COLUMN: John L. Smith

     Kathy Delaney was dealing blackjack at the Holiday Casino when she first met Herb Blitzstein.
      The year was 1983, and everyone who was anyone in Las Vegas knew the barrel-chested right-hand man of Tough Tony Spilotro. Blitzstein was a rough customer and one of the most notorious men in the city, but she fell for him.
      All these years later, she almost blushes when she thinks how naive she was.
      "In the beginning I really didn't know what was going on," she says. "He was just a very charismatic man and a lot of fun to be around. And I noticed people paid attention to him a lot."
      From pit bosses to police detectives, everyone paid attention to Herb Blitzstein. It must seem to her like 100 years ago now, but there was a time Herb and his world held great intrigue for Kathy, who became his common-law wife years ago.
      At 39, she is no longer so naive. Life with the mob guy rarely lacked for excitement, and they were together off and on for more than a decade. They were in the process of reconciling in early January when Blitzstein's body was found inside his townhouse. He had been shot in the back of the head.
      Las Vegas police homicide detectives are continuing their investigation. Unlike many street characters, whose enemies list would fill the Chicago phone book, Blitzstein had been living a relatively quiet life in Las Vegas.
      "He didn't hardly speak to anybody," she says.
      When Kathy looks back on her life with Blitzstein, she figures the bad times far outweighed the good. Life with Herb was good, but life kept being interrupted by phone taps, FBI agents at the front door and helicopters hovering above their house.
      A normal life was impossible.
      "Little by little he'd mention something that would give me a clue as to what was happening," she says. "But if you took me to court, I couldn't have said anything specific. He always said the less I knew the better."
      As police and federal investigators closed in on Spilotro's street rackets, life changed dramatically for Herb and Kathy. Their quiet times together were replaced by trips to court. In time, she went from accompanying him to the courthouse to visiting him in the penitentiary. Such is the life of a street soldier.
      When heart and circulation problems while in prison forced him to be hospitalized, Blitzstein wound up at Rochester, Minn. Once there, he was visited by old friends and some of the top bosses in the Chicago Outfit. Blitzstein was nothing if not loyal to the aging fraternity he had admired as a young man. By then, Kathy realized that Herb might not have been as old as the Joey Aiuppas of the world, but in spirit he was of their generation.
      "If you were to pick good over bad, the majority of the time was bad. Not being with him because I loved him very much. But everything else," Kathy says. "Any sane girl would have left. People started following me around, and I knew our phone was tapped. There came a time when I couldn't have girlfriends anymore. There were certain people I could talk to and certain people I couldn't.
      "Then it got bad."
      Then it was over.
      Spilotro was slain. The FBI shattered the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, Blitzstein went to prison, and a chapter in Las Vegas organized crime history was slammed shut.
      When he was released from prison a few years ago, he was a different man. He was older, slower, nearly undone by life in prison. But old feelings die hard. Kathy and Herb started seeing each other again. She packed up her things and was in the process of moving into Blitzstein's townhouse after the Christmas holiday.
      "He might have dabbled here or there, but he wasn't into anything that would get him sent away again," she says. "He was not going to die in jail."
      Instead, he died at home. Police suspect business associates of Blitzstein, but no arrests have been made. Kathy has her own theories and keeps them to herself; her time with Herb taught her that much.
      Perhaps she knew in her heart he never would leave the life he had made. She hoped the way women who love notorious men have hoped for generations.
      "He and I had gotten back together," she says. "My stuff was still in his garage. We were thinking about trying to have a baby and really settle down. Basically, he wanted a quiet kind of existence."
      Then he was gone.
      And as she reminisces about her days with Herb Blitzstein, she knows few people will appreciate her affection for an outlaw. And she knows leading a normal life won't be easy.
      Sifting through mental snapshots, she pauses, then softly says, "I cooked him dinner just like any other wife would. I did all the things that anybody else would do for their husband."
     
     John L. Smith's column appears Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. He can be reached at John_L._Smith@lvrj.com.