Chuckie again:
Jake and Blue would have these croquet luncheon parties every Saturday at the house on St. Pierre Road. For all the sports he tried to learn, croquet was the only one he was any good at, he used to love to slam your ball out of the way, as if he was trying to knock it into Ventura County or was paying back someone who’d done him wrong. There was a violence about it, about croquet, for God’s sake, you got a sense that he was only truly master of his own fate in the world of violence. He’d play in these high-stakes games with Howard Hawks and Louis Jourdan and Mike Romanoff, Reggie Gardiner, people like that, all decked out in his white flannel slacks, and he seemed to be surrounded by this aura of mystery that they didn’t have, a distance. It was as if he knew everyone was talking about him, and they were a little afraid of him. He liked that. He was a celebrity in the kingdom of celebrity, and nobody is more fascinated by a celebrity than another celebrity.
Still Chuckie:
Jake and I always got along. I never knew exactly why. He didn’t like fairies, we made him nervous. I don’t mean in any sexual sense, that sexually ambivalent psychocrap that’s always dropped on studs. He just didn’t understand men who liked to fuck other men. Maybe in the joint, he said, if it’s a long stretch, but even then I think I pass. So I suppose our getting along had something to do with my losing my leg, it wasn’t a fag thing to do. He asked me if it hurt, and I said no, I was in shock, I didn’t even know the leg was gone until I woke up on the hospital ship, and then he asked if I thought I was going to die, and I said yes, and he said did that make you scared, and I said I couldn’t remember, but probably, yes, I was scared the whole time I was on Peleliu. Both days. So why’d you do it then, he said, you could’ve gotten out of it. As if I was stupid not to. He meant because I was queer, not because I’d been a Communist. God, I didn’t tell anybody that. That was around the time Alan Shay committed suicide after testifying, and all us old Commies were scared to death. Anyway I didn’t have an answer. It was as if he was trying to find out how his victims must have felt, those twenty or thirty people he was supposed to have murdered. Or maybe he thought it was going to happen to him one day, and he wanted to know how to behave, or how he should behave, he certainly would like to behave as well as this fairy movie director.
Meta liked to say—
Meta?
This girlfriend I had at the studio school, Melba Mae Toolate said. She wasn’t in the business.
And she said what?
Meta said that dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire, you ever hear that?
I heard that.
Well, Jacob was the best dancer I ever knew, outside of Walker Franklin, he made dancing like balling, you danced with him you couldn’t wait to ball after. You’d think someone who was such a good dancer would be athletic, but he wasn’t. Arthur could hardly do the two-step, but he was a good athlete, and this drove Jacob crazy. He thought if he bought all the right clothes, that was all he needed. Arthur rode, so he had to ride too. He had jodhpurs made and a hacking jacket, and he bought a polo helmet and some mallets, and he even had this artist guy painting a portrait of him in the jodhpurs and laced-up knee boots, he was going to give it to me as a present, but I saw it, and I laughed, big mistake, Jacob didn’t like people laughing at him.
What’d he do?
He fired the painter, said he didn’t know how to paint worth a shit.
What happened to the portrait?
It ended up over at Playland.
Unfinished?
Yeah.
What happened to it after …
Listen, I don’t know. Jesus, you ask a lot of fucking questions, it’s none of your fucking business.
Okay.
How about topping off my drink?
You sure?
What’re you, my fucking keeper?
(I opened another half pint of vodka and splashed some into her glass. She took a swallow, then a second. In the freezer, I found a frozen macaroni-and-cheese dinner, popped it into the microwave, and set the timer. By then her mood had lightened.)
The first time he got up on a horse, the horse threw him, and he took out his gun, I thought he was going to shoot it.
Really?
(A cryptic smile. In other words, it was a better story with the gun. Even in Hamtramck, she hadn’t lost the knack of juicing a scene.) He tried tennis, too, right?
All he could do was hit the ball hard, when he didn’t miss it. But I could beat him, and that was too much for him. I’d say to him, Jacob, you’ve got to set your feet like this, and you’ve got to be ready to move toward the add court or toward the let court, and he’d say, okay, okay, let’s do it, and I’d slam one by him. One day he flung his racket away, and he says you know what kind of game tennis is, and I said what kind of game is it. And he said it’s the kind of game Arthur plays, I bet he’s really good at it. And I said Arthur played in college. And he turns me around right there on the court, puts his hand up under my shirt over my boob, and he says, well, tell me something, did Arthur play this in college, was he as good at this as I am? So he took lessons every day, not from some club pro at Hillcrest, but from Lanny Todd, he was in the semifinals at Wimbledon in 1936, on our own court, because he didn’t want anyone to see how bad he was. He’d practice and he’d practice, he willed himself into being a tennis player good enough to beat me. He liked beating me, it was as if his life depended on it. Finally I said to him you play like a fucking gangster, and he said no, I played like a gangster when you were beating me. And then he said if I’m a gangster, what does that make you. And I said a gangster’s moll.
