Rothstein (12 page)

Beansy downed a few drinks (horse’s tails-ginger ale with a twist of lemon) and ate his big steak “as if he could take it with him.” Usually, a five-man Hungarian orchestra performed at the Metropole, but Monday nights were slow and the Considines hired a ragtime piano player to bang out the “Bunny Hug” and the “Ocean Roll,” but there was nothing festive about the atmosphere. Everyone knew something was about to happen. They avoided Herman Rosenthal like the plague. Outside, West 43rd Street was strangely silent. Police shooed passersby off the sidewalks. They, too, expected something …

At 1:40 A.M., someone-witnesses never agreed who-asked Rosenthal: “Can you come outside for a minute, Herman?”

Beansy didn’t hesitate. He left a dollar tip (for his eighty-cent bill), put on his hat, and walked outside. A car drove by. Four-maybe five-men got out, firing pistols point-blank at Rosenthal. Five shots. Four hit their target. Three in the head. One in the neck.

Charles Whitman got the news. He had ordered Beansy to stay home, but Beansy clearly had trouble following advice. Whitman realized he should have provided protection to his star witnessalthough obviously there was a problem in providing police protection. Within an hour Whitman arrived at the precinct house nearest the Metropole, the seedy West 47th Street Station, just west of Eighth Avenue. Two things caught his interest. One was Lieutenant Charles Becker’s arrival. His presence at the station seemed to confirm Whitman’s already-great suspicions. Equally suspicious was the state of the police investigation. Several police officers were patrolling 43rd Street as Rosenthal met his fate. An off-duty police detective was dining at the Metropole. Yet no one apprehended the assailants. No one in uniform correctly noted the license number of the murder vehicle. Save for the alert eyes of Charles Gallagher, that license number might never have been revealed.

Gallagher, an unemployed cabaret singer walking to the Metropole to inquire about a job, first tried alerting an officer on the murder scene to the correct number: “New York 41313.” He was ignored. Gallagher tried again, with Lieutenant Edward Frye. “I got the license number of that car,” he repeated.

“We already have it,” Frey snarled, shoving him away.

Gallagher went to the precinct house to restate his story. “We got the number,” the desk sergeant responded, without gratitude or interest.

In fact, police possessed four different numbers: none Gallagher’s, none correct.

“The car went past me-this far away. I know I got it right,” Gallagher elaborated.

“Are you a witness?” the sergeant screamed.

Gallagher got the message. The police didn’t want the right number. “No sir,” he stammered. “I just got the license number. I thought-”

Gallagher never finished. Police threw him into a cell.

Reporters witnessed the scene at the station and told Whitman. He ordered Gallagher brought to him. Police apologized profusely. They had, they said, clearly misunderstood the value of Gallagher’s information.

They hadn’t. It was extremely valuable and broke the case wide open. Whitman quickly traced “41313” to a 1909 gray Packard touring car owned by one Louis Libby, who rented it out for hire. Libby hadn’t chauffeured the car that night, but his partner, William Shapiro, had. Shapiro readily admitted his passengers had assassinated Beansy Rosenthal. He claimed that Bald Jack Rose-Becker’s bagman-had hired the car.

Even before Whitman had interrogated Libby or Shapiro, he knew who the ultimate villain was. The next afternoon, Thursday, July 16, he told reporters:

I accuse the police department of New York, through certain members of it, with having murdered Herman Rosenthal.

Either directly or indirectly it was because of them that he was slain in cold blood with never a chance for his life. And the time and place selected were such as to inspire terror in the hearts of those the system had most to fear. It was intended to be a lesson to anyone who might have thought of exposing the alliance between the police and crime.

Just as he was about to give important additional evidence and to give the names of eight or ten men who could and would support his charges; just as the situation shapes up most dangerously for the police involved, he is killed and with him his evidence.

But the case against Lieutenant Becker will be pushed through with all possible vigor, even though it is apparent no conviction can result.

Whitman spoke too soon. Tammany knew when to cut its losses. Republican investigations had a pattern of failing to deliver the knockout punch. Usually, a cop could be thrown overboard: a Big Bill Devery, a Clubber Williams. There was no need for Charles Whitman to poke around Tammany if a high-profile cop could be sacrificed to protect it, particularly one everyone agreed was crooked to the core. Charles Becker was highly expendable.

Defending Libby and Shapiro was Aaron J. Levy, New York State Assemblyman from Manhattan’s Fourth District, and despite his youth (he had just turned thirty-one on the 4th of July) one of Tammany’s more influential attorneys. After visiting his clients on Thursday, July 18 Levy handed the press a typed statement that included this:

Shapiro told me [that] after the shooting he was working with his motor and pretended it would not start. One of the parties [murderers] said: `Don’t stall that engine. You had better get it started and be damned quick about it.

