Blood Aces Page 17
Binion also hired some trusted dealers, bringing in many of those who had worked the tables for him with the Southland Syndicate in Dallas. But as preparations moved ahead, there remained the not inconsiderable matter of the license, which he still had not been able to secure. The Horseshoe would have to open under a ruse, and Dr. Monte Bernstein, who owned a 10 percent stake, became the beard. Bernstein had operated the Eldorado Club, and had succeeded in running it into the ground. “He was the type of man that didn’t understand gambling,” Binion complained. But he had a clean record—clean enough, anyway, to win a casino license from the state. Bernstein assumed the titular chairmanship of the Horseshoe, while Binion took the position of bar and restaurant manager. Bernstein assured state regulators that Binion would have nothing to do with running the casino itself, which no one in Las Vegas gaming circles believed, although most exercised enough discretion not to laugh out loud at the claim.
As far as Binion was concerned, this coupling with Bernstein constituted a temporary arrangement. While he waited for his bribes to work their magic, the planning for the big debut party was well under way. And soon he would hear good news from Dallas. The coming days were shaping up to be some of the best of Binion’s life.
• • •
Noble’s placement couldn’t have been better, at least from his assassins’ perspective. When he stopped his car, he sat directly on top of the explosives the three men had assembled and buried the night before. Now Noble leaned out the car window, his white hair in the sun, his tanned arm extended for any soothing letters he might have received. The loudest sounds were the grinding of cicadas and the low rumble of the engine of the Ford. He breathed in: the Cat’s last. One of the men hidden in the bushes touched a copper wire from the battery to a barbed-wire fence, grounding the connection, and the buried bomb roared.
The blast ripped the car apart, flipping the frame on its back, and dug a crater five feet across and four feet deep. Shrapnel and body parts flew in all directions. A hunk of Noble’s leg went arcing toward the killers’ hideaway. If he had wanted, one of the men could have stepped from behind the brush and caught it like a football. The mailbox sailed seventy-five feet. A newspaper later said that Noble had been “rent apart by the blast,” but that didn’t do it justice. His body was simply gone below the shoulders.
Then it was done. As the destroyed car lay upside down next to the crater, dark and dirty smoke rose against the bleached blue sky. Dozens of twenty-dollar bills—from Noble’s card-playing cache—fluttered down into the flames like high-priced autumn leaves. The killers fled, leaving a scene embellished by a couple of macabre grace notes so trite that any pulp writer who conjured them would have been laughed out of town. But there they were, two playing cards faceup on the ground, a few feet from the twisted metal, next to a charred piece of Noble’s straw cowboy hat: a joker and the ace of diamonds.
• • •
His neighbors heard the blast but didn’t pay much attention to it. Farms and ranches in the area set off explosives as a matter of working routine. Noble’s corpse and the hot hulk of the Ford lay in the dirt road for ninety minutes before a farmer on his way home happened upon them.
This crime was big, so monumental that the top lawman in Denton County arrived to inspect the bombing scene in person, even if he couldn’t see a thing. Sheriff W. O. Hodges had been blinded two years earlier when a crazed man, terrorizing the tiny town of Krum, shot him in the face with a 12-gauge. This sudden handicap impeded his investigative abilities not at all, his deputies insisted. Now the blind sheriff stood in the dirt road, running his fingers over the wreckage of Noble’s car. All around the sheriff, the area swarmed with investigators, including a Texas Ranger improbably outfitted in a fedora, sunglasses, and a floral Hawaiian shirt. Also joining the probe was a postal inspector, who warned that whoever killed Noble would be subject to a three-year term for damaging a mailbox. As the inspector concerned himself with this federal matter, other officers set about collecting scattered body parts.
The cops penciled sketches, took photos, drew maps, and used tape measures to add fine detail to their reports. They also made a show of searching for fingerprints, but gathered none of use. In all, it was a hot and dirty ordeal of scouring a crime scene and coming up with little more than the abandoned Delco battery, a few wires, and the vague reports of sightings of the men in the blue pickup. By the end of the day, they could have put all their clues in a suitcase and had room left over for what remained of Noble.
