by Al Zuckerman
The take from the Xanadu, given the high occupancy rate, was coming in lower than Iz had estimated it should. And he had assigned various smart people—inside guys and outsiders too—to find out why. They came up with nothing. Everything, they claimed, seemed okay. Mr. H. had made maybe a miscalculation.
Until one day when Leroy piped up and asked if he could have a look at the books. Iz couldn’t help but notice people smirking, but Iz had quashed that quick, and ordered the accounts given over to Leroy. And Leroy, poring through the exact same ledgers, had in a day separated out a dozen crucial numbers from thousands of others, and put his finger right on the discrepancy. Liquor inventories were too high, which meant kickbacks. The booze purchases had been juggled to fit with the bar sales figures, but they failed to match up when compared with buys of sundries such as maraschino cherries, olives, cocktail napkins even. That time Iz was not the only one who’d been impressed.
And then more stuff: Leroy putting those young coon pals of his into Dukey’s numbers as runners and inside of six months doubling those routes’ takes.
And right now Leroy was the only young guy Iz could count on. Scott might develop, and David; but the schvarze was a sure thing, a jewel really, any way you looked at him. Iz hoped with all his being that the boy’d be all right.
Then the surgeons, still in their whites, were coming out the heavy metal swinging doors toward him.
Iz braced himself, rose.
The young man was still anesthetized, but he’d be all right.
Iz silently gave thanks.
Late that afternoon, Iz rode out to his gaming acquaintance’s house in the northern Virginia woods. The dead rifleman was a puzzle, no one Iz’d ever seen, nor had the Washington ace or his people. Only one thing about the stiff seemed recognizeable or traceable, a business card in a rear pocket: Carmen Scapellatti’s.
CHAPTER 16
“Hey, one thing you know you never told me about is: what about curse words?”
Ernie Blomberg searched his memory. Yeah, right, Iz had to curse from time to time. Who didn’t? But his actual words, phrases? Ernie couldn’t think of any.
“Well,” he shrugged, “I guess the usual stuff.”
“Fuck, shit, Jesus, son of a bitch, that kind of thing?”
“Nah, nah, nah.” Julie Dubrowsky, who’d been taking in this final coaching session, piped up, “not Hargett, not Izzie. In that department he’s a regular monk. A guy gets his goat, and that don’t happen often, he might call him a rat, vermin, an infected cockroach. But all that fuck stuff, nah, not from him.”
Yeah, it hit Ernie, true. With words, Hargett was, you might say, refined. “Except for kind of in Yiddish,” he added, “sometimes.”
The actor’s face, Ernie saw, flinched in panic.
“Hey, come on, Mr. Blomberg. You didn’t ever once talk about any Yiddish. I mean, I can do dialect and all, the Goldbergs, you know, any of that. I mean, you heard me audition Cockney, Irish, Charlie Chan. But real language stuff, I can’t wing that. … You got a book, a pamphlet, anything at all I could prep from? Yiddish curses, I mean, what are they?”
Actors, Ernie groaned to himself, are all alike; worry worry, always scared shitless. This barnstormer here had done musicals, Kaufman and Hart, Shakespeare, everything, and he looked so perfect, was Iz Hargett to a tee: the wavy hair, pursing lips, quickmoving eyes, straight-up-and-down posture, even the tiny cocky chin tilt. Dukey Maffetore half an hour ago had shook the trouper’s hand and hadn’t blinked an eye—Ernie had nearly burst wtih pride—and there’d been a dozen or so other respectful nods and salutations since they’d arrived here at The Paradise. Old Jerry Douglas could probably make this thing work.
“Jer, now relax and trust me, will you?”
“I trust you, Mr. Blomberg. Hey, of course I trust you. You know me. I work on a role, and I like to go for every ounce that’s in it. You know.”
Ernie was perspiring. The finger-wringing actor he could handle, but not Dubrowsky, not if Julie were to get impatient. A snarl from Nutsy, and Douglas’s self-confidence could shrivel to nothing, the whole deal go flying out the window.
