Bugsy Siegel

by Michael Shnayerson

  As an opener, Seward demanded $2 million on Wilkerson’s behalf. That would be Wilkerson’s price for selling nearly half the Flamingo to Siegel and being free of any liabilities. Siegel, through his lawyer, countered at $300,000. Seward, on Wil­kerson’s behalf, dropped his demand to $1 million. Siegel came back at $600,000. Half of Wilkerson’s payoff would be remitted in May, the balance in August. Wilkerson was torn. Siegel was buying him out for a pittance, but a pittance was better than nothing. More important, Wilkerson wanted his life back. Reluctantly, he called Seward to say they had a deal.42

  In early March 1947, Seward braved the trip from L.A. to get documents signed and countersigned, ending Billy Wilkerson’s business dealings with Siegel. He found himself sitting in a booth along with Siegel and Meyer Lansky. At one point, recounts Wilkerson’s son in The Man Who Invented Las Vegas, “Siegel made a symbolic revolver out of his hand and pointed the barrel at Seward’s head. Seward recalled feeling the pressure of the gangster’s fingers against his skull.

  “ ‘If your partner were here right now I’d blow his fucking brains out,’ Siegel said.”43

  Seward was terrified, and high-tailed it out of the Flamingo without getting any of the documents signed. Not until March 19 did Siegel and G. Harry Rothberg sign an official document releasing Wilkerson from any liability on the project. In late April, he got the first half of his $600,000, according to his son.44 He would receive the balance in August. Or so the parties agreed.

  As the Flamingo’s losses continued to rise, Siegel ranted against the injustice of having to pay his ex-partner any money at all. His front man Moe Sedway got the bum’s rush as well. Sedway had arguably done more to build Siegel’s fortune than anyone else, getting the Vegas race wire exclusive from Continental Press back in 1942, and comanaging the El Cortez. Now he was working to expand Siegel’s Trans-American turf, but he was having trouble delivering.45 That in itself made Siegel angry, but what really lit his fuse was Sedway’s involvement in local philanthropy.

  Ever since his arrival in Vegas, Sedway had downplayed his close association with Siegel. That was his job, to be the front man, but Sedway had taken the role a bit too much to heart. Like Siegel, he longed for legitimacy. He had involved himself with the United Jewish Appeal, and donated enough money to become its Las Vegas chairman. He had taken a seat on the board of the Clark County Library. Now he was being asked to run for the Nevada State Assembly and had agreed to do so.46 Siegel was furious. “We don’t run for office!” he railed at Sedway. “We own the politicians.”47

  That argument ended, or so it was said, with Siegel literally kicking Sedway out of the Flamingo and telling him never to come in again. By one account, Siegel had concluded that Sedway was a stool pigeon for the FBI. He went on about the obsequious Sedway with Hill’s brother Chick. “Before I die,” he told Chick one night, “there’s two guys I’m gonna kill. Sedway and Wilkerson, the two biggest bastards that ever lived.”48

  Siegel may have derived enormous satisfaction from drop-kicking Sedway out of the Flamingo, but the story reportedly found its way to the Syndicate, where it was received with dismay. Sedway was a longtime colleague they could trust. More to the point, he was an old and close friend of Siegel’s. If Siegel was capable of treating Sedway like this, it was another sign that Siegel was growing unhinged, and jeopardizing the Syndicate’s dough.

  With the Flamingo’s reopening, Hill was back in the ­hotel’s penthouse suite, unhappily so. She took large doses of Benadryl for her allergies, only to feel groggy and sick. Later, she would say that she now came to Vegas only when friends flew up to visit. Always quick to seethe with jealousy, she noticed that Siegel seemed drawn to the pretty young girl at the cigarette concession stand. At Siegel’s next flirty exchange with her, Hill leapt into action, grabbing the girl by the hair and scratching her face, until Siegel pulled her away. Later, before the Kefauver Commission, Hill admitted, “I hit a girl in the Flamingo and [Ben] told me I wasn’t a lady. We got into a big fight. I had been drinking, and I left.” The girl, diagnosed at the hospital with deep facial scratches and a dislocated vertebra, filed a lawsuit. According to one report, Siegel told Hill she could come back to him only if she apologized.49

  Beneath Hill’s rage, it seemed, lay insecurity and a self-destructive streak. A day or so after the attack on the cigarette girl, Hill took an overdose of sleeping pills. Siegel found her comatose in their penthouse suite. His quick response prob­ably saved her life: together, he and Chick carried her down the secret passage and into Chick’s new Cadillac. They raced to the hospital at ninety miles an hour, drawing police in their wake. A stomach pump at the hospital brought Hill back from the brink. This suicide attempt was apparently her first; it would not be her last.

