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But these wordly tribulations began to have less & less importance to the wounded Flegenheimer gangsters following the Newark shooting. Krompier was still alive. First to die in Newark was funny little Otto Biederman. Then Landau. Later Rosenkrantz. None named names as to their assailants. By next midafternoon, Flegenheimer had called for a Roman Catholic priest who baptized him into the faith of his 21-year-old, ex-cigaret-girl wife. Then Flegenheimer went into delirium. When police questioned him, they evoked an amazing babble, some of it wildly poetic, most of it completely Delphic:
John, please oh, did you buy the hotel? You promised a million—sure. . . . Oh, oh dog biscuits and when he is happy he doesn't get snappy—please, please to do this. Then Henry, Henry, Frankie you didn't meet him. You didn't even meet me. The glove will fit what I say oh Kayiyi, oh Kayiyi. Sure who cares when you are through? How do you know this? . . .
"Who shot you?" asked a policeman. The boss himself. . .. Yes, I don't know. I am sore and I am going up and I am "going to give you honey if I can. Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
"What did the big fellow shoot you for?"
Him? John? Over a million, five million dollars. . . . Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Talk to the sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please help me up. . . . French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.
His temperature at 106°, Arthur Flegenheimer then lapsed into coma. He had not given the police much of a clue as to who shot him, but "The Boss" is the name Unione Siciliana mobsters call "Lucky" Luciana. And the only underworld "John" the officers could think of who might pay "a million" for "the hotel" was Johnny Torrio, who went from Brooklyn to Chicago after the War, rose to power over the dead body of "Big Jim" Colosimo, turned Chicago's underworld over to Al Capone and retraced his steps to Brooklyn, where he is now a potent political figure.
In Harlem at twilight, poor Negroes with policy tickets grabbed at evening papers to see what lucky number had won Flegenheimer's lottery that day. They turned to the sport pages, found the figures for the three-race, five-race and seven-race pari-mutuel totals at Narragansett Park, R. I. They ran black fingers down the third digit column and blinked with surprise. The winning number was 000. It had not turned up in four years.
"Triple-zero!" they cried. : 'At's Dutch's number. 'At's good-bye Dutch. It's all over with 'at boy."
Arthur Flegenheimer drew life's blank at 8:35 o'clock that same evening. Next morning Harlem's blackmen scrambled by the hundreds to get their money down on the number they were sure would win that day: 835.