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

by David Pietrusza

  She confronted her husband.

  He confessed. He admitted everything-everything except that Bobbie Winthrop meant any thing to him. He promised to leave her, but hadn't he also promised to leave gambling? At one point he presented Bobbie with an envelope containing $100,000 in bonds. Bobbie liked the good life, expected to be cared for in showgirl fashion, expected a luxury apartment and lavish and numerous presents. But she never touched those bonds. And one day Arnold came to her-as he had approached Carolyn in Saratoga-and wanted back his largesse to invest elsewhere. She handed the envelope back untouched.

  They had first met in 1913, when Bobbie accompanied Peggy Hopkins Joyce and American Tobacco Company President Percival S. Hill to Arnold's gambling house-and Hill dropped $250,000 in a single night of play. Arnold considered her a good-luck charm. Then he considered her something more.

  They kept company through the years. She was, after all, an attractive woman and one-unlike his wife-that he could simply enjoy. "She [Bobbie] was a very beautiful girl, with blonde hair and blue eyes," Carolyn Rothstein wrote bitterly, "noted for her dancing, and her figure-just the sort of young woman with whom a man, vain of his position in a false society such as that of Broadway, might enjoy being seen."

  Yet, while A. R. may not have kept Bobbie Winthrop on a pedestal, he often put her in a lonely corner of his busy life. "I never knew a man who neglected women more," detective Val O'Farrell said of Rothstein, and so it was with Bobbie. Miss Winthrop was enjoyable company but could not compete with cards and dice and thousand-dollar gold notes.

  The Rothsteins never had children, though Arnold was surpris ingly sympathetic to youngsters. In 1924 Rothstein nearly adopted one-a nine-year-old creature of the streets and speakeasies named "Red" Ritter. Filthy and dressed in clothes barely better than rags, Red sang and danced for passersby and for patrons of such chic clubs as Owney Madden's Silver Slipper and Texas Guinan's El Fay Club, where he was a particular favorite. Arnold took a liking to him and brought Red to Wallach's, where he bought him a complete new outfit before taking him home to Carolyn-or "Momma" as Arnold called her.

  A. R. wanted him in Carolyn's care, exposed to manners and society, to outings in the country and golf and tennis and horsemanship.

  Red wasn't easily tamed. He retained his ragged outfits-"Dem's my workin' clo'se"-and his late-night, early-morning working hours. Still, things might have worked had not the boy's mother displayed unnecessary avarice, hinting strongly that she desired a house or at the least an apartment if Arnold adopted the boy. A. R. hired a detective to investigate the waif's family, and the results were disappointing, if not surprising. The mother had a boyfriend who exploited and beat her. A supposedly sick older brother was actually in Sing Sing for armed robbery. None of this was Red's fault, but Arnold had enough, his paternal instincts were exhausted quickly, and that was the last of little Red Ritter.

  Arnold thus had no kids, but he always had his girlfriends. Until late 1927 he also always had his wife. One night he reached their Fifth Avenue home and, as usual, headed silently for his own bedroom.

  "Arnold!" he heard her voice. "I've been waiting for you."

  "Are you all right? Is there anything wrong? Do you want me to call a doctor?"

  "I'm feeling fine," she said. "I want to talk with you."

  "You had me worried. What's happened?"

  "I want a divorce, Arnold."

  "Why? What have I done?"

  "We cannot go on like this. You have more money now than we need. Why don't you retire-get out of the life you have been living, and let us enjoy ourselves together?"

  "It's too late. I can't do it. You know there is no one I love except you, and that you always have been the only woman in the world, but I've gotten into it, and I can't get out of it. Why, every one would think I was a welsher if I quit now that I've got a few millions."

  "I can't stand this any longer."

  "All right, you go ahead and do whatever you think will make you happy. I'll give you twenty-five grand a year unless you marry again. If you marry I'll give you fifteen grand as long as you live with your husband. If he dies, or you leave him, I'll make it twenty-five grand again. But I wish you wouldn't leave me after all these years."

  Arnold responded to Carolyn's demand for divorce in a way oddly progressive for the times and for him. He suggested that they see a psychologist, Dr. John Broadus Watson, founder of the behaviorist school of psychology. She agreed. A. R. visited Dr. Watson first. Rothstein revealed the basic problem in their relationship, likening his wife to a beautiful doll in a glass case that he could not bear to defile or tarnish. In other words, to have sex with her.

