Stars in His Eyes

by Martí Gironell

  At Van Heusen’s house, everybody loved to gather out on the patio. At the bar in front of the pool, Chet would down his usual glass of bourbon and give advice to the very young and receptive Jean Leon, who soaked in every word.

  “Don’t ever make a show of yourself like the rest of these clowns.” Chet jutted his chin out toward the multitude gathered around the pool, not calling out anyone in particular.

  The kid could have written a rule book for making it in Hollywood with all the guidance Van Heusen gave him: Keep an eye on your conduct, at work and outside of it. Know your business like the back of your hand, so no one can tell you you’re wrong. If you get in a fight, ask for forgiveness, even if you’re in the right—your friendships matter more than your pride. Don’t drink too much . . . (He would say this when his glass, the only one he allowed himself, was empty except for the ice cubes, which he liked to savor. He’d keep them in his mouth, and before they melted, he’d crush them in a couple of bites and swallow them down.) Leave the party early. Don’t hog the spotlight, but don’t go unnoticed, either. Don’t try to persuade people with words; let your actions speak for you. Don’t do anything just for the sake of recognition. Be generous, and don’t expect anything from it. Never break a promise. Dress nice, regardless of the occasion. Don’t lower the bar for anyone. Don’t judge and don’t compromise. You can always do better. Chivalry never goes out of style.

  “Ah, and then there’s the golden rule: ladies first. You can measure a man’s charisma by the smile of the woman on his arm.”

  When his glass was empty, Chet would go off to mingle with the group of well-known faces socializing around the pool. He knew everyone, and everyone greeted him. He knew their names, what they were after, what they liked, and what they dreamed of. He played to the hilt the role of host to the stars, friend to the stars, confidant of the stars. He had a way of bringing people together and of keeping out anyone who didn’t fit in. He knew what he had to do and how he had to do it.

  And Jean kept his eye on the ball. Those parties were where he learned how to adapt to his new culture, his new language, and his new world. A changing environment, a paradise filled with light, with goodwill, but also with risks. He learned to treat each person differently. He had an almost innate ability to do so, and in that world, it became an essential ingredient for his future triumphs. He called it the Chester Style: little by little, Jean took over the other man’s mannerisms, behavior, turns of phrase—always putting his own personal stamp on them.

  He had learned from the best, no doubt about it. Life lessons that would mark him forever. The first thing he grasped was if you want to be someone, you have to trust yourself.

  Then, he learned that excellence means playing the roles you want to play in the places you want to be. Jean Leon began to mold himself to his ideal: the perfect host for the restaurant he aspired to run, and the American father of the family, the cocksure provider, the furthest thing possible from the naive immigrant he had been. He would adapt, with panache and sophistication, to the American way of life, and he would wind up making it his own.

  And finally, he realized that if he wanted respect—if he really aspired to be respected like Sinatra—he would only get it by getting out from under Sinatra’s thumb. That was what drove him to open La Scala six years ago. In Sinatra’s eyes, that had been a betrayal. For years, Jean had known he needed to patch things up between them. And he would have to be the one to take the first step.

  Ten days before the Voice showed up at La Scala, Jean had given him a call.

  He had a problem, and he needed help. It was true that Frank was a stern guy who never forgot anything, but he was also a man of his word. Jean was sure he could still depend on him, despite the distance the past few years had put between them.

  Jean Leon had just a few very faithful friends, and no enemies—or so he thought. La Scala’s success had made some people envious and had led to more than one sticky situation, but he was proud to say he’d always gotten through them unharmed. Until that late night, ten days earlier, when he was shutting down the restaurant, lost in thought, as usual, and a noise outside caught his attention.

  Ever since he’d put down roots in LA and wriggled out of his troubles with the army, both the Spanish one and the American one, he no longer worried about his past catching up with him. So when he locked the front door and two men grabbed him and shoved him into a dark, empty alley, his only reaction was utter confusion. One of them got behind him and wrapped his enormous arms around Jean’s neck, squeezing him until he choked. The other started to smack him around, then dealt several hard blows to his belly, chest, and face. They let Jean’s battered body fall to the ground just before he lost consciousness, and he stayed there on all fours.

  “You’ve got the wrong guy,” Leon shouted at them through split, bleeding lips.

  One of them grabbed his right hand, and the other started breaking his fingers one by one. Leon howled in pain, tears misting his eyes. He had no idea why they were torturing him.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “This is from Mr. Durán,” one of the thugs said after breaking the last of his fingers. “We’ll be here tomorrow to collect on his debt. Ten thousand dollars.”

  The attackers picked him up and threw him against the wall one last time, then walked away slowly. Durán? Durán? Leon was shaken. As he struggled to get his bearings, an image flashed into his mind: a tubby, bald man with a mustache, wearing garish clothes. José Durán. Now he remembered. That flamboyant agent who had sent him off to Spain to entice the famous dancers Antonio and Rosario to come work in Hollywood. That was years ago—he had never spoken to Durán again, and after he started at Villa Capri, he had forgotten the whole affair. He had other things on his mind once he returned from Spain. But it wasn’t that big a deal, was it? Surely not enough to send two thugs to beat him to a pulp.

  After the men disappeared, Leon stumbled out onto the main street and caught a cab to the hospital. There they treated his injuries and put his broken hand in a splint. He would look for a solution to his new problem tomorrow. In the morning, he showed up at the restaurant battered and bruised, dragging one leg, and with sunglasses on to hide his two black eyes. He was dressed casually, in a shirt and jeans, not in his usual elegant suit. He was nearly unrecognizable, out of sorts, and obviously not in any shape to work. And yet there he was, at La Scala. As usual. He brushed off the maître d’s anxious questions and gave him a careful set of instructions.

  “If a couple of roughnecks come in here asking for me, you treat them like VIPs and come tell me, OK?”

  Jean stumbled to his office, his little private island, where he went to gather his thoughts and plan new projects. He needed to ask for a favor. He collapsed into the armchair in an unlit corner. He remembered Frank’s exact words to him: If you ever need to solve a problem . . . Well, Jean Leon had one, a big one. There are men who keep their word no matter how much time has passed. Frank was one of them. Leon picked up the phone and dialed.

  Later that afternoon, Durán’s men showed up at the restaurant, and were surprised at the courtesy and attention they received. Leon was buying time.

  “Please, order whatever you like,” the headwaiter said.

  They ordered two whiskeys, but soon were being treated to champagne, oysters, Bordeaux—all of it on the house. The two goons softened up and failed to notice two other guys, even surlier than they were, leaning on the other end of the bar and watching their every move.

  They introduced themselves to the bartender with the agreed-upon words: “We’re Jean Leon’s nephews.”

  After drinking more than their fill, Durán’s men got out of hand, and the bartender asked them to leave. That was when Leon’s “nephews” stepped in, offering to accompany them out. The thugs’ manner changed when they saw the business end of a revolver pointed at them. The “nephews” took them out to a secluded back alley, administered a skillful pistol-whipping, and squeezed Durán’s
address out of them.

  Located in the heights of Beverly Hills, José Durán’s mansion was a true reflection of his personality: exaggerated, overblown, egotistical. It was a hulking domicile utterly lacking in any good taste or architectural discretion, a bizarre mix of styles for which eclectic could only be a euphemism. The “nephews” had no trouble identifying it from afar: dozens of spotlights made sure no one could miss it. They easily slipped past the scant security measures and found their target oblivious in his pool, floating on his back, eyes closed, like a corpse—as if anticipating what he had coming.

  The two toughs couldn’t have hoped for a better situation. Durán didn’t even see the hand that pushed him underwater. It was powerful, and he couldn’t get away. He splashed and flailed desperately, scratching at the hand and forearm that kept pushing him inexorably downward. He kicked violently, trying to swim away. He was running out of air. He was dying.

