My Old Neighborhood Remembered (14 page)

Wherever you went, whatever the neighborhood in the Bronx, the food in Chinese restaurants was exactly the same. The cooking was indistinguishable from one Chinese restaurant to the next, the same gelatinous dishes, the same “one from column A, one from column B” dinners, the same combination plates — chicken chow mein, egg roll, and fried rice, the same egg drop soup. Chinese restaurants were so much the same, it was as though every one of the places was part of a huge chain.

People have tried to explain the appeal of Chinese restaurants in working class neighborhoods, specifically, among Jewish families. I'm not sure the explanations can go very deep. These were inexpensive meals and for people without much money, Chinese restaurants allowed them to dine out. In our family, and from what I could observe from the dining habits of friends' families, eating Chinese food meant eating
in
the restaurants. We didn't order take-out to eat at home. We didn't eat Chinese food to eat Chinese food. Eating in a restaurant, being served by a waiter, was the idea, and at those prices it was possible.

Chinese restaurants were commonplace; we had three within a few blocks of our apartment. How Sunday night came to be the main night of the week for Chinese food — I don't think the explanation for that goes very deep either. Sunday was considered a family day, so for a Sunday family dinner in a restaurant people could afford, Sunday meant Chinese food.

When we reached dating age, we would sometimes take a girl for a Chinese meal after a movie and so we ate in Chinese restaurants other than those closest to our apartments. The food was still always the same. Whether the food in Bronx Chinese restaurants was ever good by any kind of culinary standards — we didn't have culinary standards. We knew what we were eating was what we had before, what it always was wherever we went, whether the place had “Jade” or “Joy” or “Garden” in the name. It was Chinese.

Standing royally at the intersection of 161st Street and the Grand Concourse, located near some of the most elegant apartment buildings on the Grand Concourse, the Concourse Plaza Hotel was the most famous Bronx landmark that had absolutely nothing to do with us in the neighborhood.

With apartment suites for the well-to-do, as a hotel for some of the ballplayers playing at Yankee Stadium, a venue for luncheons and meetings by civic groups that were reported in
The Bronx Home News
, where Bronx Democratic bosses, Edward J. Flynn and then Charles A. Buckley brought campaigning Democrats to political luncheons, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman among them, where people were married and where bar mitzvah receptions were held in its ballrooms. The Concourse Plaza, several subway stops to the south, was in a different economic sphere, a building we had no reason to ever be in. Nearby to the Concourse Plaza was another Bronx landmark, the Bronx County Courthouse, also a building we had no reason to ever be in.

I was in the Concourse Plaza Hotel only once in my years of living in the Bronx. I was brought to a sweet sixteen party by a girl I was dating, the birthday girl a schoolmate of hers. The birthday girl lived in 1150 Grand Concourse, an art deco elevator building famous for its aquatic mosaic on the facade, decidedly a “better” building in the Bronx, so that was consistent with the girl having her sweet sixteen party at the Concourse Plaza.

The sweet sixteen event was part of a string of sweet sixteen parties of girls I knew, or by way of boys who knew the girls. Needing to bring something as gifts, with little sense of what you should bring a girl for a gift, I brought them umbrellas. Nice umbrellas, but umbrellas.

I knew Jack Molinas, as we used to say, by face. If we would pass on the street, I would nod, he would nod. I was four years younger than Jack, vast in the neighborhood hierarchy. It wasn't age alone that accounted for the distance between us. At his eventual height, 6 feet 6, he walked through the neighborhood streets with striking self-awareness. Jack Molinas was a star.

And then — it's baffling. Four books have been written about him, three of them novels as if the bewildering nature of his story can't be properly expressed in other than fictional terms —
Big Time
by Phil Berger (1990),
The Great Molinas
by Neil D. Isaacs (1992),
Broken Trust
by Jerry Marcus (2008), and a biography,
The Wizard of Odds
by Charley Rosen (2001).

