Dewey knew his investigations might lead to personal repercussions, and he reluctantly accepted the services of at least one police bodyguard. After the syndicate meeting Dewey received several threatening telephone calls, and rumors spread that there was a $25,000 price on his head. Dewey did not back off, but he did take the news seriously, and he allowed the bodyguards to trail him closely. As he put it, ordinary hoodlums would be scared off by the detective … [and] the top gangsters would be too smart to tangle with such a well-protected man.

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Anastasia moved carefully. He first hired a man — some accounts say he did the job himself — to study Dewey's morning routine. The spy watched the prosecutor's neighborhood in the company of a little boy who diverted suspicion by riding a velocipede, or tricycle, in front of Dewey's apartment building. Apparently neither Dewey nor his escort ever thought twice about the man and his supposed son.

On four consecutive mornings the doting father tailed Dewey. He learned that the special prosecutor left home each morning around 8:00 and headed to a nearby pharmacy to use the pay phone, so he wouldn't disturb his sleeping wife, and to avoid any possible taps on his home phone. While Dewey called his office from the drugstore, his security detail remained outside on the sidewalk.

The plot began to fall into place. The hitman would enter the drugstore before Dewey arrived. Once the unsuspecting prosecutor was in the phone booth, the murderer would shoot him, then kill the pharmacist to eliminate the only witness. By using a silencer, the killer would ensure that the bodyguards outside would hear nothing. Once finished, the shooter would calmly walk past the guards and around the corner to a waiting getaway car.

The plan appeared feasible, but Schultz made little headway with the syndicate leaders at an October meeting. Only garment-district racketeer Gurrah Shapiro sided with the Dutchman. The others believed that Dewey's murder would create more problems than it would solve. We will all burn if Dewey is knocked off, said Lepke. The easier solution was the tried-and-true technique of witness intimidation. We are bombproof when all the right people are out of the way, argued Lepke. We get them out of the way now — then the investigation collapses, too.

Schultz himself was a factor behind the board's reluctance. Many of the mobsters thought the Dutchman was a loose cannon. The murder of Bo Weinberg, well liked and respected among underworld members, had been a black mark against Dutch. Furthermore, the other mob leaders had designs on Schultz's business interests.

In the end, the syndicate refused to authorize the Dewey hit. Schultz was enraged. I still say he oughta be hit, he said. And if nobody else is gonna do it, I'm gonna hit him myself. With those words, Dutch Schultz signed his own death warrant. Lepke quickly dispatched two of his best operatives, Emanuel Mendy Weiss and Charlie the Bug Workman, to take care of the problem.

They did so with remarkable efficiency. On the evening of October 23, Workman and Weiss arrived at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey. Weiss stayed at the door to act as lookout, while Workman headed to the back, where an informer had told them they would find Schultz. Opening the door to the men's room, the killer saw a man at a urinal. He assumed the man was a bodyguard. Workman fired, and his victim fell to the ground.

Then Workman stepped out into the back room, where he found three of Schultz's henchmen — mathematical genius Abbadabba Berman and bodyguards Abe Landau and Bernard Lulu Rosenkrantz. Schultz was nowhere in sight. Methodically, Workman riddled the three gangsters with a hail of bullets as they futilely tried to shoot back. Still, Schultz was nowhere to be found and Workman began to worry until he realized that the man in the bathroom had been the Dutchman himself.

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