Playland

by John Gregory Dunne

  “Right, J.F.” Arthur took a pencil and scribbled something on the inside of a matchbook.

  “… the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming over there …”

  Rita Lewis took a lighter from her purse, tapped a cigarette on her case, and waited to see how Jacob would respond. He seemed contained, even faintly amused. It was the way she suspected he would be before he hurt someone. Moments like this excited Rita. It was like watching a cockfight. She would like to get a bet down on the outcome. She would bet Lilo was doing something he rarely did, overplaying his hand, and she wondered if it was because he knew she had fucked Jacob when he got into town, and was wondering if she was still fucking him. He wouldn’t ask, and would not believe her if she said no, which in fact was true.

  “So, Jake,” Lilo said, “let’s enjoy ourselves. We’ll order some champagne, I’m buying.” He whistled for a waiter, took a money clip from his pocket and laid it on the table. “This is a swell town to visit. Grab a little sun, go down to the beach, I have a place out past Zuma, get a broad, take her out there, you’ll go back to New York a new man, you can tell Morris thanks, but no thanks, we don’t need his money.”

  With a flourish, Bob Crosby sang, “… and we won’t be back till it’s over over there,” then, without a pause for breath, moved into “It’s a grand old flag, it’s a high-flying flag …”

  Jacob picked up Lilo’s money clip and removed a hundred-dollar bill.

  “If you’re a little short, Jake,” Lilo said, “I’ll be glad to help you out, we like to give our tourists a good time.”

  Benny Draper giggled. Everyone else at the table watched but did not say a word.

  “Give me your lighter, Rita,” Jacob King said.

  Rita passed him her lighter without hesitation. Jacob lit it, looked at the flame, and then held it under Lilo’s nose. “I’m going to tell Morris …” He took the hundred-dollar bill and lit it with Rita’s lighter.

  “What the fuck’re you …” Lilo said.

  Jacob removed the rest of the cash from the money clip and set it on fire with the burning bill.

  “I’m going to tell Morris that you people out here’ve got money to burn.”

  Bob Crosby whipped his microphone cord. “… the land I love …”

  “You act like you’re still on the fucking Brooklyn docks,” Lilo said, as he tried to stamp out the flames and save what bills he could.

  Jacob King rose and looked at Lilo. “Don’t you ever forget it,” he said.

  As Jacob King walked toward the exit, Arthur French remembered, Bob Crosby said, “Everybody join in,” and all over the ballroom, voices were raised.

  “… the land of the red, white, and blue …”

  Arthur, I said skeptically. Not really “A Grand Old Flag.”

  Well, it could’ve been “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,” Arthur French said. You read the clips. They all said it was an evening full of patriotic songs. And there was this enormous American flag and I remember Jake walking out underneath it.

  You remember it, or that’s the way you’d shoot it.

  Jack Ford always said print the legend.

  Marty Magnin had a more direct concern.

  Speaking as a filmmaker, the producer of twenty-one major motion pictures, and for Sydney Allen, an auteur, one whose films had garnered three best-picture Oscar nominations, although none had ever won, the reason he had never been a winner, always implied by Sydney but never stated outright, being the Industry’s bias against a New York director who would not tolerate the usual Hollywood bullshit interference, he had only one question:

  When are Jake and Blue going to fuck?

  VIII

  Blue remembered it happening the night after La Casa Nevada burned down.

  Mysterious was the adjective most often used in the newspaper accounts of the predawn fire that consumed and destroyed La Casa Nevada. Mysterious is a word encouraging speculation of the wilder sort, and at the city desks and in the gossip columns and in the studio commissaries and at the gin rummy games at Hillcrest and at Brenda Samuel’s whorehouse in the Hollywood Hills, where the Industry elite gathered to fornicate in an ambiance of complete privacy and where it was said that Jacob King was a volume customer, much of the speculation had to do with the same Jacob King.

  Jacob King would always claim that he had never met Brenda Samuels, and that he had not paid for a piece of ass since the two dollars he gave at the age of ten to Philly Wexler for the use of his sister.

  It was Chuckie O’Hara who was the source of this information. While I am willing to accept the first part of the claim, I have trouble with Jacob taking Chuckie into his confidence about Ruth Wexler.

