Rothstein (48 page)

Hired killers do not shoot once, hoping a single slug will suffice. Lead is cheap. They certainly do not fire that single bullet into a man’s gut. They blow his head off, saw him in half with a stream of Thompson submachine bullets. They keep firing until out of ammunition, until their weapons are white hot, until so little remains of their victim that his own mother couldn’t recognize him.

Nor do hired killers toss the murder weapon onto the pavement at the very scene of the crime. The East River is far too convenient for that.

Hired killers did not murder Arnold Rothstein.

So what are we left with? Not much. No planned murder, no assassination plot. Just George McManus in a room with Arnold’s overcoat.

Which is actually the best place to begin-because from the circumstances of that topcoat, we know many things. We know Rothstein made it to Room 349, and we know that George McManus was there at the time. We know that words were exchanged, a single shot fired, a murder weapon flung through a window screen, and the room’s inhabitants-the dying and those determined not to die anytime soon-fled posthaste.

There was no struggle. We know that for two reasons. First, there were no powder burns on A. R.‘s clothes. Second, the angle of the wound meant the shot came from an odd corner of the room. Rothstein may never have seen his murderer fire.

So who was in the room? Rothstein? Yes. George McManus? Yes. McManus not only left his overcoat in the room, he grabbed A. R.‘s. Hyman Biller? Yes. But who were John Doe and Richard Roe?

To understand who was in the room, we have to understand why George McManus originally checked into the Park Central. It was not to kill Arnold Rothstein, nor threaten him-although he was certainly enraged at him-nor even to run another floating crap game.

It was because George McManus had had a fight with his wife.

That was it, plain and simple.

And why the Park Central? It was a gambling hangout. Titanic Thompson and Nigger Nate Raymond took rooms there. Even A. R. maintained a $14-a-day two-room suite in the place-but there was a far better reason.

The Park Central was where George McManus’s intimates livedhis bagman and enforcer, Hyman “Gillie” Biller, in Room 1463; his brother Frank, an official of the Children’s Court, in Room 252.

Hyman Biller and Frank McManus were with George McManus when Rothstein arrived. A. R. had no bodyguard, carried no gun, because of the fourth person in the room: “Richard Roe.”

“Roe” was a retired police detective. After all, no one would harm the Great Brain with a former cop in the place. A former police officer in Room 349 guaranteed A. R.‘s safe passage.

That cop was former Detective Sergeant Thomas J. McManus, George’s and Frank’s brother. Tom made first-grade detective in 1911, left the force in 1914, returned in 1915, and left for good in 1919 to operate his own floating crap and card games. Tom might be retired, might have even crossed over to the other side of the law; but to those in the underworld, a former cop never lost his status completely. With Thomas J. McManus in the room, a man like Rothstein would be safe.

When A. R. entered Room 349, he removed his topcoat, sat down, and talked. He argued-and someone shot him.

It was not anyone standing near him.

Said Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Norris:

The man who fired the shot might have been standing on his right side or even partly behind him. It is impossible to be sure that Rothstein was sitting, but this seems to have been the case. The reason is that the skin is marked above and to the right of the wound in a way that indicates the victim was seated while the assailant was standing. Rothstein was certainly not facing the man who shot him. It seems probable he was not expecting the shot at all, and possibly that he did not know who shot him.

“Possibly that he did not know who shot him.” Rothstein always threatened to name anyone who dared shoot him. He would not live-or rather he would not die-by the gangster’s code of honor, of silence. He proved he would go to the police if necessary, as when he was robbed by “Killer” Johnson. His deathbed silence puzzled many. Perhaps he simply had nothing to tell.

And just as he may not have known who shot him, we do not know why he was shot.

Presumably the shooter panicked as tempers rose. Perhaps he thought A. R. was pulling a gun. The three McManuses and Biller had all been drinking heavily. The gun may even have discharged accidentally. We will never know.

The McManuses were shocked. Someone wrestled the gun out of the shooter’s hand and flung it through the window onto Seventh Avenue.

Who shot Rothstein? No one involved was in the mood to ever discuss the case, but someone finally did.

The killer.

In one sense, our source is unlikely, but in the Damon Runyon world of Arnold Rothstein, not unlikely at all.

Meet Al Flosso, professional magician.

