Rothstein (14 page)

As the time before Becker’s execution receded into mere hours, his saintly-but naive-wife Helen trailed Governor Whitman from Albany to Peekskill to Poughkeepsie to make a last-minute plea for her husband’s life. When Whitman could run no more, she faced him and could say … nothing. Nothing emerged but a flow of tears and anguished, heart-wrenching sobbing. Whitman walked away.

At Sing Sing, early on the morning of July 30, 1915, Charles Becker walked to the electric chair. He forgave his enemies and asked forgiveness from those he had wronged. Some contended he approached death stoically. The World said he appeared “about to be overcome by sheer nerve panic.” Frank Ward O’Malley later would compare the calm demeanor of a black prisoner sentenced to death to Becker’s edginess, saying, “the Negro showed the Czar of the Tenderloin how to die.” Arnold Rothstein thought that was about the best thing Frank ever wrote.

They strapped Becker into the chair, pumped 1,850 volts through him-and found him still breathing. They ran another 2,500 volts into him. Still he lived. A third charge finished the job.

In the Governor’s Mansion, Whitman couldn’t sleep. At Tammany Hall Boss Murphy and his assistants kept watch through the night. And in the White Room at Jack’s, a different crew maintained its own vigil. They included Nicky Arnstein, Tad Dorgan, Frank O’Malleyand Arnold Rothstein. A. R. lay his gold pocket watch on the table to better track the time. At 5:45 A.M. he snapped it shut.

“Well,” Rothstein finally said, “that’s it.”

That was it for Charles Becker, it for the old style of police graft and corruption, it for the old-style gambling houses of Manhattan. Arnold Rothstein would invent floating crap games that would move from hotel to hotel, apartment to apartment, warehouse to warehouse. Now gambling would move out to the suburbs, out to Long Island. Arnold Rothstein already had a new gambling house in the old Holley Arms Hotel out in Hewlitt, with none other than George Considine, Big Tim’s partner at the Metropole, as his partner. The cops could no longer be trusted to direct the shakedowns. That would be left to the politicians, but the politicians needed a smart man-“a smart Jew” as Big Tim might have put it-to be their gobetween with gamblers, the judges, and the police.

A new world was being born, and Arnold Rothstein meant to make a profit on every continent.

ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN BECAME not just the Great Bankroll, but the great gobetween. If politicians wanted something from gamblers and vice lords, they approached A. R. If the underworld sought protection from Tammany’s judges and prosecutors and pliant police officers, it, too, approached Rothstein. He made things happen, quietly and without fuss. More importantly, he left no trail of evidence. Everything ran smoothly and profitably.

Arnold possessed power, influence, and cash, though he did not have total immunity. He had to change his gambling operations. The age of the permanent Manhattan gambling house was over. Maybe it would have ended anyway, but the Rosenthal shooting made its demise inevitable. No politician dared be part of such an enterpriseas Tim Sullivan had been. No police officer felt comfortable selling protection as brazenly as did Charles Becker.

However, the system remained safe in the suburbs. Former State Senator William H. Reynolds, a Brooklyn Republican, had moved from developing real estate in Brooklyn (he virtually created the BedfordStuyvesant, Borough Park, Bensonhurst, and South Brownsville neighborhoods) to-along with Big Tim Sullivan and Brooklyn’s Democratic boss, Pat McCarren-founding Coney Island’s fantastic Dreamland amusement park. In 1907 he moved on to Long Island, developing the resort community of Long Beach, which he modestly christened the “Riviera of the East.”

For a while, he prospered. Along with Vernon and Irene Castle, the premier dance team of the time, he opened Castles by the Sea, an opulent nightclub, featuring the world’s largest dance floor, to showcase their talent. But Reynolds overreached himself. He went bankrupt, and Castles by the Sea became the Holley Arms Hotel. Around 1912 A. R., the Considine brothers, and fellow gambler Nat Evans, eventually bought the operation. Determined to make it a first-class resort, Arnold dispatched his loyal servant, Tom Farley to oversee its operations. Eventually, they brought Sheepshead Bay bookmaker Edward G. Burke into their partnership.

Carolyn Rothstein described the place in rather mundane terms, an establishment featuring “the customary green rugs, and chandeliers, and the roulette and faro equipment,” but it was more than that. This was gambling for the elite. The Holley Arms boasted spacious, manicured grounds, and even a scenic stream outdoors. All croupiers wore proper formal attire. For its opening, A. R.‘s consortium imported every waiter and cook from Sherry’s restaurant on East 44th Street-and permanently stole away two of Sherry’s best chefs. As always, snob appeal was good business. “People like to think they’re better than other people,” he would say. “As long as they’re willing to pay to prove it, I’m willing to let them.”