  There were many examples that spring of Siegel’s temper or, perhaps more accurate, his mental deterioration. One concerned the entertainment director for the El Rancho Vegas, one Abe Schiller. As a courtesy, the town’s casinos let anyone use their pools. Schiller, so went the story, took his wife and children to check out the Flamingo’s pool. This was in early March; the Flamingo had just reopened, and some two hundred guests were ranged around the pool.

  At the sight of Schiller, Siegel began seething. Apparently the flack had been warning visitors away from the Flamingo and its hoodlum clientele. Siegel reportedly pulled out his .38 and pistol-whipped him. Then he made Schiller crawl around the pool on his hands and knees as his horrified family looked on.50

  Siegel’s mood swings had grown extreme. Yet he was still capable of generous acts. One night that spring, he hosted a fundraiser for Eddie Cantor’s cancer drive. Along with underwriting the evening and urging guests to dig deep, he wrote a check of his own. “He came across with a sum that surprised me,” Cantor later related to columnist Florabel Muir. “He didn’t do it for publicity, either, because no one knew how much he gave us.”51

  Later that spring, Siegel hosted another cancer fundraiser, this one for the new Damon Runyon fund. The Broadway journalist and short story writer had died of cancer the previous year, and his friend Walter Winchell had inaugurated the fund for cancer research. Again Siegel donated the Flamingo for the evening, and again he made an anonymous gift. This time he couldn’t resist pulling a prank on his lawyer as he did.52

  “He told me to bid on a fur for my wife,” related Louis Wiener, Siegel’s lawyer, of the auction that climaxed the evening. “He said ‘you can probably get it for five hundred dollars.’ ” Siegel melted into the crowd, and when the time came, Wiener bid $500 for what was, in fact, a silver fox fur, most prized of the various fox kinds. To his mild annoyance, another bettor raised him to $550. Back and forth the bidding went, with Wiener sweating as it reached $950. Set on winning the fur—he could hardly do otherwise, given that retainer of $25,000 a year that he and his firm continued to earn from the Flamingo—he heard himself croak a bid of $1,000. Mercifully, his unseen rival dropped out. A bit shaken, Wiener walked over to the “cage” for a cash advance. Siegel came up behind him and innocently asked, “What happened?”

  “Well, someone bid me up to a thousand dollars and I didn’t bring that much money with me,” Wiener said, not entirely able to hide his irritation. Siegel started to laugh, and Wiener got the joke at last. Still, he thought he’d bought the coat—the cage advanced him the thousand dollars he asked for, and Wiener walked over to the auction table to plunk down his cash for the fur. Instead, his money was pushed back across the table to him, along with the silver fox fur. Siegel had paid for it himself.

  Wiener wasn’t the only unwitting front for Siegel’s generosity that night. Brigham Townsend, a publicist who had helped organize the evening gratis as part of representing Siegel, sat with his volatile client through the auction.53 “Whenever an item was going for far less than it should, Benny would have me push up the bidding.” Siegel would slip him the bills that clinched the winning bid, and crooner Gene Austin, the evening’s auctioneer, would look on in amazement. All told, t
he evening would raise $8,000—a lot of money in 1947. Most of that money came from Siegel.

  The two men were seated on barstools as the guests began to leave. Every one of them came over to thank Ben Siegel—not Bugsy—for hosting the night. “When the last guest had departed,” Townsend recalled, “Benny turned to me, wiped a tear from his eye, and said ‘Gee kid, they shook my hand.’ ” Townsend, who wrote a regular column for the Las Vegas Review-­Journal, made no mention in print of Siegel’s largesse.

  These shows of philanthropy were more than pro forma. On April 17, 1947, Ben’s father died at sixty-seven and was buried in Mt. Zion cemetery in Queens, his gravestone scrunched between others, a poor man to the last. For years, Ben had provided for his parents. He could take consolation that his father Max had lived far longer, under his care, than if he had kept working in a pants factory. But those first years had been so hard. Money had helped, and Ben had taken pride in all he could do to support the family. His parents had never embraced him for that. Ben was the Siegels’ persona non grata. Maurice had done well, moved up, become a doctor. There was no need to say more than that.

