Rothstein (18 page)

He ended up with forty men, instructing them: “If I do use you, don’t tell anyone for whom you’re betting; bookmakers know I’m playing a horse, they’ll shave the odds on a five-dollar bet.”

Sidereal was now 30-to-1. A. R.‘s agents began placing fifty-and hundred-dollar wagers. He slipped to 25-to-1, then to 20-to-1. Still a good payout. A. R.‘s scheme was working pretty much to plan.

Except for the matter of the horse.

Rothstein had no horse. Hirsch had no horse. Sidereal remained at Belmont, and no one there seemed interested in answering the phone to assist A. R.‘s big plan. Hirsch gave Arnold the bad news. A. R. said little. He just led him to Carolyn. “Tell her what she has to do,” he ordered. “Tom Farley’s out in the car and he can run her over.”

Hirsch lived near Belmont. His wife was still at home. She would know how to get Sidereal to Aqueduct-but the Hirsches had no phone. “Pick her up and go to the stables with her,” Hirsch told Carolyn. “Tell her to have the horse’s plates changed and then put him into a van and get him over here. Tell her and the foreman we don’t have any time to waste.”

Carolyn and Tom Farley found Mrs. Hirsch at home. They raced to Belmont, had a stable boy locate the track foreman, and told him Sidereal must reach Aqueduct for the sixth race. He said that was impossible-but he’d see what he could do.

They rushed the colt into a van and raced across Queens. Time was running out fast. If Sidereal failed to appear before saddling time, he’d be automatically scratched. Paddock judge Jimmy McLaughlin demanded to know where Sidereal was. Max Hirsch reassured him that the horse would be there any moment now. He didn’t really believe it, but he had to say it.

With less than a minute before saddling time, Max saw a car in the distance, kicking up dust along the road. He couldn’t see who it was, but it drew closer and closer …

It was Sidereal. But it wasn’t enough for a horse to be near the track throwing up dust, he had to be on the paddock. Hirsch rushed his horse down the ramp and on to the paddock. Jimmy McLaughlin looked at the animal. He looked at his watch. “You sure drew it fine …” he told Hirsch. “You beat the gun by six seconds.”

Carolyn rushed to the clubhouse. She exchanged glances with A. R.-and he knew she’d come through. He summoned his betting commissioners. “Take any price,” he ordered. They plunged every dollar on Sidereal, crashing the odds. A. R. didn’t care. As Sidereal and veteran jockey Bill Kelsay reached the starting gate, the true beauty of Rothstein’s plan kicked in. When bookies feared potential ruin on a certain horse, they turned to A. R. as their insurance agent. They could “lay off” bets with him to avoid possible disaster. He would be their insurance company.

The moment he’d waited for now arrived. Bookmakers swarmed A. R., begging to lay off their clients’ wagers on him. He’d help outbut only on terms guaranteeing him big money no matter the outcome. Huge money-$850,000-if Sidereal won. Decent money-$40,000 coming from the bookies whose bets he’s covered-if Sidereal lost.

A. R. displayed complete calm, almost a lack of interest, as the race began at 4:48 P.M. Just before the gate went up an associate named Jimmy Rowe, Jr., approached Rothstein’s box. “I’ve put a bet down for you, Jimmy,” he commented casually.

Ultimo seized the early lead, with Northcliffe second, and the favorite, Slieveconard, unable to get going. Sidereal hung back, fourth in the thirteen-horse field-and A. R. couldn’t be bothered to look up his calculations. “How is he running?” Rothstein asked Rowe.

“Under wraps,” Jimmy responded. “He’ll win with plenty to spare.”

That was all Arnold needed. He stood up and headed for the track restaurant-ready to collect.

With a quarter-mile left, jockey Kelsay put the whip to Sidereal. The colt moved past Brainstorm, past Northcliffe. Only Ultimo stood between Sidereal and the finish line. Ultimo’s jockey, a lad named Miller, rallied his horse, whipping the animal furiously. But Ultimo had nothing left, and Sidereal slid ahead, first by a length-and-a-half.

Sidereal took 58 2/5 seconds to earn A. R. $850,000.

Outwardly, A. R. displayed extraordinary calm. Listen carefully and one might pick up a slight quiver in his voice, as he admitted he had “a good day,” but one really had to listen for it. Inwardly … well … God only knew. After collecting his winnings, he returned to Carolyn and said, “Sweet, if you don’t mind I won’t have dinner with you tonight, I have some business to look after.”

“He was,” she would have to admit, as she pondered this incident years later, “a strange man.”

