The Epic of New York City (91 page)

Chapter 45

I
N THE
G
ATHERING
gloom of the depression, Mayor Jimmy Walker gleamed like a soap bubble. Empty, colorful, tossed by the breeze of every impulse, he floated toward the pinprick of reckoning. Preferring pleasure to power, he abdicated his responsibilities to the new Tammany boss, John F. Curry, and Tammany now fastened itself like an octopus on the city, as it had in the days of Boss Tweed. It controlled the mayor, all city departments, the courts, and every prosecuting agency within the five boroughs.

Tammany relatives were put on city payrolls, while their unemployed neighbors had to go on relief. Businessmen paid tribute for services due them under the law. The granting of franchises became
a political football and a common source of graft. Politicians allied themselves with criminals. Cops took bribes, beat up prisoners, framed innocents, terrorized the law-abiding. Much of Tammany's power lay in its concern for lawbreakers. By seeing to it that they stayed out of jail, Tammany won the gratitude, votes, and money of crooks of all kinds. A Bronx Democratic district leader admitted that this “is the way we make Democrats.” Of the 514 persons arrested in gambling raids during a 2-year period, only 5 were held for the court of special sessions.

Judgeships were bought and sold. The city had three kinds of criminal courts—magistrates' courts, the court of special sessions, and county courts. County court judges were elected. In the other two kinds of court a man seeking to become a judge paid a bribe of from $10,000 to $50,000, thus won Boss Curry's recommendation, and received his appointment from the mayor.

Political hacks piled up incredible fortunes. Thomas M. Farley, sheriff of New York County and a Tammany sachem, earned only $8,500 a year but accumulated nearly $400,000 in 6 years. During the six years John Theofel served as Democratic leader of Queens, his net worth increased from $28,650 to $201,300. James J. McCormick, a Manhattan Democratic district leader and deputy city clerk, deposited his $384,788 in plunder in 30 different bank accounts.

At last decent citizens began to grumble about the way the city was run. LaGuardia accused Magistrate Albert H. Vitale of borrowing $19,500 from gambler Arnold Rothstein. Then Vitale was given a testimonial dinner by a group that included underworld figures like the notorious Ciro Terranova, known as the Artichoke King because of his grip on the artichoke business. The Association of the Bar of the City of New York petitioned the appellate division of the state supreme court for Vitale's removal. He was taken off the bench after he admitted borrowing from Rothstein and after it was disclosed that during his four years as magistrate he had accumulated $165,000 on a total salary of only $48,000.

Next, a witness testified that Magistrate George F. Ewald had paid $10,000 to a Tammany leader for his appointment. Ewald was tried, but the indictment against him was quashed when a jury disagreed. Nonetheless, Ewald resigned, telling a reporter, “I was a respected man until I got mixed up with that pack of thieves that hangs out in Tammany Hall. They ruined me.”

The New York Bar then asked Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt
to probe charges of corruption in the appointment of magistrates. Roosevelt pointed out that the governor lacked the power to remove magistrates. However, he asked the appellate division of the first judicial department, comprising Manhattan and the Bronx, to investigate the magistrates' courts. Such was the start of the most widespread probe of the city since Boss Tweed's death. It developed into three separate probes: (1) an investigation of the magistrates' courts; (2) an investigation of the competency of District Attorney Thomas Crain; and (3) an inquiry into the entire city government.

Samuel Seabury, a righteous man, was picked as referee of the first investigation. Born in New York in 1873, Seabury was graduated from the New York Law School, admitted to the bar, and elected a justice of the city court of New York, then a justice of the state supreme court, and finally an associate justice of the state court of appeals. In 1916 he resigned from the bench to run unsuccessfully for governor of New York on the Democratic ticket.

Seabury was an anti-Tammany Democrat. After his defeat he practiced law at 120 Broadway and prospered. He lived in a six-story mansion at 154 East Sixty-third Street and was chauffeured around town in a green Lincoln. He was a handsome man with a big face, a florid complexion, and dark eyebrows that contrasted sharply with his white hair, and he wore pince-nez glasses and a high starched collar. He played chess, doted on genealogy, read political philosophy, put together a large library, and smoked a pipe. When he was a judge, his decrees were highly regarded for their literary excellence, as well as their legalistic reasoning.

The probe of the magistrates' courts began in September, 1930. Only the fifty magistrates in Manhattan and the Bronx were affected; those in the other three boroughs were outside the jurisdiction of the first judicial department. As referee, Seabury had no power to initiate criminal actions; he could only make recommendations. However, he wisely planned to use the lever of public opinion. Aware that he was taking on a Tammany tiger with unsheathed claws, Seabury assembled a staff of young attorneys less likely to be corrupt than older lawyers because they had fewer political contacts.

Seabury and his men questioned the magistrates in private. The next step was to ask them to repeat their testimony in public. This touched off a wave of resignations. One magistrate left the bench with the excuse that he suffered arthritis in one finger. Another quickly fled from the state. Two magistrates were removed by the
appellate division. Seabury revealed that most magistrates had been appointed for services rendered, and he added, “This evidence presents a situation which is a scandal and a disgrace, as well as a menace, to the city of New York.”

By now almost everyone knew of Jimmy Walker's extramarital affair with an actress, named Betty Compton. One day they went sailing on a private yacht off Montauk Point. When a storm arose, the mayor became seasick, so they put ashore at Montauk. Nearby was a gambling casino. Miss Compton begged Walker to let her visit the place, and with a weary shrug he acquiesced. As they entered, the manager was careful not to use the mayor's full name, merely saying, “Good evening, Mr. W. What is your pleasure?” Walker replied, “I haven't any pleasure. I'm still seasick, but”—gesturing toward his actress friend, he added—“Miss C. would be pleased to play hazard.” Walker watched as she won almost $2,000.

