Playland

by John Gregory Dunne

  Jacob did not reply for a moment. “I need a favor, Rita.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “How do you know it’s money.”

  “You’re not the first guy to ask me for money, Jake. Someone calls me at three o’clock in the morning, says to meet him out here, this godforsaken place, and then says he needs a favor, I can figure it out. How much?”

  “Seventy-five grand.”

  A low whistle escaped from Rita Lewis’s lips. “Why?”

  “Nobody’s been paid at Playland. I thought we’d be finished by now, everything would be all right.” He took a deep breath. “The suppliers said no more deliveries effective Monday morning. Jackie says the crews wouldn’t report for work.”

  “And that’s what the fight with Lilo was about?”

  “Among other things,” Jacob said. He did not elaborate and knew Rita would not ask what the other things were. In any event, Lilo would probably tell her what he had said about him and what he had said about Blue. Lilo always had the last word. “So I wrote out a personal check this afternoon, rented a plane, and flew it over. I wasn’t on the ground more than ten minutes. I don’t have the money, Rita. I need you to cover it until I can talk to Morris. If it bounces, then it’s all over.”

  Rita leaned against the car and wondered if she could count the lights below, wondered in how many of those houses people were fucking at that very second. “Why not?” she said after a moment. “It’s my retirement money, Jake. For that time in my life when I have to buy myself a beachboy.”

  “I’m good for it, Rita.”

  “One thing. Your girlfriend. She turn you down?”

  “I didn’t ask her.”

  “Why?”

  Jacob hesitated. Rita knew the answer even before he spoke. As far as he had traveled, as far as he wanted to go, it was only with people like her and Eddie Binhoff that he would ever feel really at home.

  “I don’t know her long enough, Rita,” Jacob King said.

  XVI

  That was Saturday.

  By Sunday morning, Lilo Kusack already had his lines out.

  Jacob was supposed to have lunch at Hillcrest with Shelley Flynn, and he arrived on the dot at twelve-thirty, having decided it was best to pretend nothing had happened yesterday, it was an altercation that would be quickly forgotten and no score kept. At the desk, he was told that Mr. Flynn had just called and said he would be unavailable for lunch, and no, there was no further message, and so Jacob went into the bar and ordered a Tanqueray Gibson straight up. There were only a few people present, but no one looked up, and no one said hello. Barry, he greeted Rabbi Baruch Tyger, but Barry Tyger looked through him as if he was not there, Barry Tyger to whom in a gin game four days earlier he had fed cards that made him a seven-thousand-dollar winner. He had just taken a handful of salted peanuts when a waiter said that the resident manager wished to see Mr. King, could he come with him to the resident manager’s office. Jacob signaled for a chit to sign, but the bartender shook his head, and busied himself washing glasses, while the waiter hovered close to his elbow until he finished his drink. It reminded Jacob of the way cops tried to box you in when they came to arrest you.

  The resident manager’s name was Nathan Krakower, and for a moment Jacob wondered if he was perhaps kin to Hyman Krakower, alias Pittsburgh Pat Muldoon, who came to such an untimely end in Sheepshead Bay the winter of 1933. Probably not. Nathan Krakower did not favor Pat Muldoon, and he was so nervous his voice threatened to break. The membership committee, Nathan Krakower informed Jacob King, had recently rewritten the articles in the club by-laws relevant to guest memberships. They were no longer open-ended, and so Mr. King would have to surrender his guest card, and while he would of course be welcome if he came to the club with an accredited member, he unfortunately had exceeded the number of guest visits allowable under the new rules, which were retroactive and included the period of his guest membership. As he handed over his guest card, Jacob said he understood the difficulty of Mr. Krakower’s position, and that he had handled the matter with the tact and delicacy he had come to expect from the members and staff at Hillcrest.

  There was one further item, Mr. Krakower said, and by now he was visibly perspiring. Some members, and he was not at liberty to name them, had asked for assurances that no harm would come either to the membership, the staff, or the club facilities as a result of this action.

  It was then that Jacob King laughed.