While Rothstein’s clientele swilled the house champagne, A. R. retained his more bourgeois habits, much to the approval of the Sheepshead locals. “Mr. Rothstein is such a nice man,” observed Mrs. Holley. “He drinks so much milk and eats so much cake. A man couldn’t help but be wonderful who likes milk and cake so much.”

One evening a particular powerful individual lost heavily at A. R.‘s tables. He was not a good loser. “Hell!” he fumed. “You can’t beat places like this.”

A. R. tried placating him. He didn’t want this man as an enemy. In fact, he didn’t really want anyone-even the nonpowerful-losing more than their limits. People who lost more than they could afford to, might turn angry, bitter, and violent. “What do you mean you can’t beat places like this?” Arnold asked. “You’ve beaten this place yourself, and you’ve seen other people win too. Have you got a penny with you?”

The man did.

“Then toss it up. If I call it right you’ll owe me double the fifty grand. If I’m wrong you don’t owe me anything.”

A. R. lost. If he had won, he would have kept tossing-and doubling the stakes-until he lost.

Manhattan, however, remained too big and too lucrative to cede completely to the reformers. Yet gambling houses were too visible. Night after night Big Apple neighbors-and do-gooders-witnessed their clientele streaming in and out. They knew what transpired within and complained-to aldermen, to police, and, worst of all, to newspapers. A decade before the same fate had befallen the brothels-and the whores set up shop in hotel rooms all over the city. Now highstakes gambling did the same. It went on the move, night after night, from place to place, in hotels and apartments and garages.

The floating crap game was being born, and Arnold Rothstein was its midwife. If he did not invent (or at least perfect) the floating crap game, he certainly invented the floating card game. Around 1911 he had taken over a hitherto-modest operation called the Partridge Club. Moving from hotel to hotel, from the Astor to the Knickerbocker to the Holland House to the Ritz-Carlton to the Imperial, the Partridge Club served an upscale crowd-Herbert Bayard Swope; Broadway impresario Flo Ziegfeld; A. R.‘s old friends from Jack’s; Bruno Lessing; Wilson Mizner (who quipped that he played chemin-de-fer “by ear”); various representatives of the Imperial Russian government, including two naval commanders; comedian Lew Fields; stockbrokers Charles A. Stoneham and George H. Lowden; Pennsylvania steel magnate Leonard Replogle; oilman Harry E Sinclair; horse breeder and master oddsmaker Emil Herz; and Fire Commissioner John H. O’Brien. “Members” paid $30 per night to participate; more often than not the fee included an elegant champagne dinner.

To attract and maintain such a clientele, A. R. required an appropriate front man. He found one in attorney George Young Bauchle, a classic ne’er-do-well. Grandson of George Young, a founder of the Y&S licorice empire, Bauchle had earned a law degree, but that was pretty much his last respectable achievement. He married three times; whiled away evenings at such fashionable watering holes as Rector’s, Martin’s, Shanley’s, and Delmonico’s; and gambled away his fortune.

As Bauchle’s gambling turned from a mere disastrously expensive hobby to full-time habit, he met up-and-coming young gambler Nat Evans. Evans was pleasant enough company. (Damon Runyon termed him “one of the nicest chaps I ever met in the sporting game.”) Evans shared an apartment in Saratoga with Bauchle for two summers, and drew him deeper into the professional gambling community.

Whether Evans brought Rothstein to Bauchle or whether Bauchle introduced A. R. to Evans, we do not know. But both men proved useful to Rothstein. Evans’ personal charm ingratiated him to even Broadway’s most hardened characters. Bauchle provided continued entree to New York’s highest rollers.

All the while Bauchle extended special club privileges to its controlling force, Rothstein. In December 1916 Bauchle wrote “My dear Arnold”:

In order to keep the kitty up to the average at the table at which you play chemin-de-fer, which always runs behind the other table, I am going to ask you to help me to the extent of not offering side bets, and to set the example of paying the kitty and buying checks.

A lot of fellows see you turn to Bruce, or whoever is keeping the game, and say you will settle the checks in a little while and not volunteer to do so at the time with the result that your example is followed by others WHO HAVE NO RIGHT TO DO THAT SORT OF THING.

