Chapter IX: Part TWO: The People (3)

Every member has his exact "piece"--from the take of a prostitute summoned in the night, to the income on Park Avenue, State Street and Hollywood Boulevard frontage.

Any man who owns 2 per cent is a millionaire. The principal participant is said to own 7-1/2 per cent and he is now the richest man in Italy. He is, of course, Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

When Luciano, a swarthy Sicilian with a drooping eye, who had been a pickpocket, a pimp, a collector, a gun-toter for his betters and in time the top racketeer of the United States, was convicted by District Attorney Tom Dewey, it was said that he was railroaded and that he was guilty of everything except what he was convicted for--peddling women.

He was guilty of them all and that, too. But Dewey, with his eye looking far ahead, realized that this was the most spectacular path and he took it and followed it through.

It was the same Dewey, as governor, who shortened Luciano's sentence at Dannemora under circumstances never plausibly explained. It was published that Luciano had provided the government, then at war, with priceless information about the Italian underworld, which had helped us in the invasion. It was even bruited that he would get a medal of honor. This was all pure hokum, invented by the paid press agent of the syndicate in New York, which maintains a year-round public-relations employe who earns his $300 a week if he manages to get in one choice item, such as the above, in a year.

It was no political deal, which also was intimated, but which is as erroneous as the balderdash about Luciano's service to his adopted country.

Luciano got an excessive sentence, running up to 30 years. It was not contemplated that he would ever sit out all of that. The Italians, who are rapidly overtaking the Irish as the leading power in Tammany and in Republican councils as well, had put on heavy pressure to get amnesty for the little mug, who was the head of the Sicilian Society in the United States, a branch of the ancient Mafia.

After Luciano was deported, he turned up in Havana.

This was kept out of the newspapers for a while, but the entire syndicate was notified and there was a concentration in the Cuban capital, where 36 rooms had been engaged in Havana's leading hotel.

Meanwhile, the FBI and Federal Bureau of Narcotics tapped his phone-calls to the mainland and definitely established that he was still in undisputed command of the multifarious and nefarious operations of the infamous Unione Siciliano.

Columnist Robert Ruark sprung the story in a column which appeared in the second section of his newspaper and was treated as minor information. But the fact that he had seen Luciano holding court in the Havana Casino, surrounded by glamor gals, underworld and Hollywood celebrities, including Ralph Capone, the Fischetti Brothers and Frank Sinatra caused a national sensation, as a result of which the United States government formally complained to the Cuban government that Luciano's presence on the nearby island meant a big development in the dope business of the United States. Washington had the goods.

Cuba thereupon deported him back to Sicily, where at this writing he is dispensing charity and undoubtedly buying and scheming great influence in public affairs.

During his incarceration, his dividends as well as his crooked profits were meticulously deposited to his credit. There was some difficulty transferring money to him in Italy during the last year of the war, and in that period some $2,000,000 accrued to him; that sum was brought to him in cash on a Pan-American clipper from Miami to Havana and carried in the hand of a well-known crooner of Italian extraction, with underworld connections past and present, guarded by two of the Fischettis, cousins of Al Capone.

The New York manipulator for Lucky, who visited him while he was held at Ellis Island for deportation, is Frank Costello. He is now the mightiest of the syndicate personnel, with an uncanny genius for mixing into highly important affairs with bigwigs in various spheres.

Costello also was born in Sicily, came to New York in his youth, had some juvenile delinquency troubles and did a stretch before he was out of his teens. He was part and parcel of gangster developments in a small way until his talents brought him to the top.

He was engaged in the slot-machine business in New York until the late Fiorello LaGuardia had his one-armed bandits smashed by police axes. Costello, teaming with "Dandy Phil" Kastel, who also had counted the bars on a cell, took a trial trip to Louisiana, then the one-man dominion of Huey Long.

