Rothstein (17 page)

He never drove again.

Getting to the races was one thing. Returning safely with your winnings was another. Even then, A. R. worked an angle, inviting one sports editor to ride with him in Rothstein’s chauffeur-driven limousine to and from Yonkers’ Empire City track. That editor recalled:

And every time he had a fairly large roll, and counted it on the way to town. One day it was eighteen thousand and something. Another it was twenty-two thousand, and the last day I rode with him it was a lot more than that.

I noticed he never stopped to let me off until he had gone into a bank and made a deposit. And suddenly I thought that maybe he was just having me ride home with him so that I would be some sort of protection. He knew that the underworld knew that if I were killed, my paper would move heaven and earth to catch and punish the murderer. I never rode with him after that.

Though he loved the live action, Rothstein wasn’t opposed to betting on the ponies when he was away from the track-or trying to work whatever advantage he could. Once A. R.-very near to post timecalled a bookie in New Jersey, asking if he could handle a $10,000 bet on a certain horse. The bookie wasn’t sure and said he’d call back. A. R.‘s mind went to work and he kept his phone off the hook. His reasoning was this: If his horse lost, he’d refuse to pay, claiming that the bookmaker never verified the transaction; if he won, he’d hold him to it. The horse, won, paying 5-to-2. Rothstein collected.

He didn’t always win on the horses. Sometimes he lost fabulous sums of money. At Belmont he bet $300,000 against $100,000 on a horse called Snob II. He lost. In 1922, he put $120,000 against $40,000 on Harry Sinclair’s Morvich, that year’s Kentucky Derby winner. Again, he lost. In both cases, wrote the New York Sun, he took the reversal “without batting an eye.”

Because of such setbacks (and rest assured that despite any outward equanimity, he was indeed upset) and because he fancied himself a “sure-thing” operator, A. R. took pains to reduce risk, including working with the most scientific handicappers. At one time he employed the team of Ben Silverman and William Collins. Collins, a tall, pale, dark-eyed, scholarly man, was expert on matters of horse racing itself, discerning the capabilities of each animal, jockey, and trainer and how track conditions and weather effected outcomes. Silverman was a genius at numbers and odds. Each approached Rothstein separately, wishing to enter into his service. He respected their talents, but realized they were much more valuable working in tandem.

Starting one spring meet in Maryland, Rothstein employed Silverman and Collins to select his bets. The duo worked long hours, honing their predictions late each evening and early each morning. “Their findings,” Carolyn Rothstein noted:

were so exact that they would foretell that a chosen horse would win by a length and one half, or two lengths. And usually they were right.

However, their computations were so delicate, that if an unexpected weather condition arose, such as a light wind when they were figuring for no wind, or a moist track, when they had made their estimates for a dry track, they would throw out all their work, and not bet at all that day.

Many factors entered into their figuring of form and percentages. If Mr. Collins figured a horse had a good chance to win, but Mr. Silverman figured that the odds weren’t favorable, they didn’t bet.

Early each afternoon they traveled to A. R.‘s West 84th Street threestory stone and brick town house to work with Carolyn on the actual placement of bets. (Arnold couldn’t be bothered to be awakened or to diverge from his late-night schedule.) Rothstein provided Carolyn with simple instructions: Bet ten times whatever Collins wagered on a race; when both Collins and Silverman waxed enthusiastic about a certain horse, bet even more. A bookie once told her: “Mrs. Rothstein, your voice is the one I hate most to hear over a telephone.”

A. R.‘s experiences with Silverman and Collins were fairly straightforward. His experience with handicapper Will Davis was not.

One early morning Carolyn Rothstein heard her husband downstairs, talking with someone. She didn’t recognize the other voice. She found A. R. in the kitchen, munching on milk and cookies with a tall, pale, painfully thin, beetle-browed stranger. “Carolyn,” Arnold began, “this is-” halting because he actually didn’t know the man’s name.

“Will Davis,” interrupted the stranger.

“Will Davis,” A. R. continued, as if such things happened all the time. “He wants to borrow $1,000.”

That wasn’t exactly true. As A. R. spoke, he pulled a revolver from his pocket, adding. “I’ve got his collateral.”

That was it. Davis had tried robbing Rothstein in his own home, but A. R. had miraculously talked his way out of it.

“I was desperate,” Will explained. He told Carolyn that he had left home in California with life savings of $1,000, but arriving in New York, he himself had been robbed. He stole a gun, and heard about The Big Bankroll, a man who carried thousands on his person and prowled the dark streets of Manhattan alone. Robbing A. R. would set Davis on his feet again.

