“No…”
“Since 1936 they’ve been getting two percent of all their union members’ salaries. We estimate their take in this regard alone is a million a year.”
“Jesus! This is no small operation.”
“No. And if they get their hands on SAG, it will mushroom further. Check out the Trocadero. You’ll see how union officials of the IA spend the rank and file’s hard-earned dues.”
The Troc was a long, low, rambling building, white-frame colonial with a red-tiled roof with a large central gable and a couple of smaller ones on either side, lorded over by an incongruously folksy weather vane. A striped canopy ran across the long front of the building, and at right, just over the canopy in squat art-deco neon, the words CAFE TROCADERO were tacked on like an afterthought; underneath the pastel glowing letters a smaller neon said PHIL OHMAN’S MUSIC. Potted plants stood like World’s Fair midgets along the front of the building. This hodgepodge of architecture and oddball trimmings didn’t add up to anything much in particular, and like a lot of structures out here it looked like one you could put your foot through without half trying. Hollywood’s idea of swank was just another plasterboard fantasy.
A colored doorman in a white linen double-breasted uniform with gold salad on the shoulders let me in; I wouldn’t have tipped the guy in Chicago, but this was Hollywood so I gave him a dime out of embarrassment; he said thank you sir, but didn’t show me his teeth. Maybe opening a door was worth a quarter out here. Inside the dark, vaguely Parisian place I smiled at the hatcheck girl, who I would have rather given the dime to. She had short dark hair and a nice smile, was wearing peach-color Chinese pajamas, and made me sorry I was out here alone. I wondered what she was doing later, but I had no hat to check so I stopped at the velvet rope where the captain asked if I had a reservation and I said I did if Robert Montgomery called one in for me like he said he was going to.
That didn’t impress anybody of course, including me, but I did have a reservation, although it would be fifteen minutes before my table was ready, so I made my entrance down a stairway designed for making entrances, into the bar. This was a Thursday night but crowded, the patrons at the bar standing two-deep; since there was just the one of me, I soon found a place to stand and had some rum, and nibbled at a bowl of parched corn, and took the place in. The French decor gave way to American colonial, here, red-and-black plaid, hanging copper utensils; either way, I sure wasn’t in Chicago. I didn’t see a lot of movie stars, though; somebody who might have been Cesar Romero was having cocktails with a little starlet over in the corner, but that was about it.
Finally I was shown to a table upstairs; most of the patrons were in evening dress, tuxes on the men mostly, an occasional white jacket, the women in slinky gowns, black sequins and silver lame, velvet trimmed with feathers, silk touched with fur. You’d have to check in at a nudist colony to find more female flesh unembarrassedly exposed. I wasn’t complaining.
It was almost ten o’clock before I ate, and since a movie star was paying I had the lobster, only it wasn’t as good as I could’ve got at Ireland’s at Clark and Ontario. I was wiping the butter off my chin when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
When I looked up it was a honey-haired blue-eyed blonde in a black dress with her tits hanging out. That’s an inelegant way to put it, perhaps, but that’s what went instantly through my mind, a thought most any man this side of the limp-wrist set would’ve had.
“Could you join us?” she asked, in a chirpy, innocent voice.
I turned around in my seat and suddenly figured out that Montgomery must have requested a table in this specific area; because not far away, in a corner booth, sat Nicky Dean and George Browne and another girl, a stunning redhead, in a white dress with her…you finish it.
Dean smiled a little-very little-and waved me over. He was a round-faced man in a snazzy white evening jacket, with slicked-back black hair, a better-looking Edward G. Robinson. Even seated, the incongruously tall, slim frame below the balloon puss was evident. He had a single drink before him, and a cigarette rested regally in the hand he was motioning with. Next to him in the booth was the redhead, and next to her was George Browne, in a tent of a tux, double-chinned, wire-rim glasses, fat, bland-looking; what distinguished him was the array of beer bottles before him, half a dozen of them, various foreign labels. He was pouring one into a glass.
