Rothstein (7 page)

Mizner’s crowd sprung their trap on Thursday night, November 18, 1909. With Conaway in tow, they took their regular table at Jack’s. When A. R. arrived, the conversation centered on the usual athletic and theatrical subjects. Jack Francis very generally broached the topic of pool, discussing the merits of pocket-billiard and threecushion champ, the Cuban Alfredo De Oro, and other fine players such as Jake Schaefer and Willie Hoppe. Finally, Francis mentioned casually that young Mr. Conaway here was most likely the best amateur billiardist nationwide. Then they baited the hook: A. R., they said, you aren’t nearly as good as you think you are; Conaway can take you easily.

It was the Times Square equivalent of calling out a gunfighter. Rothstein couldn’t afford to have his skills or courage denigrated and snapped at the bait. Later, some Times Square observers thought he was suckered. Others thought he knew precisely what he was doing. A. R. peeled off a roll of bills, saying, “I’ll bet $500 I can beat Mr. Conaway.”

A. R. chose the venue, John McGraw’s pool hall, just a few blocks south on Herald Square. John “The Little Napoleon” McGraw was one of the biggest men in baseball-actually, in all of sport. In the 1890s he played a hardscrabble third base for the rough-and-tumble Baltimore club, the immortal “Old Orioles,” and was the toughest, savviest man on baseball’s toughest, savviest team. As a manager, he transformed the hitherto-woebegone New York Giants franchise into baseball’s powerhouse, establishing himself as baseball’s greatest field general.

Most ballplayers and ex-ballplayers dreamt of running their own saloon. McGraw settled for a pool hall on Herald Square. In February 1906, with Willie Hoppe on hand, McGraw opened an establishment boasting fifteen of the most expensive tables “ever placed in a billiard room in the world.” McGraw’s partners were Jack Doyle, a prominent local gambler, and Tod Sloan, once one of the world’s greatest jockeys. Sloan pioneered the upright or “monkey-on-a-stick” stance for jockeys, and served as the model for George M. Cohan’s character “Little Johnny Jones,” Cohan’s ode to “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Sloan’s betting habits got him banned from racing in 1900. He now supported himself as a bookmaker and actor.

In October 1908 McGraw moved across Herald Square, to the brand-new Marbridge Building, next door to the New York Herald. McGraw had some new partners, including Hoppe and Giants club secretary Fred Knowles. There were rumors of silent partners, among them young Arnold Rothstein. Business had picked up for Rothstein by 1908. He could swing a piece of McGraw’s place and bring more than money to a partnership. His friends at Tammany Hall (some said A. R. had the gambling concession at Big Tim Sullivan’s Metropole) had influence. Police protection for pool halls cost $300 a month, and even the great John McGraw had to pay it. A fellow with Rothstein’s connections could prevent “misunderstandings.”

Rothstein and Conaway started that Thursday night at 8:00 P.M. Their first match was for 50 points. Conaway squeaked by. The second match went to 100. Conaway led again, but Rothstein staged a spectacular run to win by a single ball. Betting now reached extremely serious levels. The rivals continued, playing game after game. At 2:00 A.M., McGraw’s normal closing time, Rothstein seized a clear lead, but Conaway jeered that his foe was merely lucky. Rothstein knew better. They kept playing.

At dawn they were still at it. Friday came and went. The crowd kept betting, and A. R. kept winning. As evening arrived, with both participants exhausted, the game no longer featured championship quality play-only grueling tenacity. Conaway won occasionally, but couldn’t quite catch up. Closing time came and went once more. By 2:00 A.M. McGraw had had enough. “I’ll have you dead on my hands,” he growled at the two weary combatants. “And if you don’t want to sleep, some of the rest of us do.”

Rothstein and Conaway begged McGraw to relent. But two hours later-at 4:00 A.M., thirty-two hours after play started-the Little Napoleon finally shut down. “You’d better get to a Turkish bath-the two of you. You can continue your little game some other time.” And that’s just what they did. Some said Arnold won $4,000 from the game at McGraw’s. All in all, A. R.‘s “friends” lost $10,000 backing Conaway.

On the way to the baths, Conaway and Rothstein agreed to meet in Philadelphia for $5,000. One can’t be sure their rematch occurred, although those claiming it did say Rothstein won again.

