The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  Monk knew how to get to Brooklyn and how to get the money—but how to get back? He’d forgotten how he’d gotten there. Monk had somebody telephone Arnold and Arnold sent somebody to bring Monk back.

  That’s how it is when you string bets from Brooklyn.

  Arnold strung his days as he strung his bets. He never said No to a proposition; and never committed himself to any.

  Operating two gambling houses, under police protection, he amassed a fortune. He converted a hundred-thousand-dollar mansion, in Saratoga, into a gambling house, cabaret and restaurant; where the cuisine was of such excellence that prices were unlisted. That would have been vulgar.

  He made Saratoga a place where flash wealth could promenade as high style; and vulgarity could purchase the illusion of good taste. By the hot summer of 1919 the ghetto Gatsby had enough money to sustain himself in luxury if he lived another century. Yet he could no more have stopped gambling than he could have stopped the circulation of his blood. It was a surprisingly long interval before somebody stopped it for him.

  The first whispers of a series fix probably came to him through the fox who served him as a pair of ears with a nose between: Albert Knoehr.

  * * *

  Albert Knoehr

  “The newspapers made the decisions those days,” the fox explained long after he’d fought professionally 365 times and had never been knocked out, “the trick was to let the yokel hold you even. I always felt bad when the papers gave me a shade. The line I liked to read was: ‘The champion was entitled to no more than a draw.’ ”

  He’d fought eleven years and had been in real trouble only once. Against Harlem Tommy Murphy both men had been half-blinded by blood by the end of the first round. In what must have been the bloodiest fight ever held in a ring, they’d fought on for nineteen more. At the end of twenty nobody but the referee could tell them apart.

  The referee picked Murphy. Well, you can’t win ’em all.

  He was Abe Attell—bom Albert Knoehr—dubbed “The Little Champ” by the press; and he hadn’t grown humpbacked carrying burns into newspaper decisions without making friends among sure-thing gamblers. And such fly-by-night veterans of the double double-cross as occasionally met themselves coming back from short-changing their mothers. He was Rothstein’s kind of kid.

  The pair of country clowns who worked their way into A.R.’s box, after the third race at Jamaica on September 23, 1919, were not Roth-stein’s kind of kid. He got out of their way before they could put a story on him. And yet, after the fourth race, he dispatched Attell to find out what the clowns had had in mind.

  Attell returned to report that one was an ex-pitcher; the other an ex-fighter. Their story was that eight White Sox players were ready to throw the World Series to Cincinnati for a hundred thousand dollars.

  There was no way the Cincinnati Reds could beat the Chicago White Sox five games out of nine. No way. The Sox had the hitters, the pitchers, the fielders and the runners. All the Reds would be able to do would be to put on their uniforms and take turns at bat. They would have to play over their heads just to keep from being shut out.

  Cicotte would beat them three games off by himself.

  Lefty Williams would beat them twice.

  Unless Cicotte were fixed.

  If Cicotte were fixed, Williams could be fixed.

  If Williams could be fixed, so could Risberg, Felsch and Jackson.

  Cicotte was the key.

  For sure-thing gamblers it was the sure-thing of a lifetime. For, if the players went along only a single game, they’d be hooked, under threat of exposure, for the series.

  And if they threw the series (Rothstein must surely have foreseen), they’d be hooked for the season of 1920, too. They’d throw the games they were told to throw then. And be paid what the Sure-Thingers thought they were worth. They wouldn’t get off the hook until the whole thing began stinking to the roof of the grandstand.

  How long that would take was a matter of conjecture. But there’d be fat paydays as long as it lasted. By that time there’d be so many mobs involved, with so many prepaid perjurors, that no investigative commission would be able to finger anybody.

  Except, of course, the clowns in uniforms.

  Rothstein wasn’t the kind of a man to pass up a good fix.

  Rothstein to Attell: “It won’t work.”

  Attell to Burns and Maharg: “It won’t work.”

  Rothstein to Attell: “Forget it.”

  Attell to Burns and Maharg: “Forget it.”

  Rothstein to Burns and Maharg, in the lobby of the Astor: “Count me out.”

