Blood Aces

by Doug Swanson

  Las Vegas police failed to solve the murder, though investigators claimed they worked hard to pin it on Binion. “If I felt that Benny Binion had done it,” homicide detective Beecher Avants said, “and there was some way to prove it, I would have picked him up and put him in jail.”

  One Las Vegas detective told the local office of the FBI that the bomber was probably a Texan named James Henry Dolan, a career criminal who had been on the bureau’s radar for more than ten years. He was known as Doc, perhaps because he had attended college briefly, perhaps because he picked up extra cash performing back-alley abortions. A former boxer, Dolan lived in Dallas, where he had run a talent agency for strippers, magicians, and ventriloquists. In this capacity he became acquainted with Jack Ruby. After Ruby shot Oswald, agents descended on Dolan’s house and searched every room, but found nothing of investigative value and accomplished little beyond frightening his wife and child.

  Dolan’s police record included arrests for robbery, burglary, and gambling. He had also worked, the FBI believed, as a “muscle man” for Florida mobster Santo Trafficante. But Dolan was at heart a traveling con man. One of his favorite swindles involved a counterfeiting machine that produced perfect hundred-dollar bills. It was, naturally, a fake—a counterfeit counterfeiter—but by the time the machine’s purchasers figured that out, Dolan had skipped town. Another scam involved having a partner set up big-stakes poker with civic luminaries in small communities. Once lots of cash was on the table, Dolan would enter the room, claim to be an IRS agent, and seize all the money. That hustle got him convicted for impersonating a federal agent. A subsequent probation violation put him in Leavenworth at the same time Binion was serving time there. At some point he also got to know one of Binion’s favorite sidekicks, R. D. Matthews.

  Now the FBI was being told that Vegas police believed “that Binion owns a 1,000 acre ranch in Mexico on which he is hiding two subjects, one of which is possibly . . . Dolan.” Though the bureau devoted many hours to probing Dolan, the investigation made no progress and finally ran out of steam.

  Dolan died in 1984, shot to death in San Antonio, Texas, the apparent consequence of selling fake drugs. The Coulthard case, despite occasional talk of breakthroughs, and the offer of a $75,000 reward, stayed unsolved. “It was . . . believed by law enforcement officials investigating this matter that the Binions were behind this bombing,” an FBI report said years later, referring to Benny and son Ted. “Unfortunately, the beliefs . . . were never substantiated.” Benny Binion maintained his innocence for the rest of his life, and it remains one of Las Vegas’s enduring mysteries.

  Las Vegas private detective Eddie LaRue, who often worked for Binion, said he never believed his boss had ordered the hit. “Do I think Benny would kill Coulthard?” LaRue said. “Sure. But Benny was not sophisticated like that. He’d have somebody shoot him between the eyes with a .45.”

  One big winner emerged out of Coulthard’s murder: Binion ultimately got a new lease at much more favorable terms.

  • • •

  Clark County sheriff Ralph Lamb, who presided over some of the Coulthard investigation, was tall, handsome, and rough-hewn; like Binion, he had grown up riding horses and roping cattle. By common reckoning, he was the most powerful law enforcement official in the state of Nevada. He was also one of Binion’s closest friends.

  Like many in Vegas, Lamb appeared to live beyond his means. This attracted the attention of federal authorities, and he was indicted for income tax evasion. “In how many other cities,” the Valley Times of Las Vegas wondered, “does the sheriff, who earns a relatively modest salary, walk around peeling off $100 bills, paying cash for his $100,000-plus house, and developing a net worth in excess of $250,000?” And in how many other cities would Benny Binion be a star prosecution witness?

  Binion readily admitted he had passed stacks of cash to Lamb, although he rebuffed federal agents when they asked to see proof on paper. “I didn’t keep no records,” Binion told them. “The last time I kept records, you assholes put me in Leavenworth.”