  Dr. Watson relayed this to Carolyn. He didn't have to wait for her response. "I'm a woman, not a doll," she snapped.

  "Not to him," explained Watson. "It isn't that he doesn't want you to be a woman. It's just that he's unable to think of you that way. It's all in his conditioning. It might be possible to change him, Mrs. Rothstein, but it would take a long time. I've told him that."

  Carolyn wanted to know her husband's response. Watson said Arnold gave almost no response, just a shrug of disappointment: "I think he believed I could give him a pill or give you one and then everything would be all right."

  Thus ended the Rothsteins' experiment with therapy-and basically their marriage. Dr. Watson recommended that they separate formally, and A. R. honored the generous financial offer he had previously made Carolyn.

  Separations are difficult. No matter how great the hurt, part of you wants to make it work, to try again. While preparing for a trip, Carolyn confided to her maid Freda, a woman she felt close to, that she was considering reconciliation. Freda literally fainted. On reviving, she pleaded: "I couldn't bear to see you go back to Mr. Rothstein" and explained that while Arnold begged for forgiveness, he continued to see other women. That finished it. Carolyn Rothstein never again considered reconciliation.

  One night in 1927, after Carolyn and Arnold had first separated, he called her. He often called, but this time he was distraught. Bobbie Winthrop had died after a long illness. In fact, she had committed suicide. "Sweet," Arnold said, fighting back tears. "Bobbie is dead."

  Carolyn responded noncommittally, not really knowing what to say.

  He had a request, one he didn't have to make, but he asked anyway: "I wonder if you'd mind if I went to the funeral."

  "Why, certainly not."

  "I think I should go."

  And so he did-getting up early to do it, but he went-and then, as usual, he went to the track.

  On Christmas Eve 1927, Carolyn Rothstein sailed for Europe, bound for Paris, London, and the Riviera, not returning until October 16, 1928. When she did, she found a different Rothstein, one worried about money, with his back to the wall.

  All was far from right in the world of Arnold Rothstein. For years, everything he touched-gambling, booze, dope, real estate, loansharking, fencing stolen goods-yielded immense profits. Now the gods of chance turned against him.

  But it was not all luck. Something inside him had changed. "When I first knew him," his trainer Max Hirsch once noted, "he impressed me as a level-headed, clean-living man, and I never met anyone who had such a quick knack for figures. He made sense in everything he said. And then, suddenly, he began to act strange and I suspected maybe he was taking dope."

  It wasn't dope, but it might as well have been. It was greed.

  Real estate speculation cost him a fortune. Late in A. R.'s life, an unlikely fellow joined the Rothstein entourage. Most of Arnold's cronies were New Yorkers, by birth or longevity. Indiana-born William Wellman was neither. At a very young age, he managed Barney Oldfield, the race-car driver. A bit later, he worked as Madison Square Garden's assistant manager. Somewhere along the way, he divined that Detroit's version of the Garden-the Coliseumpossessed financial possibilities. Wellman advised. Rothstein invested.

  Wellman soon discovered that local political forces were skimming potential profits-and would
continue to do so. Wellman summoned up his courage and advised Rothstein of his error, but also devised a way for A. R. to escape without loss. Rather than being angry for being lured into such a scheme in the first place, Arnold brought Wellman to New York to manage his growing real estate empire, which included not only numerous Manhattan apartment houses and office buildings, but also the new $400,000 Cedar Point Golf Course in Woodmere, Long Island.

  Wellman had A. R.'s confidence, but, nonetheless, took pains to approach him gingerly, never talking business with him in the afternoon when Rothstein was fresh out of bed. "He is too full of life [at 3:00 P.M.], too keen and too nervous for me to try to sell him anything now. Wait until midnight at Lindy's when his business edge has worn off, and he is tired and almost normally human. Then I can talk to Arnold Rothstein the human being and not the master mind."

