The men opened the envelopes quickly and looked with varying expressions at the amounts written on the paper enclosed.
“Two g’s a week,” Moscowits thought. “It’s not too bad.”
“Fats” Crown got to his feet ponderously. “This is a lot of crap to me; I don’t like it. Nobody’s going to tell me what I can do and can’t do.” He looked over at Luigerro as he spoke. The war between them was well known.
Kane spoke to him. “What you think is your business? In front of each of you is a pad and pencil. Write on it yes or no and sign your name, and then we’ll see what we’re going to do.”
The men wrote and passed the slips up to Kane. He looked at all of them carefully and then up at the men. He spoke directly to Crown. “Yours is the only no. Do you want to change your mind?”
Crown shook his head. “It won’t work. Nobody is going to …”
Kane interrupted him. “If you want it that way, it’s your choice. But the rest of us
Crown looked around the table. “I’m getting out, but I’m warnin’ yuh. Stay out of my territory, that’s all!” He stamped angrily to the door and went out.
The other men looked at Kane. It was important to see how he handled this situation.
What he did now would indicate what course he would take in the future.
Kane walked over to the side of the room and picked up a telephone. He dialled a number. A voice answered. “‘Fats’ walked out of the meeting,” he said quietly into the phone, and hung up.
He came back to the table and sat down. “The rest of us are in business,” he said. “Now the first step is to pick a headquarters. I’ve got a place over in Jersey City….”
“Hell!” Fennelli thought bitterly as Kane elaborated on his plan. “The son-of-a-bitch has an organization ready!” And mixed with this thought was a certain amount of reluctant admiration.
“No one would believe the story the stoolie told,” Jerry said, watching Marty’s face closely, hoping to catch an expression of surprise there. Marty’s face remained impassive, a doctor hearing a case history. His opinion would be formed later when he had heard and assimilated all the facts.
“It was ridiculous, the police claimed. They wouldn’t believe ‘Fats’ Crown was rubbed out by an organization of all the big operators in the city. They tried to find a way to pin the rap on Tony Luigerro, but couldn’t make it stick.
“After the killing of ‘Fats’ Crown the city grew quiet. The mob wars seemed to stop, and gradually the public’s attention turned to other matters. The pressure turned off, and the idea of a special prosecutor fell by the wayside for the time.
“And all the while Frank continued to consolidate and build his empire. He started his organization in a two-room office in a building in Jersey City. The name on the door read: ‘Frank Kane, Enterprises.’ But it was growing. From that little two-room office, tentacles were reaching out all over the country, to Chicago, to St. Louis, to San Francisco, to New Orleans. North, east, south, and west, they were reaching out in all directions, blanketing the country. Organized gambling became one of the biggest and most powerful businesses in the country.
“By late 1940 the two-room office had expanded into fifty rooms on four floors, had employed over two hundred people, book-keepers, secretaries, clerks. Their eight- operator telephone switchboard had direct wires to every gambling centre in the country. It was big business in the American concept. There was nothing small about it.
“It had department heads, minor executives, top executives. It had an expensive and elaborate legal department. At its head was one of the top legal business counsels in the country. It had a public relations department, with a man from one of the leading public relations agencies heading it. This was the department whose job it was to maintain public interest in the venture. I know it sounds odd, almost crazy, to believe that a business as illegal as this one was interested in publicity, but it was true. This department saw to it that stories appeared in the newspapers and columns about killings
made at the track, at the fights, at all games, by personalities that the public was interested in. They planted stories on how the bookies wept when so and so laid down his bets. They had competent sports writers writing articles on all angles of sports. They didn’t miss a trick.
“And at the top of it all was Frank Kane. Under his direction the organization called Frank Kane, Enterprises, continued to expand. A department was set up having miniature tote boards for every important track in the country. The pari-mutuel machines at the track were duplicated in this office by electric calculators, operated by trained men, which reflected at every minute the bets received in his office on any one race in the country. It was a routine matter to check his play against the track by telephone, and if the prices weren’t right, a man at the track would begin to tumble money into the machines to get the price to where a profit could be made by the organization.
