Top Hoodlum

by Anthony M. DeStefano

  Two years later, after the case had been more or less forgotten by the press, Hogan asked for the case against Broadly and the others to be dismissed. Hogan was forced to admit that his case had a fundamental weakness: the suspects were arrested before they actually illegally intercepted any telephone conversations. In other words, Hogan had jumped the gun. Of Clendenin Ryan’s charge of public corruption, Hogan said cryptically that his office was conducting an investigation into “the existence of corruption” just like Ryan had tried to do.

  If it did nothing else, the wiretap fracas and Ryan’s comic attempts to go after O’Dwyer had the effect of keeping Costello in the political consciousness. In early spring of 1949, the Fusion Party asked Ryan to substantiate his charges about Costello controlling City Hall and for O’Dwyer to tell the public what he had done to rid city government of any “malign influences,” which was a nice way of referring to Costello and the mob. But, then on May 25, O’Dwyer stunned the city by announcing he wouldn’t seek reelection. As he spoke to reporters at City Hall, the Mayor gave no reason and when pressed wouldn’t explain his decision. Asked if he might agree to run if drafted O’Dwyer answered “ridiculous.”

  But in politics the ridiculous has a way of becoming the reality. On July 13, 1949, after first rebuffing pleas by President Harry Truman and others, O’Dwyer decided to run for reelection after all. He explained his flip-flopping by saying he originally thought the five major county Democratic leaders would back Frank Hogan as a mayoral candidate. But when that didn’t happen, O’Dwyer said he decided to seek reelection.

  With O’Dwyer back in the race, Costello also reemerged as a factor because the political opposition brought his name up every chance it got. Newbold Morris, the Republican-Liberal-Fusion candidate, mocked O’Dwyer’s statement that New Yorkers under his mayoralty had a “richer life.”

  “Richer for whom, Mr. O’Dwyer?” Morris asked in one speech. “For Frank Costello and every other mobster, every extortionist, every rackeeter from Costello on down?”

  Morris attacked the “graft-ridden political machine” he said was behind O’Dwyer, a reference to Tammany Hall, and all of the mobsters behind it. Ratcheting up the rhetoric, Morris went on in other speeches to say that Costello was the real boss of the Democratic machine and that so long as O’Dwyer was in City Hall, the mob felt safe.

  “If you want a Tammany nomination for office in this city, it’s wise to get the word of Frank Costello,” Morris said. “If Costello wants you to get the nomination, you get the nomination. If he doesn’t want you to get it, you just don’t run for office on the Democratic ticket in this city.”

  To prove the point, Morris pointed out that Roosevelt’s son, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., when running in a special election for Congress, was turned down by the Democratic Party. Roosevelt finally admitted that Costello was the real boss of the party, said Morris. The Fusion candidate also pointed out that Costello’s pit bull in the press, Genoroso Pope, publisher of the Italian language Il Progresso, was a supporter of the Mayor. Morris apparently didn’t know it at the time but Pope had received financial backing from Costello in the past and, as will be dealt with later in this book, would agree later on to go soft on stories about the mob.

  As much as Morris beat up on O’Dwyer for the Costello link, the Mayor himself noted that he had cut out Tammany from many of his key decisions, including political appointments. In the end, the 1949 election results were more a vote in favor of O’Dwyer and the way he seemed to efficiently run City Hall, rather than a vote against him over Costello and the Mayor’s silence about the issues his opponent raised.

  O’Dwyer polled 1.266 million votes, some 141,000 votes more than he garnered in his 1945 win. He won all the boroughs. Morris received over 956,000 votes and Vito Marcantonio, running under the banner of the American Labor party, received just over 356,000. For all of the political remonstrating about Costello, the issue of the mob and Tammany didn’t shift the electorate. But William O’Dwyer wouldn’t be finished with Frank Costello in his life, not by a long shot.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “I’M A NEIGHBOR OF YOURS”

  IN EARLY 1950 FRANK COSTELLO WAS LIVING among the people he wanted to be like. The apartment on Central Park West, the house in Sands Point—these were the places that exuded status and class. After being beaten up in the newspapers by politicians as the gangster who controlled Gotham through Tammany Hall, Costello was desperate to show he was a man of culture and accomplishment who belonged among the wealthy and not just some dark-skinned Mediterranean immigrant who sounded like a tough guy. After all, Costello was a man of leisure who had the wherewithal to spend his days lunching in the Waldorf-Astoria, taking steam baths at the Biltmore Hotel, and dining in the best restaurants.

