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

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This was not a fairy tale. This was the Cinderella Man out on the town with the head of the FBI and his boyfriend, surrounded by an array of unsavory types, as well as the biggest and most self-important windbag in town, Walter Winchell. Even back then, Frankie Carbo, who would go on to be the main man in the fifties, was in on the take, a regular at the Cotton Club and the Stork. It is said he was answerable only to Costello and had regular quiet talks with Mike Jacobs.

So, whatever the halo that filmmakers might have deposited over their innocent heads, Joe Gould and James J. Braddock moved with ease through all parts of Gotham, from the Garden to Lindy's, the Cotton Club, and on to the Stork. Sometimes they'd stop in at Dempsey's and hang out with Jack. Dempsey's got a reputation over the years as a drop-off place for the Mob's bag money, a sort of gangsters’ post office, but none of this ever rubbed off on the proprietor—who also played a background part in Max Baer's career.

Was Baer–Braddock a fix? There is no evidence. But Baer was the only heavyweight of the era not to go openly with Madden. Owney wanted him out of the picture. And it suited him and others to have Joe Gould's fighter as the heavyweight champion of the world, because he could be manipulated more easily, through Gould, his one-time point man to Dutch Schultz. It is inconceivable that Max took a dive—and what was to follow does not constitute a case for the prosecution. But, whatever the reality, it all fell neatly into place for Gould and his Cinderella Man.