Johnny Carson

by Henry Bushkin

  My first reaction was to be appalled. No way, I thought. Members of the bar do not break and enter apartments. I am an officer of the court. I am the heir to a great legal tradition. I thought of Clarence Darrow. I thought of Learned Hand.

  And yet . . . this was an immense opportunity at the beginning of my professional life to land a very major client and launch my career into the stratosphere. I hesitated.

  Carson continued. “I need a lawyer to accompany the team tomorrow night in case shit happens. I have very experienced people who have assured me that there won’t be any problems, and Kassel has already cleared things with the cops. But somebody needs to be there in case something goes wrong . . .”

  “You’ll prevent that,” said Werblin. “Like a rubber.”

  “Like in case some cop who didn’t get the message shows up,” said Carson. “Now, I know Joanne is out of town, probably with Prince Charming, and she won’t be around.” He then sat back. Getting to the core of our encounter had removed some of his tension, and he was visibly more relaxed. Still, his eyes never left my face.

  The act he proposed clearly bordered on ethical misconduct or possibly criminal behavior. Not even as a teenager had I ever knowingly broken any laws. But I wanted to become his lawyer, not his conscience. And maybe the whole thing wasn’t so illegal.

  “Let me ask you,” I said, “does Mrs. Carson have any money of her own?”

  “No, not really,” Johnny replied.

  “Then let me suggest that you have been the person who has been paying for this apartment. So arguably it’s your apartment.”

  Johnny slapped his hands together and Werblin chuckled. “There we go!” Johnny laughed. “Arthur said you were smart.” Frankly, I had no idea if this argument had any legitimacy, but it was a reasonable line and might well provide enough cover for a fast-talking lawyer to get his coconspirators out of trouble if some nosy cop started being fastidious about the law. “Good,” said Johnny. “You’re part of the team.”

  I spent the next twenty-four hours alternately thrilled and petrified. All of a sudden, it seemed everyone around me had turned into Perry Mason–level interrogators. At home, Judy pressed me for details. “Please, Judy! We had a conversation about some personal matters that I can’t talk about,” I said, tersely cutting her off. The next day I was even more abrupt with my bosses. “It’s between me and the client,” I said, and shut the door of my office, where I quietly freaked out.

  I was better in the evening, back at Carson’s apartment, when I finally met the rest of the crew, and I was able to step into my role. Joe Mullen was the indisputable leader of this little group, but I showed no hesitancy in taking charge of the legal aspect of things. “You’re now working for me,” I told the private eye. “All your future bills must be sent to my office.” That meant that everything Joe did was protected as attorney work product, and that would begin to insulate Carson from any legal ramifications of what went on. Mullen quickly agreed.

  Suddenly, without any preliminaries or pep talks, we were off—into the night, into the rain, through the traffic, entering the door of the suspected love nest. In the bright light of the lobby, the sunglasses Johnny had been counting on to cover his identity proved useless. “Hey, Johnny Carson!” the burly doorman bellowed. “Hey-ohhh!” But his delight at the sudden apparition of a celebrity in his lobby did not translate into a willingness to admit strangers into a resident’s apartment. Joanne must have used her husband’s money to tip generously. “Oh no, can’t do that,” the doorman shook his head. “You wait here. I have to go get the building manager.”

  Fortunately the building manager turned out to be less committed to the sanctity of his tenant’s domain. When I gave him my spiel about Mrs. Carson being the tenant but Mr. Carson actually paying the bills, the manager made like Earl Warren and actually appeared to be pondering the merits of my argument, which he did right up to the moment the thick-necked Mullen grabbed his hand and slipped several hundred dollars in cash into his palm. “Yeah, okay,” the manager nodded. “Come on up, I’ll let you in.”

  With Irizarry left to stand guard in the hallway, the four of us entered Joanne’s snuggery. Almost instantly, Carson discovered evidence of his cuckoldry: the whole living room—in fact, almost the entire pad—was furnished with discards from the couple’s UN Plaza apartment. There were even some pieces that Johnny hadn’t realized were gone.

