(6 of 7)
He usually ate lunch at the Waldorf's Norse Grill, just across the hall, was always greeted effusively by the hatcheck girl ($2 tip), the headwaiter ($3 tip) and the lucky man who served his table. Almost every afternoon he wandered off by himself to see a "pictcha," a lonely figure who sought out movies he hadn't seen before, on Broadway or in the suburbs, without caring whether it was a cowboy film, a thriller, a musical, or good or bad. At dusk, he went to the dimly lighted cocktail lounge of the Madison Hotel, had a maximum of three Scotch & sodas, and made himself "available" again to anybody wanting to talk business.
He professed to be a happy burgher and well content with his lot. But at other times he seemed like a restless man. He said: "We all got just a certain number of hours to live ... I don't understand why people waste time." Frank Costello, who had once lusted for wealth, lusted for respectability. He was steadily thwarted. He had lived by stealth and secrecy, had avoided newsmen like the plague, but his power and influence had brought him torrents of publicity—all of it bad.
The storm broke on him just before a municipal election in August 1943. District Attorney Hogan, who had tapped Costello's telephone, reported the conversation which had ensued when one Thomas Aurelio called Costello the morning after Aurelio had been nominated for New York's supreme court:
Aurelio: Good morning, Francesco, how are you, and thanks for everything.
Costello: Congratulations. It went over perfect. When I tell you something is in the bag, you can rest assured.
Aurelio: . . . Right now I want to assure you of my loyalty for all you have done. It's undying.
After that Frank Costello was poison in the big city. This year when he gave a $100-a-plate charity dinner for the Salvation Army at the Copacabana, eight judges, including Aurelio, a Congressman and all the top Tammany politicos turned up in dutiful droves. But the newspaper headlines that bloomed largely and blackly the next day had the same, exultant horror that might have been expected if he had spent the night plotting to cart off the City Hall.
"Like a Rabbit." Frank Costello took the lesson to heart. Every man has his own secret portrait of himself, and Costello fancies himself a man who keeps his word, sticks by his friends ("I know a lot of people who are not exactly legitimate. But that don't mean I'm in bed with 'em, does it?") and does countless good deeds. After all, wasn't he supporting a boys' town in Italy, didn't he quietly give away thousands to charity every year, including some run by papers which damned him, and didn't he give a $5,000 bonus apiece to each of his nephews who went into the Army?
One day last week, nervously cascading a stream of quarters from one hand to the other, he talked a little about himself. "Right now I'm cleaner than 99% of New Yorkers," he said. "Now I don't want you should get the wrong impression—I never sold any Bibles." But he insisted that he obeyed the law. "There they all are wit' their shotguns waiting for me to come out of a hole like a rabbit. You think I could get away with anything? It's ridiculous."