  Rothstein thus protected himself of a future charge of conspiracy. This left him free, should Burns and Maharg find another backer, to place his own bets. He had a faceless man, whose name was either “Evans” or “Brown,” to make faceless bets. All The Big Bankroll had to do now was to watch The Little Champ.

  All The Little Champ had to do was to watch Evans. Or was it Brown?

  Rothstein didn’t have to watch Attell long. Flat in the face of his unqualified refusal to back the conspiracy, Attell assured Burns and Maharg that Rothstein had changed his mind: A.R. would bank the deal up to a hundred thousand dollars.

  Not doubting Attell for a moment, Burns wired Maharg:

  ARNOLD R HAS GONE THROUGH WITH EVERYTHING. GOT EIGHT

  IN. LEAVING FOR CINCINNATI AT 4:30. BILL BURNS.

  A man signing his own name to a telegram revealing a national conspiracy was one whom Rothstein had hardly underestimated in avoiding.

  Three days later Rothstein had a note from Sport Sullivan, asking to see him. Rothstein had never met him; but knew he was a big frog in the back-country. He received him.

  For ten thousand dollars each—Sullivan came right to the point—eight White Sox players were prepared to blow the series to the Reds.

  “On whose word?”

  “Chick Gandil’s.”

  “That’s weak collateral.”

  Yet he instructed “Brown”—Nate Evans—to hand the visitor forty thousand dollars. The balance, payable upon delivery of the series, would be held in a safety vault in Chicago, Rothstein assured Sullivan.

  Fair enough, Sullivan agreed, pocketing forty thousand.

  One condition: Cicotte would have to give the sign, that the fix was on, by hitting the first batter with a pitched ball.

  Understood.

  That Burns and Maharg were working the same street as Gandil and Sullivan didn’t trouble Rothstein. “When nine guys sleep with the same girl, it’s pretty hard to prove that the tenth is the father,” was his thinking.

  He sent Nate Evans to Cincinnati with a bankroll to hook suckers. He himself got on the phone to Harry F. Sinclair, with whom he shared an interest in horse-racing. He guided the conversation to the series until he’d hooked Sinclair for $90,000.

  Later, in his hotel lobby, he ran into the greatest single-roll crapshooter in the Western World: Nick The Greek Dandolis. When you met the Greek he either had fifty thousand in cash in hand or he couldn’t buy a newspaper.

  Rothstein, the lay-back-and-wait gambler, had broken this plunger oftener than either man could remember—the last time for a quarter of a million dollars. Now The Greek was flat again: he’d been waiting for Rothstein in hope A.R. would stake him. Rothstein peeled twenty-five thousand off the top of his roll and told The Greek to bet the bundle on Cincinnati.

  If Arnold Rothstein couldn’t be content until he owned all the thousand-dollar American bills in the world, Sport Sullivan couldn’t rest till he had all the hundreds.

  When he put down $29,000 on Cincinnati, at the Chicago Board of Trade, expecting 3-1 odds and finding the best he could get was even money, he was infuriated: somebody had beaten him to the broker’s with a big bundle.

  That he was betting other men’s money didn’t modify his sense of betrayal. By the time he found Gandil, Sport was tight up.

  So was Gandil. He’d had a phone call from a brash fellow named Jake Lingle, a ne
wspaper reporter. “The word is out,” the brash fellow had assured Gandil brashly, “the series is in the bag.” Gandil hung up on Lingle. He didn’t even have Cicotte in the bag and reporters were already beginning to hold their noses.

  Gandil had lost his awe of Sullivan. Being a bookmaker in Boston wasn’t big enough for a national conspiracy, Gandil was becoming aware. They’d started something that was growing bigger as it gathered speed—and that couldn’t be stopped. He had The Swede leaning on him, too.

  When you had The Swede leaning on you, you couldn’t afford awe of anybody.

  “Where’s the money?” he demanded of Sullivan.

  “How many payoffs you trying to make, Gandil?” Sullivan accused him immediately—“How many other people you working with?”

  It would have come to blows—had each not needed the other. After they’d cooled it, Sullivan handed Gandil ten grand for Cicotte. And explained that heavy money was being dropped on the Reds.

  Small wonder. The Little Champ was atop a table, in a hotel lobby in Cincinnati, taking all Chicago bets. Suckers were struggling to give him their money. He hooked them one by one.

