Jacob held her close. I’ll kill him, she thought he said, but she wasn’t sure, it sounded like a line in a picture, not real life. He held her so tight she thought he would crush her shoulders. Oh, God, she thought he said, but again she wasn’t sure, she was only sure he understood.
“I never told Arthur.” She burrowed her face into Jacob’s shoulder. No tears, it was just such a relief to tell someone. She had never done it with him again, she wasn’t after all one of the French Fillies, who could be fired and not missed, she was Blue Tyler, she was only fourteen years old, but the failure or success of Cosmo’s entire slate of pictures depended on her, Mr. French knew that and she knew that, and what happened at the Fremont gave her an edge that she never intended to lose, and from that day on she always called him Moe.
“I want you to go back to town first thing in the morning,” Jacob said suddenly.
“Don’t you want me anymore?”
“I’ll rent a plane.”
“I don’t see why I have to go back.”
“Just try doing what I say for a change.”
“I don’t have to shoot for another three weeks. You just don’t want me anymore.”
He had run all her pictures in the screening room at St. Pierre Road, and he knew she was doing what Chuckie called her patented pout. He wanted to say, I want you for the rest of my life, but it didn’t sound like him. Some other time, perhaps. Not now. “Listen. Blue. What I do … you think it’s glamorous.” He paused. The fact you’re a gangster is what gives her the goose. “It’s not. Sometimes it’s dangerous.”
“Jacob. You think I don’t know that.”
Not some other time. Now. “I want you for the rest of my life.”
The plane was ready at dawn, idling on the tarmac, a single-engine Cessna four-seater. Blue rummaged through her shoulder bag for a bandanna as Eddie Binhoff took her bags from the trunk of Jacob’s Continental. Jacob walked over to the mechanic who was inspecting the aircraft. The pilot was already inside, looking at his charts.
“All set, Mr. King,” the mechanic said. “It’s clean.”
“For your sake I hope it is,” Jacob said. “Because you’re going with her.”
“I said it was clean, didn’t I?”
“I always like to make sure.”
“Hey, wait a minute …”
“Maybe you want to talk it over with my friend Eddie over there?” Jacob said.
The mechanic shuddered. He had heard about Eddie around town, and he had heard what talking anything over with him involved. He wiped his hands on his coveralls. “I guess I go to L.A.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
The mechanic took Blue’s bags from Eddie Binhoff and put them into the Cessna’s luggage compartment. Blue knotted the bandanna, and then clung to Jacob.
“You know something? I’m not afraid to fly anymore. That’s one thing you did for me.”
“So call me.”
“So maybe I will.”
He kissed her, held her tight for a moment, then released her. She reached the door of the plane and looked back, one renegade to another, a melancholy joke between them.
“Big bad gangster,” Blue Tyler said.
It’s funny what you remember, Melba Mae Toolate said. Do you know what I remember about that day?
What?
I remember that the fender on the Continental, you know, the one I sideswiped the day he hit Lilo, I remember it still wasn’t fixed. That wasn’t like Jake. He always wanted everything just right.
Do you think he knew …
About what was going to happen?
I nodded.
I think he knew.
And that’s why he sent you back?
I think he decided when I told him about Mr. French.
Why?
You’d have to ask him.
You mean, it was about rules he didn’t understand.
You’d have to ask him.
Did you call him?
Every night.
XIX
Even The New York Times put it on the front page:
KING, GANGSTER, IS SLAIN IN NEVADA
—Jacob King, 41, former New York gangster and associate of Seventh Avenue furrier Morris Lefkowitz, was slain last midnight by a fusillade of bullets from an unidentified gunman in his top-floor suite of the King’s Playland Hotel, which was scheduled to open this upcoming New Year’s Eve …
The Daily News headline said:
RIVALS RUB OUT JAKE KING, GANGLAND’S NO. 1 MOBSTER
—Jacob (“Jake”) King, 42, the nation’s No. 1 gangster, and pal of Hollywood celebrities, was ambushed tonight in his palatial six-room suite at the soon-to-open King’s Playland Hotel in Las Vegas. Attention was focused on rivals who wanted to take over his multimillion-dollar hotel and gambling empire, although local authorities said they had no clues as to the identity of his unknown killer or killers …
The Journal-American:
JAKE MOWED DOWN BY GANG
… The suave, personable King was killed wearing a purple smoking jacket when bullets from an unknown killer tore him apart in front of a portrait of himself he had recently commissioned. Sources say that the portrait was splattered with the hoodlum’s blood …
The Post:
JAKE’S LEGACY—NATIONWIDE GANG WAR?
