Bugsy Siegel Page 9
“Big Greenie?” Siegel replied. “Never heard of him.”14
The detectives gave Siegel just time enough to throw on some clothes, and packed him into one of the four cars. Rather than take him to headquarters, they drove him to the Kipling Hotel on West Third Street and took him up to room 521. There were no Miranda rights to recite: some twenty-five years would pass before they became the law of the land. As a result, Siegel had no lawyer at his side. Nevertheless, he gave little away.
Siegel denied any involvement with Tony Cornero and the SS Rex, and he professed complete bewilderment at mention of the race wire. “I don’t know nothing about that,” he said. “I don’t even know how it runs—sidewards, backwards, anything about it.”15
The detectives rolled their eyes at that. Just weeks before, Moe Annenberg had pleaded guilty to massive tax evasion on his own race wire, Nationwide News Service. In exchange for dropping charges against his son, the IRS had accepted a settlement of $9.5 million from Annenberg.16 The fallen titan had also agreed to sell Nationwide for a pittance, and to serve three years in Pennsylvania’s Lewisburg federal prison. Siegel and his cohorts were actively vying to seize Nationwide for themselves.
As to the killing of Big Greenie, Siegel had no recollection of what he was doing the night of November 22, 1939. He did admit to knowing Frank Carbo, based on their mutual love of boxing and Carbo’s management of various boxers.
The detectives drove Siegel to the county jail, where a crowd of news photographers awaited him. That was the only time Siegel lost his composure. He couldn’t be photographed yet, he said, not with his hair unbrushed and an open-collar shirt. One of the detectives lent him a comb; another provided him with a tie. “I want a mouthpiece”—a lawyer—Siegel declared.17
With Siegel secure in a Los Angeles County jail cell, the detectives returned to 250 Delfern Drive for a closer look. They found a button in the library that slid open a panel, revealing a strong box with a double-barreled shotgun, loaded and ready to go. Within the strong box were personal treasures: gold watches, gold cuff links, a gold cigarette lighter, and more. There, too, were the guns Siegel had shown George Raft: a .38 caliber revolver and a .38 Colt automatic.
Of more interest to the detectives were account books that had unlisted phone numbers of Hollywood stars and studio heads. There were daily bets recorded, to show that Siegel had been to Santa Anita almost every day. There were also loans noted, from both stars and studio heads, as well as the intriguing correspondence between Siegel and the Minnesota ex-convict who by this time had repaid the $100,000 he owed Siegel.
For a court appearance the next day, Siegel was the best-dressed man in the room, with an impeccably pressed blue pinstriped suit, a snow-white shirt, dark blue tie, and a fedora. To the press he fiercely denied the story of hiding in his attic. “I was just getting up and getting dressed Friday morning when I looked out of the window and saw four cars with a lot of men with guns piling out. I stepped into the linen closet, waiting to hear who they were when they announced themselves to the maid. I hadn’t the slightest suspicion they were police officers. They didn’t announce themselves but came right on up. Then I stepped out of the linen closet. I was never in the attic, and the mark[s] the detectives say I left on the linen in the closet climbing up [to] the attic were made by the officers themselves.”18
As for the story that stool pigeons “Kid Twist” Reles and “Allie Tick Tock” Tannenbaum were about to tell a grand jury of Big Greenie’s murder, it was, as Siegel put it, ridiculous. “For instance, take Al Tannenbaum. Al Tannenbaum is singing because he was promised immunity. I would like to say right now that he is a liar.
“Tannenbaum says he was driving my car the night Greenberg was killed,” Siegel explained. “Wouldn’t I be a sucker to allow a thing like that, and to take a chance that Tannenbaum, a well-known no-good, would crash a car registered to me? I am laughing.”19 Ah, that extra wrinkle in the plan!
