A lot of misinformation has been published about what preceded the actual assassination, last September 25. After his death, committee employes realized they would have to explain Drury’s frequent phone calls. A story was dreamed up in Chicago to the effect that Drury was seeking “protection” and that Halley, after a couple of weeks’ consideration, had agreed to arrange for it. That runs for the end book. Drury never asked anyone for protection. He was the bravest man we ever knew. He often traveled without a gun, but the mobsters feared his fists more than bullets. We spoke to him a few days before he died. He was not frightened. He was angry. He told us he had been trying to contact committee investigators for weeks to give them information. He said that ever since he had outlined to them what he was prepared to prove he got brushed off when he called again.
The Democratic _Chicago Sun-Times_ charged categorically that Drury was rubbed out because someone on the Kefauver Committee “leaked” to the mobsters what Drury said he had the goods on. He told us his investigations implicated someone on the committee’s staff.
A few days after the murder, Kefauver phoned us long distance to tell us to get all our records and correspondence concerning Drury together as he was going to subpena us at once, in an effort to solve the cowardly crime. That was October 1, 1950. As these words were being typed in February, 1951, the subpena remained unserved and the assassination unpunished.
On the other hand, Lait and Mortimer were under considerable pressure from important personages, Republicans as well as Democrats, “to lay off Halley,” and place the blame for the miscarriage of the Kefauver committee on the chairman instead of on his staff. We refused to be bought, bribed, threatened or intimidated.
By resolution, the original life of the committee was until February 28, but it is probable that additional hearings will be authorized for March.
The plan, as this went to press, was to save all the fireworks for a final blow-out in New York, at which the glamor pusses of the underworld, such as Virginia Hill, dubbed by us “Mafia Rose,” would be called for the publicity value. Virginia was served with much hullabaloo in September, but was saved six months to hypo the last act. Frank Costello was also slated to be called if he “cared to talk.”
The big boys have brazenly stood on their “constitutional rights” on the advice of high-priced counsel who assured them their chances against conviction on contempt, which is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in a Federal “country club,” were about a hundred to one.
It was decided by the Mafia Grand Council that if things got too hot, Costello would have to be the goat. He has been getting too much publicity for the conservative rulers of the Unione, who still live in cold-water tenements with fat old-country wives.
They resent the airs put on by the glamor-boy hoods, who, they feel, and with some justification, are putting the finger of the law on the syndicate.
One Mafia faction is for going further. In the event the spotlight hits Costello his number is up. He has so been told by Tony Ricci, alias Goebels, who manages many such things.
We have not seen it, nor have we any confidential information about the contents of the committee’s final report, but we are willing to bet it will be along these lines:
1) There is crime.
2) No political party has the monopoly on it.
3) There seems to be a Mafia.
4) Gamblers should pay their income tax.
5) Kids should go to Sunday school.
6) Communities should appoint Crime Prevention Societies.
7) Because of the international situation, let’s forget it and call the whole thing off.
The plight of honest Senator Kefauver is not unique. Wherever possible, the underworld uses such characters to do their dirty work. They fall for it, probably because dreamers and social planners are gullible, not practical like their more conservative brethren. That’s why political bosses frequently back them and surprise semi-suspicious suckers who think they know things.
For instance, when the late Boss Kelly of Chicago, one of the most ruthless thieves who ever lived, thought he saw the handwriting on the wall, he nominated good men to run for Governor and Senator. At no time after Adlai Stevenson went to Springfield and Professor Paul Douglas got to Washington did these Utopians ever open their mouths or do anything, or even complain about the iniquities in Chicago, though we told plenty and a lot of other dirt wasn’t confidential.
He hand-picked as his successor Martin Kennelly, a mild old bachelor who didn’t know when it was Wednesday. This was a “businessmen’s candidate.” The mob and their Democratic sidekicks gave him the business.
Kefauver even has a soft spot for accused Commies. He was one of the seven Senators to vote against the McCarran Bill, which Marcantonio opposed in the House. Douglas, who didn’t have guts enough to vote no, because that would have imperiled Lucas’ chance in Illinois, did hop in to uphold the President’s veto.
The only Senator running for reelection who opposed the McCarran Bill all the way was Lehman, a ticket-mate of mob-backed Pecora and Lynch, an old codger of eminent respectability and Wall Street millions, who is and always was “safe”--he’s too wrapped up in Park Avenue dignity and too flattered by public honors to see or understand that with his silk-gloved hands he pulls hot chestnuts out of the oven for the dirtiest crooks, traitors and political plotters in the land.
27. LUCKY NUMBERS
The first thing a Congressional investigating committee gets, the sine qua non, is an appropriation. The next is a sheaf of time-tables. Then comes the joyful junketing-time to remote places--remote from the capital and remote from the subject.
The Kefauver committee made the grand tour--California and Florida, Chicago and New York, about everything but Yellowstone Park. Its golden fleece was gambling. They could have cleaned up their quest for about $1.60 on a taxi meter.
All the evidence, all the interstate involvements and local conditions which are the particular province of Congress, they could find in Washington. We did. All gambling in the capital is interstate because it is inseparable from its lines into and out of Maryland and Virginia.
We outlined the setup of the nationwide underworld Syndicate. We brought it to the District line. At that point the on-the-spot gamblers take over.
They have been mentioned as Emmitt Warring, king of Georgetown; Attilio Acalotti, “mayor” of Dupont Circle; Sam Beard and his partner Gary Quinn, and the Sussman brothers. Of money gouged from suckers, 90 per cent clears through them, and “Black Jack” Kelleher, Frank Erickson’s local observer.
A curious situation here is that “policy” or “numbers” gets a bigger play than bookmaking. The reverse is true almost everywhere else. The reason ascribed by the cognoscenti is that while everyone earns a fairly good living, few have enough surplus cash for important horse betting. But numbers tickets can be bought for from one cent up. That game is far more profitable for the operators, too. Bookmakers can’t do much better than putting a ceiling on track odds. They must follow the mutuels, though they stop at a 20-to-1 payoff. Bookies who can’t lay off enough often lose on a day.
The winning numbers pay only 600 to 1, whereas 999 numbers are drawn, and the draw can be fixed.
In most towns, the numbers play is predominantly by Negroes. In Washington it is general, with white government employes in the majority. The policy slips are usually sold by colored runners, often messengers and elevator boys in government buildings. The salesman withholds 25 per cent of the gross. Average booking is $50 a day.
The take from the numbers, in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, is deposited in the branch of the Hamilton Bank at 20th and Pennsylvania Avenue, in the Foggy Bottom section. The Congressional committee investigating local crime ascertained that this bank did not report the large deposits of small coins. The deposits are withdrawn each day and transferred to Maryland, where local representatives of the Syndicate divide the receipts and send its cut to the Mafia in New York.
The sale of numbers is so widespread, the police can make only token arrests. Invariably, when the peddler, usually a Negro, is locked up, a representative of a bonding outfit appears at once and posts bail. Next day a member of the Charlie Ford law firm appears in court. Several defendants testified the lawyers paid their fines. The operation will be described in detail later.
Numbers sellers are picked up all over the town, and they are not coy. For instance, police got a squeal that two men were selling policy slips from an auto parked in the 1200 block of 7th Street, NW. Cops questioned them and numbers slips “just rolled out of a paper bag on the car floor.” The prisoners were very “surprised,” the more so when 200 numbers books were found in the car’s trunk.