Scotty spent Johnson's money with a flair, always with an eye for headlines. "When people stop talking about you," he told Choate, "you're dead."
He loved to come to Los Angeles and splurge. On one of these sorties he obtained the second floor corner room of the Van Nuys Hotel, at 7th and Broadway, by paying its occupant $100 to vacate. Then Scotty opened the window and started throwing dollar bills into the intersection, which was then the busiest in town.
His manna from heaven naturally paralyzed traffic. and Scotty was arrested for disturbing the peace and was taken to the old central jail on 1st Street, where he was soon regaling reporters from The Times, the Examiner and the Record.
Occasionally, whenever a piece of the legend has been sent to me by some contemporary of Scotty who might have encountered him on one of his numerous epiphanies in Los Angeles, I have tried in a small way to serve his memory and posterity by recording it here.
Joseph Choate, the venerable lawyer who still walks from his downtown offices to the courthouse, was for many years Scotty's lawyer, confidant and friend, and he knows some stories that may not have been told.
He asked what my racket was," Choate recalls, "and when I replied that I was an honest lawyer, that started a magnificent friendship."
At Scotty's invitation, Choate drove up to Death Valley to stay a week at the castle Scotty had built near the artesian spring he had found about 1900. Choate spent the week indulging in fine food and drink and Scotty's stories.
Of course he learned that Scotty's gold mine was actually Albert M. Johnson, a rich Chicago businessman
A rich Chicago businessman helped Scotty
build a castle-and a legend-from air.
One day in the early l920s, Choate recalls, Scotty walked into the bank in Goldfield, Nev., and saw the president, his friend, signing a stack of uncut sheets of 25 $20 bills, each sheet worth $500 in all. (In those days, Choete explains, local bank presidents were required to sign each bill before putting it into circulation.)
Scotty persuaded his friend to sell him five uncut sheets at face value-$2,500, being assured that this was legal, as long as they were signed.
With his sheets of uncut 20s, Scotty caught the Santa Fe train from Chicago at Death Valley Junction, and on the way to Los Angeles joined some Eastern gentlemen in a parlor car poker game. He ordered drinks for the table, opened a leather pouch in which he was carrying the currency, took out his pocket knife and cut out a $20 bill, handed it to the porter and told him to keep the change. When the glasses were empty he repeated this little show.
A Treasury Inspector examined the currency and pronounced it counterfeit, though very good. Of course Scotty told his story, and the Goldfield bank president Look the train to Los Angeles and verified, before a crowd of reporters and T-men, that the currency was genuine and the signatures were his.
"Once again," Choate recalls, "Scotty invited all present to Jeffrey's bar."
Next morning the newspapers headlined: SCOTTY'S BACK IN TOWN!
"Not long ago," Choate chides me, "you wrote a hearsay story about Scotty which came to you from a writer who characterized him as just a brash con-operator and showman. Are we not all showmen, more or less?
"Scotty was a showman, first last and always. He lived and designed his life in that sole role. He was lovable, human and charitable. He handed out tens of thousands of dollars to ladies of the evening whom he found in need. He was truly a colorful part of the West, and millions have made a pilgrimage to his Castle."