Kill the Dutchman!

Book excerpt: On Oct, 23, 1935, a rusty, steel-jacketed .45 slug tore through the body of 33-year-old Dutch Schultz, the Beer Baron of The Bronx who reaped $2 million a month as king of Harlem's numbers racket. It was no accident. The Dutchman had gone too far, having threatened to murder Thomas E. Dewey-the racket's prosecutor who'd drawn up the tax indictment against him. The result was the biggest gangland execution since the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Al Capone's Chicago. In this 1930s real-life whodunit set in the Prohibition era, legendary New York newspaperman Paul Sann investigates the meteoric rise of gangster Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Flegenheimer), mean-streaked bully, alleged killer and reader of books, tracking the blood-flecked story from the Lower East Side and Bronx sidewalks, to Broadway night spots, lavish Park Avenue penthouses and, ultimately, to City Hall-along the way uncovering the truces and alliances among politicians, police, unions and racketeers. But Schultz didn't die instantly, lingering over a day, a police stenographer at his bedside recording his every word. Dutch's surrealistic, Joycean stream-of-consciousness deathbed ramblings are reproduced here in full and Sann explores the meaning of the poetic jumble of some of his last words: "I am a pretty good pretzeler [sic], Please crack down on the Chinaman's friends and Hitler's commander," and his most majestic utterance, "Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast."