The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  He was a much-sought-after guest at the fanciest of Hollywood fund-raisers, and would consent to appear only after a guaranteed donation to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. He was sought after also by both Jews and Protestants. This was no Father Coughlin, teaching hate and disruption. This was a thoroughly American voice, and checks were gladly given to aid his vast interests.

  There was a major change in the production of his show. A new producer, Church assigned, took over.

  Willie Peace, moving toward more and more experimental motion pictures, more explicit films, was proscribed by the Legion of Decency. He agreed to export his pictures to Europe, where the standards were looser.

  Willie began showing up at Hollywood parties with a beautiful young Irish would-be actress, a girl named Ellen McDougal. She was eighteen, black-haired and blue-eyed, and spoke with a marvelous, musical lilt. Slender, graceful, intelligent, and deeply religious, she had left her home and family in Dublin, when she had won a talent contest sponsored by a local beer brewer. It just happened that a Hollywood company was shooting scenes in and around Dublin—a historical romance set in the eighteenth century. As a publicity stunt, the movie company added to the brewer’s prize—five hundred pounds—and awarded the girl a trip to Hollywood and a guaranteed screen test as her prize.

  Reluctantly, the girl’s family allowed her to pursue her dream. She came to America, to the arms of a welcoming Irish-American family of distant relatives. A young aunt accompanied her across the country, and the two young women showed up for the promised screen test. The movie company was bankrupt, and no one was about to reimburse them for their travel expenses.

  Ellen McDougal would not return to Dublin to admit that she’d been taken. She was not a quitter or a whiner. She remained in Hollywood after reassuring her reluctant aunt that she would be fine, having found a job as a receptionist-typist for a talent agency. The aunt returned to the Bronx with misgivings, but reassured of her niece’s morals.

  Willie met Ellen McDougal one day when he was recruiting child singers and dancers for his Saturday-morning show, which he continued producing because it brought him easy money and security.

  Everything was special about this girl. She was the real thing. A perfect, storybook girl, bright and virginal. She was both untouched and untouchable, and Willie carefully charmed and cultivated her. For the first time in his life, dating became something to be treasured—pure enjoyment.

  Willie led her about the studios, let her watch the process of filmmaking and television production. He showed her the Hollywood tourist sights and the sights that tourists never got to see. He told her stories, true and embellished, about legendary stars. He dazzled her and did not even try to seduce her; she’d made it clear from the very start that she was a good Catholic girl.

  For the first time in his life, Willie was totally, overwhelmingly in love with a girl who seemed to return his devotion. He wanted desperately to marry her. She had abandoned all childhood dreams of being in the movies. Willie told her about any number of professional jobs associated with movies—safe jobs relying on ability, technical jobs, union-protected—and then gave her a job as a production assistant in his Saturday-morning company. She worked with the talented kids and took to it wholeheartedly. It was what she wanted to do, for a while. She loved kids.

  And she loved Willie.

  There was one obstacle. Ellen McDougal would only consider marriage in the Church. Willie, his Mexican divorce from Maryanne long forgotten and never mentioned, had not taken communion for years. That marriage had to be annulled or there could be no wedding with Ellen McDougal. It was just that simple.

  Willie’s feelings about the Church were ambivalent. But the answer flashed through him quickly: find some dinky little church, get on a Saturday-night line, give a quick version of a confession, without getting into hard specifics, do his penance, and take Ellen to church that Sunday morning, a true penitent newly returned to his Church.

  He would forget the snuff movie, the beautiful black girl, the bloody head of the blond stud. That had happened a long time ago. And after all, he hadn’t killed them. There was no undoing any of it, no going back and changing things. In fact, he wouldn’t if he could. It was the snuff movie that had made the rest of his life possible.

  The simple, logical thing would be just to forget it. He had a lot of other usual shit to confess. Who the hell would know the difference, or care? Not some overworked Mexican priest down in the barrio.

  God would know.