  The headline and accompanying story in the Times about the fire was discreetly placed on page eight, below the break:

  MYSTERIOUS EXPLOSION LEVELS NEVADA PLEASURE PALACE AUTHORITIES SEARCH RUBBLE FOR CLUES

  Cosmopolitan Pictures’ Weekly Newsreel offered a series of shots of the still-smoldering construction site; in the background, fire and police officials could be seen picking through the embers and talking to Lilo Kusack and Benny Draper, who were unnamed and who I was able to identify only by running the film slow-motion, and then freeze-framing and technically enhancing the footage. In the stentorian tones that the commentators on those old studio newsreels all seemed to favor, a voice-over said: “A propane leak is the cause given for the explosion that destroyed what was to be America’s number-one gambling palace, La Casa Nevada, in the Mojave Desert near Las Vegas. Authorities here discount rumors of arson or other foul play. Here is Clark County Supervisor Lyle Ledbetter.”

  There was a cut to Lyle Ledbetter, in an open-necked shirt and a straw cowboy hat: “I have been assured by Fire Chief Ben Hawk that his department’s initial investigation has indicated there is no truth to the speculation that this was anything else but what it was—a fire. These things happen …”

  Then over a final shot of the still-smoking sign saying, GRAND OPENING DECEMBER 31ST—HAPPY NEW YEAR, the commentator’s voice: “There is no immediate word as to when construction will begin again on La Casa Nevada. And now for a change of pace, the French Fillies promenade at the Easter parade …”

  Jacob King was called in for questioning by the Los Angeles Police Department on the matter of the fire at La Casa Nevada. He appeared voluntarily without an attorney, and although he was fingerprinted and a mug shot was taken, he was neither charged nor held in custody. The police refused to be quoted even off the record, but I have culled all seven newspapers publishing in Los Angeles at the time, and by incorporating the remarks each paper claims Jacob King made, and by throwing out repetitions and inconsistencies, I am able to draw together one coherent statement: “I’m a businessman. I can’t take those New York winters any more. My health. I’m looking for investment possibilities. Someplace where I don’t have to shovel snow. I say to Lieutenant Crotty, I’m having a little trouble here. Maybe you can help me out. This so-called felony you keep referring to. It occurred in Las Vegas, right? And Lieutenant Crotty, he says, Right. So I say to him, What are you guys in Los Angeles doing, bringing me in and mugging me and printing me on a Las Vegas case? You want to arrest me, arrest me, send me over to Vegas in leg irons. But you don’t do that, I say to him. So I keep reaching the same conclusion. You got nothing on me. And one last thing, I say to him. Under Section 516 of the California penal code, all photographs and fingerprints must be returned to the accused if no charges are brought and the accused has no prior conviction in this jurisdiction. You can look it up, I say to him. I did.”

  In fact, Jacob King’s reading of Section 516 of the California penal code was accurate. Both the mug shots and the fingerprints were returned to him, and were found among his effects after his death. I find Jacob’s having the California penal code at his fingertips almost as interesting a comment about him as the homicides he is alleged to have committed. It bespeaks both an intelligence and a sense of h
umor that I had previously been unwilling to concede.

  Morris Lefkowitz was eating lox.

  “This was not the deal, Morris,” Jimmy Riordan said. “We wanted a nice straight business arrangement. Now a hotel burns down. I don’t want to know who did it. I don’t want to know how the person did it. I don’t want to point any fingers. All I know is Jake is putting us into the construction business, and we’re going to have to build our own hotel.”

  “So we’re in the construction business,” Morris Lefkowitz said. “A new business, a new challenge.”

  “You don’t just go out there, torch their operation, not expect another shoe to drop.”

  “Sometimes it’s important to keep your eye on the big picture, Jimmy,” Morris Lefkowitz said, “not think all the time about shoes dropping.”

  Jimmy Riordan approached from another angle. “And we got to deal Jackie Heller in.”

  “His brother Leo was a nice boy. Did what he was told. No questions. Jackie will do what you tell him to do, Jimmy.” Jimmy Riordan did not miss the point. He would be the messenger bearing Morris Lefkowitz’s message to Jackie Heller. “It runs in the family.”

