A Bloody Business Page 9

  Meyer says, “I didn’t get off the boat yesterday.”

  “Listen to what I say,” Remus says. “Forty-four hustlers just happened to drop by my house after the raid: politicians, public officials, Prohibition agents, federal marshals. Forty-four! I put out such a shower of green it looked like a St. Patrick’s Day parade. A grand each. Take it from me; the government doesn’t intend to shut down the sale of alcohol but they do want their end of the business one way or another.”

  Meyer says, “I have a lawyer who will set up my corporation.”

  “I don’t care as long as you make it worth my while,” Remus says, rubbing his thumb and fingers in the ancient gesture.

  Remus sends the stockinged ladies cocktails via Jack Kriendler, then tells Meyer, “A word from the wise, keep your name out of the papers. Politicians can read. Once they get your name, they come calling…with their hand out. You can bet on that.”

  Meyer says, “What happens to our deal if you go to jail? Who has the connection then?”

  “Don’t worry,” Remus says. “If anything happens to me, my wife knows what to do.”

  “Your wife?” Meyer says.

  Remus says, “Never underestimate the ruthlessness of a woman.”

  Meyer says, “I’ll talk with my associates. If we agree to the deal, I deal with you. Not the wife. I will contact you and send a runner with the envelope. You give him the certificates. That’s the deal.”

  Remus laughs, calls for another cocktail. The first three have got him on a roll. He musters the hint of a smile underneath the veneer of cross-examination and then stands and turns to the women.

  With the charm of a barracuda he says, “Ladies, would one of you like to dance?”

  Meyer disappears into the back alley where he joins Jack Kriendler in a cigarette.

  “How’s business?” Meyer says.

  “It beats cabbage soup.”

  “You’re always here,” Meyer says.

  “Somebody has to run the show,” Jack says. “Meyer, I don’t mean to be critical but you don’t seem the type to run a joint like this. You have to put somebody out front.”

  “You need a good bartender?” Meyer says.

  “Sure,” Jack says. “Send him over.”

  With that, Meyer closes his speakeasy on Broome Street. His talent is needed elsewhere.

  Days go by. The New York Yankees are having a helluva season. Babe Ruth hits one home run after another, thirteen so far. He fills the stadium seats for which he rakes in a cool $52,000. The Yankees meet up with the Cleveland Indians at the Polo Grounds. Meyer takes the day off to watch the showdown.

  With the bases loaded, the Babe hits his fourteenth home run. He is six homers shy of Williams and Hornsby. The victory against the Indians puts the Yankees one game behind the Browns, who lead the season. The buzz in the city heats up. The Yankees have a shot at the World Series for the second year in a row.

  August rolls around. Temperatures skyrocket. Meyer packs a bag for Saratoga where he explores the ‘sport of kings’ with Arnold Rothstein. Charlie stays behind and plans for Rocco Valenti’s demise. Before long the news hits the paper, Thugs Shoot Underworld Leader at “Peace Conference” on Bootleggers’ War. Umberto, aka Rocco, Valenti is dead. According to the Times, he is alleged to have arranged for more shootings than any other man in New York.

  Meyer reads the story over a mint julep at the racetrack.

  Rothstein sips Turkish coffee and says, “Missing the action?”

  The question is mildly entertaining. Saratoga nestles into the Adirondacks. Her hills lumber across the landscape in clean, orderly fashion. All activity centers on the racetrack. At the end of the day, the crowds filter out into the local gambling establishments in civilized bliss. It is nothing like the city street where Umberto Valenti jumped onto the running board of a passing cab in an attempt to avoid the bullets filling the air.

  The newspaper story rehashes the events of a week earlier, when Joe the Boss escaped a volley of bullets that killed one bystander and wounded five others. This time, an eight-year-old named Agnes Egglineger was wounded in the chest and a street cleaner in the neck. Despite the chaos, Umberto’s assassin is cool and collected. He stands still in the middle of the New York traffic and takes careful aim. Even when Umberto jumps on the running board of the cab and the cabbie hits the gas, his shooter remains calm.