  The feds called him to the stand anyway, and Binion crossed the courtroom in his custom-made boots. Holding his white cowboy hat at his side, he swore to tell the truth and nothing but, and commenced to destroy the government’s case. Under questioning, he disclosed that he had indeed given Sheriff Lamb $30,000. This made for bombshell testimony—until he added that he had simply advanced the funds to Lamb as a loan. He had not been repaid, had imposed no repayment schedule, had executed no lending agreement, and had charged no interest, Binion said, but it was a still a loan. And the law did not require the payment of income taxes on borrowed money.

  U.S. district court judge Roger D. Foley, whose brother, Tom, had represented Binion in his own tax matters, dismissed the case against Lamb before defense lawyers called a single witness. “Many fringe benefits come to a public official which may be accepted along the honest discharge of duty,” the judge reasoned. Spectators in the courtroom erupted in applause.

  Upon his acquittal, Lamb had some harsh words for the federal government, and not solely because of the way he had been handled. He objected mightily to prosecutors’ treatment of his pal Binion when the Cowboy wouldn’t give them the testimony they wanted. “That was silly for them to imply Benny was a liar,” Lamb said after walking victorious from the courtroom. “They know Benny and I have been friends for 30 years, very personal friends. His family, his kids, his grandkids. It is more than an ordinary friendship. I could go to him for anything.”

  And Binion could likewise go to Lamb, having paid hard cash for such favors. “Oh, yeah, always give ol’ Ralph a little money,” Binion later explained. “I done it for influence. They asked me what I did this for. I said so he’d do something for me if I needed it.”

  In such push and pull, he proved himself a master. Leo Kuykendall, the FBI agent who had enlisted Binion as a confidential informant, later became chief of the Las Vegas police. But he lost his job after a dispute with the mayor. Binion promptly hired him as a security manager at the Horseshoe.

  • • •

  Binion never lost the talent for making and keeping such friends, many of whom he did not have to pay off. Moe Dalitz was one. “Me and him puts on a party every December at the Las Vegas Country Club,” Binion said in 1973. “And it’s the best party they have around here, everybody says.”

  Meyer Lansky was another. Las Vegas publicist Dick Odessky was having lunch at the Horseshoe when Binion got a phone call at his table, picked up the receiver, and said, “Hello, Meyer. How you feeling? Won your election, I see.” Lansky was calling after voter approval of casino gambling in Atlantic City. He offered Binion a chance for his own casino on the Boardwalk, but the opportunity was politely declined.

  There were many others. “Colonel” Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, often had dinner with Binion while in Vegas, then played roulette at the Horseshoe. Country star Merle Haggard would have his tour bus parked on Second Street, right outside the Horseshoe, and come inside for an evening or more of gambling. He became so close to the casino’s patriarch that he named one of his sons Binion. The film director Sam Peckinpah gave Binion a special cut of the director’s 1969 western, The Wild Bunch, for viewing at the Montana ranch. Visitors at the ranch included Steve Wynn, well into his emergence as one of the greatest hotel and casino builders in Vegas history, and Dalitz, who had assumed his own status as a Las Vegas benefactor and elder statesman. Wynn knew his way around a horse, while Dalitz looked like a lost retiree who had wandered onto a movie set.

  Actor and cowboy Chill Wills, a companion from Binion’s early Dallas days, made the Horseshoe a frequent stop. Wills’s manager, Bob Hinkle, found himself at Binion’s table one afternoon during the World Series of Poker. Binion turned to Hinkle and said, “You ought to do a movie on Titanic.” He was referring to Titanic Thompson, the great gambler and golf hustler who had been the inspiration for Damon Runyon’s
character Sky Masterson in the musical Guys and Dolls. Pool player Minnesota Fats had called him “the greatest action man of all time.” Beyond his gambling exploits, Thompson kept the excitement coming; he had married five times and killed five men.

  Thompson himself walked into the Horseshoe about half an hour later, and joined Hinkle and Binion at the table. “Who owns the rights to your story?” Binion asked him.

  “I do,” Thompson said.

  “What’ll you take for those rights?”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Thompson said.

  Binion went to the cashier’s cage, got $25,000 in hundred-dollar bills, and gave the money to Thompson. Then he said to Hinkle, “Bob, you’re gonna do this for me.” But Hinkle never could get the movie produced, making it one of the few business enterprises of Binion’s that didn’t work.

