Playland

by John Gregory Dunne

  It was like I wasn’t even there, Chuckie said. And thank God for that, because I was afraid someone might ask me about the hearings, and whether I was going to be called or not. If Moe had heard the rumors, and I’m sure he had, Lilo had a tap on the Committee, of course, he never let on. I suppose it was a collateral benefit of having my leg blown off. That meant I couldn’t have been a Communist. But Blue was simply off-the-map that day. I think that as Jake was becoming more circumspect, she was taking on a little of his wildness, and she was wild enough to begin with.

  “Blue,” a reporter asked, “you’ve been working steadily since the age of four, so you must really like to work, is that right?”

  Blue Tyler shielded her eyes from the flashbulbs. “Like to work?” She giggled. “Let me put on my Industry spokesman face.” She knit her brows. “I want to be known as the hardest-working star in this Industry to which I owe so much, and which gives so many people a release”—she paused, then giggled some more—“from their drab, unhappy, crappy, shitty little lives. Jesus, you guys are trying to make me sound like fucking Loretta Young—”

  A studio press agent interrupted, trying to restore some kind of decorum. “What Blue means is that for the first time in the history of Cosmopolitan Pictures—”

  “What Blue means,” Blue Tyler said, “is what Blue just said.” She peered at the press agent. “Stanley, what are you making that cutting gesture across your throat for? Are you trying to cut me off? These reporters are my friends. They’re not here just to stuff their faces with Cosmo’s booze and some lobster Newburg. You are my friends, aren’t you, guys?”

  The reporters laughed.

  “What Blue means is that for the first time in the history of Cosmopolitan Pictures—”

  Another question broke through the press agent’s spiel. “Blue, do you have any hobbies?”

  “I like to drown cats.” She gnawed on a fingernail and stared lewdly at the questioner. “And fuck. I really like to fuck.”

  The publicity man was sweating profusely, the stains creating moons under the arms of his jacket, trying to prevent the press conference from further deteriorating into chaos. “… a former child star emerges …”

  Nobody was listening. It was now just a question of how far she would go. “Are you at all spiritual, Blue?”

  “I pray all the time,” Blue said. “Just the other day, I went into Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills. I’m not even Catholic, but I got down on my knees and I prayed that Mr. French … you all know J. F. French …”

  J. F. French raised a hand holding an unlit Havana cigar.

  “… what girl hasn’t been down on her knees for Mr. French.”

  There was loud laughter from the reporters.

  J. F. French stared impassively at Blue, then walked to the banquette where Jacob King was sitting by himself, toying with a drink.

  “What did she tell you about me?” J. F. French said, the color rising in his face.

  Jacob suppressed the urge to ask what Blue might have told him that made Moe so suddenly angry. It was something to remember. “Nothing.”

  “Good.” J. F. French seemed satisfied. “Some people are ungrateful in this business. Ingrates. You got to watch out for them.”

  “You mean Blue?”

  “Not Baby Blue,” J. F. French said. “She’s a good little girl.” He rolled the unlit cigar under his nose and contemplated Jacob King. “So tell me, how’s the hotel business? A little more complicated than”—he hesitated—“than what you used to do.”

  Jacob let the remark pass. “I’m thinking about producing, Moe,” he said casually. “I was thinking I’d produce Blue’s next picture after Broadway Babe. And I deliver her to you. She remains exclusive with Cosmopolitan Pictures.”

  “You want to become a producer?” The idea appeared to astonish J. F. French. “Jake, I hear you’ve got all the troubles you can handle with that hotel of yours.” He rose from the banquette. “You’re way over budget, I hear. Way, way over.” He clapped his hands loudly. “That’s it. No more questions. Get those freeloading bums out of here.” He turned back to Jacob. “A producer.” He started to laugh, the way he laughed at Shelley Flynn. “You ought to think like Morris, Jake. The fur business. Fur is forever.”

  XV

  He wanted to do a Western, Arthur French said. A Brooklyn Jew, and he wanted to do a Western. He hired Dudley Nichols to work up a story, with Blue as the lead. Chuckie told him Dudley had won an Oscar for The Informer. Needless to say Jake had never heard of Dudley or The Informer. All the while Lilo was saying where did the seed money come from. Lilo had a way of asking questions in such a way that they became accusations.

