John Sutton hit Las Vegas just as the Christmas season of 1970 was beginning. Wayne Newton was at the Frontier. The Smothers Brothers were at Caesars. The Wonderful World of Burlesque was kicking it up at the Silver Slipper. This was Las Vegas at its best, manufacturing a snowy wonderland of tinsel and showgirls out of once worthless desert real estate.
After his last trip, in which his boss’s informant had embarrassingly made him, Sutton decided to tone things down. He ditched the flashy Buick Electra 225 with the horn that blared “La Cucaracha” for a four-door Cadillac Eldorado (albeit still in baby blue) and made his way to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to meet the informant who’d been supplying them information about Sonny. To be inconspicuous, he used the unmarked door in back that was usually reserved for secret witnesses.
Sonny’s accident had been all over the news. But after his discharge from Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital on December 8, he didn’t waste any time picking up where he left off. He went to his Cadillac dealership to pick up a new 1971 Fleetwood and drove straight to the International, where he was aggressively hustling fifty- and hundred-dollar bags of coke.
Sutton was eager to land Liston. And not just for the drugs he would take off the street. What he knew about the fight game alone—about Ali and Louis and half the promoters in the sport—could make an agent’s career. If Sutton did his job right, Sonny would be testifying in front of grand juries for the rest of his life.
He went over his options with Robinson, the station chief. They could apply for a wiretap to listen in on his calls, but that would take time; worse, in the leaky world of Las Vegas law enforcement, there was an above-average risk that Sonny would find out that the feds were onto him. They could also set up surveillance, but chances were the local cops would get wind of that, too. The strategy that Sutton liked best was more discreet, and known in the trade as “one, two, three and a cloud of dust.”
In the first step, a source introduced you to the target to establish your false identity. If it worked, it led to a second meeting without the source where you could make a small buy on your own. The third meeting was the crucial one. It was where you made a larger buy, cementing the relationship and setting up a fourth buy, which was so much larger that the target had to bring in his supplier, and maybe even the supplier above him. That was when you swept in and left them all busted in a cloud of dust.
Sutton told his informant that they’d hit the International the next afternoon. In the meantime he checked back into the Villa Roma, got himself a meal, and played an hour of quarter slots before hitting the sack. When he awoke, he went to the gym, got a big lunch, and was ready to go when his sidekick showed up at his hotel. Per his usual routine, Sutton frisked his partner to make sure he wasn’t holding a gun or drugs—he wasn’t—and checked his wallet to see how much cash he had. He counted about twenty bucks and handed back the money, making a mental note to check the wallet again when they were all done so he could confirm the guy wasn’t double-dealing on the side. Then he looked at his own billfold. He’d signed out a thousand dollars from the BNDD’s safe, mostly fifties with a few hundreds. Each bill was marked for identification.
Next, the agent went over their cover story. He wanted to be introduced as the snitch’s gangster cousin from Salt Lake City who was looking for a quick score. Making sure that he dressed the part, he wore a long leather coat with cow-skin lapels and a leather hat. Once he was satisfied they had their story straight, he opened the door of his Eldorado and they drove off.
Even in midweek, the International was impressive. Its thirty-thousand-square-foot gaming hall was packed with tourists, and plenty more were on the spectacular eight-and-a-half-acre rooftop playground that was just a floor up. The two men blended into the crowd, making their way past the slot machines and the blackjack tables to the keno area, where they grabbed a pair of seats in the lounge.
Keno, in which a player picks numbers with the hope of matching the digits on Ping-Pong balls that are fed from a fishbowl by a blower, can be a tedious game, and Sutton settled in to play a few hands, which turned into a few more, which all of a sudden turned into five hours’ worth—enough for him to drink three Tom Collinses and eat more than he had intended. Along the way, he asked a few waitresses if they’d seen Sonny and was assured that he was usually there. By eight in the evening, when there was no sight of him, the snitch suggested, “We could see if he’s home.”
Sutton considered this. His whole plan relied on the introduction. He didn’t want to screw that up. And since it was already past dinnertime, Sonny might be suspicious if a stranger suddenly showed up. Even if he wasn’t, approaching him like that at home seemed like an unnecessary risk. Sutton drove to Ottawa Drive just to get a feel for the place—quiet, winding streets, not too many people peering out their windows; all in all, a good spot to deal drugs—but then he called it a night.
The next day he met his informant at his motel, repeated his safety checks, and drove to the International for a second try. This time, to his relief, he spotted the hulking figure of his target right away in the keno lounge. The agent kept his distance as Sonny disappeared behind the cashier’s cage, but a half hour passed, and then another, and when he didn’t return, Sutton decided to stir things up. He went to the house phone and told the operator, “I’d like to page Charles Liston.”
