“I told the boys to grade it good. You might wanna make a tennis court some day.”
“Thanks, Angie.”
Willie had a car standing by at noon. Edward left at four-ten and was in town at six. He bathed, changed, made eight telephone calls in response to business messages and was ready to receive his guests when they arrived at seven.
As Congressman Rei had prospered he had filled out. He was as stocky as a bucket of sand, and his lumberyard cheekbones made his head seem even bulkier than it was. He was a well-disposed man who enjoyed work or play, and the dinner jacket he was wearing, like shellac over an Iron Maiden, had required twenty-three fittings. “Good work,” was the only comment Eddie made about the Goff business, then it was necessary to tell Willie, before he forgot, that he had talked to London and that a syndicate of Scottish distillers would be arriving on the Mauretania and he wanted them to be royally entertained and sounded out as to whether they would consider selling all or part of their distilleries. The value estimates would be on Willie’s desk in the morning. “Prohibition will be fading fast,” Edward said. “We face a major overhauling.”
The guests had two cocktails each before dinner. Edward drank the excellent Spanish Solares water. They dined well on ptarmigan (which Willie said he detested), spaghettini alla Siracusa, which was a miracle of oregano, capers, eggplant, black olives, garlic, anchovies, green peppers, tomatoes and olive oil combined with the pasta of Torre Annunziata. They rounded off with abbachio alla cacciatora, a Rei favorite, with some braised escarole and an eggplant pie. They drank Falerno wine from Naples, bottled by Giulio Coppola. When they had finished they smoked cigars and Edward said, “Did you reach Mr. Torrio, Ben?”
“I had the call out all day. He got back to me half an hour before I left for here. The proposition is okay with him. He’ll be on the first boat, and he’ll have everything all tidy in three weeks.”
“I want him to have a year if he needs it.”
“A year? You know John!”
“Goff worked for me because we started that way in 1911. But Mr. Torrio doesn’t know who I am or if I’m on earth, and we’ll keep it that way. Mr. Torrio will work for you.”
“Fine.”
“At the end of a year you and he will have to be ready to lay it on the line, to have all the affiliates working together. The way they work now is all right for prohibition, but in four or five years prohibition will be gone.”
“You really think so, Zu Eduardo?”
“Yes. I’ll even help it along a little.”
“Why?”
“There is too much waste this way. As long as liquor is against the law the affiliates will go on making the messes they are making now. The Detroit people are impossible. The Chicago people are ridiculous. Capone has to go. No, no!” Edward added hastily seeing the consternation on Congressman Rei’s face. “Not now. And there won’t be any gang wars when he does go. What we are doing right now is setting out what we are going to do. The first thing is the basis of the plan for the affiliates so that they can understand the coming prohibition tapering off without panic. You and Mr. Torrio have to build this plan in detail so the affiliates will see the advantages of working in combinations, sharing enforcement problems, getting the maximum out of labor-union opportunities and reinvestment possibilities, coming under a common umbrella of political protection and many, many other advantages. Why, with narcotics alone—”
“You think this can work?”
“How, work?”
“The pool idea, group advantages—the cartel idea?”
“Of course it will work. You’re as trained a businessman as I am. You just haven’t thought about it. True, you’ll have the job of making a rather strange conglomerate of mentalities and responses understand what you’ll be talking about.”
“They’re not so dumb, Zu Eduardo. We can make them see it. Anyway, this is what I’d like to say. Legal liquor aside—forgetting that prohibition can disappear—this is an imperative thing you have conceived, because it is the only chance for continuity. I mean, in theory anyway, they could kill each other off unless there is some centralization. What I am saying is that I see in what you are telling us that if there isn’t a common stake in the whole country and a sense of national cohesion, as the old men die or are knocked off—What do the young men know? They know muscle and guns. But if there can be continuity, the families will not have to react so opportunistically. They can have their young men educated as business leaders so we have to get stronger. You put your finger on what has been worrying me for a long time. What happens when you go—when I go? Is all this work going down the drain or have we started something here such as my people started in Sicily three hundred years ago? That was small—I mean, nothing compared to what we have here and can have here in fifty years, a hundred years. But what we have now is like ninety-four separate little General Motors companies instead of one big cohesive unit—a major force, a part of the American culture, if you will—an elastic, flexible organization with the advantages of centralization where that applies and decentralization where that applies. What you offer us is the only possible way we can go if we are to become the factor in American life that I know we can be.”
