In fact, O ' Connor was honoured during the ceremony with the presentation of a $2500 diamond stickpin. There was a brief interruption while one of O ' Banion's men jerked out both his guns and threatened to shoot a waiter who was pestering him for a tip. Then O ' Banion was presented with a platinum watch set with rubies and diamonds.

This dinner was the start of a new blatancy in the relationship between the gangs and the politicians, which, prior to 1924, says Pasley, ``had been maintained with more or less stealth,'' but which henceforth was marked by these ostentatious gatherings, denounced by a clergyman as ``Belshazzar feasts,'' at which ``politicians fraternized cheek by jowl with gangsters, openly, in the big downtown hotels.'' Pasley continued: ``They became an institution of the Chicago scene and marked the way to the moral and financial collapse of the municipal and county governments in 1928 - 29.''

However, this inaugural feast did its sponsors no good whatever. O ' Banion accepted his platinum watch and the tributes to his loyalty, and proceeded with the bigger and better Republican deal. On Election Day -- November 4 -- he energetically marshalled his force of bludgeon men, bribers, and experts in forging repeat votes. The result was a landslide for the Republican candidates.

This further demonstration of O ' Banion's ballooning power did not please Torrio and Capone. In the past year there had been too many examples of his euphoric self-confidence and self aggrandisement for their liking. He behaved publicly with a cocky, swaggering truculence that offended their vulpine Latin minds, and behaved towards them personally with an unimpressed insolence that enraged them beneath their blandness. They were disturbed by his idiotic bravado -- as, when his bodyguard, Yankee Schwartz, complained that he had been snubbed by Dave Miller, a prize-fight referee, chieftain of a Jewish gang and one of four brothers of tough reputation, who were Hirschey, a gambler politician in loose beer running league with Torrio and O ' Banion, Frank, a policeman, and Max, the youngest. To settle this slight, O ' Banion went down to the La Salle Theatre in the Loop, where, he had learned, Dave Miller was attending the opening of a musical comedy. At the end of the performance, Dave and Max came out into the brilliantly lit foyer among a surge of gowned and tuxedoed first nighters. O ' Banion drew his guns and fired at Dave, severely wounding him in the stomach. A second bullet ricocheted off Max's belt buckle, leaving him unhurt but in some distress. O ' Banion tucked away his gun and walked out of the theatre; he was neither prosecuted nor even arrested. That sort of braggadocio, for that sort of reason, in the view of Torrio and Capone, was a nonsense.