Dapper gentlemen with quick eyes and imperturbable faces frequent, or used to frequent, a little restaurant at 50th Street and Broadway, Manhattan. They are gentlemen with varied interests—dog and horse racing, realty, baseball, politics, lady friends, perhaps a side line now and then in narcotics or stolen securities. They are, or were, interested in almost anything involving money in sums of ten to a hundred "grand" (thousand dollars), and some stimulating element of risk.
What takes them, or took them, to the little restaurant to see each other was a consuming desire to play with their money directly, on the turn of a card, the fall of dice. Between Central Park and 42nd Street, all around the little restaurant, is a forest of "broadminded" hotels where a man can keep a girl or a case of liquor or organize a fairly professional gambling game. Word would go to the little restaurant : "Room such-and-such, Hotel so-and-so." The dapper gentlemen played only among themselves, or with sports like themselves who would blow in from other big cities to "take that mob over the jumps."
Of all the dapper gentlemen, none was more inspired and self-confident than Arnold Rothstein, a sleek Jew inclining to flesh in his late forties. Hotel managers fawned on him, because he owned a hotel himself. Newspaper editors disliked to call him "gambler" when he got into the news. The New York World used to euphemize and call him an "operator," knowing well that many another citizen gambled as often though perhaps not so daringly as Rothstein. He won a few hundred "grand" on this year's World's Series—a contest which he was said to have "fixed" in 1919. He was supposed to have "shot the works" (bet all he had) on Hoover's election, most of it at the excellent odds of 8 to 5.
One evening in late September there was a stud-poker and high-spade game in the apartment of one James Meehan. It lasted 24 hours. Meehan did not play, but received a percentage for the use of his premises. The players were Arnold Rothstein; George McManus, brother of a Manhattan police Lieutenant, Meyer Boston, shrewd Manhattan "operator"; Edward C. ("Titanic") Thompson, Chicago plunger; "Nigger Nate" Raymond, San Francisco sport; and a few lesser figures. Raymond was the big winner and a slick-looking fellow called "Tough Willie" McCabe, onetime Chicago beer-legger, was supposed to have a half interest in his play.
Rothstein was the big loser. At the end of the sitting he had to give his IOU for $349,000. He gave another IOU for $49,000 in cash lying on the table, which he shoved into his pocket. "See you later," he told them, and went his way.