
“Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.” — Ambrose Bierce, 1906
When you put a lawyer in charge of an establishment—a good lawyer—you’d expect that everything would happen according to the law.
But that’s not how things ran at Barney Welansky’s place.
Barney was a lawyer, alright. But he was a lawyer for Charles Solomon, also known as “Boston Charlie,” one of Boston’s gangland leaders. Charlie was a Russian-born mob boss who controlled Boston’s bootlegging, narcotics, and illegal gambling during the Prohibition era.
Charlie was a big shot, and so was Barney, by association. So when Solomon was gunned down in the men’s room of the Cotton Club in Roxbury, ownership of Charlie’s supper club passed to Barney.
As the new owner, Barney wanted to class up the joint. Privately, he was…
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