What else did you do?
We fucked a lot. All the time, actually. I gave him a locket from Tiffany’s once. A silver locket. With his initials and my initials on it. I put a couple of my pussy hairs in it.
(I nodded, and my absence of response seemed to make her rethink what she had just said.)
Listen, just say I put a picture of me in it. Don’t mention the pussy hairs. I was only kidding anyway. We kidded a lot. And gave each other lots of presents. With him it was always jewelry, you know, diamonds and shit. I remember a pair of emerald earrings. I didn’t tell him, but I had copies made, and then cashed in the real things. You see, I was always afraid I was going to be without money one day, broke, like I am now, and I wanted to have some stashed away.
Did he ever find out?
(She waited a moment.) Yes.
How?
Why the fuck do you have to know that?
(I did not reply. For a moment or so, neither one of us said a word. The buzzer on the microwave went off, and I removed the macaroni and cheese. It was so hot, I dropped it on the floor. My clumsiness had a soothing effect on her. As I was cleaning up the mess, she began to talk again.)
He brought them in to get insured, and the insurance guy said they were paste.
What’d he do?
I was at the studio, and I came home, and there was all this jewelry on the living-room floor. He didn’t say a word at first, he just got up and stamped it all under his feet, crushing it all to shit, and then he began to scream, if you wanted money, you just had to ask me for it, and I began screaming back at him, I threw a shoe at him, I think, and I said I never asked anybody for anything, and I’m not going to start with some fucking gangster.
What happened?
We ended up fucking, that’s how all our fights ended.
Did he hit you?
Never. Not once. I would’ve been out of there if he had. The funny thing is, we were having all these people to dinner that night, to see a picture, and we went through with it as if nothing had happened. You got to understand about Jacob, he wanted to know everybody. He’d say let’s have a few people in for dinner next week. And he already had a list made out. Eddie G. Robinson, he’d say, Ida Lupino, Linda Darnell, Arthur, I want to make a tennis date with Arthur sometime, Marvin LeRoy.
Mervyn LeRoy, I’d say.
Okay, so it’s Mervy
n LeRoy, he’d say. Chuckie, too.
And I’d say, You can’t have both Mervyn and Chuckie.
Why not? he wanted to know.
They don’t like each other.
Then fuck Marvin LeRoy, he said.
Mervyn, I said again.
You know the money in that safe upstairs? he said. I’ll bet it all he was born Marvin. You want to bet.
No, I said. I’d seen him bet. Once when he was playing cards and I was watching behind him, he reached up and put his hand between my legs, then raised ten thousand. One weekend he took a hundred sixty-five thousand off Moe French. The next weekend he lost it back, and ten grand more. I said bad cards? And he just smiled.
Meaning he let Mr. French win?
Meaning he smiled.
Playland was under construction by now, I said.
Yes.
Did he spend much time in Nevada?
He had this guy Jackie in charge over there. Jacob would talk to him every day, sometimes two or three times a day.
But he didn’t go over much?
Not at first, no. But he wanted the place finished so he could open up New Year’s Eve. And there were a lot of shortages. Wartime regulations or something. And he’d start yelling into the phone, what do you mean wartime regulations, the war’s over two years, for Christ’s sake, don’t give me shortages, Jackie …
Where was he when this conversation was taking place? Out by the pool? At the tennis court?
This was why I remember, it’s so cute. He was getting fitted for the tails he wore to the Red River Rosie premiere, he had all the measurements taken at the house, he had a three-way mirror in his dressing room, and the tailor was saying, you dress left or dress right, that meant what side of the pants did he want his balls to hang on …
I nodded.
And Jacob would be screaming we need copper, we need pipe, lumber, cement, all the shit it took to build a hotel, and at the same time he’d be saying to the tailor, I think the crotch is too low, and this guy Jackie thought Jacob was talking about his crotch, and Jacob said, no, no, Jackie, pay what you got to pay, pay black market you got to, who do you think I am, Cardinal Spellman, I’m going to worry about that? Who was Cardinal Spellman anyway?
The Catholic bishop of New York.
What’d he have to do with it?
It was just a saying.
He have any money in it?
I don’t think so.
Oh. I read in a magazine that they had all this real estate, the Catholics. So I thought he might have had a piece of Playland.
(It was something I truly wanted to believe: Francis Cardinal Spellman and Morris “The Furrier” Lefkowitz in a joint venture.) Could be.
Anyway. Jacob said he’d settle with those guys later. The guys who were jacking up the prices, I guess.
What do you think he meant by settling with them?
That he’d hurt them.
(She seemed to accept without question that to cross Jacob King would be to incur physical retribution.) Was there ever any time you were with him, I asked carefully, when you were afraid?
Once, she said after a moment.
What happened?
