Casino

by Nicholas Pileggi

  “Baron then took me on a tour of the building and introduced me to Frank Ranney, who was coming back from lunch with Frank Balistrieri. Baron told me that Ranney was the Teamster trustee from Milwaukee and a member of the three-man executive committee that oversaw all loans west of the Mississippi, which meant Las Vegas.

  “Baron said that Balistrieri could be my link to Frank Ranney. Balistrieri was a very quiet, very dapper man. He said he would be happy to help and the next time he was in Las Vegas we would meet.

  “The next time I met Balistrieri he came into the Hacienda. We discussed the loan and the application package and he said he would help me. He told me that after I submitted the loan package in Chicago, I should drive over to Milwaukee, where I could meet his sons. I didn’t exactly know how or where Balistrieri fit in, but the things I didn’t want to think about I didn’t want to think about, and Baron had said Balistrieri was my primary link to Frank Ranney, the trustee and member of the executive committee pushing my loan.

  “After I submitted the package I went to Milwaukee, where I met his two sons, John and Joseph. They were both attorneys. Balistrieri said that he would like his sons involved in the operation in some way. He said Joseph had helped him run dinner theaters and was very knowledgeable about entertainment and might serve that kind of function at the Stardust. I didn’t commit myself. I always said we could discuss it once I closed the deal on the place.

  “When I got home I called Jerry Soloway. He’s an attorney with Jenner and Block, a firm I had used. I asked him to check on a guy named Frank Balistrieri. I told him what I knew and hung up. I was due at the offices of the Gaming Control Board. Shannon Bybee, one of the board members, had said he had a ‘funny feeling’ about my buying one of the largest companies in the state after having been there only one year, and asked if I would do him the favor of taking a lie detector test. My lawyer said it was uncalled for and unnecessary, and Bybee agreed, but he said he would sleep better if he knew I was totally clean. I knew I was clean, so I wound up taking the kind of two-hour test they use on capital crime cases, and I passed like a breeze. That’s what convinced Bybee and got me the gaming license I needed to be able to buy the place.

  “A couple of days after taking the lie detector I get an emergency call from Jerry Soloway. He sounded hysterical. He wanted to make sure Frank Balistrieri was the right name. I said yes. He said, ‘What are you doing with him?’

  “I told Jerry I had been out to dinner with him. That he had been to see me at the Hacienda. That I had been in restaurants with him. That I had been to his home, met his sons, been to their law firm.

  “Soloway went crazy. He said I couldn’t be seen with Balistrieri. He said Frank Balistrieri was identified by the FBI as the Mafia boss of Milwaukee. He said my gaming license could be jeopardized with my just being seen talking to such a notorious organized-crime figure.

  “I told Jerry he had to be wrong. I had met Balistrieri in the Teamster pension fund offices. He had just come back from lunch with Frank Ranney, one of the pension fund’s trustees.

  “He said he didn’t care where I’d met Balistrieri, the man was the organized-crime boss of Milwaukee.

  “I didn’t sleep very well that night. The first thing I thought was, what would have happened had Jerry told me this before I took the lie detector test? Then I remembered I had been talking to Balistrieri just about every day on the phone discussing the progress of the loan arrangements. I had also been seen with him all over the place.

  “On the other hand, I didn’t feel there was anything I could do. What was I going to tell him? I know you’re the head of the Mafia in Milwaukee, so don’t help me get the loan? I was now very, very wary, but I felt I could maneuver it.

  “The next time he called me, he was happy. He said we had gotten the approval of the executive committee for the sixty-two-point-seven-milliondollar purchasing loan, but Ranney had said there was a debate about the second part of the loan for sixty-five million dollars. Bill Presser, the Cleveland trustee, was resisting the second part of the loan. We needed the additional money to renovate and expand the Stardust.