  It wasn’t exactly that Willie believed in God. It was more that he was afraid not to. He was, after all, a born-and-raised Catholic. The confessional, next to communion, was the most sacred rite. Better to avoid it altogether than to lie. You could skip quickly over a lot of the usual shit—adultery, lying, cheating, blah-blah-blah—but something like taking part in a murder? Shit.

  God would know.

  The Catholic boy deep within Willie would not permit him to do what he had originally planned: take communion without confession and what the hell. He just could not do it.

  He picked his confessor. Someone who would understand. Someone who had been, more or less, in his situation. After all, they went back a long way. All the way back to a winter night on a cold hill in the Bronx.

  When he approached Gene after a particularly wonderful show, Gene, exultant, carried by the passion and emotion of his sermon, shrugged him off.

  “Willie, come on. I’m not your parish priest. I haven’t heard confessions for years. Besides, it wouldn’t be right somehow. We are associates. There isn’t the anonymity of a good confessor.”

  Not friends. Associates.

  Willie insisted. “I want to marry this girl, Gene. She is the purest, most wonderful young woman. I’ve never touched her; I’ve never felt like this before about any woman. She is a sincere, dedicated Catholic, and I want to be worthy of her.”

  Gene studied the supplicant. A trace of Willie Paycek still trembled beneath the handsome even features and modulated voice. There was a slight wheedling tone if you listened closely, a strong degree of manipulation. But Gene also detected an earnestness and sincerity he found difficult to refuse.

  Gene relented. He dimmed the lights; gave instructions not to be disturbed. Willie had insisted: “Please, Gene, right here, right now. Don’t let me waver; don’t let me change my mind. I want to do the right thing, right now.”

  They sat on chairs, not facing each other, and went through the ancient, familiar opening litany and prayers. Both fell naturally into the assigned roles of priest and supplicant.

  Many years since his last confession, followed by a litany of sins, leading closer and closer to what both men knew to be the reason for this confession.

  First, though, he told about his marriage to Maryanne. Lying about a thing like that wasn’t really a sin, just expedient, necessary, something to get out of the way. They had eloped, after a quick Bronx service in a small, unfamiliar rectory by an unknown priest, to Hollywood.

  After Maryanne obtained a Mexican divorce, Willie had applied for an annulment through church channels. He had no doubt about the outcome, it was all in motion.

  “But on what grounds, Willie?”

  The marriage had never been consummated.

  “But I heard you had a child.”

  “She was pregnant when I married her, Father. By someone else. I never asked who. I didn’t even know, for sure, that she was really pregnant. I did it for money. From some people I can’t mention. As a favor. And they sent us out here and helped me get set in the Teamsters’ union. And I never touched her. I felt nothing for her. I did it to help out some people. And in a way, to help out the girl. She was pathetic, so I figured, what’s the difference to me? I got what I wanted out of it. So we didn’t really live together; she went to Mexico years ago and got a divorce and married some guy there and had some kids with him. Nothing at all to do with me, so I’m expecting my petition to be granted. Never, never touched her,
Father.”

  “You used the sacred ritual of marriage for your own ends? To get to Hollywood, to get a good job?”

  “I confess to that. Yes, Father. I knew it was wrong.”

  “But you realize you can’t marry this girl Ellen until that is all cleared up. It might take a long time.”

  “However long it takes, we’ll wait. She understands that.”

  After a few minutes, Gene, his hands over his eyes, intoned the familiar prod of the confessor. “Anything else, my son?”

  And then Willie told him about the snuff movie. Matter-of-factly, he described how he supplied the girl, the script; how he shot the movie, recorded the actual murder. For which he was well paid.

  Gene stared in horror. “Did you know, Willie, all along, that this was the way it was going to be? Did you know, Willie?”

  Willie hesitated. Then, what the hell. “Yeah. I knew. That was the purpose of the whole thing. It was quality, but it was a real snuff movie.”

  “You took part in the murder of this young girl? And the young man?”

