Rothstein (10 page)

Money did not arrive at 106 West 46th Street by chance, nor merely by means of A. R.‘s reputation or charm. Rothstein employed a variety of “steerers” to entice business. If they succeeded, and if the house won, they received 10 percent of the take. When Vinnie Barton steered Charlie Gates to Rothstein, he was entitled to $4,000. Barton never received that commission.

Not every Rothstein steerer was a professional gambler. A. R. soon learned that the attractions of the fair sex were as powerful a lure as his establishment’s promise of adventure. He turned to such showgirls as Lillian Lorraine, Bobbie Norton, and the famed Peggy Hopkins Joyce.

In the early 1910s, Lillian Lorraine was a major name on Broadway. She starred in successive editions of Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies, introducing some of the era’s more popular songs, including “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” Her “Daddy Has a Sweetheart and Mother Is Her Name” sold one million copies of sheet music. In 1909 she became Ziegfeld’s mistress. The Great Ziegfeld dubbed her “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” and installed her in a lavish apartment at the Ansonia, two floors above the ten-room suite he shared with Mrs. Ziegfeld, the great stage actress Anna Held.

Lillian wasn’t above moonlighting, either professionally or romantically. While starring in the Follies, she earned extra change by working vaudeville at Time Square’s Palace Theatre. Romantically, she fell in and out of love, usually with very wealthy gentlemen. Socialite Frank Harwood quarreled with pioneer aviator Tony Pi hl over her favors, and shot the pilot dead. She married department store-heir Frederic Gresheimer, then divorced him, remarried him, and divorced him again. Suffice it to say that if you had sufficient resources, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was attainable.

Between liaisons and editions of the Follies (Ziegfeld bounced her from his cast in 1912), Miss Lorraine needed cash and was happy to pick up a few grand from A. R. for steering gentlemen his way. However, despite her status, Rothstein had little reluctance about having fun at her expense.

Before A. R. made Lindy’s his unofficial office around 1920, several other establishments held that honor. Jack’s, of course, was first, but then came Child’s, a far humbler establishment, and then Reuben’s, a place similar to Lindy’s, but located farther north of Times Square, at West 72nd Street and Broadway-just one block south of the Ansonia.

One night A. R. answered Reuben’s house telephone. It was Lillian Lorraine, wanting a chicken sandwich and a bottle of milk delivered to her Ansonia apartment. Rothstein, who possessed a love of practical jokes and a talent for imitation, pretended to be Reuben, thanked Miss Lorraine graciously for her business, and gave assurances her chicken sandwich would be right up.

He then went around the corner to a pay phone to call Reuben’s. Putting his mimicry to the test, he now posed as Lillian Lorraine and placed an order for six dozen of Reuben’s club sandwiches, a sizable amount of the finest caviar, a gallon of dill pickles, and twelve quarts of milk.

It worked like a charm. No problem, Reuben informed “Miss Lorraine.” When half the contents of Reuben’s kitchen arrived on the thirteenth floor of the Ansonia, she threw a fit. When Reuben learned what happened, he threw a fit. Both eventually discovered the trickster.

A. R. didn’t care. He liked a joke at others’ expense, particularly when he was too big for anyone to do anything about it.

Peggy Hopkins Joyce-like Lillian Lorraine-now barely remem bered, was in her day famed not so much for her talent upon the stage, but for numerous affairs, marriages, and divorces, all financially profitable for a once-poor blonde from Virginia. When A. R. met Peggy, she was neither Mrs. Joyce (Chicago lumber baron James Stanley Joyce, who would leave her a settlement of $1,000,000, was her third husband) nor a Ziegfeld Follies star. She would attain both statuses later, but was still young, beautiful, and charming and, in the early 1910s, on the make for gentlemen with large yachts and bank accounts. Rothstein recognized her potential as a steerer, but was loath to raise so crass a subject without proper preparation.

Instead, he escorted her to the track, and informed her he was betting with his money but in her name, and she could keep the winnings. Arnold wouldn’t say which bets were hers, but when the afternoon ended, he announced Peggy was $1,000 ahead. He advised her to let it ride. In other words, he wasn’t handing over any cash.

Peggy Hopkins was born greedy, and she blindly let A. R. continue. The next afternoon she “won” another $1,000. Again, Rothstein counseled her not to cash out. Each day her bankroll increased by another grand, until it reached $5,000.

By now, Peggy really wanted her winnings. But A. R. was persuasive: wait, you’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll put it all down on one race today.