  “What do you want to cut him in for?”

  “Chump change,” Morris Lefkowitz said.

  Jimmy Riordan wondered if he should try again, because that was his advocate’s obligation, but he knew that Morris Lefkowitz had already made his mind up. Nevertheless. “Morris, Benny is not going to let this happen.”

  “Tell me, Jimmy,” Morris Lefkowitz said, selecting another slice of pink lox, smelling it, and then laying it on his plate as if it were a sable pelt, “would you rather be in business with Benny Draper or with Jackie Heller?”

  Morris had already worked it through, Jimmy Riordan thought. As usual. In the best of all possible worlds, it was no contest. Jackie Heller was a boob who could be bought, as Morris knew, for chump change. Benny Draper was a crazy boob, with a significant piece of the action, the greed to want more, and a willingness to use violence to see that he got it.

  “Have some lox, Jimmy,” Morris Lefkowitz said.

  “Morris.” One last time. Explore all the options, as he had been taught at law school. Explain the possible repercussions. “Believe me. This could mean bad stuff.”

  “You know what, Jimmy? I’ve seen bad stuff before, and I’m still eating lox.” He picked his teeth with the silver toothpick he kept on his watch chain. “Jacob’s there. We’re here. Go with Jacob.”

  Blue Tyler was dancing by herself to the music of Pal Joey on Jacob King’s Victrola when she looked up and saw him framed by the French doors leading into the living room of the house on St. Pierre Road. She wondered how long he had been there, watching.

  “I know this house,” she said. It was as if she felt no explanation was needed to explain how she had been allowed entry, and as if she knew he would not ask for one. “It used to belong to Chuckie O’Hara.”

  “I don’t know any Chuckie O’Hara.”

  “Well, then, you don’t know anything, do you?”

  “That’s possible.”

  “The director. He’s done three of my pictures. And now Red River Rosie. Chuckie’s a fairy. You know what a fairy is?”

  She amused him, and amusement had never before ranked high in his pursuit of the carnal pleasures. “I think I know what a fairy is.”

  “His boyfriend was the butler. Withers, I think his name was.”

  “Woodson,” Jacob King said.

  “Anyway I saw them necking in the kitchen at the wrap party for Lily of the Valley. Chuckie directed that, too. I was eleven. No, twelve. I came out of the kitchen and I said to my mother, ‘Withers is in the kitchen kissing Chuckie’s penis.’ ”

  “You think you know a lot, don’t you?”

  “I know that Arthur says you burned down La Casa Nevada.”

  “If I burned down La Casa Nevada, it was stupid of you to come here.”

  “Did you? I mean, burn down La Casa Nevada?”

  “I was here last night.”

  “Getting laid. By one of Brenda Samuel’s girls. Arthur says that was your alibi.”

  “What else does Arthur say?”

  “Arthur says you’re a gangster. Are you a gangster?”

  The question did not faze Jacob King. It was one he had been asked most of his adult life by reporters and assistant district attorneys and by people ostensibly on the right side of the law, and he understood the frisson they received by asking, and the power he had over them by not minding that they had asked. “That’s a newspaper word. Some people use it. It’s like movie star. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Movie star does too mean something,” Blue said quickly. It was as if Jacob King had challenged her entire value system, the only one that held any meaning for her. Usually she was in control, and here was a man she suddenly suspected would be difficult to control. “It means people don’t care what I’m in, they come to see me. Movie star means I can make any picture I want.”

  “Gangster means I can shut it down.”

  She was walking around the room now. There was a photograph in a silver frame. “Is this your wife?”

  He nodded.

  “Arthur told me you were married. Arthur said you killed people. What do you say about that?”

  “I’d say Arthur leads a secondhand life. And I’d say you’re getting pretty sick of that.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then turned, walked out of the living room, across the foyer, and slowly began to climb the main staircase. She had loved staircase shots since Lily of the Valley, when she, a poor servant child, was pretending to be the lady of the manor, only to be discovered and banished from the main house as a thief. She tried to have a staircase sequence in every picture. She knew where the camera should be placed, and how it should track her up the stairs, one long traveling shot and no cutaways.