Al Flosso, the “Fakir of Coney Island,” a 5′2″ Lower East Side vaudevillian who had sold magic kits to gawkers at Tim Sullivan’s Dreamland-with a young Bud Abbott as his shill. A fellow vaguely remembered by the magic community, but by nobody else.

Al Flosso’s sister-in-law had married bookmaker Hawk McGee, a George McManus employee. McGee introduced his new in-law to his boss, and the big gambler and the tiny magician grew to like each other. One night, a drunken McManus revealed, “I did it, you know. I was the one who gave it to Rothstein.”

Actually knowing what so many merely suspected frightened Flosso. While George McManus lived, Flosso kept silent. However, years later, he and his son Jack went for a drive. At a stoplight, Al Flosso confided to Jack Flosso what George McManus told him.

McManus also talked to his old associates, confiding details of how he shot A. R. He either told Titanic Thompson directly, or Thompson heard it from people McManus had spoken with. Years later Thompson provided this account to writer, Oscar Fraley, best known as author of The Untouchables.

Frank McManus and Hyman Biller were definitely in the room. “I’m getting a lotta static from some of the boys you owe money to,” McManus told Rothstein. “Some of ‘em are anxious to get out of town, back home, and they’re crying on my shoulder for their money.”

“Let the bastards cry,” Rothstein replied. “They cheated me, and I don’t like that a bit.”

Big George protested, “A. R., there wasn’t any cheating going on. Hell, you know that. The guy doing the dealing most of the night didn’t even know that much about the game. You gotta pay off pretty soon, A. R., or these guys are liable to start getting ugly.”

“The fact is I couldn’t pay them right now if I wanted to,” Rothstein retorted, not calming McManus down a bit. “I got too much money tied up in the elections. You just go tell them they’re going to have to keep their shirts on.”

McManus tried reason. Now he rushed to a table and pulled out a revolver and shouted, “A. R., I got nothing against you, but I’m being held responsible for something you are supposed to be taking care of. And I don’t like that. I’m not asking you to make those I. 0. U.‘s good; I’m telling you. Goddamn you, Rothstein, pay the money.”

“Hey, George, calm down,” A. R. pleaded. “I’m gonna pay; don’t worry. I just need a little more time.”

“You’ve already had time,” McManus spat back. “Time’s up. Come up with the money. Now.”

And with that, George McManus shot Arnold Rothstein. Titanic Thompson’s version of events had the two gamblers struggling and McManus’s gun discharging accidentally, but the physical evidence makes this scenario unlikely if not impossible. Gene Fowler, who possessed his own impeccable sources on Broadway, told a slightly different story of a “half-drunk” shooter meaning to scare Rothstein by firing a shot past his side, but being so inebriated, missed. In both versions, the shooting was accidental, and explains why Jimmy Hines would so solicitously aid a friend, McManus, who had shot another powerful friend, A.R: McManus didn’t mean to do it.

It was just one of those things that happened on Broadway.

But hadn’t we said earlier that gamblers don’t do their own shooting? No. We said that it was “not a premeditated shooting by gamblers.” George McManus hadn’t meant to lure Arnold Rothstein to his death. His big drunken Irish temper had erupted. He reached for his gun, pulled the trigger, and accidentally let A. R. have it.

The New Republic had very neatly and properly ruled out several categories of suspects. But it also incorrectly ruled out McManus:

Some way or other, he doesn’t seem to qualify as the shooter.

He is a big man, a bully man; not the gun-toting type. I question if he ever carried a gun in his life. He doesn’t have to; he is big enough to shoulder people out of his way and to smack them down, which he probably does if they don’t like it. Big men are not gunmen. Gunmen and killers are almost invariably small men, physically unfit, and their careers of violence usually begin on the playground where, as boys, they refuse to take a beating from the bully. They are undersized, and you can prove it by looking them over, from the frail, blond Billy the Kid down to Red Moran, the latest victim to “grease the griddle” at Sing Sing Prison. The big man waiting trial does not fit in the frame.

The New Republic got one very important detail very wrong. George McManus did indeed carry-and use-a gun. In 1902 he served time for threatening to murder a henchman who testified against him after a police gambling raid. In October 1910, he waylaid Tammany District Leader and former Manhattan sheriff and Street Cleaning Commissioner, George Nagle, promising to kill him if he didn’t pay a $50 gambling debt. Polly Adler was the 1920s most famous madam. Her upscale East 59th Street whorehouse catered to celebrities George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley, and actor Wallace Beery, and to such underworld figures as Eddie Diamond, Dutch Schultz, Frank Costello-and to George McManus. In her autobiographical A House Is Not a Home, Polly recounted just how drunk and violent Hump McManus could become. Once, he waved his pistol threateningly at her. Polly temporarily got it away from Big George, but later that evening he fired a shot through the bordello’s French doors.