  “Look, it’s him,” said Arthur. He was pointing to a table in front of the window, on which sat about six or seven framed photographs of Joanne’s playmate. For the first time I realized her noontime buddy was Frank Gifford, the former New York Giants football great who had made the Pro Bowl at three different positions—flanker, halfback, and defensive back—and who had, since his retirement, showed promise as a sportscaster for CBS. One of the pictures showed Frank and Joanne at a restaurant table against some tropical resort-like background.

  “Bingo,” said Arthur, just as Joe Mullen emerged from the bedroom. “I got men’s and women’s clothing hanging together.” Then he held up a robe of sorts, although it seemed awfully sheer to be the kind of thing a girl would wear to sit around and watch Bonanza in while she put curlers in her hair. “Recognize it?”

  Johnny nodded. Crushed by the overwhelming amount of evidence, Carson leaned against the living room wall and began to weep. It was a painfully uncomfortable moment. Arthur busied himself taking photos of the premises, while the rest of us tried to look away and give Johnny his privacy. It was, however, a small space, and I couldn’t always keep my eyes away.

  During one of those glances, I could see that Carson’s raincoat had fallen open. I was shocked to see that Johnny was carrying a .38 revolver in a holster on his hip. Mullen, seeing what I saw, shot me a look that warned, Don’t say a fucking word, and then he quietly flipped the framed pictures of Gifford on the windowsill so that their backs faced the room. Across the room, the silent Joe Mullen deftly swept some lingerie under the sofa with the toe of his shoe. He wanted to spare Johnny the sight. There was little else that could be done.

  I was beginning to feel exceedingly uneasy. Armed men, an emotionally ugly scene, a man in turmoil—I wasn’t very experienced, but as any reader of the Daily News could tell you, many an inferno has erupted with less kindling. Just as soon as Carson regained control of his emotions, I shot Mullen a look. “Let’s go,” the PI barked. I asked Kassel if he had all the photos he needed, and as he shot me a thumbs-up, Mario stuffed some of Joanne’s personal items into a monogrammed pillowcase. Items of this nature could be useful if presented in court, but the truth is that they are more useful in keeping you from having to go to court.

  Very little was said on the walk back to Johnny’s apartment. The rain had subsided, but no one felt like recapping the raid. When we reached Johnny’s apartment, he thanked us and said he was tired and wanted to be alone. He asked his houseman to give me a ride back home. As the car headed over the Queensboro Bridge, I realized that I was probably one of the very few people who had ever seen Johnny Carson cry.

  Frankly, with the job done, I had no idea whether I would ever hear from Carson again, but the next afternoon he called and asked me to meet him at his apartment the following morning. I was thrilled—the game was still on. My parents were joining my wife and me for dinner over the weekend, and I bought a bottle of expensive wine to celebrate. I could tell by their voices how proud they were of me. I doubt they would have been very impressed if they’d suspected what I’d been part of the night before.

  That evening, exhausted by the events of the past forty-eight hours, I hit the sack shortly after nine p.m. and soon fell deeply asleep. But at two a.m. the phone rang. It was Carson, and he was obviously tanked.

  “I’m sitting here with Ed at Jilly’s,” he slurred. “Can you please come down here right away.” I considered putting him off until our scheduled meeting the next morning, but knowing how shitty he must have been feeling, and realizing that he might still have a gun,
I told him I’d be there shortly. I dragged myself out of bed, put on a suit, and grabbed my briefcase. I managed to hail a cab (no easy feat at that hour in Queens) and arrived at Jilly’s around three a.m.

  There have always been a lot of good nightclubs and bars in Manhattan, but there are always two or three in any given era where there’s a real scene, a Toots Shor’s or Elaine’s or Nell’s, where people come as much to look, or to be looked at, as they do to eat or drink. Jilly’s Saloon, on West Fifty-second Street at Eighth Avenue, was a lounge that in the late sixties and early seventies had a reputation for catering to celebrities. People were forever reading in the gossip columns that Judy Garland or Dean Martin or Peggy Lee or Elizabeth Taylor had been to the place. Jilly’s was owned by a big slab of humanity named Jilly Rizzo, whose best customer happened to be his boyhood pal and frequent drinking companion, Frank Sinatra. When Frank was in town, he could be typically found sitting in a chair in the back room, and when Frank wasn’t in town, the chair was empty and leaning against the back wall awaiting him. Over time, the chair became a tourist attraction in its own right.