  When Durán’s legs stopped thrashing, the hand moved away, and the agent managed to raise his head above the water. He could barely breathe, and his eyes were blurry. Then he felt the two men grab him from behind, pick him up, and throw him onto the tiles beside the pool. A gruff voice threatened him.

  “We’re Jean Leon’s nephews,” was the first and last thing he heard.

  Without further ado, the men left.

  That same night, the police picked up two frightened men with bound hands close to the restaurant. An anonymous tip accused them of trying to extort a well-known restaurateur. Mission accomplished.

  And now, Frank Sinatra and Jean Leon were together again, sharing the special table in the kitchen at La Scala, drinking into the wee hours of the morning, reminiscing and exchanging secrets the way they used to do on nights like that, making up for lost time.

  “I guess you fixed that thing, right?” Sinatra asked him, pointing, with a very Sicilian gesture—Sicilian like Frank himself—at the bruise on Leon’s cheek.

  “Thanks to, uh . . . my nephews you sent over, yeah, that guy won’t come bothering me again. I owe you one.”

  Their loyalty had been tested. And their friendship had passed with flying colors. Things were never quite the same, but after that long night they’d spent in the kitchen, sharing a bottle of wine and some old memories, Jean and his mentor were finally back on the same team.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Lawford called,” Emilio told Jean one day when he arrived at the restaurant.

  “Tonight?”

  It was the summer of 1962. Emilio nodded, plainly worried about the huge order that had just been phoned in. For weeks, there had been rumors that the president was staying in Palm Springs, but Jean hadn’t given the story much credit. He tended to remain calm until his prey was in reach—like a lion, doing honor to his name.

  “We’ve been expecting him. No need to worry, we’re ready. You just stay back in the kitchen and I’ll take care of the rest. I’m going to make sure Randy has the van ready to go to Sinatra’s mansion.”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No van, no Sinatra.”

  Before he was elected, Kennedy liked to stay at Sinatra’s house when he was on the West Coast. Sinatra was a master at throwing discreet parties for select clientele with spectacular ladies and ungodly quantities of alcohol. But the singer was blacklisted now for his connection to Sam Giancana, the capo of the Chicago mafia and another regular at La Scala.

  “The president’s staying with Bing Crosby.”

  “Isn’t Crosby a Republican? I wouldn’t want to be the one to pass the news to Sinatra.”

  “That’s not all. They’re sending over a plane—to quote Lawford, ‘So you can get there quicker.’”

  “But it’s just two hours by car to Palm Springs . . .”

  “Plane and escort.” Emilio shrugged.

  In the kitchen, everyone rolled up their sleeves and got to work on the order. “Don’t skimp on the fettuccine!” Peter Lawford had roared into the phone. “Plus salad, some beef, and a few bottles of wine. Everything better be perfect!”

  Jean, Emilio, and the rest of the crew drove to the airport with a Secret Service escort on motorcycles from the presidential motorcade, lights flashing and sirens blaring all the way until they reached Air Force One. No one dared to utter a word.

  Crosby’s colonial mansion was in an isolated area far from the touristy parts of Palm Springs. The estate was large enough to satisfy the privacy needs of Kennedy, who came out to greet them when they arrived. After the necessary formalities, Emilio and his team went straight to the kitchen. The president, clearly tired from his obligations on that trip, invited Leon to partake in two of his most relaxing vices: a Havana cigar and a daiquiri. They sat down together on the glassed-in porch. Kennedy was wearing a black polo, white pants, and loafers. Informal and elegant. Leon, who never let his appearance slip, was in a jacket and silk tie, a button-down shirt and matching pocket cloth, and Italian loafers—and wore the same boyish smile as always.

  “When I was a kid, I tried to make it into your country,” the president said.

  Jean was surprised—unpleasantly surprised. But obviously he couldn’t hide the secret of his identity from someone who had the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service under his command.