More important than winning or losing, however, was the sheer notoriety of the match. Its marathon nature attracted major interest. The newspapers-and Manhattan boasted a dozen dailies at the time-picked up the story and reported the match as the longest continuously played game in history. They lionized the daring of the participants; the stakes wagered by them and their frenzied supporters; that it was all played out at the great John McGraw’s.

When the match began, Arnold Rothstein was just one of the horde of gamblers infesting Times Square, when it concluded he was not just $4,000 wealthier, he was Broadway’s newest celebrity.

AT SARATOGA SPRINGS Arnold Rothstein further honed his skills as a professional gambler, operated a casino, ran his own stable of racehorses, plotted a World Series fix.

And took a bride.

In 1904, when A. R. first discovered Saratoga, he was somewhat late to the game. New Yorkers had traveled to the upstate New York spa for decades. Some visited the baths and imbibed Saratoga’s pungently healthful mineral waters. Most, however, came to play the horses. Saratoga first discovered the races in 1847, to be as exact as one can be about such things. In 1863 professional gambler and member of Congress John “Smoke” Morrisey opened a new track, the grand racecourse that attracted the rich and famous of the Gilded Age, including President Ulysses S. Grant, presidential hopefuls James G. Blaine and Samuel J. Tilden, Civil War heroes Philip Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman, and financiers Jim Fisk and August Belmont I.

The town featured more than the track and the baths. The Grand Union Hotel, America’s largest, cost $3 million to build in 1864, and featured a block-long banquet hall and a solid mahogany bar much favored by President Grant. The United States Hotel, built a decade later, boasted 768 rooms, 65 suites, and 1,000 wicker rocking chairs upon its front porch. Elegant restaurants abounded. Nearby lake houses, such as Riley’s and Moon’s, provided equally fabulous cuisine as well as upscale gambling.

Saratoga’s racing season runs just one month-August. And each August New York City’s preeminent bookmakers arrived by the carload. Many traveled aboard a special rail excursion, known as the “Cavanagh Special” after organizer, bookmaker John C. “Irish John” Cavanagh. First run in 1901, the “Special” proved instantly successful, packing Cavanaugh’s fellow bookies into as many as eight cars bound for Saratoga. Bookmaking was then legal, and the best people patronized the best bookmakers. And the best bookmakers even organized their own trade organization, the Metropolitan Turf Association (members known as “Mets”), also headed by Cavanagh. Even in 1888 membership cost $7,000-more than membership in a stock exchange. Mets wore distinctive buttons, and the sight of a Metropolitan Turf Association button almost guaranteed a better class of bet and bettor for its wearer.

Arnold Rothstein wasn’t invited to join. Maybe he was slow to pay. Maybe he was already a “sure-thing gambler,” not above manipulating events to dramatically increase his chances. He rubbed fellow gamblers the wrong way. He was just a little slicker than the other fellow-and, one way or another, he let you know it. John Cavanagh wouldn’t allow Rothstein into the club, but he let him on the train. Starting in 1904 Arnold rode the Cavanagh Special.

On A. R.‘s first excursion, three or four associates accompanied him. One of them wasn’t a professional gambler, but nonetheless proved notable: twenty-year-old boxer Abe “The Little Champ” Attell. Abe was little, just 5′4″and 122 pounds. He was also an actual champ, of sorts, possessing a still-somewhat dubious claim to the world featherweight title. Attell began fighting on the streets and in the alleys of San Francisco, generally against larger Irish neighbors. In August 1900 he earned his first professional purse of $15. His mother hadn’t wanted him to fight but when Abe brought home the news of his victory-and the cash-she wanted to know when he’d fight again. He fought ten days later. By October 1901 Attell laid claim to the vacant featherweight title, although he would not fully solidify his hold on it until 1908.

In Saratoga Rothstein, Attell, and their comrades pooled their capital, placed their bets, and lost everything down to their last $100. Then their luck changed, and their bankroll swelled to $2,000. A. R. held the cash-and promptly slipped away and boarded a train to Manhattan, leaving his friends not only broke, but on the hook for room and board. Local authorities tossed them into jail. Eventually they secured their bail and their freedom.

In September 1908 A. R. had met someone special. Twenty-yearold raven-haired chorus girl Carolyn Green was not a star, never had been a star, never would be a star. But to twenty-six-yearold Arnold Rothstein she was everything he ever wanted.