She agreed. Through the first three races, A. R. made no indication that a bet had been placed. As the fourth race began, Peggy asked again. This was it, said A. R. She wanted to know which horse was hers.

“The one in the lead,” A. R. responded, knowing something she didn’t. This horse had a history of breaking strong but fading.

Past performance held true. “Her” horse lost. Peggy was disconsolate, angry, bitter. Rothstein had squandered “her” money. Ah, he said, I know how to regain that $5,000. Simply escort a certain rich friend to my gambling house. If things go well, he will lose far more than $5,000, and I’ll present you with a percentage from my winnings.

Peggy Hopkins was blond but not dumb, and had this day grown perceptibly smarter in her dealings with Rothstein. “Suppose he wins?” she wanted to know.

“Then it will be up to you to see that he pays you off.”

History doesn’t record the profitability of that first episode of the Rothstein-Hopkins partnership, but it does record that Peggy made a habit of bringing her new gentlemen friends to A. R.‘s various gambling establishments.

One evening in 1913 Peggy steered a new sucker to Rothstein, a big one: Percival S. Hill. The year before, Percival’s papa had bestowed upon him the presidency of the American Tobacco Company, and he was still feeling his oats. At Rothstein’s faro table he dropped $60,000, and A. R. did his best to maintain his composure. This was a very good night, Arnold’s best yet. But Hill wasn’t through playing or losing. He wanted his credit raised. A. R. could have quit while ahead, way ahead. He didn’t. “Of course,” he said, doing his best to appear nonchalant. “Give Mr. Hill his chips and he can name his own limit.” Hill lost $250,000 and calmly handed A. R. his I. O. U.

A. R. went upstairs to see Carolyn and let his composure drop. This was it, the big payoff he dreamed of, sweated for, connived and cheated for. He was the new Canfield. This was also the night of Carolyn’s dreams. Her husband could quit, walk away from the risk and the danger. They could live a normal life.

Arnold became expansive. “I’ll buy you the biggest diamond in New York,” he promised. “I’ll buy you the best fur coat. Whatever you want I’ll buy it for you.” She didn’t want a fur coat: she wanted a husband. If that meant giving up gambling, he wasn’t interested. He made excuses. Suddenly, $250,000 wasn’t that much money. There were expenses, payoffs, a share to the “steerers.” A. R. would not in fact, give Carolyn “whatever she wanted.”

Arnold slept fitfully. The next day he traveled down to the American Tobacco Company’s New York headquarters and asked for its treasurer, a Mr. Sylvester. Sylvester told A. R. that gambling debts weren’t collectible. Rothstein wouldn’t budge. “I am going to pay this-this-draft,” Sylvester finally announced. “You accepted it in good faith, at least with as much good faith as a gambler accepts any 1. 0. U. However, I am informing you now that I will not honor another such I. 0. U., not even for five cents. Do we understand each other?”

A. R. understood. He pocketed his $250,000 check and walked out the door.

The experience grated on him. “He treated me like dirt,” Arnold complained to his wife. “Well, I’ve got a quarter of a million dollars and that makes me as good as he is.”

But the era of the gambling house was about to end with a murder on 43rd Street. Rothstein would have to change with the times. He did-and dramatically increased both his already sizable take and influence in the world of vice.

F YOU WANTED TO OPERATE Illegally in New York-gambling, prostitution, a saloon-no problem. You required: 1. appropriate discretion (i.e., avoid having too spectacular a murder on your premises) and 2. protection from two venerable New York institutions: Tammany Hall and the police.

City cops were as crooked as the politicians. From police on the beat to the highest officials at headquarters, they possessed plentiful opportunities-and took ‘em eagerly. They became rich, arrogant, and ultimately too independent for Tammany. When the politicians finally had enough and concluded they had allowed too much autonomy to the cops, they decided to deal more directly with city vice lords. Their primary gobetween would be Arnold Rothstein.

Change came when a corrupt, brutal police lieutenant named Charles Becker ordered some East Side toughs to gun down his erstwhile partner, gambler Herman “Beansy” Rosenthal, ordering him murdered on a crowded street just off Times Square-questionable judgment on everyone’s part. Moreover, Becker sanctioned Rosenthal’s murder during one of the infrequent periods when Manhattan enjoyed a Republican district attorney. That was truly reckless. That was inexcusable.

