Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series

by David Pietrusza

  Between liaisons and editions of the Follies (Ziegfeld bounced her from his cast in 1912), Miss Lorraine needed cash and was happy to pick up a few grand from A. R. for steering gentlemen his way. However, despite her status, Rothstein had little reluctance about having fun at her expense.

  Before A. R. made Lindy's his unofficial office around 1920, several other establishments held that honor. Jack's, of course, was first, but then came Child's, a far humbler establishment, and then Reuben's, a place similar to Lindy's, but located farther north of Times Square, at West 72nd Street and Broadway-just one block south of the Ansonia.

  One night A. R. answered Reuben's house telephone. It was Lillian Lorraine, wanting a chicken sandwich and a bottle of milk delivered to her Ansonia apartment. Rothstein, who possessed a love of practical jokes and a talent for imitation, pretended to be Reuben, thanked Miss Lorraine graciously for her business, and gave assurances her chicken sandwich would be right up.

  He then went around the corner to a pay phone to call Reuben's. Putting his mimicry to the test, he now posed as Lillian Lorraine and placed an order for six dozen of Reuben's club sandwiches, a sizable amount of the finest caviar, a gallon of dill pickles, and twelve quarts of milk.

  It worked like a charm. No problem, Reuben informed "Miss Lorraine." When half the contents of Reuben's kitchen arrived on the thirteenth floor of the Ansonia, she threw a fit. When Reuben learned what happened, he threw a fit. Both eventually discovered the trickster.

  A. R. didn't care. He liked a joke at others' expense, particularly when he was too big for anyone to do anything about it.

  Peggy Hopkins Joyce-like Lillian Lorraine-now barely remem bered, was in her day famed not so much for her talent upon the stage, but for numerous affairs, marriages, and divorces, all financially profitable for a once-poor blonde from Virginia. When A. R. met Peggy, she was neither Mrs. Joyce (Chicago lumber baron James Stanley Joyce, who would leave her a settlement of $1,000,000, was her third husband) nor a Ziegfeld Follies star. She would attain both statuses later, but was still young, beautiful, and charming and, in the early 1910s, on the make for gentlemen with large yachts and bank accounts. Rothstein recognized her potential as a steerer, but was loath to raise so crass a subject without proper preparation.

  Instead, he escorted her to the track, and informed her he was betting with his money but in her name, and she could keep the winnings. Arnold wouldn't say which bets were hers, but when the afternoon ended, he announced Peggy was $1,000 ahead. He advised her to let it ride. In other words, he wasn't handing over any cash.

  Peggy Hopkins was born greedy, and she blindly let A. R. continue. The next afternoon she "won" another $1,000. Again, Rothstein counseled her not to cash out. Each day her bankroll increased by another grand, until it reached $5,000.

  By now, Peggy really wanted her winnings. But A. R. was persuasive: wait, you've got nothing to lose. I'll put it all down on one race today.

  She agreed. Through the first three races, A. R. made no indication that a bet had been placed. As the fourth race began, Peggy asked again. This was it, said A. R. She wanted to know which horse was hers.

  "The one in the lead," A. R. responded, knowing something she didn't. This horse had a history of breaking strong but fading.

  Past performance held true. "Her" horse lost. Peggy was disconsolate, angry, bitter. Rothstein had squandered "her" money. Ah, he said, I know how to regain that $5,000. Simply escort a certain rich friend to my gambling house. If things go well, he will lose far more than $5,000, and I'll present you with a percentage from my winnings.

  Peggy Hopkins was blond but not dumb, and had this day grown perceptibly smarter in her dealings with Rothstein. "Suppose he wins?" she wanted to know.

  "Then it will be up to you to see that he pays you off."

  History doesn't record the profitability of that first episode of the Rothstein-Hopkins partnership, but it does record that Peggy made a habit of bringing her new gentlemen friends to A. R.'s various gambling establishments.

  One evening in 1913 Peggy steered a new sucker to Rothstein, a big one: Percival S. Hill. The year before, Percival's papa had bestowed upon him the presidency of the American Tobacco Company, and he was still feeling his oats. At Rothstein's faro table he dropped $60,000, and A. R. did his best to maintain his composure. This was a very good night, Arnold's best yet. But Hill wasn't through playing or losing. He wanted his credit raised. A. R. could have quit while ahead, way ahead. He didn't. "Of course," he said, doing his best to appear nonchalant. "Give Mr. Hill his chips and he can name his own limit." Hill lost $250,000 and calmly handed A. R. his I. O. U.