While the police went about their futile activities, Binion relaxed in an air-conditioned restaurant at the Last Frontier on the Las Vegas Strip, visiting with his old Dallas friend Ivy Miller. The two had plenty of good times to talk about—the policy games, the Southland Syndicate, the day Miller blew away Binion’s rival Sam Murray on a crowded downtown Dallas sidewalk. Someone paged Binion. He rose from the table and took a phone call. A reporter from the Houston Press gave him the news that Noble had been killed. Binion paused, then said, “I’m glad he’s dead.”
It was not the most politic of responses, and Binion spent the rest of the day backing away. To United Press he said, “I know a lot of people think I had something to do with all those other attempts on Noble’s life, and they’re probably saying I had something to do with this one . . . But I had nothing to do with any of them. This is a bad thing.”
And he told the Dallas Morning News, “I didn’t have a thing to do with it. That’s the graveyard truth.” He wasn’t all that choked up about it, though. “I don’t care one way or the other,” he said. “I just don’t give a damn.”
Nobody believed that one either.
• • •
Seven days after his rival was blown to bits, Binion presided over the grand opening of his Horseshoe Club. The debut was, fittingly, a major Vegas event, and represented a move up in class for Glitter Gulch. The city’s crusty mayor, C. D. Baker, cut the ribbon, which had been lovingly draped over a shotgun. A grinning Binion circulated and greeted, wearing a cowboy hat, a billowy suit, and a patterned tie that stopped a good six inches above his belt. Nick the Greek showed too, as did a good slice of the Las Vegas gambling public. And the publicity machine had been cranked to high: “Crowds reminded us of famed Grand Central Station in N.Y.C. on a 4th of July weekend,” proclaimed Fabulous Las Vegas magazine.
When the sun finally sank behind the mountains, the casino’s signage came alive: a red-and-white “Horseshoe” in neon deco cursive atop each of two sidewalk awnings. And above the entrance loomed an electric horseshoe-shaped display, twelve feet tall and aglow in blinding white. Inside, the customers lined the tables three and four deep, the redolence of fresh paint mingling with the smell of smoke, whiskey, and perfume. The Horseshoe couldn’t approach the fabulous Flamingo’s luxury, but it had its charms, and the Las Vegas Sun, published by Binion’s good friend Hank Greenspun, had played them up big. “Heralded to be one of the most lavish casinos in the downtown area, the new Horseshoe opens its doors today to expectant throngs,” the Sun’s story gushed in advance. “Across the terrazzo entrance with its imbedded steel horseshoes, footsteps of throngs will pass, to immediately encounter deep-pile rose carpet.”
That, to the Sun—and the throngs—was only the beginning of the Horseshoe’s delights. The casino had an emerald-green ceiling, and the craps tables featured padded leather armrests and recessed drink holders. The hungry gambler was the lucky gambler, for the Horseshoe’s restaurant offered “anything and everything for a gourmet’s exacting taste,” the Sun reported, and at the counter, “a waitress can dispense malted milks at any hour of the day or night.” Few customers came for twenty-four-hour chocolate shakes. And they weren’t looking for scantily clad chorus girls or tuxedoed lounge singers. There weren’t any, and never would be, because, as Binion liked to say, he didn’t want his money blowing out the end of some guy’s trumpet. At the Horseshoe, all the action was in the action. From the mo
ment the lights went on, the Horseshoe rolled as the hottest gambling spot in town. Throughout that first night it pulsed with the sound of cash changing hands—the ringing of the slots, the clatter of the roulette wheel, the soft tumble of the dice across the green felt, the cries of joy from the winners.
Too many winners, initially. “The first night,” Binion said, “me and my wife went home at about four o’clock in the morning, and when we left, we was $96,000 losers.” But when he returned to the casino the next afternoon, the house advantage had prevailed. “Hell, we was a hundred and some-odd thousand winners,” he said. “So I ain’t never been in no tight since.”
