Rothstein (40 page)

They got as far as Times Square on a rainy Sunday night in November.

ELEVEN PM, SUNDAY NIGHT, November 5, 1928.

Nearly forty hotel employees gathered round the stricken man in the Park Central service corridor. Patrolman William M. Davis and Dr. Malcolm McGovern bent down to examine him.

Arnold Rothstein had a bullet in his lower-right abdomen but insisted on going home, telling McGovern he lived on West 72nd Street. He wanted a cab. He just wanted to go home.

McGovern had other ideas. He had to get Rothstein to the nearest hospital. “You take me to the Polyclinic Hospital then,” Arnold Rothstein responded, finally acknowledging the danger of his situation but still harboring ideas of his own-“and get my own doctor for me.”

Patrolman Robert J. Rush arrived on the scene. He already possessed a very important clue. Rush was on ordinary patrol duty when cabbie Abe Bender spotted him. Bender told the officer a strange story. Sitting in his parked cab near the Park Central-at Seventh Avenue near West 55th-Bender suddenly saw an object skidding across the Seventh Avenue trolley tracks. He walked up the street and found a Colt .38 caliber “Detective Special,” a gun featuring a very short barrel, just two inches in length-a weapon small enough to be concealed in a man’s hand.

Bender first thought it had been thrown from a passing sedan-a sedan carrying three men. “Something was thrown out of it,” he said. “I stopped my cab and picked it out of the curb. It was a .38 caliber revolver, still warm, with one cartridge fired.”

But it came from someplace else. The gun itself was badly damaged from being tossed out a nearby window at the Park Central. Its gutta-percha stock was cracked. Its hammer jammed. Just one cartridge, the one fired at Rothstein, remained in the chamber. Rush ordered Bender to take him to where he’d found the weapon. There, on the street, they found five unexploded shells.

It was valuable evidence. Unfortunately, while retrieving it, Bender obliterated any fingerprints the assailant left on it. “A time like this, who thinks of fingerprints,” he shot back. “I am a hackie, not Sherlock Holmes. So, do me something.”

Meanwhile A. R. arrived at Polyclinic Hospital. Doctors anesthetized him and probed for the bullet, not finding it at first. Removing it was crucial-for the longer it lay inside, the more sepsis-infection-spread within. The initial prognosis wasn’t good. The bullet ruptured Rothstein’s bladder and cut through his intestines, resulting in tremendous internal bleeding. Polyclinic Hospital director Dr. Abraham A. faller pessimistically told reporters that the only thing giving doctors any hope was the relatively clean life the nondrinking, nonsmoking, well-rested patient had led. Otherwise, he’d be dead already.

Some puzzled how Rothstein had been able to drag himself from the Park Central’s Room 349 to street level. For a man wounded so seriously, the trek seemed impossible-75 feet down the third-floor corridor, down two long flights of stairs, pushing open a pair of heavy fire doors to reach the spot where elevator operator Vince Kelly first discovered him.

Broadway was a very small town with very bright lights. Word spread immediately that its most powerful denizen lay near death. Reporters, friends, enemies, and curiosity seekers-nearly thirty in all-poured into the hospital. Among the first was a twenty-five-year acquaintance of Rothstein, Edward “Butch” Lindenbaum of the Bronx, who begged to provide blood for a transfusion. Doctors accepted his offer, but hospital administrators finally had police clear the place of Rothstein’s other cronies.

“The patient is resting quietly after the blood transfusion,” Dr. Jailer announced to reporters. “His pulse is of good quality but rapid. He is putting up a good fight. He has regained consciousness but is in no condition to be questioned.”

Detective Patrick Flood’s job, however, was to question the victim. He’d known Rothstein for years. He bent over A. R.‘s bed and asked who did it. A. R. always said that if he was shot, he’d take his assailant down with him. No underworld code of silence for him. But something had changed. “You know me better than that, Paddy,” he rasped. Maybe A. R. thought he’d live. He wouldn’t squeal, wouldn’t tell Flood what he wanted to know, wouldn’t tell Paddy anything. When the detective asked if A. R. had been shot inside or outside the hotel, Rothstein wouldn’t even help with that, merely forcing a grim little smile and placing a finger over his lips in one last playful gesture.

A. R. did want to see his lawyer, Maurice F. Cantor, the machine Democrat assemblyman from West Harlem’s 11th District. When Officer William M. Davis first spoke to Rothstein at the Park Central, Rothstein said “Call Academy 9410-call my lawyer and tell him to bring down the will.”