  • • •

  The poker series was hitting its stride, and with that came new and wide exposure for the game of No Limit Texas Hold’em. Among the attractions of this variant of seven-card stud were big-money pots and—by poker standards anyway—watchability.

  In Hold’em, each player receives two cards facedown. Bets are placed. Then three “community cards” are dealt faceup. This is known as the flop, after which a round of betting occurs. The next community card, known as the turn, is dealt, followed by another round of betting. The last card, “fifth street,” or “the river,” precedes more betting. From seven cards—two facedown, five faceup—each player makes a five-card hand.

  With no limits, the big bettor—who may hold a promising hand or may be bluffing—can run many of the players out of the round before the last card is played.

  Psychology, aggression, body language, and intuition assume as much importance as math and probability. “Limit poker is a science,” player Crandell Addington has said. “But no-limit is an art. In limit you’re shooting at a target. In no-limit the target comes alive and shoots back at you.”

  Poker lore has it that Hold’em originated in Texas, hence the name, although its provenance is impossible to prove. That didn’t stop the Texas legislature from officially declaring that the game, which had “taken the world by storm,” originated in the charming South Texas burg of Robstown. “Texas Hold’em takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master,” the legislature noted in its resolution, and—this being Texas—added some self-serving bluster. “A successful hold ’em player relies on reason, intuition and bravado, and these same qualities have served many notable Texans well throughout the proud history of the Lone Star State.”

  Amarillo Slim Preston wasn’t born a Texan, but he played one to the hilt, with a rattlesnake band on his cowboy hat and a constant stream of High Plains wisecracks. He liked to say of various opponents, “They had as good a chance of beating me as getting a French kiss from the Statue of Liberty.” And he described himself as “so skinny I look like the advance man for a famine.” After winning the 1972 world series at the Horseshoe, Slim made the first of his eleven appearances on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, a priceless run of publicity for the poker tourney. For years, rumors swirled that Binion had fixed the ’72 series so that the telegenic and attention-seeking Slim could serve as his promotional front man.

  Binion himself appeared on Merv Griffin’s nationally broadcast TV talk show, and on Tom Snyder’s late-night NBC show, a siren song to insomniacs. Snyder asked Binion why the hotels on the Strip had $500 betting limits, while he had none. “Well,” Binion drawled, “they got great big hotels and little bitty bankrolls. I got a little bitty hotel and a great big bankroll.” The show, Amarillo Slim said, was “an hour’s commercial for the Horseshoe.”

  The poker tournament gave tired, tattered downtown Vegas new life in the form of a spectacle unmatched anywhere in the world. Out on the Strip, the resort operators turned to extravaganza and silliness to rope in tourists: the shiny new Circus Circus had trapeze artists flying above the casino floor. But at the Horseshoe—the funky, smelly old-school Horseshoe—Benny Binion had done nothing less than create a new dimension in the world of gambling.

  It was drawing packs of spectators. They stood ten deep on the worn carpet and crowded the velvet ropes that separated them from the action by only a few feet. Many of them would stick around later to lose at the Horseshoe craps and blackjack tables. That, after all, was Binion’s grand plan, to lure them inside and take their money. His bait—the kings of the poker, chasing fantastic pots—was irresistible: Slim, Brunson, Moss, and the rest, plying their once-secret trade for anyone to watch, almost close enough to touch. For the average Vegas visitor who might ordinarily venture no further than a game of penny-ante stud in the rumpus room, this tableau generated excitement and awe. And there was no more fitting place for it than a casino with its own ready-made aura of danger.

  Benny Binion didn’t know frisson from fried chicken, but he was selling it now.

  Binion with his brilliant but deeply troubled son Ted.

  23

  HEROIN AND THE HIT MAN

  My other son, Ted, he’s sorta like I am.

