Rothstein (27 page)

To identify Attell, Illinois Assistant State’s Attorney George E. Gorman dispatched a Chicago manufacturer’s agent named Sammy Pass to New York. Pass, a White Sox fan, had bet with Attell on the Series, and had been a complainant in the original indictment.

Fallon’s special talents now came into play. The Great Mouthpiece met Pass at Grand Central Station. A $1,000 bill changed hands, and suddenly Abe Attell was not Abe Attell.

It went like this in West Side Court:

Q-[Fallon]: Are you the witness that complained and then testified before the Cook County grand jury against a certain Abe Attell?

A-[Pass]: I am.

Q-Did you ever see the Abe Attell who now is here in court?

A-No; I never saw that man before.

Q-Had you ever seen him until he was pointed out to you in this courtroom an hour ago?

A-No.

Authorities were dumbfounded. Judge Donnelly let Attell walk, but police rearrested Attell later that afternoon on essentially the same conspiracy charges. Fallon obtained an injunction from Supreme Court Justice John M. Tierney. District Attorney Swann bellowed about questioning Attell on his own, but Fallon retorted that in the absence of evidence, he wouldn’t allow it. Eventually the furor subsided, and Attell was indeed a free man-just as A. R. had promised.

The same confusion of identities shielding Attell and David Zelser, protected Nat Evans. The grand jury never bothered with Evans, instead indicting his alter ego “Rachael Brown.” Authorities made little, if any, effort to untangle the situation, and Evans remained at liberty.

In Chicago, with or without Attell, Sullivan, or Evans, justice ground on. Key documents disappeared from the prosecutor’s office, but authorities plodded on. Ban Johnson forced them to, rounding up new witnesses (traveling as far as Mexico to retrieve Sleepy Bill Burns) and evidence. The case went to trial on Monday, July 18, 1921, with Arnold Rothstein’s specter hanging over the proceedings, as Assistant State’s Attorney George Gorman reminded the court of Abe Attell’s boast that A. R. financed the deal. Star prosecution witness Bill Burns implicated Attell, Zelser, Chase, and every player save for Joe Jackson. He admitted Rothstein turned him down, but revealed how Attell and Bennett claimed to speak for The Big Bankroll:

Q-Did Bennett say anything about whom he represented?

A-[Burns]-Yes, he said he represented Rothstein and was handling the money for him. Bennett also wanted to go to Cincinnati to confer with the players.

Q-Was anything else said?

A-I asked Attell how it was that he had been able to get Rothstein in when I had failed?

Q-What did he say?

A-He said he had once saved Rothstein’s life and that the gambler was under obligations to him.

Q-At that time you were at the hotel was any mention made of money?

A-Bennett said Rothstein had agreed to go through with everything.

At one point Burns misspoke, testifying he met Rothstein in Cincinnati. In New York A. R. denied Burns’ charges, jumping on that point and virtually anything else Sleepy Bill had to say:

William Burns, testifying at his trial of those indicted in connection with the alleged fixing of the world’s series of 1919, mentioned my name and stated that certain persons referred to by him, without any authority by him or having any connection whatsoever with me, as his testimony effectively shows, have used or advanced my name to him as one of those ready to participate in the financing of the alleged deal described by him. Although his testimony, some of which is quoted below, is a complete exoneration of any act of impropriety on my part, I have, however, to make this statement in response to numerous requests made of me by representatives of the press.

When Burns, with whom I had no acquaintance, sought me out in this city and advanced to me his proposition to enter into a scheme to fix the world’s series, not only did I most emphatically refuse to have anything to do with him or his proposition. But I told him that I regarded his proposition as an insult and him as a blackguard, with whom I wanted no dealing whatever and warned him not to come near or to speak to me on any pretext whatsover.

When the world’s series was being investigated by the Grand Jury of Chicago without any solicitation from any source that I come to Chicago or any suggestion that I was wanted in Chicago, my name having been mentioned in the matter, I sought and obtained permission to appear before that body and gave a complete statement of Burns’s conduct as I have just described it and also permitted the Grand jury and the authorities in charge of the investigation to subject me to the most minute examination possible with a view of their ascertaining whether I had any connection whatsoever with the matter under investigation.

