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Charlie lately. He’s talking about cutting himself in on the hookers and whorehouses once Prohibition is over. It’s a stupid idea. . . . Like, say, the numbers, too much work with too many people getting a piece for not enough money. He oughta find something else.”
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    â€œCasinos and carpet joints. The profits aren’t as good as booze, but they’re steadier, and if you run a good efficient operation, you can’t lose. We do fine at the Piping Rock in Sarasota Springs. We can do the same in other places. Simply a matter of finding the right locations and the right men in office. I’ve got some things in mind. When you’re ready to leave the city, let me know. There’s always room for you.”
    I said thanks and I’d think about it, but the truth was that the idea of leaving New York scared the hell out of me. Still does, really.
    He went on, “Right now, with the bills for Buddy’s treatment, I can’t afford to spend time on something that isn’t likely to pay off any time soon. Casinos are steady.”
    Lansky was right. It brought me up short when I realized that I was worrying over dirty pictures involving a guy in a gorilla suit while he was figuring out how to help an ailing son. If I’d thought about that more seriously, it would have put things in perspective. He settled back in the chair and sipped the good cognac. “It’s not like it was. The easy money days are past us. Do you remember that night with A. R. in the Park Central when he talked about what Prohibition was going to be? Hell, you were just a little kid then.”
    â€œI may have been a kid, but I remember it. I thought he’d gone nuts. Close down the saloons? Crazy.”
    Lansky said, “I knew he was right in what he was saying, but I didn’t know how easy it was going to be. All you needed was to get your guys in the right places at the right times and shoot the hell out of any guys who got in your way. You just needed cars and trucks and guns.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “There were a lot of guys with cars and trucks and guns. We were smarter.”
    He shrugged it off.
    I went on. “Smart enough to buy off the right people.”
    He nodded and maybe even smiled a little. “But it was a young man’s game then, and besides, it’s over. Once they got rid of the mayor, the jig was up.” He shook his head. “Fucking greedy vice cops.”
    He was talking about Jimmy Walker, who’d been cashiered six months before. That was Roosevelt’s doing when he was governor of the state. I guess you could say that it went back to the Committee of Fourteen and the Society for the Prevention of Vice and the Wilcox Foundation for Wayward Girls and finally the Seabury Commission. All of them were outfits that tried to reform New York. They got started back when I was a kid and sex was for sale just about everywhere you turned in my neighborhood. These guys did their damnedest to get rid of it. That was impossible as long as the Tammany boys were in charge of the Magistrate’s Court and the vice cops. You see, being a vice cop wasn’t like being a real cop. Vice was a patronage job, one of the best.
    Between the court and the cops, those guys had a hell of a racket. Being a vice cop gave you all the quiff you could handle, and a license to steal. Say a vice cop busted a hooker or a madam and her girls. First thing, he sent them down to the Magistrate’s Court at the Jefferson Street Market where every one of the judges, lawyers, bail bondsmen, and jailers were in on the deal. Most of the women knew how the system worked. They spent a few hours down in that grim pile of Victorian brick and paid their money to everybody who had a hand out. If they’d shelled out enough, they were declared not guilty and went back to work a few hours later.
    But the goddamn vice cops got greedy and started