Shapiro still hesitated and one of the parties said: “Go on, you fool, get started: don’t you know the cops are fixed and no one will bother us? It is a clean getaway.”

That was interesting enough, but reporters wanted more. They asked Levy: “Do you believe that this murder was a gamblers’ feud?”

“I do not,” he answered.

“Do you believe it was a gang feud?”

“I do not.”

“Well, then, what kind of feud do you think it was, Mr. Levy?”

“Now then, I am afraid I have as good as told you already.”

Yes, he had. By mentioning the police fix, Levy was signaling Whitman that Charles Becker had murdered Rosenthal. Soon he would be more direct (“Rose is not a big factor in this case. There is Lieutenant Charles Becker and a few others”) and speak of “contemplated arrangements” with Whitman’s office to free his clients, arrangements having little to do with Libby and Shapiro, and everything to do with protecting Big Tim Sullivan and Tammany Hall. That night, a mysterious figure visited Whitman’s Madison Avenue home. The two men conferred for three hours. At this point, just about every coming-and-going in the case was being reported instantly, but Whitman never revealed the identity of his visitor. A day later, the Times reported he was “a very well-known gambler of the Broadway tribe” there to “take up the story where the dead Rosenthal left off.”

Was it Arnold Rothstein? Most gamblers associated with the case-aside from Beansy and Arnold-were not Broadway gamblers, but Lower East Side types. And if any of these gamblers had appeared to verify Rosenthal’s story of harassment from Becker, Whitman would have ignored him. Within a week, the district attorney admitted as much publicly when rumors began floating of Big Tim’s owning a piece of Rosenthal’s operation. On Monday, July 22 Whitman dismissed such information contemptuously-he was “investigating a murder, and not conducting a sociological investigation.” What he meant was that Sullivan and Tammany were off limits in this case. So was Arnold Rothstein. Whitman would carefully, meticulously, exclude Sullivan’s and Rothstein’s names from both Becker murder trials-further evidence that A. R. had delivered a deal to Whitman.

The deal? Tammany would give up Becker. It would not surrender Big Tim. Whitman accepted the deal.

Meanwhile, William Sullivan informed Assemblyman Levy of the identity of the three gamblers with Jack Rose during the murderLouis “Bridgey” Webber (so nicknamed for his brief marriage to a 200-pound prostitute named Bridget), Harry Vallon, and Sam Schepps. He also divulged the names of three of the gunmen: “Lefty,” “Whitey,” and “Gyp”-Lefty Louie Rosenberg, Whitey Lewis, and Harry “Gyp the Blood” Horowitz. All worked for Big Jack Zelig.

On Monday, July 22, just a week after the murder, Whitman indicted six men-Libby and Shapiro; two gamblers in the murder car: Rose and Webber; and two others: well-known gambler Sam Paul, at whose recent gamblers outing to Long Island talk ran that if Rosenthal couldn’t keep his mouth shut someone would “get him and get him for keeps”; and Becker associate and former William Randolph Hearst bodyguard Jacob Reich (a.k.a. Jack Sullivan, “The King of the Newsboys”). On the night of the murder, Reich accompanied Becker to Madison Square Garden. Becker then conveniently dropped off Reich at the Metropole-in time to witness Rosenthal’s death.

Another Tammany lawyer now entered the drama. Max D. Steuer had come to America from Austria literally in steerage and worked his way up from Lower East Side newspaper and match peddler (with a cowbell tied around his neck to attract customers) to Columbia Law School. On May 1911 the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Fire killed 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women their employers had locked in their workplace. Steuer successfully defended company owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris on manslaughter charges, earning him the enmity of those on the Lower East Side who lost friends and family in the inferno-but also cemented his reputation as the city’s toughest defense lawyer.

Steuer never minded doing Tammany’s work-it was he, after all, who had informed Charles Francis Murphy of how to exclude Big Bill Devery from the county committee. Steuer at first wanted no part of defending Bridgey Webber, but soon changed his mind: “yield[ing] to the persuasion of friends who felt the interests of someone whose name has not been mentioned in the case would not be safe unless a lawyer of Steuer’s ability was on hand to represent them.” Steuer was yet another protege of Big Tim Sullivan. He was clearly present not to defend Webber, but to ensure he (and another gambler in custody, Harry Vallon) confessed and implicated Charles Becker.