  It would have been better for A. R. if Wellman had spoken to him in early afternoons. Wellman's worst idea was the development of a 120-acre section of Maspeth, Queens into a variety of ill-chosen uses: a 200-unit housing development, a golf course, a greyhound track, and even a motor speedway. Wellman supposedly convinced Rothstein of the profitability of each venture, and Rothstein added his own angles: letting the mortgage on each home, selling insurance to each inhabitant of what he named juniper Park.

  It was a money pit.

  The land cost $400,000. Each week for almost three years, A. R. peeled off $5,000 in cash for Wellman, but he could never bring himself to drive to Maspeth. If he had, he would have seen how the grandstand for the dog track had collapsed. He would have seen hideous, badly built houses; building supplies rotting unprotected in open fields and on weed-infested front yards.

  Finally he asked Carolyn to visit and report back to him. She saw it all and, fearing A. R.'s wrath, nonetheless told the truth. Arnold now went to the location himself. Emerging from his limousine, the first sight greeting him was a hot-water heater sitting on a front lawn. Other sights weren't much better. He returned to his car and ordered his chauffeur back to Manhattan-where he didn't want to talk about it with his wife. The episode ultimately cost him over $1 million.

  His gambling luck also vanished. On Memorial Day 1928, A. R. attended Belmont, not intending to do much betting. In the first race he lost $2,000 on the favorite. He vowed to recoup on the next race and walk away. He lost. Eventually A. R. bet all six races. He lost all six, dropping $130,000. He never lived to pay off.

  That was just the beginning. Police investigating the manufacture of crooked roulette wheels traced one to a Rothstein-financed gambling house in suburban Nassau County. They raided it and jailed its staff. Later they traced more crooked wheels to Chicago, Cleveland, and Cincinnati-all to Rothstein-backed houses.

  He lost $11,000 to entertainer Lou Clayton (of Clayton, Jackson, and Durante), and again neglected to pay. Clayton threatened to spread word on Broadway of Rothstein the "welsher." A. R. hated being called that-certainly not for a mere eleven grand-and finally paid.

  A. R. not only parted with his luck, he began to part with his intellect, his judgment, his impeccable sense of calculation.

  Carolyn Rothstein traced her husband's downfall to close association with the Diamond brothers, Legs and Eddie. Arnold found the vicious Diamond brothers worth keeping around-allegedly compensating them $50,000 annually as bodyguards. ($30,000 for Legs; $20,000 for Eddie.) Their tenure had begun when A. R. learned that Chicago gangster Eugene "Red" McLaughlin planned to kidnap him for $100,000 ransom. McLaughlin never made it to New York. Cook County authorities found his body in a drainage ditch outside Chicago.

  Perhaps Carolyn was right. Perhaps she wasn't, but the Diamonds' presence was indicative of a change in Arnold Rothstein. Once, he traveled in wealthy and reasonably respectable circles, with newspapermen and stockbrokers and steel barons. Increasingly now he surrounded himself with crude gunmen, labor racketeers, and narcotics smugglers and peddlers-the Diamonds, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky. Carolyn Rothstein believed that association with Legs and Eddie Diamond marked A. R.'s "real beginning of the end."

  "The Diamonds," she would write, "figured more and more prominently in my husband's affairs, until finally, [they] and others of the underworld were his constant companions, instead of casual and useful acquaintances as had once been the case."

  Whatever-or whoever-it was, something inexplicable now drove him, pushing him to destruction. He didn't need to gamble, to take risks, but he did. And he lost-a lot. Nicky Arnstein warned A. R. He couldn't stop. "Why do you eat every day?" he told Nicky. "I can't help it. It's part of me. I just can't stop. I don't know what it is that drives me but I'll gamble to the day that I die. I wouldn't want it any other way."

  Others saw what was happening and didn't like it, among them Meyer Lansky, a fellow emerging as the new Great Brain. Said Lansky:

  The gambling fever that was always part of Arnie's make-up appeared to have gone to his brain. It was like a disease and he was now in its last stages. He gambled wildly ... He started to look like a man suffering from some terrible sickness.... There is only one way to win-and that is not to play. Every player, even Arnie Rothstein, king of them all, loses in the end, whether it's the horses, craps, blackjack, roulette, or anything else. Only the house or the bank or the casino wins. That's why I gave up firsthand gambling at a very early age. I ran crap games and dice games, I set up gambling joints and casinos. I knew I would always win that way. And I knew I would not end up like Rothstein.