  A. R. went upstairs to see Carolyn and let his composure drop. This was it, the big payoff he dreamed of, sweated for, connived and cheated for. He was the new Canfield. This was also the night of Carolyn's dreams. Her husband could quit, walk away from the risk and the danger. They could live a normal life.

  Arnold became expansive. "I'll buy you the biggest diamond in New York," he promised. "I'll buy you the best fur coat. Whatever you want I'll buy it for you." She didn't want a fur coat: she wanted a husband. If that meant giving up gambling, he wasn't interested. He made excuses. Suddenly, $250,000 wasn't that much money. There were expenses, payoffs, a share to the "steerers." A. R. would not in fact, give Carolyn "whatever she wanted."

  Arnold slept fitfully. The next day he traveled down to the American Tobacco Company's New York headquarters and asked for its treasurer, a Mr. Sylvester. Sylvester told A. R. that gambling debts weren't collectible. Rothstein wouldn't budge. "I am going to pay this-this-draft," Sylvester finally announced. "You accepted it in good faith, at least with as much good faith as a gambler accepts any 1. 0. U. However, I am informing you now that I will not honor another such I. 0. U., not even for five cents. Do we understand each other?"

  A. R. understood. He pocketed his $250,000 check and walked out the door.

  The experience grated on him. "He treated me like dirt," Arnold complained to his wife. "Well, I've got a quarter of a million dollars and that makes me as good as he is."

  But the era of the gambling house was about to end with a murder on 43rd Street. Rothstein would have to change with the times. He did-and dramatically increased both his already sizable take and influence in the world of vice.

  F YOU WANTED TO OPERATE Illegally in New York-gambling, prostitution, a saloon-no problem. You required: 1. appropriate discretion (i.e., avoid having too spectacular a murder on your premises) and 2. protection from two venerable New York institutions: Tammany Hall and the police.

  City cops were as crooked as the politicians. From police on the beat to the highest officials at headquarters, they possessed plentiful opportunities-and took 'em eagerly. They became rich, arrogant, and ultimately too independent for Tammany. When the politicians finally had enough and concluded they had allowed too much autonomy to the cops, they decided to deal more directly with city vice lords. Their primary go-between would be Arnold Rothstein.

  Change came when a corrupt, brutal police lieutenant named Charles Becker ordered some East Side toughs to gun down his erstwhile partner, gambler Herman "Beansy" Rosenthal, ordering him murdered on a crowded street just off Times Square-questionable judgment on everyone's part. Moreover, Becker sanctioned Rosenthal's murder during one of the infrequent periods when Manhattan enjoyed a Republican district attorney. That was truly reckless. That was inexcusable.

  Venal police officials long predated Lieutenant Becker, the most spectacular being Inspector Alexander "Clubber" Williams, Commissioner "Big Bill" Devery, and Becker's former superior, Captain Max Schmittberger. Their careers reveal the workings of what frustrated reformers called "The System."

  "Clubber" Williams didn't invent police corruption and brutality, but transformed both into fine arts. In 1876, when Williams's superiors transferred him from a mundane East 20s precinct to the West Side's Central Broadway District, hub of Manhattan's gambling, white slave, and liquor trades, his
greedy heart leaped with joy. "I've had nothing but chuck steak for a long time," Williams chortled, "and now I'm going to get a little of the Tenderloin." Previously, the precinct was "Satan's Circus," forever afterward-the "Tenderloin."

  Clubber exploited his opportunities, accumulating a $500,000 fortune, a seventeen-room town house, a $17,000 steam yacht, and a Connecticut country estate. Eighteen times he was investigated for graft. Eighteen times he won acquittal.

  Gotham's cops had a license to steal, but Tammany charged them for the license. Even in Williams' day, a promotion to roundsman cost $300; to sergeant, $1,600; and to captain, anywhere from $12,000 to $16,000. Big money, but money easily earned back.

