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  The door to suite 3907 opened from the inside before Winship could press the buzzer. The apartment suite was six rooms. Charles Ross, also known as Charles Luciano, occupied them. He was there along with Costello and four others: Joseph Adonis, John Torrio, Albert Anastasia and Frank Scalice. All the men were wearing suits and ties. They had been meeting there for the past ten hours but the ashtrays were clean and no one had a glass in hand.

  Costello introduced Winship, who introduced Cabot. Winship noted that their handshakes were pro forma, no wasted energy.

  Drinks were poured as though they were everyone’s first for the night. All sat except Luciano. He did the talking, got right to the point, said he and his associates had in mind to establish an investment fund of some sort and wanted to make sure they went about it correctly. Luciano asked several questions that Winship felt the man already knew the answers to.

  Winship and Cabot gave polite, proper advice, as though they were dealing with straight, genteel clients.

  Luciano was pleased. When he smiled his mouth seemed much larger. His eyes were narrow, the right one more so. As a matter of fact, the entire right half of his face seemed affected. The knife scar that ran from beneath his chin to halfway up his cheek didn’t quite pass for a face line. He flattered Winship and Cabot before asking if they would personally take on the responsibility of setting up the investment fund.

  Winship looked to Cabot, who deferred by taking his gaze to his left shoe. Winship’s inclination was to say they’d give it some thought. But he knew that wasn’t what these men wanted to hear. His better judgment told him not to displease them. He was also listening to his crotch.

  Winship said he didn’t see why not.

  Luciano wasn’t interested in what Winship didn’t see. Yes or no?

  Sure.

  Costello had to leave. Adonis and Torrio left with him. Then Anastasia and Scalice put on their hats and overcoats and were gone. Luciano asked was there anything he could get Winship and Cabot.

  No, they’d have this last drink and be off.

  What neither Winship nor Cabot knew was they had just come in on the tail end of the most important conference ever attended by top-level mobsters. Delegates from Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Chicago and other cities had gathered at the Waldorf Astoria to close once and for all the accounts, grudges and other such due bills left over from the prohibition era.

  That very day, crime had become syndicated on a national basis. Territories were redefined to everyone’s satisfaction and new codes of conduct were agreed upon. For one thing, within the Syndicate there would be no more indiscriminate killing. The reason for one of them to kill one of them would have to be heard by a commission made up of twelve of their kind. They could walk their streets without fear, shuck their bodyguards. When a killing was allowed it would be carried out in a new, cleaner way. Each region would volunteer the services of six of its hit men, who could be imported from one region by another. They would go in, kill, get out the same day. The police would be perplexed. Murder, Incorporated.

  And then there was the investment fund. Everyone’s take was getting too large. It wasn’t good to have so much cash around, as a matter of fact it was getting more and more difficult to hide. Smarter if they pooled it, kept a fixed percentage and let the rest be invested. It appealed to them, the idea of becoming legitimate, and to that extent more stable.

  The second hand of Winship’s watch was sweeping around to make it straight up eleven. His drink had been down to its ice cubes for fifteen minutes. Cabot shrugged when Luciano wasn’t looking.

  The door buzzer didn’t ring.

  But Luciano got up, went to the door and let the girls in. Four very pretty girls. Luciano himself had selected them out of a dozen of his best.

  They were young experts.

  THE following day, Winship and Cabot had misgivings, of course. They had overindulged, gotten only a couple of hours sleep, weren’t accustomed to such erotic acrobatics. It was all they could do to summon up the spirit to kid one another about it. Not a word about the investment fund they had agreed to set up. The silent hope was that perhaps Luciano and Costello and the others hadn’t really been serious.

  A week went by. Two.

  Less and less Winship expected a call from Costello. He almost believed he’d heard the last of it. Part of him was disappointed … that all-night two-on-one at the Waldorf had pretty much receded to a fantasy.

