Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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His friends called him Owney. While he was growing up in the company of Arnie Rothstein, “Lucky” Luciano, Jack “Legs” Diamond, and Dutch Schultz, none of them choirboys, Madden, born in Leeds but made for New York, was also known more chillingly as “The Killer.” He was a top-flight thug, a graduate of the feared Gopher Gang who earned his reputation wielding a gun as if he were in a Wild West show. After his uncontrollable temper got the better of him once too often, he spent nine years in prison for murder.

When Madden got out of Sing Sing, in 1923, there to meet him at the gates was Joe Gould, sitting at the wheel of a fancy Packard, alongside a convicted murderer called Arthur Bieler. Gould, a small-time boxing hustler, had been instructed to collect Madden on behalf of Schultz, one of New York's premier liquor salesmen. Madden got in and Gould handed him a beer. “This is what Dutch Schultz puts out,” Bieler told him. “If you play your cards right, you can get in on the act. Dutch don't like no fuckin’ freelance operators. You would do well to do what he says.”