meyer lansky mastermind of the mob

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Meyer Lansky: Mastermind ofthe Mob

by Mark Gribben

The Mythical Meyer

Maybe he said it and maybe he didn't, but Meyer Lansky will forever be identifiedwith the statement that the Syndicate, the underworld conglomerate of hoodlums,mobsters and killers from across the nation, was bigger than U.S. Steel. The boastmade for good headlines and helped politicians like Estes Kefauver and BobbyKennedy build their reputations and later achieved near-factual status when HymanRoth, the Meyer Lansky-inspired character in the Godfather II repeated it toMichael Corleone. Whether or not Lansky ever really said it, it was probably true.Organized crime in America from the 1930s to the 1980s was big business andMeyer Lansky had helped make it that way.

There is a lot about Lansky that is apocryphal. Did he, for instance, meet BugsySiegel and Lucky Luciano on the same day? Probably not, but the story still floatsaround about how Lansky, the hard working son of Jewish immigrants, happenedalong one day and found Siegel and Luciano brawling over the favors of aprostitute the Italian was pimping.

Lansky, the story goes, hit Luciano over the head with a tool from his apprentice'sbox and stopped the fight. The known facts fit --Luciano did run some bordellosand no one disputes that Benny Siegel liked the ladies.

But Lansky never mentions the story in his authorized biographies and Lucianoremembers meeting Lansky when Lucky's gang tried to shakedown the youngMeyer and was told in no uncertain terms to go f__ themselves.

"Ok, Little Man," Luciano remembers telling the diminutive Lansky. "You get yourprotection for free."

"Shove your protection up your ass," Lansky shot back. "I don’t need it."

And Lansky, who would never grow much above five feet, proceeded to prove it tothe older boy.

"Believe me, I found out he didn’t need it," Luciano recalled years later. "Next toBenny Siegel, Meyer Lansky was the toughest guy, pound for pound, I ever knewin my whole life and that takes in Albert Anastasia or any of them Brooklynhoodlums or anybody anyone can think of."

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Mug shot of Meyer Lansky (NYPD)

If there ever was a golden age of organized crime, it could be argued that it beganwith Lansky's descent into the underworld when he placed his first bet on a streetcorner craps game before the start of World War I and ended when he died in thewinter of 1983. Arnold Rothstein, the supposed fixer the 1919 World Series, wasthe Cronus of American organized crime -- the proto-godfather, if you will. CharlieLuciano stirred up the action, Benny Siegel provided the chutzpa, Lepke Buchalterterrorized the enemy but Lansky rose above the fray and served as the brains of theoutfit. Luciano was exiled and died relatively young, Siegel and Rothstein wereassassinated and Lepke died in Sing Sing's electric chair, but Meyer Lansky died awealthy old man in Miami, Florida, where he was known as a supporter of Israeland a frequent contributor to the local public television station.

Siegel was more likely to shoot first and ask questions later as he lived and died bythe gun. Buchalter, whose Stalinesque purge of his own gang would signal hisundoing, was the only mob kingpin to go to the electric chair. Lepke was easy tofigure out. He was a cold-blooded killer who was all ego and only interested inprofit. Siegel was just your basic psychopath. A nice guy one minute and a killerthe next, Bugsy was a big talker and loud dresser who loved mixing it up and let hisfists do his talking. Luciano was a little more complex. Lucky killed guys, sure, buthe had a sense of honor and nobility about him and seemed to recognize right andwrong even if he ignored it. Lansky was different. He was a family man with a wifeand kids and a brother. He had learned a trade and operated legitimate businesses aswell as carpet joints and bootleg operations. Lansky was one of the few mobsterswho could rein-in his passions, disdaining the spotlight, which attractedup-and-coming gunsels eager to make a name for themselves as well as the law. Helived a nondescript life, a twice-married father of three children who preferred to letothers do the dirty work for him. Meyer claimed in his biography never to havekilled a man although circumstantial evidence shows otherwise and his exploitsdemonstrate that he wasn’t completely averse to eliminating those who stood in hisway.

Where men like Lucky Luciano and Lepke Buchalter ruled their gangs through thestandard mob methods of violence and fear, Lansky rose to the top of his professionbecause he was first a master organizer and more importantly a man of his word.Lansky was the brains behind the Syndicate; his shrewd analytical mind wasresponsible for the creation of an international crime cartel the effects of which arestill with us today. This is the story of Meyer Lansky, the Russian immigrant whobecame known as the "Mogul of the Mob.



Meyer's favorite photo ofhimself (Eisenberg, Dan)

NEXT: A NICKEL LOST, A FORTUNE FOUND

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Meyer Lansky: The Mastermind of theMob

A Nickel Lost, A Fortune Found

Legend has it that sometime in the 14th Century, Jews were invited to settle in the thenLithuanian-controlled city of Grodno, a town on the border with Poland that was just beginning to makethe change from small agrarian village to prosperous market town. The Lithuanians believed the Jews,reputed to be excellent craftsmen and traders, could help bring commerce to the community.

As in so many European cities, the Jews were tolerated when the community prospered. However inGrodno, as in other cities, anti-Semitism was common. In the 17th Century, the Russians, who had takencontrol of Grodno, wanted to expel all of the Jews. At another time, the Eastern Orthodox priestsordered the Jews to brick up any window which faced the church. And still later, Jews were forbidden tospeak Hebrew. Jewish children were sometimes kidnapped from their parents to be raised as Christiansor to be ransomed by their families.

Under the rule of czars, Jews in Grodno suffered greatly. There were restrictions on their businesspractices and their rabbis were sometimes martyred at the hands of their Gentile neighbors. By the endof the 19th Century, many Jews felt the pressure to emigrate as the Russian pogroms targeted them, theirhomes and property.