  Clubber Williams paved the way for others. In the 1890s, William S. "Big Bill" Devery-300 pounds, crooked, and often drunk-served as New York's police commissioner. Devery, in partnership with Big Tim Sullivan and Sullivan's ally Frank Farrell, controlled Manhattan gambling. By 1900 Manhattan police payoffs amounted to $3 million annually, twenty times that amount in the purchasing power a century later. In 1894 the Board of Police Commissioners booted Devery off the force. A grand jury indicted him for extortion. But Big Bill won acquittal and returned to duty. A few years later, after the same process of indictment and acquittal, the New York State Legislature abolished the commissionership. Devery still survived. Tammany Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck, who called Big Bill New York's best police chief ever, reinstated him, imaginatively naming him "Deputy" Commissioner.

  Most folks at Tammany liked Devery, among them organization boss Richard Croker. The general public, however, sickened of having their pockets picked by the Croker-Van Wyck-Devery operation. In 1901 Croker dumped the unpopular Van Wyck from the ticket, but Republican Seth Low still captured City Hall in a landslide. Croker departed for a genteel European exile, replaced at Tammany by Charles Francis Murphy, a taciturn but savvy East Side saloonkeeper. Murphy attempted to distance Tammany from Devery-and from other obvious thieves. It was a policy that would inevitably make the ostensibly colorless Murphy the Hall's most successful leader.

  Big Bill could comfortably retire from public life; he just didn't enjoy being shoved out. In 1902 he contested a Murphy henchman for leadership in the West Side's Ninth Assembly District, going all out for victory. Big Bill packed 10,000 constituents onto two steamboats, six barges, and a single tugboat for a magnificent Hudson River cruise, where they received sandwiches, soft drinks, pies, 6,000 pounds of candy, 1,500 quarts of ice cream, and even 1,500 nursing bottles for infants. Forty-five musicians serenaded the crowd. As Devery's flotilla docked, fireworks exploded from nearby barges, and Big Bill dispensed shiny silver twenty-five-cent pieces to each child.

  Just before the primary, Devery staged another outing, distributing 20,000 glasses of beer from kegs emblazoned "Special Devery Brew." He won. But Murphy cited a Democrat County Committee rule allowing the expulsion of "objectionable" members and refused to seat him.

  In 1903 Devery retaliated, running for mayor as an independent. He outraged the churchgoing Murphy by exposing a house of prostitution operating at a Murphy-owned property at Lexington and 27th. "There's been more young girls ruined in that house than in any other place in the city," Devery charged. "The trouble with that fellow [Murphy] is that he's got a red light hangin' around his neck, and consequently he sees a red light in whichever direction he looks." Devery handily lost to Tammany-backed Congressman George B. McClellan.

  In 1894, during one of the state senate's periodic probes of police graft, its Lexow Committee heard testimony from Clubber Williams' henchman, NYPD Captain Max Schmittberger. Schmittberger implicated both himself and Williams in corrupt activities, but proved unusually flexible. When times had called for corruption, he was corrupt. When reform was in vogue, he was honest. Schmittberger not only remained on the force after the probe, he won promotion to oversee the Tenderloin. Reformers-including President of the Board of Police Commissioners Theodore Roosevelt-thought Schmittberger had gone straight. As long as they held office, he had.

  But when Tammany reclaimed power, Schmittberger reverted to form, exacting tribute from every Tenderloin poolroom, bordello, and saloon. To help collect his loot Schmittberger engaged the services of Lieutenant Charles Becker, a cop as tough and corrupt as any of his predecessors. Born in the Catskills in 1870, as a teenager he moved to the Lower East Side's burgeoning German neighborhood. He worked at menial jobs (including bouncer in a huge Germanic beer hall, the Atlantic Gardens), meeting the usual neighborhood characters: street toughs, gamblers, prostitutes, and Tammany politicians. Tammany liked him. He wasn't just physically imposing, his manner distinguished him from other bullyboys. The Wigwam admired him so much, that in November 1893 it not only obtained his appointment to the force, it waived its usual fee.

