The Valachi Papers (21 page)

But as big as he was, Buchalter simply did not have the resources and die mystique of a Cosa Nostra to enable him to survive. By 1937, wanted for murder and indicted on narcotics and extortion charges, he decided to hide out while methodically directing the demise of various people who could testify against him. Then one of his gunmen made the mistake of shooting down a luckless citizen who happened to resemble a potential Dewey witness. The ensuing public uproar triggered a massive manhunt for Buchalter dead or alive. The strategy used in trying to flush him out was so to harass his Cosa Nostra colleagues that they would begin having second thoughts about his continued freedom. It worked. Not even Buchalter's closest ally in the Cosa Nostra, Albert Anastasia, was able to intervene in his behalf. Finally, after two years as a fugitive, Buchalter's underworld brethren sold him on the idea that a deal had been worked out with federal authorities. If he surrendered on the narcotics charge, he would be allowed to serve his sentence before New York State could get a crack at him for murder. The plan had an undeniable appeal; who knew what misfortune might befall witnesses against him while he was in prison? But Buchalter soon found he had been duped. Within seventeen months he was on trial for his life and, doomed by the testimony of one of his own men, received the death penalty.

On the heels of this, the revelations of Abe (Kid Twist) Reles kept public attention focused on organized crime. Reles, a Buchalter crony, belonged to a band of Brooklyn mobsters popularly called Murder Incorporated, which had strong ties with several Cosa Nostra figures, most notably Anastasia. Information from Reles led to convictions in a half dozen previously unsolved gangland slayings. Murder Incorporated has since been portrayed as a sort of specialty house which handled contracts to kill for the entire U.S. underworld. This, according to Valachi, was not so at least as far as official Cosa Nostra executions were concerned. In such matters, he says, it has always relied on its own membership.

The career of informer Reles was cut short on November 12, 1941, following his fatal plunge while in protective custody from a sixth-story window at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island. The chief beneficiary of his death, curiously enough, was Albert Anastasia; as then Brooklyn District Attorney William O'Dwyer noted, a "perfect" murder case against him "went out the window with Reles." The debate over how Reles happened to fall with six policemen guarding him raged on for years. For Valachi, however, it was not much of a mystery. "I never met anybody," he says, "who thought Abe went out that window because he wanted to."

Thus, quite aside from his disenchantment with "mob life" brought on by his running feud with Tony Bender, it was an ideal time for Valachi to lie low. And comfortably off with his income from the numbers, loansharking, his dress factory and restaurant, he decided to take a fling at racing horses. It is probably the only thing he ever did for the pure pleasure of it. During my interviews with Valachi, he could speak with utter dispassion about his involvement in a Cosa Nostra contract, his acquisition of a mistress, even his " beefs" with Bender. When he spoke about his horses, he became another person, jumping up from his chair and excitedly pacing his cell, acting out each story, for once eager to relive his past.

Valachi's underworld ethics crumbled the first time one of his horses, Knight's Duchess, seemed likely to win a race. The only other horse entered that concerned him was owned by a friend named Joseph Bruno, and on the eve of the race, at Rockingham

Park in New Hampshire, Bruno approached him with a proposition. If Valachi agreed to let Bruno's horse High Caste win, Bruno would return the favor die next time they were in competition. That way, Bruno argued, they could realize a small fortune since both horses, while in top form, were long shots as far as the betting public was concerned. Valachi indignantly rejected the idea. "I told him," he says, "I didn't care nothing about the money. All I wanted to do was win my first race. I was so nervous I was already sure I wasn't going to sleep that night. Only a trainer or another owner will understand my feelings."