  On the Tuesday of the third week Winship returned from lunch and found two packages on his desk. Brown-paper wrapped, about twice the size of a shoebox. He untied them. They were indeed shoeboxes—four of them. Each contained one million dollars in cash. There was no accompanying letter, nothing, but there was no doubt in Winship’s mind who the money was from. No receipt requested. Luciano, Costello and the others trusted him that much on such brief acquaintance, Winship thought, and then realized they considered themselves their own guaranty.

  The sight of that much cash did not astound Winship. He was accustomed to dealing, though on paper, with amounts of six, seven, eight, nine figures. Besides, he was a Winship, in the direct line of that great old wealth. Huge sums were his first nature. What Winship found fascinating about this shoebox cash was how dirty it was.

  He took up a thickness of it, riffled it, chose to imagine the very prurience it represented, the many warm, working crotches.

  He quickly covered the boxes and locked them in his private coat closet. Considering the circumstances, there was no doubt what he should do. Beg off, apologize and see that the money was returned to Costello.

  In a roundabout way he acquired Costello’s phone number and several times went so far as to dial all but its last digit. Something pulled him the other way, offset his bluenose, his inbred principles, cut right through his caution. He would not admit to himself that it was anything so inconsequential as his wanting to experience more young experts.

  After more than a week of ambivalence he opened an account for his new clients. Kept their identities secret, of course. Put the account in his own name and coded it Ruff and Company. Ran the cash through one of the banks dominated by Ivison-Weekes, not really an uncommon course of action.

  Winship’s first investment for Ruffco, as it was now called, was ten thousand shares of American Telephone and Telegraph. He reasoned it was the solid sort of buy that would appeal most to the men he’d met, particularly Luciano and Costello. He was anxious to call Costello and tell him.

  Costello was delighted. Amiable as ever, he suggested Winship join him and two attractive friends for dinner at L’Aiglon the following night. He understood the hesitancy, the silence that followed his invitation and immediately revised it. Said in case something came up and he couldn’t make it, Winship and the young ladies should enjoy the night without him. He’d make the reservations.

  Winship had recently read in one of the newspapers that Frank Costello’s underworld associates referred to him as “The Prime Minister.” At that moment of finesse, Winship believed it suited him.

  The cash in the shoeboxes continued to arrive, not regularly but often. Sometimes it was one million, other times four. Winship processed the money into the Ruffco account and made only the surest investments. In a few instances he gave the account the advantage of ripe stock information he was privy to because of his position at Ivison-Weekes. Except for charging the standard commission he treated the money almost as though it were his own.

  During the first year not a single demand was made on the account. There were no withdrawals, not even an inquiry. Numerous times in the course of that year Winship phoned Costello using the pretext of business. He would have the Ruffco portfolio right there before him ready for review but Costello always took their conversations as quickly as tact allowed to Winship’s real reason for calling. When it came to that, Winship was easily diverted. He had become addicted to the sort of girls that were being supplied, the variety, their erotic catering.

  THE follo
wing year, the last week in May, Costello phoned Winship. This time it was business. Luciano wanted a meeting. That night.

  Winship didn’t mind the short notice. He knew Luciano was under pressure. It had been in the headlines for weeks. Special prosecuting attorney for the State of New York, Thomas Dewey, was trying Luciano in the state’s Supreme Court on ninety counts of compulsory prostitution. Every day Dewey had whores and madams on the witness stand swearing to how Luciano had exploited them. Winship doubted it. According to the photos in the newspapers, those witnesses were unattractive, low-life whores, not up to the quality of those he’d known through Luciano.

  Nine that night was set as the meeting time.

  Winship arrived at the Waldorf Towers at five after nine. He’d worked late at the office, foregone dinner, gotten so involved with a problem account that he’d lost track of time, and to make matters worse, the driver of the taxi he’d taken uptown had refused to hurry.

  It seemed they were waiting for him in apartment 3907. Luciano and Costello, of course, and Anastasia, Scalice and Adonis. They were seated around the dining table, lights on bright. A lot of smoke.

  No handshakes.

