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Beer Garden
Broken into between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Took machine, $18 from register, wines and cigars.
Found by Andy in cellar of 246 East 80th Street. This is hangout of gang. Recovered, Dec. 4.
The gross profits of the slots, calculated at $600 per machine a year, brought in an annual profit of $3,000,000. But in 1934. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordered the machines seized, personally banged up dozens of them with a sledge hammer while photographers recorded his prowess. He also called fellow Italian and longtime admirer Frank Costello a bum, a tinhorn gambler, and a punk. That was the end of Tru-Mint and of Costello's regard for the Little Flower.
Helpful Huey. It was not the end of the slot-machine king. Costello had cultivated Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, a man he suspected of having liberal views on certain types of financial matters. The friendship paid off. Within a few months, Huey had granted Costello and Kastel a concession to operate their slots in Louisiana, and a new river of nickels began jingling into their coffers.
Costello once described the deal to a federal grand jury:
"I got Philip Kastel, which is my associate, to go down there and work the thing out. He went down and he incorporated . . . [Huey Long] wanted to get himself about 25 to 30 thousand dollars per year to donate toward some fund . . . There was supposed to be a tax to the state and that tax was going to some relief of some kind . . . That was his proposal, but it never happened because he died." How did Costello happen to be singled out for so profitable a deal? "Maybe I was the lucky one," he dryly told the jury.
The partners bedded down happily with Huey's heirs and remained in business. It was an ideal arrangement for Frank Costello, who had put up only $15,000; he stayed in New York City and just let the money roll in. One year, they grossed $1,297,580. The Louisiana venture was still an ideal arrangement last week even though slot machines are illegal in Louisiana and Reform Mayor Chep Morrison had chased them out of New Orleans.
Dandy Phil, who lives in a brick mansion in the city, devoted himself to managing the lush dining room and the gaming tables of the white colonial Beverly Club, a Costello enterprise which had risen in 1945 in wide-open suburban Jefferson Parish.
"Mr. Schedule." With his business embarrassments thus detached and distant from his home town, Frank Costello lived as openly as his more respectable neighbors along apartment-lined Central Park. He followed an almost unvarying routine ("I go places so regular they call me Mr. Schedule").
At 10 a.m., with commuter-like regularity, he walked into the big, opulent, mirrored barbershop of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for a shave, a manicure, and, if need be, a trim. Afterwards he seated himself on a leather chair near the doors and received those who wished to chat, make quick touches, or offer him investment opportunities.