In his biography, Charley Rosen quotes Hubie Brown, the television analyst and as an NBA coach a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. “Jack Molinas was one of the greatest players to play the game of basketball. Molinas was a perfect player and by that I mean he wasn't a specialist. He could handle and pass, play defense if he wanted to, and rebound in a crowd if he wanted to. He had a great assortment of head fakes and ball fakes. He was a savvy player with great timing, and his extra edge was his phenomenal hook shot, the best hook shot ever. There was nothing Jack Molinas couldn't do on a basketball court.”

Jack Molinas was murdered in 1975, shot to death by a hit man in Los Angeles. At the time of his death Jack was to stand trial on charges of shipping pornographic films from Los Angeles to Memphis. Nicholas Gage wrote in
The New York Times
, “Law enforcement officials say Mr. Molinas was involved with Mafia members in the distribution and production of pornographic films both in Los Angeles and New York.”

Frank Lombardi reported in
The Daily News
that in 1977 the LAPD made arrests for Jack's murder. A man named Eugene Connor was identified as the hit man. Two accomplices of Connor told the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, Lombardi reported, that the hit was ordered by Joseph Ullo, a crime figure who had come to Los Angeles from New York. The men claimed Jack had an outstanding gambling debt and Ullo was looking to collect and capture part of the money and ordered the hit when Jack refused to pay.

The trial for Jack's murder was held in 1979. The two accomplices testified against Connor and Ullo. There was insufficient evidence to link Ullo to the crime and he was acquitted. Connor was found guilty and sentenced to life for the murder.

Over time a theory was advanced that Ullo did order the hit, but was not acting out of personal grievance, rather he was directed by a higher level of the mob to see that Jack was killed. Whoever it was who actually ordered Jack's murder, that person was never convicted.

I just happened to be in an apartment of a school friend who knew Jack and had invited him to stop by on the same night the news came over the radio about the 1950-51 college point shaving scandal. On hearing the news report, Jack left abruptly saying, “I know some of those people.”

If anyone was caught up in the culture of gambling in the neighborhood it was Jack Molinas. He was a regular at the cars-to-the-track candy store near Bickford's Cafeteria, and the bookmaker, Joe Hacken, was often seen openly talking to Jack in the store. Joe Hacken even sponsored a basketball team and Jack and several of the best ballplayers from the area played on the team, The Hacken All-Stars. A bookmaker organizing a basketball team? And naming it after himself? Interesting times.

That Jack Molinas was friendly with a bookmaker, that he knew “some of those people” who were involved in a betting scandal, and that he favored a candy store where bettors used to hang out was foreshadowing, which in a play or movie would have been obvious foreshadowing at that.

Jack's first basketball success came when he was playing for Stuyvesant High School and from there he went to Columbia University. As captain and high scorer of the team, he led Columbia to the Ivy League championship in the 1952-53 season. He was a first round draft pick in the NBA of the Fort Wayne Pistons and in his rookie season, the 1953-54 season, he was named to the All-Star team. Jack never played in the All-Star game. He was found to be betting on Pistons games, which was against league policy, and was suspended by the NBA commissioner, Maurice Podoloff.

The talk in the neighborhood was that the NBA was riddled with tainted games. Podoloff might have been looking to use Jack to deflect criticism and in the process send a message to the players. Or he might have legitimately felt this was what the situation called for. The suspension was punitive. It became a permanent suspension. In a similar situation ten years later, Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers and Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions were suspended for betting on NFL games. They were reinstated after one year.

Jack turned around, went to law school, graduating from Brooklyn Law School in 1959, joined a law firm, and prepared a suit against the NBA for reinstatement and damages. He was playing in the Eastern League, a minor league with ballplayers a cut below NBA level, along with some NBA-level players who were also barred from the NBA, having been involved in the 1950-51 scandal. Jack was a dominant player in the league.

I can't possibly understand what happened next, not that I could understand why Jack would throw his professional basketball career into jeopardy in order to make side bets.
While
working as a lawyer,
while
playing in the Eastern League to stay in condition for a possible reinstatement by the NBA,
while
he had legal action pending against the league,
while
he had knowledge of how the 1950-51 point shaving enterprise ended — the main gambler-fixer, Salvatore Sollazzo, was caught and imprisoned — Jack enlisted some pals and organized a large, complex ring of his own for bribing college basketball players to fix the scores of college games and profit from tactical betting on those games.

