Blood Aces Read online

  On an upper floor of the Ambassador, from a room facing the street, an elderly woman heard shots. Mrs. M. R. Gelfan leaned out her open window and saw a man exit Loudermilk’s car, step into another car that pulled alongside, and leave. Another resident of the neighborhood, out for an evening stroll half a block away, also heard gunfire. He ran to the immobile car and found a man slumped behind the steering wheel, dead. It was Loudermilk, who had been shot seven times in the chest and stomach.

  Within an hour, Minyard arrived at the courthouse by taxi and surrendered to the outlaws’ lawman of choice, Decker. He told the deputy sheriff only that he and Loudermilk had been “having a little trouble” and, “I shot him a few minutes ago.” The next morning, while Loudermilk was being pumped full of embalming fluid at the O’Neal Funeral Home, Minyard walked free on $10,000 bond. The high-dollar lawyer for Binion and Miller, Maury Hughes, had secured his release.

  Life began to improve in quick order for Minyard. He faced no more rooming-house penury. Soon he and his wife moved into a two-story brick home—“expensively furnished,” according to the Morning News—in Lakewood, a fine Dallas neighborhood of pricey residences and wide, tree-lined streets. Nor did Minyard remain stuck on the Southland Syndicate’s lower rungs. Not long after Loudermilk’s death, police considered Minyard to be Binion’s right-hand man.

  He led a charmed life in the county’s legal system too, despite his indictment for murder. “The grand jury lost no time in indicting Minyard,” District Attorney Dean Gauldin announced within two weeks of the shooting, “and we will not lose any in bringing him to trial.” Gauldin sensed that citizens had tired of open-air gangland assassinations, and he sought to assure voters that the county’s chief prosecutor held steadfast and vigilant. But the DA was also a friend of Binion’s, and such friendships superseded hasty public posturing. The case languished, and nearly three years after Loudermilk’s death, Minyard still had not faced his day in court.

  The failure to prosecute his henchmen was welcome if not unexpected news for Binion. Yet the killing of Sam Murray and Loudermilk had invisible ripples. In the city at large, feelings of resentment and fear had been aroused. But there were games to be run and money to be grabbed, so no one in Binion’s crowd gave much thought to these stirrings. To the gangsters, it was nothing more than smoke on the wind.

  Binion nemesis Herbert Noble, after would-be killers missed him but shot up his car.

  7

  THE MOB WAR IS JOINED

  I wasn’t to be fucked with. But I used to get a kick out of it.

  —BB

  The mid-1940s were good times for the Cowboy, with his business vibrant and his competitors dead. “Binion’s interests,” an FBI report later observed, “had complete control of all rackets in the Dallas area during the war years.” Many of the police were his friends. Those who weren’t he felt free to taunt, especially one assistant chief who had fallen from official favor and drew late-night duty at the Dallas Zoo. “Used to call him up and hoorah him ’cause he couldn’t catch nobody,” Binion said. “I’d call him up about four o’clock in the morning and I said, ‘Monkeys go to bed yet?’”

  Binion had no worry about any departmental backlash for such mockery. A prominent California criminologist hired by the city found in 1944 that the gambling business had exercised an “evil influence” over the Dallas police for many years, and that any attempts to erase it would be in vain. He proposed instead that vice enforcement be taken away entirely from the police and turned over to an independent and presumed incorruptible “Morals Chief,” who would answer only to the city manager. The suggestion was ignored.

  Dallas enjoyed prosperity during World War II, benefiting mightily from defense plants and nearby military training bases, and it mirrored the nation’s economic upturn when the war ended. With money flowing, Binion’s dice operations continued to thrive, and he was developing a reputation that extended beyond the state’s borders. “A lot of people from other parts of the country, professional gamblers and bookmakers, liked to come down there,” son Ted Binion told an interviewer decades later. “They came because Dad would run a high [betting] limit, and also because he was known to run honest games.”

  Binion also remained the undisputed king of the Dallas policy games, with an estimated 80 percent of the business countywide. He cleared hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from policy alone, and paid income taxes on a mere fraction of that. That omission caused Binion no concern, because he and his partners retained a competent and crooked accountant to cover their tracks.