  One shot later, Umberto hits the street dead.

  If it wasn’t for the bad publicity and the bullets left in innocent bystanders, Meyer might be impressed with the “conference on a sidewalk.” But as it is, the collateral damage is trouble for their burgeoning business. Already, the Italian Squad, organized by Lieutenant Joe Petrosino, is busy gathering information on Joe the Boss and, by extension, Charlie Luciano.

  Charlie will have to lay low for a while.

  Rothstein finishes his coffee.

  “The rich don’t jump on running boards in broad daylight,” Rothstein says. “They have better ways of taking your money. Gambling. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  The Brook is Rothstein’s pride and joy. It lies a mile past the golf course. The Brook was part of the Bonnie Brook Farm until Rothstein bought it. The mansion is surrounded by a working farm and racing stable. The entrance faces west and opens into a large hall furnished with heavy mission furniture. The fireplace, built from rock found on the site, is massive. Heavy beams run across the ceiling.

  Rothstein points to the reliable money makers: roulette and chemin de fer. He paints an alluring picture of the elegance and sophistication of a gambling house operator that occupies Meyer’s mind for the month he spends with the upper class but always there is something missing in the equation.

  When Meyer gets back to the Lower East Side, he sits down with Red and Charlie at the Villa Nova restaurant. Over plates of pasta with marinara sauce, he shares the notion of running a casino in Saratoga. Meyer doesn’t stop with August in Saratoga. Gambling joints could be something easily spread all around the country, the perfect complement to the business of bootleg.

  “Booze and gambling go hand in hand,” he says. “Everybody knows that.”

  Red says, “I don’t know, Meyer. We’ve just started to get a handle on the booze. Why change horses midstream? Why work for Rothstein?”

  Meyer says, “You don’t just one day run a joint like that. And I’m not going to work for Rothstein. I’ll go up there a couple of times and then we’ll open our own joints.”

  Red says, “I’d like to bump Ben Siegel up a notch. He’s been doin’ good with everything we give him. We can’t take care of all the business, Meyer. We’re gonna have to give some of it to other people. One of them should be Benny.”

  “O.K., Red. Do what you think is best.”

  “Polly Adler takes her girls to Saratoga,” Charlie says. “She makes a lot of dough.”

  Meyer says, “And puts on quite a show. She parades the girls around the racetrack first thing in the morning while all the men have breakfast at the club. They twirl their parasols and flaunt the goods. She never gets hauled in for soliciting.”

  “Good madams make good money,” Charlie says, “for everybody. The cops are all on the take. Looks like your friend Abe Zwillman is coming up in the world. The guys up there call him Longy.”

  “That’s because his height. He used to protect the pushcart vendors from the micks trying to shake them down,” Meyer says.

  “He with a guy named Reinfeld,” Charlie says. “That’s the Italian that was giving him trouble a while back. Willie Moretti is up in Jersey now. He wanted to know if we had anything to do with Zwillman. I told him he’s a friend of yours and that he watches over our booze coming in from Canada. That should keep things in line for now. Are you gonna talk to Gordon?”

  Meyer says, “That’s the general idea. I didn’t get into this game to get knocked out by a guy like that.”

  * * *

  Summer gives way to fall. The air is crisp. Static electricity snaps Meyer’
s hands as he slides across the taxi seat on his way to the showdown with Waxey Gordon.

  “The Knickerbocker,” he says to the cabbie.

  Waxey’s receptionist is a tall brunette with showgirl sensibility.

  “Right this way, Mr. Lansky,” she says in a Bronxy nasal twang.

  She ushers Meyer through the reception room and into the heart of Waxey’s operation. The blackboards are scrubbed clean; nothing to see except a couple of thugs playing cards and bookkeeper laboring over a set of ledgers.

  Bronx throws open another door at the far end of the room. Waxey sits behind a heavy desk and downs Irish whiskey. A cigar burns idly nearby. A couple of girls are perched on the couch. Waxey gestures to a chair in front of the window.

  “Take a load off,” Waxey says.

