Murk from the Reservoir

Jerome Park Reservoir in The Bronx is a mile-long meander of New York City drinking water. Often dotted with migratory waterfowl, it serves as a cool, quivery mirror to the red brick apartments and raucous traffic that surround it. The 97-acre artificial lake, built in 1905, holds 800 million gallons of water to quench the thirst of nearly a million New Yorkers. Last year Republican Mayor John Lindsay's reform administration discovered that the reservoir's spalled concrete bottom had never been cleaned, and decided to scour it out. "Because of the magnitude of the job," wrote Water Commissioner James L. Marcus in last month's issue of the American City (circ. 35,664), an urban management magazine, "we awarded it to an experienced and well-equipped contractor."

The muck-bottomed reservoir could serve as a metaphor for urban malaise. Last week, in the wake of Marcus' cleanup, Jerome Park Reservoir was as spotless as the bottom of a washed soup bowl, but the Lindsay Administration was murky with implications of corruption. In the first major scandal to besmirch Lindsay's two-year-old (out of four) administration, Marcus was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of accepting a $16,000 kickback on the $835,669.39 reservoir cleaning contract.

Duclcs & Sharks. Indicted with Marcus on charges that could lead to five years in prison and fines of $10,000 each were five other men. Foremost among them: Antonio Corallo, 54, identified by the FBI as a leader of the Mafia "family" once headed by the late

Thomas ("Three-Finger Brown") Lu-chese. Corallo is known as "Tony Ducks" because he has been tried or investigated for extortion, loan-sharking, narcotics pushing, labor racketeering, gambling, strong-arm tactics and murder, but "ducked" almost all charges. His only significant conviction was for bribing a New York Supreme Court justice to "fix" a prison sentence. Both judge and fixer were given two-year sentences of their own.

Also named were a pair of law partners who had been associated with Marcus in various business deals and a bakery-union official convicted during World War II of ration-stamp violations. Then there was Henry Fried, 68, a onetime (1955-57) member of the New York State commission of correction and currently president of S. T. Grand, Inc., the construction firm that was given the Jerome Park job by Marcus--without competitive bidding.

The exact scenario of the scandal is not yet clear, even in the federal indictment. Investigators say that Marcus was deeply in debt to Loan Shark Corallo. Between January and November 1966, Marcus and Attorney Herbert Itkin, 41, a close friend and business associate, conferred a number of times with Tony Ducks and Bakery Union Official Daniel J. Motto, 57, who has close connections with politicians and the Mafia. These two men apparently advised Marcus to award the "emergency" reservoir-cleaning contract to S. T. Grand, and both served as negotiators with Grand. The kickback--5% of the total contract fee--was divided as follows: Marcus, $16,000; Itkin, Motto and Corallo, $8,000 each. Grand President Fried got the contract--payment enough. Corallo also got what he doubt less hoped would be a continuing grip on a high city official.

History of the Fix. When it comes to such high-up manipulations, New Yorkers do not shock easily. The city of superlatives is the home of the urban "fix." Construction costs of a high-rise building can be raised by $30,000 in a "squeeze" (payoff) merely to keep city inspectors and cops from complicating delivery and construction operations. Says one embittered Manhattan builder: "To sneeze, turn on the lights, even flush the toilet, you have to pay--you even have to pay to have the fire outlet inspected."

Such tactics are in keeping with a tawdry tradition that dates from the earliest days of Tammany Hall. Such old Tammany tigers as Fernando Wood and William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed had more polished counterparts later in men like Mayors Jimmy Walker, who resigned in 1932 after being caught taking bribes, and William O'Dwyer, who was peripherally implicated in a scandal over fire-department permits for fuel-oil installations.

Intricate Story. James Lewis Marcus, 37, is not of the old, rough cast, but is a new sort of New York politician. As such, he appears more naive than his predecessors. Son of a lawyer from Schenectady, N.Y., Marcus worked in investments before he walked into Lind say's campaign headquarters in 1965 and asked for a job. Lindsay hired the tall (6 ft. 1 in.), greying, soft-spoken man in the dark-rimmed glasses without checking his credentials. Marcus, whose wife Lily is a daughter of former Connecticut Governor John Davis Lodge, served as a nonpaid public relations aide during the campaign, then as a troubleshooter during the early months of Lindsay's mayoralty. One of his jobs: to clean up the blatant homosexuality in Greenwich Village and along Broadway. Marcus was later named a $30,000-a-year commissioner.

Last week a check was finally run on Marcus' credentials. They showed that though Marcus claimed attendance at four different colleges (Penn, Rutgers, Union and Siena) he had no degree. Though he claimed to have been director, president or a partner in a number of. investment or speculative corporations, from Chicago to London, many of the firms proved either dead or even possibly nonexistent. At week's end, Marcus hired Washington Attorney Edward Bennett Williams to defend him, and was spending quite a bit of time telling his intricate story to U.S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau, son of F.D.R.'s Treasury Secretary.

Mayor Lindsay, whose own reputation stands to be sullied, was clearly dismayed by the affair. "If the charge is true, it's clear that Mr. Marcus lied to me," he said. "In that event, to say that I have been ill-served is an understatement." And that was an understatement too.

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