Chicago, Spring 1931.  That night, Ness and his men are in their car; it's an 80 mph chase to catch a guy running whiskey for Solly Girsch.  The 19-year-old driver has a high-speed accident; his car overturns and explodes in flames.  Solly Girsch is the king of bootleg whiskey; he has 500 ""mom & pop"" stores pushing his hooch-- all together, they form the biggest single outlet of whiskey in Chicago.  Next night, top boss Harry Mastrogeorge-- along with Solly's crooked lawyer Billy Baron and about half a dozen of Mastrogeorge's lieutenants-- are throwing a party for Solly, celebrating his getting his 500th outlet.  They bring in a 2-foot-high cake.  Solly quips he wishes a blonde would jump out of the cake. (she'd be pretty short.) But Solly has an announcement; he's buying 1,000 gallons of whiskey a day from them, and he wants to cut the price he pays from $8 a gallon to $4.  They all balk, and Pete Topchinski  is vocal about it.  Big bucks are involved-- it's a $2-million a year bus