Capone sent Jimmy Fawcett and
Murray "the Camel" Humpreys out to Des Plains to talk to Roger. The
probable reason for sending Fawcett and Humpreys to see Touhy was, in all
likelihood, to try one last time to get him to fall into line before the real
shooting started. Sending Fawcett, an old hand Capone gunman, was a smart move.
Touhy had known Fawcett for years, the two of them living along the edges of
Chicago unionism for several years. Humpreys may have been new to Touhy. The
Camel, Touhy said, did all the talking. Humpreys got things off to a bad start.
He said Touhy was "putting [his] nose where it don't belong and that means
trouble."
'Mr. Capone" the Camel hissed, 'is
upset at the Touhys and that isn't good." Capone wanted Touhy to stop
offering protection to the Teamster Union bosses.
Afterward Roger went to Cicero with him and
Fawcett and talked over the problems with Frank Nitti. There are several
versions of what happened next, but the end result of each version is the same.
When the Camel was done with his threats,
Touhy put a pistol into his mouth and told him never to show his face in Des
Plains again. Humpreys offered to buy back his life with his new car but Touhy
let them go. After the pair had left, Fawcett returned and offered "to
kill Humpreys on the way back into Chicago and for an extra few grand, Rog,
I'll knock off that son of a bitch Nitti too."
Years later, Touhy told the story, or at
least a cleaned up version of it, in his memoir. When the book hit the streets,
an infuriated and humiliated Murray Humpreys denied that it ever happened.