  And that was when it went wrong?

  Sending him out here always was a demented idea, Arthur said, with that uncanny ability of his to make hindsight seem like prescience. But it really began to go wrong the day he hit Lilo.

  Melba Mae Toolate remembered they were doing head when the call came that morning from Jackie Heller. Whether indeed Blue and Jacob were engaged orally is subject to question, as Melba tended to punctuate her memories according to the sexual acrobatics she claimed she was performing at the exact moment of the incident remembered. It was however a Saturday, she was sure of that, because there was to be a croquet luncheon at the house on St. Pierre Road, and croquet luncheons took place only on Saturday. And she had not intended to invite Lilo.

  “Jacob, don’t answer it.”

  Jacob King tousled her hair and reached for the telephone.

  “We’re never alone anymore,” Blue said. “There’s always all these fucking people around.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said into the telephone. “Jackie.” He sat up in bed. “What’s up?”

  “Jake, where the fuck are you?” Blue crawled up on Jacob’s chest. She could hear Jackie Heller shouting at the other end of the line. “You were supposed to be here yesterday. We got decisions to make, checks to sign. We’re already two months behind schedule, and today my plumbing supplier says no more deliveries until he gets paid, certified check, nothing else, seventy-five grand, so I got two dozen plumbers sitting on their ass on double time, waiting for somebody to write a goddamn check that can be covered …”

  Jacob distractedly fondled Blue’s breast with his free hand. “I keep telling you, Jackie, let Eddie handle it.”

  “Let Eddie handle it.” Jackie’s voice was strangled with rage. “Eddie Binhoff’s a contract killer, for Christ’s sake, that’s the only fucking thing he knows about contracting …”

  Blue began sliding back down Jacob’s chest. He was beginning to get angry, and seeing him angry always made her feel erotic, in command, able with her encyclopedic sexuality to calm his furies.

  “Wait a minute, hon,” Jacob whispered. Then back into the telephone, his quiet voice, the dangerous voice. “I’ll give him a check, Jackie. I’ll hire a plane and send it over this afternoon.”

  “It’s got to be a cashier’s check, Jake.”

  “It’ll be out of my own account. A personal check from Jacob King. That’s better than a cashier’s check. You tell him he’ll have it by tonight. If that’s not good enough for him, then Jacob King will be insulted.” He let the words sink in. “And then you tell that fuck to start making his deliveries or Eddie will break both his fucking arms, and then he’ll stick a piece of dynamite up his ass and light it. You tell him about Dominic Conti’s hands. That ought to do the trick. Don’t worry about it, Jackie. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He slammed the telephone back into its cradle.

  “Who’s Dominic Conti?” Blue asked. Jacob’s circumcised prick stood straight up, as thick as a pepper mill. She wondered if he could balance a telephone book on it. Chuckie had once told her about some South American who could do that, but she would match Jacob’s dick against anyone’s. Even Walker Franklin’s. Walker was not circumcised, and the folds of his foreskin had the consistency of the treads on an automobile tire. His dick always had a urine
smell, and she guessed that was why she preferred Jewish men and their circumcised cocks.

  “A guy Eddie used to know. Listen, come up here.”

  “Jacob, I’m not finished.”

  “We’ll finish later. I need a favor.”

  A pout. “What?”

  “I want you to ask Lilo today.”

  “I’ll ask Lilo. It’s that cunt Rita I won’t ask.”

  “Lilo won’t come without her.”

  “No.”

  “Blue. It’s a favor. The first one I ever asked.”

  “You’ve done wonders with this place, Jake.”

  “Thanks, Lilo.”

  “What do you call this thing we’re sitting in?”

  “A gazebo.” Jacob pronounced it “gaze-boe.”

  “You had one in Red Hook, right?” Lilo started to laugh. “And I bet they pronounced it ‘gaze-boe’ in your neighborhood, too, right?”

  Jacob King flushed, but he had vowed not to be provoked, and smiled.

  “Rita was beginning to think Blue didn’t like her, the way we were never invited here, me being Blue’s lawyer, you and me being partners, she had to think that, you know how dames are.”

  “You’re not a croquet player.” He saw Blue at the center wicket check to see if anyone was watching, then move her ball slightly with her foot to get it in a better position. Cheating came naturally to her. She was playing in a mixed doubles foursome with Chuckie, Arthur, and Rita Lewis. “These afternoons are for serious players.”

  “So if I’m not a serious player, then how come we get this last-minute invitation?” Lilo waved at J. F. French. “Moe, you’ll be glad to know, I took two tables for your Mount Sinai benefit.”

  “So we’re even,” J. F. French said. “I took two for UJA.”

  Lilo turned back to Jacob King. “The way of the world out here, Jake. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

  Jacob King took a deep breath. “We’re running a little short at Playland, Lilo.”

  “You know, I figured there was a reason Rita and me got invited at eleven o’clock this morning, and I figured that was the reason, and not that Blue wanted pointers from Rita on how to do Broadway Babe.” Lilo smiled at Jacob King. “We should define our terms here, Jake. One, we’re not running a little short, we’re running big short. And two, we’re not running short, you”—he paused for emphasis—“are running short. We give you a budget, you’re twice over it already. Frankly, Jake, you got a problem.”

  “So it’s my problem.”

  “Your problem, right, exactly. Bottom line. We send somebody in there to pick up after you, it’s coming out of your piece.” Lilo rose suddenly from the table. “Shelley. Long time no see.”

  “I was in Chicago,” Shelley Flynn said, embracing Lilo. “A gig at the Drake. My clean shit. No cooz jokes. I save my dirty shit for Playland when it opens. How you doing, Jake?”

  Jacob raised a hand in greeting. It was as if he had been dismissed by Lilo Kusack.

  “Chicago,” Lilo said. “You remember that joint in Moline, Shelley? When you were just starting out, and I was booking bands?”

  “Nino’s,” Shelley Flynn said, taking a place at the table under the candy-striped umbrella. “Nino’s Flame Room. That was a tough joint, Nino’s. Those guys”—Shelley Flynn flattened his nose to one side with a finger—“knew how to kill a guy with a newspaper. You ever heard of that, Jake?”

  Jacob King shook his head, not about to offer his professional expertise.

  Shelley Flynn jabbed an imaginary newspaper. “The Chicago Tribune was good, like a fucking Louisville Slugger. Hey, Jew-boy, they’d say, poking you in the fucking ribs, your first show was shit, you better be funny the midnight show or we’ll break your fucking kidney, Sidney. Hey, I said, my name is Sheldon, not Sidney. You want to break my kidney, get my fucking name right …”

  Lilo roared with laughter, all the while looking at Jacob.

  “… for the newspapers. ‘Shelley Flynn, headlining the bill at Nino’s Flame Room in beautiful downtown Moline, was murdered last night …’ ”

  From an adjoining table, J. F. French said, “I should be the one breaking your kidney, the grosses on your latest.”

  Shelley Flynn rose and knelt down in the grass beside J. F. French. “J.F., seriously, I die tomorrow, I want my ashes spread on your driveway, so your car don’t skid …”

  Lilo Kusack wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and attacked his lunch. “That Shelley, what a guy. He gives me gas I laugh so hard.” He broke a roll in two and stuffed half in his mouth. “So, Jake, Moe tells me you want to be a movie producer.” A hard laugh. “A word of advice.” Lilo drew his right hand into a gun and pulled an imaginary trigger. “Stick to what you’re good at.”

  Jacob drummed his fingers on the table, determined not to be provoked. “I didn’t like this to begin with, Lilo. But the deal is, we’re partners.”

  “Look around, Jake.” Lilo’s hand took in the manicured lawn and the tables full of people. “This place is full of people who understand deals. Deals aren’t open-ended. Ask anybody here. You had your shot. You got rid of Benny. You deserve credit for that. Digging up Round Trip Buchalter, that was genius. That kind of deal you know how to do. But you ask me, it’s time we put somebody on the job over there who can add and subtract.”