After the .38 caliber slug entered A. R.‘s body, everyone fled. A. R. staggered down a stairway. Everyone else headed their own way. Sober enough to realize he was in big trouble, George found a phone booth at the corner of Eighth Avenue and West 57th Street and called Jimmy Hines. Hines sent Bo Weinberg to take him to safety in the Bronx.

Coverup Number One, orchestrated by Jimmy Hines, was beginning. It would end a year later with Hump McManus’s acquittal.

Frank and Tom McManus and Gillie Biller knew they hadn’t fired any shots. Big George was in trouble, but they weren’t too worried about themselves. They hadn’t done anything. Hell, they’d even wrestled the gun out of George’s hand. So they remained in the area, keeping their heads, plotting what to do next.

George McManus was the most famous member of his family, an irony because the McManuses were actually a police family. Frank worked in the Children’s Court system. Tom had reached the rank of detective before retiring. Another brother, Stephen, remained on the force, holding detective rank. Their father, Detective Sergeant Charles McManus, had been one of Inspector Thomas F. Byrnes’ “Forty Immortals,” an elite corps of nineteenth-century crime stoppers. To be an “Immortal”-or even one of their sons-brought a place of honor at any precinct house.

The McManuses-Big George notwithstanding-were as police department-blue as any family in New York. The force would take care of them, because they were part of that bigger family of the NYPD. Once it became known the McManuses had been involved in the Rothstein shooting, and not just George but Tom and Frank, well …

Coverup Number Two.

Park Central staff discovered the wounded Rothstein at 10:47 P.M. Around midnight, off-duty police officer Thomas Aulbach ran into Tom McManus near the corner of West 50th Street and Broadway. Unlike brothers George and Frank, Tom did not live in Manhattan. He resided at 2328 University Avenue in The Bronx. What was he doing there on a bone-chilling Sunday night just a few blocks from the Park Central? Was this not beyond the realm of coincidence if he had not been in Room 349 just an hour before?

And stretching the realm of happenstance was this: As Aulbach and Tom McManus stood talking, who should arrive but Gillie Biller? Ostentatious in his air of innocence, he remarked for Aulbach’s benefit, “What do you think of that? Rothstein was shot in the hotel and I am living in the hotel and I just heard of it?”

Early in the case, Detective Paddy Flood told reporters something that at face value seemed to betray a basic ignorance of what really happened-i.e., that George McManus was “Richards”: “We know the identity of those who were in the room, although we have as yet been unable to locate them. One was `Humpty’ McManus and the other was `Richards.’ ” In reality, he may have been saying something far more significant. Tom McManus was also known as “Hump.” Flood revealed more than he wanted to, but everyone ignored his slip.

Circumstances surrounding the McManus family became even more suspicious. At roughly 1:00 A.M. investigator Flood and fellow detective Joseph A. Daly learned of the call from Room 349-hearing about it while at Lindy’s. On reaching the Park Central, they first stopped to pick up a key for that room from house detective Burdette N. Divers. However, they didn’t go to the third floor. Instead, they visited Room 252-Frank McManus’s quarters. He wasn’t in, but Flood and Daly found his wife in bed and interrogated her concerning Big George’s address. She couldn’t-or wouldn’t-provide it, but gave them his unlisted number: Endicott 2649. Despite their presumed interest in George McManus’s whereabouts, they made no further effort to find him until 9:00 the next morning.

When Flood, Daly, and Divers finally reach Room 349, the phone rings. Divers picks up the receiver, obliterating whatever fingerprints are on it-the prints of whoever called Lindy’s and summoned A. R. to his death. The voice on the other end asks for “George.”

At 2:30 A.M., Biller, Tom, and Frank McManus arrived in Room 349. Tom McManus and Paddy Flood were old friends, having met ten or twelve years before when Tom was still on the force. An official departmental report of police malfeasance in the Rothstein murder indicated that the trio “came to the room and, after some conversation, they left,” but actually, as Paddy Flood testified, they stayed for twenty minutes.