Ernie made himself grip Dubrowsky’s wrist under the table, to keep The Nut quiet, while reassuring Douglas, “For the vast majority, it’ll be just a nod, a wave. For you actually to speak to, it’ll be a handful only, and for them, it’ll be enough, ‘Hello, nice to see you,’ that sort of thing. Chances that you’ll have to curse, in Yiddish or any language—zilch, really.”
No, he’d never be called on to curse, not in the midst of all this super schmaltz. Gilt picture frames, sterling flatware, crystal chandeliers, the hotel on the eve of its opening glittered like a thousand-dollar whore. Fantastic how in the middle of the Nevada desert Dubrowsky had built this palatial clip joint. The investment capital, Ernie read between the lines, came from Iz and his group, which no doubt was why Mr. H. had been scheduled to appear.
“Ernie, look.” Julie pointed his chin toward the dining room entrance a good hundred yards away.
Blomberg turned his eyes but not his head. Squinting, he picked out Andy Feld, whom even as a kid he’d had no use for.
“All right, Jer,” Ernie pep-talked, “here comes sort of an appetizer. Guy over at the door is Andrew Feld. Call him Andy. You’ve known him since public school.”
“He here to visit me, or gamble, or what?”
“Only the invited guests are here this early, so probably not the gambling.”
Dubrowsky snorted. “That shmo’d be too scared to play. He’ll lose a nickel and go home crying.”
“Probably he’s here for old time’s sake,” Blomberg whispered soothingly, “and you’re paying his tab—sort of a complete freeloader.”
“Why’s that?”
Ernie was not exactly sure. “See, he’s some small-time mucky-muck in Washington, for Uncle Sam. So maybe he does you a little favor—who knows what?—say, a little inside dope now and then.”
“You want me to thank him for something? Is there anything he’s done for me lately?”
“Look, you keep your head in one direction,” Dubrowsky muttered, “straight ahead. He’s an old buddy. Hargett sticks by his old buddies. You just stick to that.”
“Well uh what about—he got a wife, kids? I should know about that, shouldn’t I?”
“Oh, a missus he’s got himself, a lulu,” Dubrowsky cracked, his eye on the approaching Feld.
Ernie strained to remember the woman’s name, but couldn’t. “Jer, if it comes up, just say, the little woman, or the missus. That’ll be plenty good enough.”
“Hey, do I like this fellow, say, a bear hug’s worth? Or just a smile, a good handshake, you know, nothing extravagant?”
“Look buster, just remember one thing. …” Julie began.
Ernie burned to shut The Nut up, but there was a roughness to Julie now, an ominousness.
“. . . You are the king.”
“The king?”
“Anything you say or don’t say, any way you say or don’t say it, that’s gonna be just fine. You get my meaning?”
“You’re a great man,” Ernie added in explanation, “That’s how he’ll see you, so he’ll accept most anything you say.”
“Go to it, kid,” Dubrowsky whispered.
Then Feld was a foot away.
“Iz!”
“Andy. How are you? Nice, very nice you could make it all the way out here.”
“It’s just a terrific, terrific place. Julie. Ernie.”
They all shook hands.
Ernie swelled with pleasure. The man was Izzie incarnate.
Feld looked around. “It’s incredible, beats the Xanadu even.”
“Yeah, it did turn out kind of nice, but it’s Julie’s baby really. The credit goes to him. Hey, Andy, look, we’re having a little business meeting now; so you and I’ll have to get together a little later on, okay?”
“Oh, of course, sure. Thanks, Iz. So long, fellas, see you later.” And Feld faded o
ff.
The actor gulped down half a glass of water. “Well? Okay? What’d I do wrong?”
“Not a damn thing,” Julie snapped back.
“You were a hundred percent.” Ernie beamed. God, if Iz himself turned up here, it’d be so nice. Ernie could almost taste that little extra pat on the back, in crisp green. And considering the sensation Iz had made yesterday at the Kefauver hearing, it might be possible he’d surprise them.
Iz slowly shook his head, marveling. Except maybe for the eyes, a little shifty, this actor could be himself in the mirror. Clothes were different a bit of course from the stuff he owned, but close enough so no one would notice probably, except himself.
“You did a job, Ernie. You really did.”
“Thanks, Iz.”
