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.