Criminal - The Mirage

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

In 1977, a new bar opened on North Wells Street in Chicago. Things weren’t as they seemed at the aptly named “Mirage Tavern.” This story is from our friends at Snap Judgment. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more.  We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You might know that the Criminal team loves to find great spots to eat lunch on tour. So when we're back on the road this fall, we plan to use the new app from our friends at Eater. It's free, and it uses your location to show you nearby restaurants recommended by Eater's editors. More than 10,000 restaurants in more than 100 cities around the world. You can even search by the type of food. I've already found two good-looking spots near our shows in Portland and Atlanta. You can download it, too, at eater.com slash app. Hi, it's Phoebe. Today we're bringing you a story about a bar in my hometown of Chicago. It was called the Mirage Tavern, and even though it sold drinks and had regulars,

it was a front, but probably not the kind you're imagining. Our friends at the radio show and podcast Snap Judgment talked with some of the people who ran the bar back in 2018 in an episode they called Night at the Mirage. And today, we wanted to share that story with you. Here's Joe Rosenberg. Zay had dreamed of being a reporter for the Sun-Times his entire life. And in 1977, he was still a cub reporter, a rookie, stuck covering the suburbs. But then, one night, he was in the office, working late. It was in the evening, and I was working on a story

when suddenly I was called into Man editor Stu Lurie's office. And if you called into the office late at night, I was worried that this was not good news. I didn't know what it might be. But Stu's first words, and he was smiling when he said them, he said, Zay, have you ever waited tables? And I said, yes. And they said, can you hold your liquor? And I said, something was happening here. And I decided I was going to answer yes to every question, no matter what it

was. And I said, yes. And they said, are you good at talking to people? And I said, yes. Otherwise, can you keep your mouth shut if you have to? And I said, yes. And then he asked, can you write 50,000 words in a big hurry? And I said, yes. And at that point, Stu leaned back in his chair and smiled and said, Zay, I think we're going to detach you from the city room for a while. At the end of the meeting, Stu Lurie said, do you have a nickname? And I said, well, my college friends call me Norty. And he said, all right, well, good luck, Norty the bartender. That's when the editor read Zay in on the plan,

that the Chicago Sun-Times had bought a bar. And the story needed a second reporter to work with Pam, and I said yes. Pam Zekman, Z-E-K-M-A-N, and I'm an investigative reporter now with the CBS station in Chicago. Pam Zekman was a senior investigative reporter at the Sun-Times, and she and the editor, Stu Laurie,

had come up with this idea. The idea was for the paper to buy, set up, and operate a working bar. It was to be a sort of undercover bar to catch Chicago officials in the act of corruption. Normally, what would happen is that people would call into newspapers like the Sun-Times with complaints about things that they thought needed to be investigated, and then Pam and the other reporters would go out and, well, investigate. But one of the most difficult tips that we got was tips from small businesses that said that they were sick and tired of having to pay bribes to all kinds of inspectors that would demand payoffs and keep coming. It never ended. In other words, a city inspector would come to an establishment like a restaurant and say, oh, geez, you're out of code, what can we do?

And then shake them down for a little money. And to be clear, this wasn't something that just affected a few businesses. It affected thousands. People would say, everyone does it. It's systemic. You'll never be able to do anything about it. It's just the Chicago way. And we wanted the tipsters to go public with us,

and they wouldn't understandably, they would not. And that's when Pam and her colleagues came up with the idea. Well, what if we buy a bar? And that's when Pam and her colleagues came up with the idea. Well, what if we buy a bar? And this was back in the day when a newspaper could afford to buy a bar. No sooner had they made their grand plan than they realized exactly how unprepared they were to buy, manage, and run a bar in the middle of Chicago. This was a big project with all kinds of things that could go quite terribly wrong. My biggest fear was that we would have something terrible happen in the bar and that it would become a horrible mistake. Well, aside from the fact that the cover could be blown and the whole project

could just be collapsed, someone could be killed in our tavern. It's a tavern in Chicago and you're always careful. There were so many ways it could go wrong.

First, they partnered with an investigator from the Better Government Association named Bill Rechtenwald to help them run the operation. The second is, duh, they hired a bartender. They figured they needed at least one professional who could pose as the owner. His name was Jeff Allen. But like them, he was new to the ways of the Chicago bar scene. Then came the third order of business, to actually find a bar, preferably one that wasn't sparkling clean and up to code. We looked at dozens of places,

tried to find a bar that was in our price range. We were looking for a place where we could conceal our photographers. Finally, they found a 731 North Wells Street. I remember very well one of those moments in life you remember, the corner of Wells and Superior, parking my car, not really knowing quite what I'd be called upon to do, opening the screen door and going in. There's a bar along the left, some booths on the right, and a jukebox, and this is a shot and a beer kind of place. Most important of all, from the get-go, it had a lot of obvious violations.

