by Damon Runyon
Finally Mrs. Putnam said the man’s name was Perry. He is said to be a citizen of Asheville, and what will be said of Mr. Perry in Asheville when the news reaches the sewing circles down yonder will probably be plenty. Not content with touching on Mr. Perry to Mrs. Putnam, the attorney for the defense asked her about a Mr. Elias, and then about a Mr. Bruce, becoming right personal about Mr. Bruce.
He wanted to know if Mr. Bruce had remained with Mrs. Putnam one night in her room at another New York Hotel, but she said no. Then Murray brought in the name of a Mr. Otis B. Carr, of Hendersonville, N.C., and when Mrs. Putnam said she didn’t recall the gentleman, the attorney asked, “Did you steal anything out of a store in Hendersonville?”
Mrs. Putnam said no. Moreover, in reply to questions, she said she didn’t steal two dresses from a department store in Asheville and that she hadn’t been arrested for disorderly conduct and fined $5. Before Murray got through with her some of the listeners half expected to hear him ask the lady if she had ever personally killed A. Rothstein.
Mrs. Putnam couldn’t have made the State very happy, because she admitted under Murray’s cross-examination that she had once denied in Asheville, in the presence of Mr. Mara, one of the district attorney’s assistants, and County Judge McCrae, of Asheville, that she ever left her room in the Park Central the night of the murder.
She said her current story is the truth. Mr. Murray asked her if she hadn’t said thus and so to newspapermen in Asheville. She replied, “I did.”
A young man described as Douglas Eller, a reporter of an Asheville paper, was summoned from among the spectators in the court room and brought up to the railing, where Mrs. Putnam could see him. The lady was asked if she knew him, and she eyed him at length before admitting she may have seen him before. Mr. Eller retired, blushing slightly, as if not to be known by Mrs. Putnam argues one unknown in Asheville.
Murray became very curious about the Putnam grill in Asheville. Didn’t she have curtained-off booths? She did, but her waitresses could walk in and out of them at any time, a reply that Mrs. Putnam tossed at Murray as if scorning utterly the base insinuation of his question.
Did she sell liquor? She did not. She had been shown pictures of Rothstein and McManus and Biller, but she couldn’t recognize any of them. She was mighty reluctant about telling the name of a lady friend with whom she dined in her room the night of the killing, but finally admitted it was a Mrs. Herman Popper. She explained her reluctance by saying, “I don’t want to get other people mixed up in this.”
December 3, 1929
The most important point to the State in the trial of George McManus yesterday seemed to be the key to room 349 in the Park Central Hotel, which, according to testimony, was found in a pocket of an overcoat hanging in the room.
This overcoat bore the name of McManus on the tailor’s label in the pocket.
The prosecution will, perhaps, make much of this as tending to show the occupant of the room left in a very great hurry and didn’t lock the door, besides abandoning the overcoat, though Detective “Paddy” Flood said the door was locked when he went there with a house detective to investigate things.
It was Detective Flood who told of finding the key. He was relating how he entered the room and found, among other things, an overcoat with the name of George McManus on the label. He was asked, “What other objects did you find?”
“A handkerchief in the pocket of the overcoat with the initials ‘G. Mc’ There were other handkerchiefs in the drawer in the bedroom and a white shirt.”
“Did you find anything else in the coat?”
“A key, in the right-hand pocket, for room 349.”
“A door key.”
“Yes.”
Aside from that, the testimony brought out that “the master mind,” as the underworld sometimes called Arnold Rothstein, died “game.”
Game as a pebble.
In the haunts of that strange pallid man during his life, you could have had ten to one, and plenty of it, that he would “holler copper,” did occasion arise, with his dying gasp.
Indeed he was often heard to remark in times when he knew that sinister shadows hovered near—and these were not infrequent times in his troubled career, living as he chose to live—“If anyone gets me, they’ll burn for it.”
And cold, hard men, thinking they read his character, believed they knew his meaning. They felt he was just the kind, when cornered by an untoward circumstance, that would squeal like a pig. It shows you how little you really know of a man.
