CRIME: End of the Line

Irving Wexler had only his own two hands to work with when he started his career in Manhattan’s lower East Side. He used them to such smooth advantage in picking pockets that he became known as “Waxey” to his friends and the cops, took on the name of “Waxey Gordon” as he advanced through stickups, slugging, dope and murder charges into the big time. With Prohibition, Waxey muscled into a string of big New Jersey breweries, made his adopted name a byword in the world of Al Capone, “Legs” Diamond and Dutch Schultz, and wallowed in a life of $10 silk underwear and Pierce-Arrows.

Then, after U.S. District Attorney Tom Dewey put him away for seven years for income-tax evasion, Waxey had to start all over again in 1940. He dabbled in black-market sugar and was settled for a year in Atlanta. He got out, was caught in an office with $40,000 worth of “hot” watches, but released. Waxey dropped out of sight. Last November a New York detective got a mysterious telephone call: “If you want one of the biggest gangsters in the country, who is now in dope, look for your old friend W.” The cops looked, found 63-year-old Waxey ostensibly a legitimate warehouse manager, actually a big-time heroin wholesaler.

For eight months, they tailed him across the country as he made his contacts, waiting patiently for him to carry some of the junk himself. One night last week, Waxey took a cab to a dark corner of Manhattan, furtively grabbed a newspaper-wrapped bundle from a man in another car. The cops and the feds swooped down, caught the terrified Waxey with a pound of heroin (worth $200,000). Waxey’s accomplice pleaded: “Please, if you’ve got a heart don’t lock Waxey up. I’ll pay you anything. This’ll kill him.” Waxey himself slid to his knees. “Kill me! Let me run and then shoot me!” he sobbed. “I’m an old man and I’m through. Don’t take me in for junk. I’m finished. This is the end of the line.”