  Admirable as Ben’s philanthropy was, motivated as it might be by grief at his father’s passing, it also spoke to a sort of mania. Siegel could no more afford to make charitable gifts at this point than to run for president.

  Amid the grim portents was one surprisingly positive bit of news: sometime in May, the Flamingo turned a profit. Siegel was euphoric. Maybe the whole crazy extravaganza was turning around at last.

  11

  Time Runs Out

  LITTLE ABOUT Siegel’s last days suggested the end was near. In early June 1947, he seemed optimistic, at ease, good-natured, even philosophical, if that could be said of a gangster.

  One source of Siegel’s improved mood was obvious. The Flamingo’s day-to-day operation was in the black at last, with $250,000 in profit in May.1 Siegel finally had croupiers he could trust, good counters in the cage, and a growing clientele, now that the hotel’s bedrooms were done and bettors could stay the night. Luck played a part, too. Siegel believed deeply in luck, as any true gambler does. Luck had come to the Flamingo not a moment too soon, he thought, but not too late, either. Of course, the Flamingo was still millions in debt on construction costs.

  After several tempestuous months, Siegel was feeling philosophical about Virginia Hill as well. He felt resigned to the odds that their romance, whether a marriage or not, was over. They loved each other, and always would, like the characters in their favorite book. But the two were so volatile, their fights so fierce, that both were relieved whenever Hill left Las Vegas for L.A. Hill’s brutal takedown of the cigarette girl had felt like a turning point.

  Hill’s house on North Linden Drive in L.A. had given her some of the freedom she craved, but Vegas had worn her down. She was tired of being queen of the Flamingo. She hated the desert. She could hardly venture out into the searing heat without triggering her allergies. She felt suffocated, literally and figuratively, by Siegel. If she kept going to Vegas at Siegel’s command, she felt sure she would overdose again.2 What she needed after that, she told her friend and landlord Juan Romero, was a real getaway.

  Romero asked whether Hill had been to Paris. She had not. As the two drank Champagne, Romero painted a vivid picture of the city. Hill knew one Frenchman already, he reminded her, and pointed to the bottle they were emptying. Just weeks before, Romero had introduced Hill to Nicolas Feuillatte, a young heir to the Mumm’s Champagne fortune. Feuillatte could be her guide. Hill laughed at the very idea: Was Nicolas even twenty-one? Possibly, Romero said, possibly not. But Hill wasn’t that much older than Feuillatte, Romero teased. How old was she, again?

  Hill was twenty-nine. A lot had been packed into those years, though Feuillatte didn’t have to know that. To him, she would be a great adventure: beguilingly chic, beautifully dressed, and an all-star in bed.

  Hill flew up to Vegas to tell Siegel she was planning a summer in Paris—on her own. His first reaction was a flat no. Siegel had been through a lot with Hill, between the overdose and the frequent fights, and he didn’t need any more aggravation. Hill was ready for that. “You don’t own me, Ben Siegel,” she said, according to her brother Chick’s recollection.3

  Later, Virginia Hill would tell investigators that she and Siegel had broken up that day. “He was a constant strain on my nerves,” she said. “We couldn’t be together five minutes without arguing. When he barked at me, I packed my bags and left the hotel.”4

  Siegel decided he would take his daughters to Vancouver for a summer vacation. Meanwhile, he declared, Hill could travel around France as much as she liked. At summer’s end, they would see how they felt about getting back together. At least this was the story that Virginia’s brother Chick told investigators. Both, he said, were “too nervous” to stay together. Doc Stacher, Meyer Lansky’s right-hand man, dismissed that theory. His view was that Siegel just needed to keep the Flamingo in the black another three months, after which the lovers would reunite, more ardent than ever.5

  Whatever their true feelings, Hill let Siegel stay in the capacious Linden Drive house when she left L.A. for Paris on June 10. He had the gold key Hill had given him, and he could take his time packing his clothes: the lease on the Linden Drive house expired on June 23. Hill also allowed her brother Chick and his new girlfriend Jerri Mason to stay there in her absence, on the stern proviso that they not do something foolish, like get married. Hill even bought Chick a new Cadillac to keep him happy while she was away.6 Siegel would use the house as a brief base of operations, pitching more investors for the Flamingo.