“Well!” Edward preened. “Thank you very much, Ben.”
“And may I say,” Willie put in, “it’s the only way you’ll ever control the offensive publicity that indiscriminate killing generates. A Goff is one thing. There have to be Goff eliminations of course. But killing civilians or just killing people in another neighborhood gang because of some old-time feud only leads to difficulties that make trouble and a great deal of unnecessary expense to put things on ice.”
“Enforcement has to be centralized of course,” Edward said, “and how that is done will be reflected in the reorganization as a first order of business. But the major consideration here, as I see it, is that soon we most certainly will be facing an altogether different economic climate, and we will have to be fit functionally to ride that out. This market is insanely overpriced. The money mania that grips all the people is grotesque—as though they believed the credo of an equal chance for all! The economy is going to collapse.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that,” Congressman Rei said. “I talk to a lot of people in my neck of the woods and everybody thinks—”
“Let me put it this way, Ben, because it will save time. Will you sell when I tell you to sell?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll be all right, and that ‘lot of people in your neck of the woods’ will be in the gutters. When the easy money goes down the drain and the people get frightened again on a permanent basis, that’s when we have to be prepared to buy cheaply, to exploit a helpless labor movement that will need a strong point of view and other things, all on the one hand. But on the other hand, when the easy money stops, the same people aren’t going to be thrilled and amused and entertained by a lot of hoodlums swaggering around shooting and scrounging. We have to prepare for both those very real problems. Add to those problems that beer and liquor will be legal, so that the payoffs to politicians are necessarily reduced to a fraction of what they had to be when these were illegal, and you’ll find a lot of vicious, hungry and discontented politicians and police on your hands. So bear those things in mind. The big racket is about to depart. We have to develop and have ready substantial, national, profitable new rackets—or I should say expanded old rackets—to take its place or this marvelous political weapon so carefully developed will become just a disorganized mass of shake-down artists all over again instead of a controlled division of corporate personnel.”
“Zu Eduardo,” Rei said, “you really think with your head.”
“We have one job, as I see it. We’ve got to protect our one-sixth of the gross of every affiliate’s turnover from all sources, and we’ve got to keep them dependent upon our available short-term commercial credit,” Edward said flatly.
“Very sound, Eddie,” Willie said.
E
dward was overwhelmed with work throughout 1928, mainly in supervising the pumping of a Horizons A.G. “special” fund into the American, French, and British stock exchanges from bases in Europe and six American cities. He moved on the pooled information of Horizons partners, driving the fantastic listed stock prices still higher and higher with the fund.
Throughout the intense work his mind had never really been away from thoughts of Irene, some wonderful thoughts of the past, some of regret, but many, many thoughts of the future. He couldn’t accelerate the arrival of that future because of the pressure of the work and also because he had calculated that a certain amount of time would be needed to heal their breach. He missed her at all hours of the day.
It was not until January 13, 1929, that Edward learned that Irene was in the Harkness Pavilion and about to have a baby. At first his mind went back as he convinced himself that this must be Goff’s child, but he could not be sure of that, and Irene was in New York and he could not concentrate on his work any longer. The news came in the late afternoon. It was vague. Willie had been told by Rhonda Healey who knew a girl whose sister was a nurse at the hospital, and she had said that Mrs. Edward Courance West was expecting a baby there. Willie had checked the hospital immediately but they told him they had no record of any patient of that name. Edward pressed him to call Dan in Palm Beach. Will got Dan, who said his mother had gone to New York to have the baby and that Mr. Tobin could reach her at the Harkness Pavilion but he didn’t know what room, so Rhonda had to pass bribes through the chain until the room number came back. It was the morning of January 14 when Edward went to see Irene. She had died in childbirth by the time he reached the hospital.
