Miami, Florida, February the 15th, 1933.

A warm Wednesday evening in Bayfront Park and five shots from a 32 caliber revolver just changed the course of American history.

The President-elect of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

sat in the back of an open touring car near the Banshell, having just delivered a short speech to a

crowd of thousands. He had been fishing in the Bahamas for 10 days. He was tanned and relaxed,

17 days from taking the oath of office, and a five-foot-one

Italian bricklayer named Giuseppe Zangara had just tried to kill him. Zangara missed, but he hit

five other people. One of them was the mayor of Chicago. The mayor's name was Anton Kermak,

and he would be dead inside three weeks. Now, the papers would write it up as a madman's failed assassination attempt,

a deranged anarchist who hated presidents and capitalists,

firing wildly from a wobbly folding chair.

And that version might be true.

But in Chicago, where the mayor's own police bodyguards had recently tried to gun down the head of the Chicago outfit in his office on LaSalle Street, certain people found the official story a little too convenient. But we'll get to that.

Roosevelt's car had pulled up in front of the Banshell around 915 that evening.

The park was packed. Palm trees lined the waterfront along Biscayne Bay,

and the air was heavy and warm, the way February air has no business being anywhere north of the Tropic of Cancer.

The crowd had gathered to welcome the man who, in less than three weeks,

would inherit the worst economic catastrophe in the nation's history. Roosevelt sat up on the back

of the rear seat and spoke for about a minute, thanked the crowd, said he'd gained 10 pounds

fishing in the Bahamas and would need to work them off.

The crowd loved it. When he finished, he slid back down into his seat.

Chicago Mayor Anton Kermak, who had been sitting with other dignitaries near the band shell,

...