Vegas and the Mob: Forty Years of Frenzy by Al Moe

Author:Al Moe [Moe, Al]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2013-04-03T23:00:00+00:00

11 Lady Luck

There were plenty of happy times in Las Vegas, as the start of Carlton Adair’s casino project, the Lady Luck. After two years of struggle, bulldozers were finally pushing dirt and sand around the hotel site. Adair thought the day would never come, but things looked better after he hired a tough, expensive lawyer from Reno, Mead Dixon, to help him get licensed to operate. Dixon met the partners, Stanley Burke, who owned the land, Frank Hoefus, the money man, and Warren “Doc” Bayley, who owned the Fresno and Bakersfield Hacienda Hotels and was slated to run the hotel. “Where’s the capital?” Dixon asked.

Adair had designed the project so he and a few partners could run the casino, but the idea wouldn’t fly without a real investment on his part. As a last ditch effort, he tried to convince his partners that he did indeed have plenty of capital available, showing them a handful of diamonds he claimed were on loan from the widow of the Waterman Fountain Pen Company, to be used as collateral. Of course, if they were on loan, they couldn’t be sold and were worthless as collateral, even if they weren’t fakes. Adair was politely shown the door.

Pushed out of his own deal at the Hacienda, Adair did find some cash and a chance to front for the Mob over at the new Dunes. There, Major Riddle held 40-percent interest, and Chicago (and other families) took a fair share of the profits each week before any of the listed “owners” got a shot at it. Adair was surprised and disappointed when the Dune’s casino license was almost revoked, but there wasn’t enough evidence to prove his allegation that the graveyard crew kept losing a ton of cash to some guy from Boston. Adair was shown the door again.

Just as well. It was better to leave alive than face the wrath of one of the real owners of the Dunes, New England crime boss Ray Patriarca. The man from Providence, Rhode Island was tough, smart, and unrelenting. He was also unfazed by family ties. It is said that he ordered a hit on his own brother for not finding an electronic surveillance device placed by the FBI in his office. That’s not someone you want to mess with.

Back at the building of the Lady Luck, things weren’t getting any better. Frank Hoefus couldn’t get a gaming license. That damn Gaming Control Board was starting to look at applications, and even with experience in gaming and a secret interest in the Golden Hotel in Reno, he couldn’t get so much as a single vote for licensing.

Stanley Burke, the hamburger king from Sacramento, and Bayley, with his very successful hotels in California, managed to finance the project and the hotel opened in July of 1956, with Bayley taking over controlling interest. He renamed the Lady Luck the “Hacienda” like his California hotels, after convincing Roy Ritner, the owner of the Hacienda casino in North Las Vegas, to close his club and sell him the name.

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