Speed Kings by Andy Bull Page B

baccarat, though, in the words of his first wife, “he would bet on anything under the sun.” In 1913 he took a holiday in England. He sailed back to New York on the
Mauretania
, the largest, fastest ocean liner in the world. Jay spent the voyage holed up in the smoking room, playing cards. By the time the ship docked in New York, he had won twenty-five thousand dollars, almost half of which was made in the final twenty minutes of the voyage as his desperate opponents tried to win back what they had lost in a frantic final game. Word spread around the ship that something extraordinary was afoot in the smoking room, which was soon filled with spectators. They were keener to watch the cards than they were to take in the sight of the city from the deck. It was worth it; Jay won five thousand dollars on the turn of a single card. This caused whispers. Someone muttered the phrase “card-sharping” to the press, but nothing came of it.
    Jay had another narrow escape later that same year. He and his friend Al Davis had hired a bachelor pad above Murray’s Roman Gardens, the most famous of the ritzy “lobster palaces” that popped up on the Gay White Way of 42nd Street. Downstairs at Murray’s they had a rotating dance floor, which turned lazy circles underneath a ceiling filled with electric stars. Showgirls flitted in between the statues and fountains and took turns dancing tangos with the clientele. And if any of the guests found all that to be insufficient entertainment, well, the showgirls would show them upstairs to Jay and Al’s apartment, where there was what one journalist called “a wonderfully circumspect roulette wheel” ready and waiting for anyone who was rich, drunk, or dumb enough to take the chance. Until they made the mistake of taking twenty-five thousand dollars off a staff member of the Russian consulate. He woke the next morning with a thick head and a slim wallet. Incensed, he reported Jay and Al to the police. He said he had been fleeced.
    And so he had. They called the con “shearing the lamb.” The showgirls, who took a cut of the profits, were paid to spot victims, liquor them up, and leadthem to the suite. Then they lured the mark into splashing his cash on the crooked roulette wheel. Astonishing sums were lost at that little gaming table. Angier Duke, who was then a trustee of Duke University, was forced to issue a public denial that he had dropped eighty thousand dollars there. He admitted, a little coyly, that he had met Jay in Murray’s, but insisted that he was “just very fond of music and dancing” and had dropped in at the club to “tango away a little time.” Snaring and shearing a foreign diplomat, though, was just asking for trouble. Unlike Angy Duke, he wasn’t about to let them off easy.
    Deputy Commissioner of Police Newburger led the raid himself. He and his men hustled into Murray’s and busted down the door to the suite. But Jay had been tipped off. The room was empty, except for one little roulette table. They picked it up and carried it away, past the replica of Cleopatra’s barge, the thirty-foot marble fountain, and out through the restaurant. “Tumult reigned among the gay throngs clustered in horrified bewilderment,” read one report. “Certain attractive girls professed to have no idea what it was all about. Others nudged their companions and winked significantly.” It took Newburger a couple of days to track down Jay and Al. They turned up in “another Broadway trottery” and were brought in for questioning, then charged with gambling. Jay insisted it was a “frame-up” and that the police were being used by two men who owed him money. The charges were eventually dismissed. But then, Jay had some low friends in high places. His thousand-dollar bail was paid by Arnold “Ace” Rothstein, one of the biggest racketeers in the city.
    They called Rothstein “the