  Costello played the media card in his game of acceptability. The story goes that Costello looked across the Peacock Alley in the Waldorf and saw a familiar face, that of Alicia Patterson, founder and editor of the Long Island newspaper Newsday. Founded in 1940, Newsday had steadily built itself into the biggest and most substantial newspaper on the island and would over time slowly force its competition out of business. The other New York dailies didn’t give Newsday a serious battle over circulation in Nassau and Suffolk counties because Newsday’s household penetration rate would eventually reach 60 percent. This situation was different in the five boroughs where Newsday at the time had minuscule circulation.

  If Costello was looking for a big media outlet to talk to there were certainly others with a larger audience. But Mrs. Patterson happened to live in Sands Point in a large Norman-style mansion high above Long Island known as Falaise with her husband Harry Guggenheim, the former ambassador to Cuba and the scion of a wealthy family. The property Patterson and Guggenheim had in Sands Point, with its dozens of acres, dwarfed Costello’s country squire house on Barkers Point Road. But Costello wasn’t intimidated as he walked across the hotel lobby and approached Patterson.

  “I’m a neighbor of yours in Sands Point,” Costello said as a way of introducing himself to Patterson. “Why don’t you and your husband come to my house for cocktails some time. Maybe you’d like to invite me to your house.”

  Patterson likely didn’t know it at the time but her extended family seems to have had a tenuous connection to Costello’s clan through the old bootlegging days. Her brother-in-law Isaac Guggenheim also owned a palatial estate in Sands Point known as Villa Carola. After Isaac died in 1922, a group of bootleggers took to off-loading $90,000 worth of what was called “Chinese whisky” at a dock on his property facing Hempstead Bay. The incident in April 1924 led to the arrest of several men, including Costello relative Edward Aloise of Astoria, all of whom were caught trying to move the booze in a bucket brigade formation to waiting trucks. Cops confiscated the liquor, as well as three trucks, and the local police chief said it was the biggest single haul made on Long Island.

  Back on Long Island, the next day after her meeting with Costello, Patterson had lunch with her columnist Jack Altshul, broaching to him the idea of an interview with the mob boss. Altshul was skeptical that a normally press shy Costello would really consent. But the next day, Patterson told Altshul that Costello agreed to an interview. On a Saturday morning, Altshul and his photographer wife Edna Murray, who was at the time eight months pregnant, paid Costello and his wife Loretta a visit to his home in Sands Point. They got quite a scoop.

  There were more than enough reasons for Costello to open the door to the two Newsday journalists. Just about a month earlier he had appeared voluntarily before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that quizzed him about what he knew about national gambling syndicates. Costello was evasive on some things but was being candid when he told the committee members that the public wanted to gamble and that it was difficult to control. Asked about his influence with politicians he said, “I couldn’t even get a parking ticket fixed.”

  Costello came out of his house to meet Altshul and his wife, and extended a hand in greeting. H
e wore a short-sleeved tan sport shirt, darker slacks and what were described as “moccasin styled” shoes. He offered the couple a drink as he escorted them to the terrace where a radio was tuned to a Yankee-Athletics game. Inside the house the television, a relatively new device, was showing a Giants baseball game. The selection of the games wasn’t because Costello was a compulsive sports fan.

  “I’m bettin’ on the Yankees and they’re getting trimmed,” said Costello. “Inside I’ve got the Giants on television and they’re not going anywhere either.”

  “Saturdays are usually a big day for Frank,” Loretta chimed in. “He’s got a couple of games on television, a game on the radio and he’ll go inside to watch the race from Belmont when that goes on.”