They say a million dollars passed into the hands of the Huey Long inner group--and not a bad investment, for the first year's profits, reported for Federal taxes, exceeded $1,200,000. Anyway, the Louisiana legislature voted a bill legalizing slot machines, and Costello and Kastel organized several inter-involved corporations with innocent names to run them. There was practically no competition--and very little shooting; Long simply passed the word around that the concession belonged to these two gentlemen from New York.

As a concrete example of how the tax situation is manipulated by intricate items of overlaying accounts, it was shown when Costello was hauled up for taxes apparently due, that the slot machines belonged to one corporation, that they were operated by a second, which rented the locations from a third.

Costello eventually settled for $600,000 cash. Among other little entries about which the government inquired were payments of $200,000 a year to each of his wife's two brothers, as salaries in different slot-machine corporations. This transparent cover-up was laughable--but it was judged not criminal. Costello pleaded that he had been misadvised--excuse it, please--and he wrote a check.

This is only a ripple on the ocean of hundreds, probably thousands, of holding companies organized in various states and under various directorships and local laws, through which flow the vast garnerings of the syndicate from coast to coast, with an accounting system which in any emergency can explain and make good any entry, and thus avoid the peril of the penitentiary.

There is an intercommunicating liaison among the lawyers, many of whom are engaged for their exclusive services by the year, and all supervising the main channels and watching hawklike to guard against letting their employers become involved in actionable tax delinquencies.

As for all other matters, they can be handled locally. The syndicate owns plenty of judges, strong men in both parties and great fluid assets. It is no secret that money can square anything in the United States.

Luciano was no peanut when Dewey ruined him. But there are few Deweys. And Luciano had not yet learned to cover his tracks. The money came in so fast and his drag was so good, he felt immune, but Tom Dewey wanted to be President of the United States, and Lucky hadn't thought of that.

Luciano had been taken for a ride in the orthodox manner, between two executioners, and had come out alive. They left him for dead in a lonely spot, but he beat it.

After that he felt that nothing could break him.

Like Samson, he was betrayed by infatuation for a doll. She was Gay Orlova, a fabulously beautiful, but plump, blonde White Russian refugee, who had come to Broadway and Earl Carroll's choruses by way of Turkey.

Said by Carroll to be "the sexiest gal who ever worked for me," Gay quickly found a protector in the late Theus Munds, rich and elderly Wall Street broker, who went whole hog with diamonds, furs and limousines.

During the Florida season of 1935, Gay appeared as a featured show girl in the floor show Carroll presented in the flamboyant Palm Island Casino, then operated by Bill Dwyer, a Prohibition-time big-shot rumrunner, on Al Capone's private island.

There she met Luciano. Lucky, who had had the pick of girls, never had had one so glamorous--or amorous. He moved right in.

Gay was proud of her conquest. When asked by one of your reporters, "What about Munds?" she replied, "Oh, Theus is O.K. But all he's got is money. Lucky, he's sinister!"

When that was printed, it was the first intimation Dewey's detectives had of the romance. When Gay returned to New York, they tapped her wires, and thereby traced Luciano to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he was hiding out.

After Lucky's conviction, Uncle Sam deported Gay as an undesirable alien. When last heard of she was a Paris mannequin, still beautiful, still in love with Luciano, still bitter at your reporters--and trying to get a passport to Italy.

His conviction was another lesson to his kind. It showed them that, with all their accumulated power, they were not sure of their liberty.

Luciano had conducted his vice operations from a duplex suite in the Waldorf Towers. These activities were traced right into his two manicured hands. The syndicate came to the conclusion that that, too, must be changed.

Now the important stockholders delegate everything illegal. In one season the outfit netted $6,000,000 in Miami gambling houses. But these were all run by stooges, few of whom knew to whom the money eventually went, and none of whom knew how or where it went--into corporations with strange and remote names, into sinking funds, reserves, depreciation allocations and undivided profits.

Corporations can be sued and can be taken, but they cannot be locked in a prison.

That, briefly, is the story of the gangsters' progress, one of the biggest-monied combinations in the nation. That is the reason why the shootings have stopped and top men are no longer put on the spot.