HE AGE OF THE MANHATTAN GAMBLING HOUSE was over. But other locales remained wide open for the industry: Hot Springs, Long Island-and Saratoga.

More than the races, Saratoga was the gathering place of the rich and powerful, where they whiled away the August heat, taking restorative baths, dining at elegant restaurants, enjoying the best entertainments. Saratoga was also the land of casinos.

After the last horse crossed the finish line each day, the action continued. Richard Canfield’s opulent casino shut its doors in 1907, but other sporting establishments, such as the lake houses, Newman’s and Moon’s, remained. Newman’s attracted Presidents Chester Alan Arthur and Grover Cleveland and New York Governors Horatio Seymour, Alonzo B. Cornell, and Roswell P. Flower. Moon’s lured its own celebrities, from Commodore Vanderbilt and Jay Gould in the nineteenth century to Franklin Roosevelt, Al Smith, Jack Dempsey, and Clark Gable in the twentieth.

During Prohibition, Saratoga’s nightlife grew gayer still. Two new gambling clubs, Piping Rock and Arrowhead, opened. Both maintained opulent but remarkably affordable restaurants-designed to lure patrons to their gambling tables. For five dollars, patrons enjoyed complete meals with drinks and first-class entertainment. (Joe E. Lewis and Sophie Tucker were regulars.)

By 1919 A. R. was no longer struggling, no longer even merely prosperous. His Manhattan and Long Island operations had made him fabulously rich, and he could afford his own Saratoga house. He set his sights on converting one of Saratoga’s grandest estates into the town’s premier casino.

It had to be grand to lure clients. Neither downtown nor on the lake, the property lay some distance from town, a mile past the golf course, on Mr. and Mrs. George A. Saportas’s Bonnie Brook Farm. It was a fabulous place, not just a mansion but also a working farm and racing stable. A local historian described it:

The entrance faced the west, opening into a large and commodious hall, furnished with heavy mission furniture, and a famous old fireplace, built out of rock found on the site…. Great heavy beams denoted massiveness.

In the basement was the billiard [room] furnished in leather. On the main floor the “Dutch room” attracted greatest interest and was used as a breakfast room. Tiled in terra cotta, it had a large fireplace with heavy brass and irons. The walls were covered with antique steins gathered from many countries.

The dining room was hung with heavy tapestry, the furniture mahogany, massive and of odd design. The sideboard, complete in detail, was built into the house….

A sun parlor facing south was part of the house. Water was supplied by windmills and was of adequate amount and pressure. Bonnie Brook … was set in surroundings of indescribable beauty and loveliness, stretching out in every direction.

It was where high society would want to be. Men not formally attired were refused entrance. Free limousine service was provided. “The cuisine,” noted one observer, “compared favorably to the food served in New York City’s finest dining rooms and there were no prices on the menu.”

It may have been the nation’s most exclusive nightspot. No day in Saratoga was complete, wrote the National Turf Digest, without breakfast at the paddock, an afternoon in the clubhouse, and a visit to “the United States or the Grand Union Hotel to exchange pleas antries with one’s acquaintances and then perchance take a drive to The Brook, to while away an hour or two…. After a month of this kind of living one returns to the city absolutely unconscious of nerves.”

A. R. did not operate The Brook by himself. At his side was New York gambler Nat Evans, soon to help A. R. in a far more notorious venture. Rothstein and Evans controlled 56 percent of the place. Another 28 percent went to local gambler Henry Tobin and his henchmen. The remainder was earmarked for well-placed payoffs, for while Saratoga was wide-open, it did not mean its primary attraction, gambling, was-at any given time-legal. A. R. disposed of such obstacles in time-honored fashion, in cash, in large unmarked bills.

From the start, Rothstein paid for protection, giving Saratoga Springs Democratic boss Dr. Arthur J. Leonard with $10,000 and a faction of the local Republicans $60,000 to keep The Brook operating. Veteran local gambler Jules Formel, an old hand at such things, said that wouldn’t do. A. R. was paying off the wrong crowd. The man to see was District Attorney Charles B. Andrus. Rothstein agreed.

Formel approached Andrus, who barked he “had taken an oath not to let that Jew [Rothstein] open.” But Andrus was merely being coy. “He was only stalling,” Formel later recalled. “He would have taken a red hot stove.”

“Finally,” Formel recounted. “Andrus said that as long as Rothstein was paying so much money, he would have to get $60,000, so I went around to the side door of the United States Hotel and saw Rothstein and told him he could go for $60,000.”