There were drain boards behind the bar that were rotting. There were bar sinks that dumped water directly onto the floor. There was a pool of water in the basement that we thought had maggots in it. It looked like maggots. There were electrical wires hanging down from all sorts of places. One of the toilets didn't flush. In other words, it's the perfect place for what you wanted to do. It was wonderful.

And incredibly, the owner said in five years he'd never been cited for a single violation. We couldn't believe it. We had just started fixing the place up minimally when the first inspector that came in was a plumbing inspector, older man, very heavy set. He was looking at behind the bar. He wound up being unconcerned about water that was like a waterfall, practically, dripping from the sinks, and he said, nothing here is up to code.

And then he made a comment about probably we didn't have enough money to fix it, so leave it, he said. That's not something an inspector should say, leave your code violations. He said, don't worry about it. We'll work something out. This happened a few times. An inspector would come in, ham and haw, and leave saying they'd be back to work something out. So all that Pam and the rest could do was carry on with the business of getting the bar ready and wait to see what would happen next. We'll be right back.

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why don't you call it the Mirage? That's what it's going to be. And he was right. It was perfect. Do you remember, tell me what you remember about opening day. Fear. I did not expect that we would have a lot of business in the neighborhood that we were in. I was wrong. I mean, on opening day, I was having trouble pouring beer. And a customer had wound up giving me a lesson in pouring beer without having it foaming out of the glass and gave me a pat on the back and said,

that's very good. There was another time when somebody asked me for a drambuie. And I said, a what? And he said, a drambuie. And he said, I don't think we have that. And the customer said, what do you mean you don't have it? It's right behind you. I have no idea. One guy came in one morning and wanted a shot and a beer. And I poured the shot in the beer. But even before the bar opened, they also had had to figure out how to find graft, and they had no idea how it worked. How would inspectors ask for handouts? What words would they use?

And how were they expected to hand over the bribes exactly? What the owner is supposed to say is, isn't there some way we can avoid this aggravation? That's a key word in Chicago. That sentence has been spoken so many times. Isn't there some way we can avoid this aggravation? At which point you start negotiating. But we were very concerned about never being accused of entrapping these inspectors.

We did not want to do that. In order to avoid entrapment, and if you have an inspector who's obviously fishing for an envelope of money, we just stood there like the dumbest kids on the block. We didn't make a move to the point where some of the inspectors were almost frustrated having to move this thing along and get their payoff. We looked like just dumb beginners, which is what we were. We weren't going to say, well, can we pay you off in order to ignore the violation? That was absolutely not going to happen. We needed to either have them ask for the money or hint that they wanted the money. The language and dance of

the game was, well, we really want to work with you, and oh, you're nice people, and we want to help you, and things like that. But they didn't know the dance. They didn't know the language. But luckily, they had found this accountant. He was straight out of central casting. His name was Phil Barish. Phil Barish is a very colorful character. He drove a Rolls Royce,

and he bragged about his gambling habits in Las Vegas. He was constantly talking about how much money he had. He had to tell us that he gets lots of sex, lots of trips, nice trips. He also had a criminal record. He was the most honest, dishonest man you'll ever meet. He was of the city of Chicago. He taught us you've got to follow the rules if you're going to break the law.

And Phil Barish showed them the exact steps of the corruption dance. The bribes were small, but they were coming in from hundreds of bars across the city, so they added up. He said, okay, I want you to put $10 in an envelope for the fire inspector, $15 in an envelope for the building inspector, along with my card, and when they come in, give them the envelope.

Tell them that Phil Barish told you to give this to them. In other words, he wasn't just their accountant. He was also their corruption broker. That was extraordinary because that was an easy way to get ourselves into the corruption angle without being accused of entrapping the inspectors. So the photographers climbed up into a hidden loft, positioned behind a fake air vent, and they waited. And remember, before it opened, the bar had serious code violations, things that really were dangerous.