This will superseded one that A. R. drew up on March 1, but A. R. had never signed this new document. In Cantor’s hurry to reach Polyclinic Hospital, he forgot to bring this new document. A. R. asked him for it two or three times. Cantor rushed back to his West 57th Street offices to retrieve it.

Meanwhile, Carolyn Rothstein had returned home from dinner at the Plaza Hotel, reaching 912 Fifth Avenue at about 10:30. She read the day’s newspapers before turning in at 11:00. A half hour later her maid came into the room and prepared for bed. Oddly enough, the maid slept in Carolyn’s room.

As her maid turned off the lights, Carolyn lit up a cigarette, smoking in bed in the dark.

“Mrs. Rothstein, do you want me to turn on the light?” the maid asked.

“No,” Mrs. Rothstein responded. “I am very nervous.”

She had a premonition of trouble. “I had been generally nervous for a long time,” she would later write, “but it always seemed to me that on the occasions when I became acutely nervous Arnold was in some difficulty. This had happened to me before.”

Not long afterward, the phone rang. It was Rothstein’s exbodyguard, Fats Walsh. Carolyn recognized his voice immediately.

“Rothstein has been in an accident,” said Walsh, calling from Rothstein’s 57th Street office.

“Where is he?”

“At the Polyclinic Hospital,” Fats said. “I’ll call for you right away.”

Carolyn dressed hurriedly and dashed downstairs. It didn’t take Walsh long to make the three-block trip. He dropped her off at a side entrance to the hospital. Two photographers wanted to snap her picture. Fats threatened them with a revolver.

Rothstein lay on the operating table. Carolyn waited in the hallway. She didn’t know for how long. It seemed like forever, but finally at 2:15 A.M. she saw them wheel her husband to a private room on the floor below.

Dr. Philip H. Grausmann, Arnold’s and Carolyn’s longtime personal physician, advised her to return home-there was nothing she could do here. “I didn’t want to go, but he was so urgent that I returned to my room.”

Others came and went. Walter Howey, editor of the Daily Mirror, hired a man to impersonate a priest, “Father Considine of Long Island City,” and gain entrance to Rothstein’s room for a story-on the pretext that the still-Catholic Mrs. Rothstein had requested his presence. Unfortunately. “Father Considine” reeked so much of speakeasy gin that hospital authorities wouldn’t let him in the building.

Arnold’s immediate family soon arrived: his father, who had pronounced A. R. dead when he married a Catholic; his brother Jack, who changed his name out of shame for the life his older brother led. After all, death brings people together. “Arnold has always been an excellent son,” Abraham Rothstein told reporters, and perhaps at this moment he actually meant it. “I am so perturbed over this affair I cannot think clearly enough to say anything to you except that he has been a good son. I could not ask for a better one. He was not the kind who neglects his parents.”

Maurice Cantor returned to the Polyclinic with the will, but when he arrived, A. R. still lay on the operating table. He left again, then returned again, but Arnold remained so weakened that doctors refused Cantor access. Finally, at 3:50 A.M., with will in hand, he entered Rothstein’s room. A. R. was awake, but too enfeebled to open his eyes.

“Arnold,” Cantor told him, “this is your will, your will.” A. R.‘s eyes remained shut. Cantor repeated himself, trying to get through. Finally Arnold rasped a weak, barely audible word: “Will.” That was enough for Cantor, who responded. “This is your will, Arnold. I made it this morning, just as you asked me.” Placing a pen in A. R.‘s left hand, Cantor moved it twice across the paper, forming a shaky “X.” The vultures were beginning to pick Arnold’s estate clean.

This new will would soon enrage Carolyn Rothstein and the Rothstein family, as it provided generous shares for his mistress and his cronies. The first four provisions were straightforward:

• ONE. Payment of A. R.‘s funeral and legal expenses.

• Two. $50,000 to brother Edgar Rothstein.

• THREE. $50,000 to brother Jack Rothstein.

• FOUR. $15,000 to A. R.‘s longtime black servant Tom Farley.

But after these provisions, the will grew increasingly labyrinthine and beneficial to Cantor and to his two coexecutors, Rothstein property manager Bill Wellman and A. R.‘s confidential assistant Samuel Brown:

• FIVE. One-third of the remaining amount to set up a trust fund for Carolyn Rothstein. She would derive the income from this amount, but could not touch the principal. On her death, the trust fund would be donated to charity.

• Six. One-third of the remaining amount to set up a trust fund for Inez Norton. She too would enjoy the income from this amount, but could not touch the principal. After ten years the trust would revert to Cantor, Wellman, and Brown.