  Lilo also contacted Hedda Hopper. On Monday, her column in the Times began: “This editorial is dedicated to all those Hollywood stars who try to play with fire, particularly Blue Tyler. Blue, you first won America’s heart as a four-year-old cinemoppet, and all your dreams should have come true by now …”

  As it happened, Chuckie O’Hara was shooting wardrobe and makeup tests for Broadway Babe with Blue that Monday morning, even though the rewrite on the script was still not finished and the score only half written. Her eyes were all puffy, as if she had been crying all weekend, but when Chuckie asked if she had seen Jacob she told him to mind his own fucking fairy business. Everyone on the set had seen Hedda’s column, and as Blue slumped at the makeup table, her hairdresser was reading it to her.

  “ ‘… dreams should have come true by now. You have youth and beauty …’ ”

  “C.C.,” Blue said to her makeup man, “I have a zit on my nose, fix it.”

  “As soon as I finish with the bags under your eyes, sweet,” C.C. said.

  “ ‘… and fame and jewels,’ ” Gavin, her hairdresser, continued. “ ‘You have an army of adoring fans. You have studio scion Arthur French begging you to set the date. But let’s talk frankly, Blue. Some Hollywood insiders are saying …’ ”

  “Gavin, did you talk to that cunt?” Blue said irritably.

  “Hedda doesn’t talk to us little people, you know that, Blue,” Gavin said. He continued to read. “ ‘… insiders are saying your current flame is out, out, out. Blue, your fans beg you, don’t persist on a romance that only means trouble, with a capital T. You’re more royal than any king.’ Well, does she have a nerve. ‘More royal than any king.’ C.C., is that what they call a veiled reference?” Gavin put down the paper and examined Blue in the mirror, appraising the makeup. “You need … something.”

  “What I need is a good fuck, and you and C.C. don’t fill the bill,” Blue said.

  I saw him first, Chuckie said. It was supposed to be a closed set, and I’d heard that J.F. had barred him from the lot. I don’t know how he got on, maybe the studio police were afraid they’d get shot, but then they’d worked with him when he broke Benny Draper, and they liked him. Anyway, there he was, stepping over the cables and the stacked lumber until he got to the edge of the set. Blue was doing left profile, right profile, hitting her marks, it was uncanny, she never missed a mark in all the pictures I did with her. He didn’t say a word. I think it was the first time Jake realized she had a working life that no matter what happened would always exclude him. Then she saw him. Mr. Trouble with a capital T. Chuckie, she said, will you please ask that gentleman to move, he’s in my eyeline.

  The cunt of the eon, but a star. All right everyone, I said, take five.

  “I’m going to New York for a few days,” Jacob King said. “When I get back, I’m going out to Playland. I want you out there with me.”

  “I’ll be working,” Blue said. She still had the makeup Kleenex around her neck.

  “You’ll be finished.”

  Blue took the Kleenex from her neck and wadded it in her hand. “You ever think maybe we’re finished?”

  Jacob watched her for a moment. Her gaze did not waver. Then without a word he turned and headed for the stage door.

  “Chuckie, how much longer do I have to fucking wait around here?” Blue said.

  Did she cry? I asked.

  She only cried on cue, Chuckie O’Hara said.

  It was the first time Jacob King had been to New York since he arrived in California on the Sup
er Chief. Whether he drove to Bay Ridge to see Lillian King and Matthew and Abigail King is unknown. It is known—this from Melba Mae Toolate—that Jacob and Lillian talked more or less regularly on the telephone, business usually involving the children, or finances, or repairs on the house. Their last exchange, however, became so acrimonious that all communication between them had ceased. Soon after which a lawyer in New York contacted Jacob about working out a financial settlement for a legal separation, leading ultimately to divorce, with Lillian Aronow King having full custody of Matthew and Abigail King. The lawyer’s name was Ze’ev Boorstin, and in due course Ze’ev Boorstin was contacted by James Francis Riordan, attorney-at-law, who told him that separation and divorce were no longer contemplated, and that any expenses Mr. Boorstin had accumulated would be paid by Lefkowitz For Fur, M. M. Lefkowitz, Prop. Moreover, if Ze’ev Boorstin pursued the matter with Mrs. King further, a complaint would be lodged with the New York State Bar Association. Lefkowitz For Fur, Ze’ev Boorstin said. Is that Morris Lefkowitz? It’s enough for you to know that it’s M. M. Lefkowitz, Jimmy Riordan said.

