Martha certainly was not putting her daughter on the market for anybody, but she, too, was swept away with the mighty magnificence of the name. She advised Frances to go for a drive with him in the big, slinky, steel-jacketed and bullet-proof car that she could see from her window. Frances, hatless and flushed, ran back and got an hour off. When Dutch Schultz asked, few people questioned.
As she came out, two men slipped from the front seat, and as one opened the door the other, with his hand inside his coat at his armpit where he carried his gat, looked up and down the block. Schultz and Frances got in and the door closed with that authority which only a high-priced limousine can express with a bang and a click.
Within a month, Frances was Mrs. Arthur Flegenheimer. It was infatuation on the whisper of a name, but it had grown into a tremendous and all-conquering love. Few romances with figures that defy the law were ever more mutually fervent and sincere.
Schultz was always in trouble. Despite the enormous sums he took in, he had to pay out, at times, more. He cheated on his Federal and State income taxes, kept enormous staffs of bodyguards and fixers and collectors, and when he wasn't hunted by the Internal Revenue men he was tracked by gunmen of rivals who wanted to take over. He was frequently arrested and numerous times shot at, and his only chance for a few hours or days of happiness with his bride was to drive to remote villages in New England or 100 miles out on Long Island, where, under an assumed name, he might hole in for a day or two before someone recognized him.
Thus they lived for four years, in which time two children were born, first a girl and then a boy. She proudly named their son Arthur Flegenheimer, Jr.
He bathed Frances in furs which she didn't want to wear, and weighed her down with jewels which she rarely wore; and he got her up in the middle of nights and took her to strange places, whence they frequently had to escape on a moment's notice, more than once to the music of whining bullets.
On October 9, 1935, they were under cover in a hotel in Newark, N.J. They dined in their rooms and then he told her he had to meet some of his henchmen in a little restaurant. She went to a movie. Schultz walked into a little café and joined two other men on a bench in a booth.
The two favorite methods of murder among the outlaws were "put him on the spot" and "take him for a ride." The first was designed to plant a victim, drawn by treachery, to be slaughtered by executioners who would know just where and when, and thus elude the uncertainties of pursuit or having to do a job in a public street. The theory of "taking for a ride" also was usually carried out through misplaced faith, though sometimes at the point of a gun, and its strategy lay in taking the body-to-be out to a quiet, lonely spot where there would probably be no police or witnesses.
Dutch Schultz was put on the spot.
No sooner had he sat down than the two men who had lured him there dived to the floor, as a man in a green hat stepped out from behind a pillar and gave Schultz all his six bullets in the belly, the gangster's favorite target. To make certainty doubly sure, he was shot with slugs dipped in garlic, a deadly poison to the mucous membranes of the bowels. They took him in an ambulance to a hospital, where he died raving, with Frances' name on his lips. The first she knew she was a widow was when two detectives closed in on her as she returned to her hotel.