Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [33]
Instead of destroying his career, the jail term invigorated it. He was renominated as the Democratic candidate for alderman while still behind bars, then boasted of his criminal record in a campaign slogan that appealed to the us-against-authority culture of the famine Irish: “He did it for a friend!” Soon he was back to his old tricks—a few months after his release Curley was accused of selling his aldermanic vote to a shipping company that wanted to build a rail line through the streets of East Boston. A grand jury refused to issue indictments, but that luck would not hold. In 1907 Curley was indicted for pressuring New England Telephone and Telegraph to hire phantom workers as an apparent cover for the payment of bribes. Fearing that his ambitions would not survive a second conviction, Curley hired lawyer Daniel Coakley, a thoroughly unscrupulous ex-reporter and boxing referee who relied more heavily on blackmail than legal briefs. Coakley worked his magic, and the indictments were dropped.
In 1909 Curley rose to the newly formed Boston City Council, which replaced the Board of Aldermen as well as the Common Council. From that perch he won a seat in the U.S. Congress in 1910, was reelected two years later, and set his sights on the plum job of Boston mayor. His main obstacle was a fellow Irish-American: John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, who was enjoying his second term as mayor and considering running for a third. Fitzgerald had come up in a fashion similar to Curley’s, from ward politics to the Boston Common Council to the Massachusetts senate to Congress, where he’d served three terms and won a reputation as a staunch supporter of immigrants. His nickname was a tribute to his honeyed rendition of “Sweet Adeline” at every public event save wakes. Fitzgerald’s diminutive stature and acquisitive nature earned him another sobriquet, “the Little Napoleon.”
By 1913, Curley was eager to become mayor—the job paid better than being a congressman, and there were more opportunities for pocket lining. But he loathed the idea of having to face a sitting incumbent Democrat with a similar following. Once again the lawyer Dan Coakley proved useful. Coakley shared with Curley a scandalous piece of information about Fitzgerald: The mayor had made a spectacle of himself with a buxom roadhouse gal named Elizabeth “Toodles” Ryan. Curley had just what he needed to squeeze the family man Fitzgerald from the race. A letter soon arrived at Fitzgerald’s house threatening exposure of his public flirtation with Toodles. Fearing for his reputation, Fitzgerald ended his candidacy, giving Curley the opening he needed to take control of Boston City Hall. The episode was eventually memorialized in a classic bit of Boston doggerel: “A whisky glass and Toodles’ ass made a horse’s ass out of Honey Fitz.” Fitzgerald’s only consolation was the wedding soon after of his beloved eldest daughter, Rose, to Joseph P. Kennedy, the son of an Irish politico-cum-saloon-keeper-cum-rumrunner. Rose would pay special tribute to her father by naming her second son after him: John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Curley claimed the mayor’s office in the name of honest government, ironically suggesting that he was just the man to clean up the mess of graft, patronage, and incompetence that Fitzgerald had left behind. At first, he seemed true to his word, but soon he returned to form: ethnic warfare, intimidation, and a level of graft unparalleled in Boston history. The nadir was the palace he was building on the parkway.
The big question was how he could possibly afford such a mansion. Curley had no declared savings, yet he had also recently purchased a seaside summer home in Hull. His mayoral salary of ten thousand dollars was not enough to