Asked what he did for a living, the thirty-seven-year-old Siegel declared himself “retired.”20
Siegel was remanded to the county jail without bail. A day or so later, the grand jury was mesmerized by the appearance of Reles and Tannenbaum, flown out from New York to L.A. under heavy guard. The two testified for hours, relating the Big Greenie story in scintillating detail. They declared that Siegel swung more weight in the mob than Lepke, and that in his bootlegging days, Siegel was, as Tannenbaum put it, the “absolute king” of the liquor business in New York.21
By the time the duo flew home, again under close guard, five men were charged with Big Greenie’s murder. Along with Ben Siegel, the defendants were the imprisoned Lepke and three others now on the lam: “Champ” Segal, a boxing promoter; Mendy Weiss, one of Lepke’s lieutenants; and Frank Carbo, the trigger man. (Reles and Tannenbaum had traded their testimony for their freedom.) Rumors swirled that one or more of the three might soon meet Big Greenie’s fate. But in the courtroom, Siegel waved off the thought. “Just let me get to a telephone and I’ll have them for you within 24 hours,” he told the judge. His offer was declined.22
Some days later, Siegel was back in court to make his formal plea. Not guilty, his lawyer declared. The lawyer tried to win his client bail by calling him “a good citizen and family man whose business interests would be incompatible with flight.”23 The judge declined this proposal as well. That meant an immediate return to county jail, where Siegel would remain until his trial.
It took time for the press to discover how different jail was for Siegel than for his fellow inmates. He had stylish, hand-tailored uniforms with notched lapels that were made of a soft, high-quality denim. He had an inmate to iron those uniforms and shine his shoes. He got to sleep on the prison doctor’s comfortable bed and to use his private shower. He had takeout food from local restaurants, including caviar and roast pheasant from Ciro’s restaurant on the Sunset Strip. Often, he entertained women visitors in the jailer’s quarters. Unrestricted phone use was de rigueur.24
Siegel even had his freedom, more or less. By mid-November, he would be granted nineteen daily leaves, each from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M., within his forty-nine-day stay. Most of his outings were listed as meetings with his dentist or lawyer. Some may have been with his daughters, to give the impression he was out and about, busy with work, and if so then also to check in with Esther, as well as his parents, who by now were apparently living at the house on Delfern Drive.
Of Siegel’s many “leave” days from county prison that fall of 1940, at least a few were rendezvous with Wendy Barrie, the new woman in Siegel’s life.
Barrie, the daughter of a distinguished lawyer, had grown up in England. She made her screen debut at twenty, resplendent with red-gold hair and sapphire blue eyes, and soon brought her accent and élan to Hollywood, where she played opposite Spencer Tracy (It’s a Small World) and Jimmy Stewart (Speed). She was at the peak of her career in 1940, with five films that year alone, when she came into Siegel’s life, unbothered by the fact that her date was a gangster.
George Raft, ever the self-sacrificing friend, found himself recruited into taking Barrie to the county jail for an extended visit with her new beau. Raft did give her a serious warning on their drive home. “If you go around with Ben Siegel you’ll get hurt,” Raft said. “And I mean hurt. Suddenly nobody will want you in pictures.” Barrie was resolute. “I’ll take that chance,” she said.25
Days later, a prison guard drove Siegel to Lindy’s restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard, where he met up with Barrie for a meal after having his handcuffs removed by the thoughtful guard. Unfortunately, the crusading editor of the Los Angeles Examiner, Jim Richardson, had heard rumors of Siegel’s day leaves and assigned a reporter to follow the gangster as he was driven about town in a county vehicle. Plastered on the front page of the Examiner the next day were pictures of the happy couple.26
The city was outraged, especially when further investigation revealed the role that county jail doctor Benjamin Blank had played in the scandal. Bl
ank was the one who had sanctioned all those luxuries. In return, he had accepted multiple checks totaling $32,000. Record of the payments was found in Siegel’s strongbox. Oddly enough, Dr. Blank had been one of the luckless treasure hunters aboard the Metha Nelson. He was also Maurice Siegel’s roommate in medical school. A short proceeding led to his formal ouster as county jail physician. He vowed to fight it, after accusing his fellow jailers of “making life miserable” for Siegel, who was, as he put it, “a personal friend,” whom he would “not permit . . . to be so treated.27
The negative coverage did nothing to cool Barrie’s ardor for Siegel, nor his for her. When Barrie told him about Raft’s warning, he was incensed. As soon as Siegel was released that December, he would drive up to Raft’s Coldwater Canyon home and charge in with gun drawn, threatening to shoot his friend dead. Raft knew how to calm him down, using a soothing nickname he liked: Baby Blue Eyes. But long after Siegel left, Raft was shaking. He was sure that anyone else in his shoes that night would have been a dead man.28
The coziness of L.A.’s county jail could do only so much to ease Siegel’s anxiety about his upcoming trial. Another court performance from “Kid Twist” Reles and “Tick Tock” Tannenbaum might leave him facing the death penalty, and L.A.’s long-serving district attorney, Buron Fitts, was eager to see justice done. But Siegel had a get-out-of-jail card to play. With Fitts running for a fourth term as D.A., Siegel managed to make a $30,000 contribution to Fitts’s rival, John Dockweiler. That was a fortune for a D.A.’s race in 1940, and one that probably tipped the outcome, yet Dockweiler seemed not to notice it.
