ON THE VERY DAY THAT HENRY MORGENTHAU ANNOUNCED in Washington that the government wasn't interested in any cash settlement from the Treasury's most wanted man, a prominent attorney in Albany, James M. Noonan, had a visit from two strangers.
Noonan's callers outlined a "hypothetical" tax proceeding and asked the counselor what he thought of it. Noonan pondered the matter for a split second or so and then expressed a most disdainful view of the prosecution's case as it had been set before him. Accordingly, he was told that he would hear presently from a potential client described as a person of some means. The call came two mornings later, on November 28. Noonan happened to be available for an immediate audience, and very shortly there stood before him a--broken-nosed, sallow-looking man in a black topcoat, a baggy blue suit, and, of course, a gray fedora.
Noonan said he recognized his visitor from his picture in the Albany Post Office.
A brief conference ensued and then, at 10:30 A.M., the two men appeared at the nearby office of United States Commissioner Lester T. Hubbard.
"I'm Arthur Flegenheimer," said Jim Noonan's new client. "I am under indictment in the Southern District of New York. I wish to surrender."
The Commissioner did not recognize the name and did not stand up and do a song and dance, for that matter, when it was translated to Dutch Schultz. So they started all over, with some interpolations by Noonan, and in due course the federal official was persuaded that the chain-smoking gorilla in the fedora was nobody less than J. Edgar Hoover's Public Enemy No.1, come to throw himself upon the mercy of the bar. This so impressed the Commissioner that he set bail at $50,000 and doubled it later at the formal arraignment. Schultz thereupon was packed off to the state capital's new $2 million escape-proof jail in time to catch a belated pre-Thanksgiving dinner with 16 local malefactors of considerably lesser prominence. This repast--fresh ham, potatoes, vegetables and pie and coffee--left the refugee from the Big Town with a decidedly low opinion of Albany's facilities for the oppressed.
Except for his meals and an occasional turn around the 150-foot exercise corridor, Schultz confined himself to his cell to catch up on his reading. In the evening papers, he would find quite a few things about Arthur Flegenheimer. Down in Manhattan, Commissioner Valentine was quoted as saying that the Dutchman had surrendered only because he had found himself just "one jump"--a short jump, presumably--ahead of his suddenly relentless pursuers. In truth, a band of New York police and federal agents, no doubt spurred on by those nagging calls Henry Morgenthau had made to Messrs. LaGuardia and Hoover, had swarmed into upstate Newburgh only to hear that the fugitive had slipped away to a cottage somewhere between Saratoga and Lake George, supposedly with a revved-up plane at hand in case the enemy got too close. Maybe so, but while the fuzz was beating the bushes in that scenic country, Schultz happened to be in Albany offering his body to the law, like any good citizen should, after a while, when he knows
the law wants to see him. Valentine speculated that the Dutchman might have chosen that course because rival underworld types were looking to throw some lead at him. Then the gruff Commissioner added an observation which the prisoner would have to view as unfriendly at best.
"I wish they were bringing him back in a box," he said. "That's what the bum was afraid of--that he'd be brought in dead. That's why he surrendered. The trail was getting too hot for him."
Mayor LaGuardia was more restrained. "It is a sad commentary on the police department of every city in which Schultz had been hiding," he said of the Dutchman's 22 months of freedom, perhaps unmindful of the fact that New York City itself had served as the gangster's primary host during most of that period.
Valentine's suggestion that Schultz might have sought the sanctuary of a jail to escape enemy guns quickly washed out when the man's barristers hastened into court to get his bail reduced so that he could walk the streets again. J. Richard Davis, noting that his client had suffered but one conviction in his 33 years and had posted bail in 11 other cases without ever running away, put the case this way:
"Schultz is not a Dillinger. He is not a Baby Face Nelson. He is indicted for failure to pay income taxes. Is this a serious crime to man?"
Without waiting for an answer, Davis went on to submit that his much-abused client had a perfectly good reason for not filing tax returns during the three years listed in the indictment. "He had no income," said the attorney. Later on, Jim Noonan would observe that Arthur Flegenheimer's situation was really something like that of J. P. Morgan, who
had paid no tax in 1929 "because he had no taxable income." There was something amiss in this argument, actually. The financier, unlike the beer-and-booze magnate, had filed a return, but it showed no taxable income because of the heavy
losses Mr. Morgan had sustained in that very bad year for
non-bootleggers.
The Dutchman's bail eventually was reduced to $75,000
but the process of posting it took several weeks, inflicting upon him his longest incarceration in all the years since he had done that 15-month stretch for unlawful entry as a 17-year-old apprentice thief in The Bronx back in 1919. Breathing free air again but under an injunction not to leave the jurisdiction, he repaired to a hideaway outside Troy, just a few miles from Albany, to await his trial, which was months away.
