Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [138]
Most of Mrs Rosenstiel’s testimony to the committee was behind closed doors, in executive session, and remains sealed. Two decades later, interviewed at her home in France, she still had the keen recall that so impressed the New York investigators. By her account, to live with Rosenstiel was to live with the command structure of organized crime.
Her first date with the millionaire, in 1955, was dinner at the Waldorf accompanied by Lansky associate Joe Linsey. He was there again during the honeymoon cruise, along with Robert Gould, a Schenley distributor who had been jailed for black marketeering in World War II. Mrs Rosenstiel later met Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mafia boss, and Santos Trafficante, the Florida crime chieftain. She was also introduced to Al Hart and Art Samish, both shady operators in the liquor business who had met Edgar at the Del Charro hotel in California. At Rosenstiel’s birthday parties, famous hoodlums drank elbow to elbow with judges and local government officials. Cardinal Spellman, another of Edgar’s friends, was a regular guest.
During 1957, a time of crisis for the mob – the year of the Apalachin conference and feuding over who was to dominate New York – Rosenstiel stayed in constant touch with Frank Costello. He visited him during a brief spell in jail, then received him as a guest at his home on East Eightieth Street. Earlier that year, on a trip to Cuba, the millionaire had introduced his wife to Meyer Lansky – an experience she described vividly to the New York Crime Committee.
‘We arrived in Havana,’ Susan testified, ‘and then we went to the National Hotel … We had a very big suite, and it was filled with flowers … I looked at the card, and it said, “Welcome, Supreme Commander, to Havana. Meyer and Jake.” So I asked my husband who Meyer and Jake were, and he said, “That is Meyer and Jake Lansky, very good friends …”’
The Rosenstiels dined with Lansky that evening. He paid all their bills in Havana and provided unlimited credit for gambling. The millionaire, for his part, regularly returned the hospitality when the mobster was in New York or Florida. Lansky found one of the grander dinner parties a positive ordeal.
‘I had two butlers,’ recalled Mrs Rosenstiel, ‘double service, with Mouton-Rothschild to drink. The butlers were trained always to have white towels around the bottles so my husband couldn’t see it wasn’t one of his champagnes. And we had this marvelous dinner. I was using my beautiful gold dinner service that had belonged to Queen Marie of Romania. They ate the dessert and then the butlers brought the little finger bowls, with little flowers in them. And some of them thought at first it was an extra dessert. Meyer Lansky went to taste it and hurt his teeth on the bowl.
‘Then we went upstairs to the sitting room, and Lansky said, “Can’t I have a decent cup of coffee?” He had, you know, just a little demitasse. My husband thought himself quite a pianist, and he said to these men, “Well, boys, what would you like to hear me play?” They said, “Play anything.” So he did, and when he finished he said to Lansky, “Meyer, what do you think I was playing, what composition?” I think Lansky had only heard of Beethoven, so he said Beethoven. And Rosenstiel laughed, and he said, “You goddamn son of a bitch, I composed that myself.” They all had to applaud.’
Susan Rosenstiel was aware that her husband had business deals with Lansky. ‘He was always having under-the-table transactions, and for that he didn’t want to use the banks. Just cash. And Lansky used to put up a lot of money. Once, later, they gave my husband some kind of big payment at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in bundles of cash.