Among those who emigrated was Max Suchowljansky who in 1909 left his wife and three childrenbehind in Grodno as he crossed the Atlantic to forge a new life in America. Two years later, 10-year-oldMeyer Suchowljansky and his mother, brother and sister followed Max to New York City. Max hadsaved the money to bring his family to America by working as a garment presser in the clothingmanufacturing industry.

On April 3, 1911, the S.S. Kursk landed at Ellis Island and after numerous processing delays theSuchowljanskys were reunited in a tenement in the tough Brownsville section of Brooklyn. In thepre-World War I era, New York was teeming with immigrants from all over the world. To the10-year-old Meyer it was an exotic and fascinating place.

"I loved to walk around and see things I had never seen before, like peaches and bananas and otherexotic fruits" Lansky told Uri Dan, his biographer. "I had no money to buy anything. I saw some otherboys stealing, but I always remembered my mother telling me not to touch anything that did not belongto me."

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Shortly after moving to Brownsville, the Lansky family (the surname had been Americanized by Maxshortly after he emigrated) moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, "by no means a step up in theworld," according to Lansky biography Robert Lacey.

Meyer’s mother Yetta was the dominant influence in his young life; his father was never able toovercome his depression over his abject poverty and would be only a minor influence on his children.To please his mother was the most important thing to the young boy and to let her down wasunacceptable.

For her part, Yetta Lansky was devoted to her children. She would forgo food for herself on those dayswhen the cupboards were almost bare so that her children would not go hungry. And each week shewould scrimp and save for the Sabbath cholent, a traditional meal of potatoes and eggs, beans andvegetables. On the weeks when things were good for the Suchowljansky family, there would be meat inthe cholent, but more often than not it was served as a meatless dish. Cholent is prepared before theSabbath, for on the Sabbath no cooking is allowed.

On the Friday before the Sabbath, Meyer’s mother would hand the cholent to her eldest son and it wasMeyer’s job to take the dish down to the local bakery because the family didn’t have an oven largeenough to fit the dish. Proudly carrying the family’s Sabbath dinner and a nickel to pay the baker for theprivilege of using the large oven, Meyer would walk down Delancy Street past the small storefronts,pushcart vendors, and street corner craps games.

On one fateful Friday, young Meyer, who had vowed that one day hisfamily would have wealth, decided to risk the nickel on one of those streetcorner games. Although he had never gambled before, Meyer had oftenwatched in fascination as the Irish and Jewish immigrants played withwhat looked like a fortune to the youngster. Confident that he would winand would be able to return home with more money for his family, Meyerplaced his bet.

"I handed the money over to the banker, sure I was going to win – and tomy dismay, I lost it!" he recalled years later. "Nobody in the game paidany attention to me, and I stumbled away. For a long time I couldn’t gohome...I felt worse than a criminal. I had let the family down."

That Sabbath there would be no cholent. It was a defining moment in theyoung boy’s life.

Young Lansky (Lacey)

"I was genuinely concerned at the way I had upset my family, but what troubled me more than anythingwas that I had lost that money," he said. "That night before I went to bed I swore to myself that one dayI would be a winner – I would beat them all."

Meyer began to watch the games more than ever, determined to learn the secret. He began to notice thatother men would often stop by the crap games and collect winnings from the bankers manning thegames. He also noticed that the bankers were using shills – men with whom the bankers were in cahoots– to get others to play the game.

Fortune Found


"I kept my eyes wide open and soon understood the tricks," Lansky said. "Then I decided it was time forme to try my luck again. This time I knew the rules and I understood exactly how they were doing it."On the Friday before Sabbath, with the cholent in one hand and a nickel tightly grasped in the other,Meyer watched a game until he saw the shill place a bet. Following the shill’s lead, the young manplaced his own bet just as the dice were tossed.

"That was one of the most fateful moments of my life. It may sound very strange when only a nickel wasat stake, but it was truly a turning point."

Meyer won that bet like he knew he would and for weeks he played the same game all over the LowerEast Side. Moving from street to street, staying one step ahead of the bankers and shills, Meyer nevergambled with the cholent money again.

Meyer had a head for figures and his father, a hardworking, gentle man who toiled in the sweatshops ofthe garment industry, was determined that his son would be a success. He decided that Meyer wouldexcel in school and would grow up to be a mechanical engineer. In deference to his mother and hispaternal grandfather, Benjamin, who had made it to Jerusalem, Meyer continued his religious studiesand at 13 was Bar Mitzvah.

But Meyer was living a secret life, as well. Lansky was taking his education from the public schools ofNew York, the schools that were meant to help immigrants develop the tools to realize the AmericanDream and to indoctrinate them into the ways of their new home, and putting it to work on the streets ofthe Lower East Side. Hidden in a hole in his mattress was an ever-increasing bankroll which the youngman won by playing the street corner gambling games.

As Meyer continued his solitary winning, he saw that the Jews of the Lower East Side were frequenttargets of the organized Irish and Italian gangs. It wasn’t so much an anti-Semitic assault as it was anattack on the less organized, law-abiding immigrants.

One day, walking home from school, Meyer was set upon by a group of Sicilians, boys much older thanLansky, who demanded tribute from the teenager. The leader of this shakedown group was SalvatoreLucania, who would become better known to the world as Charlie "Lucky" Luciano. Salvatore likedpicking on solitary Jews because they rarely fought back. But this time, he realized he had cornered asmall, but dangerous opponent.

"Pay up," Lucania told Lansky.

Drawing on his past, on the way the Jews of Grodno had stood up to their oppressors time and timeagain, Lansky told Lucania to "go f__ yourself." He would not pay one cent to the Italian or anyone elsefor that matter.

Years later, Lansky would tell an Israeli writer that he "never got on my knees for any Christian,"something of which Lansky was very proud. Standing toe-to-toe in the dirty snow of New York, Lanskyand Lucania both realized that there was something special about the other. "We both had an instantunderstanding," Lucania remembered later. "It was something that never left us."

Lucania and the Sicilians let Meyer pass without paying.

