o_192c5t3tp1tpc9s1uc3qg1viua.pdf

"But usually we didn't have to do anything like that. We would just call Paulie, and Paulie would
give us twenty-five or thirty grand with no interest. After all, he was a partner. If we couldn't get
Paulie and wanted to put off paying for a couple of days, Milty had a great trick. He kept five or six
one-thousand-dollar bills around, and he'd give them to me to flash on the winners. Since none of
our clients wanted to get paid in thousand-dollar bills, we could always put off paying them for a
couple of days. The big bills were just too much trouble for wiseguy bookmakers to cash. Milty
must have used those same bills for years.
"We had a great operation. Milty had five different rooms all over the city where we took the
action. We had most of the police on the pad. Milty paid off the Borough Command and the
Division. Every once in a while we'd have to stand still for an arrest, usually by the police
commissioner's Confidential Investigating Unit, but it was a misdemeanor, and all that meant was a
fifty-dollar fine. Nobody ever went to jail for bookmaking. Still, we couldn't figure out how the
cops always knew where we were. Milty was constantly changing apartments. Sometimes we'd
move a couple of tunes a week, but they always knew our new locations.
"We finally figured it out. Milty had this old guy who used to go around and rent our rooms.
That's all the guy ever did. Milty gave him three hundred a week to find the apartments, put down
deposits, sign the leases, get the gas and electric lines opened up, and get the phones installed. The
guy used to come in on the Long Island Railroad, get off, and take buses and subways as far as he
could until he found apartments to rent. Somehow the cops got a line on the guy, and they used to
tail him from one apartment to another until they had a list of our places. Then, when they saw one
of our cars parked outside, they'd crash through.
"After about four months I took my first pinch for running a wire room. It was in August of 1967,
and the cops who broke in said we were doing two million dollars' worth of business a week. I only
wish. We'd gotten word from the cops we'd paid off that we were going to get busted. We were due.
They just went through the motions. It was done right. No cuffs or anything. After we were booked
we took the cops for dinner on Mulberry Street before we went to night court for the arraignment.
Al Newman, our bondsman, was already in court when we got there. I grabbed a cab home. The
cops dropped Milty off. The next day we were back in action at a different apartment. We had taken
a pinch and now we were okay for a while. John Sutler, my lawyer, bounced the case around the
courts for a year until I finally pleaded guilty. I got fined a hundred dollars and went home. It was a
joke. The city was spending millions of dollars for plainclothes cops to catch bookmakers, but it
was obvious that the whole thing was set up so the cops could shake us down. The cops didn't want
to put us out of business any more than they wanted to shoot the golden goose.
"It was at this time that another business opportunity arose. There was a terrific supper club and
restaurant called The Suite on Queens Boulevard, near Forest Hills. Its owner, Joey Rossano, was a
horse-player and gambler. The guy needed money. We made a deal that I'd take over the place but
he'd keep his name on the papers. I paid him some money and I took over his loan-shark debts. I
knew some of the guys he owed, and they weren't very strong. They didn't have the weight. So I
knew I wouldn't have to pay. I just strong-armed them out of the money--and who could they go to?
If you were with Paulie and our crew, you could tell most of the city's half-assed wiseguys to get
lost. I made them eat the debts.
"Also, Karen loved the idea of getting a legitimate joint. Our first daughter, Judy, was two and a
half and Ruth was about six months old, and Karen had been insisting I keep an eye out for a good
business opportunity. She knew about the cigarettes and swag and she knew about Air France. She
knew I had some money, and she wanted me to invest it right. The bookmaking business wasn't her
idea of a good deal. She knew I had taken the pinch, and she knew I used to gamble away most of
the money I made right there in our own office. We all did. We'd get some good action from a
trainer or owner on a certain horse and we'd add a few grand of our own money on top of the bet.
When you do that as a bookmaker, it's only a matter of time. Show me a bookmaker who bets and
I'll show you a guy owned by the sharks.
"Before I thought about taking over The Suite I talked it over with Paulie. He liked the idea. He
liked it so much that he ordered the place off limits for the crew. He said we had to keep the place
clean. He didn't want to turn it into a joint like Robert's.