  A dark-leathered tomb of a place, Jilly’s was frequented not only by celebrities but also by a criminal element that gave the setting a dangerous allure. It was said that when he walked in one night, Sinatra had quipped, “Jesus, there must be forty-two indictments sitting at the bar.” He loved the place so much that he set a scene from The Manchurian Candidate there.

  At the wee small hour I arrived, the club was dark, lit only by lamps above the smoked-glass mirrors that cast a light so frail that it quit before it reached the banquettes. The back room where Sinatra held court was dark except for a red neon exit sign, and everything was so quiet that the only sounds you could hear were sounds you never otherwise heard, like the hum of the cooling units under the bar. All the regulars were long gone; even the hatcheck girl had checked out. Behind the bar was a barkeep in a bow tie, and at the bar was one patron, Johnny Carson, his head in a cumulous cloud of cigarette smoke, nursing a drink; all that was missing was Ol’ Blue Eyes singing “One for My Baby and One More for the Road.”

  It was suddenly clear that Werblin had not been exaggerating. Johnny looked like the loneliest man I had ever seen, and the sight intimidated me. “Henry, get the hell out of here; you’re out of your league,” a small voice inside me said, and I nearly turned and walked out. Of course I didn’t listen. I rejected the voice of reason and instead succumbed to the lure of ambition. Or maybe it was compassion. Perhaps I just felt drawn to the guy. Maybe it was just that the last two days of my life had been so incredibly different from the first twenty-seven years that I figured I owed it to myself to see what happened next.

  I approached him, and when I was about five feet away, Ed McMahon wobbled out of the men’s room, steadying himself on bar stools as he moved. He still had a few feet to negotiate, but then Johnny straightened up and said, “Ed? We’re done here, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ed replied, and with a slight recalculation of his course and direction, Johnny’s sidekick was gone in thirty seconds.

  I took the empty stool to form a new trio: me, Carson, and the bartender, who brought me a Heineken and then slipped discreetly away. The silence was oppressive, and the pressure to make small talk was overwhelming. I was about to start chatting about the last time I had been to Jilly’s, back before the baby, when Judy and I had set up another couple on a blind date, but I was spared that embarrassment when Johnny, sighing heavily, finally spoke. “I’m not surprised that Joanne did this to me,” he said, “but it hurts. Hurts like hell.”

  That he was devastated was obvious. “Maybe I drove her to it. I wasn’t the best husband in the world.” He stared at the ceiling as though reflecting on the accuracy of this statement and then pounded the bar for emphasis when he apparently reached a judgment. “I shoulda been home more,” he said with a drunk’s certainty. “Not out running around.”

  I didn’t try to respond. There was nothing to say. Johnny was lost in regret and self-loathing. “I’m a shit. I have three kids with my first wife and I don’t see any of them.”

  The more Johnny talked, the weirder this moment seemed. People I’d known all my life, my best friends, none of them would ever unburden themselves to me. But here’s a man I’d known for two days baring his soul, and I had nothing to say? Maybe that’s why I was here.

  Abruptly he changed topics. “Ever been to Nebraska, Henry?” he asked. Nebraska, of course, is where Carson was raised. “No, of course you haven’t; why would you have? Let me tell you, Henry—it’s terrible. The roads, the wind, the snow, the mud, the freezing weather. But the people . . . they couldn’t be nicer or friendlier.” He stopped abruptly. “Nature calls, I’ll be right back.” He headed woozily to the men’s room.

  I sat there dumbfounded, like an actor in a play that had no script. Nothing in my relatively young life had prepared me for this situation. There must be some way men in my circumstances are supposed to behave, but I hadn’t read the handbook. I had no choice but to be me. Then Johnny returned.

  “Where was I?”

  “You were telling me about weather in Nebraska,” I reminded him.