  The Binion syndicate controlled the local horse-racing wire too, which meant all turf betting operations in North Texas owed a piece of the action to the Southland group. And Binion still pulled his hefty percentage out of the glamorous—and impervious—Top O’Hill, which had attracted the attention of mobsters nationwide. Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was believed to have gone there and taken notes on how to run a swank gambling resort. Noted New York racketeer Waxey Gordon sent a team of advance goons to case Top O’Hill for a robbery. Their conclusion: such a raid was doomed to failure because the casino was too heavily fortified.

  As his local operations flourished, Binion spread out. He bought property in Louisiana and Mississippi—land worth more than $1 million, by one law enforcement estimate. Another big purchase was a horse and cattle ranch in eastern Montana. He also began buying or forcing his way into far-flung criminal enterprises. He owned, or was about to own, a piece of an opulent gambling house in the booming, if gritty, West Texas oil town of Odessa. Police reports described the casino as palatial, and it was lucrative enough that Southern California mobster Mickey Cohen showed an interest. Binion also had a sizable percentage in the Log Cabin Club in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

  Binion and Teddy Jane presided over a full household of five children. Their second daughter, Brenda, was born in 1941, and a second son, Ted, followed in 1942. Their third daughter, Becky, was born in 1944. All of them lived on a Northwest Highway spread big enough for half a dozen horses, including some Shetland ponies. Binion’s ailing father, Lonnie Lee, slept in a cottage out back. Though most of the family was happy there, Teddy Jane had visions of a more stylish setting: she sat for hours chain-smoking and sketching elaborate plans for a house on seven acres the Binions owned along Turtle Creek, where many of the city’s business elite lived.

  Binion often made it home for the family dinner at 6:00 p.m. “He didn’t work very hard,” daughter Brenda recalled. The family employed a full-time cook who made his favorites, which generally meant anything with lard and salt pork. No longer the lean, hustling sharpie he had been when he first arrived in town, Binion had swelled and softened into a corpulent crime boss. He weighed well over two hundred pounds and cruised his holdings in a Cadillac driven by his chauffeur, a large man known as Gold Dollar, whom the Morning News referred to simply as “an enormous Negro.” Gold Dollar’s true name was Perry Rose, and he was an affable cowboy imported by Binion from New Mexico. He often chauffeured Binion to the Montana ranch, and was believed to be the first African American ever to set foot in the nearby town of Jordan.

  For a generally disheveled man, Binion paid surprising attention to his clothes. He had his cowboy boots custom-made by Willie Lusk at Lusk’s store in Lubbock, which Binion had helped finance by pulling a roll of hundreds from his pocket one day and peeling off $2,500, which he handed to Lusk with, “Pay me back when you can.” His western suits came from a personal tailor on Elm Street in Dallas, although Binion’s increasing girth and the .45-caliber handgun he carried in his pocket tended to mar the drape.

  It can’t be said that Binion ignored his Dallas syndicate, but he delegated much of its management to Ivy Miller, Harry Urban, and others. He preferred instead to spend weeks at a time in Montana, where he rode, bought, and sold horses. Now in his early forties, Binion had made himself into a wealthy ranchman who could reenact the treasured parts of his chi
ldhood on horseback. Still, it was a business. “He wouldn’t put radios in the ranch trucks,” daughter Brenda recalled. “He said, ‘You’re supposed to be thinking. You’re not supposed to be listening to that garbage.’” Despite that, she remembered a happy, dedicated father. The only times he ever really got angry with his children, Brenda said, was if he believed they were mistreating a horse.

  All in all, life could hardly have been better for Binion. There was, however, the nagging problem of Herbert Noble.

  • • •

  Like many others in the North Texas gangland, Noble had crawled out of the slums of West Dallas, but he emerged a bit more refined than most. He had some schooling, and as an adult he earned a pilot’s license. Unlike Binion, who was practically born to the life, Noble embraced gambling as a simple necessity. He had tried to make a living as a truck driver, but the Depression threw him out of work. “I turned to gambling,” he explained. “You had to do something to get enough to eat.” His only criminal conviction on record was for auto theft in 1932, for which he received a two-year suspended sentence.

