Sublime

So Moses would have to keep them—and all the other officials involved—from understanding. He would have to persuade Mayor, City Council, Legislature and Governor to approve his bills before they realized what was in them.

white men and Native women together,

Moses’ rage over what he regarded as his greatest defeat never cooled, not even after the tunnel, years later, was incorporated into his Triborough empire.

But it wasn’t La Guardia’s or Ickes’ feelings that counted. It was Roosevelt’s and Moses’. And when these two men were dealing with one another, they were not “reasonable men” at all. Not normal political considerations but personal animosity, “real hatred,” hatred that had been boiling between them for years, governed their actions. Neither one wo

dyed-in-the-wool

If from a personal viewpoint it is not too much to say that La Guardia liked Moses, from a political viewpoint it is not too much to say that he feared him.

He had been a lawman once, a deputy marshal in Colorado, not to mention the man who killed the man who killed motherfucking Jesse James, and he believed that he deserved more respect. This injustice would not stand. Kelley promised his underworld friends that he would take revenge, as soon as he possibly could, on the Oklahoma City police.

The explanation for Moses’ independence of La Guardia was as complex as the Little Flower’s many-petaled character and as simple—and ineluctable—as the basic realities of the political game at which the Mayor excelled.