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It was no secret that Donovan had close connections in New York—he had been a United States Attorney in New York, a very successful one in seeing to the enforcement of Prohibition laws, before settling into a highly lucrative private practice on Wall Street.
“There’s an interesting twist here,” Donovan said to Canidy, rising to the story, but then had second thoughts and turned to Gurfein. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear your take on it again, Murray.”
Gurfein nodded.
“Very well, sir.” He looked at Canidy. “You’re familiar with Tom Dewey?”
“Just what I read in the papers,” Canidy said. “Good-looking, bright guy, fearless. Ran for governor of New York—and lost—in ’38 at age thirty-five, thirty-six, prosecuted big-time mobsters and other high-profile bad guys, like the leader of the American Nazis, whatshisname—”
“Fritz Kuhn,” Gurfein supplied.
“—Fritz Kuhn,” Canidy repeated. “Dewey is running for governor again, and will probably go from there to run for President.”
“Simply put, in a short time he’s cut a very wide path that’s shut down a lot of people,” Gurfein said. “You’d think the mob would want to rub him out—”
“Sure,” Canidy said.
“—and you’d be right.”
“And therein lies the twist,” Donovan said.
Gurfein nodded slowly. “With Joe ‘The Boss’ Masseria and Salvatore ‘Little Caesar’ Maranzano dead and gone, Luciano and Lansky knew this was their chance to pull together the various factions of the underworld. If they didn’t, well, what goes around comes around, right? So with some great dealing and convincing they managed to set up what was called ‘the Commission.’”
The director of the Office of Strategic Services said: “Dutch Schultz, Lansky, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, and of course Luciano as its chairman.” He looked at Gurfein. “You tell it.”
“It was, I think, 1935—”
“Right,” Donovan said. “’Thirty-five.”
“—and Dewey was investigating Dutch Schultz. When Dutch went into hiding, Mayor La Guardia started to really put the screws to Schultz’s slot-machine racket. Needless to say, Dutch didn’t like it, and proposed to the Commission that Dewey be taken out. Jonnie Torrio told him, ‘You don’t go whacking guys that high,’ or words to that effect—”
“That’s right,” Donovan said. “I’d forgotten Torrio was also on the Commission. An
d no wonder. It was his gang that a young Luciano first joined.”
Gurfein waited to see if Donovan was finished, and when the head of the OSS waved his hand in a Go ahead gesture, Gurfein continued:
“See, the Commission was really afraid of their own rackets taking heat—even getting shut down—after the public reacted badly to the news of the immensely popular D.A. being killed by the same scum he was trying to clean up. So when Dutch was told no, he was, shall we say, less than thrilled about not getting his way, and became so pissed that he decided that he was going to do the job himself. That is, have his goons kill Dewey. Word spread among the gangs, and when Luciano and his buddy Lansky got wind of it they knew that they had to stop Dutch Schultz.”
“And the only way to do that,” Canidy said, remembering the news stories, “was for Schultz to get whacked.”
Gurfein took a sip of water and nodded at the same time, spilling water on the table and in his lap.
“Shit!” he said softly, then “Excuse me,” and quickly patted at the wet spots with his napkin.
“So, Schultz,” he went on, “real name Arthur Simon Flegenheimer, aka the notorious Beer Baron, age thirty-three, got shot in the Palace Chop House in Newark and days later died of wounds suffered.”
“And Dewey lived to see another day,” Donovan said, “saved, oddly enough, by the mob.”
“Fascinating,” Canidy said. “But what—”
“Not that that made any difference to Dewey,” Gurfein interrupted, adding, “because while Luciano may have directly or indirectly kept Dewey from being killed, Luciano was far from being home free. In fact, quite the opposite. The relentless prosecutor got him good: His team of racket busters raided scores of brothels and brought in some one hundred hookers and madams. After a couple weeks in the city’s Women’s House of Detention, enough of them talked so that Dewey could bring charges that would stick. And, in the end, Luciano was found guilty of running prostitution rings and sentenced to a record term of thirty to fifty.”
“Sounds like Dewey essentially had him tossed in the slam for life and thrown away the key,” Canidy said.
“That’s what everyone thought,” Donovan said. “But then the ONI came calling. They were desperate—are desperate—for information on spies, saboteurs.”
“Navy intelligence in New York,” Gurfein said, picking up the next part of the story, “was having trouble—”