  The empty chair was for Winship. He sat down in it. Luciano said Torrio wouldn’t be there. Torrio was sick in Chicago.

  “Sick of Chicago,” Adonis quipped.

  Costello asked if Winship wanted a drink and Winship picked up from Costello’s tone that it was best to decline. He snapped open the catch on his pure leather briefcase and took out a gray legal-sized folio bound at the top by flat metal posts. The Ivison-Weekes logo was printed on its cover in black. Winship placed the folio on the table surface in front of him. He looked to Luciano for permission to proceed. Costello gave it to him.

  It wasn’t until Winship opened the folio that he realized the mistake. He’d brought the wrong one. All Ivison-Weekes accounts were given that same gray cover and in his rush he’d picked up the folio of another of his accounts, a rather large one code-named Contico. It wasn’t like him to do such a thing, not to double-check.

  He was about to explain and apologize when Luciano took the folio from his hands. Winship almost protested.

  Luciano scanned the first page of entries and the second. Too quickly to be getting more than an impression. The holdings of Contico were summarized on the final page and Luciano impatiently turned to it.

  Sixty-eight million, three hundred fifty-four thousand dollars was the bottom line figure.

  Luciano was unreadable, no change in his mouth or eyes. He passed the folio to Adonis and it went around the table from man to man. For a look at that last page. Only Costello examined the other pages, noting the shares bought and sold. After he closed the folio, he was grim, eyes-to-eyes with Winship for a moment and then broke it with a smile.

  Luciano said he was pleased.

  They all were.

  Winship should keep up the good work.

  “Yeah, keep it up,” Anastasia remarked wryly to make Scalice and Adonis laugh.

  Winship again said no to an offer of a drink. Said he had to hurry to another business appointment. Costello saw him to the door.

  Down on Fiftieth Street Winship tipped the doorman but declined a cab, walked over to Park. To get his legs back. He tried to put out of mind the horrible things they would do to him if ever they believed he was cheating them. Evidently they were satisfied with that sixty-eight million figure. Was it possible they didn’t know how much had gone into their account—all those shoeboxes full. They weren’t careless with their money. Were they? In his mind he went over exactly what had happened up there, tried to recall the reactions. They’d been either pleased or acting. It had been spontaneous. They were pleased, he decided. Probably no more or less than they would have been with the actual Ruffco total.

  Ninety-eight million, four hundred eighty-five thousand dollars.

  A thirty-million-and-some difference.

  Winship walked slower.

  TWELVE days from then, on June 7, 1936, the New York State Supreme Court found Luciano guilty on sixty-two counts of compulsory prostitution. It sentenced him to not less than thirty years. He was taken to Sing Sing and then upstate to Clinton state prison in Dannemora.

  In his place, Costello stepped up.

  About that time Winship also was moved up a couple of rungs. He was brought home to Ivison-Weekes in Boston. It was assumed he knew he was being given a clear shot at the top.

  The packages of dirty money followed Winship to Boston. No problem. Ruffco was acknowledged as his personal account. He handled it as he had in the past.

  By then, some of the syndicate bosses had stopped contributing to the investment fund. Just stopped and made no claim on any part of it. However, the majority continued to put in a share of their take, true to the pledge made when the national syndicate was formed. It was a rule easier to live by than the one that said there would be no killing of one another. That stipulation was never in their hearts. So, Calonna killed Forti, so Stassi killed Calonna, so Scarpullo killed Stassi, so Cuchiara killed Scarpullo and that was how it went. The dead were as forgotten as lost hats.

  Crime increased.

  The profit from crime increased.

  The Ruffco account prospered, with its cash influx and Winship’s special care. It became important to Ivison-Weekes. When asked about it, Winship said only that Ruffco was a consortium of investors. Presumably, he was one of them.

  Winship had at least one meeting each year with his anonymous clients. They were only five without Luciano, and in 1939 they were down to four because John Torrio was sent to Leavenworth on a fourteen year sentence for income tax evasion.