In 1917, Lansky left school for good, a few weeks shy of his 15th birthday. Max Lansky, determined tohave his eldest son do better than himself, got his son a job as an apprentice in a tool-and-die operation,

Fortune Found


with the hopes that one day Meyer would be a mechanical engineer.

"The foreman at the tool-and-die shop where he started to work used to praise his dexterity," Laceywrites in Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. "’You have golden hands,’ he told theyoungster. ‘in 20 years you will be a professional worker and make good money. You’ll earn a dollar anhour.’" At the time, Lansky was working 52-hour weeks for 10-cents an hour. The 20-year climb to adollar an hour was a joke to the 14-year-old who could make that in a few rolls of the dice. Meyercontinued to work at the tool-and-die shop, but he knew he would never be "a professional worker." Themost important education he was getting came from his work after the shop closed, when he and an Irishfriend worked as strong-arm men in a crap game run by Yudie and Willie Albert.

In a few short years, Lansky was known to union organizers as a shtarke, a strong-armer who would doviolence for a price. It is as a shtarke that Lansky’s name first appears on the police blotters. In 1918,16-year-old Meyer Lansky was charged with felonious assault, only to have the charges dismissed.Shortly afterward, Lansky was arrested again, this time for disorderly conduct. Lacey alleges thatLansky was leaning on some of the local prostitutes on Madison Street in an effort to become a pimp.He pleaded guilty to the charge and was fined $2.

In 1921, a year after the Volstead Act ushered in Prohibition, Lansky quit the tool-and-die shop. "Henever worked for anyone again," Lacey writes. "And he was never again employed in a conventional‘job.’"

NEXT: THE BUGS AND MEYER MOB

PREVIOUS CHAPTER



Fortune Found


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The Bugs and Meyer Mob

As a youngster, "we were beaten up daily by the Irish boys," Lansky recalled in his later years. "And wehad a choice. We could run away, or we could fight back – and fighting back meant everythingconnected with that."

Standing up to the Irish and Italian gangs required Lansky and his friends to organize their ownprotective society. Between 1914 and 1920, Meyer and his younger brother Jake -- who was everythingMeyer was not: large of stature and slow of mind – were joined by Meyer "Mike" Wassell, Red Levine,Tabbo Sandler, and Doc Stacher, who would remain a lifelong friend of Meyer’s. Sometime in that sixyear period, Meyer Lansky would meet and become close friends with another man who wouldaccompany him on his rise to the top of the Syndicate.

Lansky and Benny Siegel met, according to Meyer, on a street corner on thepoverty-stricken Lower East Side of Manhattan when they were both youngteens. The two were involved in a fight that arose from a street corner crapsgame when a gun was drawn and subsequently dropped. Lansky saw Bennyreach for the gun and point it at one of the combatants. Just as policewhistles began to blow and the law drew near, Lansky hit Siegel’s arm andforced him to drop the piece.

"Are you crazy," he shouted at Siegel. "Let’s get out of here."

Mug shot of a youngBugsy Siegel

The two youngsters ran away although Benny could barely contain his rage at the older boy.

"I needed that gun," he said.

Despite the rocky beginning, Lansky and Siegel became fast friends and soon were the terrors of theirneighborhood. Meyer was without a doubt the brains of the outfit while Benny, a.k.a. Bugsy, was thebrawn. Benny, the youngest member of the gang, was known on the streets as chaye, the Yiddish wordfor "untamed." He was a hothead: crazy as a bedbug, which gave him the nickname he came to loathe.

Siegel was a loose cannon and it seemed like only Meyer could handle him. It is said that opposites

The Bugs&Meyer Mob

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attract, and there are probably few friends who are as dissimilar as Lansky and Siegel. Benny was aflashy dresser who was quick to fight and despite his high intelligence was ruled by his passions. Meyerwas the thinker, the one who never let his emotions overrule his head. Despite their differences, the twoteens were closer than brothers.

The Bugs and Meyer mobsters were equal opportunity thugs. They liked to shakedown Jewishmoneylenders and store keepers as well as Irish and Italian shop owners and gamblers. No one was safefrom the gang.

Thanks in no small part to Lansky’s experience with automobiles and mechanics, the Bugs and MeyerMob was active in car theft and hijacking. The gang quickly became known as experts in"transportation" with no job to big or dangerous. They fronted the operation thanks to a car and truckrental garage that served as a nice warehouse for swag.

NEXT: A MEETING WITH THE BRAIN PREVIOUS CHAPTER

RETURN TO STORY BEGINNING



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A Meeting with the Brain

To the members of the early 20th century underworld he wasknown simply as A.R. or the "Brain". His name was ArnoldRothstein and in the years before Prohibition, he was arguablythe most important and powerful gangster in the United States.

Rothstein was a gambler and a deal maker and the man to see inNew York City. He cavorted with killers and politicians alikeand there was probably nothing he couldn't fix -- includingreportedly the 1919 World Series. It is a testament to Rothstein’sinfluence that in reality he had nothing to do with the fix, but thegamblers who did used his name to impress the playersinvolved.

A.R. made his fortune by making deals and findingopportunities. Like a modern venture capitalist, A.R. bankrolledothers who came to him with risky propositions. He also had thegift of being able to smell a good bet, whether it was at thegaming table or on the street, and an eye for young hoods withpotential.

Arnold Rothstein before his death,1928 (NY Daily News)

Rothstein was inspirational to many people, not just young gangsters like Lansky: A.R. provided thebasis for the character of Meyer Wolfsheim in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby, andwas Damon Runyon’s inspiration for Nathan Detroit and the character known simply as "The Brain"who appeared in some of his plays.

In early 1920, A.R. knew an easy way to make a lot of money.

In January, the18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law, ushering in the great Americansocial experiment known as Prohibition. Like so many others, the Brain knew that a constitutionalamendment wouldn't keep people from drinking, it would only serve to drive the drinking underground.The law of supply and demand, therefore, dictated that the price of liquor was going to go through the

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roof and the Brain was determined to be in charge of supply.