Only one minor inconvenience occurred during this hiatus--a quick trip into town on March 9, 1935, to see Troy's District Attorney, Charles J. Ranney, about a case of murder. The victim happened to be Jules Martin, the Schultz enforcer in the restaurant shakedown racket. Martin, nee Modgilewsky and known as "Modgilewsky the Commissar" because he was a very rough customer, had been found dead in a snow bank up that way the week before. Ranney had reason to believe that Rensselaer County's other distinguished guest from New York might know something about the violent departure of his associate, but the command appearance produced nothing more than a blanket of silence. The Dutchman even refused to say that he had nothing to say, letting his attorney, Jim Noonan, convey that to the District Attorney. Well, did Schultz know the deceased? Ranney couldn't even get that harmless question answered.
Accordingly, the murder lay dormant for another three years, until two cons in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary started peddling a story that Bo Weinberg had done in Julie Martin. When that tale got around, Dixie Davis, his pipes loosened by his extended singing role in the Hines trial, suddenly remembered that Martin had been dispatched by the Dutchman himself. Davis's story is worth telling first, because he submitted that, much to his own revulsion and disgust, he had witnessed the whole thing with his very own baby blue eyes.
In the barrister's account, the unpleasantness began when Schultz, short of cash, phoned Martin one day and told him to dig $21,000 out of the accounts of the Metropolitan Restaurant and Cafeteria Association, the polite name for the shakedown operation, and dash upstate with it at once, if not sooner.
Well, the busy little subsidiary's bank deposits happened to be rather low at the time of the hurry-up call from Troy and Martin was said to have remarked to Philip Grossel, its secretary, that "the Dutchman's got some nerve coming around to draw that kind of dough when we're almost broke." The Commissar spoke with considerable authority, since the anemic condition of the exchequer derived principally from the fact that he had been going South--or rather West--with small but regular stacks of the association's receipts in order to operate a factory which he had set up in Elkhart, Indiana, for the purpose of turning out a fleet of rebuilt taxicabs. Anyway, within a day or two after making that crack about the Dutchman's avarice, Martin found himself on a train rolling toward Albany with $21,000 and J. Richard Davis riding shotgun.
Davis said the trip wasn't his idea. He said he had orders to deliver Martin and the cash to the Harmony Hotel, a decrepit installation in the little town of Cohoes, near the capital, where Mr. Schultz would be waiting. The confrontation between the errant strong-arm man and his employer evidently was exceedingly bitter from the very outset. Davis said the Dutchman maintained that there was $70,000 missing from the association's accounts, while Martin, even after absorbing a hard sneak right to the eye, insisted just as vehemently that he himself hadn't heisted more than, oh, maybe $20,000. This is how Davis described the conclusion of the debate:
"Dutch Schultz was ugly; he had been drinking and suddenly he had his gun out. The Dutchman wore his pistol under his vest, tucked inside his pants, right against his belly. One jerk at his vest and he had it in his hand. All in the same quick motion he swung it up, stuck it in Jules Martin's mouth and pulled the trigger.
"It was as simple and undramatic as that--just one quick motion of the hand. The Dutchman did that murder just as casually as if he were picking his teeth."
Davis said that even as Martin tumbled to the floor, moaning, Schultz turned to him and advised him that he was free to leave at once, adding, "Dick, you must hate me for this." That made sense, of course, since the peace-loving barrister was hardly accustomed to that kind of untidiness in hotel rooms and, in any case, Lulu Rosenkrantz and a party named Danny Dale happened to be on hand to dispose of the expiring guest for the ill-tempered Dutchman. Davis said his mental anguish increased immeasurably the next day upon learning to his horror that Martin's body also bore twelve stab wounds, all in the chest, when it was found stiffening in the snow. Davis said that when he asked his client about this unseemly item at a later date, Schultz replied, in his irrepressibly direct way, "I cut his heart out." The counselor said he never really liked Dutch Schultz after that--a rather slow footnote, since it came almost four years after the man had expired.
In the interest of fair reporting, especially since the Martin demise was the only one ever so directly credited to the Dutchman and his constant companion, the .45 Colt, the Davis story should be weighed against the earlier account from the Atlanta gaol.
That one came mainly from a disreputable character named Hyman (Hymie the Painter) Berger, then idling away his time in federal custody on an endlessly long sentence, like life, for an auto theft which had compounded a series of other indiscretions. Berger submitted in February 1938, six months before Davis opened up, that he happened to be in Troy on March 2, 1935, to see one William Dooley in connection with a little painting racket he had going for himself in Brooklyn. He said he ran into Dutch Schultz, Bo Weinberg, Dixie Davis and Jules Martin, saw the quartet go into a house around 2:00 A.M. and presently saw Martin stagger out in evident haste, only to be overtaken by the hulking Weinberg. He said he saw Weinberg slip a revolver between the outmatched Martin's molars and fire it.