  —BB

  If you wanted to mix with some of the heavy hitters of Las Vegas, you went to lunch at Binion’s place. So on a sunny day in 1979, a recently crowned mob lawyer walked six blocks from his office on South Fourth Street, making his way to the Horseshoe. Oscar Goodman was a tall, slightly hunched, bearded man who wore a dark pin-striped suit, modish tinted glasses, and alligator-skin cowboy boots. Over the previous few years he had built a reputation as legal counsel to some of the stars of organized crime. Meyer Lansky had been a client. Tony the Ant was one too. The boots he wore were an expression of gratitude from Jimmy Chagra, a Texas drug dealer who had recently blessed Goodman with a million-dollar fee. On behalf of such defendants, Goodman treated prosecutors the way a mongoose treated cobras.

  At Second Street, Goodman entered the Horseshoe’s side door and stopped in at the club’s newsstand, staying just long enough to scan the headlines on the local and out-of-town papers. From there he strode toward the sound of laughter coming from the Horseshoe’s restaurant, where he found his friend Benny Binion at his customary booth, with a bowl of squirrel stew in front of him. The squirrel’s black glassy eyes stared up at the man who was eating it.

  Goodman took a chair and ordered a salad, as he was a man who watched his weight. He liked looking slim, or something close to it, in the numerous front-page photographs in which he appeared escorting notorious clients under indictment to and from courthouses. Around him now in the Horseshoe restaurant had gathered the regular collection of lawyers, politicians, police officers, and a state supreme court justice.

  The food was cheap and filling, but this crowd wasn’t here for the cuisine. This was where gossip was exchanged and business transacted, and where loyalties were forged.

  Harry Claiborne sat next to Binion, as he did almost every day. Binion and Claiborne had remained the closest of friends since Binion hired him as his lawyer three decades before. Claiborne treated Binion’s club as a combination frat house, dating service, and bank. He had married a Horseshoe waitress in 1978, divorced her after two months, then remarried her in 1979, which made her his fourth and fifth wife. He cashed his checks at the Horseshoe and kept a $100,000 stash in the casino’s vault, withdrawing money whenever he needed it. He regarded the Horseshoe almost as a second home.

  Claiborne was also a federal judge, having been appointed to the bench in 1978 after a recommendation by Binion’s friend Senator Howard Cannon. As such, he reigned as one of the most powerful legal figures in the state.

  Like Binion, Claiborne hailed from a rural backwater—he grew up on an Arkansas cotton farm—and rose to the upper reaches of his profession. Both men still wore the perpetual demeanor of sharp operators from the sticks. Both of them rode and owned horses. And both loved swapping stories. “It was like two great personalities got together,” Jack Binion said. “The
y enjoyed each other’s company so much.”

  At lunch, the U.S. district court judge and the former federal prisoner talked and guffawed, a couple of old cowboys telling tales. As Binion and Claiborne carried on, two men in suits watched from the casino floor—FBI agents. Binion had fallen away from his status as a confidential informant with a change in local bureau administration. Now he was back to being a bureau target. He and Claiborne had that in common too.

  • • •

  More than ever, running the Horseshoe had become a family affair. Binion and his wife had departed their Bonanza Road house—simply walked away, leaving behind furniture, keepsakes, and kitchenware, with clothes still hanging in closets. “Everything’s in there like they’d gone on a trip, but they just never came back,” Jack Binion said. The couple then moved into separate quarters at the Horseshoe. In part, this was because Binion spent great stretches of time in Montana, and he didn’t like having Teddy Jane alone at the Bonanza spread. He also couldn’t stand his wife’s four-pack-a-day cigarette habit.

  “She don’t think they hurt you, but she’s just hooked so damn bad that she doesn’t want to fool with [quitting],” Binion said. He recalled one night in his Horseshoe room: “She had a little old dog. The door’s closed between us there. She was in there working the books all night. She opened that door. That little old dog ran in there and he was sneezing and rubbing his nose on the carpet and raising hell. I said, ‘Goddamn it, you’re killing your goddamn dog.’ That sonbitch about 10 days later died with a heart attack. Them cigarettes killed that little old dog.” Perhaps the living arrangements also had something to do with the weariness of a long marriage between strong characters. Sometimes, in place of arguing, Benny and Teddy Jane would glare at each other and make rat-a-tat machine-gun noises.