19. A New Breed of Mobster
Unlike their hidebound predecessors, Frankie Yale and the new breed of Mafiosi to which he belonged were willing to cooperate and work with other ethnic gangs, so long as there was money to be made. From protection, he soon branched out into prostitution and ran a string of brothels. When Prohibition arrived, Yale became one of Brooklyn’s biggest bootleggers. However, the high profits came with correspondingly high risks, and in 1921 he barely escaped an assassination attempt by rival bootleggers. He got away with a shot up lung, while one of his bodyguards was wounded and another was killed.
He survived another assassination attempt just a few months later, that claimed the life of another bodyguard. That was followed by yet another attempt in 1923 when he escaped with his life only because the assassins mistook an associate for Yale and shot him dead instead. In 1924, his former employee Al Capone asked him for a favor, so he traveled to Chicago with a hit team to murder North Side Gang leader Dean O’Banion, who was locked into a bitter feud with Capone and the Chicago Outfit.