  Meyer grabs a chair and makes himself comfortable. The girls trade secrets and giggle. The noise annoys Waxey. He gives them a glare and then tells them to beat it. The girls shrug off the insult and leave the suite.

  Waxey sizes up the measure of Meyer’s success, handmade suit and shoes, Sulka shirt, smart tie, fresh haircut.

  “You’ve come a long way, kid,” he says, “but you still got a lot to learn.”

  Meyer says, “Not too many guys could pull off a thing like this in the middle of Manhattan. You must have a lot of political pull.”

  “Connections,” Waxey huffs. “That’s what it takes.”

  “What does a guy like you need with a guy like Rothstein?” Meyer says. “He’s a gambler, a bankroll. He’s no street guy.”

  “That’s what I say,” Waxey says catching on to the reason for Meyer’s visit. “You here to clean up his mess?”

  “Rothstein wants out,” Meyer says.

  “We got a deal,” Waxey says. “He musta told you that much. Son of a bitch made me take out an insurance policy with him as the beneficiary in case we got knocked off before we repaid his loan. The guy’s got balls in business, just no brains.”

  Meyer nods, “So cut him loose. You’re better off without a guy like that meddling in your business. He’s a purist, what does he know about the value of cut whiskey.”

  Waxey curls his lip in disgust, “You mockin’ me?”

  Meyer says, “Rothstein is more interested in his image than his purse. He’s got to look these guys in the eye every time they play poker. He can’t afford to have the reputation of a guy selling cut whiskey.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about his reputation. I don’t need him meddling in my business.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Rothstein brought me and my associates in on his end,” Meyer says.

  Waxey lets out a howl.

  “Kid, you’re still in the neighborhood. You’re still running around with guys you knew when you were sucking your mother’s tit. I got guys coming outta the can to do my business. Didn’t that upstart tell you what he saw here? You think the guys in Cleveland are wheeler-dealers cause they run Canadian whiskey across the border? I got shiploads of booze coming in from overseas. I got connections to the Caribbean for rum. I got vodka coming from Russia. What the hell do you got? A 45-foot cruiser and a guinea friend.”

  “You’ve got it all. What do you need with a stiff-shirt guy like Rothstein?”

  “When you put it like that,” Waxey says.

  Meyer says, “Let’s not take this thing to the street. Cut Rothstein loose. There’s plenty to go around. They say there are forty thousand speakeasies in this town, maybe more. You go your way and we’ll go ours. Me and my associates will take care of Rothstein’s little cache of snobs. The rest of New York is up for grabs.”

  Waxey laughs, “You think you can do better than me with these characters? You think I’m some Daymon Runyon dub? I can’t hold my own in the upper classes?” He thumbs the lapel of his suit. “Listen to me, kid. I eat at the finest restaurants, dance at the finest clubs. I got the best lookin’ broads in town. I wear suits that cost as much as most guys’ annual incomes and there’s plenty more where that comes from.”

  “You work your side of the street and we’ll work ours.”

  “You’re smart, kid. You better stay outta my way. I ain’t got no qualms about protecting what’s mine. I ever find you movin’ in on any of my joints, we’ll come to blows.”

  Meyer stands.

  “It goes both ways,” he says.

  Chapter Five

  Build Capital

  AUGUST 1923

  The summer of 1923 rolls around. The Big Apple has been through several interesting revolutions. For one, Frank Costello got a judge to throw out the court case against Charlie Lucky’s boys who got themselves into some real hot water. Joe the Boss found out about the fix and decided that Costello, an Italian immigrant from Calabria, should demonstrate allegiance to his mob instead of relying on his friends at Tammany Hall.

  Moe and Izzy, the fat, cigar-chomping, middle-aged Jewish Prohibition agents, became hometown celebrities almost as popular as Buster Keaton and twice as funny. They dressed as gravediggers, dock workers, stout old ladies, and tuxedoed European royals, then tricked the city’s bartenders into violating the Volstead Act. “Yer pinched” is the latest catchphrase among the Broadway set.