  “Balistrieri said he wanted to meet me in Chicago about the second part of the loan. I was terrified of being seen with him. But I wanted the loan application to go through. He said he wanted to meet me at the Hyatt Hotel near O’Hare Airport. I went. When I got to his room he said that the executive committee was now considering the second part of my loan—the first twenty-million-dollar installment to begin the renovations. The rest would come a little later, and that would be used to expand the Stardust and build a luxury guest tower. This had all been worked out and agreed to in principle, since the properties needed extensive work to stay competitive with the market.

  “Bill Presser was still opposed, Balistrieri said, and there were only two weeks left to pass the entire loan package. I see now that he was building up the pressure.

  “Then he reminded me about the promise I had made about his sons getting jobs with the new corporation, and I said that we’d work it out as soon as the deal went through. Balistrieri then asked me to go with him to Milwaukee and see his sons.

  “I agreed. The next day we met in his sons’ law offices, and Balistrieri said he would like to have something formalized. Balistrieri then left the room and his sons, Joe and John, discussed an agreement, actually an option agreement, in which for twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars, I don’t even remember, they would have the right to buy fifty percent of the new company if and when I decided to sell.

  “‘Without this,’ one of the sons said, ‘you’re gonna get turned down tomorrow.’

  “I asked if we could talk about it later, after the deal.

  “They said no.

  “I’d already sworn to the Gaming Control Board that I had no partners. I knew the Balistrieris would never get licensed.

  “I said I’d like to do it, but I’d signed with the state that I had no partners. They suggested I postdate the option.

  “I asked if they thought they could get licensed, and they said they both felt licensing would be no problem for them. I began to sense these people were living in a fantasy. They didn’t seem to know who they were or what baggage they carried. Or they didn’t know that I knew and were simply carrying off a charade. Whatever it was, I felt like Alice in Wonderland.

  “I said that I would sign it, but they had to promise they wouldn’t do anything with the option. They agreed.

  “That night I changed my mind. I called Joe and said I can’t go through with the option agreement. If the control board comes back and finds out about it, everything will be jeopardized. I’ll lose it all.

  “I said if the deal was contingent on the option, as much as I would hate to, I would have to step away from the deal. I said I respected his dad and was grateful for what he had done, but I couldn’t jeopardize everything I had, including the Hacienda. I said I didn’t have a problem with retaining them as lawyers—I eventually retained them as counsels for fifty thousand dollars a year—but that option could destroy everything.

  “A few minutes later, he calls me back. He says, ‘My dad is going to call you and say he’s “Uncle John.” He wants to talk to you.’ Uncle John! He had never used code names before. Why? I didn’t know and I couldn’t even act surprised, because I didn’t want them to know I knew who they were.

  “Balistrieri called, identified himself as Uncle John, and said, ‘You can’t back out.’

  “I said, ‘I can’t do it the way it is.’

  “‘Are you sure?’ he asks.

  “I said, ‘Yes, and I’ll just have to take the consequences.’

  “‘You disappoint me,’ Balistrieri said. He sounded very sad.

  “His son Joe then calls back and says they’ll rip up the option and we’ll work something out after the deal goes through.

  “I told him not to rip it up, but to send it back to me. I had already shredded my copy and I didn’t want another copy floating around and f
inding its way to the control board.

  “‘You don’t trust me?’ Joe said, almost hurt.

  “I told him it wasn’t a matter of trust. It was business. He said he would send me the copy, but of course he never did.

  “A week later or so the loan went through. It got a full-board approval. The board’s discussion of my loan took no more than two minutes. At the end, Bill Presser, the Teamster boss from Chicago, who had been the most reluctant of the trustees, said, ‘Good luck,’ and that was that.

  “I had gotten the sixty-two-point-seven-million-dollar Teamster loan in sixty-seven days.”

  On August 25, 1974, over 80 percent of the Recrion shareholders tendered their stock to Allen Glick’s company, Argent. The company name was an acronym for Allen R. Glick Enterprises and, of course, meant “money” in French, a language in which no one connected with the deal was fluent.

  “I was euphoric,” Glick recalled. “Joe Balistrieri called and said his father was coming into Chicago and wanted to have a celebration dinner.