  What was the reason for all this sudden acrimony? I asked.

  Jacob told her he wanted his brats out for the opening of Playland, Melba Mae Toolate said, and the bitch wife said I’m not sending them out to meet your new whore.

  Jacob told you this? I asked.

  I was listening on an extension, and I said, Who’re you calling a whore, you fat bitch. I couldn’t help myself.

  “Every prick out there’s on overtime, twelve hours a day, seven days a week,” Jimmy Riordan said. “You got plasterers in from Detroit. Detroit, for Christ’s sake. Carpenters from Cleveland. Fucking Cleveland. In fucking Nevada.” Profanity was an indulgence to which Jimmy Riordan rarely resorted, but there were times it got the attention he wanted it to get. “I didn’t know you were trying to end unemployment in the Cleveland locals. They’re having a hard time in Buffalo, too, you want to help them out. Will you just explain to me why? Why? In simple no-bullshit English?”

  “You been in touch with Jackie,” Jacob King said. “You went behind my back. I would’ve given you the figures, you just asked me. I know how much we’re over. It’s the price you pay, you want a Christmas opening. We got a building boom in California, everybody’s short work crews, that’s why we bring in Detroit, Cleveland. You just asked me, I would’ve told you that. But no, you go behind my back, you go to Jackie.”

  “Of course we’ve been in touch with Jackie. That’s what you do, Jake, you go four million dollars over budget. What’re you going to do now? You going to work Jackie over, like you worked Lilo over? That was smart, real smart, they do that in all the big companies these days. Merrill works over Lynch, Kuhn beats up Loeb.” He wondered if Jacob even knew what Merrill, Lynch and Kuhn, Loeb were. “Now I hear you want to be a fucking movie producer.” He started to say Your brains are in your dick, but thought better of it. “And I hear you want to buy your suits in England.”

  Morris Lefkowitz sat behind his desk, hands folded in front of him, his head swiveling between Jimmy and Jacob, saying nothing, taking everything in. He had aged since Jacob had last seen him. There were brown spots on his hands and on his scalp that he did not remember from before. There was no point in carrying on an argument with Jimmy. Morris would make the final decision. “Morris …”

  “Jimmy talks sense, Jacob.”

  “You know what you’re telling me, Morris?” Jacob King never thought the day would come when he would confront Morris Lefkowitz. You argued with Morris, but once his mind was made up you did not cross him. Morris knew best. “You’re telling me you’re an old man.”

  Oh, God, Jimmy Riordan thought to himself, I didn’t hear that. Morris Lefkowitz’s subjects showed him more deference than was shown to kings and popes, or paid the price if they did not. Jacob of all people should know that, he had pulled the trigger on Philly Wexler for a less heinous heresy. Lilo’s right. He’s crazy.

  “That’s the way you speak to Morris, then don’t speak,” Morris Lefkowitz said with difficulty.

  “I’m in touch with Lilo, Morris,” Jimmy Riordan said quickly. “He can move somebody out there tomorrow, bring the thing under control. Somebody who knows how to add and subtract.”

  “You used to have big dreams, Morris,” Jacob said. “You used to be a gambler. Now you sit here and tell me you’re turning your big dreams over to the accountants. To the lawyers. You’re letting the Fordham guys place your bets.”

  “Jacob, you are causing me such pain,” Morris said.

  “Your choice, Morris.” Jacob was relentless. “Is that what you really want out there, somebody, the only thing he knows”—Jacob looked directly at Jimmy Riordan—“is how to add and subtract. Put it together right, and it will last long after you and I are gone.”

  “His idea of right will break us, Morris,” Jimmy Riordan said. “Go on this way, California will pull their money out, and we’re back where we started. We got to think savings.”

  “Savings,” Jacob exploded. “What is this fucking savings you’re talking about.”

  “It’s a word you must’ve been in reform school the day it was taught,” Jimmy Riordan said, and immediately regretted it. The ad hominem was not his style. It placed him on the same level as his antagonists, and Jimmy Riordan detested a level playing field.