  Charley habitually fell into trouble, but-each time-somebody pulled him out. On the evening of September 15, 1896, Becker, on plainclothes assignment outside West 32nd Street's newly opened Broadway Gardens, arrested three women for soliciting. Two of the ladies were being escorted by Stephen Crane, a reporter for William Randolph Hearst's New York journal and author of the recent bestseller The Red Badge of Courage. Crane, who later claimed to be interviewing the women for an article, protested that nobody had done anything wrong. Becker released Crane's companions, but hauled the third woman-a "really handsome," redheaded prostitute named Dora Clark-into the 19th Precinct house on 30th Street. Crane followed. Despite police warnings, Crane defended Clark vociferously. ("Whatever her character, the arrest was an outrage. The policeman flatly lied.") The next morning a magistrate dismissed charges against Clark, but Crane remained outraged. He discovered that only shortly before Dora Clark's arrest, Becker had falsely accused another woman of soliciting. Crane also learned of a general police vendetta against Clark, initiated after she spurned a swarthy officer named Rosenberg, whom she mistakenly thought to be black. ("How dare you speak to a decent white woman!") Soon after, Becker met Clark on the street, throttling, punching, and kicking her until passersby restrained him. He threatened Dora that she would "wind up in the river" if she caused any more trouble for the police.

  Crane demanded that Becker be disciplined, and learned how police protect their own. Cops raided Crane's living quarters. At Becker's departmental hearing, every off-duty officer in the precinct appeared in a demonstration of support for their comrade. Becker's attorney implied that Crane, never the most fastidiously moral person, was both a pimp and an opium addict. His questions were perfunctorily ruled out of order, but, nonetheless, made their way to the pages of the daily press. Becker won acquittal. Police Commissioner Roosevelt (formerly a friend and admirer of Crane's; Crane had dined at T. R.'s home in July and autographed a copy of The Red Badge of Courage) professed concern for gratuitous police roughness, but heartily congratulated Becker and turned his back on Crane permanently. Police accelerated Crane's harassment. Newspapers continued questioning his morals and judgment. He left the city for safer territory.

  Becker soon found himself in more trouble. On September 20, 1896-five days after arresting Dora Clark-he discovered three men robbing a tobacco store. He clubbed one man. Then he and his partner, an Officer Carey, fired at the other two. One shot went through a suspect's heart. Police falsely identified the dead man as the "notorious fanlight operator [burglar] John O'Brien," and Becker and Carey enjoyed considerable public approval for two full days. But the dead man was no burglar. He was nineteen-year-old plumber's assistant John. Fay. Becker received a month's suspension. Only Big Tim Sullivan's intervention kept him on the force.

  That December Becker arrested yet another woman for soliciting. She turned out to be the very proper wife of a Paterson, New Jersey, textile manufacturer. "I don't care who she is," Becker responded. "I know a whore when I see one." Again, Big Tim saved his job. Not long afterward, a teenager charged Becker of beating him senseless in a theater lobby.

  In the summer of 1904, Becker rescued a man named James Butler who had fallen off a Hud
son River pier, earning the highest departmental award for heroism. Two years later, Butler alleged that Becker had promised to pay him for falling into the water and reneged on the promise. Butler hinted that he ended up saving Becker.

  Becker was the quintessential bad cop, the type of officer who, if retained at all, should never be presented with even the mildest temptations. So, of course, he was transferred to Captain Max Schmittberger's Tenderloin.

  Becker saw the immense sums Schmittberger raked in. Three hundred dollars a month was the going rate for protection, and hundreds of saloons, poolrooms, brothels, and red-light hotels needed protection-protection from people like Lieutenant Becker. One day Becker entered Dollar John Langer's West 38th Street saloon and gambling hall and informed Dollar John that in addition to the usual $300 monthly fee paid to Schmittberger, he would remit an extra $20 to him. Langer paid. Impressed by the ease of that shakedown, Becker made the rounds of the district, collecting at each stop.

  The next morning, Schmittberger ordered Becker to see him. He knew all about his subordinate's actions-whom he had visited, how much he had collected. He ordered Becker to hand over the $150 he had accumulated. He threw $15 back at Becker.

  "That's your share, ten percent," Schmittberger snapped. "From now on you're my collector. You'll get ten percent. Some of the joints can stand to pay more than they are and if you can get it so much the better for you. But remember, I'll always know exactly how much they paid." Thus, Charles Becker became Max Schmittberger's bagman. His bankroll grew, and so did his ego.

  By 1909 reform was in the air. Tammany, eager to retain power and flexible enough to realize it once again needed a respectable and pliant front man, dumped Mayor George McClellan and turned to irascible, but clean Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice William J. Gaynor. Gaynor was more upright than Tammany would have liked. Almost immediately he broke with the machine, but his reforming was not always easily fathomable. Rather then shut down the city's widespread vice industry, he advocated merely the preservation of "outward order and decency." That didn't mean shutting everything down, but it didn't mean a wide-open town. It meant something in between.