Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [132]
He had indeed, thanks to a neat piece of manipulation by the mob. Lucky Luciano, issuing orders to Costello and Lansky from prison, had decided that to relieve law enforcement pressure on mob operations Lepke must be made to surrender. Word went to the gangster that he would be treated leniently if he surrendered to Edgar – a false promise, as it turned out, for he was to end up in the electric chair. Costello, meanwhile, met secretly with Edgar to hammer out the arrangements.
The beauty of it all, Luciano would recall, was that they achieved two things at once. They won relief from law enforcement pressure and simultaneously ensured that Edgar and Dewey – even the ego-obsessed Walter Winchell – each got their ‘piece of the cake.’ For supreme practitioners of the Fix, the sacrifice of Lepke was a job well done.
William Hundley, the Justice Department attorney, had a glimpse of the way Costello handled Edgar. It happened by chance in 1961, when Hundley was staying at the apartment of his friend – and the mobster’s attorney – Edward Bennett Williams. ‘At eight o’clock in the morning,’ Hundley recalled, ‘there was a knock at the door. There was a guy there with a big hat on, and this really hoarse voice. It was Frank Costello, and he came in, and we sat around eating breakfast … Somehow the subject of Hoover came up, and Hoover liking to bet on horseracing. Costello mentioned that he knew Hoover, that they met for lunch. Then he started looking very leery of going on, but Ed told him he could trust me. Costello just said, “Hoover will never know how many races I had to fix for those lousy ten-dollar bets.” He still looked leery, and I guess he didn’t want to say much more.’
In Costello, Edgar had one of the most powerful tipsters in gambling history. One of his primary mob functions was to control betting and fix races. Those who failed to cooperate got hurt, or worse. Edgar’s relationship with him was corroborated by sources both inside and outside the mob. ‘Costello did give tips to Hoover,’ said Walter Winchell’s colleague Herman Klurfeld. ‘He got them from [betting-parlor operator] Frank Erickson and passed them on through Winchell … Sometimes Costello and Hoover met directly. Now and then, when Hoover was in the barbershop at the Waldorf, so was Frank Costello.’
Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana reportedly had an inside track on the relationship. His half brother Chuck claimed that Costello ‘worked the whole thing out. He knew Hoover was just like every other politician and copper, only meaner and smarter than most. Hoover didn’t want an envelope each month … so we never gave him cash outright; we gave him something better: tips on fixed horse races. He could bet ten thousand dollars on a horse that showed twenty-to-one odds, if he wanted … and he has.’1
In 1990, aged eighty, New York mob boss Carmine Lombardozzi said Costello and Edgar ‘had contact on many occasions and over a long period. Hoover was very friendly towards the families. They took good care of him, especially at the races … The families made sure he was looked after when he visited the tracks in California and on the East Coast. They had an understanding. He would lay off the families, turn a blind eye. It helped that he denied that we even existed. If there was anything they could do for him, information that did not hurt family business, they would provide it.’2
George Allen, Edgar’s racecourse companion for forty years and a prominent public figure who had no connection to the mob, recalled a conversation between Edgar and Costello. ‘I heard Hoover in the Stork one night,’ he said, ‘tell Costello that as long as he stayed out of Hoover’s bailiwick, he’d stay out of