  Morris tented and untented his hands, rhythmically, as if keeping time. “Jimmy,” he said at last. “We give Jacob some leeway.”

  As always Morris Lefkowitz spoke in tongues. Leeway was for Jimmy to interpret. Leeway was granted to Jacob King as it would be to an unruly son. The son Morris Lefkowitz never had. The son from whom he would ultimately exact tribute for the offense of calling him old. “I’ll work out the figures, Morris.”

  “You work out the figures, Jimmy.” He raised his hand, as a pontiff might, a sadness in the gesture. “Mazel, Jacob.” It was what Morris Lefkowitz had said when Jacob King left this same office for California, but then it was a benediction, and now it had the sense of a farewell.

  The rain slanted down at La Guardia. Morris Lefkowitz’s black customized four-door Oldsmobile slid into a No Parking zone outside the departure entrance, and his driver, Rocco, put a hundred-dollar bill in his lap to give any policeman who asked him to move. Jimmy Riordan raised the window between the front and the back seat so that Rocco could not hear what he had to say, then put his hand on Jacob King’s arm. “Jake, I want to tell you something,” Jimmy said quietly. “I haven’t always worked for Morris. I wasn’t always a Mob lawyer. My first job out of Fordham Law School was working for the New York State Banking Commission. I started out checking the books at the First National Bank of Oneonta, New York. I look at something that’s costing too much, I get a funny feeling. A little buzz.”

  “You think I’m cooking the books?”

  “No. Cooking the books I understand. What I don’t understand is why you think you got to build the Taj Mahal out there.”

  Jacob almost said he wanted to be respectable, but caught himself. At his center of gravity, he knew that respectability would always elude him. He was who he was, and he would carry the tag Jacob King, with all it implied, to his last day. “Because I want to hear people say, Jake King built the Taj Mahal out there,” he said finally. It was not respectability, but as close as he could ever come to it.

  “At least you’re honest, Jake. Okay. So let me explain something, something I didn’t want to, but …” Jimmy Riordan lowered the window to the front seat. “Rocco, go inside, find out when Jake’s plane is leaving.”

  “Eight-thirty, Mr. Riordan.”

  “It’s raining, Rocco, it could be delayed.”

  “I got you, Mr. Riordan.” The driver opened the door and ran toward the departure lounge.

  “The Italians, you got to tell them things twice,” Jimmy Riordan said.

  Jacob smiled. It was a complaint he had heard often from Jimmy in days when life was easier, and Morris was younger.
New York days.

  “Jake, you want to be something you’re not,” Jimmy Riordan said. “You’re a hood. A smart hood. In time, maybe very smart, smart enough to cross over and be like Morris. That’s why Morris said okay today. Morris still believes in you. But Morris is also still a businessman. And there’s a point at which any businessman …” Jimmy paused. He knew Jacob well enough to know that he would understand the meaning of what he was about to say. He repeated, “… there’s a point at which any businessman will cut his losses.”

  Jacob King opened the car door. The rain splashed inside. “Morris is old.”

  “Jake, Morris wants you to be old, too. I want you to be old. Believe me.”

  “So long, Jimmy.”

  XVII

  From the continuing testimony of Lyle Ledbetter, appearing before the federal grand jury impaneled in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, to investigate matters pertaining to the shooting death of Jacob King o/a December 1, 1948. Court was called to order at 10:42 A.M., May 30, 1949, in Department C, U.S. District Courthouse, Las Vegas, Nevada, the Honorable Lucius Klinger, presiding. Stanley Prince, assistant United States attorney for southern Nevada, appeared for the government:

  THE COURT: Good morning. I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Mr. Ledbetter, you are still sworn. Mr. Prince, you may proceed.

  MR. STANLEY PRINCE (hereinafter referred to as “Q”): How are you, Mr. Ledbetter?

  MR. LYLE LEDBETTER (hereinafter referred to as “A”): All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.

  Q:: I think W. C. Fields has copyright on that joke, Mr. Ledbetter. Now, before we recessed Friday, you said you would ransack your memory about the state of affairs at Playland in the weeks after Jacob King moved here more or less permanently to oversee the finishing touches of construction. Where was Jackie Heller during all of this? He at least had a construction background?