INVESTIGATIONS: Willing Willie

From the time he started to work at the age of five, Willie Moretti kept his eyes peeled for the fast buck. His first job with a Harlem milkman paid 25¢ a week. Later, as a teen-ager with plenty of savvy, big-city cunning and a marked talent for crap-shooting, Willie managed to do a little better—though he did spend a year in the reformatory for assault. But it wasn't until he took to betting that Willie really hit his stride.

Last week, a portly and well-heeled 56, and still an avowed and unashamed gambler, Willie dropped in on the Senate's...