But A.R. was not the type of hoodlum who got his hands dirty. He needed partners. The Brain waslooking for men who were smart enough to realize that there was still a market for high class, expensiveliquor and who were tough enough to survive in the rough-and-tumble, dog-eat-dog world ofbootlegging. Rothstein knew where to find just such men: he looked to a pair of up-and-cominggangsters from Manhattan: Meyer Lansky and Charlie Luciano.

Rothstein met Lansky at the Bar Mitzvah of the son of a mutual friend, and the Brain told Meyer he wasimpressed with the young man. He invited Lansky to his exclusive apartment at the Park Central Hotelwhere the men had a six-hour conversation about the future. A.R. wanted Lansky to go into businesswith him running booze.

"Rothstein told me quite frankly that he had picked me because I was ambitious and hungry," Lanskyrecalled later, still somewhat in awe of A.R.

The Brain held a similar meeting with Charlie Luciano and would be a profound influence on theSicilian.

"He taught me how to dress, how not to wear loud things but to have good taste," Luciano recalled in hisautobiography. "He was the best etiquette teacher a guy could ever have – real smooth."

Unlike other bootleggers who were interested in making a fast buck selling bathtub gin, Rothstein wasintent on building a network of bootleggers who would only sell the best booze money could buy.

"If they know we are selling quality," he told Lansky and Luciano, "they will pay for it." A.R. developedcontacts with distilleries in Scotland who would sell him grade A scotch which he then transferred toanother minion, Irving "Waxey" Gordon in Philadelphia.

"He went to Waxey Gordon to arrange for distribution of the liquid gold, with the condition that I shouldhave first call on the buy," Luciano wrote. "Naturally, I bought every drop of it."

Rothstein refused to allow his minions to cut the scotch with cheaper booze and forbid them fromripping off each other. To defy A.R. meant courting death. Rothstein, Lansky, Luciano and Gordondeveloped a distribution system that made them all very rich men. A fifth of scotch on the boat cost thebootleggers $2.20 and easily sold on the street for 15 times that.

"We made what we called ‘Scotch right off the boat," Luciano said. "and that original scotch wouldbring us as high as a thousand bucks a case. That case cost us, if you forget the danger part of it, onlyaround twenty-five bucks."

The economics of bootlegging were actually a little more complex than Luciano remembered. Thesupply of scotch and other whiskey had to be regular, so customs and federal agents had to becontrolled. That cost money. There had to be plants to cut the whiskey in, so Lansky and Luciano wentinto the real estate business. They needed bottles that looked like the originals, so they bought a bottlingcompany. They needed labels that looked exactly like the Johnny Walker, Haig & Haig and Dewerslabels, so Lansky bought a printing operation complete with color presses. And trucks. Lots and lots oftrucks.

Meeting with Brain


NEXT: THE ITALIAN AND THE JEW PREVIOUS CHAPTER




Meeting with Brain





The Italian and the Jew

By the start of Prohibition, Lansky and Luciano, along with the Bugs and Meyer mob were widelyknown in the underworld. Luciano had already attracted the attention of two of the leading gangsterrivals for the title of capo di tutti capo: boss of bosses. Both men, Guiseppe Masseria and SalMaranzano, were not-so-gently pushing for Luciano to join their gangs.

But Luciano was holding out, because he had developed a close affinitywith Meyer Lansky and was able to look past Lansky’s Jewish heritage,something neither Masseria or Maranzano, a couple of "Mustache Petes"could do. They wanted Luciano to dump Lansky and take over theterritory the Bugs and Meyer gang had clawed out.

The relationship between Luciano and Lansky was complex and veryunusual for its time. Masseria and Maranzano, who headed the two mostinfluential Italian gangs on the East Coast refused to associate withanyone who wasn’t a Sicilian. They were firm believers in the old way ofdoing things: the secret societies like the Black Hand, the Camorra andthe Mafia which they brought with them from the Old Country.

Lucky Luciano

But Luciano and Lansky didn’t let their different ethnic backgrounds stand in the way of friendship,partnership and profit. As Luciano noted in his authorized biography, there was more to attract him toLansky and Siegel than to repel him. "The same ambitions, desires and intensity transcended religiousdifferences," wrote Martin Gosch, Lucky’s biographer.

Lansky and Luciano were as tight as could be. They seemed to be on the same wavelength all the time,Siegel said.

"They would just look at each other and you would know that a few minutes later one would say whatthe other was thinking," he told Doc Stacher. "I never heard them argue. They were always in agreementwith each other."

The ethnic differences were sometimes the source of jokes between the men. Once, when Lansky,Siegel, Luciano and Charlie’s lieutenant were meeting to plan an attack on a warehouse, Lanskycomplained that the Jews were forced to take the risky jobs while the two Italians sat back and watched.

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"Whadda you mean, two Italians? We’re one wop, one mick and two Jews, just like in theneighborhood," said Luciano, using the current vulgar slang for Italians and Irish.

Lansky stared at Luciano like he was nuts. "What are you talking about, ‘one wopand one mick?’ Where’s the mick?"

Luciano started to laugh and pointed at his Italian chum, Francesco Castiglia."Him, he’s Irish. Y’know, Frank Costello."

And thus did Castiglia become Costello, a name later to be associated with thehighest echelon of organized crime in New York City.

Frank Costello

The United Nations of crime grew and prospered. They bought boats for picking up loads of bootlegscotch and trucks to haul it in. Lansky and Siegel ran profitable gambling houses and Luciano, much tothe chagrin of Costello and Lansky, became an important bordello owner. The quartet and theirhangers-on hit the pawnbrokers and moneylenders in the ghettos and the insurance salesmen whocollected nickel and dime premiums proved to be easy targets for the toughs.

"We had so much dough coming in that it was hard to keep track of it," Luciano said. "Even a goodcounter like Lansky got a little confused once in a while."