“Tell her why you wanted the money,” Rothstein commanded the would-be robber.

“To play the races,” Davis responded haltingly. “I know I can beat them. My figures prove it.” A. R. met a lot of people with betting systems. Most ended up turning their revolvers on themselves.

“No one can beat the races,” A. R. scoffed. “Not with figures.”

Davis screwed up his courage. “I can,” he said, not exactly matter-of-factly, but something in his manner said he was telling the truth.

In between sips of milk, A. R. played with Davis’s gun, clicking the chamber open. It was empty. “That’s like your figures,” Arnold mocked Davis.

“Please, Mr. Rothstein,” the intruder begged, “give me a chance. I’m not a holdup man. I’m a schoolteacher. At least, I used to be. I’ve got a wife and kid in California. It’s like I told you. I saved up a stake to come here and bet the horses. Someone picked my pocket.”

A. R. saw something in Davis. “I was desperate,” Davis continued. “I didn’t think. All I wanted was a loan. I would have paid you back.”

Carolyn intervened. “My God, Arnold, can’t you see he’s telling you the truth?”

“I’ll give you a chance, Davis,” Rothstein promised. “You give me your figures for ten days. If they’re good, then I’ll back your play. Meanwhile-meanwhile, here’s eating money.”

Each day Davis gave A. R. at least one pick-but never more than three. Rothstein made money and decided to keep him, promising him 15 percent of his winnings at season’s end.

Davis needed money for his family, and Arnold promised them $50 a week as long as Davis’s picks remained profitable. Davis worked twenty-hour days, refining his choices up to the last minute if even the smallest variable changed. At season’s end A. R. earned $160,000 from Davis’ selections and he owed Davis $24,000, which Davis wanted as soon as possible so he could return to his family. He was willing to settle for $5,000 if he could just go home.

Rothstein didn’t want him to leave. The fall Maryland racing season was still on, and he took Davis with him. The trip earned A. R. another $90,000. Still he delayed paying Davis, and still Davis said he’d settle for just $5,000. A. R. said that wasn’t the point and eventually gave him $4,000 in cash and $30,000 in Liberty Bonds-plus a cash bonus of $5,000. “For your kid,” as he put it.

Davis promised to return, but never did. Rothstein had his agents scour California but without luck. The mystery irritated A. R. He complained to Carolyn: “There’s something fishy about it. Did he play me for a dub?”

“Maybe he has all the money he wants?”

“Nobody ever has that much. Do you think he was a detective or a government man?”

“Isn’t that silly?”

“Then why doesn’t he come back? Or at least write?”

“I don’t know.”

There the matter ended, but after A. R.‘s death, Carolyn Rothstein received a letter from San Francisco. The brief handwritten note read:

I’m awfully sorry.

Will Davis

Sometime around 1920, A. R. started his own racing stable, Redstone (Rothstein=Redstone) Stables, with six yearlings purchased for an average of $3,500 each: Sidereal, Gladiator, Sporting Blood, Georgie, Wrecker, and Devastation.

Herbert Bayard Swope named each horse. Sidereal, a twoyear-old chestnut colt by Star Shoot out of Milky Way, was not “Side-reel,” but rather a more esoteric word. “Almost everyone called the horse Side Reel,” Swope complained. “Even a cultured bookmaker like Maxie Blumenthal. I had a difficult task trying to explain it was sydee-ree-al, that the nomenclature was quite simple: it had been obtained through the name of the horse’s sire, Star Shoot. Sy-dee-reeal, of or pertaining to the stars.”

Algie Dangerfield, secretary of the Jockey Club, selected the colors. Some thought Redstone Stable’s were crimson and gold. Carolyn Rothstein called them primrose (more of a violet) and gold-a gold horse upon a primrose jacket and hated the design-“a primrose jacket and a gold running horse, which looked more like a greyhound than a horse. You couldn’t distinguish it. I don’t think any one has ever seen anything so dreadful on a race track….”

Rothstein had his highest hopes set for Gladiator, by Superman, out of Lotawanna. Observers thought the powerful horse might have become a second Roseben, the greatest sprinter of its time. In 1921 Gladiator, with Hall of Fame jockey Clarence Kummer aboard, captured Belmont’s Toboggan Stakes, with a 1:08 4/5 pace, a record until 1956. A. R. set his sights on the $40,000 Latonia Derby, a race comparable to the Kentucky Derby. Rothstein couldn’t secure the jockey he wanted, but his second choice, Edwin Johnston, rode Gladiator to a photo finish. For two minutes judges haggled, before awarding the victory to the opposition. Johnston was reduced to tears, and nobody felt much better. “I think this was the greatest disappointment of my racing experiences,” Carolyn Rothstein wrote. “I felt a real affection for Gladiator, and I believed at the time that Gladiator himself was brokenhearted over losing the race, which all of us who knew him believed he should have won.”