  Later, looking for prey in the lobby, he spotted George M. Cohan. Not only was Attell miffed at Rothstein, for preferring to work with Sullivan instead of with himself and Burns and Maharg, but he now saw a chance to do a big shot a favor: that might one day be returned with interest. He cut into Cohan.

  Cohan had just put thirty thousand, with a man named Brown, on the White Sox.

  “Take a tip from The Little Champ,” Attell wised Cohan up, “you just bet thirty thousand dollars with Arnold Rothstein. And the series is fixed.”

  Cohan phoned Sam Harris, his partner in New York, to put thirty thousand on Cincinnati. He’d covered himself.

  Attell tailed “Brown”—Nate Evans—until Evans got another mark into conversation. Attell caught the mark’s eye and signaled him, from behind Evans’ back—“Lay off. Lay off.” When the mark walked away, Attell disappeared himself until Evans cornered another, and repeated his performance. He loved the feeling that he was cutting into The Big Bankroll’s bankroll. So much so that he wasn’t aware that he was being tailed.

  Burns and Maharg had business with The Little Champ. Where was the hundred thousand, they wanted to know when they’d finally cornered him.

  Attell didn’t even blink. All you had to do to get out of a lie was to compound a bigger one. Get the players together, he instructed Burns and Maharg. He would handle them himself.

  The evening before the opening game, seven players showed up in Attell’s room. Weaver was counting himself out.

  His instructions from Rothstein, Attell confided in the athletes, was to stagger payments at twenty thousand dollars per game. The man had to protect himself, didn’t he? They all knew that Rothstein’s word was his bond—didn’t they? And as soon as A.R. gave the word, he, Attell, would pay them off. Then he waved a telegram addressed to himself:

  AM WIRING YOU TWENTY GRAND AND WAIVING IDENTIFICATION—AR

  That nobody in the room, including Attell, had the foggiest notion of what “waiving identification” meant, mattered not at all. What mattered was that it was a telegram; and that it was signed with Rothstein’s initials.

  Even Risberg was mollified. Cicotte had already been mollified. He had sewn ten thousand dollars into the lining of his coat.

  Attell saw them waver and got in the clincher: Cicotte would blow the first game and Williams the second.

  The players almost pulled themselves together then: if they didn’t win behind Cicotte and Williams they surely weren’t going to win behind The Busher, Dick Kerr, Collins’ friend.

  Attell must have made a mental note right there. Kerr had won 13 games and lost 8, with great support. Without that support, Cincinnati would beat Kerr, too.

  The fourth game, it was then agreed, they would win behind Cicotte.

  Then Attell, who never knew when to stop when he had a good thing made, nearly wrecked his own ploy. He told Gandil he’d hand him twenty thousand dollars on the sidelines, just before the game.

  The prospect of handing out thousand-dollar bills along the White Sox bench must have momentarily boggled Gandil’s mind. It must have boggled all their minds; because Attell got them out of the room before they’d recovered their senses.

  Maharg was the first to come to. How did they know, he asked Burns, that that telegram had been genuine? Western Union, they found, had no record of anyone sending a telegram to the Hotel Sinton signed “A.R.”

  If Attell had been lying about the telegram, the light began to dawn at last, he may have been lying from the beginning about Rothstein’s backing. They must have felt like men, tiptoeing through shallows, who find themselves plunging into bottomless depths.

  Curiously enough, a telegram signed “A.R.” had arrived at the Sin-ton. But Rothstein hadn’t sent it. Attell had had a friend in New York send it.

  Joe Jackson returned to the bench, following pregame practice the day the series opened in Cincinnati. He sat off by himself, looking sullen. Joe was hurting. Gleason went over and looked at him.

  “What’s the matter, Jackson?’’

  “I don’t wanna play!” Jackson blurted out.

  “You what?”

  Jackson began shouting, “I don’t wanna play! I don’t wanna play!” Then, at the top of his voice: “You can tell that to the boss, too!”

  Gleason leaned over him and whispered hoarsely:

  “You’ll play, Jackson. You’ll play.”

  To Lefty Williams, Gleason paid no heed. The left-hander was scheduled to pitch the second game. All he had to do today was to watch Eddie Cicotte.