The group looked for ways to put their money to work for them. They bought into establishedbookmaking operations, the first step in what would become a nationwide gambling syndicate. Lanskymade them create what he called the "Buy-Money Bank" with a nest-egg of $5,000 which was paid outby Costello to politicians and policemen who agreed to look the other way when the gang came intotheir wards. The Buy-Money Bank was sort of an investment plan that paid off big for the men. Costellostarted small, buying the pols and cops and ward heelers in areas where the group was buying upbookies. The politicians in turn used the money to insure election victories.

By this time the Italians and Jews of the Luciano and Bugs and Meyer mobs had attracted the attentionof not only Rothstein, but of Maranzano and Masseria. As a powerful Italian, Luciano was drawn intothe battle between the two old-timers despite his reservations. As a Jew, Lansky could only sit back andwatch the battle and try to help his Sicilian friend. Later, once the forces of Masseria had beenvanquished and Maranzano adopted the mantle of capo di tutti capo, Lansky and Siegel would step in,and working closely with Charlie Luciano, (who emerged from the two-year Castellamarese War withthe appellation "Lucky") would bring true "organization" to organized crime.

In the Castellamarese War, Maranzano and Masseria attacked each other ruthlessly in an effort to uniteall of the Italian underworld under one boss. Joe The Boss Masseria managed to woo Charlie to his side,only to see Lucky betray him to Maranzano when the balance of power shifted in favor of Salvatore. Inreturn for betraying Masseria and helping in his murder, Luciano was rewarded with a lieutenant’sposition in Maranzano’s new underworld order. But Lucky had no intention of staying number two forlong. Shortly after Maranzano became boss of bosses, Bugsy Siegel and Bo Weinberg, Dutch Schultz’snumber two man, burst into Maranzano’s Unione Siciliano office and shot him dead.

Lansky and Luciano called a summit of the major underworld leaders in New York. Taking an idea fromJohnnie Torrio, who gave Al Capone his start in Chicago, they proposed a loose-knit Syndicate of

Italian and Jew


gangs. They stressed that this was not a unification under one boss and no one would have to surrenderany power to any other boss. The Syndicate, Lansky and Luciano said, would serve as a cooperativeventure to halt the tit-for-tat bloodshed that had claimed so many lives in the past few years. TheSyndicate would be a crime cartel, Lansky said.

With Maranzano out of the way, Lucky and Meyer took their show on the road and went from city tocity selling the idea of the Syndicate. It was clear that this was a new day for the underworld. Lucky,who because of his extroverted personality took most of the spotlight, refused to accept the sealedenvelopes filled with money that was the Mafia tradition.

"The old Mafia traditions are fine for Sicily," he told the mobsters. "But we are in America. The idea ofputting a crown on my head is kid stuff. It’s time we grew up. We’ll all work for each other, but each isrunning his own outfit."

NEXT: THE CARPET JOINTS PREVIOUS CHAPTER




Italian and Jew





The Carpet Joints

When Prohibition ended, Meyer turned from bootlegging to gambling, which was always his first love.He never really left it, but had merely turned his attention toward the most lucrative racket at the time.When the Volstead Act was repealed, Meyer was pulling in a cool ten grand a year, about $125,000 in1999 dollars. But as the country went wet, Meyer’s income began to dry up.

"He was driven back to the expertise with which he had won his first illegal nickel," wrote Lacey. "LikeCharlie and Benny, Meyer had kept his crap games going throughout the bootlegging years, and the endof Prohibition brought him back to his primary virtuosity – his original love."

Unlike now, in 1933, every state except Nevada made gambling -- save for horse, and in some casesdog, racing – illegal. In New York, there was a huge underground gambling network, but it floated inalmost every sense of the word. The games were held on street corners, in back rooms and in suites ofhotels. But they were rarely permanent. In many cases, the games were rigged and their operators didn’tworry about their reputations for fairness because they would be running the game blocks away by thenext day.

New York turned a blind eye to illicit gaming during the August racing season in upstate SaratogaSprings. A spa community known for its sulfur springs as well as its race track and casino, Saratoga wassummer camp for hot Manhattanites roasting in the city 190 miles south. The racetrack opened duringthe Civil War and after the war Southern horse owners migrated north during the steamy summermonths and brought with them the gambling games from the Mississippi riverboats.

"By the 1890s, the casinos of Saratoga in their month of summer glory rivaled those of Europe’s mostglamorous spas," Lacey writes. "Saratoga’s two principal hotels on the main street, the Grand Union andthe United States, were the two largest hotels in the world."

Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, centered the novel Diamonds Are Forever around the spas andracetrack of Saratoga Springs, a town he was not particularly enamored of. In the book, Fleming callsSaratoga "a stinking town, but then all gambling towns are," and points out how the city was permeatedwith the mob influence.

By the time Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano were in a position to have an effect on the market inSaratoga, AR was in charge of the spa town. He paid off the local officials and imported his dealersfrom New York but he still operated in his traditional manner by having others do the real dirty work.

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Lansky and Luciano were brought in to fix things with the local pols as well as to run the dining roomand entertainment. It was through Rothstein’s patronage that Meyer, Siegel, Luciano and Costello honedthe craft of casino and hotel operation.

Lansky and his chums approached casino operation with the same scruples as they had in bootlegging.They knew the percentages were in their favor and that the short-term gains from running a crookedgame could never match the almost unimaginable profits from a fair casino.

"Everyone who came into my casino knew that if he lost his money it wouldn’t be because he wascheated," Meyer said proudly.

The Little Man recruited the best dealers and croupiers he could find and paid them a salary plus acommission – a percentage of the drop on their tables every night. This instilled loyalty and made thedealers pay closer attention to the games and to each other.

In the years leading up to World War II, Lansky had slowly but surely developed a reputation thatattracted the highest rollers and most influential gamblers. He was partners with Frank Costello and JoeAdonis in the Piping Rock, a Moorish-style building that exuded elegance. Uniformed valets parked thecars for gamblers, and Costello had imported his chef and maitre d’ from his Manhattan club, theCopacabana.