Shortly thereafter, Gladiator contracted a severe cold. Veterinarians inserted a tube in the animal’s throat. It caused chronic breathing problems, destroying the horse’s effectiveness after six furlongs. After one particularly poor showing by the horse, A. R. saw his chance to recoup. Entering Gladiator at a claiming race at Aqueduct, he placed $120,000 on the animal-and won.

Rothstein’s-indeed, anybody’s-biggest killing at the racescame at Aqueduct on a blisteringly hot Monday, July 4, 1921.

A. R. entered Sidereal in the day’s sixth and last race. For most of the afternoon it appeared he would not even run. Why not? The horse wasn’t even at the track; he was three miles away at Belmont. And though seven other horses had scratched, competition remained formidable. Carpet manufacturer John Sanford’s Slieveconard, a beautiful animal, was favored at 3-to-1. Charles Stoneham’s Ultimo and traction magnate Thomas Fortune Ryan’s Northcliffe each went off at 7-to-2. Even Harry Payne Whitney’s Brainstorm at 10-to-1 drew more attention then Sidereal. With the horse still at Belmont, it wasn’t hard to conclude that he’d be scratched. As the day began, Sidereal languished at 50-to-1.

Not that anyone much cared. The sixth was for maidens-horses without a win to their credit-and featured a mere $1,672 purse. Most bettors focused on the fourth race, the Carter Handicap and its $4,000 purse.

Twenty thousand patrons jammed Aqueduct despite overcast skies, 94-degree heat, and stifling humidity. A. R. hatched a plan. “What a great day for an oldtime killing!” he exclaimed. “Those bums on the lawn [the bookmakers] won’t know what they are doing when this crowd begins to push and shove them around.”

A. R.‘s trainer was the great Max Hirsch, though not always officially. Sometimes Rothstein and Hirsch pretended that Hirsch’s brother-in-law Willie Booth was the Redstone Stables trainer-but it was always Hirsch. A former jockey, Hirsch had originally picked out Sidereal for Rothstein-and selected Gladiator, Sporting Blood, Georgie, Wrecker, and Devastation for good measure. Hirsch took great pride in Sidereal, thought he had real potential. And, in fact, he knew he had more than potential. The colt had run strong in workouts, very strong. That horse could win today. But why waste him in the sixth? It was a nothing race. Better to save him for a few days.

Max Hirsch walked toward the secretary’s office, ready to scratch Sidereal. Then A. R. approached him, gesturing toward Aqueduct’s bookies, who were already barely able to handle the day’s volume of business. “They’re so busy, they don’t have a chance to think,” Rothstein snorted. “This would be a day to put a horse over. By the time they got wise they’d be paying off.”

He was right. In those days, bookmakers could take only oral bets legally. With a crowd like this, they could barely track individual wagers, let alone discern they were being set up for a killing of epic proportions. A. R. asked if Hirsch could think of how to capitalize on the situation: “Do you know anything?”

“Nothing. The only horse we were going to run today was Sidereal. I’m going to scratch him for a race on Friday.”

“What shape is he in?”

“He’s sharp. I think he could beat these other horses.”

“Then run him,” A. R. ordered.

“I didn’t van him in,” Hirsch protested. “He’s in the stable at Bel mont.” He thought again. Sidereal was ready. “I can get him here in time, though,” Hirsch added, “if you want to run him.”

“We’ll never get another chance like this,” said Arnold. “Get the horse here.”

Hirsch phoned Belmont-but no one answered. He called again and again. Still nothing. He knew Rothstein was making bets. He had to get Sidereal to Aqueduct.

Rothstein was indeed busy making bets, capitalizing on Sidereal’s long odds. But he couldn’t tip his hand. If he plunged two or three hundred grand, that would crash the odds. He had to obtain the best odds possible, laying down maximum money while creating minimum suspicion.

A. R. needed help. He casually asked the biggest gamblers at the track if he could borrow their betting commissioners. “I don’t figure on betting today,” he lied, “but I may change my mind. I gave Nat Evans and the boys a day off.”