For when the hour came, as the jury in Judge Nott’s court room heard yesterday, with the dismal snow slanting past the windows of the grimy old Criminal Courts Building—when Arnold Rothstein lay crumpled up with a bullet through his intestines, knowing he was mortally hurt, and officers of the law bent over him and whispered, “Who did it?”—the pale lips tightened, and Rothstein mumbled, “I won’t tell and please don’t ask me any more questions.”
Then another “sure thing” went wrong on Broadway, where “sure things” are always going wrong—the “sure thing” that Rothstein would tell.
But as the millionaire gambler lay in the Fifty-sixth Street service entrance of the Park Central Hotel that night of November 4, 1928, with the pain of his wound biting at his vitals, and the peering eyes of the cops close to his white countenance, he reverted to type.
He was no longer the money king, with property scattered all over the Greater City, a big apartment house on fashionable Park Avenue, a Rolls-Royce and a Minerva at his beck and call, and secretaries and servants bowing to him. He was a man of the underworld. And as one of the “dice hustlers” of the dingy garage lofts, and the “mobsters” high and low, he muttered, “I won’t tell.”
A sigh of relief escaped many a chest at those words, you can bet on that.
Detective Flood, who knew Rothstein well, was one of those who bent over the stricken man.
Patrolman William Davis, first to respond to the call of the hotel attendants, also asked Rothstein who shot him, but got no more information than Flood.
The head of the millionaire gambler was pillowed on a wadded-up burlap sack when Davis reached the scene, which was important to the State in trying to show that Rothstein was shot in the hotel, in that it had been said that Rothstein’s overcoat was put under his head.
Before the session was completed, the tables in the court room were covered with exhibits of one kind and another taken by Flood and other officers from room 349 in the Park Central.
There was a layout of glasses and a liquor bottle, and ginger ale bottles on a tray. But, alas, the liquor bottle was very empty. Also the State had the dark blue overcoat with the velvet collar that was found in a closet of room 349, said overcoat bearing a tailor’s label, with George McManus’s name on the label.
Likewise, handkerchiefs found in the room were produced and these handkerchiefs were elegantly monogrammed. One was inscribed “g Mc M.,” another like “G. M. A.” with the “G” and “A” in small letters, and the “M” big. A third was monogrammed “J. M. W.” with the “J” and “W” in small letters on either side of the large “M” while the fourth bore the marking “J. M.”
A white shirt with collar attached, some race-track slips, and a window screen with a hole in it were spread out for the jurors to see. Also, the .38-caliber pistol, which one Al Bender, a taxi driver, picked up on Seventh Avenue.
This is supposed to be the pistol with which Rothstein was shot, and the screen is supposed to be the screen through which the pistol was hurled out into the street after the shooting, though the point where the pistol was picked up is quite a hurling distance from room 349.
While Flood and some other officers were in the room Hyman Biller, a cashier at the race track for McManus, and under indictment with McManus for the murder of Rothstein, came in with Frank and Tom McManus, brothers of George, and remained about twenty minutes.
It was the failure to hold Biller on this occasion that brought d
own much criticism on the heads of the Police Department, for Hymie was never seen in these parts again.
The lights were burning in room 349 when Flood got there. Four glasses stood on the table which is the basis of the indictment returned against McManus, and Biller, and the celebrated John Doe and Richard Roe. The State claims four men were in the room when Rothstein was summoned there by a message sent by McManus to Lindy’s restaurant.
Vincent J. Kelly, elevator operator at the Park Central, testified he was working on the service elevator the night Rothstein was shot, and saw Rothstein in the corridor, holding his hands across his stomach, and didn’t see him come through the service doorway, through which he must have passed to make good the State’s contention he came from upstairs.
He heard Rothstein say, “I’m shot.”
Thomas Calhoun, of Corona, Long Island, thirty-two, a watchman on the Fifty-sixth Street side of the hotel at the time of the murder, saw Rothstein at 10:47 standing in front of the time office at the service entrance. Calhoun ran and got Officer Davis.