So the first big test came with the fire inspector's visit. I was outside the bar waiting. This was the date and the time that our Mr. Fix-It, Phil Barish, had told us to expect an inspector. And he came just as Barish said he would. And he was the fire inspector, a lieutenant, and he came in and he looked around. I don't know what he was looking for, but it certainly wasn't fire violations. He asked about the condition of the basement, and Jeff Allen told him, well, we never use it. And the fire inspector said, well, as long as it's clean, no trash, no junk down there, which was laughable

because it was a fire hazard. There were all kinds of open ceilings that plaster had fallen off the ceiling. A fire could have gone right through there. He never went near the basement. And then, out of nowhere, he started talking about how much he liked beer and how he loved, loved beer. And it got to the point where we thought that maybe what he was hinting at was that he wanted beer or a keg of beer as his payoff. At that point, it was obvious that the inspection was done, if you call it an inspection, and Jeff Allen had the envelope that we were supposed to give to him,

according to Barish. And there was some hesitation, nervous hesitation. And then he just scooped it up and acknowledged that he was done and he was leaving and he wasn't citing us for any code violations. And he walked out he said it's a beautiful day and walked out we'll be right back what software do you use at work the answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be the The average U.S. company deploys

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At one point he looked up at the grill that our cameraman had put in the loft so that they could shoot down on top of the bar and capture what was going on. He looked straight up at that ventilation duct, and the cameraman thought that they were spotted. I mean, they froze. They didn't want to make a move. And they wound up, though, getting the picture that we wanted of him scooping up the envelope. That was, yes, one of the iconic photographs is he took the envelope. The same thing happened with the building inspector that followed. And I should say, both the fire inspector and the building inspector, the fire inspector's like in his uniform, but he's got the cigarette dangling. There's a huge amount of, it's a very smoky cigarette. And then the building inspector's got the world's

perhaps most amazing haircut. You like that, huh? But he's also got a cigarette dangling from him, too. They both did. I mean, we were very excited about those photographs, and, of course, the cameraman told us that right away, they told us that they had nailed it. And, you know, it happened over and over again. You asked me at what point did I think that we really were accomplishing

or proving the point that this was systemic. My wow moment came as we progressed through the different specialties and the ventilation inspector and the plumbing inspector and then the liquor inspector just telling us go to the cash register and get some cash. Did I imagine going into it that we found all the things we did? No. It was incredible. And there was something else that Pam and Zay and the Sun-Times were able to document. Not only did they find and prove incontrovertible government graft over and over again, but in creating a bar, they had also created a tiny new world. And that tiny world was peopled with stories.

A tavern is a city, a whole city come in off the street for a beer. You know, you're caring for a community every day. There quickly grew this cast of regulars at the Mirage. We called them the Mirage Menagerie, and they ranged from Cheeky the Gunrunner, a little old guy who suddenly came in one day, a handgun he was trying to sell, wrapped in newspaper. There was a guy named Cowboy Don.

Well, Cowboy Don, you could tell from a distance that he was a cowboy. He'd have a buckskin jacket and a cowboy hat. There was a guy they named Football Hero. But I remember one moment when he looked down at a bourbon he was drinking and said, sometimes all I can remember are football plays and my serial number. And that was Football Hero. Then there was the guy they called Lost Weekend. Well, Lost Weekend was the most intellectual member of the menagerie by far.

He was very smart, and he said he was a writer. He said he wrote a piece for The New Yorker once, but he hasn't written anything else, and we couldn't find any record of the piece he said he wrote for the New Yorker. But he had a little problem with liquor. And then, of course, there were fights. Because, you know, it's a bar.

There had been a full-blown barroom brawl. And what happened was it started with a simple argument about, can I dance with this girl? That developed into a fistfight, and suddenly everybody in the place has a reason to punch out the person next to him. And we had a guy smashing the beer bottle repeatedly on the bar trying to get it to break, and it wouldn't do it

the way it would in the movies. Everything settled down, and then we noticed that there was an old tipler sitting quietly in one of the booths, and he had somehow managed to remain unnoticed, sipping a martini throughout the brawl. And he just said, can I have another drink? The service in here is terrible. In our bar, we had a jukebox and a pinball. Our pinball was an Evel Knievel pinball. And one night, I looked up from the bar because I heard some commotion at the pinball, and there was this young fellow just shouting at the pinball machine as he played. You scurvy dog, I hate you. I had to go over and check out the scurvy dog and I made his acquaintance and found out that he was a young man

who just about turned 22, very respectable young man, but he had this thing about pinball machines, and he couldn't rest until when he met a new pinball machine. He could not rest until he'd beaten the high-posted score. The high-posted score on this pinball was 242.050, 242,000. And he was a very good pinball player and he said, for some reason this machine, I hate it, I hate it.

I could see something was developing because he was back every night for hours on the machine trying to conquer the 242.050. I made friends with him and he started, he started teaching me about pinball. People would gather because they realized what was going on, the drama. And he'd come close, and the ball would go down the chute, and we'd hear the shout of, you scurvy dog.

