Augie "The Banker" Ciamino (played by Keenan Wynn) is a vicious and brutal bootlegger who has developed a seemingly foolproof way of manufacturing liquor. He has equipped over a hundred immigrant homes with small stills to actually make the stuff and a unique way of collecting the product. Not everyone in the immigrant community is participating in the illegal liquor-making operation and Ness visits a night class where adults learn English, and writes his phone number on the blackboard. 

When gangster Nick Moses and another Chicago mobster threaten to go to war after Moses poaches customers in the other's territory, Frank Nitti - now the top mobster in Chicago after the recent incarceration of Al Capone for tax evasion - tells them to settle things amicably, or else. Moses pretends to make amends but actually arranges a hit on his rival, one that also leads to a young newspaper boy being shot. When Nitti tells him he's a dead man, Moses tries to make one last deal - in return for sparing his life, he will make sure Eliot Ness is killed.