Not only that, his pioneering wall-to-wall floor covering paid for itself when the company owner hit the Horseshoe tables. “The carpet cost $18,000,” Binion said. “He was a player, and the first night he played, I won $18,000 exactly. So I win the carpet.”
• • •
Herbert Noble’s remains were buried in a concrete vault next to those of his wife, the two bombing victims now side by side at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas. His feud with Binion had been so prolonged, violent, and darkly absurd that even national publications took notice of his death: Life magazine ran a pictorial display of the bomb scene, and Time weighed in with a story headlined “The Last Days of the Cat.” As a continuing criminal investigation produced few hot leads, police had to console themselves with the thought that at least the Noble-Binion feud had finally run its course. Except maybe it had not. All over Dallas, people still talked of their belief that Noble had left a vengeance fund in escrow.
This notion gained new life on a Las Vegas night in late September, when Binion returned home from the Horseshoe. He rode in his Cadillac, which was driven by a bodyguard, a man named Natie Blank. Also in the car was Russian Louie Strauss. Another car pulled alongside on the dark street, and shots were fired, blowing holes in Binion’s Caddy. No one was hurt, although Blank’s performance may have been less than sterling. He soon found himself discharged from Binion’s staff.
Binion and his friends among the local authorities managed to suppress news of the incident for a while. “The law enforcing here has always been honest and tops,” Binion once explained. “Of course, they’ve let little old things go, which I was in favor of.” But several weeks after the shooting, United Press broke the story, calling the incident a possible “underworld assassination attempt.” Police said they had no clues and no leads, and that “officers were unable to trace down any secret repair job on Binion’s auto.” The story added this description of his home: “The Binion yard is patrolled by two vicious Great Dane dogs, and visitors must be escorted personally to the house for protection. Mrs. Binion herself was reportedly scarred for life by one of the huge Danes.” That last part wasn’t quite right. The mauling victim was a man who worked for the Binions.
Though silent on the matter of his dogs, Binion insisted that the shooting never happened. “The portly gambler himself has denied the reports,” United Press wrote. “‘Not a damn thing to it,’ he said. ‘This town is lousy with rumors. You can’t believe anything you hear.’”
Rumor or not, such publicity could hurt a man trying to ingratiate himself with casino regulators, and Binion needed a rousing rebuttal. It soon appeared in the Pioche Record, the journal of a mining town to the north. “The various stories that have been appearing through press releases about Benny Binion are malodorous to put to shame the wildest efforts of a dime novelist,” the Record wrote, adding that Binion was “the target of scatter-brained sensationalism.”
The United Press account of the attempt to shoot Binion was “as stale as the opening of King Tut’s tomb,” the Record’s story asserted, and presented a “dither of misinformation.” And those supposedly vicious guard dogs? They actually greeted strangers with “much tail-wagging and barks of welcome.”
The Record’s writer knew this because his research included a visit to the Binion home on Bonanza Road: “Upon entering the Binion residence, our reporter would be instantly intrigued by the decorous atmosphere, Mrs. Binion’s reserved charm, and a princely hospitality offered by Mr. Binion into which is insinuated the social traditions of the old South, including fried chicken by an imported colored cook.”
Not only did he offer southern fried chicken, but Binion was generous to a fault with his cash, the Record noted. “Charitable organizations hail him as a philanthropist,” the story said, “and unfortunate individuals look upon him as the sweet prince of ‘touch.’”
On that last point, at least, the newspaper could be considered something of an impeccable source. About the time the story appeared, Binion bought the publisher of the Record, Nevada state senator E. L. Nores, a brand-new car—a Hudson Hornet. Or, as some sarcastically took to calling it, a “Binion Bullet.”
Such a car cost about $2,500 in 1951. Binion’s Horseshoe could grab that much on one sucker’s roll of the dice.