A. R. agreed, and Formel asked, “Do you want to open up tonight?” Arnold said no, that wasn’t possible. His “tools”-the roulette and chemin de fer tables-were hidden away in the countryside of nearby Greenfield. He’d wait another day.

Formel returned to Andrus, who asked impatiently, “Did you get the dough?” Formel said Andrus would have his money tomorrow, but that wasn’t good enough. “Never mind that,” he snapped. “I will attend to it myself.”

Andrus soon did. Meanwhile, Rothstein wanted to know what Formel thought his services were worth. Formel volunteered a figure of $4,000, which A. R. seemed to think fair. The next day at the track, he paid Formel $1,000. That was the last of Rothstein’s money he ever saw.

Investments in the proper officials returned solid value. When authorities raided The Brook, their arrival would be announced well in advance. They would see nothing, as witnessed by these two items found in the local press:

July 31, 1919-According to testimony given by Superintendent of Police Thomas J. Sullivan … a raid was made by himself, Sheriff Austin J. Reynolds and Deputy Sheriff Hovey upon the alleged gambling establishment out on Church Street early last night and nothing was found to indicate that gambling was being conducted there. He said that there were but two men in the house at the time, that the officers were admitted without question and escorted about the entire house… . Sullivan stated that they had no warrant to enter the property, but that they were nevertheless freely admitted after the sheriff introduced the party as police officials.

August 5, 1920-Reports that open gambling is being conducted in various places about the outskirts of Saratoga Springs were branded as groundless by Sheriff Austin J. Reynolds … his deputies are making nightly inspection of all suspicious places and that none, so far as they can find out, are open. A place near Greenfield center [The Brook] was visited last night but the house was dark and the piazzas covered with fresh paint.

Formel and one Charles White, better known as “Gold Tooth” Moore, reputedly earned between $7,000 to $38,000 nightly at their own establishment, downtown at 210 South Broadway. It had significant overhead. District Attorney Andrus received 10 percent of the net profits. In 1921 Formel and Moore were raided. Rothstein imported Bill Fallon to defend them. Twice Fallon produced hung juries. The third time, Formel faced time in Dannemora.

Pondering chances for revenge (as well as for a possible lesser sentence), Formel considered informing authorities of Rothstein’s $60,000 bribe to Andrus. He thought of revealing Andrus’s 10 percent cut at 201 Broadway. He knew of the graft-25 percent of the net-Andrus received from the posh Arrowhead Inn. Andrus begged him, with “tears in his eyes,” to keep silent, promising $100 per week for Mrs. Formel while her husband served his sentence. Formel kept silent, but the cash never came.

In 1926 the reforming Saratoga Taxpayers’ Association petitioned Governor Al Smith to probe local corruption. Smith appointed Supreme Court Judge Christopher J. Heffernan to investigate, and Formel finally talked-about Andrus and about Rothstein. A subpoena went out for Nat Evans, but he couldn’t be located. No subpoena went out for A. R. Andrus lost renomination, and Smith removed him from office. Not a thing happened to Arnold Rothstein.

The Brook attracted the highest rollers in town: oilmen Harry Sinclair and Joshua Cosden, professional gamblers like “Nick the Greek” Dandolos, millionaires like Subway Sam Rosoff and Charles Stoneham.

Among Arnold’s prize pigeons-at The Brook or elsewhere-was “Nick the Greek” Dandolos. Like A. R., Nicholas Andrea Dandolos could easily have succeeded in more respectable fields. A friend once called Nick “a sensitive and courtly 6-footer with a cultivated, rather professional air, humanitarian instincts, a sharp, sometimes caustic wit, and a talent for conversational counter-punching.”

Born on the isle of Crete, Dandolos was the son of a rug merchant and the godson of a wealthy shipowner. He developed a lifelong love of philosophy, particularly Plato and Aristotle, and at age eighteen earned a theological degree from the Greek Evangelical College in Smyrna. Supposedly headed for Oxford, he ended up in Chicago. There, Nick met a girl and fell in love. They quarreled. He drifted to Montreal and received word of her death. Heartbroken, and usually inebriated, he bet wildly and unsystematically on the horses at the local track. Befriending Phil Musgrave, one of the better jockeys of his time, his fortunes changed. With Musgrave’s tips, he won $1.2 million within two years.

Returning to Chicago in 1913, The Greek took up cards and dice. Without a Phil Musgrave to assist him, he lost everything. But he determined to learn and soon was among the best in the business. Nick didn’t always win, but he was sanguine when he lost. Once Titanic Thompson bet him $10,000 he could empty his revolver at a silver dollar across a room. Dandolos got to keep what was left of the coin as a souvenir.