It's the Ticker, Doc

It was enough to baffle an electrocardiograph; a strange outbreak of heart and circulatory diseases seemed to be sweeping through the oddest levels of the St. Louis social structure. Police Commissioner John T. English, of East St. Louis, just across the Mississippi in Illinois, announced that he had a heart condition. Leo Dougherty, the Democratic boss of East St. Louis, checked into a Chicago hospital with "a coronary." Then Charles J. ("Kewpie") Rich, a big bookie, discovered that his ticker was acting up.

Even James J. Carroll--a big-league gambler whose operation is so smooth that St. Louis newspapers long referred to him respectfully as a "betting commissioner" instead of a bookie--revealed that his blood pressure and pulse were higher than his bank account. By coincidence, all the heart cases happened to have been invited to testify before the Senate's crime investigator, Senator Estes Kefauver, during his stopover in St. Louis.

Bighearted John. Most of the invalids managed somehow to totter into the St. Louis federal building and prop themselves up before a battery of television cameras to talk a little bit about gambling in the St. Louis area. As they arrived, it quickly became evident that all of them were also suffering from a companion disease which one curbstone diagnostician described as Kefauveritis--"characterized by a clammy feeling, excessive perspiration, forgetfulness, a sinking sensation in the stomach and inability to utter more than a few inaudible sounds."

The well-placed TV cameras and microphones carried the sights & sounds into St. Louis bars and homes--even picking up some of the whispered consultations between witnesses and their lawyers. Commissioner English, it appeared, had been running the East St. Louis police department for eight years, but he could not remember the last time a bookie joint was raided. He had never even heard of Bookmaker Carroll, said he, although Carroll's East St. Louis book used to be just around the corner from the police station. There was also the matter of some $131,419 English had locked up in a safe-deposit box. He had, he was quick to point out, paid federal income taxes on the money. Where did he get all that cash? Well, said English, it wasn't exactly his. It was left over from funds contributed by the good Democrats of St. Clair County, 111. for political campaigns. But he had bigheartedly paid personal income taxes on it, anyway, and was keeping it safe & sound until another big campaign came along.

"It's Warm." Another doggedly uncommunicative witness was a sullen, gum-chewing ex-convict, Anthony Lopiparo, a pinball-machine entrepreneur. At first Tony wouldn't even tell the committee whether he had ever visited Tijuana, Mexico (where, rumor had it, the murder of Kansas City's Charles Binaggio was plotted). "I stand on my constitutional rights," he muttered. "Haven't I got a Constitution?" Finally, however, Tony broke down and confessed. "I like it down there," said he. "It's warm."

Kewpie Rich, whose bookmaking enterprise grossed him about $4,000,000 a year, according to witnesses, complained that he had been in the U.S. since he was seven, having come from Russia, but he had never been able to get U.S. citizenship. It was the business he was in, Kewpie explained. "Do you value American citizenship above your business?" Kefauver asked. "Oh, no sir," replied Kewpie. "They won't let me."

Nix on Pix. Bookie Carroll, whose gross annual take is said to be at least as big as Kewpie Rich's $4,000,000, was saved to top the proceedings, like the maraschino cherry on the sundae. Carroll had "retired"* from business last July, soon after the Kefauver crime investigation got under way. Wearing dark glasses and. a deep tan, he marched into the hearing room and served an ultimatum: "I am willing to testify, but not while this is being televised. The whole proceedings outrage my sense of propriety."

It was a sentiment that might have struck a sympathetic chord under other circumstances. But exasperated Senator Kefauver replied that he was not going to make an exception in Carroll's case; TV was no different from press or radio coverage. "I won't testify," Carroll insisted, "until the television goes off." Carroll soon departed, carrying his sense of propriety with him. Kefauver ended the hearings and left town, full of plans to bring contempt action against Witness Carroll. The stricken gambling community slowly began to recover from the ravages of disease.

* In the glossary of bookies, an indefinite verb meaning, loosely, to move to another location with the least possible interruption of business.

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