NEW YORK A Bookie in Command In a crowded Brooklyn courtroom one day last week, all the principals seemed to be playing the wrong roles. The judge was ranting, the hard-boiled D.A. was sobbing and a bookie was looking down his nose at both of them. This miscast scene was the unexpected end of New York's biggest police-graft trial since 1915.*
The sneering bookie was a little man named Harry Gross. The trail that led him to this courtroom fiasco went back ten years to a spot on Brooklyn's Church Avenue. Gross, then a rookie bookie, was furtively taking a bet off a customer when a plainclothes policeman came up. "You're a sucker for cheating this way," said the cop. Cheating, Gross found, meant breaking the law without paying off the cops. He stopped cheating, and by 1950 was the "Mr. G." of Brooklyn gambling, operating 35 places with 400 employees, handling $20 million a year, handing out $1 million a year to police for protection.
Gross was arrested a year ago. After four stubborn months in jail, Gross pleaded guilty to bookmaking and talked freely to the grand jury about his police connections. The jury thereupon indicted 21 policemen (some of whom had hastily retired from the force) for taking Gross bribes, and denounced 56 others as "co-conspirators." Gross got out of jail in $25,000 bail, was placed under constant guard as a "material witness."
Last week the 35-year-old bookie, perfumed and wearing an expensive suit, was led into the courtroom as the star witness against the police he had bribed. When the time came to really tie the defendants to graft, the flabby dandy shook his pomaded head and said: "I won't answer any more questions."
"Let's Go to Lunch." Judge Samuel Leibowitz at first tried persuasion. But when Gross bolted off the witness stand, the judge growled: "Bring that man back."
Gross: "I refuse to take the stand."
Leibowitz: "Bring him back and have the gentleman sit down on the stand, by order of the court. I will chain you to the stand with handcuffs. You cannot thwart the dignity of the court in that fashion . . . Your silence will be deemed a refusal to answer and the court finds you guilty of contempt."
Gross: "Why don't you give me the chair and let us get it over with, huh?"
Leibowitz: "Face around, Mr. Gross. Sit around straight. You are not at a race track now .. ."
Gross: "I wish I was."
Leibowitz: "Now, do you want to name the people that threatened you [Gross had said his life was in danger] ? .. . You can say yes or no. If you say no ... we will go on to something else."
Gross: "Let's go to lunch."
Leibowitz: "I warn you, Mr. Gross, all of this sarcasm and smart-aleck retort is going to cost you dearly."
Gross: "How much more trouble can I have than I got?"
Leibowitz: "I will give you a thousand years if necessary. I will bury you in jail."