  That 1939 meeting was held at night in Costello’s place high up in the Majestic Apartments at 115 Central Park West. The men sat around Costello’s dining room table with the chandelier on bright.

  Winship presented the Ruffco folio that, by then, was diverse and complicated. As usual, Anastasia and Adonis and Scalice tried to give the impression they understood it, but again it was obvious to Winship that they were concerned only with the last page bottom line figure. Also, as usual, Costello was another matter. He looked over every page and asked about certain holdings.

  Winship had the answers.

  The last page of the folio showed that Ruffco’s worth, after commissions, was three hundred seventy-four million and change.

  The meeting could have been that short, but Winship placed the folio on the table, pushed it a few inches away from himself to show his detachment and, with care to appear that it did not matter one way or the other to him, he asked: “Do any of you care to draw from the account at this time or perhaps even withdraw from it entirely?”

  Anastasia, who was seated on Winship’s left, made a face as though he smelled something unpleasant. “Why do you ask that?”

  “To reaffirm everyone’s position,” Winship replied.

  “You never asked that before,” Anastasia pointed out.

  Winship told him: “I just thought it should be stated that you have the option to close out your share of the fund, take your part of the money and no longer participate.”

  “Sounds like a squeeze-out,” Anastasia said.

  “Merely a courtesy,” Winship assured him.

  Anastasia gradually relaxed his face. He turned to Scalice. “What do you think, Cheech?”

  “About what exactly?” Scalice asked.

  “Want out of this fund?” Anastasia asked.

  “Tell you one thing. I’d like for a change to be able to feel my money instead of this having it but not really having it, if you know what I mean.”

  “Can I speak for you?” Anastasia asked him.

  Scalice gave permission with one definite nod.

  Anastasia told Winship: “Cheech and me want ours out.”

  Winship didn’t waver.

  Costello asked: “Are you serious Albert?”

  “I got asked, I answered,” Anastasia replied.

  Whenever Cos
tello talked to Anastasia he was cautious about how he might be taken. “Do what you want, of course, but if all at once you have that much money, you’ll probably end up with Torrio in Leaven-worth,” Costello told him. “As you are, the federal tax people have you under glass. What is it with you, you need money?”

  Anastasia sat straight, stretched his neck to relieve it from the starch in his shirt collar. “I don’t need,” he growled.

  “Then for your own sake, leave the money where it is,” Costello advised.

  Adonis, who had been seesawing, decided on that.

  “Let it ride,” Anastasia said.

  “Let it ride,” Scalice said.

  It didn’t occur to them that they had just consented to the fact that the money had outgrown them, that by its immense amount, it was no longer theirs, unless they chose to pay the penalty for having it.

  After one more drink, Adonis, Scalice and Anastasia left. Winship stayed on. He and Costello turned comfortable chairs to the window to have the lights of the East Side skyline for their view. It seemed to Winship that the tension was gone. It was the frame of mind he’d hoped for. He reached into his briefcase, brought out another gray covered Ivison-Weekes folio, handed it across to Costello, who didn’t ask what it was or bother to go really into it, just appreciated its thickness and turned to the last page, last line.

  Five hundred forty-eight million and change.

  The actual worth of Ruffco. Two hundred million more, Winship pointed out.

  No reaction from Costello. Winship wondered if perhaps the man could be that good at concealing his anger.

  Costello now regretted more than ever that he hadn’t exposed Winship and that first wrong folio back in 1936. Problem was then he’d only been suspicious, anyway not sure enough to risk spoiling the set-up they had managed to establish with reputable Ivison-Weekes. So he’d gone along with it, no wiser than Luciano and the others as far as they knew. Now, when he rationalized it, it seemed to Costello, he’d never really had a choice in the matter, certainly not one that would save him in Anastasia’s eyes. He, Costello, had brought Winship in. Winship was his man. According to code, if Winship fucked them over Costello was as much to blame and deserved equal penalty. So, as long as he was holding back for his life, Costello decided he might as well also hold back for an extra few hundred million.