• • •
The blind sheriff of Denton County and his deputies made little headway in their investigation of Noble’s murder. The Texas Rangers were conducting their own probe but had turned up nothing in the way of solid leads, despite the assistance of the ever-present Lieutenant Butler of the Dallas police. Butler and the Rangers faced no shortage of hoods to interview, because by official police count, thirty-nine people “had been propositioned to kill or had attempted to kill Noble” since 1945. However, five of them were already dead and fourteen in prison. Some of the rest, in Butler’s estimation, didn’t appear capable of pulling off the complex bombing job. Still, “all are tough outlaws,” he wrote. “Informants close to Binion state that he would not have anything to do with some of the lessor [sic] lights mentioned, but others state, equally as positively, that Binion did not care who made the money as long as Noble was killed; the quicker the better.”
Butler and Ranger Bob Crowder initially focused on three men as their prime suspects: Bob Braggins, Finley Donica, and J. R. Gilreath, well-traveled journeymen Dallas burglars who knew their way around explosives. A witness told police that a few days before the bombing he had been in Donica’s home and seen a “two-gallon pickle jar, full of dynamite sticks.” The three men were spotted together less than an hour after the murder at a nearby café, where they looked, a waitress said, dirty, hot, and thirsty. In the classic manner of dimwitted criminals who hit it big, all three bought new cars right after the killing. But leads that looked promising fell apart. Polygraph tests of the men told police nothing. A witness who said he heard two of the suspects talking about the murder soon recanted his story, and had a good reason for doing so. “He is very muchly afraid of Gilreath killing him,” Butler wrote.
Many of the usual rats had gone mute. “Most of the informants are afraid to do any talking,” Butler wrote. “The word in the so-called underworld being to ‘forget the Noble deal’ if you want to get along.”
Getting nowhere, Butler and Crowder decided to try a different, more aggressive strategy. They would go to Las Vegas, where they could question Binion in person. It would be two tough cops—one of whom was, after all, a Ranger—putting the heat on one simple gambling man. This, they believed, might finally crack the case—or, at the very least, produce some decent leads.
• • •
In the fall of 1951, the Nevada Tax Commission reversed itself and decided to grant Binion a new hearing on his Horseshoe license application. That worried Robbins Cahill, a commission official who thought that approving Binion would present big image problems for the state. “You left yourself open to the argument, ‘Well, if a man with a background like that can get a license, who can’t?’” Cahill said. “Who can you keep out?”
Practically nobody, as it developed, for other commission members seemed untroubled by Cahill’s concerns. But before they could rehear Binion’s case, they had to make a stab at appearing to do their duty. The commission dispatched two men to Texas to look into Binion’s background. Co
mmission member Paul McDermott and an agency supervisor flew to Dallas, where they talked to reporters, prosecutors, police, and business owners. They asked about the murders of Sam Murray, Raymond Loudermilk, and a few others, including Noble, and they examined some court records. They uncovered absolutely nothing that was new. Nor did they find any hard evidence that Binion was actively engaged in the gambling business in Texas, though he remained under indictment for that. They could have done as well if they had stayed home and read the newspapers.
The Nevada emissaries did accomplish one thing: they provided Dallas police with another good indication of Binion’s heft in his adopted hometown when they related his treatment at a recent Branding Iron Dinner given by the Las Vegas Press Club. This was one of those gatherings in which local journalists and politicians poke fun at each other and drown any lingering resentments at the bar. One of the press club skits that night made light of the recently consummated Binion-Noble feud. This provoked much laughter from the audience. When the hilarity subsided, Binion was presented with a commemorative branding iron, a gift he accepted to much cheering. “Most of the prolonged applause,” a memo noted, “came from the other big time gamblers who were present.”
Not coincidentally, these were some of the same Strip casino operators who had written or called the Nevada Tax Commission urging that Binion be granted a license. “They all like Benny,” McDermott said.
It wasn’t only the local hacks and hustlers that Binion had finally managed to pocket. Some of the state’s most powerful politicians were lining up behind him too. Governor Charles Russell said he had been in Las Vegas recently, and while many locals had told him they supported Binion’s licensing, he couldn’t find a soul who would speak ill of the man. “No one,” he said, “has ever come to me opposing Mr. Binion.”