  “Well, no, I didn’t kill either of them. The other guy did, this Arab big shot or whoever he was, the guy who financed the whole thing. I only—”

  “Willie, you are responsible, particularly for the girl’s death. You recruited her. You knowingly set her up to be killed. You knew. You are guilty of her murder. Surely you know that.”

  Willie shrugged. “Yeah, well, that’s why I’m here. I’m really sorry about all of it. The girl, the guy, all of it.”

  Eugene stood up abruptly. “What do you want from me? Absolution? For a horrible double murder? Surely you didn’t think that I would—”

  “Look, Father, I’m here to confess. You know ‘I heartily despise my sins’? I want to do penance. I want to get right with, you know, God and the Church. I want to be able to take communion with … what the hell did the nuns call it, ‘with a pure heart.’”

  Gene stared at him. “Do you feel genuine remorse for what you did to this girl, for what was done to this young man?”

  “Sure. Sure I do, Gene. That’s why I’m here. To make it right with God. You know.”

  Gene took a deep breath, then sat down and leaned forward, speaking directly to Willie, who tried to avoid his gaze. “Willie, what you have to do is go to the authorities. To the police. Tell them what you’ve told me. Do you have a copy of this … film?”

  “Yeah, sure I do. But what good would that do? I don’t even know where the bodies are. I—”

  “Willie, there are two things involved here. Your confession to God and your hope for redemption. And, second, your involvement in a terrible crime. It can’t be ‘handled’ here, in this room. There is no way I can grant you absolution at this point. Surely you know that.”

  Willie’s voice went low and harsh as his body stiffened. The Bronx kid emerged from the Hollywood-handsome face. Paycek emerged. “Why not, Gene? What the fuck, it was done for you, wasn’t it?”

  There was a stark silence between the two men as each remembered a battered, bleeding man lying in the icy snow. Gene met Willie’s furious intensity for a moment, then looked away.

  “Willie, we didn’t kill Stachiew. Your father did. What we boys did was defend ourselves, and then we ran away. And then your father came along.”

  “We boys and your little cousin, Megan the doctor, right? You all made out pretty good, didn’t ya? Danny a lawyer—now a congressman. Ben some kinda bigshot in Israel. Me, a leading talent in Hollywood, with a future wide open. You, with the Church and the country in the palm of your hand. Jeez, your brother Charley’s the only one settling for being a nobody. Well, I guess one big shot in the family’s enough.” He stood up and glared at Gene. “The church took care of you, Gene, and I want you to take care of me. I want absolution, no strings attached. That’s what they gave you. Look at you now, best-known priest in the country, maybe in the world. And I did that for you, kiddo. I made you ‘the television priest.’ I took you off the chickenshit suppers and soggy-pancake breakfasts and gave you the whole country to collect millions of dollars from.” His voice softened, became earnest, pleading. “Gene, I have a real chance with this little girl. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I want to marry her in the Church and get on with my life. Isn’t that what the Church is all about—to give a sinner a second chance? Look, it’s just you and me here, and you got God’s power, He gave you the right—so, Gene, come on. Let’s get on with it. Gimme a second chance.”

  He met the implacable stare as Gene slowly shook his head from side to side.

  “Damn you, Gene. They did it for you, but you won’t do it for me? Shit, how about when my old man fried? Didn’t you count that as murder number two, the old man sizzling for something we did? Hell, they let you off the hook for that one too, right? So that you could be their pretty-boy priest. Gene, listen. You better—”

  Gene said quietly, “Willie, I think you’d better go. I can’t give you absolution. I think, however, somehow, there is some hope for you. Obviously, you sincerely want to return to the Church, for whatever reason. You believe enough to know you can’t fake your way to a return. It is also pretty obvious to me, however, that you have no remorse, no moral regret whatsoever, for the people who were murdered with your collusion. Willie, you’re not beyond redemption, but you have to start legally, and then you have to approach your confession through a true sense of spiritual remorse. There’s nothing I can do for you now, Willie.”