The details of the race are forever etched in his mind:

Who can forget something like that? First I got to tell you about this Knight's Duchess. I just loved the name. She was from Ireland, and she was what you call a bay filly. She was by Knight of the Garter out of Diomedia. You see, real class. She was listed as a two-year-old when I bought her, but she was really one and a half. I'll explain why. Any horse no matter what month he is born automatically becomes one year old the next January. It's the rule. Being as Knight's Duchess is born in Ireland, she runs the wrong way. Over there they make the horses go clockwise, don't ask me why, so naturally we got to teach her the right way. Now this takes time, but she's ready to run as a three-year-old. As she is being trained, we find out some things about her. We find out she is best at a distance than in a sprint. One morning we clock her at one forty-three for a mile, and she is faster during the last sixteenth than she was at the first. The trainer tells me she is ready and we got to run her at Empire State racetrack. That's when I find out the second thing about her. "What's so important about Empire?" I ask, and he explains that Empire has a very hard track and Knight's Duchess will do well there because she has small hooves. In other words, if a track

is soft, she is going to sink in and get tired. Gee, I think to myself, how much do you have to know to race horses?

Well, before we can do anything, they sell Empire State and make it into a track for trotters. That's why we ship her to Rockingham. It's a hard track—not as hard as Empire but hard enough for her to bounce off as she is running. Now Knight's Duchess is a long shot because the first time she races at Rockingham she finishes out of the money. I wasn't there, but the trainer telephones me and says he don't like the way the jockey handled her. To tell the truth, he thinks the boy pulled the horse. So I go up there myself, and I hire Teddy Atkinson—you must have heard of him—to ride her. I want the right boy to be on her this time. I know she is ready. I got a thousand on her to win and a thousand to show. She starts off at 40 to 1, and at post time she is 11 to 1. You never can be sure, but I think all I got to worry about is this High Caste. Knight's Duchess is in post position number seven, and High Caste is in number five. I thought I'd have a heart attack.

I will call the race for you. They are in the gate, and they're off. This horse—I forget the name, it was something like Brave Action-breaks in front, another horse is second, High Caste is running third, and Knight's Duchess is fourth. As they go around the first turn, Brave Action is now out in front by four lengths, this other horse is running second by four lengths, High Caste is third by three lengths, and Knight's Duchess is still fourth. Down the backstretch Brave Action is in front by half a length, High Caste is catching the second horse, and Knight's Duchess is four lengths off the pace. They are around the stretch turn, and High Caste takes the lead, the other horses are out of it, and here comes Knight's Duchess.

In the stretch it is High Caste by a head; Knight's Duchess is second and coming on. Now she is starting to pass High Caste. All of a sudden the boy on High Caste raps Knight's Duchess in the mouth with his whip. I see it, and I'm up on my feet screaming and yelling. Everybody sees it, and they're yelling, too. It happened right in front of the grandstand. Knight's Duchess comes on again, but it ain't no use, and she finished second. They put up the winning number, and it's number five, High Caste. I'm already thinking what's going to happen to that jockey, even if he is Joe Bruno's boy, when Teddy Atkinson goes to the stewards and claims a foul. I hold my breath these few minutes, and then they change the number, and they put up number seven, which is Knight's Duchess, and I am a winner.

Boy, was
I
happy! I don't care about the money, but it ain't so bad. I am ahead $10,400 on my win bet, and I also collect for show. I think it was around $2,000. I don't bet at the track, as that would knock down the price. I bet with bookmakers back in New York. Now I want to explain something. When I placed my bets, I insured them. The insurance is 10 percent of what you bet. If you don't do this, a bookmaker would only pay you up to 20 to 1 even if the horse come in at more than that. By insuring your bet, you collect whatever the horse pays at the track. Of course, Knight's Duchess closed below twenty to one, but only at the last minute. In other words, it is wise not to take any chances when you have a long shot.

After the race the first thing I do is to give Teddy Atkinson $200 or $300, plus the fee for riding the horse, which is $25.1 give the trainer $500, and I tell him to keep the purse, I think $800, as there are a lot of expenses in running horses for shoes and medicine and whatnot. I don't forget the exercise boy and the stable hands. I don't give them much, just enough so that they know I am thinking of them. It is important to have everybody on your side. These people can do you harm. If they want, they can give you all kinds of phony reasons why your horse is losing. I remember a lady had this fine horse, and he was always losing. Why? Because the trainer was having the jockey pull the

horse, so he would get the lady thinking that the horse ain't no good and he could buy him cheap. "Well," the trainer would say to this lady, "the horse just didn't seem to want to run today. I don't know what's wrong with him." It is them kind that can give the horse business a bad name. You got to watch them all the time.