Just before midnight some burly men burst into the gambling room. One bellowed, “Stand where you are, everybody! This is a raid!” The Suffolk County sheriff had picked that night to crack down on gambling joints. Miss Compton gasped as she saw Walker vanish through a door leading to the kitchen. When she tried to follow, an officer stopped her. With other patrons she was taken into temporary custody and led through the kitchen to the outdoors. Seated at a kitchen table was Mayor Walker, wearing a waiter's apron and eating beans. At the sight of her lover in this thin disguise, she exploded, “Jim, are you going to let these farmers—” A deputy sheriff growled at her, “Come on, lady! Tell it to the judge.” Walker, who didn't even lift his eyes, went on eating beans. A few hours later Miss Compton was released and made a beeline for the yacht. Walker was calmly sitting on deck. After glaring at him awhile, she finally cried, “Why did you desert me? You and your beans!” Walker apologized, saying, “It might be a good idea if I didn't tempt fate at this moment by showing up in a rural hoosegow.”

The second phase of the Seabury investigation was a long look at District Attorney Crain, a Tammany wheelhorse who often let people indicted for major crimes plead guilty to misdemeanors. After studying Grain's record, Seabury reported to Roosevelt that the district attorney wasn't corrupt—he was just incompetent. Crain was not removed from office.

While probing the magistrates, Seabury put on the stand a man he called “a witness without parallel in the history of American juris-prudence.
This was Chile Mapocha Acuna, a stool pigeon who did dirty work for the police vice squad. Acuna was so depraved that he became known as the Human Spittoona. At the behest of corrupt cops, he helped frame innocent women as prostitutes. The details were so sordid that Seabury asked ladies to leave the courtroom before Acuna told his story.

The stool pigeon would wait until a doctor left his office and then enter it posing as a patient. When the doctor's nurse approached him, he would put some money in a conspicuous spot and take off his clothes. Naturally, the startled nurse would protest. At just this moment in would dash police to arrest the nurse for prostitution. This was just one of the many filthy tricks used by Acuna. Seabury asked if he could identify any vice squad officers who had hired him, and Acuna pointed an accusing finger at twenty-eight policemen. The new police commissioner, Edward P. Mulrooney, immediately suspended every cop identified by Acuna and other stool pigeons. Mayor Walker told reporters that he was “more or less shocked by the reports of the framing of innocent women.”

The Reverend John Haynes Holmes and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, acting for the City Affairs Committee, now drew up a document charging the mayor with ignoring corruption, appointing unworthy officials, and failing to administer the city government properly. They handed the indictment to Governor Roosevelt in his mother's Manhattan home. The governor, who wanted Tammany support to further his political career, received them coolly and lectured them half an hour. But the 4,000-word document contained 10 specific charges that Roosevelt could not dismiss out of hand. He forwarded it to Walker, who then sent a 15,000-word reply to the governor. Walker called the City Affairs Committee “an annex of the Socialist party” and characterized Holmes as “a leader in a group of agitators and Soviet sympathizers.” Roosevelt told committee members that there was insufficient evidence to remove the mayor.

The Republican-ruled state legislature, however, refused to let the Democratic governor protect the city's Democratic mayor. On March 23, 1931, state legislators called for the appointment of a committee for “the investigation of the departments of the government of the City of New York.” Roosevelt approved a $250,000 appropriation. Named chairman of the new committee was Samuel H. Hofstadter, a Republican who had defeated a Tammany candidate for the office of state senator. The committee consisted of five Republicans and
four Democrats. They named Seabury as their counsel, and now began the third and most crucial probe.

Seabury's assistants bored into the underground of Walker's life by examining his income tax returns, bank deposits, savings accounts, brokerage statements, real estate records, and other pertinent papers. They failed to find any solid clue to the mayor's wealth until a Chase National Bank teller suggested that they search for letters of credit. The investigators then made out a subpoena for letters of credit, got no help from the bank, threatened its president, and finally took possession of Walker's letters-of-credit record. When this was shown to Seabury, he cried, “This is the fatal blow to Tammany Hall! It is the first time in the history of New York that a mayor is caught taking money with his actual receipts for the bribe.”

All the pieces now fell into place. A group of politicians and businessmen had maintained a slush fund for the mayor in exchange for favors. Whenever they communicated with one another, they used a secret code, in which the term “boyfriend” signified Walker.

One plotter was a Wall Street broker, who had invested in a big taxicab corporation. He had said he was going to “take the mayor in” on some oil stocks. Although Walker put up no money, one of the broker's friends appeared at City Hall and gave the mayor an envelope containing $26,535 in alleged profits.

Another conspirator was John A. Hastings, a Democratic state senator from Brooklyn, who had become friendly with Walker when both had served in Albany. After Walker had become mayor, Hastings went on the payrolls of several firms, including some that operated taxis in Manhattan. About this time trolleys were giving way to buses, so Hastings and some Ohio manufacturers organized the Equitable Coach Company, asked for bus franchises in New York, and sought control of all the city's surface transportation. The Equitable people paid for one of Walker's European vacations.

Still another Walker crony was Paul Block, who owned the Brooklyn
Standard-Union
and eight other newspapers. Block was associated with Hastings in a chemical firm that hoped to produce tile for the city's subway stations. Block opened a joint brokerage account for Walker and himself, using the initials “P. B.” and “J. J. W.” Walker never contributed a cent to the dual account, but in two years he received $246,693 from it.