The Epic of New York City (92 page)

The mayor's principal go-between and bagman was an accountant, named Russell T. Sherwood. Soon after Walker took office as mayor,
Sherwood opened an investment trustee account in a large brokerage firm, and in the next 5½ years he deposited nearly $1,000,000 for Walker, of which $750,000 was in cash. The secret joint account was kept in a brokerage house because if the money had been put in a bank, the name of the depositor and the existence of the fund would have become known. When Seabury began closing in on Sherwood, the mayor's bagman took off for Mexico, rather than testify.

Now Walker himself was ordered to appear before the Hofstadter committee. The morning of May 24, 1932, he prepared for his public ordeal. At the time Walker was living in the Mayfair House at Park Avenue and Sixty-fifth Street. His valet helped him don a blue ensemble: light-blue shirt, dark-blue tie, double-breasted blue suit, and matching blue handkerchief. Walker kidded: “Little Boy Blue is about to blow his horn—or his top.” Jauntily he walked out of the hotel and into a group of waiting reporters. One asked if anyone had advised him about the testimony he was about to give. A grin splitting his foxy face, Walker replied, “There are three things a man must do alone—be born, die, and testify.” Then he stepped into a limousine and told the chauffeur, “Drive carefully. We don't want to get a ticket.” The car purred south toward the new nine-story State Office Building, on the northeastern corner of Foley Square.

The hearing was scheduled to begin at 11
A.M.
, but at 8:30 an attendant had opened the hearing room doors prematurely. Within seconds all 340 seats were occupied, and about 400 standees crowded inside the relatively small chamber. These early birds were infuriated when they were told that the only persons allowed inside were holders of passes signed by Chairman Hofstadter. Ordered out, they refused to move. Police reserves were called, and the intruders were pushed out into the warm May sunshine. Perhaps 5,000 persons clotted the sidewalks about the building when the mayor's limousine pulled up at 10:45
A.M.
They cheered Walker, who grinned and touched a thin finger to his light gray fedora. There were shouts: “Good luck, Jimmy!” and “Attaboy, Jimmy!” and “You tell 'em, Jimmy!” He clasped his hands over his head like a triumphant prizefighter. Then he walked inside, strode through a marble foyer, and took an elevator to an upper floor.

When Walker entered the hearing room, he was greeted again with cheers and applause. Senator Hofstadter banged a gavel and warned spectators that they would be ousted if they interrupted the proceedings. At 11
A.M.
die senator turned to Judge Samuel Seabury, who
wore a gray suit, white starched shirt, and conservative dark tie. “Judge Seabury,” said the senator, “the committee is ready, if you are.” Seabury turned to Walker and asked courteously, “Mr. Mayor, will you be good enough to take the stand?” Walker stepped briskly into the witness chair and sat with one hand dangling gracefully over the oaken rail.

One of Seabury's associates, warning the judge about Walker's legendary charm, had advised, “Don't look him straight in the eye when he's on the stand. He has an uncanny ability to stare you down.” Seabury took this advice. During his examination of the mayor he stood to one side and faced him as little as necessary. Their exchanges were like a duel between a jack-in-the-box and an adding machine.

Seabury stuck to facts—grim and revealing facts. Walker fought back with wisecracks and tart answers, stalled for time to reflect by asking for more details, interrupted Seabury's questions, made speeches, feigned indignation, shed crocodile tears, insisted that questions were so complex that he couldn't trust his memory, announced that the answers were in the record anyway, and asked the judge to repeat his questions. Refusing to be hoodwinked, Seabury turned his back on the witness and told the stenographer to read back the questions. The committee's minority Democratic members tried to protect the mayor by objecting repeatedly to questions and by heckling Seabury. Chairman Hofstadter practically wore out his right arm banging the gavel to restore order. Seabury was relentless. Using the evidence amassed by his assistants over the previous seven months, he tripped up Walker time after time and forced him to make damaging admissions. The judge got into the record a series of confessions, whose import was lost on Walker's admirers. After the second and final day of the mayor's appearance, roses were strewed in his path as he strode out of the State Office Building.

But a few days later at Yankee Stadium the mayor was booed. New Yorkers began to understand that their erstwhile pet was an ersatz mayor, able to play the role of Beau Brummell only because he was subsidized by rich and conniving men seeking favors at the expense of taxpayers.

On June 8, 1932, Seabury sent Governor Roosevelt fifteen charges against Walker, the first one declaring that Walker had “failed properly to execute the duties which, as Mayor of the City of New York, it was incumbent upon him to discharge.” Seabury urged the Democratic governor to dismiss a Democratic mayor backed by Tammany
Hall at a time when the Democratic national convention was only a few weeks away. Roosevelt wanted the Democratic presidential nomination and felt that he needed Tammany support to get it. He was very much on the spot. In his Hyde Park home the governor turned to Raymond Moley and mused aloud, “How would it be if I let the little mayor off with a hell of a reprimand?” Before Moley could reply, Roosevelt jerked up his great chin and snapped, “No! That would be weak!”

Now the scene shifted to Albany. In twelve sessions held in the State Capitol Building Roosevelt sat as judge in a hearing to determine if Walker should be deposed. Like Seabury, the governor quickly learned how difficult it was to get a straight answer from the playboy mayor. Before the Albany hearings began, Roosevelt conferred with Felix Frankfurter, then a Harvard law professor. Frankfurter later said, “I worked out with Roosevelt the legal theory on which Jimmy Walker had to go—the theory being that when a public official has acquired money during the time that he was in public office, the presumption of wrongdoing lies there unless he can explain why he suddenly came into money that he couldn't have got merely through his salary.”