No, they had no such right. Only the club’s real operator didn’t have to pay his debts.

Partridge Club regulars fancied themselves as more than mere gamblers. They were sophisticated, witty, madcap. In December 1912 Bauchle, Evans, Mizner, and John Shaughnessy were at Rector’s, bantering about the upcoming holiday. Mizner confessed he didn’t particularly care to be in New York for Christmas. Evans and Shaughnessy promptly agreed, whereupon Bauchle suggested they all leave aboard a liner.

“We-would-take-the-first-ship-leaving-from-thisside,” a member of the trio countered.

“For a thousand dollars apiece I’ll bet you that you won’t,” Bauchle challenged, noting that the Cunard liner Mauretania sailed at 6:00 p.m.-in thirty-five minutes.

Mizner, Shaughnessy, and Evans accepted Bauchle’s challenge, hopped into his car, raced to the pier, engaged a stateroom, and sailed for Europe. A few days later they wired Bauchle. “We counted on getting clothes from the purser and the barber,” the trio wailed, “but we couldn’t get things to fit us. Why, oh why, did you take advantage of our impulsiveness and our inexperience.”

Partridge Club stakes ran high. One night Arnold arrived with $5,000 in his pocket, and ran his chemin-de-fer winnings to $165,000. At which point, Harry Sinclair walked over from another table, called out “Banco,” and had the cards dealt to him. He won and walked away with the entire $165,000.

To cover his Partridge Club losses, stockbroker George H. Lowden came to a bad end, embezzling $300,000 in stock certificates from his firm-which he used as collateral for a $100,000 loan from Rothstein. Lowden was caught, found guilty, and sentenced to Sing Sing. His firm’s principals wanted their stock back and sued A. R. Defended by Bauchle, Rothstein claimed to be merely acting as Lowden’s agent. The actual lender was Knott, Temple and Company, a failed brokerage house owned in part by Partridge Club member Charles Stoneham. Knott, Temple left behind no records and no assets. Rothstein never returned one dime of Lowden’s stolen stocks.

The publicity surrounding the suit prompted an investigation by District Attorney Edward Swann. “It would appear,” observed Swann, “that Nat Evans, Arnold Rothstein, Henry Tobin, and Max Blumenthal, all professional gamblers, are the driving force in the club’s activities. The rest are simply window dressing, cloaks of respectability to get the unwary suckers to come in and be fleeced.”

In February 1918 Swann had Bauchle arrested for maintaining a gambling establishment. Charges were soon dropped, but the Partridge Club was finished-and ultimately so was George Bauchle, though it took a few more years for him to hit bottom. Bauchle had inherited a half-million-dollar fortune. Thanks to his sporting ways, he was eventually borrowing money from Rothstein, and helping him fence stolen jewelry. Originally, Arnold Rothstein needed Bauchle’s society connections. Now they were gone, and A. R. discarded the man like yesterday’s newspaper.

Bauchle ran through what little remained of his fortune. Numerous appeals to A. R. for assistance met with indifference. In 1921 Bauchle departed for the season at Saratoga and didn’t return, leaving behind a wife, daughter, and $50,000 in debts. By the following spring, Nat Evans informed reporters that Bauchle had sailed for China.

Rothstein told them he was sure Bauchle must have left the country-otherwise he’d still be dunning A. R. for money he claimed was owed him. A. R. was lying. Bauchle begged Arnold for funds repeatedly, as witnessed by this letter, written from somewhere on the lam, on November 1, 1922:

Dear Arnold,

Having been ignored by you before I would not write to you were it not for the fact that I am in need of two things. The combination is funny. I need some dental work and an overcoat. I would like to have you write me direct, but I am staying in a rooming house and hope to make a connection very soon that would be a very good job.

Rothstein again ignored him, and now Bauchle resorted to a veiled threat:

Dear Arnold,

Please read this letter through as it is important. My attitude toward you in various parts of the country has been that of a friend,
etc.
In Chicago, where you are considered the worst crook working, I have defended you. On the Pacific Coast, you are spoken of as a kind of Jesse James and Oregon Jeff, and in New Orleans you are accused of crimes that cover the penal code. I asked an editor for a job, and his reply was that he would give me ,$350 for a Sunday story about you if I wrote what I really know. I was broke at the time but declined the offer. I have done a lot of shady things, but would not do that and never will.

Bauchle never did write that article, though more than once he wished he had. But few ever dared anger Arnold Rothstein-no matter the provocation.