—A gang war of nationwide proportions may have been touched off by the snuff-out death of Jake King, 43, mob hit man, gambler, and man about Hollywood …
And Winchell: “Is Blue blue??????… And didja hear what they’re calling that portrait Jake King’s brains were splattered all over?… Modern art, geddit?… Jakey was wearing jodhpurs in his pitcha … Jodhpur Jakey better be riding a fast horse to get out of where he’s going …”
Jacob walked through the empty casino, spinning the roulette wheels and checking the quality of the felt on the crap tables. The clocks. He should get rid of the clocks. There should be no clocks in a casino, time for a gambler should stand still. He would do the kitchen tomorrow, too. A chef had told him he had found evidence of rat shit, it was that way in every new building, no big problem, just drop a little something on the inspector from the Department of Health, otherwise an exterminator would have to be called in. Exterminator, Jacob wrote on the leather-bound notepad he always carried now. Another gift from Blue. From a place in Paris. He would go there with Blue one day. It made him smile that he would call the exterminator rather than pay off the health inspector. Bribery had always been second nature to him, anyone can be bought, an article of faith learned from Morris, but Playland was going to be on the square. He pushed the elevator button, and when the light did not immediately come on, made another note to have an electrician check it out tomorrow. In the elevator he noticed some barely perceptible chipped paint. Still another note. So many details. The paint in the corridors. The brass numbers on the room doors. Jackie Heller. Jackie was playing footsie with Lilo again. Rita said she had seen them at Hillcrest. Jackie had forgotten to tell him he had gone to L.A. What else had Jackie forgotten to tell him? Eddie could handle that. When things slowed down. Where was Eddie anyway? He checked his watch. Blue would call at ten. He walked down the hall and opened the door to his suite.
Eddie Binhoff was standing at the picture window, staring out at the KING’S PLAYLAND sign.
“Eddie. I been looking all over for you, where you been, you want a drink, something to eat?”
“Come over here, Jake, take a look at this.”
Jacob walked to the window. Outside the marquee, neon was lighting up the night sky. He had planted a dozen palm trees around the Playland sign, five grand a tree, take it out of my end, he had said to Jimmy Riordan, and the fronds were now waving gently in the night breeze. It was the right thing to do.
“You did it, Jake,” Eddie Binhoff said.
“Goddamn,” Jacob King said after a moment. “It’s beautiful.” He would deal with details tomorrow. Right now he just wanted to enjoy the moment. “We’ve come a long way f
rom Red Hook, Eddie.”
“A long way.” Eddie Binhoff moved to the bar and turned on the radio. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians live from the Starlight Roof at the Waldorf-Astoria, Carmen Lombardo on the vocal. I’m wild again, beguiled again … “Calls for a drink.”
… a simpering, whimpering child again …
Jacob stood by the window, mesmerized by the sign. He wondered if the lights should blink on and off. No. They should stay on, as they were now, reflecting off his face, like neon sunlight. “Eddie, Guy Lombardo’s the kind of class guy I want here, I’ll call him tomorrow.” He turned, and there was Eddie Binhoff standing by the bar, the double-barreled shotgun he had stored in the bar cabinet in his hand. “Oh, no,” Jacob King said. “It had to be you, didn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, Jake,” Eddie Binhoff said, and he was sorry, even as he pulled the triggers, and the force of the shotgun pellets propelled Jacob backward against the wall, down which he slid until he came to rest against his still-unhung portrait.
… bewitched, bothered, and bewildered …
XX
Morris Lefkowitz flew out for the funeral, his first trip on an airplane. He booked under his own name on United, then under the name Schmuel Leibrandt on TWA, and of course with Jimmy Riordan took the TWA flight, sending Lillian King and Matthew and Abigail on United. Just in case. Lilo, Jimmy Riordan had said on the telephone from New York, Morris doesn’t want the press there, and Lilo Kusack had said, not to worry, we put an announcement in the paper that the service will be at Forest Lawn, I know a place in Van Nuys, it’s where Schlomo Buchalter was buried out of, they do a nice little service, no crowds, you don’t mind if I don’t show up, Barry Tyger’s busy, too. Morris said that was fine, he understood Lilo’s reluctance, and then, because he did not trust Lilo Kusack, made still other arrangements, under Schmuel Leibrandt’s name, to hold the service at the Heyer & Sobol Funeral Home & Mortuary in Studio City, the name of the deceased being Yakov Kinovsky, whose body was to be cremated and his ashes placed in a mortuary crypt.
Lillian King and her two children, along with Morris Lefkowitz, Jimmy Riordan, and Eddie Binhoff, were the only mourners at the mortuary, except for Rita Lewis, her face hidden behind a thick black veil, and Chuckie O’Hara, who that very morning had been served with a subpoena to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was Rita who had found out where the service was actually being held, a call from a pay phone to Jimmy Riordan so that Lilo could not overhear, and the promise, Listen, Jimmy, I’m not the fucking lady in red, I’m not going to finger Morris, Jake was a friend of mine. She had called Chuckie, and he had said Jake was a friend of his, too, of course he would go, and by the way I got my subpoena today. What’re you going to do? Rita had asked on the way to Studio City, and Chuckie had said, Auntie Charlton will think of something crowd-pleasing, darling, you can count on that.