  Noble had an entrepreneurial gift and a determination to excel not found in the ordinary run of car thieves. Soon he was operating his own dice games. By the mid-1940s, he was considered by police and gangsters alike to be one of the aristocrats of the local criminal class, not least because his cousin ran the vice squad. Noble’s deportment contributed too. He was gentlemanly when the situation called for it, and he knew how to dress. At his ranch in Denton County, he could be found carrying a rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other. He took photographs as a hobby, and traveled to exotic climes: South America was a favorite. Relative to others in his line of work, Noble—with his groomed hair and cleft chin—had the patrician look of a worldly professional.

  For all his brains and polish, Noble still operated in Binion’s shadow and under his thumb. Noble’s main business concern was the Airmen’s Club, 1710 Live Oak Street, a gambling room in downtown Dallas. It turned a good profit, but he had to kick back 25 percent of his earnings to Binion. “I operated a little place in those days,” Noble told a reporter once. “I paid the man protection money. My business grew, and he didn’t like the competition.”

  Some police believed the real acrimony between Noble and Binion began when Binion upped his rake. Noble’s games, a police internal memo said, “were making so much money that Binion’s games began to suffer, and Binion, in order to force Noble out, raised his percentage from twenty-five percent to forty percent.” This, the memo said, was not received well: “Noble told Binion to ‘Go to hell.’” Others thought the dispute arose from Noble’s constant complaint that Binion—uneducated, uncouth, and unironed—didn’t respect him. Noble’s financial backing of Raymond Loudermilk hadn’t helped to cool matters either. Though authorities couldn’t agree on a particular reason, nearly all believed that the situation was destined, sooner or later, for a deadly showdown. “Noble developed an extreme hatred for Binion,” a police memo said. “The feeling between Binion and Noble became very bad.”

  The fuse was lit one winter afternoon in 1946 as Noble presided over operations at the Airmen’s Club. He looked up from his business to see a Dallas police detective approaching—not an unusual sight, for officers regularly stopped by to collect unofficial fines. But this cop had come for something else. “We have received some complaints,” the detective told Noble. The Airmen’s Club, he said, would have to shut down immediately.

  Noble boiled over. What, he demanded to know, about Binion? The Southland Syndicate’s casinos operated full tilt, and the police barely touched them. Before the detective left, Noble made it as clear as he could that he would not go down quietly. It didn’t take long—a few hours at most—for Binion to receive a full report on Noble’s response. Noble knew Binion would hear about it, and he knew what that meant. “Benny had a bunch of thugs hanging around him,” Noble recalled. “When Benny couldn’t bluff me out, he sent those thugs after me.”

  No gangland arriviste himself, Noble had assembled some protection too, a police report said: he “collected a bunch of hoodlums from the West Dallas section.” But his West Dallas hoods weren’t with Noble on January 12, 1946, when he left the Airmen’s Club around midnight. It was cold and clear as Noble started his Mercury and drove toward the Denton County town of Grapevine, about twenty-five miles to the northwest.

  Glancing in his rearview mirror, Noble could see a Cadillac behind him. When he sped up, it did the same. If he slowed, his pursuers slowed with him. He made several quick turns; the Cadillac did too. What Noble didn’t know was that the car carried Binion’s main-attraction hired killers: Bob Minyard, Lois Green, and Johnny “Brazil” Grisaffi. Minyard was still under indictment for the murder of Loudermilk. Green retained his status as Binion’s number one staff hit man. Grisaffi was enjoying a bit of free time between narcotics and robbery indictments.

  Noble headed for his ranch, and the Cadillac stayed behind him even as the city lights fell away. On a dark country highway Noble gassed the Mercury until the needle on the speedometer touched 90. Only a few other cars were on the lonely road, and Noble and the Cadillac blew past them. Tires squealed as he made the curves. The more powerful Cadillac pulled closer, nearly alongside Noble now. Grisaffi leaned out the window on the Caddy’s passenger side, pointed a sawed-off shotgun, and fired. Metal popped and glass shattered, but Noble kept going. Grisaffi fired again.

