His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [133]
Robbins E. Cahill, one of the commissioners, later expressed the board’s concern about Frank’s Mafia associations. “Entertainment people are always closely connected to the element that we always feared in those days because both of them had money. I think, like a lot of great entertainers, Frank knew many, many hoodlums.”
After deliberating on and off for fourteen months, the commission finally approved the application that would eventually make Frank a multimillionaire.
“I can’t tell you how happy this makes me,” he said at the time. “I’ve been trying for more than a year to get a foothold in Las Vegas because I believe it has a great future. I want to be a part of that future.… You know, an entertainer’s life is somewhat uncertain. It all depends on the whims of the public. When I am finished as an entertainer, I want to have an investment that will insure the education of my children and a sufficient income for me. I think this Sands investment will keep me very comfortably.”
In addition to mobster Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo, there were only four hotels on the Las Vegas strip, but Frank knew the city would eventually be a boomtown for gamblers. It couldn’t miss; it was the only place in the country that had legalized casino gambling. Frank’s two percent interest in the Sands, which grew to nine percent, was a testament to his good relations with the underworld, for the new luxury hotel was at that time controlled by more Mafia groups than any other casino in Nevada.
Justice Department files indicate that one stockholder was persuaded to sell two of his five shares of stock in the Sands to Sinatra for $70,000, giving Frank his initial two percent. Informants told the FBI that Vincente “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo then gave Frank “a gift of seven percent of this hotel,” bringing his share to nine percent.
The number one man at the Sands was Joseph “Doc” Stacher, a New Jersey gangster who was second only to Meyer Lansky in the syndicate and looked on Frank as his son. Stacher’s police record listed atrocious assault and battery, robbery, larceny, bootlegging, hijacking, and murder investigations. The casino’s official greeter was Charles “Babe” Baron, once suspected of murder. Some of the less visible gangsters involved with the Sands included Joe Fusco of the old Capone mob, Meyer Lansky, Abner “Longy” Zwiliman, Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo, Gerardo Catena, acting boss of the Genovese family in New York, and Abraham Teitelbaum, a former attorney far the Capone mob who frequently stated: “Alphonse Capone was one of the most honorable men I ever met.”
Years after he fled the U.S. and went into exile in Israel, Doc Stacher admitted that the mob had offered Frank a share in the Sands so that he would draw the high rollers.
“I was the man who built the Sands,” Stacher said in 1979. “To make sure we’d get enough top-level investors, we brought George Raft into the deal and sold Frank Sinatra a nine percent stake in the hotel. Frank was flattered to be invited, but the object was to get him to perform there, because there’s no bigger draw in Las Vegas. When Frankie was performing, the hotel really filled up.”
For the next thirteen years, Frank would reign supreme at the Sands, eventually becoming vice-president of the corporation and earning over $100,000 a week when he performed. His drawing power was such that he could do no wrong in the eyes of the Mafia owners. When they gave him three thousand dollars a night to gamble with, he often went through the money in twenty minutes, but they extended credit, frequently allowing him to play no-limit games, and sometimes even ignoring his markers. They built a three-bedroom suite on the ground floor for him because they knew he was afraid of heights—he always booked hotel suites on low floors—and they installed a private swimming pool for him protected by a stone wall. Later,