Half Hour At The Half Moon

November 11, 1941

At about eleven PM, Rose Reles closed the door behind her as she left room 623 of The Half Mood Hotel, located on the Boardwalk at West 29th Street, Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.
Her eyes, circled dark and discolored from the stress of the last year, were rimmed in red with tears. She shuffled past policemen on duty at the end of the corridor as she buttoned the top of her dark coat and prepared to brace herself for the late autumn chill and cold breeze blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean, which seemed somewhat larger and particularly menacing this evening. Six floors below, as she exited the hotel preparing to return home to Brownsville, she looked up at the Half Moon one more time and wondered: “How could I ever have married such animal…? ”

Back up in room 623, Abe Reles simmered with anger and spittle still gathered in the corners of his mouth from the last forty-five minutes of arguing with his wife. Rose had asked for a divorce.
“A fuckin’ divorce!” he yelled to no one in particular and everyone.

Outside of a few visits to the hospital, court and testimonial appearances, and a trip out to Los Angeles with Allie Tannenbaum, he had been in this damn hotel and the occupant of room 623 for almost a year. The reason he was here in the first place was because of Rose and the kids. He also wanted to protect Pretty Levine.

He was good looking kid, confused is all, and shouldn’t be part of this “life” he told himself.
“So I turned on my friends, went stoolie, entertained DA William O'Dwyer with pages and pages of confessional mumbo jumbo. All the news that’s fit to print, like that fancy New York Times paper likes to say. Now she wants out? No way, not after all this…they’re all I have left”

Allie and Sholem Bernstein were down the hall, in the same squeeze he was, doing the same time, singing the same song. Tick Tock and Sholem were playing cards. Again.
Not tonight thought Reles.
“I’m just gonna lie down for while and listen to the radio...”

Abe Reles sprawled on his back as bedsprings of the single bed squealed and creaked underneath him. He threw his disproportionately long right arm over his eyes and thoughts begun to tumble in circles; about how he found himself in this room, and what he had done to his pals since he made his decision to turn rat while sitting in that “stinking awful Tombs prison” back in March of 1940.

“ They would of done the same…” thought Reles.

“What was I suppose to do? The DA had me backed into a corner; my nuts were in a vice and it just got tighter. Rose got so delirious and hysterical on me; and she was pregnant with another kid. I was only 33, still a lot of time to restart a new life, something legit – even that lunch counter was starting to do OK and turn a little profit. I gotta good memory as I kept them DA secretaries busy night and day filling up notebooks and documents with details on various hits and missing bodies. I knew enough legal jargon with all the time I’ve spent in the court and in the clink – corroboration – that’s all you need.”

“Lookit Gangy *..., that crazy son of a bitch scrammed to Hollywood, he knew this was no life. It’s exhausting being tough guy twenty-four hours a day; being the boss; dealing with nutjobs like Pittsburgh Phil.”*
“Heh, I heard the hothead wasn’t too happy about my squealing, and some cop down the hall whispered to me that he’d spent all his money on legal fees and to put up a bounty on my head. I still can’t believe he grew a beard and stopped cutting his hair to convince folks he was ‘crazy ‘ and ‘unfit’ for trial. Well, he was right about the crazy part. Hard to believe they already cooked him at Sing Sing back in June…the same day as Meyer”*

“Ah Buggsy, when we were kids nothing could stop us. We flipped the bird to the eighth grade and never looked back. When we had trouble with Shapiro brothers, we really took ‘em to the mattress huh? Those Amberg brothers got a lesson as well. Thanks to you we linked up with the wops in Ocean Hill and then Lepke and downtown Manhattan came knocking at our door thanks in part to Louis* and Albert A.**”
“There was a time I would of done anything for Lep, but we gotta look out for ourselves. He was the big man, we were loyal, and the money rolled in. He was always amused at your insistence that Edward G. Robinson stole all his movie mannerisms and talking out of the side of the mouth from you. Kids in the neighborhood always thought you were he as well. You always said: “He’s a kike like us and all he plays is wops in the pictures. That ain’t right!”

“I’m sorry pal that I ratted you out.”
“It wasn’t easy for Blue Jaw* either when he took the stand against you. He told me after that you had tears in your eyes, but he couldn't tell if it was from rage or sadness”

“What can I, or Allie, or Bluejaw; Sholem; Pretty; and others say that would make it any better? We jumped ship like rats to save our own skins. We had no choice. They even nabbed Oscar The Poet*. Cripes, that guy was just a driver and dumb as a bag of nails”

“And they got everybody rounded up: Mendy*, Charlie The Bug *, Louis Capone, the Dasher, Happy, - a regular Brooklyn sweep up. Midnight Rose’s must be awfully quiet these days…”
“But we are prisoners too, just in different kinds of prison. I know how many wanna see me dead! Sliced, diced, and served for lunch on Lansky’s desk.”

