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| Take for a ride |
"Take for a ride" has long been a standard in the underworld lexicon, coined in the bootleg wars in Chicago in the early 1920s by Hymie Weiss, one of the leaders of the North Side O'Banion Gang.
When Steve Wisniewski hijacked one of the mob's loaded beer trucks, Weiss was accorded the duty of exacting the proper retribution. He invited the unsuspecting Wisniewski for a drive along Lake Michigan, from which he never returned. As Weiss later explained, "We took Stevie for a ride, a oneway ride."
Weiss set the standard for other mob killers, instigating a technique identifiable to the press as "a professional job." Weiss decreed that from the back seat a hit man put a .45 to the back of the victim's neck as he sat in the front seat of the car. At the proper moment the gun was fired.
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As Weiss explained to fledgling hit men, it was important to make sure the bullet did not "take a course"—that is, be deflected by a bone so that in an outlandish quirk the victim might survive. Even more embarrassing would be an instance in which the bullet might be deflected by the skull and slant off into the driver of the car instead.