—
Sonny was snorting cocaine on the can when the message crackled through the public address system: “Charles Liston. Please meet your friends in the keno area.”
The page sent a shooting pain through his head. The only ones who called him Charles anymore were Geraldine, the fans who read about him in the papers, and the cops. His money was on the cops. But the locals knew where to find him, and they always called him Sonny.
Charles. He closed his eyes and tried to think straight. It had to be the feds. But which ones? It was in all the papers that the FBI was crawling over every square inch of Caesars Palace. After spending months investigating its top layer of management for taking sports bets over the phone in violation of the federal Wire Act, agents swept down on the resort at nine in the morning and went straight to the office of its executive vice president, Sandy Waterman, the same casino boss who’d belted Frank Sinatra. While agents in twenty-five other cities were arresting two dozen of the biggest sports betters in the country, the agents cuffed Waterman and four other executives, including Sonny’s neighbor on Ottawa Drive, Frank Masterana. In Washington, U.S. attorney general John Mitchell described the Caesars executives as “the illegal underwriters for the top bookmakers in the nation.”
Ash Resnick wasn’t caught up in the raid. But who knew who was ratting on whom?
“Charles Liston. Your friends are waiting for you at the keno area.”
Sonny wasn’t about to wait to find out. He finished his business, pulled up his trousers, washed his hands, and made his way into the keno room. He scanned the cashier’s desk and the gaming tables beyond it and triangulated a shortcut to the exit. Knowing he’d stand out, he swept past the slots and weaved his way through the craps tables until he reached the revolving door. Not bothering to look behind him, he placed a bill in the hand of the valet for his Caddy and drove off.
When he assured himself that he wasn’t being followed, he let out a deep breath.
Charles Liston. Shit.
—
Sutton was waiting in the lounge when he saw Sonny race out of the bathroom behind the cashier’s cage. He tried following Sonny as he made a beeline for the door, but by the time he got to his car, Sonny was already in his Cadillac, speeding away. Instead of trailing him back to his house, Sutton decided to be patient and give the International one last try the next day.*
On Sunday, December 13, he took up his position in the keno lounge, where the waitresses had conveniently come to think of him as a regular, and started playing the numbers. Whatever had spooked Liston must still be spooking him, Sutton thought, because he was a no-show. This time Sutton decided to play his last card. “Come on, we’re getting out of here,” he told his informant, and the two made the ten-minute drive to Ottawa Drive.
He could see from the twin Cadillacs parked in front of the two-car garage that someone was home. Sutton parked in front of the lemon tree in the yard while his informant got out and walked up the long white steps to the art deco façade and rang the doorbell. It was a cool December afternoon, a wintry 56 degrees, and Sutton was impressed to see Sonny answer in charcoal pants and a tight-fitting T-shirt. Sutton was a big man but Sonny was bigger.
The agent couldn’t hear what the men were saying, but he saw Sonny’s pencil mustache twitch and worried that something might be going wrong. His informant kept talking and made enough headway that after a minute he waved Sutton over. More than forty years later, Sutton would still recall the way Sonny stuck out his hand when the informant introduced him as his cousin John from Salt Lake. In all his years dealing with tough guys, he’d never seen a hand so big. When Sutton shook it, it swallowed his own.
Geraldine was cooking in the kitchen and Sonny made no move to introduce the men when he escorted them through the living room and into his den. As they all sat down, Sutton tried to break the ice by mentioning that he’d been following Sonny’s career since the Patterson days. He was relieved when Sonny broke out into a grin. “Yeah, man, you can’t believe how much white pussy I used to get,” he replied, dropping his voice so Geraldine wouldn’t hear him. “White pussy everywhere.” He was boastful, but also relaxed and friendly, and he crinkled his nose when the informant asked him whether he had any coke for sale.
No, he said apologetically. He’d done it all the day before. “I was in the bathroom doing lines,” Sonny explained. “I don’t know how long it was, but it was a long time. And while I was in there somebody paged me calling me Charles. Ain’t no motherfucker in the world but the police calls me Charles. I was so high, I even forgot that was my name. And the motherfucker paged me several times. A buddy of mine who works in the hotel told me the place was crawlin’ with the police. I thanked him but I don’t give a fuck.”
Sutton cursed himself for another rookie mistake. Charles. How could he be so stupid? Well, at least now he knew why Sonny had left the International looking spooked.
The informant, still working, asked Sonny if he had something small lying around the house. “You know, just a little stamp for your man?”
“Shit, if I do it ain’t a lot,” Sonny said.