We were watching a picture at the house. That’s what we’d do nights we didn’t go out. Woodson would serve us dinner on a tray in the screening room, and I’d make some popcorn, it was the only thing I knew how to cook. Jacob liked to watch old gangster movies …
Really?
Yes, and Mr. French had found an early one Bogie had made …
“I thought it was great,” Blue Tyler said when the lights came up. She was stretched out on a couch, her head resting in Jacob King’s lap. “I love Bogie’s lisp, it’s sexy.”
Jacob took a handful of popcorn and dropped a piece in her mouth.
Blue yawned, and then seemed to realize Jacob had not replied. “You got nothing to say?”
He tried to drop another piece of popcorn into her mouth, but Blue turned her face away and it fell to the floor. Suddenly she rose from his lap and stared belligerently down at him.
“Well, what’d you think?”
“I thought it was all right.”
“Come on, Jacob, I want to know what you really thought.”
“Then I really thought it was a piece of shit,” Jacob King said quietly.
“You’re a critic now?” Blue said defensively. The movies were her turf, and suddenly that turf was under attack from a civilian who didn’t know how hard it was to make a film. It was so easy to be critical, it always made her furious.
“Okay, then I thought it was great.”
“No, I want to know what you didn’t like, Mr. Bosley Big Deal Fucking Crowther.”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s the critic for The New York Times. You don’t know anything, do you?”
“I know a couple of things.”
“Like what?”
From the projection room, the projectionist said good night, he would see them next week.
“Like what?” Blue repeated.
Jacob slapped his hands together, wiping away the popcorn crumbs. “Like the scene in the car,” he said at last. “The one where Bogie takes the guy out. He just pulls out his piece and starts blasting.”
“And that’s not how you do it.”
“No, that’s not the way you do it.”
“Well, how do you do it then?”
“Look, it’s not important …”
Blue was insistent. All her life she had gotten her way, all her life every caprice was satisfied, all her life there had been legions of retainers at her beck and call to do what she wanted done, however trivial or mean, and she was not about to be thwarted now. “No, I want to know.”
Jacob stared at her for a moment without speaking. “The way I hear, you do it this way,” he said finally, his voice so soft she had to strain to hear it. “You say, Let’s go out and get a bite to eat. You get a driver, you put your boy in the front seat next to him, you sit in the back. Everything nice and easy. You talk about the ponies, you talk about the Giants, you talk about the fried calamari at Mario’s, What you do is, you squeeze some extra lemon on it, it’s a real treat. Let’s go to Mario’s, you say.
“Except you take the long way,” he said after a pause. She was staring at him, her eyes not blinking, and he wondered if he should continue. “The quiet way. The guy’s still thinking about the calamari with the extra lemon, he can almost taste it, when bang, the guy in the back seat puts one under his ear. You open the door, you push the guy out. You wipe your piece clean, you drive over the Williamsburg Bridge, you drop the piece in the river, then you go looking for some of that fried calamari.” He was still staring at Blue. “That’s the way I hear it’s done.”
Blue shivered, then sat back down next to him on the couch. “You scare me sometimes. I’m not used to being scared.”
“You want to leave?”
“No,” Blue Tyler said.
XIII
Maury Ahearne checked in periodically from Detroit. Always after midnight California time. I had a feeling he had trouble sleeping. His calls were always collect. I wondered what he would have done if I did not accept the charges.
“I checked her old telephone records,” he said one night.
“Is that legal?”
“You want to find her, or not?”
I did not reply.
“Nothing there,” Maury Ahearne said after a moment. “Local calls, no long distance. The church, the drugstore, never even used up her message units.”
“I suppose something will turn up.” I was not hopeful.
“As a matter of fact.” I should have known he would save the best for last. “Remember I told you once she wasn’t on any kind of public assistance?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I checked out the banks in Hamtramck. It took a while, but I found out she had a savings account at First Federal Trust. There seemed to have been regular payments into the account. On the first and the fif
teenth of the month. Seven-fifty each time.”
I did not wish to know the level of extortion and intimidation Maury Ahearne must have used to get that information. “Account in her name?”
“M. M. Toolate.”
“How was the money deposited?”
“By wire. Money orders.”
“Still coming?”
“Stopped the first due date after she left.”
“How did she withdraw it?”
“Cash. A hundred bucks a pop. Four twenties, a ten, a five, three ones, and eight quarters. Never varied.”
This from a woman who before she was twenty years old was making fifteen thousand dollars a week. “Anything still in the account?”
“Took everything out the day she left. Didn’t close it, though. So she owes a finance charge. Five bucks a month. You got to keep a minimum amount.”
“It’s a start.”
“I’ll keep on top of it.”
I was sure he would.
“Arthur, she seemed to be on a kind of remittance,” I said when I talked to him in Nogales on the telephone the next day.
“What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t on welfare.”
“What about Social Security?”
Playland Page 31