  Finally, Willie stood up, paced the small dressing room, whirled around, and said, “Well, maybe there’s something I can do to you, Gene. Maybe I can shake your boat. How’d you like the world to know that their wonderful Mr. Terrific TV Priest was nothing but a punk murderer, and maybe hear the reason why you personally got involved? Remember, Gene? Remember why, pretty boy? Stachiew had some body on him, didn’t he? Did he teach you to give it or take it, Gene? I’ve always wondered.”

  Eugene, standing six-foot-two, towering over Willie, his face stiff, his voice controlled and soft, said, “Willie, get out of here. Right now. I don’t want to hear another word from you. You do whatever you feel you have to do, but don’t you threaten me. Just get the hell out of here.”

  Willie left. The hate burned hard. He’d get even. Not right now. He felt himself in too much jeopardy, even though he knew Gene couldn’t reveal anything he’d said. It could wait. He would plan it and do it right when the time came.

  Willie Paycek was a boy who knew how to wait. And how to get even.

  Ellen McDougal, reconciled to the fact that she could not, ever, marry Willie Peace in a church wedding, returned home to Dublin. She had lived through her shattered dream of Hollywood stardom. Why, she could still sing and dance at the local church or pub at home, where the people could be trusted and where her family would be around her. She missed the softness of the voices of home, and the mist and dampness and the incredible green of the hills and fields and the quietness of her world. She had had enough of the sun and the tanned, thin, frantic faces and the scheming and the planning and the fakery and the broken promises.

  She realized she did not have the driving ambition required to survive in Willie’s world.

  She had no idea how deeply he truly loved her, but she felt her own love of him turn to indifference. She was more anxious to return home than she would have believed possible.

  After she left, of course, Willie was not long at a loss for female companionship.

  His highly rated children’s Saturday-morning live talent show, hosted by a bright, saucy, precocious twelve-year-old, led to his downfall and exile.

  The child’s mother, a starlet who seemed to accept that her dream of stardom would be limited to her child’s achievements, moved into Willie’s Beverly Hills star-home. Along with her daughter.

  They were a threesome.

  The mother, a slender but now tired-looking redhead, thought she had Willie’s promise of a shot at the star role in his next movie, to be filmed i
n France. She was mistaken. Was he responsible for her misconceptions?

  She went to the most vicious gossip columnist in Hollywood, a woman who lived for the big story. Willie Peace, she said, had tricked her; he had asked her to move into his mansion, had given her and her daughter an entirely separate wing. There the child could have singing, acting and dancing lessons, as well as the tutoring in school subjects mandated by law. It seemed a sensible setup; it made the child’s life more contained, more normal. All her lessons in one place.

  But then, the tearful woman said, the abuse began. The child didn’t tell her right away; she was terrified of Willie. He was a powerful man in the industry, and he could destroy all of the child’s dreams.

  It wasn’t until Willie turned his attentions to the mother, forced himself into her bed, that the hysterical child rushed to her mother’s side, whacking at Willie with a golf club, screaming, “You raped me, but you won’t rape my mommy!”

  Before the story broke, Willie Peace was in Paris, arriving to work on his planned movie. He had moved as much of his wealth as he could to Europe. He was glad he’d had the foresight to open a Swiss bank account years ago. He had no intention of returning to the United States to stand trial on the accusation of rape and child abuse.

  The future of Gene O’Brien’s show was never at issue. His highly rated show was now produced by another well-known producer, one who had been thoroughly investigated and accepted by the Catholic Church.

  The child star of the Saturday-morning kiddie revue went on to star in a series of poorly made porn movies, along with her mother. She was not twelve years old, as had been believed, but eighteen. Her mother was actually closer to forty, and together they were known in the porn trade as a hot property. Hell, these two, mother and daughter, would do anything to anyone, alone, together, whatever—as long as you paid them enough.

  The case against Willie Peace was dropped. The two women had mysteriously come into an unspecified sum of money from an unspecified source.