  End up like Rothstein? People all over Broadway knew how the story was going to end, although some preferred not to believe it. Fight promoter Tex Rickard had predicted it. And he wasn't the only one. One Sunday night in early October 1928, Gene Fowler, then managing editor of the Daily Telegraph, heard the same story from one of his better reporters, Johnny O'Connor, who said it would happen that very evening in front of Lindy's. Fowler, O'Connor, and assistant editor Ed Sullivan (not the Ed Sullivan) walked to Lindy's to witness the crime. They waited. A. R. appeared. Nothing happened.

  Fowler was miffed. "Johnny," he complained. "I'm afraid the ball game has been called off on account of rain or something."

  "It's only a matter of days," O'Connor responded matter-of-factly. "Rothstein's number is up."

  Telegraph publisher Joe Moore didn't want his paper wasting time or newsprint on the story ("Even if Rothstein gets killed, we won't print a line of it"), so Fowler passed it on to his close friend, Walter Howey, now Victor Watson's replacement at the Mirror. Howey asked Hearst columnist Damon Runyon for verification. Runyon thought his pal Arnold was invincible. He advised Fowler and O'Connor to change their bootleggers and "better still, to quit drinking."

  There were plenty of reasons to kill Arnold Rothstein, plenty of reasons not to mourn him. And yet ...

  And yet for all his greed, his egoism, his repeated betrayal of those around him-and even of a national trust-he was yet a child of God, capable of occasional charity and compassion. And before we return to his deathbed across 50th Street from Tex Rickard's Madison Square Garden office, we must in fairness report those who did mourn him. The Lanskys and the Lucianos would miss his business acumen, his intellect, the sense of class he imparted. Others still remembered that on more than one occasion, the Big Bankroll could peel a few bills off the top and use them for some good. The Hearst papers long pursued A. R., but following Arnold's death Hearst's Daily Mirror would note that while many cursed him, "others claimed many synagogues in Greater New York would not have been built had it not been for his quiet generosity."

  The Mirror told this story of his dealings with longtime henchman Jack "The Duke" Schettman and of other Broadway characters:

  Two years ago [1926] "The Duke" had a breakdown. He had financial reverses at the same time. Sometimes they come together like that. Rothstein sent him to the mountain for three months. He paid all expenses. When "The Duke," came back, he set him up in business. He took care of his family while he was away. That's the kind of guy he was.

&
nbsp; "The Duke" tried to pay him back.

  "No," said Rothstein, "you've been on the up-and-up with me, and everything is O.K."

  Look at Joe ("Dimples") Bonnell. He got sick, too. Arnold paid for everything. Then he put Joe in the cigar store business at 116th St. and Lenox Ave. And it was the same way with Jack ("Stickpin Jack") Friedman. He was sick for a year. Rothstein paid his rent, paid all his expenses, sent him to the mountains.

  Why, I heard him myself, talking to his real estate agents, when they'd come to him and say that some of the tenants in his buildings were in a bad way and couldn't pay the rent.

  "Well, the rent don't amount to much anyway, does it?" asked Arnold. And the agent says he guesses it isn't so much. "Well, it's o.k. if they pay you and it's o.k. if they don't; forget it," says Arnold. That's the kind of guy he was.

  Inez Norton also mourned Arnold Rothstein, perhaps not for altogether altruistic reasons, but she mourned nonetheless. Inez had met A. R. sometime in 1927. The Daily News described her as "the gem of the Follies . . . one particular beauty in all Ziegfeld's garden of beauties." She bloomed but briefly, though, appearing in only one edition of the Follies, before leaving to wed a stage-door Johnny.

  She was, by her own account, a true child of the jazz Age, a jazz baby, a flapper, providing this abbreviated autobiography to a reporter:

  I . . . was raised in Jacksonville, Fla. My father was in the lumber business. I was educated in private schools and studied music and dancing. I loved the outdoors and was quite athletic. I developed into a champion swimmer and diver and employed this ability to good advantage when I took my first job as a double for Betty Compson in the film "Miami." I came to New York [in 1923] and went on the stage.

  I posed for James Montgomery Flagg, the famous illustrator. He insisted I was an unusual type.