Dooley, in Atlanta himself because he had been caught impersonating a federal officer, a social lapse frowned on by most federal officers, actually had spilled the Weinberg story first, but he had to admit that he had not actually witnessed the deed himself. Thus the tale rested on Hymie the Painter, known here as Hymie the Storyteller because the author is inclined to go along with Tom Dewey's expressed view that Dixie Davis had the Martin murder right. While no knowledgeable observer could list the dandy mouthpiece on any roster of the more dedicated searchers after truth, there is no gain saying that his account had more merit on every score, starting with the fact that he had the locale right--Cohoes, not Troy.
Beyond that, one wants to remember that among the sudden departures with which he became acquainted in the service of the mob the Martin slaying was one of the very few that Dixie Davis did not charge up to Bo Weinberg. That had to count for something.
Even so, it is necessary to report that if the Dutchman himself had the blood of Jules Martin on his hands or his conscience, it hardly showed a month later when he presented himself in Syracuse, on the eve of his tax trial, for that celebrated meet-the-press session of his. The man of the hour was in reasonably good humor all through the long session, which even contributed some tidbits to his scant biography.
A reader of Horatio Alger (not to mention Mr. Shakespeare, Stefan Zweig, Emil Ludwig, Ambrose Bierce and some guy named Plato), he managed to come out in the Alger mode: Born of impoverished immigrants, lost his father at a tender age, had to quit school to help support his mother and kid sister, worked at any job he could get, lifted himself up by his own diligence, enjoyed a modest success--and now had the damned government on his back trying to tear it all down. Sort of a typical American success story.
The Dutchman strove in other ways to strengthen the image of the respectable burgher. Thus on another occasion, talking to Meyer Berger of The New York Times, he professed some anger over a reference to his private life.
"Ain't you the one who wrote that I was a pushover for blondes?" Schultz asked the celebrated reporter.
"I was told that you are a pushover for a blonde," Berger replied. "Someone told me that."
"That is beside the pernt," the Dutchman came back in one of his few pronunciation lapses. "I only remember it made me feel bad when I saw it in the Times. I don't think 'pushover for a blonde' is any kind of language to write for a newspaper like the Times."
Berger stood corrected. At last he had an editor who really appreciated the niceties of that time in history.
An old hand on the Schultz story, Berger, by the way, was disappointed by the racket overlord's appearance. To him the Dutchman always came off as "an ill-dressed vagrant," or at best a guy with "a special talent for looking like a perfect example of the unsuccessful man."
Schultz, for that matter, made no secret of the frugality that governed his wardrobe. He said he never spent more than $35 or so for a suit or more than $2 for a shirt. "You take silk shirts now," he told the assembled press in the big Syracuse session, "I think only queers wear silk shirts. I never bought one in my life. Only a sucker will pay $15 or $20 for a silk shirt."
But, then, there were matters of substance on that day's agenda as well.
Had he surrendered in November because the FBI seemed to have turned a little trigger-happy when all those agents chopped down John Dillinger? And then Homer Van Meter? And then another Dillinger playmate, Pretty Boy Floyd? And then, on the very day of the Dutchman's surrender, Baby Face Nelson, who had taken two G-Men to eternity with him when he was trapped in a Chicago suburb? "Naw," said the Dutchman. "I wasn't wanted for murder or kidnapping like the guys that were getting shot. They only wanted me for a minor offense--this income tax stuff."
Did he consider himself a public enemy? "I'm no public enemy. I'm a public benefactor." In what way? No answer.
Was he the Beer Baron of The Bronx until Repeal? "I'm no beer baron. I never was a beer baron. That'll all come out at the trial." But hadn't he made a couple of million selling beer? Dixie Davis, on hand in the hotel room, rescued his client. "He never was in beer," the lawyer said, although the defense was prepared to concede at the trial that Arthur Flegenheimer was up to his neck in the forbidden brew.
Why was he in trouble? "I think they've picked me out--the government. I mean--because a certain group of individuals, some of them still in the government and some actually prosecuting this case, had a personal grudge against me. And they wanted the publicity out of it, too. That was mostly it."
Did he know Jimmy Hines? "I know of him and I hear he is a grand man. Not that I can recall that I ever spoke to him, though." All that with a bland, expressionless face, despite a trace of nervousness, while he waited for Davis to close out this line of questioning. "He doesn't know Hines," the lawyer said, also with a straight face.
Had he known the late Vincent Coll? "I knew his sister. She's Florence Redden. I just received a letter from her wishing me luck in my trial." But weren't he and Coll good friends once? "Sometimes," came the cryptic reply. Was Coll looking for him the day the Vengalli baby was gunned down in East Harlem? "I wasn't the target. The police know who the target was. They know who shot and was shot at and it wasn't me. I believe I was in court that day."
How did he feel about cops? "They're overgrown bullies. They're too lazy to work--that's New York cops I'm talking about."
Was he worried about the trial: "Worried? No, I'm not worried. I've been in worser spots than this."
Even so, the Dutchman in a single day accepted a set of rosary beads from one well-wisher and a murmured "Good luck" in Yiddish from another. "I guess I'm gonna need all the luck I can get," he said, "so I ain't passing anything up."
All the flanks were covered.