“Nate Heller,” Nicky Dean said, appraising me with the dark, matinee-idol eyes that were his best feature. The blonde was sliding in next to him; I was just standing there, rum cocktail in hand.
“Nicky Dean,” I said. “Who’s minding the store?”
By that I meant the Colony Club, his Rush Street joint, which had a restaurant and bar downstairs and a casino upstairs, a pretty fancy layout.
“My girl Estelle,” he said, without any apparent concern for, or effect on, the bosomy little blonde next to him who was smiling at him with considered affection, running her fingers idly through his slick black hair. “You remember Estelle, don’t you?”
So Estelle had mentioned me to Dean.
“I knew her back in my pickpocket-detail days,” I said, smiling nervously, shrugging the same way. “Cute kid. Smart as a whip.”
“Cute. Smart. She sure is. I miss her. Sit down, Heller. Slide in next to Dixie.”
I did. “Hi, Dixie,” I said.
“Hiya,” Dixie said, just barely looking at me, but she was the kind of girl who could load an hour of promise into a split second of glance.
Browne was drinking his latest beer. A barmaid in black and white with her legs showing came over and brought him three more bottles with three other labels and piled the empties on her tray while Browne handed her a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Let me know when that’s gone. Keep the last five for yourself, honey.”
She thanked him, and was gone, and he looked over at me. “I know you,” he said, bloodshot eyes narrowing on either side of a bloodshot nose. “You’re that dick.”
The two girls looked at me.
“That’s right,” I said. “I have my own little agency on Van Buren.”
The girls looked away.
Dean blew a smoke ring and said, “What brings you to Tinseltown?”
“Business. What brings you boys here?”
Dean smiled at Browne, but Browne wasn’t looking; he was pouring his next beer.
Dean said, “We work out here. For the Stagehands Union.”
“Really? Is that a good racket?”
Browne belched into his hand. “It’s not a racket,” he said, having to reach for the indignation. “We serve the working man. Without us, they’d be out on a limb. You can trust an employer just so long as you’re shaking hands with him. When he relaxes his grip, you’re had, unless we’re on your side. Excuse.”
Browne had chosen the outside seat for a reason; he was up and gone.
“Little boy’s room,” the redhead explained to me. “He does that every half hour.”
“You could set your watch by it,” the blonde said.
“Girls,” Dean said, and that meant they were to be quiet. “What kind of business you out here on, Heller?”
“Wandering daughter job. A Gold Coast swell hired me to find his little girl. She’s out here trying to make it in the movies.”
“I’m an actress,” the blonde said.
The redhead chose not to declare herself.
“You’ll find there’s lots of actresses out here,” Dean said. “Any luck?”
“Yeah. The father had an old address on her, which I checked out. Found she’d been doing a little work as an extra. Tracked her through SAG.”
Mention of the Screen Actors Guild didn’t raise a ripple out of Dean. He merely said, “The girl going back home?”
I shook my head no. “I didn’t expect her to. They had me give her some dough, which’ll underwrite another six months out here.”
This story was more or less true, by the way, should Dean go checking-only the job dated
back a couple months and had been handled by me over the phone from Chicago. This afternoon I’d called the moneybags papa long distance and asked if he wanted me to look in on his daughter, while I was out here, and see how she was doing; he’d said yes, and to write her a check up to five C’s if she needed money, for which he’d reimburse me and then some. The bit about finding her through SAG was baloney, though-she’d left her new address with her old landlady-but Montgomery had checked for me and she did carry a card. The story would hold.
“If she’s a good-looking kid,” Dean said, “she won’t need their money.”
The blonde sipped her drink; the redhead lowered her eyes-I thought I saw contempt there. Whether for Dean or herself or the world in general, I couldn’t say.
“You may be right,” I said, “but she took the dough.”
Dean shrugged. The orchestra was starting up, across the room. They were playing “I’ll Be Seeing You.”
