Phil Van Cise: Scourge of Denver's Underworld

Van Cise wasn't sure. But in his first few weeks on the job, he discovered that fighting crime in Denver was a complicated business. He went to see the chief of police, Hamilton Armstrong, who ordered a reliable captain to take the new DA on a tour of the city. The captain showed Van Cise gambling rooms tucked inside of pool halls, guarded by elaborate lookout systems; brothels that had moved from the now-shuttered red-light district to small downtown hotels; rampant bootlegging operations; fan tan and lottery dens in Chinatown.

The Fighting DA was stunned. Chief Armstrong, a brutally candid man, laid it out for him. The town was wide open. None of this could happen without graft, and there was graft everywhere. Men on the force, men in the jails and the courts, men in the DA's own office were paid to tip off any enforcement action and thwart it. And Lou Blonger and his partner, a man named Adolph "Kid" Duff, were at the top of the pyramid.

Van Cise asked why the chief couldn't simply "cut loose," raid the whole mess and put the grafters on the spot.

"Say, you are green," the chief replied. "My raids would all be tipped off, and I'd arrest a lot of people but have no evidence. And Denver would have a new chief of police."

Denver soon did have a new chief; Armstrong died shortly after that conversation, and Van Cise was left to find his own way. He figured out how to defeat the gambling lookouts and raided a few parlors, only to see judges deal leniently with the owners. He closed nineteen brothels in one day, but they quickly re-emerged in a less concentrated fashion. The bootlegging problem was hopeless. He knew he was just scratching the surface.

His raids had done no damage to Blonger and Duff. Their real power was elsewhere, in something more lucrative than hookers, dope, roulette wheels or even booze. And Van Cise was beginning to understand what that something was: Blonger had given him a clue by talking about his stockbroker friends.

Fighting Denver's underworld, the Colonel realized, meant paying attention to what was happening on 17th Street. In the downtown financial district, Blonger and Duff had perfected a con game far beyond anything Soapy Smith could have imagined.

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The letters arrived from all over — Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Texas, Great Britain. But the story was always the same.

It went like this. A visitor comes to Denver to sell some livestock or possibly just for a little vacation. In the lobby of the Brown Palace (or a newsstand at the Albany Hotel, or in Civic Center Park), a stranger strikes up a conversation with the visitor. The stranger is from out of town, too, and soon they're seeing the sights together. At some point the visitor's new friend recognizes another man on the street. That man, he says, made a killing in a stock deal back east; it was in all the papers.

When approached, the newcomer denies he's that person. Then, reassured that the fellow who accosted him isn't a reporter, he becomes friendly, too, even sharing a news clipping about his stock triumphs — with much of the photo missing. Since he's on his way to the local exchange, he agrees to take five bucks from the stranger and invest it for him. The investor returns a few minutes later, handing ten dollars to the stranger and ten to the visitor, even though the latter didn't risk anything.

Before long the visitor and his new friend are invited to see the stock exchange for themselves. The investor produces a membership card that gains them access to a bustling office on 17th Street equipped with phones, a blackboard full of stock quotes, special purchase slips, the works. Their generous host makes a few big-ticket trades in the names of his new friends. Substantial profits, soaring into six figures, are made. But when the visitor tries to collect his share, the clerk behind the counter learns he doesn't have a local bank account and balks. The gentlemen made the trades on credit; how does the clerk know they're good for it?

Much discussion follows among the three friends. It's decided that each man will transfer money to a local bank from their home accounts — never less than five thousand dollars, usually fifteen or twenty-five grand. This takes time, and then there's another complication — something about an error in the purchase slip that requires bringing the cash to the exchange and depositing it there. The visitor is told that if he does this, he can collect his winnings without risking a dime.