Days after his victory, Dockweiler made a show of preparing for the Big Greenie murder trial. That brought an angry letter from Siegel, who had expected his immediate release to be Dockweiler’s first order of business. He announced his $30,000 contribution to the press and demanded its return. Dockweiler responded by sending the money back immediately, claiming he had no idea it had come from Siegel.
Nothing Dockweiler did in his first days in office persuaded outgoing D.A. Fitts or Brooklyn D.A. Bill O’Dwyer to risk sending their star witnesses to testify. Consequently, Dockweiler had no case, which appeared to be just what he wanted. The judge had no choice but to adjourn the trial. An investigation by Fitts’s outgoing team of attorneys excoriated Dockweiler and found his office mired in corruption.29
Before the judge’s gavel came down, halting the case, Siegel offered a statement. “I am keenly disappointed in the dismissal of this case,” he told the court. “I am absolutely innocent of this offense and have sought nothing but the opportunity to establish my innocence in a fair trial before a Los Angeles court and jury.”30 With that, Siegel reclaimed a pair of gold cuff links from the jail’s front office and walked out a free man, home in time for Christmas.
Siegel wasn’t quite off the hook yet. In the early summer of 1941, he was charged in New York with harboring a fellow suspect in the Big Greenie murder case: Lepke Buchalter. With an armed escort, he was flown east from L.A. and once again sat in a courtroom, this time just a few seats from Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and Allie “Tick Tock” Tannenbaum, whose threat to Siegel’s continuing freedom remained keen.
Reles took the stand to say that Siegel had attended the meeting called by Lepke in August 1939 in which the decision was made to kill Greenberg. The meeting lasted twenty to thirty minutes, Reles recounted. That was when Siegel declared that he would take care of Big Greenie in L.A. over the others’ protests. Reles testified that he had known Siegel at that point for ten years.
When Siegel was called to the stand, he testified that he had never met Reles. As for the meeting just before Lepke’s surrender, he said that he couldn’t have been there because he’d been sailing to Naples with Dorothy Di Frasso on a ship called the Conti di Savoy. Upon reaching Italy, he added, he and di Frasso had attended an audience with the pope. They had met the king of Greece, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, and the duke of Spoleto, who later became the king of Croatia. The court was stunned. Siegel went on to say he had returned from Europe to New York on June 5, 1939, and immediately returned to Los Angeles. Thus he could not have attended the supposed meeting with Lepke in August of that year.
Asked what he did for a living these days, Siegel described himself as a stock and bond operator worth $500,000, but added that he was also in real estate. At that moment, he was trying to sell his mansion on Delfern Drive. “If somebody offered me $75,000 for the place I’d take it and throw in the furnishings,” he declared.31 Siegel probably meant what he said. As Lansky had noted, Siegel didn’t seem to care what he did with his money once he got it. The game of getting it—the adrenaline rush—was what exhilarated Siegel, just as it had when he was a ten-year-old boy, tearing off with a bag full of change on his first neighborhood theft, the market owner racing after him until he lost his breath.
If only out of embarrassment, L.A. district attorney John Dockweiler decided by the fall of 1941 that a Big Greenie murder trial must go forward after all. On the East Coast, the Brooklyn D.A. Bill O’Dwyer had gotten what he needed from Reles and Tannenbaum in his New York case against Lepke for murder. Now he was willing to send the songbirds back to L.A. to testify once more against Siegel, protected by some of his best men.