He told the men to wait while he went to his bedroom to look. It was tempting in that moment—left alone with the man’s accomplishments in his room, in his house—for Sutton to see something tragic in Liston. After all, boxing existed to cheat its brightest stars. Sonny belonged to the generation where money disappeared down rat holes that were dug by rats. Maybe with just a little more support, a little more education, he might have . . .
Sutton stared at the photo of Sonny shaking hands with President Lyndon Johnson. No, best not to go down that road. The guy had had plenty of opportunities. Keep it simple. He was just another bad guy dealing drugs and ruining neighborhoods.
A few minutes later Sonny returned with a look of genuine disappointment. “I thought I had some on my night table but Geraldine musta cleaned it,” he said. “Probably thought it was headache powder or something. She don’t know nothin’ ’bout this stuff.”
Sutton tried to gauge if something had spooked Sonny. Did he suddenly get suspicious? Did he put two and two together and see that the answer to who had paged him at the International was staring him right in the face?
If so, he didn’t seem overly concerned. He went on about his accident and how the medication he was given in the hospital, morphine or maybe Dilaudid, left him so high he didn’t want to leave. Sutton waited until Sonny stopped talking before redirecting the conversation. Using the old police trick of distracting a source by getting him to look into the future, he asked: “So, when you gonna get some more?”
Sonny had a contact in Los Angeles who hooked him up on a regular basis, usually with a pound of cocaine at a time. But because of his accident he hadn’t been able to make his regular trip. He was, however, going in a few days. “I’m staying in Henderson and I really don’t wanna drive all the way to L.A.,” Sutton said. “I was really hoping to set up a pound connection here in Las Vegas.”
Sonny nodded. The last time he made the trip, he said, a cop flagged him while he was driving with two condoms full of coke under the front seat. He had to cut them and throw them out the window before pulling over to the side. Fortunately, the highway patrol officer let him go with a warning. “All the big white folk here like me,” he said, implying that he understood why Sutton, without the same celebrity, would have qualms about driving between states with a pound of cocaine. “How about I score a pound for you when I go?” he asked.
Cousin John smiled and said he appreciated it. Then they rose to shake on the deal. Step one was done. On to steps two and three and the cloud of dust.
—
At about 7:30 p.m. on December 16, 1970, a California Highway Patrol officer was sitting in his cruiser on the San Bernardino Freeway when he noticed a Cadillac swerving in and out of the eastbound lanes. Flipping on his flashing lights, he pulled behind the Caddy and brought it to a stop on the side of the road. He must not have known who Sonny was, because after he asked for his license, he asked, “What do you do, sir?”
It was then, according to an account in the Los Angeles Sentinel, that Sonny provided the answer “I’m a boxer. Unemployed.”
What a thing to say to a cop! He didn’t say that he was a celebrity, or a businessman, or even an actor, which is what everyone said in L.A. He said he was unemployed. It was a depressing statement, the kind that someone who’d been drinking hard and wallowing in self-pity would make. In fact, the cop described him as being “moody.” That evening he was brought to the Los Angeles PD’s central booking unit and charged with drunken driving. He paid $308 in cash to get out.
Why was he moody? Why wouldn’t he be? Ever since the accident, he hadn’t felt quite right. Not frail, exactly, but not the same intimidating force that he had been. In a weirdly prescient metaphor, Sonny once told The Washington Post: “Fighters are just like cars. You get in a car and put your foot on the pedal down to the floorboard and that car’s not gonna last long. If the car has just one owner and that owner takes it easy, then that car’s gonna last a long time.”
The foot was about as far down on that floorboard as it could go. Sonny had been arrested and hospitalized twice in the space of a month and was probably in California to get the cocaine he’d promised Sutton that he’d bring back. Moody? Damn right he was moody. Here he was, hustling fifty-dollar bags of coke to support himself, and every time he heard another dollar figure thrown around about the Ali–Frazier fight, he got moodier.
Even Geraldine, who managed Sonny better than anybody, was at her wit’s end with his mood swings. Shortly before Christmas, one of his oldest friends, Lowell Powell, a retired St. Louis policeman who’d worked as a bodyguard for Sonny over the years, stopped by the Listons’ home to wish them happy holidays. Sonny wasn’t there. He was at the International. So Powell found himself getting an earful from Geraldine. As he’d later recall to Nick Tosches, Geraldine confided to Powell that she didn’t know what to do anymore because “Sonny has gotten unruly.”
Unruly. There was another word. After all they’d been through together, it must have taken a lot for Geraldine to call her husband that. It suggested that he’d crossed another threshold, perhaps to a place even she couldn’t reach.