“Your hair,” he asked the man, “it’s naturally wavy that way?”
“No, no. Mr. Blomberg took me to have it dyed, and permanent-waved too.”
Iz nodded. He’d never had a solid handle on Ernie’s hits in the theatre, how much luck versus how much skill, talent, sweat. Now it was clear. Ernie was good.
Iz looked past his old buddy through the broad window to the airport’s nighttime lights: luminous blurs, pinpoint twinkles, yellow, red, green. Odd, this huge distance he’d traveled, and now he wouldn’t budge much beyond this scruffy airport manager’s office. His intention had been not to come at all, to notify the few insiders that his coming wasn’t worth the risk, and to have the actor placed up on a balcony or somewhere else conspicuous but inaccessible, so it’d appear to the lesser members of the group that everything was normal. Then reports filtered back from Chicago and Cleveland, the two big sources of the Paradise’s funding, that the boys were getting uneasy. Could old Izzie be losing his touch? How come he’s letting himself get fucked around? Time maybe for some fresh blood. Iz then decided that it’d be less risky to come and quietly meet with these investors than to stay away. But somewhere up over Saint Louis or Kansas City, he’d again altered his plan. No, no Paradise, no going to the hotel, even secretly, until this tough stuff got itself settled. The men he needed to see would come out to this airport.
“My hat’s off to you, Ernie, and you too, Jerry; but what I’ve got to tell you now is, I’m canceling our little show.”
Ernie’s face fell. “What do you mean, Iz?”
“What’s the problem?” Julie was perplexed.
The actor, who didn’t talk, looked like he had stomach cramps.
“Jerry, you’re getting your contract, every nickel, plus you’re free now. No more work. So what’s so bad about that?”
The man shrugged sorrowfully. “It’s hard to explain, about being an actor, I mean. It’s not just a job. It’s a marvelous role, a challenge, and I was just kind of getting into it. So please, just until tomorrow morning, couldn’t I, please?”
Iz told him quietly, “The thing is over, now, right this second.”
“Why?” Julie wanted to know.
“Too chancy. For you, Mr. Douglas. Also it would not be too great for the Paradise if on opening night we had a bomb, or some other kind of maybe messy accident on our hands.”
“Who would pull that kind of stuff on me?” Nutsy defiantly snarled.
“But, Mr. Hargett. …”
“Look, Mr. Douglas, forget it.”
“. . . But Sybilla Garborg, I was going to be meeting her tonight. And it’s been my greatest dream to play opposite her.”
“We’re talking about your life.”
“But there are so many people there. It’d be so hard for anyone to harm me, or you.”
Iz felt a twinge of wanting to give in. Then he thought of Leroy, blood overflowing that shoe. … “It wasn’t in the papers, but yesterday somebody almost got me, right outside the Federal Courthouse on busy Pennsylvania Avenue. Leroy took a fifty caliber in the leg. Another shot chipped his skull. So now we avoid any more such trouble. That clear?”
Glumly one by one they nodded.
“What about my stuff?” the actor blurted.
“What about it?”
“I can go back and pack it up, can’t I?”
“Couldn’t a chambermaid do that for you?”
“I’ve got a makeup kit to put back together. Must be twenty-five items laid out on that dressing table. It’d be hopeless if anyone else screwed around with it. It won’t take me long, really.”
A makeup kit, Iz sighed to himself, that should be his own only worry. “Do it quick, then. And the two of you, stay with him. …”
Only two makhers came, Mick “Socky” Saccardo from Lake Forest, Illinois, and Tony Anselmi from Shaker Heights. Iz had expected four or five, including some old-timers from bootleg days; but these two, both younger than Iz by about a decade, had since the War shot up in Chicago and Cleveland. Iz sensed that if these two wolves could be satisfied, the others would stop their howling.
Saccardo, whose brooding good looks reminded Iz of Rudolph Valentino, moved through the ritualistic chit-chat double-quick, charging right to the point: “We’re not happy with Dubrowsky.”
Iz understood, we’re not happy with you.
“You have a man in mind you think can run the place better?”
Iz then only half-listened to their candidate’s name, pedigree, history, distinctions, Iz’s mind racing all the while to find the lever that would propel these carnivores back out the door soothed, reassured.