  He steered the Mercury onto an unpaved, unlit county road, the Cadillac right behind him, the cars bouncing through the darkness. If he could reach his ranch, Noble could get to his small armory of rifles and return fire. But about a mile from home he lost control of the Mercury and slid into a ditch. Noble scrambled from the car and ran toward a farmhouse in the distance. More shots came from the Cadillac—the roar of the shotgun and the sharp report of a pistol—as Noble ran. A bullet struck him in the hip, and he staggered and fell. The shots kept coming as he crawled through the dirt, gasping for breath, with a burning pain in his lower back. He reached the farmhouse and slid under its porch. Dogs barked, lights came on, and the farmer who lived in the house opened the front door. The attackers returned to their Cadillac and fled.

  Noble had been hit once; a bullet was lodged near the lower part of his spine. It was a serious wound, but not fatal. Lawmen gathered at his hospital bed and began to bombard him with questions about the shooting. But Noble gave them nothing. In the unlikely event arrests were made, he added, he would not appear as a witness against his assailants. It was the code of the gangster, but it was something else too: Noble had no need for the cops. He planned to settle the score his own way.

  • • •

  Back at the Southland, Binion knew that he had now started, and failed to finish, a nasty fight. He called Grisaffi into his office. “You’re carrying a lot of heat on this deal,” Binion told him. He instructed Grisaffi to stay at the Southland “until things cool down some.” This had a dual purpose; Binion could keep an eye on Grisaffi, and use him as a bodyguard at the same time. Such a tactic made some sense until Noble, from his hospital bed, ordered his personal gunmen to attack the flank.

  Two days after Noble’s adventure, an Airman’s Club pit boss named Slim Hays drove his own Cadillac down Gaston Avenue, through East Dallas. The sun was down, the sky had clouded over, and a cold mist descended as he passed the Lakewood Country Club, not far from White Rock Lake. Sitting in the front seat of the car with Hays was his red-haired girlfriend, a hard-bitten diner waitress who talked too much. In the backseat rode a would-be tough guy, the generally feckless Charles “Sonny” Lefors. Hays made a few turns before taking a slow roll down Avalon Street, lights off. This was a quiet, well-tended neighborhood. The curbed street was lined with smooth sidewalks that fronted handsome two-story brick houses, a world away from the unpaved roads and shotgun shacks that Hays and Lefors had known in West Dallas. Leaving the redhead, the two men got out of the car and made th
eir way into the backyard of one of the houses. There they hid themselves in some shrubbery and waited.

  Around 10:00 p.m. a set of headlights raked the yard, and a car—a new Oldsmobile—pulled into the driveway that ran along the right side of the house. The driver eased the Oldsmobile into the garage, turned the engine off, and stepped from the car. As the driver walked to the house, Hays and Lefors jumped up and began firing. One of them had a sawed-off shotgun, while the other used a .38.

  Their target was Bob Minyard, Binion’s newly crowned right-hand man, who fell onto the driveway with gaping, mortal wounds. Although he had been struck in the chest, he managed to pull his own gun and get off four shots, but he hit nobody, and his assailants ran to their car, with the red-haired waitress as wheelwoman. Minyard’s wife grabbed the phone and called Binion’s house, and when Teddy Jane answered, she screamed through her sobs that her husband had been shot.

  Minutes after Minyard went down, Decker was notified at the courthouse. The deputy sheriff departed for the crime scene but made a stop en route, at a side entrance to the Southland Hotel. The car’s passenger door opened and Binion got in, and the two rode together to Minyard’s house. It was clear to both of them that this was not a simple robbery, for in the dead man’s pockets police had found $2,400 in cash. The gang war was raging now.

  A Dallas police report set the scene: “Informed underworld sources stated that Noble had Minyard killed and that Binion was more determined than ever to get Noble because if he did not, Binion would ‘lose his power as boss of racket operations in Texas, and Noble would have someone kill Binion and become the new boss of gambling.’”