  Blue’s voice suddenly reached them.

  “Arthur.” Blue was trying to prevent Chuckie O’Hara from slamming her ball. “Isn’t there a rule against someone playing with a wooden leg? It gives Chuckie an unfair advantage, because that thing of his is so heavy.”

  Lilo watched Blue for a moment. “She’s not very interested in your problem, is she? And you don’t understand it, because you think she’s crazy about you.” Lilo carefully buttered the other half of his roll. “I’ve been around this business a long time, Jake. I understand girls like Blue. They like to be around people like you. It makes them feel wild. It makes them feel dangerous. The fact you’re a gangster is what gives her the goose. Not you. Morris pulls the plug on you, see how long she sticks around.”

  Jacob tried to control himself.

  “So you’re fucking her.” He looked Jacob up and down. “Jake, who hasn’t she fucked?”

  Jacob King erupted from his chair and smashed Lilo Kusack in the face. Lilo’s chair toppled over with him in it. Jacob sprang to his side and began savagely kicking him as he lay on the gazebo floor. Suddenly Blue appeared and jumped on Jacob’s back, trying to pull him away. “Goddamn you,” she screamed, “you don’t hit people. They only do that in B-pictures.”

  Jacob shook her from his shoulder and wrenched her around, holding her by the wrist. “What exactly do you think I am?” His face was contorted with rage. It was as if no one else was present. None of the other people on the lawn said a word. On the floor Lilo assumed a fetal position, and dabbed at the blood pouring from his nose. “A hood? A mobster? You think I’m a killer? That gives you a thrill?”

  “Get your fucking hands off me.”

  Jacob suddenly released Blue. She looked at him for a moment, then turned and fled from the gazebo.

  Quelle melodrama, Chuckie O’Hara said, quelle dramaturge. There were all these people milling around, pretending nothing happened. Thank God for Rita. Okay, everyone, the show’s over, she said, like she was a traffic cop, ordering everyone around, go home, get laid, get a drink, tell everyone all about it, it’s an event, like Pearl Harbor, you can tell people you were here that day. Arthur, you drive Lilo to the emergency room at Mount Sinai, she said, and to Jake, Where do you think you are, back at the social club in Red Hook? Even Blue didn’t get off free. She was up in the house and kept on asking, What could Lilo have said that made him do that? And finally Rita was just fed up to here, and said, You wouldn’t understand, Blue, it wasn’t in the script. And with that, Blue bounces out the door, gets in her car, sideswipes Jake’s Continental, and nearly cracks up on her way out the driveway. And in the middle of all this, Jake had just d
isappeared. We looked all over the house, and he wasn’t there, and nobody had seen him leave. So Rita pours herself a drink, and she says, You know something, Chuckie, I wished you fucked women, because you’re my type of guy. I would’ve loved being on that island with you. Like I loved being here this afternoon. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

  Of course, her day had a postscript.

  It was three in the morning when Rita Lewis spotted Jacob King’s smashed Continental on a deserted stretch of Mulholland Drive. Jacob was smoking a cigarette at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the lights of the San Fernando Valley twinkling below. Rita parked and got out of her car.

  “What did you tell Lilo?” Jacob said. He was unshaven, his shirt streaked with sweat and dust, and he looked exhausted.

  “I didn’t have to tell him anything. Lilo’s not used to getting beat up at a croquet game. So he takes two Seconal, two shots of Scotch to calm him down, and he’s out until morning. If I’m lucky, he doesn’t wake up, and he remembers me in his will.”

  Jacob laughed. The laugh he had when he was on top of the world, Rita Lewis thought.

  “What you don’t understand about Blue and Lilo, Jake, is they’re going to go to each other’s funerals,” Rita said. “This is a community here. All these people today, they all belong to it. Everybody there, except for you and me. Their kids marry each other. One of them dies, they all show up to sit shiva. Except it’s with drinks, and Virginia ham, and everybody doing a little business, and Barry Tyger talking about the stuff dreams are made of. You don’t understand that.”