• SEVEN. $75,000 to set up a trust fund for Sidney Stajer. He too could not touch the principal. It too reverted to Cantor, Wellman, and Brown after ten years.

The remainder would be divided four ways:

• EIGHT. 40 percent each to trust funds for Edgar and Jack Rothstein. After ten years they or their estates would receive the principal.

• NINE. 10 percent each to trust funds for Wellman and Brown. After 10 years they or their estates would receive the principal.

A tangled, complex document-and one A. R. certainly could not comprehend at that time, and perhaps one he never read at all. Two nurses were present: Elizabeth E Love and Margaret Goerdel. Cantor pressured them to witness Arnold’s signature. Love curtly told Cantor she’d “sign anything to get him [Cantor] out of the room.” Cantor advised both to keep quiet about what they had seen. Miss Love refused, saying she’d “tell everything, the truth, if I have to go to court.” Six weeks later, she did, testifying in Surrogate’s Court that A. R.‘s “hand was limp and never moved” as Cantor “wiggled” it across his will. She testified further:

Daniel J. Madigan [attorney for Cantor]: In your opinion, was Mr. Rothstein of sound mind when the will was executed? Love: He was irrational most of the time. Madigan: How about the rest of the time? Love: He seldom spoke a thing that had any sense to it.

Carolyn Rothstein had no knowledge of Maurice Cantor’s activities, but she had enough to worry about. She retained some feelings for her dying husband and could not rest. Almost immediately after arriving home, she returned to the hospital. A. R. fell back into unconsciousness after Cantor departed, but awoke fitfully at 4:30 A.M. Through eyes that barely saw, he stared up at his wife. The sight pleased him. “I knew you’d be here,” he said as strongly as he could, adding. “When will they operate?”

“Dr. Grausmann says there is no need of an operation,” Carolyn lied.

“Will I pull through?” A. R. asked without much confidence.

“Sure you will,” she lied again. Then, knowing that money was never far from her husband’s mind-no matter what the circumstances-she added, “and I’ll take care of the banks in the morning.”

That didn’t seem to register with him. He wanted to go home. “Well, if I don’t need an operation, then we’ll go home.”

That was all he had in him. A doctor sedated him with a hypodermic, and he lapsed into a sleep from which he never awoke.

By now police possessed an outline of a case, and the desk sergeant at the 47th Street Precinct House wrote in his case blotter:

Arnold Rothstein, male, 46 years, 912 Fifth Avenue, gunshot wound in abdomen, found in employees’ entrance, Park Central Hotel, 200 West Fifty-sixth Street. Attended by Dr. McGovern, City Hospital. Removed to Polyclinic Hospital. Reported by Patrolman William M. Davis, shield #2493, Ninth Precinct.

They also had a suspect in George McManus. Out went an all-points bulletin: “Age, 42. Six feet, 210 pounds. Dark hair and fair complexion. Wanted for questioning. Pick up on sight.”

Why McManus? Not only had Jimmy Meehan testified that A. R. had told him he was going to meet with the gambler, but detectives searching Room 349 found one very important clue. Hanging neatly in the closet of the otherwise-disheveled two-room suite’s closet was an expensive hand-tailored dark blue chesterfield overcoat with a velvet collar. Its owner’s name was embroidered in the lining:

“GEORGE MCMANUS”

There were also handkerchiefs with McManus’s “G A M” monogram in the room. But not much more. The room reeked of cigar smoke, was filled with littered ashtrays, empty liquor bottles and flasks, and dirty drinking glasses. Some of the glasses bore traces of lipstick. But there was no sign that Arnold Rothstein had visited the room or that it had recently been the scene of violence. No gun, no spent shells, and, most mysteriously, no blood.

There was no murder weapon-at least, not there. The revolver had found its way to a Seventh Avenue gutter and to Al Bender. But there was an open window and a torn screen through which it might have been thrown. Unless somebody talked, prosecutors would have their work cut out for them.

As A. R. lay dying, something mysterious happened: He became a hero to the traditional Jewish community he had worked so hard to distance himself from. The Yiddish press lavished praise upon their wayward son. The Morgen Zhurnal praised A. R. as possessing “the manners of an aristocrat and a rare and beautiful vocal inflection…” Forwerts approvingly called him “a gentleman gambler [who] made his living by the old tradition of honest gambling.” Der Tog called Rothstein’s shooting “tragic,” claimed that he had been “totally absolved” of blame in the Black Sox scandal, and concluded remarkably: “And so it seems that there he lies, not like one who belongs to an inferior class, but a sort of saint.”