Having cut his teeth on the Saratoga Springs casinos, Lansky began to branch out. In New Orleans forthe 1932 Democratic National Convention, Meyer and his friend Doc Stacher met with LouisianaGovernor Huey "Kingfish" Long and arranged for the governor to open a Swiss bank account so that hecould accept the $3 to $4 million in cash annually that the mobsters were prepared to pay for theprivilege of running casinos in the Big Easy.

"Deeply impressed by this sophistication, the governor gave his visitors from New York carte blanche,"wrote Uri Dan. "The opening of the famous Blue Room at the Roosevelt Hotel and of the BeverlyCountry Club, also in New Orleans, was the beginning of the nationwide development of casinos."

Leaving New Orleans, Lansky went north to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he worked a similar deal andput Owney "Killer" Madden – former operator of The Cotton Club in Harlem -- in charge. The HotSprings set up was so luxurious and safe that it became known as a place for gangsters on the lam tohole up until the heat blew over. Lucky Luciano was extradited from Madden’s spa when he wasindicted by New York special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey.

Exercising considerable political muscle, Lansky proceeded to expand his gaming empire into Kentuckyand eventually Florida.

The Florida "carpet joints" as the illegal casinos were known, breathed life into the depressed SouthBeach communities of Hollywood, Hallendale and Opalocka. Just across the county line from Miami,some small-time casinos and bingo houses provided Lansky with the perfect set up for a south Floridaempire.

The Carpet Joints


The good people of Broward County were not necessarilyambivalent toward the carpet joints that people like MeyerLansky, Jimmy Blue Eyes Alo and Potatoes Kaufmann wereputting up on the outskirts of town. More than once, somehigh-minded citizens would approach a judge for aninjunction against a particular piece of property, whichwould prevent the gamblers from operating on that site. Thecarpet joint owners would have to find another place tooperate from, which created significant logistic problems forLansky. So Meyer sent his brother Jake down to BrowardCounty with a sack of cash.

Jake (left) & Meyer (Lacey)

"During the months preceding the reopening (of a Lansky casino), his operations manager, brother Jake,supervised the handouts: to the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks, to the Fort LauderdaleShrine Club, to the Hollywood Fishing Tournament, to the South Florida Children’s Hospital – morethan two dozen local organizations began receiving generous and helpful donations from the newowners of the bingo parlor near the crossroads on U.S. 1," wrote Lacey.

The ploy worked and there were no more complaints from citizens.

NEXT: HAVANA PREVIOUS CHAPTER




The Carpet Joints





Havana

With carpet joints running from Saratoga to Key West, Lansky attracted the attention of many differentgovernment officials. Some were on his payroll, others were his sworn enemies. But the probably themost powerful government official to be drawn to Lansky wasn’t even American. He was Cubandictator Fulgencio Batista, the former army stenographer who had twice grabbed power in the Caribbeannation 90 miles south of Miami.

In 1952, when Batista seized power, Cuba was known as the Paris of the New World. Europeans andAmericans flocked to the sunny beaches and danced to the hot rumba rhythms of the Cuban big bands,drinking daquiris and rums and smoking cigars. Gambling was big in Cuba, too. But Batista had aproblem. The games, it seemed, were seen as crooked and no one was playing. Tourism started to falteras gamblers bypassed the Cuban casinos in favor of the more honest Puerto Rican joints. Things beganto look bad for the dictator

Batista needed to inject some honesty into his games quickly and he turned to Meyer Lansky. PresidentBatista appointed Lansky his advisor on gambling reform and gave him the authority to clean up thecrooked gaming houses like the Sans Souci and the Montmartre Club.

"Fulgencio Batista saw the enhancement of revenues from foreign visitors, and from Americans inparticular, as a major source of future income for Cuba – and for himself," Lacey wrote.

Lansky went to Havana and immediately began to roust the crookedcasino bosses. He kept Santo Trafficante Jr., the son of Tampa’s chiefracketeer, but leaned on Sans Souci operator Norman Rothman to startrunning a clean game. He ordered dealers and croupiers – most of themAmerican – who were crooked to be deported and started the practiceof dealing Blackjack from a six-deck shoe, which not only helped thehouse in terms of percentage, but minimized cheating by the dealer andplayer.

While Meyer’s reformed Montmartre Club was the in place in Havana,he had long expressed an interest in putting a casino in the elegantHotel Nacional, which overlooked El Morro, the ancient fortressguarding Havana harbor. Meyer planned to take a wing of the 10-storeyhotel and create luxury suites for high stakes players. Batista endorsed

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Lansky’s idea over the objections of American expatriots like ErnestHemingway and the elegant hotel opened for business in 1955 with ashow by Eartha Kitt. The casino was an immediate success.

Meyer and sons in Havana(Lacey)

That spring, Lansky began working on his own casino, a 21-story, 440-skyscraper called the Riviera.When it opened it would be the largest casino-hotel in the world outside Las Vegas. The Riviera wasLansky’s second attempt at building a hotel from scratch – the first time was the ill-fated FlamingoHotel in Vegas with his friend and partner Benny Siegel…

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Vegas

In the mid-40s, things were pretty hot for Benny Siegel in New York. He was the key suspect in amurder and Meyer Lansky was having a hard time keeping him under control. The two were still asclose as ever, but Benny was chafing under Meyer’s leadership. Bugsy needed to go out on his own,Meyer decided, and so Benny headed west to Los Angeles to bring the operations in California under theSyndicate’s control.

Benny quickly rose to the top out west and began to expand the Syndicate inland. He looked east toNevada, and saw a small town at the southern tip called Las Vegas. Siegel wasn’t the first man to build acasino there, but he was the first mobster with Syndicate connections to realize that putting a casino inLas Vegas could mean a license to print money for the mob.