  After a moment Jacob followed her. When he got to the second-floor landing, he watched her disappear into the study next to the master bedroom down the corridor.

  “It’s a Remington, and it’s a fake,” Jacob King said.

  “Who’s Remington?”

  “A famous painter.”

  “What do you keep in the safe? Your tommy gun?”

  Jacob pressed a button and the painting disappeared up into the ceiling. “It’s open. Open it.”

  She pulled open the door, and gasped. The safe was full of loose cash and stacks of bills still in their paper wrappers. “You keep this kind of money in an open safe?”

  “It’s one of the advantages of being a gangster. No one’s going to take it.”

  She kept looking at the money, as if it were the fruit in the Garden of Eden. “How much is it?”

  “A hundred grand. Maybe two hundred.”

  She scooped a handful of cash from the safe and held it in her hands. “For my sixteenth birthday, I signed a seven-year contract that made me the highest-paid teenager in America. I make twelve thousand five hundred dollars a week this year, but I never see it. My agent sees it. My lawyer. My business manager. My accountant. I’ve only held a hundred dollars in my hands once in my life. And that’s when I made a contribution to the March of Dimes on behalf of the Industry. Mrs. Roosevelt thanked me.”

  “Take it,” Jacob King said.

  Suddenly she threw the money into the air, then watched it drift down, her childlike avarice almost as highly developed a sense in her as sex. “I don’t want your money,” she said finally as the bills dropped off her like snow.

  “What do you want?”

  “What do you think I came here for?”

  “Are you lucky?” Blue said later. She could see the full moon shining through the open French doors in the bedroom.

  “So far. Why?”

  “Arthur said if you didn’t watch out, you were going to get killed.”

  Jacob did not reply.

  “That’s why you should stay with me,” Blue said. “Because I’m lucky.”

  “
How lucky?”

  “Very lucky. During the war, I was fourteen, I was on this war-bond tour with Carole Lombard. She was great, Carole. We talked all the time. Usually about men. I mean, she treated me like a grown-up. I told her some things I never told anyone, and she told me she really loved Clark, but that Ted Fio Rito, you know the bandleader …”

  Jacob nodded.

  “… she said he was the best she ever had.” She rolled over and brushed her lips over Jacob’s cock. “Like you with me.” It was a line she would have insisted on saying if the Hays Office allowed fuck scenes. He lifted her up into the crook of his arm. “Anyway. The tour was a big success, we sold over two million dollars in bonds, I said I would kiss any man who’d buy ten thousand dollars’ worth of bonds, and Carole said she’d kiss anyone who’d buy fifty thousand dollars’ worth, and if you bought a million dollars’ worth, well, you just think about what she’d do for that. It always got such a laugh. I said, Carole, what if someone buys a million, and she said, someone’s going to get the fuck of his life. But finally we just wanted to get back home, we’d been away so long, the whole trip we’d been on a train, and so we decided to fly instead. TWA. A DC-3. It made a stop in Las Vegas. A gas stop. I got off, I didn’t think it was going to leave so quickly, and it took off without me. And crashed into a mountain. Everyone on board was killed. Including Carole.”

  Jacob King took a deep breath. “That’s lucky.” He ran a finger down her stomach. “I guess I’ll stick close to you. Try and buy a piece of your luck.”

  She rolled over and looked at him, as if debating whether to say something more. “Actually …”

  “Actually what?” Jacob said.

  She rose from the bed without answering and went to the doors leading to the balcony. Tears were welling in her eyes and she did not want him to see them. She did not like to think about the crash, because the crash made her think about why she had missed the plane, the reason she had never told anyone, not even Arthur, and with Arthur she shared her worst secrets, even those that hurt him most. It was a reason that saved her life, but there were moments, rare, it should be said, when she wondered if she might have been better off had she been on the plane when it smashed into Potosi Mountain, and rescue crews were dispatched to bring down the bodies, and then she wondered if she would have had a bigger funeral than Carole. She knew everyone would have cried. Even Moe. She tried not to cry now and, as always when she did not want to yield to emotion, searched for an appropriate line of dialogue from a favorite movie. That was the thing about movies. There was never a situation that had not been anticipated in some picture. High in the night sky she could see the stars.