Browne returned, sidled his heft back in the booth. “Where’s that waitress? I’m down to one beer.”
Nobody answered him.
Dean said to the little blonde, “Do you want to dance, Dix?”
“Oh, sure, Nicky.”
He turned his dark gaze on me. “Dance with her, Heller, would you.” It wasn’t a question.
“My pleasure.”
I threaded Dixie through tables to the crowded dance floor and held her close. She smelled good, like new hay. I hated the thought of the kid being in Dean’s arms.
However, the first thing she said was, “Isn’t Nicky sweet?”
“He’s a peach.”
“Inn’t he, though? Ooh, look. There’s Sidney Skolsky.”
“Who?”
“You know, Sidney Skolsky, the columnist! I wish you were somebody. I could get in his column.”
“I was somebody last time I looked.”
She looked at me, with melting embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like that.”
“It’s okay, Dixie. Is it okay if I call you Dixie?”
“Sure. How should I call you?”
“Any time you want.”
She giggled and snuggled to me and we moved around the small packed floor awhile; we danced three or four numbers. It turned out Dixie was her stage name-the last half of which was “Flyer”-but she didn’t want to say what her real name was.
“Oooh, look! There’s Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor!”
I looked over and there they were, at a little table together. They looked small.
“Inn’t it nice,” she said, “that people leave them alone here? I hope when I’m famous people aren’t all the time bothering me for autographs.”
“There’s worse problems in the world,” I said, looking at Dean looking at us from the booth. Browne wasn’t; he was just drinking his current beer.
“There sure is! Hey, you’re kind of cute. What’s your name again?”
I told her, and the orchestra let up, and we made our way back. I waited for Dixie to slide in next to Dean, then slid in next to her.
“You two make a cute couple,” Dean said.
“Thanks,” Dixie said.
I didn’t say anything.
“We must have similar taste in dames,” he said, with a cold little smile. “Where you staying?”
“Pardon?”
“While you’re in town. What hotel you staying?”
“Roosevelt,” I said.
Dean’s faint smile now seemed honestly amused. “Ha. Joe Schenck’s joint.”
“What do you mean?’’
“Guy at Twentieth we know,” he said, glancing at Browne, who didn’t glance back. “He owns that hotel, him and some other guys.”
Montgomery had a wry sense of humor, I’d give him that much.
“Mr. Dean?” somebody said.
I looked over and a mustached, dapper little man in evening dress was standing, almost bowing, before the booth; he seemed nervous, even frightened.
“Hello, Billy,” Dean said. The words were like two ice cubes dropping in an empty glass.
“I’m relieved to see you back at the old stand tonight,” he said. “I was afraid we’d seen the last of you for a while.”
“We’re funny people, in this day and age,” Dean said. “We believe in staying loyal to our friends.”
The man stepped closer. “Allow me to explain.”
Dean said nothing.
“For whatever mistake I have made, I stand willing to do anything you dictate, to make it up,” the man said, his voice barely audible, trying, it would seem, to keep the humiliation of this scene from being broadcast. “There was an unfortunate circumstance, caused by a new man on the desk covering union news.”
“Aren’t you the boss?” Dean said.
“I have to take responsibility for it, I know. That story got through, which to you says I broke my word. But please believe there was no intention not to take care of you, as you have of me.”
Dean said nothing.
“It was a horrible mistake,” the man continued, filling the awful silence, “and I stand willing to rectify it. Please. Command me.”
“Forget it. All is forgiven.”
The little man smiled, almost crumpling under the humiliation, and said good evening, and moved quickly away.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Billy Wilkerson,” Dean said. “He owns the joint.”
And the Hollywood Reporter. That had been about the negative piece on the IA that Montgomery mentioned had run in the Reporter yesterday. These boys did have clout.
Half an hour on the second and Browne was getting out of the booth again, saying, “Excuse.”
“Anyway, Heller,” Dean said. “You must not have a car out here. Maybe we can drop you off at your hotel?”
