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Much of this avalanche of accusation was politicians' talk or crime reporters' romance. Most working-level law enforcers (including FBI men) scoff at the idea of one big crime "syndicate" presided over by one overlord; they know that rackets 1949 style are a loose arrangement of agreements, territories, cuts and splits. A gritty residue of the charges was probably perfectly true. Frank Costello made no bones about the fact that he played Tammany politics, kept in touch with such nefarious "old friends" as Longy Zwillman, Joe Adonis and Socks Lanza, and had an "interest" in a rich Louisiana gambling empire.
But amid all the hue & cry against him, nobody for 34 years had been able to arrest him and make charges stick; several ambitious prosecutors had tried and were still trying. While the public assumed that Frank Costello everywhere flouted the law, he was busy staying inside it, or stepping outside only when he was sure that local law enforcers were in his pocket. He abhorred violence; it did not pay. Of his critics, he asked: "What do they think I am? Superman?" He liked to describe himself as a "legitimate businessman" and pointed to his own habits and mode of life as evidence.
In many ways, he was one of Manhattan's quietest and more conservative citizens. He was a sedate husband, who had been married for 35 years to a plump, pleasant, onetime show girl named Loretta ("Bobby") Geigerman Costello: he seldom stayed out later than 10 o'clock. The Costellos were childless, lived unostentatiously in a seven-room, $3,600-a-year apartment on well-to-do Central Park West, employed one servant, a Negro maid who had been with them for 15 years. They also owned a twelve-room, $34,000 summer home at Sands Point, N.Y., had a small peach orchard on the place which Costello pruned with zeal and precision.
After years of life in the upper brackets, Costello had learned many of the mannerisms of the Man of Distinction. He was a hero to many a Manhattan headwaiter and doorman. His clothes bore a faint look of Broadway and Madison Square Garden, but they were cut well and worn with assurance. He still spoke with some of the accents of the Upper East Side, and suffered embarrassment at occasional mispronunciations. But he made a point of smoking English Ovals, and liked to reflect that he owned half a million dollars' worth of Wall Street property—more than most Yalemen.
He had no enemies in the underworld, and he employed no bodyguards; his regular trips to Florida and to Hot Springs, Ark. (for golf and the baths) were invariably peaceful. Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan was convinced "he's not committing any crimes in New York. If he was, I'd slap him down so fast it'd make his head swim." The FBI watched him sharply, but was convinced that he did not break any of the federal statutes under their jurisdiction. What he might have been doing to state statutes across the country was none of the FBI's concern.