  “I said I didn’t think it would be a good idea, but Joe insisted. He said, ‘You can’t tell my father no.’

  “I didn’t even want to be seen in an out-of-the-way restaurant with him, but we wound up in the Pump Room at the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago. He was well known in the place. Waiters, captains, they all came over. He was ordering Dom Pérignon. All through dinner I’m thinking, if the FBI was tailing him tonight, my life in Las Vegas is over.

  “Toward the end of the dinner he said if I had any questions concerning the loan—especially the additional sixty-five million dollars for renovations and expansion—I should talk to him and only to him. I shouldn’t try and discuss anything about what we had done with other trustees or union officials. He said the two of us had established a successful pattern that’s the pattern that should remain established.

  “Then, as we were leaving, Frank said to me, ‘You’ve got to do me a favor, Allen. There’s a guy living in Las Vegas; he’s working for you now. It would be helpful if you give him more recognition. He can help you.’

  “‘Who?’ I said.

  “‘I can’t tell you now,’ he said.

  That was the end of the evening.

  “One week later I got a call from Uncle John. He said he wanted me to meet the guy he had mentioned to me. I was in La Jolla, and Balistrieri said, ‘He’ll come to see you there. I want you to give him a promotion. More money. Okay?’

  “I asked, ‘Who is it?’

  “He says, ‘His name is Frank Rosenthal. If you don’t like him, you can call me up and I’ll straighten him out.’ He said there were people on the fund who would look very favorably on the rest of my loan application if I were to promote Rosenthal. When I hesitated just a little, I could hear the tone of his voice change. He sounded annoyed. After I agreed, he asked me to meet with Rosenthal as soon as I could.

  “I phoned Rosenthal right after I talked with Balistrieri. He said that he was expecting the call.

  “Rosenthal came to La Jolla. He came to my home. He told me that Al Sachs was a moron. He told me that there was a lot of potential in the company. He was very good. Plus, he was very smart. He may be the devil—which I personally think he is—but he’s very smart.

  “I told him I knew about his expertise in gaming and that I would appoint him as my assistant or as an advisor. At first he was very conciliatory. He said he understood and he would do as I said and that he appreciated the promotion and that he would do his very best.

  “He asked me to acknowledge his promotion through a memo, and asked me for a raise. I gave him the memo and the raise.

  “The next day I checked with the chairman of the Gaming Commission. I learned that Rosenthal was a genius with numbers, a master handicapper. He knew all the casino games. I also learned he would probably never get a license.”

  Frank Rosenthal returned to Las Vegas with a new job description and a raise from $75,000 to $150,000 a year. He immediately began to make changes in the operations of the casino. “Almost all of the executives viewed him as the man with all the authority,” Glick said. “He was supposed to clear everything with me, but he didn’t. At the outset, when I questioned him about these things, he wasn’t disrespectful. But every day I would hear that he had taken a little more power. I heard that when he walked through the casino, dealers used to jump to attention. He would fire a dealer for not standing with his hands folded before him, even at an empty table. He hired whoever he wished. He changed certain purveyors. Without clearing it, he changed the car rental company, the advertising company, and he tried to bring in his own ticketing agency for the Lido Show.

  “When these things were brought to my attention I would either stop them or rescind them, but he was hard to stay ahead of. While I was unraveling one thing he did, he’d be in the kitchen telling the chefs how to cook.

  “I was commuting between my home in San Diego and Las Vegas, and whenever I would get to town I would hear all the stories about what he did while I was away. Then, for a few days, I would have almost daily confrontations with him. I saw him in operation. He was the kind of man who held out his cigarette and expected it to be lit. He could be withering with people. He did not curse. He did not raise his voice. But you’d rather get hit in the mouth than have him harangue you.

  “He designed himself an office that Mussolini would envy. It was four times larger than any office in the place. He didn’t like the wood paneling he had ordered and had it all ripped out and replaced. It was all ego. He wasn’t satisfied being a boss behind the scenes; he had to let everyone know it.