“I ain’t seen my kids in over a year. I’m fat, unhealthy, and bored.”
“I play pranks on these cops guarding me just to keep amused. They are complaining I smell and should shower. Fuck ‘em”

“And it ain’t over. Next up I gotta testify against Albert A and boy, that’s gonna be a doozy…”

Abe Reles then turned on side, flatuated and feel asleep.

Just a little after 7 AM, a policemen poked his head in to check on Reles and saw he was asleep, a light snore rising from beneath the sheets. The cop then wrinkled his nose at the smell emanating from the small hotel room and closed the door again.

A short time later, with early morning light pouring through the window on an overcast day, Reles, in a slumbered haze, half-heard a distinct click as the doorknob turned left and the door opened. He could barely make out the shape before him through half closed eyes…

Sixty-seven years ago at around 8AM on the morning of November 12, Abe Reles lay dead forty feet, five stories, below his hotel window. Knotted bed sheets hung from the window connected to a wire that was tied to the inside radiator. The bed sheets stopped at about halfway the length of the fall. He was fully dressed. His back was broken in two places and vital organs ruptured. His face was cut from the impact of hitting the pebbly roof that extended out from the hotel’s second floor. His body was over twenty feet from the wall. It was surmised later by investigators that he landed butt first and bounced forward like a 150lb ball in a cheap suit.

On the sixth floor of the Half Moon, six policemen were on ‘duty’ when word got out.
“What happened?”
asked one arriving for the morning shift.
“Abe Reles went out the window”


William O'Dwyer got a phone call at his office. He slammed the phone down, put his head in his hands, and proceeded to rub his temples.
Allie Tannenbaum, a few doors down from room 623, couldn’t keep his hands from shaking.

In Los Angeles, Benjamin Siegel was still in his silk housecoat and slippers trying to focus on that morning’s Los Angeles Times when a phone call came in from the east coast. Minutes later, he hung up the receiver in his study, smirked to himself, and reached for a Cuban cigar.

* Irving 'Gangy" Cohen
* Harry Strauss
* Meyer "Buggsy' Goldstein
* Seymour 'Bluejaw' Magoon
* Oscar 'The Poet' Freidman
* Emmanuel 'Mendy' Weiss
* Charles 'The Bug' Workman
* Louis Capone
** Albert Anastasia

Arnold Rothstein and the 1928 Election.

Eighty years ago, on the evening of November 4, 1928, Arnold Rothstein sat at his favorite table at Lindy’s, a delicatessen located between 49th and 50th on Broadway. It was a modest, almost unassuming place, even with its renowned world famous cheesecake. But it held a certain allure with the varying denizens of the Great White Way, and some of its more popular customers included Al Jolson, Harpo Marx, Walter Winchell, and stage performer Fanny Brice, who went so far as to have the cheesecake flown or driven to her during her out of town appearances. The 1920s was known as the ‘Deli Decade’ in New York, mostly Jewish owned, and Lindy’s, which opened in 1921, was the place to be. Rothstein held court there and used it as a defacto office; conducting business over coffee and cake, jotting down numbers in his famous little black books, and took his calls. If he wasn’t at Lindy’s, his table would sit vacant, rarely occupied by anyone else, and never after 9 pm.
It was A.R.’s.

Rothstein spent part of the evening taking bets on the Presidential election, which was two days away. New York’s famous and beloved reformer State Governor, Alfred E. Smith, Democrat, was up against Hebert Hoover, Republican.

Rothstein had his money on Hoover.
The 1920s had been a boom decade of economic upswing and prosperity for Broadway and the rest of America, and much had to with President John Calvin Coolidge and his Republicans in office. They rode the momentum of an already invigorated post-war America that quickly rose to world leadership and power. Coolidge stepped aside, and Herbert Hoover stepped in.

Rothstein always had an eye for a winner.
He knew America was not ready for someone like Al Smith; a gruff voiced son of the Lower East Side; a cigar-chomping Roman Catholic who was soft on Prohibition, who leaned a little to the Left, and has some loose ties early in his political career to Tammany Hall. He was a product of New York City, not America, and Rothstein knew that that fundamental difference went far in the political arena. He was one of us, and he doesn’t have a chance.

Recent events in Rothstein’s life prior to that evening had led to a shaky last couple of months. Things had just not been right. His mind, once sharp with an uncanny memory for numbers and percentages, had grown fuzzy. His slick demeanor and appearance took a turn. He seemed unkempt and sickly, his hands shook all the time, and his confidence faded.