Sticky problem. Their murderous reputations worried him. More worrisome was the twenty percent they personally owned. That added to the support they’d no doubt lined up, they probably had majority control already in their pocket.
“What if I were to tell you fellas, nothing doing?”
“You’re supposed to be the most logical guy in America.” Anselmi who had an owl-like face and a voice lined with gravel spoke up for the first time. “So why would you want to do that?”
“Because this thing smells.”
The two mid-westerners looked at each other surprised. Saccardo’s eyes shone with anger.
Iz meanwhile had narrowed his possible approaches to two: reason—showing how in spite of his problems he could make more money for these boys than they could for themselves; or unreason—scaring the shit out of them.
He’d instinctively opted for the latter.
But rough customers both, what would frighten them? With each having a small army back of him, Iz knew he could not get them to lose sleep about their personal safety. Nor could he scare them with financial loss. They each had plenty of bread and butter on the local level which Iz could never get near, and they knew it.
One spot though where they might be vulnerable—pride. If this push-out of theirs were to end up making them look dumb, that, Iz intuited, would worry them—a lot.
“Iz,” Anselmi continued in his half growl, “I don’t think we got all that much really to talk about. Between Socky and me, we got the fifty-one percent, now, right here.” and he slapped his hip.
“You fellows ever hear about Galveston?”
“No,” Saccardo answered, his eyes still ablaze, “And I don’t want to hear about it either.” He rose to leave.
“Sit down,” Iz said gently.
To Anselmi’s amazement, Saccardo almost automatically obeyed.
“We had a sawdust joint there during the War,” Iz continued as if nothing had happened. “Big operation. LaPolla who ran everything else in Galveston convinced Enzo Giunta who owned a big piece that LaPolla ought to be running that too. Why some little Jew out of Miami? You never heard that story?”
Anselmi and Saccardo exchanged looks, questioning ones.
Iz began to breathe easier. He’d guessed right. Giunta, who in Kansas City ran the most old-fashioned operation in America, had put his good-sized percentage in with these boys—for now.
“Enzo, in case you never heard, counts the take personally, every single dollar bill.”
“So what’s he got to do with this?”
Iz kept a poker face, but he smil
ed inwardly at Anselmi’s bluff. “See, LaPolla did used to run a very sharp operation. But twenty gaming tables going at once, that gets complicated. One off night, and you’re out a hundred grand. LaPolla, sharp as he was, where could he have got the experience? But old Enzo, once that count started coming down some nights, well, you can imagine how that upset him.”
“That will never happen here”—Saccardo clipped each syllable—“but if we ever have to, we’ll buy up Giunta’s piece, and yours too.”
“LaPolla, you know, had exactly the same idea, and when the time came, he made exactly the same offer. And Enzo wasn’t mad or anything. He just laughed at LaPolla. Matter of fact, the whole country laughed at him. That poor guy couldn’t face anybody any more. Santo LaPolla,” Iz tilted his head toward Anselmi who appeared the more powerful of the two, “you sure you never heard of him?”
“The whole country will never laugh at us, Mr. Hargett.” Saccardo contemptously emphasized the mister.
“Maybe not.” Iz’s tone was nonchalant. “But for your own good, maybe you’d better call Enzo, see what he plans to do—well, just in case.”
Grudgingly they left to make the call. An hour later Saccardo phoned. They would give Dubrowsky a three month grace period.
Iz was elated. His hunches still were holding.
By then, it was too late to catch a plane out, and Iz took a room in a motel.
Instantly awake, he recognized Julie’s voice.
“Iz, Izzie, it’s me, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” His gut already was drum-tight. Had to be bad news for Julie to come crashing in the middle of the night.
“I’m turning the light on.”
“Go ahead, sure.”
“You were right.”
Blinded at first, Iz took a minute to focus and see Julie, the dandy, hair dishevelled, tuxedo rumpled, spotted, stained. Was it blood?
“What happened?”
“They booby-trapped what was supposed to be your room.”
Iz felt punched in the neck. That shlimozzl actor had to go for his makeup. “Where were you?”