The Fat Boys

In inviting New York's slick-haired Gambler Frank Costello to testify about gambling, the U.S. Senate had been strictly high class all the way: it had not only communicated with him in a manner befitting his station (i.e., through his attorney) , but had arranged to have cops at the airport to prevent any possible chance of his getting plugged on arrival. Last week, as he waited to keep his appointment, the "Prime Minister of the Underworld" was determined to be just as polite to the Senate.

He wore mirror black shoes, a pearl blue pin-striped suit, and a necktie that would have graced a diplomat's funeral. He fidgeted as he waited for breakfast in his suite at the Mayflower Hotel. "I want to be right on time," he said, glancing at his watch. "It is proper." He ate little, wrapped a napkin over his forefinger and rubbed his teeth and gums meticulously when he was through. Forced to wait before testifying, he sat in a Capitol anteroom with the stiff dignity of a British butler in an American movie.

Little Casino. But when he sat down in the buzzing committee room and faced the Senators--a subcommittee of the Commerce Committee--he lost no time in sounding his favorite theme; Frank Costello is really a sound, honest, dignified, conservative citizen. The committee, which is considering a bill outlawing interstate racing wire services for gambling information, wanted to know about bookmaking. Costello lighted an English Oval and said, in a voice which rasped like a slot machine gagging on a phony quarter:

"I have very slight knowledge . . . I don't feel I qualify . . . I'm not equipped for it . . ."

But didn't he have anything to do with bookmaking? "Nothing," he said.

Was he a member of a crime syndicate? "No, absolutely not."

What did he do, then? "I am in the real-estate business," he said. "I am interested in a nightclub in Louisiana, and I have some oil leases in Texas." Pressed, he did admit that his nightclub (the famed Beverly Club near New Orleans) had a "casino." There was a little gambling in the casino: "Just to make it clear, they play the roulette wheel and dice."

At one point the wonderful politeness of it all was broken, if only momentarily, by New Hampshire's Senator Charles Tobey. Cried he: "Have you ever greased the palm or paid for protection in any state in the union?"

"No, sir," said Costello.

Well, why did all the committee's witnesses keep referring to him as an underworld big shot? Costello was ready. Said he, earnestly:

"The fantastic write-ups I've been getting. The newspapers have a great investment like Coca-Cola. The newspapers want to get off the nut. With them I'm number one."

That seemed to put the Senators back on their haunches, and they turned to another subject. Did Costello think that this bill would end bookmaking? He sorrowfully admitted that he did not. He explained: "Ninetynine percent of human being is gamble-minded. Passing a law is not enough. There is always an angle on how to skin a cat. There is no way to wash the spots off a leopard. If a man wants to gamble, he'll find some trick to do it."

The Senators gave up. Costello, dignified to the end, stopped to admire the Capitol's murals on the way out.

His appearance had been something of a sensation: it even outdrew the McCarthy investigation. Among Costello's hearers had been Chief of Police Edward J. Allen of Youngstown, Ohio, who had already told the committee: "If it wasn't for corrupt politicians, I might say Frankie Costello wouldn't be in the position he is today." Racketeers like Costello, he added, "all start out with a piece of lead pipe in their hands."

The Lay-Off Man. But Costello was not the only big shot who pooh-poohed the idea that bookies could be reached by law. The committee heard the same line from St. Louis' bland, bankerish James J. Carroll, the Mr. Big of betting, who announces winter book odds on the Kentucky Derby, and "lays off" (in effect, reinsures) all kinds of bets with gamblers across the nation. When he was asked what a bookie needed to operate, beyond the racing wire, he answered with one word: "Money."

Prompt telegraphic reports were useful only in "relieving the anxiety of the. bettor," he said. When Bookmaker Carroll was asked if he opposed the bill, he replied: "It is a matter of complete indifference to me."

Carroll, who made a great show of earnest interest, was treated with vast politeness, too. (Said one baffled spectator: "They act like they was trying to give him the Congressional Medal.") But pudgy, fat-necked Gambler Frank Erickson, once assailed by the late Mayor Fiorello La Guardia as a "tinhorn and punk," ran into trouble. Enraged when Erickson, for approximately the twelfth time, insisted on his "constitutional rights," Senator McFarland yelled: "You're your own crime syndicate, aren't you?"

"I don't know what you call it," Erickson mumbled.

"But you do violate the law?" The witness said, "Yes," in a squeaky voice.

Cried Senator Tobey: ". . . In your soul don't you think this is a hellish business that isn't worthy of a man?"

"I have felt that way," Erickson admitted, obviously a bit puzzled but anxious to be a good fellow.

A Little Nervous. He was threatened with contempt once for failure to tell where he banked his money. He got up, walked to the end of the room and conferred a minute with a fellow as bulky as himself; it was his brother Leonard. Then Erickson answered, apologizing for "losing my memory--I was a little nervous." The brother, it turned out, was paid $20,000 a year. "Just to deposit money in the bank?" asked Tobey incredulously. "That's right," said Gambler Erickson.

When he was asked his opinion about the Senators' bill, Erickson, too, said casually that it would not work. If a man had money, customers, and the sports page of the New York Times, he saw no reason why he couldn't do well as a bookie.

Erickson was a man of some authority on the subject: he admitted to the committee that he makes $100,000 a year. Like all the rest of the fat boys of the rackets, he seemed to be incredulous that Congress entertained the idea that it could stop him; through the testimony of all ran a confident theme: "We're here, and you'll just have to put up with us."

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