  Although Costello had no way of knowing at the time, Altshul was also an inveterate and troubled gambler. Colleagues remembered how he would bet on the most mundane things, like how a rain drop might fall down a train window. He also became obsessive, running out to Roosevelt Racetrack when he was supposed to be editing the newspaper at night and having his colleagues cover for him if the publisher called. So hearing about Costello’s obsessive interest in sports results was something Altshul could understand. Over the years his betting would become an uncomfortable part of his life, and in 1981 he would go cold turkey and not travel to Atlantic City again.

  At home on Barkers Point Road, the Costellos appeared relaxed and well into life in the suburbs. But, with his interests in Manhattan, Costello said he only really got out to Sands Point on the weekends. He couldn’t take commuting into the city. Hot Springs in Arkansas was where Costello went for weeks of golf, availing himself of the famous baths.

  “I take the mineral baths you know and I come back feelin’ like a new man,” Costello said.

  In Sands Point, Costello and his wife entertained, but it is highly unlikely that any of their well-heeled neighbors came to the parties. Observing him, Altshul couldn’t help but remark on how unprepossessing Costello seemed.

  “He is just under average height, under the paunch of a man of 54. Only a big star sapphire could give an inkling that here is a man reputed to own hotels, nightclubs, Wall Street real estate, gambling houses, slot machines,” Altshul later wrote. “He looks not unlike George Raft in the cast of his features. His black hair is not as sleek as Raft’s, is thinning and gray at the edges.”

  Costello walked around the property with Altshul. They walked up to a split-rail fence where two horses on an adjacent property came up to greet them. Costello pulled out an apple and offered it to a chestnut-colored horse, who refused to take it. A pinto pony took the half Costello offered. For a photo, Costello posed lounging in a hammock, a copy of a recent Time magazine in his lap which had him on the cover as a result of the recent Senate hearing.

  Altshul perceptively noticed how cultured and refined the Costellos made an effort to appear to be. Loretta, who Altshul described as a “pleasant-faced, plumpish woman who talked in a soprano voice,” seemed to speak “with a conscious effort to be grammatical.” Loretta said she didn’t do the cooking but had a maid to do that. Her living room had a number of pastoral paintings and a portrait of a nude girl

  “Frank has a lot of artist friends,” she said. “That girl is art. It’s all the way you look at it, you know.”

  Despite all of the stories about late nights in the clubs, Costello said his evenings were, well, boring.

  “You know, I haven’t seen the late show at a nightclub in 15 years. I go in for the dinner show, leave about 10 o’clock. Most nights I am in bed by ten, ten-thirty,” he said.

  Finally, the talk got around to the investigation of the gambling syndicates and Costello admitted knowing gamblers, as did other people. Why should he be any different? His past criminal record was just a product of the times he grew up in.

  “Look, whadda I need with a syndicate. I got all the money I ever need,” Costello noted. “So, when I was a kid in Harlem, it was fashionable to carry a gun. So they passed a new law, the Sullivan law. And I did a bit. Only time. That makes me a criminal.”

  As far as his activities in Prohibition were concerned, Costello indicated that by bootlegging he just provided a service the public wanted. Drinkers were on one side of the bar while Costello sold the booze from the other side, making money.

  Altshul couldn’t resist getting Costello to play a short game of klabiash, a card game that originated in Europe. Costello said in jest that maybe he shouldn’t play, just to save his reputation. They played and as it turned out Altschul won, to which Costello said “You’re the champ.”

  As Altshul and his wife Edna were leaving, Costello asked the pregnant woman whether she was hoping for a boy or a girl. Edna answered she was thinking about a girl.

  “You got it,” he said with a grin. “Costello can rig anything.”

  About a month after the visit to Sands Point, Edna Murray Altshul gave birth to a baby girl Sara.

  * * *

  In the months before his interview with Altshul, Costello’s appearance before the Senate subcommittee had also given him headlines. It was at his attorney’s suggestion that Costello agreed to appear before the senators and talk about gambling and his views on proposed legislation. Wolf said he thought the opportunity would be a good chance for Costello to show he had nothing to hide and to further burnish his attempt to appear legitimate.