  “Oh yeah. Bad weather. But Cornhuskers? Cornhuskers never complain. I love ’em all. Tough as nails, the people from Nebraska. Whiners wouldn’t last a year there. They can put up with all the shit nature throws at them.” He shifted on his stool. Anger rose in his voice. “Especially my mother. She’s the toughest son of a bitch of them all. There is no goddamn way to please that woman. She’s Lady Macbeth! My marriages failed because she fucked me up!”

  Up to this point, he’d been speaking into some middle distance situated between him and the rows of liquor bottles standing in front of the mirror. But now he spoke specifically to me.

  “You’re married, aren’t you, Henry? I bet you love her. I bet she’s a wonderful girl. But let me tell you, be careful because women will take anything they can. Money, jewelry, clothing, shelter, even children. And they can have it all! I don’t give a shit, I really don’t. But it’s never enough, is it?”

  He really wasn’t interested in an answer. He wanted a sounding board. Carson was sharing with me thoughts he probably never unloaded on anyone else in his life. But why me? Maybe he unloads like this all the time, and all he needs is to spot a fresh set of ears and off he goes.

  “Joanne has broken my heart . . . to the extent I even have one.”

  Now this was getting to be too much. It was one thing to let a guy get something off his chest, but I didn’t want to stand around while he wallowed in self-pity—at least not until he was officially a client. “Johnny, would you like me to take you home?” I asked.

  “Fuck no, George is outside with my car. Have a drink, Henry. I’m not finished yet.” Like magic, the bartender appeared with another Heineken, and Johnny continued. “If a doctor opened up my chest right now, he couldn’t find a heart, or any goddamn thing. Just a lot of misery. My mother made sure of that. She deprived us all of any real goddamn warmth. My dad, Homer, should get the fucking Medal of Honor for endurance. The fucking Medal of Honor! I love them both—but from a distance.” He stared into his drink and brooded. I wished I could say something to comfort him, or at least help him wrap up the evening. If nothing else, I hoped just listening would help.

  Carson lit another cigarette then looked me straight in the eye. “I can’t quit smoking and I get drunk every night and I chase all the pussy I can get. I’m shitty in the marriage department. Make sure you understand this.”

  Understand what? What was he saying? And why was he saying all this to me? Maybe because nobody else would listen to him. The wife didn’t. Werblin certainly didn’t; Werblin talked about him in the third person while he was sitting right there! Ed McMahon was a guy you sent home. I don’t know what he saw in me in our initial meetings; I don’t know what I had done, but I suddenly realized that he was going to let me stick around. He was telling me all these things so I woul
d realize what he expected of me.

  Carson’s mood then turned on a dime. He shot me a smile and said, “Henry, did you know that it’s a proven fact that married men live longer than single guys? It’s also a proven fact that married men are far more willing to die.” I burst into laughter, and he did too. And suddenly the dark cloud lifted.

  “Why Frank Gifford?” he asked. “What’s that asshole got that I don’t have?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this but maybe nowhere good. The mood appeared to be swinging back.

  “That guy plays three positions on the field,” he said. “I could never get Joanne to go for more than two.” His deadpan timing was perfect. I nearly fell off my stool laughing. He was smiling appreciatively. “I think I’ll use that line in tomorrow’s monologue.”

  From the front of the bar, the creak of the door opening and the thrum of a passing car broke the silence of the room. We turned to see a woman enter. As she drew closer in the dim light, one could gradually see that she was a young woman—tall—with long brunette hair—and even longer legs, in a short skirt and thigh-high boots—and as nearly famous as Johnny was.

  Next to me, Johnny rose from his stool. “Henry, we’re done here, right?”

  I knew my line. “Yes, sir,” I said, and the handsome couple left. All the trauma and misery from Joanne’s betrayal vanished the minute he had another woman on his arm. Whatever cares he had were melting faster than the ice cubes in his Tanqueray and tonic.

  Later that same morning, not long before noon, he called. “Hey, what did we talk about last night?” he asked. “What the hell did I say?”

  “Nothing much,” I replied. “Nothing important.”

  He paused for several seconds. I think that he was impressed that my discretion extended even to him. “You must never, ever repeat a word from last night,” he finally said. “You understand that?”