5
One thing they couldn't save him from. The Toledo detectives were furious. They knew who had beaten him. They had wanted those leg-breakers for a long time but could never make a case against them. Now they had beaten a man who could identify them, and he wouldn't do it.
On another Saturday night, January 23, 1932, The Clock was raided by state Prohibition agents. Maurie was taken out of his carpet joint in handcuffs and lodged in the Lucas County jail. The Clock had operated for years without a raid, but the Toledo detectives had demanded this raid. Selling liquor was against the law. Few were arrested anymore, since Prohibition was likely to be repealed soon, but it was a handy tool occasionally when somebody wanted to embarrass a politician or punish a guy like Maurice Cohen.
On an icy day in February, Maurie — again in handcuffs and trembling with fear — was led inside the high stone walls of the notorious Ohio Penitentiary. He had been only eighteen years old when he entered the Plaquemine prison camp: young enough and resilient enough to survive. Now he was fifty, and he was not certain he would live to the end of his three-year sentence.
As at Plaquemine, the first day was the worst. The warden himself described the intake process as a day that made grown men cry. Maurie would remember spending six or seven hours stark naked. Issuing clothes was the last step in the process, and the new inmates were herded naked from shower to barber to doctor to dentist to fingerprinting to mug shot to indoctrination lecture, with long waits at each station. Finally, in their uniforms, the new convicts were marched across the yard and into the bewildering labyrinth of the huge prison. They ate their first meal in the dining hall. They were marched to a cell block and assigned to a cell.
Maurie compared what he had to endure here to what he'd had to endure in the Louisiana camp more than thirty years ago. In some ways this confinement was easier, in other ways harder. He wore no leg irons, but the convicts were organized into companies and marched as companies from the cell blocks to the cafeteria, to work, to the cafeteria again, back to work, to the cafeteria again, and back to the cell block. Only with a written pass signed by a guard could a prisoner cross the yard alone on his way to the infirmary, the library, or the chapel.
At Maurie's age, no one wanted him for a "wife," so he was not assaulted. He was not the only Jew in the prison. In fact there were so many that a rabbi held services in the ecumenical prison chapel on Saturday mornings. His work assignment was the noisy little factory where the convicts made license plates. He sat at a bench six hours a day, stuffing license plates into brown envelopes.
He wore what the convicts called a hickory shirt, made from a fabric so coarse and rough that it must have been mattress ticking, oversized blue jeans that he had to roll up, a cap, and black shoes made inside the prison. The shirt must be buttoned to the collar; that was the rule. Except when locked in his cell, every man had to keep his cap set squarely on his head.
He lived in a cell meant for two men but housing four. From their stations and while walking their rounds, the guards could peer through the chain-link cell doors at all times; and, unlike the Louisiana guards, these did not leave the prisoners alone all night while they went off somewhere and slept. It was a rule that prisoners must not masturbate, and to be sure they didn't the rule required them to sleep with their hands outside their blankets. When a guard spotted a man with his hands under the blankets he would bang on the cell door with his baton and order him to get his hands out. One of the men in Maurie's cell was caught masturbating and spent ten days in solitary for it.
After a little time, Maurie knew he would survive, but he was not absolutely sure he wanted to. Weeks and months of his life passed in utter monotony, wasted and never to be recovered. He did not suffer from systematized cruelty but from constantly oppressive discipline, total want of privacy, and austerity so severe that it dispirited even men who had never known much of comfort or amenities.
Firetop arrived to begin his life sentence. Maurie saw him occasionally but could almost never find a chance to say a word to him, since they were not in the same company or the same cell block.
When he had served one year of his term, he appeared before the parole board. In the argot of the prison, the board "flopped" him — denied him parole. They thought of him as a gangster. Besides, the Toledo police recommended he be kept in prison till the end of his term.
That is why he was surprised when he was granted parole in 1934, with a year of his term remaining. The board reasoned that it was pointless to keep a man in prison for violating a law that had been repealed.
Maurice Cohen never reported to his parole officer. He went directly to Detroit. The Purple Gang was no more, but that didn't mean there was no gang. Maurie was welcomed home with a wild party, at which it was announced he was the new manager of a new carpet joint in Flint. He was Maurie, he was the guy who hadn't squealed and had even done time in the Ohio pen because he wouldn't squeal. There had to be something good for a guy like that.
Maurie had an announcement too. From now on, he told his friends, his name was Morris Chandler.
6
He was always glad to hear from Max. This time he was glad to have the chance to do him a favor.
They had seen each other from time to time over the years, as Chandler moved from managing the carpet joint in Flint to managing others in various parts of the country. For eight years he managed one in Saratoga Springs during the racing season, then moved to Fort Lauderdale and managed one there during the winter. Max visited both of them.
More and more, the Sicilians took over everything the gangs had operated. It made no difference to Chandler. If anything, the new managers had even more respect for a man who had kept his mouth shut. With them, omertà was a matter of honor, the essential quality of every man they trusted and accepted, an essential foundation stone of their organization. Morris Chandler would not become a "made man," would not be inducted into their society, but they accepted him as a man of honor and courage, whom they could trust.
He met many of them. Lucky Luciano, the greatest of them. Frank Costello. Albert Anastasia. Joe Profacci. Carlo Gambino. Frank Nitti. They weren't all Sicilians. Murray the Camel Humphries, in Chicago. Meyer Lansky. Bugsy Siegel.
Max didn't want to know them. He wouldn't come near one of Maurie's joints if he knew any of them were there.
5
1
MORRIS CHANDLER ASSURED JONAS THAT EVERYTHING was being arranged: the telephones with scramblers, the relay through San Diego, new locks ... everything. And he hoped Jonas and Nevada would be his guests for the show that evening.
Shortly they sat around a table in a glass-fronted box overlooking the stage. The glass tipped forward at an angle, so as to cast bright reflections on anyone looking up from the dining floor or the stage, rendering anyone inside invisible. Their table was covered with heavy white linen. It was set with heavy silver and crystal glasses. A bottle of bourbon and one of Scotch sat in the middle. A bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket to one side.
A special bottle, label soaked off, sat at Chandler's place. He poured a little green liqueur from the bottle into a glass and added a touch of water. The clear liquid clouded. "Absinthe," he explained. "Illegal. I have to get it from Asia. Taste I acquired in New Orleans before it was banned. You're welcome to try it. It's said to damage the brain."
"I've tasted it," said Jonas, "and I'll have another taste. My grandmother made cookies with that taste: anise."