There was a break in the Albany hearings so that Walker could return to New York to attend his brother's funeral. The mayor met in the Hotel Plaza with a dozen or more Tammany leaders, including Al Smith. When Walker asked Smith for his opinion, Smith said, “Jim, you're through. You must resign for the good of the party.” The evening of September 1, 1932, Walker sent the city clerk this statement: “I hereby resign as Mayor of the City of New York, the same to take effect immediately.”

Walker then issued an angry statement calling Roosevelt “unfair” and his hearings “un-American,” and in the late afternoon of September 2 he sailed for Europe. The Jimmy Walker era was over. The bubble had burst.

Chapter 46

J
IMMY
W
ALKER'S
duties as mayor were taken over temporarily by the president of the board of aldermen, Joseph V. McKee. Then a special election was held in November, 1932, to select a man to serve the rest of Walker's unexpired term. Boss Curry picked John P. O'Brien as the Tammany candidate, and O'Brien won. A former surrogate of New York County, O'Brien was so gauche that his enemies called him the wild bull of the china shop. He once referred to Einstein as “Albert Weinstein.” When a reporter asked the Tammany-controlled mayor the name of his new police commissioner, he replied, “I don't know. I haven't got the word yet.”

In the regular election of 1933 three candidates vied for mayor.
The Democrats were split, O'Brien running as the Tammany candidate and McKee running as an independent Democrat. Fiorello H. LaGuardia, a Republican in name only, was the choice of the Republican and City Fusion parties. It was a vicious campaign besmirched with violence. LaGuardia charged that McKee was anti-Semitic, and McKee declared that LaGuardia was “a Communist at heart.” LaGuardia promised to destroy the Tammany system of bosses and machine politics and replace them with nonpartisan government by experts. New Yorkers were weary of Tammany domination, shocked by the Walker scandals, and sobered by the depression. Between them O'Brien and McKee won more votes than LaGuardia, but he was elected.

The evening of December 31, 1933, LaGuardia and leaders of his reform coalition gathered in the second-floor library of Judge Samuel Seabury's town house. The host and most male guests were in tuxedos, but LaGuardia wore a business suit. At midnight a black-robed state supreme court justice swore him into office, thus ending sixteen years of Tammany rule. LaGuardia then turned to his wife and kissed her while Seabury cried, “Now we have a mayor of New York!” A minute later LaGuardia picked up a telephone and ordered the arrest of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the most notorious gangster in town.

Now the “Little Flower” held the office he had sought three times. With cyclonic energy he threw himself into the job, dictating to relays of secretaries up to twelve hours a day and dashing here and there in the city to see conditions firsthand. Only about five feet tall, the new mayor was sensitive about his height. He had a chunky body, a round face, black hair, dark and burning eyes, a swarthy complexion, and eyebrows that met over the bridge of his nose. His full lower lip pushed out petulantly whenever he was crossed. He bounced about on short legs and walked with a choppy gait. Indifferent to clothes, he wore rumpled suits and never quite got his tie firmly tucked into the V of his collar. He was an exuberant Latin, who spoke in a high-pitched voice and waved his hands as he talked. He knew all about gutter politics, yet genuinely cared about the welfare of the people. Trigger-fast at repartee, a master of the crushing retort, he pounded lecterns and often shouted until his voice broke. No intellectual, he saw life in blacks and whites. A liberal, he distrusted big business and pronounced the word “rich” as though it nauseated him. He was irascible, stubborn, autocratic, impatient, belligerent, opinionated, and
overbearing. He was charming, warmhearted, generous, and loving. He adored children, enjoyed parties, smoked a cigar or corncob pipe, was a talented mimic, played chess, and blew the cornet.

Although this was LaGuardia's first administrative job, he knew city government inside and out. It pained him to delegate power, but he nonetheless surrounded himself with as distinguished a group of city officials as could be found in the world. These departmental heads developed an infectious esprit de corps, despite the polished bone the mayor kept in a jeweler's box. Whenever a commissioner pulled a
boner
, LaGuardia presented this symbol to him with ceremonious irony.

When LaGuardia took office, city finances were chaotic, crime was rampant, housing was a mess, and soon the city's unemployed equaled the entire population of upstate Buffalo. The new mayor preferred welfare to economy, although he restored the city's credit rating. He was friendly with the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, obtained vast sums of New Deal money for city relief and used them well. LaGuardia built more public projects than any other mayor in the city's history.

Municipal parks had been deteriorating for a decade, and the mayor chose an exceedingly able man, Robert Moses, to renovate and beautify them. Park Commissioner Moses said, “We aim to rebuild New York, saving what is durable, what is salvageable, and what is genuinely historical, and substituting progress for obsolescence.” In the Central Park Zoo the lions' cages were so flimsy that animal keepers carried shotguns to protect children if the beasts escaped. The park itself teemed with rats, and in a single week Moses's exterminators killed more than 200,000 of them. In 2 years Moses increased recreational facilities by about 35 percent. With parks and playgrounds multiplying at incredible speed, Moses snapped at the sanitation commissioner for piling garbage cans along a certain park. The commissioner asked plaintively, How were his men to know when they set down garbage cans that there would be a new park beside them the next day?