The action of that body is known to everyone and is a complete exoneration and vindication of me, fully supporting the statements made by me at that time, of my absolute innocence of any wrong doing in connection with this matter.

What stronger proof can any one require to support what I have just said than the following testimony given at the trial by William Burns on Thursday last.

“Q-Mr. Burns, you claim you spoke to Mr. Rothstein in New York in connection with this matter?

“A-Yes.

“Q-Did you see or speak to him in Cincinnati?

“A-No.

“Q-Did you see or speak to him in Chicago?

“A-No.

“Q-Did you ever talk with him either than this one time you were in New York?

“A-No.

“Q-You spoke to him only once?

“A-Yes.

“Q-At that time you say you put this proposition to him?

“A-Yes.

“Q-Did he accept it or turn it down?

“A-He turned it down.

“Q-He turned it down?

“A-Yes, sir.”

It seems to me that it must appear to all fair-minded persons from what I have just said how wholly unwarranted has been the mentioning of my name in connection with the matter now being tried in Chicago and how greatly slanderous in the imputation that I participated in any way in the occurrence.

… I talked to Burns once in my life when he approached me in the matter of throwing the games. I didn’t think he had a chance in the world and told him so, and added that even if he could assure me he could actually do it, I didn’t want him to ever speak to me again as long as I lived. That was the first and last time I ever had knowledge of the situation until I heard my name being used out West [in Chicago].

Burns said I was waiting downstairs in the Sinton Hotel, Cincinnati, to join a conference between himself and the other ballplayers. I was never in Cincinnati in my life. At the time he mentioned, I was at the race track in New York …

On Friday, July 22 Assistant State Attorney George Gorman revealed that some key evidence-Cicotte’s, Jackson’s, and Williams’s confessions and waivers of immunity-had disappeared. When reporters asked how such things could happen, Gorman retorted. “Ask Arnold Rothstein-perhaps he can tell you.”

Monday, July 25, saw presiding judge Hugo Friend admit the substance of the missing confessions into evidence, allowing the use of unsigned carbon copies-but only against the individual who made each confession. State’s Attorney Robert Crowe (Maclay Hoyne’s replacement) promised two new grand-jury investigations, including a probe of Rothstein’s involvement in the disappearance of the documents. Crowe’s office pledged to indict at least two additional ballplayers, but declined to name them. It also promised that more gamblers would be questioned or indicted. When reporters asked Assistant State’s Attorney John F. Tyrrell if Rothstein would be questioned, he replied ominously: “None of those we expect to indict will be called as witnesses.”

American League President Ban Johnson had also lost patience with Rothstein-after all, Giants owner Stoneham had helped elect Kenesaw Landis commissioner and end Johnson’s dominance of baseball. “I charge,” Johnson said in a written statement:

that Arnold Rothstein paid $10,000 for the [signed] Grand Jury confessions of Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams. I charge that this money, brought to Chicago by a representative of Rothstein, went to an attache of the State’s Attorney’s office under the Hoyne administration. I charge that after Rothstein had examined these confessions in New York City, and had found that the ballplayers had not involved him to the extent of criminal liability, he gave the documents to his friend, the managing editor of a New York newspaper. I charge that the editor offered these documents for sale to broadcast throughout the country.

Fallon calmly admitted possessing grand-jury minutes, saying it was all very innocent, having received them from Carl Zork’s defense counsel, Henry J. Berger (until very recently an assistant state’s attorney in Chicago). Berger denied everything, including being Fallon’s representative (“I met him only twice”).

In New York, Rothstein once again feigned anger:

My name was dragged into this by men who thought they might evade trouble for themselves or get some advantage by bringing me into it. I have never seen these confessions nor would I spend ten cents for the privilege of reading all the documents in the case.

Ban Johnson needs to watch his step: the most peaceful of men can be driven too far.

As suddenly as the tide had risen against the gamblers, it subsided. Nothing more was heard of indicting Rothstein. In fact, the state’s entire case was collapsing. As the trial began, judge Friend dropped charges against Ben and Louis Levi. On July 27 he announced that even if Weaver, Felsch, and Zork were convicted, he would grant them new trials “as so little evidence” existed against them. Now only David Zelser and the remaining six Black Sox remained in jeopardy.