He heard Rothstein say something to the policeman about taking his money, and it was his impression that Rothstein had his overcoat over his arm and that it was put under his head as he lay on the floor, which impression was not corroborated by other testimony.
Through Calhoun, Attorney Murray tried to develop that Rothstein might have come through the swimming pool by way of Seventh Avenue. While cross-examining Calhoun, Murray suddenly remarked, testily, “I object to the mumbling to the District Attorney.”
He apparently had reference to Mr. Brothers, of the State’s legal display. Everybody seemed to be a bit testy yesterday, except the ever-smiling defendant, McManus, who just kept on smiling.
Calhoun heard Rothstein say, “Call my lawyer, 9410 Academy.”
Thomas W. McGivney, of No. 401 West 47th Street, who was also near the service entrance, testified he had taken Rothstein’s overcoat off his arm and placed it under his head. Rothstein’s overcoat hasn’t been seen since the shooting.
McGivney, a stout-looking young man with a wide smile, and a rich brogue, gave the spectators a few snickers, but by and large it wasn’t an exciting day one way or the other.
AL CAPONE
Chicago, October 6, 1931
A fragrant whiff of green fields and growing rutabagas and parsnips along with echoes of good old Main Street, crept into the grime-stained Federal Building here today as your Uncle Sam took up the case of Al Capone and gathered a jury in what you might call jigtime.
It is a jury made up mainly of small towners and Michael J. Ahern, chief counsel for Al Capone, frankly admitted dissatisfaction to the Court about it.
He wanted all these persons dismissed but Judge Wilkerson overruled his motion. The jury was sworn in with nine veterans of court room juries among the twelve good men and true, and tomorrow morning at ten o’clock the Government of these United States starts work on Al Capone.
The truly rural atmosphere of the proceedings today was evidenced by horny-handed tillers of the fruitful soil, small town store-keepers, mechanics and clerks, who gazed frankly interested at the burly figure of the moon-faced fellow causing all this excitement and said,
“Why, no: we ain’t got no prejudice again Al Capone.”
At least most of them said that in effect, as Judge Wilkerson was expediting the business of getting a jury to try Capone on charges of income tax evasion.
Your Uncle Sam says Al Capone owes him $215,000 on an income of $1,038,000 in six years.
Your Uncle Sam hints that Al Capone derived this tidy income from such illegal didoes as bootlegging, gambling, and the like.
“Do you hope the government proves the defendant guilty?” was one question asked a venireman at the request of counsel for the defense.
Apparently none cherished that hope.
“Have you any desire that the defendant be sent to jail?” was another question requested by the defense.
“Well no,” was the general reply.
Al Capone sat up straight in his chair and smoothed his rumpled necktie. He felt better. The G-men—as the boys call ’em—want to put Al Capone in a Federal pokey, or jail, for anywhere from two to thirty-two years, to impress upon him the truth of the adage that honesty is the best policy.
As Al Capone sat there with the scent of the new-mown hay oozing at intervals from the jury box, he was a terrific disappointment to the strictly seeing-Chicago tourist who felt that Al should have been vested at least in some of the panoply of his reputed office as Maharajah of the Hoods. Perhaps a cartridge belt. Some strangers felt this Chicago has been misrepresented to them.
The jury as it now stands is as follows: Louis G. Wolfersheim, Chicago; Louis P. Weidling, painter, Wilmington, Ill.; Burr Dugan, farmer, DeKalb County; A. C. Smart, painter and decorator, Libertyville; W. J. Hendricks, lubricating engineer, Cook County; George M. Larsen, wood patenter, Dalton; W. F. McCormick, receiving shop, Maywood; A. G. Maegher, country store-keeper, Prairie View; Ambrose Merchant, real estate agent, Waukegan; Arthur O. Prochno, insurance agent, Edison Park; John A. Walker, abstractor, Yorkville; and Nate C. Brown, retired hardware dealer, St. Charles.
Selection of the jury in one day is regarded as amazingly quick work, and the trial may not be as long drawn out as expected.
