The BEST episodes written by David Zelag Goodman
#2 - Death for Sale
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 26
Chicago, last week of April 1933. Frank Nitti is offered a huge quantity of Chinese opium. Ever since the government had established the Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, the flow of opium from China to the USA had slowed to a trickle, and by 1932 the flow had almost ceased; now, with the end of Prohibition seeming imminent, the Syndicate is ready to deal in opium again. Late on the night of May 4, Nitti sends one of his top lieutenants, Ed Getty, to pick up some opium from Art Rele and his thug Cliff Anders. But Ness and Lee Hobson show up, too; in the shootout, only Art Rele escapes. On Getty, Ness finds some raw opium wrapped in a sheet of paper in an envelope. Later at Ness' office, the other hood is identified as Cliff Anders, who used to work for Phil Melnick, the one-time ""king of opium."" And so Eliot Ness and his Untouchables head to New York (on a train, not a plane as they usually do). Their only lead is the expensive bond paper that the opium was wrapped in; it was manufac
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#3 - The Mark of Cain
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 5
Chicago, late Spring 1932. There is public protest about the increase in drug addiction. Charlie Sebastino has amalgamated all the small distributors into one big empire, setting himself up as emperor. Ness and his Untouchables had virtually shut down dope dealings, by nailing the big operators, but this network is run through small-time pushers. One of Charlie's pushers is a park worker known as Ragpicker; right now he's selling some heroin to 19-year-old Carol Royce. Later, Ness visits Carol in the hospital, where she is dying of an overdose; she identifies the Ragpicker, who works at the Williams Street Park. Carol dies. Ness tells the reporters to print the story. At a nightclub, Sticks is playing the drums. Charlie Sebastino is coming on to the beautiful nightclub singer. Ness and Rico and Lee Hobson barge in; Charlie's boy Puffy Oselle says to his boss, ""Sorry, I couldn't stop him."" Ness has a search warrant to look for the Ragpicker, but he's not there. Frank and Joe
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The Untouchables - Season 4 - Episode 3
By mid-June 1932, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables had uncovered and shut down every champagne-producing operation in the city. 4 months later, however, champagne appears again in the fashionable Westside nightclubs. Ness is about to raid the swankiest speak, the Silver Canary. At the club, Marty Baltin is paying Charley Mailer for the last champagne shipment: $86,000 for 350 cases (that comes out to about $245 per case of 12, about $20 a bottle). Ness and his men raid the place; as Charley Mailer exits quickly, he accidentally leaves his small ledger book on Marty Baltin's desk. Ness and Hobson find a dozen bottles in the bar area, wherein the champagne is frozen solid, the bottles must have accidentally arrived in a refrigerated shipment. Enrico Rossi checks with the railroads, and finds out 4 refrigerated freight cars had arrived from the Marblehead Seafood & Ice Company in Boston; the Untouchables fly to Boston. Next day, Mailer is meeting with Baltin again. Baltin found out M
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#5 - The King of Champagne
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 30
Chicago, the 3rd week of November 1932. Working on an anonymous tip, Eliot Ness and his men raid a warehouse; all the crates are filled with champagne bottles, it was a shipment for the New Year's celebrations. Ness has the landlord who owns the warehouse, Michel (french for Michael) Viton, arrested; but he's released. Birdie, a deaf-mute, takes Viton to his boss, Edmund Wald, a bottle manufacturer (he's also the one who tipped Ness, to get rid of the competition). Edmund Wald is secretly making champagne bottles; he also has a man in Indiana making a brew of spiced cider and sugar cane that can pass for champagne. Wald can get all the bogus champagne he needs for $2 a quart-bottle, and then he wants to sell it for $10 a bottle. Wald needs Viton for a capital investment: $100,000 to buy the bogus champagne, and $100,000 to have a bottle-corking machine smuggled in from Europe. Viton says they can steal the corking machine from the Industrial Museum; and Edmund will have to go to
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#6 - The Antidote
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 20
Mid-October 1932. The nation's attention is on the election campaign between incumbent president Herbert Hoover and his opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is crippled by polio. With Prohibition still the law of the land, the government is looking for ways to denature alcohol, which legitimate manufactures need for industrial purposes (making perfumes, etc). Should the alcohol fall into the wrong hands, if it was denatured, it would be useless to bootleggers. Eliot Ness and his Untouchables, along with top Federal agents from all over the country, attend an important meeting in Washington, DC. The Speaker says that since the beginning of Prohibition, all alcohol produced under government license has had one of various denaturants added to it: pyridine, methanol, etc. But the Underworld has always found a way to renature the alcohol. The Speaker is happy to announce that the government chemists in his Department have finally come up with a denaturant for which there is no Antidote
#7 - The Masterpiece
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 14
Chicago, December 1931. With Al Capone in prison, the bootlegging part of his empire was split in 2. One of Capone's lieutenants, Mayer Wartel, acquired the speakeasies; another lieutenant, Karl Positan, acquired the breweries and distilleries. In an attempt to take over the entire operation, Positan withholds his whiskey and beer; the number of speaks flourishing drops to an all-time Prohibition low. Eliot Ness and his men keep an eye on the situation. Nitti's plenty sore. As collector for Capone, Nitti has a meet with Mayer Wartel. Nitti snaps, ""Candy stores take in more!"" When Wartel says you can't operate speaks without booze, Nitti tells him, ""I don't want to hear no excuses. Excuses ain't money-- only money is money!"" Nitti makes it clear that Wartel's problem with Positan is his business, and he better take care of it and soon. Wartel sends ""Happy"" (so nicknamed because he never smiles) Levinsky and 10 of his boys armed with tommy guns to the Kayope Hotel where Positan
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#8 - The Matt Bass Scheme
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 5
In mid-June 1932, Eliot Ness, having compiled a list of Frank Nitti's breweries & distilleries, began a series of raids designed to break the back of the Capone empire. This puts the pressure on Frank Nitti, Capone's lieutenant. Nitti calls a meet with Seth Otis and Phil Grier, who jointly own the biggest speakeasy in Chicago, the Hotsy Totsy Club. Nitti tells them he's going to build new breweries and distilleries outside of town, where Ness can't find them, and have the liquor delivered by trucks. It'll take about a month, maybe 6 weeks. The speak owners are shocked, they can't go that long without beer and booze. Nitti tells them nobody better buy booze from out of state and have it hustled in-- and he's going to make sure the 2 speak owners ""set a good example"" for everybody else to obey his orders. In the meantime, at the State Pen, 2 cons cook up a scheme: the brains is Jason Fiddler, an engineer who will be sprung in a month, and his partner is Matt Bass, who is being paro
#9 - The Jazz Man
The Untouchables - Season 4 - Episode 27
During the blistering summer of 1931, Ness and his men are working tirelessly against both the illicit whiskey and the narcotics that are flooding the city. One morning, a despondent Capt. Jim Johnson visits Ness in his office; Capt. Johnson had been on a raid that netted 50 dope addicts-- one of them was his son Buz. Ness talks to Buz behind bars. Buz cooperates, and says he got the powder from a pusher named Peepers (so-named because he always wears shades); Ness gets Buz released. Peepers, meanwhile, is awaiting a big shipment of narcotics from Sal Rudin, alias ""Mr. Big."" Later, Agent Lee Hobson traces Peepers to where he's staying, at the Viking Hotel. Ness and Lee see Peepers carrying a small case of dope-- Peepers fires his gun at them; Ness shoots back, killing him. Searching Peepers' apartment, they find out that Artie Tresh, a bass violin player working at the Club 88, also lives there. They go to the Club 88, and meet the owner, Sal Rudin. When Ness says he wants to t