Been a vicious all he stole my heart
Virginia Hill, engraved with the words: “Always in my heart.”
“This remains one of my most treasured possessions,” she says.
Yet Lansky kept their romance secret, not only to protect her from investigation by the FBI, but also from his second wife, former manicurist Thelma, who may have suspected the affair.
“He gave serious thought to leaving his wife, but never did,” says Zali. “He still cared for her.”
The two women became friends, but when Zali kissed Lansky’s dog on the mouth one day, Thelma cautioned: “My dear, you never kiss a man or a dog on the mouth. You never know where their mouths have been before.”
LANSKY refused to discuss the Mafia with Zali. “I’d ask him, but he’d say: ‘Don’t ask, because I don’t want you to know anything. If you’re ever called to testify against me, if you know nothing you won’t have to lie.’
“He told me he regretted his life of crime. He’d always wanted to be an engineer, but was pulled into bootlegging and never turned back.
“He admitted that he did it all for the mighty dollar, and made a fortune, though not as much as people believed.
“But Meyer wasn’t a Mafia killer,” she says, despite FBI claims that his mob enterprises were notoriously murderous from his 1930s bootlegging days onward. “Meyer insisted that he was never involved in the drug trade. He told me: ‘If it wasn’t for me, the mob would have been a lot worse.’
“I don’t believe he was dangerous. The Meyer I knew was a sweetheart.”
Their affair moved from Israel to America.
“He’d fly me over to Miami and put me up in an apartment for months at a time.
“He wasn’t afraid of a hit. He never carried a gun or had a bodyguard. He’d take the bus to my apartment, and walked his dog Bruiser alone in the street. He’d made millions for the mob, and they knew he’d never talk.”
Lansky was only jailed once, briefly, in 1953 for illegal gambling, but for years battled US prosecutions for criminal conspiracy, skimming casino profits and tax evasion, sparking his bid to emigrate to Israel to escape trial.
“He wanted to live in Israel to be with me,” Zali insists. “He endured five lengthy trials and won them all, but they took their toll. It cost him a lot of money, and sadness. His health suffered. Then Israel refused to grant him residency as a ‘danger to the public’. How dare they!”in his late 70s Lansky battled lung cancer in Florida while Zali lingered alone in Israel.
“He was too weak to leave his home in Miami, and with his wife there I couldn’t see him safely,” she says. “It was very painful to be apart for the last months of his life.”
When Lanksy died in
1983, aged 80, he left a paltry $57,000 in his will.
The FBI was convinced he had $300million stashed away in secret overseas bank accounts, but never recovered a cent.
“I still miss him and love him,” says Zali. “I always will.”
● They Called Him A Gangster, by Zali de Toledo (available on Amazon.com, £11.46)