"Bugsy" Siegel and Binaggio, slain after this chapter first appeared in print, were exceptions. Benny, who got his nickname because the boys said he was "nuts," had threatened to blow the whistle on the syndicate when Luciano refused to bail him out of his $6,500,000 white-elephant gambling casino-hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

He was put on the spot because he refused to be "organized"; preferred old-fashioned gang methods learned when he was the No. 1 torpedo for Murder, Inc. Binaggio, too, double-crossed the boys.

No independent operator can scratch the surface. Competition isn't even a hearty joke. The boys have everything so tightly tied up, they work so far ahead and have so many trained eyes and ears, that they can take long vacations, enjoy a hangover as well as the next man and sleep in reasonable security under silk canopies in silk pajamas.

26. HELLO SUCKER!

Three different movie outfits, at three different times, took the trouble to consult with Jack Lait about authentic incidents in the life of Texas Guinan. He gave freely and at great length in response. We later saw "Incendiary Blonde," supposed to be based on her life. It wasn't a bad picture. But it wasn't a good Guinan.

Tex was hardly incendiary, and wasn't even a blonde by nature. The only three men in her life were--first, a quiet New England artist; second, a sedate California writer; and third, in later days, a bookkeeper, no less, who used to beat her up and who scrammed with a lot of her assets.

Texas and Lait were good friends back in 1913, when she was making two-reel, two-gun westerns. That's when she acquired the "Texas" handle. Her name was Mamie. She had a little house near Hollywood, with Lottie Pickford and Mabel Normand. Lew Cody, Paul Armstrong and Lait would drive out there to play stud poker. Texas came east to join a musical show. Abe Erlanger, king of the legit, went soft for a little pug nose in the chorus and took Texas' song away and gave it to the youngster. To make it worse, he wanted Texas to support her with an obligato. Lait stood on the stage of the Illinois Theatre, Chicago, when Tex told Erlanger off pretty in the presence of the entire troupe.

She was fired instanter and barred from every branch of theatricals except vaudeville. Lait wrote her an act, with four people and a horse. At the climax, Tex on the horse leaped in through the window and saved the post office from being robbed. Her name wasn't good enough for the big time, and she played the Loew circuit. Transportation ate up most of the salary. So Tex got a job as a hostess in the Beaux Arts, New York, opposite Bryant Park, high up by elevator, sort of a secluded spot after the uptown speaks were emptied. There her personality caught on.

Larry Fay, the sentimental gangster, had gone mad over a lovely little ingénue whose name shall not be mentioned, because it might embarrass her and it wasn't her fault. Larry pestered her so, she ran away to Florida and took a cheap night club engagement. This gave Larry a big idea, which made Texas Guinan, quite inadvertently.

The Friars Club, about to open its own building, was moving out of its temporary quarters on 45th Street, near Sixth Avenue. Fay leased the building for five years. His plan was to set up a magnificent club which he thought would lure back to New York the gal he was nuts about, if he offered her star billing and a big salary. He hired Tex as emcee, with a heavy guarantee. He called it the El Fey Club so it could be identified with him and still not carry his name, which was on record where it wouldn't help. He began frantically telephoning the girl in Florida. She turned him down and after the first call refused to answer. So here he was, stuck with a five-year lease on a five-story building and a contract with Guinan.

Here comes the most interesting incident, which has never been truly told and which has been untruly told for years everywhere.

As each show went on, Larry would stand in the extreme rear, where it was dark and where he--always in plain blue serge suit, white silk shirt and black windsor tie--was inconspicuous. As Texas would mount her chair (that was how she worked) she would look across the long room at him. And, thinking of the lease, her pay, the flop of his romantic objective, she would cast a glance right over the heads of the audience and call out--to him--"Hello, sucker!"

Through some phenomenal human quirk, every other sucker in between thought it was addressed to him. And, as strangely, every man liked it. It became her trademark. Long after Larry passed out of her picture and was killed on a New Year's morning, she still featured it--his only monument.