Capone arrived for the opening session fifteen minutes ahead of time, which is said to be a record in punctuality for him.
A big crowd was gathered on the Clark Street side of the dingy old building waiting to see him, but Al popped out of an automobile and into the building like a fox going into a hole. Not many of the curiosity-seekers got a good peek at him.
He entered the court room alone and was quickly surrounded by a crowd of reporters, male and female, who began bouncing questions about his ears. They asked him if he was worried, and he replied, logically enough, “Who wouldn’t be worried?”
He was scarcely the sartorial spectacle familiar to the winter inmates of Florida, where Al’s sport apparel is one of the scenes of interest. In fact, he was quietly dressed this morning, bar a hat of pearly white, emblematic no doubt, of purity.
’Twas a warmish morning and Al, being stout, is susceptible to the heat. Then, too, he was in a hot spot. His soft collar was already crumpled. He frequently mopped his forehead with a white handkerchief. His swarthy jowls had been newly shaved. His black hair now getting quite sparse was plastered back on his skull.
Judge Wilkerson himself is a fine-looking man with iron-gray hair. He is smooth shaven. His eyebrows are black and strong. He wore no flowing robe, like New York judges. He was dressed in a quiet business suit of dark color and wears horn-rimmed glasses.
His voice is clear and very decided. He sits far down in his chair while listening, but when he is doing the talking he leans far forward over his desk, his shoulders hunched up.
Wilkerson made it very clear to the men in the jury box that Capone is being tried on charges of violating the income tax law and nothing else.
Capone’s chief counsel, Ahern, a tall, good-looking chap of perhaps middle age, who wore a gray suit and tan shoes, approached the railing in front of the bench as court opened this morning, flanked by his associate in the defense, Albert Fink, a ruddy-faced, baldish man given to easy attitudes.
Ahern’s first approach was with a mild protest against the arrangement of the court room by which the thirty or more representatives of the press were crowding defense attorneys out of house and home. He was satisfied when the scribes were shoved off a bit so their hot breath would not beat against the back of Al Capone’s neck.
George E. Q. Johnson, the United States district attorney in charge of prosecution, is a forensic-looking man. He has a pink complexion, a rather beaming countenance and a mop of gray hair, all mussed up.
At the request of Ahern, Wilkerson asked the veniremen:
“Do any of you belong to any law enforcement organization? Counsel asks specifically about the Anti-Saloon League?”
“Have any of you ever contributed to a law enforcement organization?”
Well, one man had once chipped in ten dollars to the Crime Commission. His confession didn’t seem important to the attorneys at the moment.
None of Capone’s so-called bodyguards were in evidence anywhere around the court house, I am reliably informed. Naturally, I wouldn’t know ’em myself. Al goes to his citadel, the Hotel Lexington, out south, as soon as he leaves the court. It used to be a noted hostelry. The President of the U.S.A. stopped there during the World’s Fair. Now it is Capone’s G.H.Q.
October 8, 1931
“What do you do with your money—carry it on your person?”
An income tax examiner asked this question of Al Capone in September, 1930, when Al was seeking a settlement with your Uncle Sam and could produce no books, bank accounts or anything else in writing bearing upon his financial transactions.
And, according to a transcript of the examination, Al replied:
“Yes, I carry it on my person.”
He must have had plenty of room on his person, judging from a letter his attorney at that time wrote to the Internal Revenue Bureau, for this letter, the basis of argument lasting most of the day’s sessions, admitted Capone’s income was nearly $300,000 in the years 1926 to 1929, inclusive.
Capone’s lawyer at that time was Lawrence B. Mattingly, Washington income tax expert. In fighting the admission of the letter, one of Al’s present lawyers, Albert Fink, characterized the letter as a confession by a lawyer in behalf of a client.
He argued that no lawyer has the right or authority to make a confession for a client.
Judge Wilkerson finally overruled objection to the admission of the letter, which was undoubtedly a big victory for the government. Capone seemed deeply concerned when he heard the Court’s ruling.
Judge Wilkerson said he believed the weight of authority was in favor of the admissibility of the document.