“He set limits upon which the bookies would pay off. Twenty-to-one to win. Fifteen-to- one to place. Ten-to-one to show. Fifty-to-one on parlays. One-hundred-to-one on daily doubles. Before that, the prices bookies would pay were on a competitive basis, depending on how much business they needed or wanted. Sometimes one or the other would go over his head and fail to pay off. Frank Kane stopped this. A limit was set for the bookies according to their financial basis; all over that limit had to be turned into the organization, which would then split the profits with the bookies on a commission basis. It was a place where bookies not only could, but had to, lay off their bets if they went in over their heads. This had a stabilizing effect on the business. They began to brag that not one of them had failed to pay off in two years. It was a great deal like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guaranteeing the deposits in banks.
“Perhaps the most amazing thing about the entire setup was that, despite its size, comparatively few people outside those connected with the organization knew about it. And even less people knew about Frank Kane, when suddenly one day the newspapers broke forth with the news. A joint interview with the Governor and the Mayor resulted in the statement:
The City and the State of New York, even the country, is in danger of falling into the power and hands of one man.
One man, who has so organized gambling as a business that it is vitally affecting our entire economic welfare, whether we gamble or not.
He has so involved many of our citizens in economic bondage, forcing them into debt to small and large usurers and bookmakers, that the amount of money involved is greater than we can imagine.
His business has led him into fields of corruption never before equalled in our history. He does business in millions, not in pennies. He has bribed or attempted to bribe large and small public officials. He has so organized nefarious activity that no longer is murder necessary as a threat to those that would oppose him, though there can be no way to estimate the murders and suicides that have resulted from his activities. He has substituted for this another weapon. The threat of economic enslavement for those who dare to oppose him.
This man must be stopped.
Within a few days the governor will announce the appointment of a “Special Prosecutor” whose sole function it will be to stop this man and put him where he belongs. Behind bars.
This man’s name is Frank Kane.
The job of the special prosecutor will have but one function. To get Frank Kane.
“The newspapers were in an uproar. They had long been aware of the fact that a great story was to break, but this caught them almost unprepared. They searched frantically in their files for pictures of Frank Kane and couldn’t find any. He was described variously as tall, short, fat, thin, and so on. To the public, he was a ghost, a wraith, a name without a body. He had never been arrested, never finger-printed, never described. The question on everyone’s lips was, ‘Who is Frank Kane?’ ‘Where is Frank Kane?’
“Frank was in Chicago when the story broke in New York. He had gone there alone for two days, and for reasons no one seemed to know. There was never any business involved that we could find out, no woman, none of the usual things that would take a man to another city half way across the country for only two days.
“I don’t know whether he was aware of what had gone on in New York after he had left, but I rather imagine he was. Anyway, he boarded the train with his usual nonchalance, took his seat in the Pullman and opened his copy of the Chicago Tribune to the first page. And there I came back into his life—or rather he into mine.
“Right there on the bottom of the page, next to an item that told of the accidental death of a Chicago railroad detective, was a small squib which read——
New York, N.Y. September 9, 1940 (A.P.)
Jerome H. Cowan, son of the former mayor, A. H. Cowan of New York, has been appointed to the position of Special Prosecutor by the Governor of New York. It will be the job of Mr. Cowan to get Frank Kane, who is designated as the currently top man in the gambling racket of the country by New York’s Governor.
“Yes, that was my job—to get Frank Kane. A funny way to get your big chance—nail your friend to the wall and let the buzzards pick at his carcass!
“I didn’t want the job really. But my father, who had wangled it, said: ‘This is your opportunity. Friendship be damned! You may never get another like it.’
“So I took it. I was a fool, I guess, but then I couldn’t know what was to happen. My first order was to bring Frank in for questioning. You know what happened to that. He stood politely across the river in Jersey and thumbed his nose at us.
