One Last Shot
When 89-year-old Vic Maceo walked into the office of a Galveston accountant and opened fire, the incident brought back memories of the Island’s gangster past.
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Those were heady times on the Island, as wild and bawdy—and prosperous—as anything this state has ever seen. In a way that is hard to grasp today, the Island back then was a state treasure. People came from as far away as Dallas and Fort Worth, sometimes by excursion train, to sample the fleshpots, gambling dens, and tropical splendors of Galveston. To an outsider, there was no more romantic place than this shimmering sandbar, with the moon hanging large over the Gulf and the sound of big band music drifting far down the beach. To those who lived there, the romance was in the action and the sense that this was the most special of times. Though they were welcome in the bars, nightclubs, and houses of prostitution, Islanders who gambled at any Maceo-owned casino were not allowed to place large bets or lose substantial sums—exceptions being made for a wealthy few. The policy was calculated to undercut would-be reformers and keep the money where it belonged: in the pockets of the people of Galveston. “The reason the rackets lasted so long,” says constable Sam Popovich, at 75 the oldest active lawman on the Island, “is that the biggest portion of the people wanted it that way. Everybody was making money.” Every drugstore, cafe, grocery, barbershop, and washateria had slot machines, pinball machines, and tip books—courtesy of Gulf Properties, the Maceo family’s holding company. Mike Gaido, whose family owns Gaido’s Seafood Restaurant, recalled in a conversation with me a few years ago, “The Maceos didn’t ask you if you wanted their slots, they just asked how many.” One cafe owner calculated that his six slots turned more profit than his food service.
The Maceos changed the rules in Galveston. The underworld became the overworld. Activities that had been merely tolerated became part of the mainstream. Everyone cooperated and everyone made out. The Moodys, the Kempners, and the Sealys—who owned all of the banks on the Island—did not socialize with the Maceos, but they willingly did business with them, thereby giving the Maceos instant respectability. Not a single Galveston bank closed during the Depression. The Moodys’ hotels were always full, even in the winter. By mutual agreement, the Maceos stayed out of the hotel business and the Moodys stayed out of the gambling business. “What people remember most about that era is that everyone who wanted a job had one,” says A. R. “Babe” Schwartz, a former assistant district attorney and state senator. Ten percent of the Island’s adult population worked for the Maceos, and every merchant in town profited in some way from the rackets.
The Maceos weren’t just businessmen with bottom-line orientations; they were genuine citizens who took an interest in local politics—they could buy an entire slate of candidates for $25,000—and were active in civic and charitable affairs. A pew at St. Mary’s Cathedral was reserved for Sam Maceo, his wife, and children, who almost always arrived late, occasionally in the company of some show business celebrity. When the chamber of commerce or the Mardi Gras committee or any church or charity needed a favor, Sam Maceo was their man. Sam sent orphans to college, kept widows from being evicted, and once a year paid the expenses for Monsignor O’Connoll, the director of St. Mary’s, to visit his dear mother in Ireland. After an explosion killed 576 people in the port of Texas City in 1947, Big Sam arranged for a few of his Hollywood friends to come to Galveston for a fundraiser. Among those who showed up were Frank Sinatra, Jack Benny, Victor Borge, George Burns, and Gracie Allen.
Old-timers recall that nobody in Galveston locked their doors in those days; no one feared to walk the streets. The crime rate was among the lowest in the state, at least statistically. The Maceos maintained law and order with their own squad of vigilantes, known as Rose’s Night Riders. Miscreants simply disappeared. While the Maceos were in power, mobsters from other parts of the country were normally wise enough to stay the hell off the Island. On one memorable occasion, when the Al Capone gang sent Frank Nitti to Galveston to inquire about “investing” in the Maceo organization, a Maceo in-law, Anthony Fertitta, personally showed Mr. Nitti the way back to the mainland. There were a number of gangland killings in the thirties—Rose Maceo was suspected of murdering several people, including his first wife and her lover—but no member of the Maceo family was ever convicted of a felony. On the contrary, the Maceos were the first to offer help to the police. On Christmas Eve 1938, when a Maceo thug named Leo Lera shot down an innocent patron at a Seawall Boulevard night spot, Gigolo Maceo delivered the killer to police headquarters. Gamblers who won big at a Maceo casino were escorted back to their hotels at night, lest some lowlife rob them and soil the Island’s reputation. The Maceos ran a clean game in a clean town, and anybody who didn’t like it slept with the fishes.
World War II had been over for nearly a decade—and both Rose and Sam were in their graves—before a Galveston County politician dared campaign on a promise to bust up the rackets. The candidate was Jim Simpson, a former FBI agent who now practices law in Texas City. Running for county prosecuting attorney in the 1954 elections, Simpson lost by eight votes. But two years later he put together an undercover operation for Attorney General Will Wilson that eventually gathered enough evidence to close down the Maceo syndicate for good. The coup de grace was administered by a task force of Texas Rangers in June 1957.
Most of the old gang had already gone by then anyway. By the early fifties, the dealers and pit bosses who worked for the Maceos had mostly migrated to Las Vegas, as had the high rollers and all the big-name entertainment. The Fertitta family, related to the Maceos by marriage, had assumed control of what remained of the syndicate. The Turf Athletic Club, once the hottest action in Texas, was making a marginal profit skimming lunch money from medical students, clerks, and secretaries. A wave of idealism had swept the country in the post-war years—a new respect for the law, a yearning for stability, an urgency to reexamine values. Even without Jim Simpson and the Texas Rangers, the Free State of Galveston would have collapsed under its own weight.
One by one, many of the Maceos moved away, to Houston or out of state. A few, like Vic Maceo, stayed on to take care of property they had acquired. For the past quarter of a century, Vic has operated the Hill Top Motel, a modest barrickslike structure on Seawall Boulevard at Eighty-eighth, well down the Island from the high-dollar hotels and restaurants that are the heart of Galveston’s tourist trade today. From time to time, Vic has emerged from obscurity to participate in campaigns to return gambling to the Island. Four times in recent years Islanders have voted on such a referendum, and four times it has been defeated by margins of about two to one.
“Other than Little Vic, none of the Maceos have supported a return to gambling,” says Vic A. Maceo, Jr., Gigolo’s son. “Gambling had a good reputation when our family ran it. The Maceos treated people right. It wouldn’t be the same today with a bunch of outsiders.” The Kempners, who have led the opposition against a return to gambling, make essentially the same argument: The Maceos may have been gangsters, but they were our gangsters.
Vic Junior is fairly typical of the new generation of Maceos. He is the director of the Beach Patrol for the Galveston County Sheriff’s Department and has been decorated several times for heroism. Acknowledging the irony that his family once flouted the law that he is charged with enforcing, Vic Junior says, “They did their job. I’m doing mine. I’m proud of my family.” So proud, in fact, that he wonders why in a city that celebrates its history so fervently, there is not a museum commemorating the Maceo era.
As for Vic Maceo, he has created something of a problem for Galveston County prosecutors. Nobody wants to put an 89-year-old man in the slammer, especially one who is apparently in bad health. But then he did try to kill Pete Miller—tried and almost succeeded. In addition to the criminal charge against Maceo, Miller has filed a civil suit, wondering, as do many others on this Island, how much the old man has stashed away and where.
What was going through the old man’s mind that morning? Nobody is sure. But one of the regulars at the Little Sunday Morning Coffee Club speculates that maybe it has something to do with redemption. Vic was never much of a gangster. Maybe he was just trying one last time to get it right.
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