For once, Siegel seemed to lose his swagger. On September 18, 1941, with a grand jury about to convene, he disappeared. His lawyer said he was vacationing at Lake Tahoe. A grand jury in late September heard riveting testimony from Tannenbaum, but Siegel was a no-show in the courtroom. His absence seemed to hearten Tannenbaum. With gusto, he described Siegel as “what is known in gangster parlance as a cowboy, which is the way the boys have of describing a man who is not satisfied to frame a murder but actually has to be in on the kill in person.” Tannenbaum added that in one sense, Siegel was underappreciated. For more than a decade, he said, “Ben Siegel was the supreme gangster in the U.S., the top man, he had been the big boss for the last ten years throughout the country.” Six days later, Siegel was still absent. When the judge asked why Siegel’s chair was empty, there was only “mocking silence,” as one newspaper account had it.32
With his life in the balance, vacationing on Lake Tahoe was the last thing Siegel was apt to be doing. Tannenbaum’s testimony was devastating, and soon the grand jury would hear worse, if that were possible. Reles was due to address the grand jury in November. Siegel was almost certainly meeting with Syndicate stalwarts to see what could be done about Reles before the start of Siegel’s reconvened trial.
For months, Reles had resided at the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island under around-the-clock armed guard provided by the government. Reles was, according to Rich Cohen, “a jerk, lighting matches and throwing them at the officers, pouring pepper all over his food. The cops had to grit their teeth and bear it, for Reles was implicating one gangster after another in the many murders of Murder Inc.”33 Now he was about to do the same with Siegel.
At about 3 A.M. on the night of November 12, 1941, Captain Frank Bals had six policemen on the midnight-to-eight shift guarding Reles and three other squealers on the hotel’s sixth floor. He brewed himself a cup of coffee and turned to see Reles emerging from his bedroom—623—into the sixth-floor common area. “No thanks,” Reles said when asked if he wanted a cup of coffee himself, and retreated into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.
At around 7:45 A.M., a guest on the fifth floor looked out the window to see a gray-clothed body tangled in bed sheets, spread-eagle and very dead on the roof of the hotel’s second-floor extension. From Reles’s own window dangled a makeshift escape line of sheets knotted together and extended by wire, suggesting to the detectives that Reles had meant to escape, possibly by swinging outward and then swinging back through the window directly below him, which happened to be unoccupied. But that was just one of many theories.34
The mystery was never solved, but Meyer Lansky’s version was as good as any. “The way I heard it was that Frank Bals stood in the room and supervised the
whole thing,” Lansky later told his Israeli biographers. “Reles was sleeping and one of the cops gave him a tap with the billy and knocked him out. Then they picked him up and heaved him out.” Doc Stacher, the garrulous Lansky man, said he had overheard Frank Costello say, shortly before Reles’s death, “It cost us a hundred grand, but ‘Kid Twist’ Reles is about to join his maker.”35
Siegel’s life was almost certainly saved by Reles’s demise. For lack of corroboration on Tannenbaum’s testimony, both Siegel and Frank Carbo were freed, and the Big Greenie story came to an end at last in a California courtroom in February, 1942.36
Reles’s death saved Lepke from one dire fate, but not another. On December 2, 1941, Lepke was found guilty of first-degree murder of another gangster, Joseph Rosen. Two of Lepke’s lieutenants, Mendy Weiss and Lou Capone, were found guilty of the same charge. All three were sentenced to die in the electric chair—and did, on March 4, 1944. Weiss’s last words were ones of gratitude. “I want to thank Judge [Irving] Lehman. He knows me because I am a Jew. Give my love to my family . . . and everything.”
The Big Greenie ruling was Siegel’s chance to go legit at last, in a grand, ambitious way. He would buy his way into the burgeoning Las Vegas casino business, and for a brief, shining moment, all of his dreams would come true.
6
The Flamingo
IN 1941, the drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on U.S. 91 took nearly six hours. “It was horrendous,” recalled John Cahlan, the first newspaper reporter to make Vegas his beat. “It was paved, but lots of ups and downs, and two-lane all the way. If you got behind a truck you might as well forget it. And no air conditioning in the cars of those days.” Drivers had to take extra tanks of gasoline; God forbid they should run out in the long stretches between stations. Worst were the sandstorms that rose up from the desert without warning. “It would pit the windshield,” Cahlan recalled, “just as if you were being sand-blasted, and it would take the paint right off the car.” These storms could get so thick that the sky turned dark and a driver had to pull over until the skies cleared. “It didn’t rain like it does now, it just blew instead,” Cahlan said.1