Along the way, in 1961, he lost his lawsuit against the NBA. Judge Irving R. Kaufman, the judge who sentenced the Rosenbergs to death, ruled against him.

In Jack's operation his main people were friends of his, Joe Green, Aaron Wagman, and Joe Hacken. All eventually went to jail when the scheme unraveled. He had enlisted at least six other people who were also indicted. It was reported in
The New York Post
by Phil Berger and Stu Black that Jack was in business on the money side with “mob-backed gamblers.”

Jack's betting ring involved forty-nine basketball players in twenty-five colleges in eighteen states. That really needs to be restated, forty-nine players, twenty-five colleges, eighteen states. How could he ever think he would get away with something so large and complicated? And why would he ever do it in the first place?

Because of Jack's scheme the college ballplayers who were implicated had their lives turned upside down and his friends ended up in prison. Joe Hacken, an experienced bookmaker, had to know the risks he was taking by trying to rig scores, and on such a large scale. Joe Green was someone I used to see around the neighborhood. I had no idea what he did for a living. He was a rough looking, linebacker-type guy, but I always thought him to be a benign character and had no evidence to the contrary. Aaron Wagman, whom I knew, was just another neighborhood guy, also benign.

When the betting operation was exposed, Aaron Wagman chose to become a witness for the prosecution.
The New York Times
reported he received “a suspended sentence conditioned on his serving a five-to-10 year sentence in Florida for fixing a football game,” Aaron having gone off on a scheme of his own. Joe Green was sentenced to six to seven years. Joe Hacken was sentenced to seven and a half to eight years. Of the six other people in the “Molinas Ring,” as
The New York Times
identified the group, five received suspended sentences, the sixth was sentenced to jail.

In his book, Charley Rosen suggests the kind of arrogance and denial Jack must have been operating under. “Before the trial began,” he writes, “Molinas was offered a deal — admit that he'd masterminded several fixes in exchange for having his license to practice law revoked and serving a six months' sentence. Molinas refused.”

He was found guilty. The sentence was ten to fifteen years, so harsh it was eventually reduced on appeal to a still significant seven to eleven and a half years, and Jack Molinas of Stuyvesant High School, captain of the Ivy League Championship Columbia basketball team, chosen an NBA All-Star in his rookie year, a Brooklyn Law School graduate, and a practicing lawyer, was sent to Attica prison.

At Attica he attempted to have his time reduced by offering to the Brooklyn District Attorney's office information about a harness racing fix scheme he knew about possibly through his commerce with the “mob-backed gamblers”
The New York Post
mentioned. He also offered information about a check swindle operation. His cooperation on the harness racing scheme was reported in
The New York Times
, so he was publicly identified as an informant, a risk he was willing to take, and his sentence was indeed reduced, Jack leaving Attica after four years.

He was able to get his parole jurisdiction switched from New York to Los Angeles, ostensibly so he could sell his life story to the movies. A movie was not made.

In Los Angeles, he became partners with Bernard Gusoff in a wholesale fur business. They took out life insurance policies on each other and only weeks before the policies were to expire, Gusoff was murdered, beaten to death. Jack collected $500,000 on Gusoff's life insurance. No one was ever convicted for the murder.

Arnie Stein, someone else I also knew in the neighborhood by face, played basketball for Taft High School and then for Dayton University. He was a friend of Jack. I recognized him in a restaurant he owned in Manhattan. One evening we talked about Jack. “His father was very strict, abusive, really,” Arnie said, “and I think Jack lived a life to get back at his father, to humiliate him.” Later in the conversation, he said, “I always thought Jack was somebody who was trying to find a way of committing suicide.”

Arnie Stein, Bobby Santini, another friend of Jack, who starred at Iona College, and Dolph Schayes, a few years older than Jack, were major basketball players from the neighborhood. They were of the same neighborhood background at the same time, a time when betting on horse racing, boxing, and ball games among the working class men of the neighborhood was common. They were subject to the same cultural pressures and influences. Arnie Stein became a businessman and restaurateur, Bobby Santini, a teacher, Dolph Schayes was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA history. And Jack became Jack.