Edward collapsed. His breakdown could have been induced by the fear of losing her, the shock of her loss and his grief at now really having to live without her, but part of it was overwork and undernourishment. He was admitted to the hospital and he stayed there for thirty-two hours of amber and purple twilight while Willie handled the funeral arrangements.
Edward was aware of Willie sitting beside the bed with red eyes. Edward said, “It was Goff’s child.”
Willie shook his head. “No, Eddie. I saw it. He’s your child.”
Edward closed his eyes again and realized that all through the passing year while he thought he was punishing Irene he must have been punishing himself, and he could not understand it. It was as though he had been staring himself down in terrible judgment (of what? what terrible thing had he done beyond protecting his name and his hearth?). He would stay away from her for one year because that was right, she deserved that punishment. It would also give her time to savor the marriage she had almost thrown away. They could forgive and forget and he would take her back again in spite of everything she had done to him. But he saw his guilt in a flash. He had hurt her grievously, and he was using the full and formal year to help her, bit by bit, get over the loss of the house she had loved and perhaps slowly come to understand why he had to burn it down. Bit by bit he had been giving her time to forget those poisoned letters, to have the chance to come to yearn, as he had yearned, that they could go together again, so that everything could be the way it always was meant to be.
“Willie?”
“Yes, Eddie?”
“I want the best private detectives.”
“Why, Ed?”
“I want to know who sent Irene those letters.”
“Okay, Ed.”
“Now. Do it now. Get it started.”
“After the funeral.”
“Whose funeral?”
“Irene’s.”
Edward began to weep.
Only Edward, Dan, Willie, Charles Pick, Jr., and old Marxie Heller attended the funeral. Edward and Dan rode together in the limousine behind the hearse. They had invited Willie to ride with them as a member of the family, but he had declined.
“What would you want to do now, Dan?”
“Stay with you.”
“But you have to go to school.”
“I can’t go back to Florida.”
“Well—Gelbart.”
Dan nodded.
“We’ll have the summers and all the holidays together. Just the way my father and I used to have, and we’ll go anywhere you say. Would you like to meet a champion or have lunch with the cadets at West Point? Do you like the races or baseball games? Would you like to go to Europe? Whatever is the most fun, that’s what we’ll do.”
Edward threw himself into the work of reorganizing Horizons’ affiliate concepts. He worked with Congressman Rei, who in turn worked with John Torrio. Rei called the meeting at the President Hotel on the boardwalk in Atlantic City for late April. It lasted three days and four nights. It was entirely successful. On the first day of the meeting Capone was told he was through, and he seemed relieved. He grinned at the news. “Game fish and fast ponies,” he said. “Florida for me.” He played it with class, like a board chairman stepping down for a younger man, but that night he went to Rei’s suite and he was so frightened he was trembling. He could not believe that they had meant what they said, that he had not been marked for death. He was convinced that Congressman Rei was the pezzinovanta who had ordered his execution. In Rei’s presence he pleaded with John Torrio to intercede for him, to convince Rei that he must be saved. He clung to Torrio’s arm and begged for help.
To prove Al was mistaken, Rei said they would make any arrangement he wanted. Capone began to calm down. Torrio suggested that if he felt this way right now perhaps he would feel safer in Europe. Capone shook his head. “They’re a bunch of foreigners to me, John. It was different for you. You like opera and you have your mother over there.”
“Look, Al,” Congressman Rei said. “We wish you well, like I keep saying. But I can see it might be good for you to cool yourself off, because, who knows, when the word gets out and some junky thinks you took a fall, he could take a shot at you in the first couple of months.”
“Jesus. I didn’t think of that yet.”
