Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series by David Pietrusza Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Pietrusza
savings from day jobs or other games, as often as not, he put it to work not by wagering on dice, but by lending it to those who would. Rates were steep: 20 percent by next Monday's matinees.
Growing businesses add employees, and Arnold's business was growing. He needed friends to collect for him because when people owed you money, they avoided you. He hired big, hard, ruthless friends like Monk Eastman, men he had long cultivated. "It was always the biggest, toughest boys whom he treated [to favors]," brother Edgar recalled of Arnold's school days. "I guess he wanted to get them on his side."
So some of the players in Rothstein's story were starting to come together. It's instructive to present a physical description of the main character in the drama. One of the best physical descriptions of Arnold Rothstein appeared in Donald Henderson Clarke's biography, In the Reign of Rothstein. Written shortly after A. R.'s death, it describes him very near to this point in time:
When he first appeared in the news [c. 1908], Rothstein was a slim, young man of twenty-six, with dark hair, a complexion remarkable for its smooth pallor as if he never had to worry about razors-white, skilful hands, and amazingly vital, sparkling, dark brown eyes.
The Rothstein eyes were features above all others that those who met him recalled most faithfully-those laughing, brilliant, restless eyes glowing in the pale but very expressive face.
He laughed a great deal. He looked worried when it suited him to appear worried. A casual observer might have said that Rothstein's face was an open book. It certainly was far from the ordinary concept of a "poker" face. In the course of an evening at table, or at play, it ran the whole gamut of expressions. But, mostly, it was a smiling, a laughing face....
He was about five feet seven inches tall, slim of figure, most meticulously garbed, not in the garish style of Broadway, but in the more subdued method of Fifth Avenue, and was extremely quick in his movements. In his later years, although most abstemious in eating, he gained weight, but he never lost anything of that pantherish quickness, which was more like the catlike suavity of muscular coordination that is Jack Dempsey's than anything else.
Rothstein put on a little paunch in later years, but never changed greatly from Henderson's description of the young man. He retained his unhealthy pallor, his grace, his charm, and a quality that Henderson did not here describe: an overarching ego that manifested itself in a cutting remark, an arched eyebrow, in cruelty and in toying with those unfortunate enough to need his cash or protection. As he grew wealthier and more powerful, his ego and cruelty grew: particularly in regard to money. When he died, a reporter for the New York World wrote:
He loved, almost viciously, to collect, and he hated, almost viciously, to pay. He took an almost perverted delight in postponing the payment of losses. There was something cruelly satisfactory to his senses in tantalizing and teasing the persons to whom he owed money. This perverted pleasure grew on him in his later years.
As Rothstein increased in confidence and in what passed for stature in Times Square, his supercilious manner grated upon those who considered themselves at least as crafty, and perhaps more so. One such group of wits congregated at "the big white room" at Jack's. A decade later, a similar clique formed at the Algonquin Hotel. The Algonquin Circle's members-poetess Dorothy Parker, humorist Robert Benchley, playwrights George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, and Robert Sherwood, critic Alexander Woollcott, columnists Franklin Pierce Adams and Heywood Broun, comedian Harpo Marx, and New Yorker founder Harold Ross-are remembered today. But back around 1907, the group that gathered at Jack's proved just as clever, and just as cutting and witty-and rising young gambler Arnold Rothstein settled comfortably in their midst.
Rothstein didn't patronize Jack's just for
Growing businesses add employees, and Arnold's business was growing. He needed friends to collect for him because when people owed you money, they avoided you. He hired big, hard, ruthless friends like Monk Eastman, men he had long cultivated. "It was always the biggest, toughest boys whom he treated [to favors]," brother Edgar recalled of Arnold's school days. "I guess he wanted to get them on his side."
So some of the players in Rothstein's story were starting to come together. It's instructive to present a physical description of the main character in the drama. One of the best physical descriptions of Arnold Rothstein appeared in Donald Henderson Clarke's biography, In the Reign of Rothstein. Written shortly after A. R.'s death, it describes him very near to this point in time:
When he first appeared in the news [c. 1908], Rothstein was a slim, young man of twenty-six, with dark hair, a complexion remarkable for its smooth pallor as if he never had to worry about razors-white, skilful hands, and amazingly vital, sparkling, dark brown eyes.
The Rothstein eyes were features above all others that those who met him recalled most faithfully-those laughing, brilliant, restless eyes glowing in the pale but very expressive face.
He laughed a great deal. He looked worried when it suited him to appear worried. A casual observer might have said that Rothstein's face was an open book. It certainly was far from the ordinary concept of a "poker" face. In the course of an evening at table, or at play, it ran the whole gamut of expressions. But, mostly, it was a smiling, a laughing face....
He was about five feet seven inches tall, slim of figure, most meticulously garbed, not in the garish style of Broadway, but in the more subdued method of Fifth Avenue, and was extremely quick in his movements. In his later years, although most abstemious in eating, he gained weight, but he never lost anything of that pantherish quickness, which was more like the catlike suavity of muscular coordination that is Jack Dempsey's than anything else.
Rothstein put on a little paunch in later years, but never changed greatly from Henderson's description of the young man. He retained his unhealthy pallor, his grace, his charm, and a quality that Henderson did not here describe: an overarching ego that manifested itself in a cutting remark, an arched eyebrow, in cruelty and in toying with those unfortunate enough to need his cash or protection. As he grew wealthier and more powerful, his ego and cruelty grew: particularly in regard to money. When he died, a reporter for the New York World wrote:
He loved, almost viciously, to collect, and he hated, almost viciously, to pay. He took an almost perverted delight in postponing the payment of losses. There was something cruelly satisfactory to his senses in tantalizing and teasing the persons to whom he owed money. This perverted pleasure grew on him in his later years.
As Rothstein increased in confidence and in what passed for stature in Times Square, his supercilious manner grated upon those who considered themselves at least as crafty, and perhaps more so. One such group of wits congregated at "the big white room" at Jack's. A decade later, a similar clique formed at the Algonquin Hotel. The Algonquin Circle's members-poetess Dorothy Parker, humorist Robert Benchley, playwrights George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, and Robert Sherwood, critic Alexander Woollcott, columnists Franklin Pierce Adams and Heywood Broun, comedian Harpo Marx, and New Yorker founder Harold Ross-are remembered today. But back around 1907, the group that gathered at Jack's proved just as clever, and just as cutting and witty-and rising young gambler Arnold Rothstein settled comfortably in their midst.
Rothstein didn't patronize Jack's just for
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