  First stop for Hill was Chicago, where she had dinner with the long-suffering Joe Epstein, her adoring mob accountant, and stayed the night in his apartment. That evening, she and Siegel exchanged their last words. “I phoned goodbye to him from Chicago and I said I was going to Europe,” Hill later said to a reporter. “That was the last I heard from him.”7 The next morning, Epstein flew with her to New York, and the pair took a suite at the Hampshire House on Central Park South. One order of business was getting a passport for Hill. On the application form, she noted that she would be setting up an import business for French wines from the Feuillatte family. That was probably a stretch, given that she had just written to Nicolas to ask him to guide her around Paris, but it would serve.

  The young Feuillatte was delighted. So were his parents, who had no idea that the woman hiring their son as a guide was a notorious gun moll. On June 16, Hill flew from New York to Paris. By one report, she was carrying $76,000 worth of furs as excess baggage. Perhaps she liked having her choice of furs for the Parisian summer. Or were the furs making a one-way trip to Europe?

  Four days later, gangsters and detectives alike would be left wondering if Virginia Hill had had an ulterior motive for flying to Paris when she did.

  Siegel was still in Vegas as Hill flew off from New York. He had a special guest to welcome at the Flamingo. Rumor had it that Meyer Lansky stayed away from the gaming tables and barely left his room. Still, word of his presence traveled, as it always did. Most likely, he was there to preside over a forced conclave of major race wire operators. Siegel had just announced that he was doubling their subscription fees to the Trans-American race wire and giving them no choice to go elsewhere. Siegel needed more money for the Flamingo, it was as simple as that. The operators were furious.

  Possibly in that group of disgruntled mobsters sat the one who would become Siegel’s murderer.8 A good prospect was Russell Brophy, son-in-law of the late James Ragen and victim of that ferocious beating in 1942 by Mickey Cohen and Joe Sica. At the meeting, Brophy reportedly demanded a much bigger chunk of Siegel’s turf: Arizona, southern California, and Nevada. Decades later, Doc Stacher reported on how that turned out. “He was informed that he not only couldn’t have Siegel’s territory but would lose five other western states that he already owned for being so greedy.”9

  According to Stacher, Lansky did his be
st to defend Siegel to the end, giving him business advice and reporting the ca­sino’s upturn to the boys back east. Later, another version of Lansky’s Vegas trip surfaced. Perhaps Lansky had flown out to bid Siegel goodbye, knowing a gunman was about to act.10 Yet Siegel seemed jovial when Lansky departed. As for Lansky, he would deny, for what it was worth, playing any role in Siegel’s murder. “Ben Siegel was my friend until his final day,” he told his Israeli biographers. “I never quarreled with him.”11

  A warning of sorts came one June night at the Linden Drive house in L.A. Siegel was still in Las Vegas. Virginia Hill’s younger brother Chick and his girlfriend Jerri Mason were at the house on their own, in a second-floor bedroom. They heard a scuffling and scraping, followed by a sharper impact. Chick came down to find the kitchen door wide open, its latch jimmied, and heard receding steps. Or so he said.12

  In Paris, Billy Wilkerson picked up his phone at the George V to receive a much more explicit warning. He had planned on coming back to Las Vegas at last, to get the second half of his $600,000 buyout money. Now he heard a raspy voice saying, “wait till it’s over.” The phone clicked.13 Wilkerson chose to take the advice, though it would cost him the rest of his buy-out money.

  By one account, Siegel received several threatening calls, too. Enough of them came on June 19 at the Flamingo that he told the switchboard not to connect anyone he didn’t know well. Still, Siegel seemed at ease. He called Chick Hill to say he would be flying down that night of June 19. He had business in L.A. the next day and would be staying at the Linden Drive house. Chick and Jerri shouldn’t wait up, he advised: he wouldn’t get to the house until 3 or 4 A.M.14

  Before flying down, Siegel reportedly called one of his most trusted bodyguards, “Fat Irish” Green, to his office. There, according to legend, he popped open a locked case filled with cash.15 Green was accustomed to seeing wads of cash; he had run the wire service book at El Rancho for six months. But this was really big. Later estimates of the cash varied from $60,000 to $600,000.