On July 29 Whitman indicted Becker. Bald Jack Rose, Bridgey Webber, and Harry Vallon had all confessed to their roles in the murder. All claimed that Becker ordered their actions. All swore that Lefty Louis, Whitey Lewis, Gyp the Blood, and a fourth gunman, Dago Frank Cirofici, did the actual shooting.

Whitman lost interest in four of his original suspects: Sam Paul, Jacob Reich, William Shapiro, and Louis Libby. Shapiro and Libby gained immunity as material witnesses. Jack Sullivan vouched consistently for Becker’s innocence (and for Rose, Webber, and Vallon’s duplicity). He remained indicted, but never went to trial. Sam Paul, an ally of Lower East Side Republican chieftain Sam Koenig, walked away scot-free.

Whitman now possessed three key witnesses against BeckerRose, Webber, and Vallon-but all were admitted accomplices. Under New York law, a defendant could not be convicted solely upon the testimony of an accomplice. That left Whitman with no case whatsoever. To solve this problem, Whitman, Rose, Webber, Vallon, and their attorneys created the improbable fiction that Sam Schepps-wit- ness to numerous meetings with Becker and present at numerous other critical junctures-had not actually participated in the crime. Schepps, a con man at heart, played the part eagerly.

Meanwhile, public unease grew regarding Commissioner Waldo. Yet Waldo retained Mayor Gaynor’s unrestrained support. “You have the hardest police situation in the world to deal with,” Gaynor wrote Waldo. “We have in this city the largest foreign population of any city, and a large number of them are degenerates and criminals. The gambling of the city is almost all in their hands, not to mention other vices and crimes. The published names of every one connected nearly and remotely with Rosenthal and his murder shows them to be of this same class of lawless foreigners to which he belonged.”

Not surprisingly, some observers-especially prominent Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise-interpreted Gaynor’s remarks as antiSemitic. The short-tempered Gaynor denied hostility to Jewish voters, but refused to apologize, especially to Wise, a longtime adversary. “I cannot help Rabbi Wise,” Gaynor sniffed. “He is supposed to be a preacher and a charitable man. That he has borne false witness against me concerneth him more than it concerneth me. He seems to read the Hearst newspapers and accept their statements as true. What a howling wilderness the mind of such a man must be.”

Months passed before Becker’s murder trial, and odd events overtook New York City’s Democratic Party. In 1912 many Republicans wanted Charles Whitman to run for governor. He refused, claiming that he wanted to wrap up the Becker case. In actuality, 1912 was the year of the disastrous Teddy Roosevelt-William Howard Taft feud that split the Republican Party and elected Woodrow Wilson president and scores of other Democrats nationwide-not a good year for ambitious Republicans. Tammany boss Charles Francis Murphy had reluctantly backed East Side Democratic Congressman William Sulzer for governor and, as payback, demanded that Sulzer appoint Murphy’s business partner, James E. Gaffney, state highway superintendent. Sulzer refused. Soon they tangled on other issues, and by August 1913 the assembly (led by Aaron J. Levy, now assembly majority leader) impeached Sulzer. In October the state senate removed him from office.

As Sulzer’s career exploded, Big Tim Sullivan’s mental state unraveled. It had been deteriorating even before Rosenthal’s death. In 1912, The Big Feller’s supporters realized he wasn’t stable enough to serve in the State Senate-and elected him to Congress. But he never did return to Washington. His mind worsened, and in July 1913 he sailed for Europe, hoping for improvement. When he returned, he was worse yet. He wandered away from the hotel where his family had sequestered him. They found him on the streets and moved him to his brother Paddy’s house in the Bronx, where he was guarded round the clock. One night, after playing cards with four retainers, Big Tim escaped again.

Two weeks later, at the Bellevue morgue, a police officer chanced upon an unidentified man scheduled for a pauper’s grave. “It’s Big Tim,” he exclaimed. “God rest him!”

A New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad employee had discovered the body near Pelham Parkway, on their tracks. The first police officers to arrive on the scene unanimously thought the corpse oddly cold for one just run over by a train. They surmised that someone had planted it there. Despite the corpse’s expensive attire and gold jewelry, no one-including three detectives later disciplined for inaction-bothered tracing its identity. No one transported the remains from the Fordham morgue to the main Bellevue morguewhere it should have gone immediately-for more than a week. The coroner, who had known Sullivan for years, failed to identify him (even though the deceased’s face was unscarred). Indeed, no one had recognized a man whose eventual funeral attracted 75,000 mourners, including sixteen congressmen and four United States senators, and whose main floral display contained 3,000 American Beauty roses and 2,000 white chrysanthemums.