Texas played to a strange conglomeration--Wall Street, the world of art and letters, the Blue Book lorgnette set, New York's usual concentration of out-of-town buyers, plus never-failing underworlders. These were all paying guests. There was very little passed out on the cuff in any of her deadfalls. There were very few beefs about atrociously phony "champagne" at $35 a bottle, and some of the bootleggers who made her Scotch and gin at perhaps $1 a quart came to her dives and paid $15 a quart for their own hogwash.

There was something in that "Hello, sucker!" which softened up a man and made him what she called him. She always had a flock of lovely young girls, but no customer ever got closer to them than seeing them on the floor. It was no place to pick up one on short notice. Texas watched over her kids like Diana guarded the doves on Olympus. Many a contented matron, perhaps now turning 40, may remember what a demon chaperon she was.

"Give the little girl a great big hand!" But that was all. Not a great big car; not even a sandwich.

She never got rich. She lived in a little flat on Eighth Street, which looked like a Chinese second-hand furniture store, where she had one servant. She certainly left no great sum. She dropped a wad in the stock market crash and had to hock her "ice," in which she had sunk a bucket of bucks. She had thieves and thugs for partners and, though regarded as a shrewd operator, she was taken like Armour takes a sheep. From the moment she came to work at night, until daylight, she was on her job and had no time even to look at accounts. She could well have said "Hello, sucker!" talking to herself.

But she was dynamite as a drawing card. The sappos began laughing before they came in. They greased headwaiters heavily for ringside seats in front, and a few minutes later saw tables moved in front of them. The best act she ever put on was George Raft, doing a Charleston, which lasted a minute. Ruby Keeler broke through the barrier with her beauty and tap-dancing. Beyond this, there were practically no principals, except Guinan.

Yet, when the band struck up "I'll See You in My Dreams," her theme song, and the spotlight caught her scintillant smile and she shouted "Hello, sucker!" her customers were electrified, ecstatic. We have never known an exclamation from any person to carry the wallop that this impertinent quip packed when Guinan let go with it.

It is generally believed she got it from Wilson Mizner. Truth is, Bill Mizner got it from her!

27. NO PAIN, NO FUN

The hotel hustler, age-old character more or less tolerated in the best institutions, making her hunting habitat in midtown lobbies and the various "peacock alley" passages, has become a police problem on grounds other than protection of morals.

In the main hotel sectors, she spurns the wage of service. She is generally a cold, calculating crook.

Her equipment is a small bottle of white crystals, chloral hydrate, a powerful concentrated hypnotic which will knock a man completely out in 15 minutes and keep him unconscious for some dozen hours.

This method requires that she be in the man's room. She cannot take him to her own or to a neutral one, as he will wake up in due time, robbed of every nickel, his watch and ring, sometimes even some haberdashery.

A complaint, were the victim to regain consciousness anywhere but in his pro tem quarters, would set the dicks waiting for the lady to come home, if it were her place, or would convict a place that rented rooms to her as an assignation house, which in New York means lifting the license for keeps.

But, where traveling men, convention gatherers, visiting buyers and occasional migrants have accommodations, she combines in comparative safety the lure of her charms and the modus operandi of her larceny.

The flirtation is simple enough. The proposition comes in due course, usually in the cocktail lounge or café of the hotel. The acceptance is at first hesitant--she isn't that kind, shouldn't stay out long, but she has taken a fancy to the stranger (after she has worked out of him the information that he is stopping at the hotel and isn't a permanent guest) and so, yes, she will go to his room--unaccustomed as she is to unconventional adventure--for a little while. He doesn't dream how little time.

His room is not only her objective, but there is no other retreat.

Should he want to lead her somewhere else, he is stymied. All hotels are full up. Even if he got a handbag and tried to get into another haven with her, he would be asked for his reservation.

There are no more loose hotels specializing in such twosomes. In 1940, there were hundreds. Now there isn't one. The war rush, the military police, the high rates for legitimate rentals turned them all respectable. They found that more profitable and kept it up.

Because of her system, she cannot take him to her abode or to any other which he can identify after his long snooze, even if she, a wise New York cookie, does know some side-street bed-house where a cheating clerk holds out a cubicle or two for quick turnovers.