Venal police officials long predated Lieutenant Becker, the most spectacular being Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams, Commissioner “Big Bill” Devery, and Becker’s former superior, Captain Max Schmittberger. Their careers reveal the workings of what frustrated reformers called “The System.”

“Clubber” Williams didn’t invent police corruption and brutality, but transformed both into fine arts. In 1876, when Williams’s superiors transferred him from a mundane East 20s precinct to the West Side’s Central Broadway District, hub of Manhattan’s gambling, white slave, and liquor trades, his greedy heart leaped with joy. “I’ve had nothing but chuck steak for a long time,” Williams chortled, “and now I’m going to get a little of the Tenderloin.” Previously, the precinct was “Satan’s Circus,” forever afterward-the “Tenderloin.”

Clubber exploited his opportunities, accumulating a $500,000 fortune, a seventeen-room town house, a $17,000 steam yacht, and a Connecticut country estate. Eighteen times he was investigated for graft. Eighteen times he won acquittal.

Gotham’s cops had a license to steal, but Tammany charged them for the license. Even in Williams’ day, a promotion to roundsman cost $300; to sergeant, $1,600; and to captain, anywhere from $12,000 to $16,000. Big money, but money easily earned back.

Clubber Williams paved the way for others. In the 1890s, William S. “Big Bill” Devery-300 pounds, crooked, and often drunk-served as New York’s police commissioner. Devery, in partnership with Big Tim Sullivan and Sullivan’s ally Frank Farrell, controlled Manhattan gambling. By 1900 Manhattan police payoffs amounted to $3 million annually, twenty times that amount in the purchasing power a century later. In 1894 the Board of Police Commissioners booted Devery off the force. A grand jury indicted him for extortion. But Big Bill won acquittal and returned to duty. A few years later, after the same process of indictment and acquittal, the New York State Legislature abolished the commissionership. Devery still survived. Tammany Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck, who called Big Bill New York’s best police chief ever, reinstated him, imaginatively naming him “Deputy” Commissioner.

Most folks at Tammany liked Devery, among them organization boss Richard Croker. The general public, however, sickened of having their pockets picked by the Croker-Van Wyck-Devery operation. In 1901 Croker dumped the unpopular Van Wyck from the ticket, but Republican Seth Low still captured City Hall in a landslide. Croker departed for a genteel European exile, replaced at Tammany by Charles Francis Murphy, a taciturn but savvy East Side saloonkeeper. Murphy attempted to distance Tammany from Devery-and from other obvious thieves. It was a policy that would inevitably make the ostensibly colorless Murphy the Hall’s most successful leader.

Big Bill could comfortably retire from public life; he just didn’t enjoy being shoved out. In 1902 he contested a Murphy henchman for leadership in the West Side’s Ninth Assembly District, going all out for victory. Big Bill packed 10,000 constituents onto two steamboats, six barges, and a single tugboat for a magnificent Hudson River cruise, where they received sandwiches, soft drinks, pies, 6,000 pounds of candy, 1,500 quarts of ice cream, and even 1,500 nursing bottles for infants. Forty-five musicians serenaded the crowd. As Devery’s flotilla docked, fireworks exploded from nearby barges, and Big Bill dispensed shiny silver twenty-five-cent pieces to each child.

Just before the primary, Devery staged another outing, distributing 20,000 glasses of beer from kegs emblazoned “Special Devery Brew.” He won. But Murphy cited a Democrat County Committee rule allowing the expulsion of “objectionable” members and refused to seat him.

In 1903 Devery retaliated, running for mayor as an independent. He outraged the churchgoing Murphy by exposing a house of prostitution operating at a Murphy-owned property at Lexington and 27th. “There’s been more young girls ruined in that house than in any other place in the city,” Devery charged. “The trouble with that fellow [Murphy] is that he’s got a red light hangin’ around his neck, and consequently he sees a red light in whichever direction he looks.” Devery handily lost to Tammany-backed Congressman George B. McClellan.

In 1894, during one of the state senate’s periodic probes of police graft, its Lexow Committee heard testimony from Clubber Williams’ henchman, NYPD Captain Max Schmittberger. Schmittberger implicated both himself and Williams in corrupt activities, but proved unusually flexible. When times had called for corruption, he was corrupt. When reform was in vogue, he was honest. Schmittberger not only remained on the force after the probe, he won promotion to oversee the Tenderloin. Reformers-including President of the Board of Police Commissioners Theodore Roosevelt-thought Schmittberger had gone straight. As long as they held office, he had.