I didn’t think there was anything sinister in that; and, if there was, I couldn’t think of a graceful way out, so I said, “That’d be swell.”
“Maybe you’d like to show Dixie your etchings.”
Dixie, whose fingers were working in Dean’s hair, smiled at me shyly. Maybe she did have a future as an actress. As for whether or not I took Dean and Dixie up on this, I’m not going to say. You might be disappointed in me, either way.
Browne came back and settled his fat ass in the booth and said, “Willie wants to see you while you’re out here.”
I didn’t know that was directed toward me, at first; then Browne repeated it, saying he’d phoned Willie at home to say Wilkerson had eaten crow, and I said, “Bioff’s out here, too?”
“Sure,” he said. “Kind of unofficially these days, but he’s out here.”
“Willie and I go way back.”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “You hate each other’s goddamn guts.”
“I don’t hate anybody,” I said, smiling, sipping some rum. “I haven’t seen Willie in years. If he’s making good, more power to him.”
“He’s making good,” Dean said.
“Anyway,” Browne said, wiping some foam off his face, “he wants to see you.”
“Why would he want to see me?”
“I don’t know. When I called him, I mentioned we run into you. He wants you to come out to his place.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon.”
“Go out to his place at Bel Air tomorrow morning. Hell, I’ll drive you out there myself. He says to tell you it’s worth a C-note minimum.”
The thought of George Browne driving a car was a sobering thought.
But I said, “Call him back and tell him sure,” anyway.
“In half an hour I will,” Browne said, and lifted another bottle.
Browne driving was no problem: he picked me up in a chauffeured limo, a big shiny black Caddy. I tried not to make anything out of the fact that the last big shiny black car I went riding in was E. J. O’Hare’s. Besides, that was overcast, chilly Chicago and this was warm, sunny Hollywood.
There was plenty of legroom, despite the extra passenger that sat betwe
en us on the floor: a tub of ice and beer. It was ten o’clock in the morning and Browne was already at it. Maybe the tale about him putting away one hundred bottles of imported beer a day wasn’t an exaggeration; maybe it was an understatement.
Probably it was the constant drinking that did it, but he showed no signs of the night before having taken any effect; he was wearing a baggy brown suit and had a glow in his cheeks, not to mention his nose. We were on our way to Westwood, on the other side of Beverly Hills, and we had plenty of time to talk.
“You have any idea why Willie wants to see me, George?”
“Not a clue,” he said, cheerfully, bottle in hand. “But Willie always has his reasons.”
“You guys been partners a long time.”
Swigging, nodding, he said, “Long time.”
“Even before the soup kitchen?”
In 1932 the Stagehands Union, which is to say Browne and Bioff, had opened up a soup kitchen in the Loop, at Randolph and Franklin Streets to be exact, two blocks west of City Hall. The 150 working members of the local would pay 35 cents a meal, which-along with the donations of food from merchants and money from theater owners-helped ensure that the 250 unemployed members could eat free.
“Oh yeah, sure,” Browne said, “before that. Willie was running a kosher butchers union, similar to what I was doing with the gentile poultry dealers.”
“You were already head of the Stagehands local, though.”
“Yeah, sure. My ‘Poultry Board of Trade’ was just a sideline. No, the soup kitchen was what taught me to listen to Willie, what taught me Willie had brains. That was a sweetheart idea, that soup kitchen.”
“Made you a lot of friends,” I said agreeably. “Nice publicity.”
Browne’s smile was a proud fold in his flabby face. “We served thirty-seven hundred meals a week, most of ’em free. The biggest actors in the land passed through our portals-Harry Richman, Helen Morgan, Texas Guinan, Jolson, Cantor, Olson and Johnson, everybody.”
“So did a lot of politicians and reporters.”
Browne swigged and swallowed and grinned. “Being close to City Hall didn’t hurt. It’s like Willie always says: never seen a whore who wasn’t hungry or a politician who wasn’t a whore. So we let the politicians eat for nix. And the reporters.”
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