Rothstein (9 page)

Tim didn’t discriminate among the different nationalities of his East Side empire. He couldn’t afford to. The Lower East Side was changing fast. The Irish no longer dominated numerically. Germans, Italians, and Jews-hundreds of thousands of Jews-now lived there. Big Tim helped them all.

Gratitude remained a practiced virtue, and Sullivan’s beneficiaries remembered him, not only at the polls, but in their hearts. Countless tenement homes featured framed portraits of their great friend and protector State Senator Timothy D. Sullivan.

Not all of Big Tim’s activities were so saintly. Every saloonkeeper, gambler, thief, and pimp operating on the Lower East Side paid tribute to Sullivan. Some said Big Tim owned brothels himself; his holding the vice presidency of the area’s formal pimps’ trade group, the Max Hockstim Association, did little to alleviate suspicion. He oversaw Manhattan’s boxing industry. If Big Tim didn’t receive his cut, you didn’t receive a license. With gambler Frank Farrell and police chief “Big Bill” Devery he controlled most of Manhattan’s gambling.

Not everyone loved Big Tim. Some coveted his power and challenged the candidates he sponsored, mostly in primaries. To counter them, he employed fraud and outright thuggery. Election fraud might involve tossing an occasional ballot box in the East River, but more often it involved “repeaters,” gentlemen moving between polling places, voting at each stop. Not surprisingly, Sullivan had his own strategies on repeating, and they favored employing the hirsute. “When you’ve voted ‘em with their whiskers on,” he once observed, “you take ‘em to a barber and scrape off the chin-fringe. Then you vote ‘em again with side lilacs and a mustache. Then to a barber again, off comes the sides and you vote ‘em a third time with the mustache. If that ain’t enough and the box can stand a few more ballots clean off the mustache and vote ‘em plain face. That makes every one of ‘em good for four votes.”

Sometimes fraud proved insufficient. Other Democrats were also skilled at such devices. So Big Tim-and his rivals-hired neighborhood toughs to discourage opposition voters, scare off enemy campaign workers, and soundly beat rivals to a pulp. A classic battle erupted in 1901, when fellow Tammany saloonkeeper, Fourth Ward Alderman Paddy Divver, balked at Sullivan’s Red-Light Cadets’ (pimps’) control of prostitution in his district. Usually, Sullivan employed thugs from Monk Eastman’s gang. This time, he selected Paul Kelly (Vaccarelli)‘s Italian hoodlums for his dirty work. Kelly’s men descended on Fourth Ward polling places, blackjacking Divver supporters into submission, while police blissfully ignored the bloody mayhem proceeding around them. Sullivan’s candidates, including aldermanic hopeful Big Tom Foley (later mentor to Governor Al Smith), triumphed 3-1.

Employing such hoodlums had drawbacks, one being that they often grew too big for their britches. Big Tim provided a remedy. In Albany, he enacted the nation’s first gun control law, modestly titled the Sullivan Act. Its purpose was simple: if a gang member proved excessively troublesome, a cop would collar him, shove an unlicensed gun in his pocket, and begin the unfortunate’s journey to Sing Sing. Nervous gang leaders like Big Jack Zelig had tailors sew their pockets shut and hired expendable flunkies to follow behind them, carrying guns on their persons.

Big Tim always liked Arnold Rothstein-just as he always liked gambling. He first came across A. R. when Arnold was shooting poolquite excellently for a teenager-at his brother Florrie’s pool hall. The lad was soon performing the usual political odd jobs for the Sullivan brothers, but Big Tim knew where A. R.‘s talents lay. “Stick with gambling,” the East Side politician advised A. R. “Gambling takes brains, and you’re one smart Jew boy.” Sullivan meant it. Needing someone to oversee gambling at his Times Square hotel, the Metropole, a few years later, he chose Rothstein.

Just as Sullivan assisted the jobless and the homeless in his district and gave a helping hand to up-and-coming allies like Tom Foley, he was more than willing to promote sharp youngsters like Arnold Rothstein with their own “business” enterprises. As always, there was a condition for his patronage. Sullivan would certainly ensure that Rothstein received no unwanted visits from New York’s Finest, but in return Sullivan wanted two things. First, he would take a cut for himself. Second, he wanted Rothstein to take a partner: a foreman in the Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity, former ward leader Willie Shea. “Willie can put up part of the bankroll,” Big Tim added, and he certainly could, with the graft he collected as building inspector.

