CHAPTER TEN

In the years between the formation of Horizons A.G. in 1911 and the day constitutional prohibition went into effect everywhere in the United States at 12:01 A.M., January 17, 1920, E. C. West had greatly consolidated his position. He had married and had had one son, Daniel Patrick. His efforts for the prohibition movement (his day-to-day work on its behalf among national leaders), his closeness to the President and the administration, the nature of his partners in the Swiss company, the increased strength of his position with Pick, Heller & O’Connell, his wife’s father’s influence and the influence of her family had greatly enhanced the yearly statements of the West National Bank. It was now a bank of the first echelon with total resources of $455,493,531, as of its annual statement issued on December 31, 1919, with deposits on that date totaling $301,768,091. West’s national influence was seen not only through his stunning successes for the prohibition movement. He had won the admiration of the national business community for the decisive assistance he had brought to the desperate labor unrest, particularly in the steel industry in 1915—16, when he had organized an army of effective strikebreakers from New York and elsewhere, mainly through Dopey Benny Fein and Paul Kelly. This experience had given him insight into the labor opportunity that he was to bring to fruition in the garment industry in New York in 1925, installing his friends Louis Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro, then, earning while learning, moving upward while he promoted still other labor leaders to effective control of the labor movement.

Before C. L. Pick’s death in 1916 (when his place in the firm was taken by West’s old roommate, C. L. Pick, Jr.) the old man had asked E.C. to visit him at Locust Valley. He was quite weak by then but wholly amiable. “Was it you or Evans Dwye who framed us in 1911, Eddie?”

“Why, C.L. I—”

“Have no fears, my boy. It’s just one of those tiny things left unexplained that have interest only to me. It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My word!”

“There was a good reason, C.L. I had to do it because—”

“I know. I know,” the old man said, staying him with a fragile hand. “We could never have taken your bizarre plan seriously—nor could we possibly have sponsored it—if we had not been so grotesquely indebted to you. It was good thinking, Eddie. You were born a master criminal, perhaps the greatest I have ever met in a lifetime of practicing corporate law.”

E.C. thanked him because he knew the old man meant it as a sincere compliment.

“Do you still own those six lots of your father’s between Fulton and Wall?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You must build a new bank there. A skyscraper filled with money.” He sighed. “Ah, how I envy your coldness of spirit, Eddie, your inability to understand that mortals feel pain.” He delivered his sere and ghastly laugh. “You paranoiacs are the true romantics.”