  Now he sat, between the bat boy and the water cooler, watching Cicotte’s practice pitches to Schalk.

  When the first Cincinnati batter, Max Rath, came up, Williams canted his hand across his eyes. Cicotte’s first pitch cut the heart of the plate for a called strike. The second hit Rath between the shoulder blades.

  At one minute before 3 P.M. on October 1, 1919, Rothstein walked into the Green Room of the Hotel Ansonia. Most of the several hundred chairs were already occupied. The chairs faced a diamond-shaped chart representing the playing field in Cincinnati. The game would be reported, pitch by pitch, by telegraph; with red and white markers, representing the players, being moved according to the report. Rothstein stood against the wall.

  When Cicotte’s second pitch hit Rath, Rothstein left. He hailed a cab and was sped to his broker. He placed another hundred thousand there on Cincinnati: on the series. Rothstein never bet individual games.

  Cicotte blew the game single-handedly in the fourth. He not only crossed Schalk’s signals, but fielded so badly that the Reds scored five runs. Final score: Cincinnati 9/Chicago 1.

  Eddie Cicotte was earning that farm.

  Jackson’s condition was pitiful. Williams had handed him a dirty envelope containing $5,000 and he’d been afraid not to take it. His pocket was fixed and his heart was sick.

  He was afraid of Gandil and even more afraid of Risberg. He was also afraid of Gleason, Comiskey, Grabiner, Collins and Schalk. He couldn’t swing at a bad pitch and he couldn’t throw badly. One fly ball dropped between himself and Felsch: that was as close as he came to making a series error; while outhitting everyone on both clubs. Yet he felt he wasn’t playing to win.

  Buck Weaver was. He was not only playing flawlessly; he was playing ferociously. His thinking was to take Sullivan’s money, take Attell’s money, take Burns’ or Maharg’s or anybody’s money—then go out and whip Cincinnati four straight and take the winners’ end of the purse as well.

  Buck Weaver was the only one, apparently, who was in his right mind.

  When Lefty Williams walked two men, in one game, he’d had a wild day. In the fourth inning of the second game he walked three men in a row; none of them dangerous.

  Then, with men on second and third, he delivered a pitch so high that Schalk had to go off the ground to prevent
a wild pitch. Schalk called time out. He walked out to the mound holding the ball, to talk to Williams. Williams wasn’t talking: he demanded the ball. The next batter lined out a single, scoring two men. Final score: Cincinnati 4/Chicago 2.

  Yet the game wasn’t over for Schalk. He waited for Williams, on the ramp under the stands. When Williams came out of the clubhouse, Schalk hauled him to the wall and clobbered him, both hands, until other players pulled him off. Williams hadn’t even fought back.

  “He crossed me three times in the fourth inning,” Schalk explained to Gleason, “he wouldn’t throw a curve.”

  Gleason went looking for Williams. He found Chick Gandil, fully dressed, sitting in the locker room.

  “Did you have a good day, Gandil?” he asked.

  “Did you?” Gandil inquired in turn.

  Gleason got his hands around Gandil’s throat so firmly that, when Gandil stood up, Gleason was lifted off the ground and yet held on. When he finally shook Gleason off, Gandil turned and walked away. He hadn’t fought back either.

  Gleason went to Comiskey. Comiskey reached Heydler, the President of the National League, on a midnight train bound for Chicago. Heydler waked Ban Johnson, the American League President at 3 A.M. in another compartment of the same train.

  “That’s the yelp of a beaten cur!” Johnson decided about Comiskey; and went back to sleep. Comiskey and Johnson weren’t passionately fond of each other.

  Abe Attell was stashing money. He had so much to stash that he’d called in helpers: the brothers Ben and Lou Levi and one “Bennett.”

  Abe, Lou, and “Bennett” were stacking it on tables, tying it into pillow-cases, folding it into wallets, hiding it under rugs, planting it in sugar bowls and stuffing it into shoes in event of a raid. They were even putting some in their pants against a rainy day.

  Burns and Maharg, come to collect the players’ payoff, had to stand around awhile before they could get anyone’s attention. It was plainly to be seen that either these fellows had been wonderfully lucky or the first two games hadn’t been honest.