Arnold could use the money. But he knew Shea, had worked with him, and certainly didn’t need someone like him gumming up his new operation. Shea had no experience running a gambling house. He was obnoxious, not particularly bright, and adding insult to injury he didn’t care much for Jews.

Nor did Shea want Rothstein as a partner. “How can you tell what a Jew’s thinkin’?” he asked Big Tim. “They’re different from us.”

“Rothstein’s a good boy,” Sullivan responded. “And smart. You stick with him and you’ll make a lot of money.”

Rothstein and Shea obeyed orders. If Big Tim Sullivan did you a favor, you didn’t question the conditions-at least, not loudly.

The Rothstein-Shea partnership started inauspiciously. Upstairs, Carolyn Rothstein gauged her husband’s fate each evening by just listening:

I used to sit up in my bedroom and listen to the roulette wheel to learn whether the house was winning or losing. This was simple because if the house won, all that was necessary was for the croupier to rake in chips, but if the house lost he had to take time to count out chips for the winners. Thus, when the house was winning the wheel spun with short stops, but if the house was losing the wheel spun with long stops.

Even when the house won, however, business was not all that good. “There was some play in the parlors from the beginning,” Carolyn recalled, “but it was not spectacular.”

That changed one night in November 1910.

Barbed-wire magnate John Warne “Bet-a-Million” Gates was the most fabled recreational gambler of his time. He never actually bet a million dollars, but he bet heavily, and often. In 1901 Gates won $600,000 on the English racehorse Royal Flush. In 1902, at Richard Canfield’s Saratoga faro tables, he was down $150,000 at 10:00 P.M. He not only recouped his losses, but won an additional $150,000.

In November 1910, Gates’ affable but not particularly distinguished son, Charlie, found himself in New York, looking for some action. Some said life had been frightfully dull for Charlie since winning $29,000 in Los Angeles a few months back (he spent $8,000 of his haul on a new bulldog). Others said he wished to celebrate surviving a recent appendicitis attack. You never knew what caused a Gates to head toward the gambling tables. On the evening in question, Charlie Gates was drinking at Rector’s with A. R.‘s associate Vernie Barton. He commented matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t mind having a little play tonight.”

“That’s just what I was thinking myself,” Barton responded, barely concealing his excitement, for Vernie received a percentage of whatever business he brought A. R. Gates’ friends protested, but Barton prevailed. First Charlie played roulette, then faro, ultimately dropping $40,000. He wrote out a check and departed. A. R. awoke Carolyn, telling her, “With this money added to the bankroll, we can go after more of these highfliers. It makes us solid.”

Forty thousand dollars didn’t mean much to the Gates family, but at this point in Arnold Rothstein’s career, it generated incredible excitement. And it certainly interested Willie Shea, who stood to collect half the winnings. The story of young Gates’s losing evening made the newspapers, helping puff up Rothstein’s reputation, but it also brought tension between Shea and Rothstein to a head.

Shea suspected that their partnership was not as lucrative as it could be-at least for him. He knew A. R. was sharp, and sharp gamblers made all manner of things happen, could manipulate nearly any thing, including profit-and-loss ledgers. The next morning Shea, Rothstein, Barton, and Gates breakfasted amiably. All seemed fine. Shea and Gates adjourned to a nearby bank to cash Gates’s checkand Shea decided to keep it all for himself. Shea reasoned:

I’ve been convinced for some time that Arnold has been tossing the bank roll [sic] to his friends. I don’t mind a guy being nice to his friends but when he fixes it up so that his friends can get away with my money in our gambling house, I don’t care so much for it.

Take Arnold’s friend, George Young Bauchle, the eminent lawyer, for instance. When Mr. Bauchle has been playing in our house, Arnold always let him bet as much as he wanted to, and as often as he wanted to on the last turn out of the box [an advantage in faro]. And Mr. Bauchle has been pretty lucky at calling the turns, and our bank roll [sic] has been pretty well nicked.

Shea complained incessantly to Rothstein about Bauchle. Shea changed faro dealers on Bauchle, and Bauchle still won. He dealt faro himself to Bauchle. Bauchle still won. Finally, he demanded that Rothstein ban his friend from the establishment. A. R. refused. He knew that if he blacklisted Bauchle, he’d be sending multiple bad messages to the gambling community. The first was that he and Bauchle were cheats. That would be obvious. The second, more subtle reason was that only losers were welcome at Rothstein’s. No gambler liked thinking of himself as a loser. Sending that message was bad for business, and A. R. didn’t want to scare away customers.

So, as Willie Shea cashed Charlie Gates’s check, he thought: “I figure that this $40,000 just about squares Arnold and me.”