But finally, on the night of September 16th, it was a Friday night, and he came in and he played a game. He had a bag with his flight suit with him because he was getting ready to go up to Naval Reserve weekend training. First of all, he said, I just missed the 620 train, but I'll get the 720. And then he, I just missed the 720 train, but I'll get the 820. And then he finally said, can the reserve, I am going after this machine. And so he did. And a crowd gathered, and he went after it and lost,

and went after it and lost. And then suddenly, he was up in the 200,000th with a free ball left. And the place fell quiet. As he went with the last ball, and he did, you could tell he was just doing everything he knew how to do. Intense concentration, flipper action, and finally, bang, he was past 242.050. And his first words were, I love this machine.

I go back to the line, it's a city coming off the street in need of a drink. I think that's what I would have found on any number of neighborhood taverns. And it would have been quirky in the sense that people are quirky. But the mirage was never meant to last. Once they had their story, it was time to close the doors and say goodbye to the menagerie. Finally closing up, you know, we wound up having to take down some of the decorations we'd put up. It was not depressing. It was the end of a huge, huge effort that had gone successfully and a huge sense of relief and of accomplishment in what we had done. But there was so much more to do. There was one last hurdle. They had to write the story. We ended up, when it came time to write it,

which is quite a moment, suddenly have to say to yourself, my goodness, I have to write this now. The pile of memoranda was taller than Pam. But you asked me whether I felt scared at the start of the project. If I felt scared at all, I felt scared at this point. There's an old saying in our business, if you've got a good story, tell it. If you don't have a good story, write it.

This is a good story. All I had to do was tell it. Three months later, on January 5, 1978, an article appeared on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times. It looked like any other tavern in the city. The beer was cold, the brass was hot, but the Mirage 731 was never quite what it seemed. I was down in the city room and the papers came up and, uh, hot off, well, you know, it's always hot off the presses. It's actually wet off the presses because if the papers are anything off the, or at

least if they're out of the press run, they're a little wet. But the papers came up, and after one story, I walked, I was walking down what we, it was a place, a row and a desk in the city room we call Murderer's Row, because the columnists were in a row, and they were all reading the Mirage story because the papers had just come up, and they all looked at me and gave me a thumbs up, and I thought, gee, that was nice. They really liked it. That was terrific. And I later found out they were giving me the thumbs up

because I got the word ass into the paper. The article was a hit, and four days later, another article appeared, and then one the day after that. The article was a hit. And four days later, another article appeared. And then one the day after that, and the day after that. Zay and the team would end up writing a 25-part series. It became like a soap opera. People were buying the paper and sitting there and reading it on the train and following it very closely.

And it went from the corruption to the tax skimming to the vendors to the features and the characters in the bar. And it turns out, while the mayor and city council might be able to duck one bad article, a 25-part series is a little harder to gloss over. In the next election, the mayor was voted out of office, although Zay says it wasn't all thanks to the mirage. The blizzard of 79, which paralyzed the city in ways that it became obvious the city was not delivering services. And they say that that was the one-two punch.

Corruption, yeah, it's corrupt. And now the mayor wasn't even able to keep the streets plowed, and that's why he went down. There's still a bar at 731 North Wells Street. They knocked on a wall, but the old back bar is still there, and there are pictures from its days as a sting operation. I still have in my closet a Mirage jacket and t-shirts that say I inspected the Mirage. And I have matchbooks that we had made for the Mirage. The night the Mirage closed, there was a wrap party. All the reporters went. The fake bartenders, the real bartender, the photographers who had been cooped up in the ceiling boards.

And even some members of the menagerie showed up. And we were part of it. We were members of the menagerie. They were generally good people that I enjoyed knowing. The 25-part series that the Chicago Sun-Times ran, called The Mirage, became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local special reporting. The Pulitzer jury said the paper had shown extraordinary commitment in terms of cost and legal risk to reveal widespread abuses by public officials.

But in the end, the Pulitzer Board refused to give them the prize because the reporting had been based in deception. Pam Zechman and Zay Smith wrote a book together in 1979, also called The Mirage. Two years after Zay Smith spoke with Snap Judgment, he died of lung cancer. He'd been a reporter for more than 40 years.

Special thanks to the team at Snap Judgment. This piece was produced by Joe Rosenberg and Anna Sussman, with an original score by Leon Morimoto. You can find all of the show's many years of excellent episodes and stories at snapjudgment.org. You can also listen to Snap shows, many years of excellent episodes and stories at SnapJudgment.org.

You can also listen to Snap Judgment on any podcast platform. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.

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