Now, before I forget, here is the best part of my story about Knight's Duchess. I am back home, and the guys in this horse room tell me that Bobby Doyle bet a bundle on High Caste, and as High Caste was disqualified he blew his top and starts screaming, "Joe must have fixed the race!" I got a good laugh out of it. That's the way a dog like him thinks.

Until 1937, as far as Valachi was concerned, thoroughbred racing
's
sole function was to determine the winning policy number each day. Then he took his wife, Mildred, to Miami for a winter vacation, and in the company of The Gap and various other Cosa Nostra members he began frequenting the track. At first he was not especially taken by it. "With the tips all my friends gave me," he says,
"I
was lucky
I
was only betting tens and twenties.
I
got nothing but losers."

A chance encounter, according to Valachi, changed everything. One afternoon Mildred bet $2 on a horse listed at 99 to 1 because she liked his name. The Gap and Valachi ridiculed her choice, but an elderly man nearby told her, "Don't listen to them, lady,
I
think you're right." When the horse won, Valachi decided the stranger was worth cultivating:

This was how I learned to play horses. I went to him and said, "Thanks for the tip you gave my wife. It's the first good one we got since I been here." He said no thanks are needed; he was glad to do Mildred a favor as she looked so nervous when The Gap and me said her horse ain't got a hope.

I asked him, "Was the race fixed?" and he looks at me kind of funny and says, "How long have you been coming to the track?" I tell him the truth, which is not long. He laughs, and he says, "Well, that is the first thing you must learn. Even when the fix is in, nothing is ever certain." Then he tells me about this guy that fixed a race to make a killing like we all dream of. The guy has eight or nine horses entered in the same race with different people fronting for him. It is a race for nonwinners that they have every now and then to give a trainer a chance to come in with a horse that ain't won yet during the year. All the guy's horses fit in this class, and that's how he can get them together in one race. Naturally there are some other nonwinners entered, but this guy pays off the trainers, and they are scratched. So now he is all set. He can't lose as he has given instructions about which horse is to win. He spreads his bets around, and he stands to collect a couple of hundred thousand. Well, the horse that is supposed to win has a fine lead coming down the stretch. He is all by himself, and nobody could catch him even if they wanted to. Then what happened? The horse stumbles and breaks a leg, and that is the end of the fix.

"Gee,"
I
say, "I see what you mean, but how did you know the horse my wife bet on was going to win?"

So he says that's what he is trying to tell me. He didn't
know
the horse was going to win. Every horse in a race has a chance, he says, and I should never forget it. That's the beauty of the sport. But he says he had a pretty good idea about this horse. He knew they have been bringing the horse along, and one of the stableboys told him the true time of his last workout, which was three seconds faster than what they gave out to the newspaper handicappers. You see, it is to their advantage to hide a horse's ability whenever they can.

"Oh," I say, "the idea is to get connected with the trainers and them others working around the barns."

"Yes," he says, "if you are going to be serious about racing. That way you have an edge. It's all you can ask for. You listen to all these tipsters, and you'll just lose your shirt."

Well, to make it short, he was a nice old man—that's why I am leaving his name out of this—and he has been following the horses all his life. I stuck with him the rest of the time I was in Florida, and he introduced me to a lot of racing people. When the season come to New York, I started going to the track, mostly with Johnny Roberts, as that was the time we were getting friendly, and I looked up some of the guys I met through the old man. I also get to be a pal of this handicapper who has good information and is what you call a fine judge of horseflesh. With one thing and another, I'd say I am ahead between $200 and $300 a week, and I am having a lot of fun. I don't win every week, but it averages out to that. I'm not foolish. I don't bet every race, only when I got a horse that looks good, and when I bet, I bet two ways— win and show—to cover myself.