When A. R. walked downstairs for a new night of business, Shea wasn’t there. That wasn’t like him. Critics could say what they wanted about Willie Shea, but he put in his hours. Vernie Barton gave Arnold the news: “Shea’s on the town, drinking champagne, and telling everybody that he put one over on you.”

“Go find him and tell him I want to see him,” Rothstein ordered.

Finding Shea was easy. Retrieving him was hard. “Go back, and tell the Jew I’ve got the money and I’m going to keep it,” a sodden Shea growled. “If he wants his share, tell him to collect it from what Bauchle stole.”

If that’s how Shea wanted to play it, Rothstein would oblige him. A. R. went to see Tim Sullivan, to tell his side of the story. After all, if Big Tim thought Arnold was cheating Shea, things could only get worse. Sullivan proved sympathetic, then asked, “What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to think about it,” Rothstein answered noncommittally.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Sullivan. After all, hardly anyone ever approached him without wanting a favor. What did Arnold want? To have some muscle put on Shea-either by the toughs downtown or the police? That was messy, but feasible. To kick him off the city payroll? Again, feasible. Maybe Arnold just wanted Big Tim to reason with Willie. Big Tim had a way about convincing people to do the right thing.

In fact, A. R. wanted nothing. “Let him keep the money,” he responded calmly.

“The whole forty thousand?”

“It’s cheap,” said A. R., finally getting to his point. “Look at it this way. One-third of it was his anyway. He has eight thousand coming to him out of the bankroll. We’ve been averaging about a thousand a week in profit. What it comes down to is that he’s taken $15,000 for his share of the business. It’s worth a lot more.”

Sullivan appreciated A. R.‘s logic: “That dumb Irishman should’ve known better than to try to outsmart you.”

“I had Bauchle draw this up. It’s a quitclaim. When I find [Shea], I’m going to get him to sign it.”

“Whatever you do is all right with me.”

At week’s end, A. R. found his erstwhile partner at the bar of Times Square’s Knickerbocker Hotel. Shea, good and drunk, expected a fight. Shea told Arnold he wouldn’t receive “one damn dollar out of the Gates money.” When A. R. announced, “Okay, Coakley. Sign this and you can keep the money,” a wave of relief passed over Shea. He felt good about this turn of events-and about himself. “Thought you could put something over on me, didn’t you?” he chortled. “Well, I was a lot too smart for you.”

He took A. R.‘s fountain pen and signed away his rights to their gambling house. “We’re quits now,” said A. R., barely containing his glee. “The money’s yours and the place is mine.”

Willie sobered up and realized he no longer owned a share of Broadway’s most promising gambling house. He begged A. R. to take him back, promising to return Gates’s cash. “Get out of here before I throw you out,” Rothstein yelled. “You’re a crook and a welcher.”

Shea ran to Big Tim. Surely, he’d help. “Nothing doing,” said Sullivan. “You thought you were putting one over on Arnold. Well, now you know you got to get up mighty early in the morning to do that.”

Arnold didn’t net any cash from the Gates incident; what he received was far more valuable: free-and-clear title to his place and tremendous publicity. Rothstein’s was a place for high rollers.

“Play became better following this incident,” recalled Carolyn Rothstein:

The house was renovated, with an English basement. The two parlors were made into one great room, which was redecorated in garish green and gold, with crystal chandeliers. In fact, it took on the appearance of a high class gambling house.

The house was making money. We had a Mettalurgic touring car, red and gold, and very low, a gorgeous and striking vehicle. I still hoped that soon Arnold would have enough money so that we could quit.

No matter what he had promised Carolyn, A. R. had no interest in quitting.

The Gates affair demonstrated Arnold’s ability to extract large sums of money from moneyed clientele, providing him with the opportunity to extract even more money from well-heeled suckers, egotistically wanting to prove their skill and flaunt their wealth. His house now attracted such plungers as Willie Vanderbilt, a grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt; Harvard-and Yale-educated former United States Senator Edward 0. Wolcott, a Republican from Colorado; yeast magnate (and former mayor of Cincinnati) Julius Fleischmann; Sweet Caporal cigarettes manufacturer Francis S. Kinney; Yorkville’s Louis Ehret, whose “Hell’s Gate” beer made him the nation’s most prominent brewer; Canadian whiskey baron Joseph Seagram (who dabbled in horse racing and parliamentary politics); and Pittsburgh drug manufacturer John Staley. Sometimes they won; sometimes they lost. But they lost more than they won and A. R.‘s reputation-and bankroll-grew ever larger.