In the years since Benny moved out west to cavort with starlets and take over the Hollywood extrasunion he and Meyer had remained close. Armed with mob money, Siegel tried in 1943 to buy his wayinto a partnership with the owners of the Last Frontier in Vegas, which was then the hot spot in town.The owners went public with Siegel’s action and rejected him. Instead, Siegel and Lansky acquired ElCortez, a downtown hotel and casino that had been open for several years, serving both local clienteleand soldiers from the nearby army air base and gunnery school.

Meyer did not share Siegel’s enthusiasm for Las Vegas, telling his friend the city was in "sorry shape"and concentrating on his carpet joints in Florida. He put up a $60,000 investment in El Cortez andbecame a silent partner – letting Siegel run the show. Soon after the men bought the casino, Siegel soldthe operation and netted a $166,000 profit – a 27 percent return on their investment in just 6 months.

In 1946, with the Las Vegas real estate market booming, Benny convinced the investors in El Cortez toreinvest in a bigger, larger, more fabulous new casino he was going to build. The Flamingo – named forhis girlfriend, Virginia Hill – would be a glitzy alternative to the dude-ranch style hotels like El Cortezand the Last Frontier.

Lansky allowed Siegel to reinvest the $650,000 from the sale of El Cortez into the Flamingo, buying a66 percent stake in the casino.

"As controller of the majority consortium, Benny set himself Christmas 1946 as his deadline for gettingthe Flamingo finished," Lacey wrote. "But he immediately developed bright new ideas for improving therooms…. The charming and imperious Ben Siegel totally lacked his friend Meyer’s sense of control."

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There were incredible cost overruns and delays caused in part by Siegel’s ignorance of how to build ahotel of the magnitude of the Flamingo and partly because of the booming post-war constructionindustry.

In Havana, where Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano and the rest of the heads of the Syndicate weremeeting in secret because of Luciano’s exile, Lansky was forced to tell the bosses that the cost of thecasino would far exceed the $1 million they had been told. In fact, Meyer admitted, the Flamingo waslikely to cost the Syndicate about $6 million before it would be completed.

Immediately, there were calls for Siegel’s head, but Lansky was able to pacify them with promises ofhuge inflows of cash once the buildings were completed.

What was unsaid at the meeting in Havana, was that some mobsters were getting suspicious of thefrequent trips Hill was making to Geneva, Switzerland, reportedly on "buying trips." The gangstersbelieved Hill and Siegel were skimming investment money and secreting it away in a numbered Swissbank account.

"This sort of behavior meant only one thing in the underworld," Doc Stacher said. "Bugsy was going tobe hit. Meyer knew it too, but he did all he could to save his friend."

Meyer talked the men into giving Bugsy until the spring to turn a profit, and then went to Las Vegas totry and talk some sense into his old friend. Benny had turned decorating control over to Virginia Hill,who was in many ways responsible for the overruns. When Meyer returned from Las Vegas, he wasquite dejected.

"I can’t do a thing with him," Lansky told Stacher. "He’s so much in that woman’s power that he cannotsee reason."

Luciano told Lansky that Bugsy would have to get things under control or he would order their oldfriend killed.

"Unless Bugsy makes a great success of that hotel, you know as well as I do that he will have to be hit,"Luciano told his friend. "And if you don’t have the heart to do it, Meyer, then I will have to order theexecution myself."

Doc Stacher reported that Luciano’s comments brought tears to Meyer’s eyes and he excused himselffrom the meeting with bosses. For two hours, he remained in his suite at the Hotel Nacionale beforecalling friends in the States and ordering them to keep an eye on Benny.

"If anything happens to him," he told Benny’s lieutenant, "You will answer to me."

Vegas


The Flamingo Hotel, Las Vegas (Lake CountyIllinois Museum)

Siegel managed to get the casino completed by his self-imposed December 1946 deadline, but not thehotel portion. On December 26, the casino opened with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra providing the musicand Jimmy Durante and Rose Marie providing the comedic entertainment. At the gambling tables,nothing went right for the mobsters. Although in the long run the house cannot help but win because ofthe way the games are structured, in the short run the guests at the Flamingo cleaned the casino out of$75,000 in the opening evening.

Siegel managed to struggle on for two weeks before realizing that the casino would have to close whenthe hotel was being finished. Back in Cuba, Lansky once again saved Benny’s life by coming up with aplan to put the Flamingo in receivership and setting up a new syndicate to buy out the old corporation.Luciano backed Lansky’s plan, despite reservations by a number of other bosses.

In March, the Flamingo reopened and by April it was starting to get out of the red. In May the casinoturned a profit, but for some reason it was too late to save Benny. In mid June, 1947, sitting in hisapartment in Beverly Hills, Benny Siegel was gunned down by an unknown killer.

Shortly after Siegel died in California, two men working for Meyer Lansky walked into the Flamingoand announced that they were taking over. Maurice Rosen and Gus Greenbaum had worked for Lanskyin Miami, Havana and New York, which gave a great deal of strength to the theory that in the end,Lansky had ordered his best friend killed.

Lansky, however, denied having anything to do with Benny’s killing.

"Ben Siegel was my friend until his dying day," he told Uri Dan. "I never quarrelled with him. If it wasin my power to see Benny alive," he added. "He would live as long as Mathusala."

Vegas


Bugsy shot, 1947 (Wide World Photos)

NEXT: ISRAEL PREVIOUS CHAPTER




Vegas





Israel

Meyer Lansky’s religious upbringing and cultural background as a Jew played conflicting roles duringhis lifetime. He was never particularly religious after leaving his parents’ home. Neither of his sons wasBar Mitzvah, and after the death of Lansky’s father, he chose not to continue the Hebrew tradition ofhonoring the father on the anniversary of his death. Whether that was because of Lansky’s disdain forhis weak father or because he had turned his back on his faith is really unknown.