  “Finally, in October 1974, I called him into my office. I had just arrived from California. It was a Monday. Again, I’d learned that certain things had gone on in the casinos over that weekend, and I felt that this was the time to terminate his position.

  “I met him in the coffee shop of the Stardust, which was called the Palm Room.

  “I said, ‘Let’s go to the back of the coffee shop. I want to explain a couple of things to you.’

  “I told him what I had told him on repeated occasions—that he had to control his activities and that he was supposed to work within the parameters of what I had outlined to him in our meeting in September in California.

  “I said that on repeated occasions he had lied to me, that there was subterfuge, and I learned that he had even instructed my secretary to tell him on a daily basis what my movements were, where I was going and what I was going to do. I said that I found that intolerable.

  “He looked surprised. He asked if my secretary had told me that. I said yes. And instead of apologizing for spying on me, he said that he was going to fire her.

  “That’s when I realized I wasn’t dealing with a normal man. We were in the back of the coffee shop. It was a closed section. He hesitated for a second and then he got up and he walked away from the table. Then he came back to the table. I could see his blood pressure rising.

  “He said, ‘I think it is about time that we have a discussion, Glick.’ He referred to me by my last name. He had always called me Allen. But he called me by my last name as in setting the stage.

  “He said, ‘It is about time you become informed of what is going on here and where I am coming from and where you should be. I was placed in this position not for your benefit, but for the benefit of others, and I have been instructed not to tolerate any nonsense from you, nor do I have to listen to what you say, because you are not my boss.’

  “I began to argue with him and he said, ‘Let me just cut you off right here.’ He said, ‘When I say you don’t have a choice, I am just not talking of an administrative basis, but I am talking about one involving health.

  “‘If you interfere with any of the casino operations or try to undermine anything I want to do here, I represent to you that you will never leave this corporation alive.’

  “I felt like someone had just arrived from an alien planet. I was a businessman and everything I had conducted was
in a businesslike manner, and this was almost totally a different subculture. I didn’t know what to make of it. In respect to the conversation that I had had with Jerry Soloway in regard to Frank Balistrieri, I realized that I just entered into a trap.

  “I told him I wanted him out of the hotel. He said, ‘I hear what you are saying, but I want you to listen to me carefully again. When I said you will not leave this corporation alive, I meant the people that I represent have the power to do that, and much more. You should take me very serious. You are an intelligent individual, but don’t test me.’

  “After I recovered, I was in somewhat of a state of shock. I called Frank Balistrieri and I said, ‘You got me into something I did not bargain for, or I would not have accepted anything like this.’ I said, ‘I felt that the appointment of your sons as corporate counsel was done in a businesslike manner, and I have no problems with that, but I do have problems with this.’

  “I related to him the conversation I had with Rosenthal and he was very conciliatory. He said he would get back to me. But just remember, he said, the only one I was to talk to about this matter was him. Frank Balistrieri. If anyone else approached me and I talked to them, I would be doing it irrespective of his wishes. He was very firm. I did not pursue it with him.

  “Within a few days Balistrieri called back. He explained to me on the phone that he understood the situation, but at this time there was nothing he could do about it and that I should heed Mr. Rosenthal’s advice and keep him in that position.

  “I discussed Rosenthal’s mention of ‘partners,’ and I said that I bought this corporation through my own efforts, acknowledging that he helped me get the pension fund loan, but there were no partners.

  “But Balistrieri said, ‘What Mr. Rosenthal told you is accurate.’”

  For several months, Glick fenced with Rosenthal. He was afraid to confront him, so he tried to limit his activities. He excluded him from meetings. He tried to keep him out of the loop. He countermanded his orders. He rejected his suggestions. And finally, one night in March 1975, Allen Glick’s wildest nightmare came true. He was having dinner in the Palace Court Restaurant in the Stardust when Rosenthal called. “He said there was an emergency. I had to join him at a meeting. I asked what emergency. He said he couldn’t tell me over the phone, but I had to meet him. I said I’d rather not. I said we could deal with whatever it was in the morning.