Arnold informed Carolyn coyly that he was a “sporting man.” “I thought that a sporting man was one who hunted and shot,” she wrote. “It wasn’t until later that I learned that all a sporting man hunted was a victim with money, and that all he shot was craps.” Actually, her new friend operated a poolroom in the small West 51st Street apartment he shared with gambler Felix Duffy. Arnold and Duffy took whatever bets they could over the two or three telephones installed in the place.

For a showgirl, Carolyn boasted a reasonably middle-class background, as respectable as Arnold’s. At least, the story she circulated was that her father was a retired wholesale meat broker; she still lived at the family’s Gramercy Park town house; and until meeting Arnold, she never dated without others present. Actually her father was a Ninth Avenue butcher, and there was no town house. The Greens bounced from apartment to apartment in the West 40s.

In 1906 Carolyn completed studies at the Rodney School of Elocution, and shortly thereafter met budding playwright James Forbes, who had just written his first Broadway effort, The Chorus Lady. Carolyn played “Mae Delaney,” a small part that required her to try to pick “a winner at a race by sticking a pin blindly into a programme.” Rose Stahl, an established leading lady, filled The Chorus Lady’s title role (“Maggie Pepper”), helping make the show the hit of the 1906-7 season.

The Chorus Lady ran for eight months before going on the road for an interminable series of one-night stands that caused Carolyn Green to yearn for a settled life:

I remember as we hurtled through the night on a train through Pennsylvania-or it may have been Kansas-I looked out at the little country houses, with kerosene lamps burning cozily behind curtained windows, and thought how comfortable and safe was the life of the persons who sat behind those curtains around those softly glowing lamps.

They weren’t rushing madly around the country, putting on and taking off make-up, living in impossible hotel rooms, catching trains, and playing eight performances a week whether they felt ill or well.

Carolyn returned to Manhattan between road bookings of the show and twice for its Broadway revivals. During one such visit, she met A. R. A mutual acquaintance named Albert Saunders threw a supper party at West 43rd Street’s Hotel Cadillac. Eight diners feasted on lobster and sipped champagne. Teetotaler A. R. skipped the champagne.

Rothstein noticed only one guest. He took Carolyn home in a hansom cab. The following night he called at her theater and took her to dine. Carolyn remembered:

Arnold, at that time, was a slim young man with sensitive face, brown, laughing eyes, and a gentle manner. I cannot emphasize too much this gentleness of manner, which was one of his most alluring characteristics.

He was always extremely well tailored and presented a most dapper appearance, noticeable even on Broadway where it was the fashion to be well groomed.

Above everything else, from the moment he had been introduced, he had paid no attention to any one except me. That flattered me, his manner charmed me, his appearance pleased me. I was as much in love with him as he was with me.

They continued dating. A. R. continued gambling, but though he made a living at it, he was not immune from periodic strings of bad luck. He was undergoing one now, and though he wished to impress his new girl, he didn’t possess the requisite cash. “He sent me flowers on one or two occasions,” Carolyn recalled, “but not more than that, had funds enough to take me to dinner, and drive me home in hansom cabs. He never made me any presents.”

Carolyn Rothstein’s autobiography, Now I’ll Tell, describes a straightforward, uncomplicated courtship. Boy meets girl. Boy dates girl. Boy marries girl. It was more complex. Shortly after they began dating, A. R. stopped calling, stopped visiting the Casino Theater. She learned A. R. was interrogating friends and acquaintances: What did they know about her? What were her habits? Her virtues? Her vices?

Mostly her vices.

Outraged, Carolyn exploded. “How dare you ask people about me? What business am I of yours?”

Rothstein replied calmly. “A man has a right to know all about the girl he’s thinking of marrying.”

Marrying?

A. R.‘s response startled Carolyn. But no more than his next move. He tipped his cap and walked silently away. She heard no more from him but soon thereafter received an invitation from attorney George Young Bauchle to a supper party at Delmonico’s. She asked the maitre d’ for Bauchle’s party. He escorted her to a table for two. There sat A. R. He stood up and announced. “I’m the party, a party of one. I hope you’re not angry.”

She was indeed, but calmed down. A. R. had his charms. And, after all, a dinner at Delmonico’s was, well, a dinner at Delmonico’s. Their courtship resumed.

Soon another bump arose. Arnold had drifted away from his family, from Abraham Rothstein and his world. Now, strangely, A. R. wished to present his prospective bride to the family he had spurned. He informed her, “I want you to meet my family.”