So she plays quite helpless. She lives with her folks. Unless they go to his place--well, where else?

He takes the standard precautions of the seasoned wayfarer. He goes up alone, tells her to follow in five minutes and walk right in.

With few exceptions, the dreaded "Get that woman out of your room!" has gone the way of the one-buck blue plate. Guests are still protected, but not against their own peccadillos. The simp has pushed the little plunger so the knob will turn from the outside. The tough trollop, acting nervous and timid, but irresistibly tempted, enters.

He makes a grab. Oh--he mustn't be so impulsive, so impatient. She is jittery and fluttery--natch, since she is doing what her breeding and better nature tell her she should never have yielded to.

A drink--one little drink to settle the nerves--and then--

He calls room service, even if he has a bottle in his bag. If he has seltzer, she can drink it only with ginger ale, or vice versa. When the waiter is called, she steps into the bathroom on his knock, and the cluck giggles and says he always takes two about that time of day. The waiter says lots of customers do, it's getting to be a national habit. For that he gets a bill instead of a coin.

She has taken her purse into the bathroom with her, and when she can safely return she has the knockout dose held between the thumb and the palm of her gloved hand--she keeps the gloves on; no fingerprints.

She sits, then remembers she has left her handkerchief on the washstand--would he please get it? As he turns his back, she drops the tasteless, colorless grains into his drink, which dissolves them instantly.

They raise glasses. Here's to crime! Skoal!

If he comes over for a grab right away, she holds him off. She wants to know--is he really married? Oh, dear, all attractive men are! She is a grass widow. Yes, she made a mistake, but what does a girl know when she's 18, and unworldly? How about a cigarette? Is he sure the door is locked now? He makes sure.

By this time his eyes are heavy, his hands more so. He can't understand--it's been a hard day, of course, and last night--zowie! He'll snap out of it in a minute. But he doesn't.

She has stalled until a debilitating lethargy overcomes him. He sinks back, limp. She waits a few more minutes. She pokes him. No reaction. Then she goes to work. He may still see and know what she is doing. But he is paralyzed.

She goes through him, even taking off his shoes and socks, for she has learned that many a cautious cluck hides currency there. She frisks his trousers, vest and coat. Then she scrams.

Quite a number of official beefs to the cops have completely established every move. Though only an infinitesimal percentage of the total go to the police, these average a dozen a week, mostly at East 51st Street police station, which is in the district of most top-grade hotels.

The dicks often can name the dame on description. But, if they collar her, she gives them the horselaugh. No corroboration.

After a touch in one hotel, hustlers usually move on to others, to avoid running into the victim, though when they do, little can be done about it.

Time and again, when arrests are made, the bottle of chloral hydrate is found in the suspect's handbag. That still isn't convicting evidence.

Most of the saps, of course, really are married. And they are people of some standing back home. They will lie to avoid prosecution, which would invite publicity, even when the thieving broad is caught with their watches which have their full names engraved on the cases.

The drug, without which the entire clockwork would stand still, is not too difficult to get. Chloral hydrate is a recognized and respectable anodyne, in the pharmacopoeia, prescribed for quick insensibility when a patient has convulsions, and in drastic cases as a painkiller. It cannot be had ethically except on a physician's prescription, but there are underworld druggists as there are underworld medics, and both serve out the stuff knowing how it will be used.

An overdose can be fatal, and women who feel secure in mulcting men do not want to chance a murder rap, which would set the bulls working in full cry. So they often have the powder put up in capsules with just the right dose, and they open the gelatinous envelope, spill the contents into the hand and drop the container into the drain.

All this gives you some idea of the intensive forethought and preparation expended to turn the ancient and never-too-honorable calling from whoring to robbery.

While the two have long been associated, only of late has it become the custom not only to give the sucker no even break, but no break at all. A glib grifter in this streamlined system could work it indefinitely and retain her virtue.

Newspapers continually dig up new versions of the "meanest thief." We nominate this one!