"He was never Jewish-minded when we were growing up," said his son Buddy. "The Christmas trees,the bacon – no Bar Mitzvah…. We didn’t know what Jewish was."

But as time went on and Lansky grew older, his Jewish heritage came to mean more and more for him.He visited Israel for the first time when he was almost 60 years old, and the visit to the Holy Landsre-ignited a passion for his culture.

By 1970, hounded by the police, wiretapped by the FBI and under surveillance at every turn, MeyerLansky decided to join his friend Doc Stacher in Israel. After living in Israel for several months, Lanskydecided to take advantage of the country’s unique immigration law, the Law of Return, which states thatevery Jew in the world is eligible to become an Israeli citizen. Every Jew save for those with "a criminalpast, likely to endanger the public welfare."

Lansky engaged several attorneys in order to secure his rightful place as an Israeli citizen. "I have nocriminal past which is likely to cause a breach of the peace and I am not now likely to endanger thepeace in any country," Lansky wrote to the Ministry of Interior.

Things looked favorable for Lansky and his second wife, Teddy, until the Israeli press caught wind thatMeyer Lansky, the chairman of the mob board of directors was in Tel Aviv. Photographers stalked theLanskys and newspapers reported that he was planning on continuing his racketeering in Israel. Itwouldn’t have been hard to do, but Lansky was fairly close to being retired by this time.

In the end, when Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir found out Lansky was connected to "the Mafia" sheintervened in the naturalization process and Lansky was turned out of the country.

From Israel, Lansky traveled to Zurich and quickly left Switzerland for South America. He was trying tostay one step ahead of the FBI which wanted to arrest him on racketeering charges. But Paraguay wouldnot accept him either and he was placed on an airplane whose final destination was Panama City,Florida. There would be no escape for Lansky this time.

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Immediately after the plan touched down in Florida, FBI agents arrest Lansky and he was held until heposted a $250,000 bail. From jail, Lansky checked into the Mount Sinai Hospital for observation – thestress of the 13,000 mile journey from Tel Aviv to South America through Latin America to Florida hadtaken its toll on the heart of the 70-year-old Lansky.

In the federal court in Miami, Meyer Lansky, proclaimed by the Miami Herald as "the GanglandFinance Chairman" was convicted of contempt of court for failing to return from Israel two years earlierto answer a grand jury’s questions. He was sentenced to a year-and-a-day in jail.

Soon afterward, with his contempt conviction on appeal, Lansky was tried for tax evasion, despite his illhealth and need for oxygen and almost constant medical attention. The jury in this case took little timein finding against the government and for Lansky. Meanwhile, the 5th Circuit court overturned hiscontempt conviction. Finally, the third case which had precipitated Lansky’s deportation from Israel,was dropped by the government after an unfavorable ruling by the judge.

"He was able to go to his grave laughing that he whipped us all," said one FBI agent.

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Meyer's Legacy

Lansky lived an additional six years after his final court battles. In that time he never gave up hope ofreturning to Israel either as a tourist or as a citizen. But his health became poor and on January 15, 1983,Meyer Lansky, the mastermind of the mob, died at his home.

"’He would have been chairman of the board of General Motors if he’d gone into legitimate business, anagent of the FBI once said of Meyer Lansky with grudging admiration" wrote the New York Times inhis obituary. "And in a moment of triumph, Mr. Lansky once boasted to an underworld associate,"We’re bigger than U.S. Steel."

Superlatives and apocryphal statements filled the Little Man’s obituaries. He was called "treasurer of themob" and "frequent advisor to the Chicago mob" and "The most influential Godfather in the history ofAmerican organized crime."

"In all the hyperbole on a poor weekend for news, only the Miami Herald…pointed out that Lansky’sreputation was a matter of ‘popular belief, never proved legally,’ and that Lansky’s links to mob killingswere "more by speculation than by proof," Lacey wrote.

Bugsy Siegel once told a non-mobster that people had nothing to fear from men like himself andLansky.

"You see," he said. "We only kill each other."

But even though Meyer Lansky was never convicted of murder, and shunned criminal enterprises likenarcotics and prostitution and gave people the illicit things they really wanted like alcohol and gambling,he shouldn’t be dismissed as just an interesting underworld figure.

Every time an honest citizen buys clothes, they are paying for protection from the garment industryracketeers. And in many cities, particularly large ones, garbage collection includes the hidden cost ofmob tribute. Payoffs made to crooked politicians help them remain in office and contribute to themalaise that Americans feel about our political system.

Meyer Lansky didn’t invent graft, and he didn’t install the protection rackets in the unions and garmentindustry, but it was through his guidance that the Syndicate was able to prosper in the United States. He

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might not have been the one to suggest the idea that the mob get involved in narcotics, but his system ofcooperation between various gangsters regardless of race or ethnic background paved the way fortoday’s organized gangs.

He prided himself on his honesty and his commitment to working a fair deal, but his vision has beenperverted by others with fewer scruples. If Meyer Lansky has left a legacy, it is in the widespreadcorruption which pervades our society. In the final analysis, Meyer Lansky was a criminal. He couldhave devoted himself to building an honest career where a man with his talents could have gone far.Maybe antisemitism held him back, maybe not. But the fact that he chose to be a criminal rather and alaw-abiding lifestyle means any admiration we feel for Meyer Lansky should be mixed with contempt.

Lansky, the "Chairman of the Board"(NY Daily News)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

There are several good books on Meyer Lansky: Robert Lacey's and Uri Dan's are particularlyrecommended as being the most detailed.

Eisenberg, Dennis and Uri Dan and Eli Landau, Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob. New York &London: Paddington Press, Ltd. 1979.

Lacey, Robert, Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life

Messick, Hank, Lansky.

Another good source of information on major figures and movements in organized crime is Crime, Inc.:The inside Story of the Mafia's First 100 Years by William Balsamo and George Carpozi, Jr.

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Bibliography

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http://bn.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=93919&ISBN=0316511684









meyer lansky mastermind of the mob

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