Up until then, Rothstein's criminal career had been a meteoric rise to the top. His powerful influence and notoriety reached far and wide - from the Lower East Side to Harlem and most points in between as well as beyond city limits.
Early on, his father, Abraham Rothstein, a well – respected and religious man whose philanthropic interests earned him the moniker of 'Abe The Just', was troubled by his son's wayward wanderings into the underworld. He tried to have him follow in his good son's Harry's footsteps of academic achievement and rabbinical studies. Arnold shunned it all, apparently claiming,
"Who cares about that stuff. This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American!"

He is perhaps most famously remembered in allegedly having a hand in fixing the 1919 World Series with the loss of favorites the Chicago White Sox to the Cincinnati Reds, something never proven and more possibly untrue, but makes for great folklore and newspaper copy.
He saw beyond the rough and tumble ways below 14th Street, using his sharp mind instead of his fists. He always looked ahead of the curve and was one step ahead.

Gambling and numbers were his biggest strength and he had a true talent for it. He made early connections with Monk Eastman and used his muscle as collector on debts owed back to him. Tutelage from Big Tim Sullivan and other political connections allowed him to manage secretly run city casinos that attracted Manhattan socialites and others including Joseph Seagram, the Canadian Whiskey baron. High rollers would lose upwards of $250,000 to Rothstein in a single night.
He watched the Rosenthal – Becker affair like a stage play from the cat walk, never getting his hands dirty but pulling important strings.
He bankrolled early Prohibition operations and speakeasies all over the city, and even financially backed a couple of Broadway plays. One was called Abie’s Irish Rose, whose story revolved around an inter-faith marriage much like his, between a Jew and Irish girl. It was a smash hit. The second, Shuffle Along, was the first Broadway play with an all African-American cast, which nobody else wanted to touch.
He moderated and arranged truces between warring gangs all over town. His ability to move within both the Lower East Side and uptown white-collar criminals was an advantage no one had before and by the age of 46, he was the underworld's golden boy and his orders were obeyed by almost everyone.
He was never arrested and rarely photographed.
He was respected, and reviered.
He taught, tutored, and tolerated.
They called him A.R., The Brain, The Big Bankroll, and he was the original Mr. Big.
Picture early 20th Century New York as the Land of Oz, and Broadway as the yellow brick road.
Rothstein was the man to see behind the curtain.

The evening of November 4, 1928 however did not find Rothstein, a notorious hypochondriac, in the best of mental states. Those endless bags of figs he kept in his suit pocket and consumed daily as supposed brain food, were not working.
And his luck seemed to have changed as well.
He took a call at his booth in Lindy’s from George McManus, who wanted to see him at the Park Central Hotel.

Back on September 8, he had sat down to a poker game organized by McManus at the Park Central Hotel.
The game ended on September 10.
No one seemed sure what happened to Rothstein during the course of that marathon poker game. His judgment was off, he fumbled like an amateur and he raised very high stakes without sure bets in his palms. His edge had dulled somehow and the card sharks in the room noticed as they circled him, waiting for the kill.
He lost $50,000 on a single high- card draw.
His total loss amounted to over $320,000.
Rothstein, livid, slipped them an IOU. and left, promising them a pay off in a day or two, which included the winnings to west coast gambler ‘Nigger Nate’ Raymond, who took Rothstein on that hefty high-card draw and who was showing him very little respect through the entirety of those fateful 48 hours.
While a staggering amount to lose at poker, Rothstein could afford it, but he never intended to pay up. He convinced himself and others around him that the game was rigged and announced he would refuse to pay up.
Whispers and hyperbole now traveled up and down Broadway on how the great A.R. had suddenly welshed on a bet, the one trait he had always despised. Rothstein paid the gossip and back alley talk no heed, and for the following couple of months, sidestepped their demands of payment.

Half an hour after taking his phone call from McManus, Rothstein leaned against the wall next to the service entrance of the Park Central. Blood, which had trickled down the stairs leading from Room 349, was now streaming between his fingers as he clutched his mid - section, his face ghostly pale as he struggled for breath. He asked the service elevator operator to get him a cab, but an ambulance arrived instead.
Rothstein spent two days clutching for life at Polyclinic Hospital.
Detectives urged the dying Rothstein to name the shooter. Rothstein stayed mum, claiming he would take care of it himself.

On November 6, Herbert Hoover took the Presidential Election with a 58% landslide over Alfred E. Smith’s 40%. Hoover even took New York State from Smith, which left him rather devastated.
At the Polyclinic Hospital, Arnold Rothstein let out his last dying breath, winning his final bet, and the lights at Lindy's and along Broadway, dimmed.