Buried among such news were Assistant State’s Attorney John Tyrrell’s comments regarding A. R.‘s direct involvement with Attell, Zelser, and company. “It will be remembered,” Tyrrell noted as he interrogated Zelser, who had conveniently forgotten that he and Attell (along with the Levi brothers) had shared the same room at the Hotel Sinton, “that this sample room he [Zelser] registered for is the one Attell kept his money in cases and hidden under the mattresses of his bed. It is the same place where the gamblers hatched their conspiracies and to which Rothstein had a private wire from New York.”

“Rothstein had a private wire from New York … “

In an era when people thought twice-and then twice againabout the expense of placing a single long-distance call, this was news indeed. That A. R. paid for a private wire to Attell and Zelser reveals that Attell and Zelser were not acting alone. They weren’t pretending to have Arnold’s backing; they had it all the way.

Thus Attell knew that he could safely stiff the players. Working as the left hand of Rothstein, he knew the players were getting enough money from Arnold’s right hand-Nat Evans and Sport Sullivan-to keep them on the hook. And Evans and Sullivan knew they could toy with the Black Sox for the same reason-or if they didn’t quite know why, A. R. would simply tell them not to worry about it.

Attell’s working for A. R. ties up yet another loose end-one making no sense if Attell were operating behind Rothstein’s back and, if not jeopardizing his “good name,” jeopardizing his activities with Sullivan. That loose end is this: A. R. spent a lot of time and money shielding Attell from prosecution, hiding him in Montreal, having Fallon concoct his audacious “two Attells” scheme. If Attell had acted on his own, there would be no reason to shield him, no reason to buy The Little Champ’s silence.

But, in fact, there was every reason in the world.

Rothstein’s name surfaced again in the trial’s closing moments. Carl Zork’s other counsel, A. Morgan Frumberg, asked repeatedly why Rothstein or Sport Sullivan or “Rachael Brown” or Hal Chase ever went to trial. “Arnold Rothstein came here to Chicago during the Grand jury investigation and immediately went to Alfred Austrian, the White Sox attorney,” Frumberg pointed out. “What bowing and scraping must have taken place when `Arnold the Just,’ the millionaire gambler entered the sanctum of `Alfred the Great.’ By his own testimony, Mr. Austrian admits conducting this financier to the jury and of bringing him back unindicted.

“Why was this man never indicted? Why were Brown, Sullivan, Attell, and Chase allowed to escape? Why were these underpaid ballplayers, these penny-ante gamblers from Des Moines and St. Louis, who bet a few nickels perhaps on the world series, brought here to be goats in this case?

“Ask the powers of baseball, ask Ban Johnson, who pulled the strings in this case? Who saved Arnold Rothstein?”

Judge Hugo Friend’s instructions to the jury made each defendant breathe easier: “The state must prove that it was the intent of the ball players that have been charged with conspiracy through the throwing of the World Series to defraud the public and others, not merely to throw games.”

Well, how could anyone prove what was in the mind of Shoeless Joe Jackson or Happy Felsch? The jury returned two hours and fortyseven minutes later, acquitting everyone-the Black Sox, Zelser/Bennett, Carl Zork. Everyone. Eddie Cicotte hugged jury foreman William Barry. His teammates lifted other jurors upon their shoulders. Judge Friend beamed. When Friend’s bailiffs noticed his reaction, they abandoned any impartiality, “whistling and cheering” with the players. The camaraderie didn’t end there. Defendants and jurymen found themselves celebrating at a nearby Italian restaurant. It was just a coincidence, of course, that both groups found themselves in adjoining rooms, separated by a folding partition, in the same establishment. Soon, doors opened, partitions folded back, and jurors and defendants rejoiced together.

In 1961 a newspaper columnist asked Abe Attell if the Series could be fixed again. “Not a chance,” the Little Champ responded, “that kind of cheating died when they buried Arnold Rothstein.”

THE TIMES WERE CHANGING and had been for quite a while.

A. R.‘s early world, the twilight of Victorianism, appeared respectable, straight-laced, prim, proper. In reality it was wide-open, tolerating, and indeed reveling in prostitution, gambling, gluttony, and drunkenness. The Gilded Age. Fin de siecle. The Gay Nineties. Nouveau-riche business tycoons. The mauve decadence of seven-percent solutions, Oscar Wilde, and Aubrey Beardsley.