hattan skyscraper. And it was said that that was the only way an opportunist like Bender could make it to the top.
See also: Pisano, Little Augie.
Berman, Otto "Abbadabba" (1880–1935): Policy game fixer Before Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky realized how lucrative it was, Dutch Schultz had in the early 1930s found the way to fix the numbers racket in order to control the winning digits.
Avaricious to the core, Schultz did not like the fact that policy produced a mere 40 percent profit on the money gambled. Every paid-off winner grieved Dutch. If he could only find a way to fix the results, he realized, he could greatly increase profits.
Schultz took over the Harlem rackets, business concerns that took off thanks to a mathematical "magician" named Otto Berman, "Abbadabba." At that time the numbers were determined by the betting statistics at various race tracks. It was impossible for the mob to control the figures at the New York tracks, but when those tracks were closed the numbers were based on the results from tracks that the underworld had successfully infiltrated, such as Chicago's Hawthorne, Cincinnati's Coney Island and New Orleans's Fair Grounds. Berman worked out a system whereby aides could pour money in on some races to manipulate the payoff number. It was believed that Abbadabba's mathematical wizardry added 10 percent to every million dollars a day the mob took in.
Dutch Schultz, noted as being one of the stingiest crime bosses in New York, paid his top gangster aides—men like Lulu Rosenkrantz and Abe Landau—something like $1,200 a week. By contrast he paid Abbadabba $10,000.
In 1935 a vote by the syndicate's national commission passed the death sentence on Dutch Schultz after he announced plans to bump off Thomas E. Dewey. Then a racket-busting prosecutor, Dewey was closing in on Schultz. The other top mobsters in the syndicate, men like Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Louis Lepke and Joe Adonis, felt that such a killing would cause a widespread crackdown in which they would all be hurt. So much for criminal statesmanship. It was also a fact that all the mobsters were eager to cut in on Schultz's rackets.
On October 23, 1935, Schultz and two bodyguards, Landau and Rosenkrantz, arrived at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey. A three-man syndicate hit squad was dispatched to take care of them. Unfortunately, another late arrival joined the Schultz party. It was Abbadabba Berman.
All four were shot to death, Abbadabba included. A final testament to the skills of the magician was contained in the papers the quartet had been going over. They indicated that over a certain period of time the Schultz policy banks had taken in $827,253.43 in bets and paid out only $313,711.99. The difference between that last figure and the approximately $500,000 which should have been paid out to winners was attributed to Abbadabba Berman's skills.
His demise cost the syndicate literally millions of dollars annually. For a time others tried to imitate Berman's technique—as much as could be figured out—but none came within a fraction of his results. Even Vito Genovese, probably the most anti-Semitic crime bigwig in the syndicate, mourned the passing of "the Yid adding machine."
Bilotti, Thomas (1940–1985): Castellano aide and murder victim A rule of thumb: The assassination of a top aide of a Mafia boss often presages the boss's murder. The reason: It usually weakens the boss and at the same time eliminates a figure who, if he survives, could rally the crime family to his side.
Thomas Bilotti didn't exactly fit the pattern. Clearly he had moved up to top aide of Paul Castellano, the boss of the Gambino crime family. On the natural death of underboss Aniello Dellacroce (no close ally of Castellano) on December 2, 1985, Bilotti was slated to succeed as No. 2 man in the family—the eventual, logical successor to Castellano.
Under Castellano the Gambino family had been divided into two less than friendly camps. Before his death, Carlo Gambino, who wanted his brother-in-law Castellano to succeed him over the underboss Dellacroce, won his way by giving Dellacroce control of most of the crime family's Manhattan rackets. Dellacroce gained the allegiance of a number of Young Turks, especially John Gotti, said at the time to control the organization's rackets at JFK airport. Gotti, who idolized the murderous Albert Anastasia (a previous boss of the family), was clearly viewed as the ailing Dellacroce's successor and as such the logical heir to the position of underboss. The problem that arose within the Gambino family was that by December 1985 there were two logical heirs to the throne—obviously one too many.
Castellano had cast about among his supporters for someone deemed capable of standing up to the fiery and vicious Gotti. He came up with Bilotti and promoted him to the position of capo—in line with Gotti. What Castellano liked best about Bilotti was his toughness; he was known to smash opponents over the head with a baseball bat as a way of ending disputes. With the 70-