  Traveling to Washington, Wolf recalled that his client was a Nervous Nelly as the hour of his testimony approached. They were breakfasting in the Mayflower Hotel and Wolf noticed Costello had hardly touched his meal, and when he did finish he took a napkin and polished his teeth. Dressed in a dark, conservative pin-stripe suit and a blue figured neck tie, Costello wanted to make a good impression and leave nothing to chance.

  In Capitol Hill in the jammed committee room Costello indicated he had been out of the gambling business for over fifteen years but didn’t think any law could wipe out the activity. The proposal to outlaw the transmission of gambling information in interstate commerce was doomed to failure, he said.

  “You can’t wash the spots off a leopard,” Costello told the subcommittee. “If a man is a gambler, he’ll find a trick. Local officials can stop it to a certain extent, but there’ll always be some cheating.”

  Costello acknowledged working for years as a “betting commissioner,” earning up to $30,000 in commission. In that job Costello said he took big wagers from bettors who didn’t want to run down the odds and placed them with bookmakers, taking a 5-percent commission along the way. But that was all in the past, Costello said. Now he was into real estate, owned the Beverly nightclub in Louisiana and had some Texas oil leases with his friend Frank Erickson. Pressed to say if he had an interest in any gambling location, Costello pled the Fifth Amendment, although he admitted that there was a little gambling at the Beverly, the roulette wheels and dice games.

  Asked why everybody called him a “big shot” Costello answered with a Cheshire Cat grin that the newspapers had an investment in him: “to them I’m number One.”

  Costello’s testimony before the subcommittee didn’t seem to damage him. But times were still dangerous for him. He and Erickson were on a list of 150 racketeers that was leaked to the press. On the rundown were Costello’s old friends: Joe Adonis, Joey Rao, Waxie Gordon, Vincent Alo, Mike “Trigger Mike” Coppolo, and Anthony Carfano. Federal prosecutors said they would see if they could build criminal cases and it looked like they might start a nationwide sweep against the Mafia.

  Unlike Costello, Erickson didn’t fare as well from his Senate testimony. Called as a witness he went against the advice of his lawyer and answered questions. It proved disastrous. Erickson seemed evasive and lacking in candor. The substance of his testimony showed that he had indeed been involved in gambling and, as The New York Times reported, “had to admit that for the last thirty years he had violated the laws of every state.” Added to his problem was that back in New York, Hogan and his staff seized Erickson’s business and pe
rsonal records from his office at 487 Park Avenue. The materials showed that he was partners with a number of racketeers in the Colonial Inn casino in Hallandale, Florida, an operation that netted its partners nearly $700,000 in profits one year. Erickson had a 5 percent share of the business but others also owned a similar amount: Joe Adonis, Meyer Lansky and his brother Jake, as well as Vincent Alo, who was described as a “reputed agent of Costello.”

  Although Costello wasn’t shown to have a share of the Colonial, Erickson’s papers showed that he had made some loans to Costello and his 79 Wall Street Corporation. Some of the loans appear to have been paid off. One document was a thank-you note to Erickson for his $1,000 donation to the Salvation Army, one of Costello’s favorite charities.

  Erickson was indicted by a Manhattan state court jury on charges of conspiracy and bookmaking. In the face of overwhelming evidence, Erickson quickly pled guilty to the charges on June 26, 1950. His attorney, in pleading for leniency, said that while bookmaking was considered an evil influence that it was a product of the public’s desire, a position Costello had taken just a month earlier during the Senate hearing. The court sentenced Erickson to two years in prison and fined him $30,000, with the added provision that for an additional three-year suspended sentence he never again engage in professional gambling.

  The case essentially broke Erickson as a man, stripping him of his role as the nation’s biggest bookmaker. Meanwhile, Costello had his own issues. Word leaked out in June that Senate investigators were looking at a 1946 New York case in which Costello and the mob were linked to vice—which is another way of saying prostitution and gambling—and narcotics trafficking. Senator Estes Kefauver, the Tennessee Democrat and chairman of the committee doing the investigating, said the particular case involved six narcotics dealers in Harlem, while another investigator said at least two were members of the Mafia and thus white.