“Look, Al. Pick a city. Any city in the country except, of course, Chicago. I’ll arrange for you to take a pinch there and you can cool off in a big, comfortable cell, in a big, safe building where money counts for something.”
“Yeah?” He looked at John Torrio for confirmation.
“When you, personally, are satisfied, Al,” Torrio said, “when you can guarantee yourself that everything is copasetic, then you can go to Florida or do whatever you want.”
An important point that was decided at Atlantic City gave much of the impetus to the “Americanization” of the mobs that began immediately thereafter, truly coming out of the inspiration, with which everyone heartily agreed, that a slush fund should be established for the proper education of promising young people to give them a chance to learn business administration the scientific way, the way Congressman Rei had learned it at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, so that they could assume their proper roles as executives in the new interlocking organization, to cope with the already complex and sophisticated industrial problems that had arisen.
It was agreed that in the meantime a lot of impossible old-timers, the real inflexible Mustache Petes, would have to be eliminated, because every day they were proving that they just didn’t have the elasticity to keep up with the modern operation. Joe the Boss was knocked off. Frankie Marlowe, Frankie Yale, the whole Diamond gang, Fats Walsh, Monkey Schubert, Johnny Guistra, Carmelo Liconti, Gerardo Scarpato were all killed, Sam Pollaccio disappeared forever, and Salvatore Maranzano, leader of the most reactionary of the Mustache Petes, was murdered in his office on the twelfth floor of 230 Park Avenue by Bo Weinberg, actually Dutch Schultz’s chief gunman, as a favor to Charley Lucky. They were the headliners. Across the United States on September 11, 1931, fifty-six Mustache Petes were executed, and the new administrative team to co-align all national interests of Horizons A.G. was selected by Congressman Rei, headed by Charley Lucky and Vito Genovese. Edward West was enormously pleased with the changes that
Rei (and the original Atlantic City conference) had effected. He was now confident that the enterprise would prosper and expand to an even greater degree than ever before realized despite the fact that prohibition itself was doomed.
Since February Edward had been using women as an anodyne. He didn’t drink. He had a revulsion for drugs. His nerves had been laid bare and he was haunted by wonderful memories of Irene and pursued by the need to find out who had sent those letters. He pressed on Willie hard and Willie in turn pressed on the agencies working on the investigation, but they were getting nowhere.
Rhonda Healey had set up a beautiful girl named Baby Tolliver in a flat on Park Avenue, staked her out with a colored maid, some furs and nice furniture, and kept her in spending money. Willie handled the bills. Edward saw other women at random too, but Baby Tolliver was programed in as a staple, two or three nights a week, dipping in out of nowhere, always after one in the morning, sometimes at five in the morning. As the summer went on he saw less of the girl because the market was at last showing signs of real weakness. He moved into the apartment in the bank building next to his office and ran out his guerilla lines for buying, selling, raiding and wrecking from there to eleven action stations on either side of the Atlantic, all aimed right back at New York and finally causing the ruinous sure trend that capsized the market. Meanwhile he manipulated to get the two billion four hundred million dollars of the swollen Horizons “special” fund out of the market on May 4, 1929, moving into the short position on September 5. However, on October 25, after the profit had been taken on every dollar he had taken out, something very bad happened that required him to leave the country. He had discovered that Baby Tolliver had been operating a house of prostitution in the luxurious home he had made for her, and he had gone berserk with resentment and frustration, and it was possible that he had hurt her badly. Also, although he had not known it had happened at the time, he had beaten up the colored maid. But that was adjustable and Willie adjusted it. But a beating wasn’t enough for the girl after what he had done for her. Willie handled the police and the DA’s office through and with John Kullers, and they nailed her on maintaining and operating and on charges of compulsory prostitution and attempted bribery. However, it was decided that it would be a better thing if Edward got out of town or out of the country, so he sailed for Europe with Willie on October 27, 1929, and told the horde of ship news reporters who had crowded into his stateroom that he was “seriously concerned with the immediate financial future of the country.”