  Abe “Longy” Zwillman welcomed an alliance with Meyer Lansky and promptly expanded his whiskey running empire. His once senior partner, Joe Reinfeld, found himself in the less enviable position of subordinate but he doesn’t mind. He makes enough money to drown his sorrows.

  Moe Dalitz immediately saw the advantage of the Zwillman/Lansky alliance. The coup was not so much the alliance but the fact that the rail lines end in Jersey which is Zwillman territory. Dalitz tells his partners in Cleveland that it’s time to start thinking beyond boxcars and make the move to owning railroads.

  Benny hears about Nucky Johnson, the sheriff in Atlantic City, who is getting rich allowing rumrunners and booze smugglers access to his shores. The resort town is a stone’s throw from Manhattan. That’s one advantage. The sheriff is another. But the true advantage lies in the fact that off-season, the whole town is dead. That means no hassles from the cops or any other enforcement agency.

  The former journalist turned dictator, Benito Mussolini, marches on Rome sending a wave of Mafioso immigrants to America. These hard-core soldiers provide fresh recruits for the local gangs. Frankie Yale, the local gang leader, uses this infusion of strength to vie for control of the Brooklyn docks.

  Charlie Lucky is jerked back into the neighborhood politics that consume the Italian way of life. Joe the Boss calls Charlie and his right-hand man, Vito Genovese, to a meeting in a Brooklyn brownstone. Vito is a throwback to the old country, a native of Naples, while Charlie is the Americanized Young Turk. Although Vito is ten years Charlie’s senior, he falls in line under the younger man.

  Joe lays out his problem. As he does, he watches for any expressions that might transpire between the two men that would give away their deep-seated nature to exploit the situation. Joe stokes a fire in an apartment he maintains for such conferences. August’s temperatures are unseasonably cold, 53 degrees to be exact. The third-story apartment is stark, nothing like his lush Manhattan residence. Should anyone break in, there is not much to discover.

  Joe takes a fatherly tone, “Charlie, Charlie. I’m glad you come.”

  Vito Genovese looks unkempt. His hair sweeps up in an unruly tuft that clings to one side of his head. His deep-set eyes are ringed with dark circles. Joe the Boss needs their strength to succeed in taking over the Italian rackets if he is to become, truly, “the Boss.” Joe hovers over a traditional cake, Cassata Siciliana.

  “Sit,” he says. “I cut you a piece of my wife’s cake.”

  The cake is a Sicilian jewel: sponge cake flavored with liqueur, ricotta cheese, candied peel, and chocolate filling all covered with a marzipan shell topped with candied fruit native to Sicily. Joe opens the small cabinet and removes a gold-rimmed plate. His vest buttons strain under the bulge of his extended gut. He slides the long blade of the knife
through the heart of the cake and pulls off a thick slice, then runs his chubby finger along the blade to gather what’s left. The lick of icing leaves a greasy shine on his lips.

  Charlie says, “You keep eating like that, you’re not gonna fit through this door.”

  Joe says, “What if I get to heaven and I ask St. Peter where to get a good cassata and he say we no got?”

  “You worry about what ain’t in heaven?” Charlie laughs.

  “I worry about lots of things. I worry about Frankie Yale who wants to take over the Unione Siciliana and now he got plenty of soldiers coming in by the boatload from Italy. These guys from the Old Country, they been killing a long time. They handle themselves pretty good. Capisce?”

  Charlie says, “He ain’t even Sicilian.”

  “I can taste his treachery. He gets the Unione, he puts his finger in everybody’s pie. I worry about Frank Costello. I see how he pays the politicians but he don’t pay me. Where is his respect? I worry about your Jew friends. What you think, Charlie, they gonna help you when you need help? We say ‘homo homini lupus est.’ Vito, you got good Latin. Tell Charlie what this mean.”

  “Man is a wolf to his fellow man,” Vito says.

  Charlie says, “You can worry about Yale when he crosses the bridge.”

  “Yale is a wolf. I have my eye on him, always. Someday I will split his kingdom and he will not be so strong against me.”

  Charlie nods. “No need to worry about Frank Costello. He is in Harlem with the bucket shops.”