  “In the summer of 1937, I was in Biarritz, right by the Spanish border,” he continued.

  Leon couldn’t believe it.

  “In ’37? You must have been a kid . . . ,” Leon said. “What were you doing there in the middle of the war?”

  “I was a kid, all right. I’d just turned twenty. It was my grand European tour while I was at Harvard. My father wanted information, too. He became the American ambassador in London later that year—I guess they’d been planning to give it to him for some time—and he needed a neutral outsider’s perspective on where things were headed in Europe.”

  “Who better than his son, then?” Leon said, hovering somewhere between scandalized and alarmed.

  “Exactly,” the president responded, smiling. “We were in France, Italy, Germany. This was the dawn of fascism, and my father tasked me with interviewing the . . . let’s say the right people.”

  Kennedy blew a diffuse smoke ring before continuing.

  “My father was on Franco’s side, but Roosevelt’s government still supported the Republicans. And the reports he was getting were, to put it lightly, a little biased. His gut told him the war in Spain could be a powder keg that would lead to another world war, and he wasn’t wrong,” Kennedy admitted. “A lot of this ended up in my undergraduate thesis. You know, right through the forties, my father recommended that the US stay neutral in European conflicts and keep out of war no matter what—no military or financial support.”

  Leon listened, not daring to interrupt. Then, finally, the president looked him dead in the eyes.

  “Did you fight in the war, Jean?”

  “No. I was too young. But my father suffered the consequences.”

  “Your father and your older brother, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I lost my brother, too. Joe. He died in flight, on a mission in 1944. He was my friend, my hero.”

  Kennedy raised his glass, Jean followed suit, and they both tipped them back firmly, as though drinking down a hard-to-swallow memory.

  “You must miss it, right?” Kennedy asked. “Your home.”

  “Sometimes, yeah . . . ,” Jean conceded, frowning to express a measure of doubt. “But I left at a bad time, and it doesn’t seem like the situation’s changed too much. In Spain they still hunt you down if you dare to disagree with the government.”

  Their conversation about the political situation in Spain made Jean think of the talk he’d had the night before with his children. They were of an age when they could easily fall into a trap set by someone trying to wheedle information about their family out of them.

  “Jean-Georges, Cécile, come here a second, Papa’s got a treat for you,” he’d said.

  He had sat them
down at the kitchen table and taken an ice-cream cone out of the freezer for each of them. He looked at his son and his little girl, her glimmering blond hair—My God, it seems like yesterday Donna was pregnant, and already they’re walking and talking—and while they tore into their desserts, he told them a story about his name, one that had little to do with reality but that he believed would be effective.

  “Do you know why we’re called Leon?”

  “Nooo!” they both replied.

  “The origins of our name go back very far into the past, and they have to do with the king of the animals. The lion symbolizes strength, bravery, dignity, and constant struggle.”

  They listened to their father with gleaming, wide-open eyes.

  “Those are things I needed to make it out of the country of our ancestors, where there were good and honorable men and women, but where I didn’t feel like I could live my dreams. So I decided to come over to America, a land of opportunities for me and my children—for the two of you.”

  “How did you come here?” Jean-Georges asked.

  “Papa took a ship and left France, the land of lions, to come to work in America. If they ever ask you where I’m from, if anyone wants to know where Papa’s from, what should you say?”

  And the kids shouted boisterously, in unison, with a smile:

  “France! You came from France!”

  “Very good! That’s right! Good kids!” their father congratulated them, stroking their cheeks.

  Leon had grinned, but deep down, he was ashamed. He didn’t like having to lie to his children. He’d convinced himself that he was doing it for everyone’s good. When they were older, he would tell them the truth. He hoped that when the time came, they would understand, and that they wouldn’t reproach him for deceiving them. Leon took comfort in the thought that this white lie could save them lots of headaches.

  “We’ll have to continue our conversation another time, Mr. Leon,” Kennedy said, bringing Leon’s reminiscing to an end. He stood up and stretched out his hand.