“At the end of three weeks of intensive investigations, we had gotten nowhere and I was getting frantic. The newspapers were slugging away at me. They thought I had been given a wrapped-up case, that all I had to do was get it into court. They were wrong. I had nothing to start with and nothing after three weeks.
“I decided to see him and talk with him. So one afternoon I picked up the private
phone on my desk, not the one that went through the switchboard, and dialled the number of Frank Kane, Enterprises. If I couldn’t get him over here, maybe I could make him see the hopelessness of his position and get him to quit before it was too late. ‘After all,’ I thought, ‘he was my friend.’
“A voice answered the telephone: ‘Frank Kane, Enterprises.’ “‘Mr. Kane, please,’ I said.
“‘Thank you,’ the voice replied. I heard the clicking of the transfer then another voice came on: ‘Mr. Kane’s office.’
“‘Mr. Kane, please,’ I repeated.
“‘Who is calling?’ came the voice over the phone. “‘Jerome Cowan,’ I said.
“I could hear the faint note of surprise in the voice as it said: ‘Just a moment please’; then a click, then the voice again: ‘Mr. Kane, Mr. Cowan on twenty-fi-uv’; then another click and——
“‘Kane talking.’ His voice came expressionless through the receiver. It was like talking to a ghost.”
Jerry put his half-finished drink on the side table—he had long forgotten that he held it in his hand. He got out of his seat and walked over and stood in front of Janet and Marty, looking down at them.
Janet looked up at her husband with slightly widened eyes. He had never mentioned this before. He was agitated and nervous as he seemed to relive the moment in his mind. He began to talk again, his voice was harsh and nervous. “‘This is Jerry Cowan,’ I said.
“‘I know,’ came Frank’s reply through the phone. His voice exhibited no more emotion than if I spoke to him every day; he didn’t seem affected by the strangeness of my call, by the fact that I had been appointed to put him in jail. It betrayed no curiosity as to the reason for my call; it was polite, casual, disinterested.
“I spoke quickly. I was afraid he might hang up and cut me off before I could finish what I wanted to say. From the way I acted, one might think I was the accused, not the accuser. ‘Jerry Cowan,’ I repeated. ‘Remember?’
“‘I remember.’
“‘I want to talk to you,’ I said foolishly.
“‘You are,’ he pointed out in the same cool, casual voice.
“‘You’ve got to get out of this,’ I said. ‘You know people are gunning for your scalp and that you can’t beat them for ever. We were friends once. Take it from me—get out while you can.’
“‘Is that all you called up to say?’ he asked.
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Frank, for heaven’s sake, listen to me!——’
“‘I have listened,’ his voice replied, and now a hard note had come into it. An underlying quality of steel crept into his inflection. ‘Mr. Cowan, I know you have a job to do. It’s your job. You took it. You do it. Don’t expect me to do it for you.’
“‘But, Frank,’ I protested, ‘that’s not it. I want to help you.’
“He laughed shortly. ‘You can start in helping by minding your own business.’ “‘All right,’ I said, ‘if that’s the way you want it.’
“‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Cowan?’ he asked. There was a hidden quality in his voice that I couldn’t understand.
“‘No,’ I said, suddenly exhausted, ‘nothing. I was just thinking. When we were kids, everything was so simple and we were friends and you and Marty and I were——’
“‘I know,’ he answered. Suddenly his voice had changed; it was gentle and friendly. ‘I was thinking too.’ He rang off and left me staring at the receiver in my hand.
“I put it back on the rocker and sat there in a sort of daze. I must have sat there for almost an hour, while a feeling of despair slowly crept over me. I was licked and I knew it. It was the same old story, and he was always better at it than I. I had the feeling I would never beat him down—never.
“I looked around the office. I hated it, everything it stood for, hated everything I wanted to be ever since I was a Kid. What a fool I was, wanting to be something I wasn’t! I had to get out of the office, had to go out in the air by myself and think. I grabbed my hat and left. ‘I’m going out for the afternoon,’ I snapped at my secretary as I passed. ‘I won’t be back today.’ I jumped into my car and drove up into the country, and