I had no idea what became of Johnny Hagan, but in preparing this memoir, I asked my son Sam—who runs the A-1 now—to do a full search. In 1972, John Oscar Hagan died in the gutter in Los Angeles—Central City East, Skid Row.

Murray Humphreys’ lieutenant, Fred Evans—Dutch Downey’s insider at the Outfit, who aided in laundering the Greenlease money—was heading for his Cadillac outside his West Lake Street office when two men approached and riddled him with slugs. I knew him a little—just starting out, he ran a popcorn stand for Capone at the 1933-’34 Chicago World’s Fair. Asked about the murder of his second-in-command, Murray Humphreys said, “He was no friend of mine.”

Jack Carr died of a heart attack on April 21, 1984, the year Route 66 was decommissioned and removed from road maps. He had been obsessively attentive to the Coral Court even after its fortunes began to fade. His wife, however, a former prostitute with a potential new husband in the wings, had no such sentimentality, selling out eight years later. She even had the iconic neon sign destroyed. Though preservationists worked to save the Art Deco motel, it was torn down and replaced by a subdivision of single-family homes. The distinctive low-slung front gates are now all that survive at Oak Knoll Manor.

But at least the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis includes a Coral Court Motel exhibit: the exterior of a bungalow built from salvaged 1946 glazed brick and glass blocks. It’s part of an exhibit of car culture in the USA with a vintage Fleetwood Cadillac ready to pull into the unit’s garage. Bobby Darin’s Dream Car, a space-age fantasy from the year Lou Shoulders died, perches close by.

Still ruling East St. Louis at age 63, Buster Wortman died August 3, 1968. He was in intensive care, suffering complications after larynx surgery; but some said his death was due to a liver ailment from heavy drinking. After Buster died, his son subdivided the land around the moat; last I knew the Art Moderne castle was standing, still surrounded by water but also suburban homes.

Attorney Morris Shenker, who represented both Vitale and Wortman, came also to represent Jimmy Hoffa and the $700 million Central States Teamster’s pension fund. He borrowed two million personally from the Outfit and bought the Dunes Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, promising a kickback he never delivered. He died of natural causes, as mob lawyers often do, in 1989.

John J. Vitale took over the St. Louis branch of the Outfit after the death of Anthony “Tony Lap” Lopiparo. He was “manager” of heavyweight champ Sonny Liston, and likely arranged Liston taking that famous dive in the championship rematch with Mohammed Ali. He dabbled in coin-machine rackets, firearms trafficking, and informing the FBI. The St. Louis mob boss died in his sleep in 1982.

Wes Grapp became head of the L.A. office of the FBI, but left the Bureau under a cloud. He had borrowed from the Beverly Hills Fidelity Bank headed by Stanley M. Stafford, whose young son in 1968 was kidnapped and rescued by Grapp and his agents in a highly publicized $250,000 ransom case. He subsequently joined the budding Federal Express as their world security director until retiring in 1982. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Grapp died in 2011 at the age of 93.)