The rabbi in his prayer shawl recited the kaddish, and said a few words about Yakov, a generous contributor to Jewish causes, and then the service was over. “Thank you, Morris,” Lillian said, dry-eyed through the ceremony, Matthew and Abigail each clinging to a hand, neither quite sure what it all meant, and then Lillian had asked Jimmy if the woman in the veil was one of Jacob’s whores, why not let him die in peace, and what about the fairy with the gimp, there were children here, they shouldn’t be exposed to such things. Right, Lillian, Jimmy Riordan had said, you are absolutely right, it shows a definite lack of respect, all the while thinking the only benefit of this unhappy occasion was that he would never have to see Lillian King again.
Morris Lefkowitz hung back until after Lillian departed, then approached the urn containing Jacob King’s ashes, which rested in the still-open crypt. There was a typewritten card on the door of the crypt: YAKOV KINOVSKY (1907–1948), and under Jacob’s name, the words, chosen the night before by Jimmy Riordan from a dictionary of quotations, “But westward, look, the land is bright.”
Morris’s face was ashen, his hand unsteady, and the wattles on his neck hung over the collar of his shirt. He’s going to die soon, Jimmy Riordan thought suddenly, a calculation he had disciplined himself not to entertain, even as the evidence of Morris’s physical decay had become steadily more apparent, even as, concomitantly, his fabled mental agility flashed only sporadically, like the filament in a lightbulb that blazed brightest just before it burned out. Jacob had made the mistake of calling Morris old to his face, while Lilo would only whisper it into Jimmy’s ear, a messenger certain that his message would not be passed on. Loyalty was a virtue Jimmy valued, and his loyalty to Morris Lefkowitz had always been total and unquestioning. For fifty years, Morris had been a master puppeteer whose marionettes danced to the tune of his supple fingers, with never a misstep. Now there were too many puppets falling in a heap. First Philly Wexler, then Jacob, with all the attendant litter. Morris was on borrowed time, and if Morris, his protector, was, then so too was Jimmy Riordan. The difference was that Jimmy knew it, while Morris seemed to comprehend it only fleetingly, as when he made Jacob’s funeral arrangements, Morris whose entire life had always been governed by his sense of self-preservation. It was for Jimmy to make the deals ensuring that Morris died in bed, a field marshal emeritus. And at the same time put into place a deal for himself, after Morris was gone, commuting his self-exile to the country of crime, where Morris Lefkowitz had reigned for so many decades as absolute monarch, and where James Francis Riordan had served twenty years and then some as the monarch’s chief minister.
“Sometimes, Jimmy,” Morris Lefkowitz said, turning away from the crypt, “I wish I was in another business than the fur business.”
As Morris started for the door, his step faltered and Jimmy quickly motioned for Eddie Binhoff to go with him. Eddie nodded, then stopped, and for a second placed both hands on the ceramic urn holding the last remains of Jacob King.
Jimmy stared at the urn and made a mental note that as soon as Morris was on the plane back to New York, Eddie Binhoff should take care of the Jackie Heller problem and then get lost for a while.
As for the future, speed was as much a priority as skill. The extortioner’s skill he did not doubt he possessed, and he thought that time, though short, was still on his side. First however he had to pay homage to the dead, and ask forgiveness.
Rita told him they would all be at Chasen’s that evening, she was giving it a pass, it was a show of solidarity that she did not wish to attend, a way of letting the community know that life went on, and it was at Chasen’s that Jimmy Riordan found them, sitting in the first banquette on the left inside the door, Blue Tyler and her court, J. F. French on one side of her, Arthur on the other, and Lilo Kusack next to Moe.
“This little girl’s starving,” J. F. French said. “Get us a plate of shrimp … then the hobo steak …”
“I’m fine,” Blue Tyler said, demure in Edith Head’s black wool jersey, and the two strands of natural pearls around her neck, and the small hat with the point d’esprit veil.
“Of course you’re fine,” Arthur French said. “Nobody said you weren’t fine.” He snapped a finger. “Waiter, get us some shrimp …”
“Why do you think we’re at Chasen’s, little girl?” J. F. French said, and then answered his own question. “We’re at Chasen’s because you’re fine.”
Lilo Kusack half rose. “Jimmy,” he said to Jimmy Riordan, who was sliding into the booth next to Arthur French. “Swell to see you. You know Moe and his son, Arthur. Blue, this is Jimmy Riordan from New York, Jimmy, this is Blue Tyler.”
She knew she was not supposed to speak, but only nod and smile as if Jimmy Riordan was just another fan seeking an autograph, but she could not help it, she had to ask. “You were a friend of—”
“God rest him, we were all his friends,” J. F. French interrupted. “Where’s that shrimp, Arthur?”
“A big dreamer,” Arthur French said, ignoring his father.
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