Dreams Bigger Than the Night (3 page)

“You’re leavin’, Jay bird? If you want lessons . . .” T-Bone laughed.

“I have an office just down the street. Why not meet me there for lunch tomorrow, if you’re working in the neighborhood.” Having bent a wire hanger into the shape of a miniature basketball rim and taped it to the wall, he added, “We can shoot buckets with a stuffed sock.”

T-Bone showed up the next day, carrying two Negro newspapers, the
New York Age
and the
New York Amsterdam News
, which were featuring stories about whether or not colored athletes should boycott the 1936 Olympics to be held in Berlin. Naturally, most Jews opposed participation because it would serve as a showcase for Nazism, a subject and problem that all of America seemed to be talking about.

“Shall we have a friendly game?” Jay asked, pointing to the board.

Until his work project ended several weeks later, T-Bone never missed a lunch hour. Jay looked forward to his legends and laughter. T usually found a way to win at checkers, though not at B-ball, which admittedly was not his game.

“You ever play baseball?” asked T-Bone.

“Just stickball in the streets with a Spaldeen.”

Slowly, T-Bone shook his head and positioned his checkers. “Great game. I’d still be playin’ if I hadn’t hurt my ankle slidin’ into second base ’gainst the Pittsburgh Crawfords.”

“You played pro?”

“Yeah, for the Kansas City Monarchs. The hot corner. I had an arm like a rifle and could one hop the ball better than any white boy in the majors.”

Having started in 1920, the Monarchs were the New York Yankees of the Negro leagues.

“How old are you, T-Bone?”

“Thirty-six . . . twenty-eight when I got injured and started swingin’ a pick and a shovel. If the Man upstairs had made me white, maybe my name would be right up there with Ruth and Gehrig and Lefty Gomez. But that can be said about a lotta black ballplayers, ’specially Satchel Paige and James ‘Cool Papa’ Bell.”

One evening, Jay accompanied T back to his digs at the Douglas-Harrison Apartments, a long row of redbrick buildings, and sat next to him on the couch leafing through his scrapbook. The living room had few amenities: a wooden cable spool that held a radio topped with a lace doily and a porcelain figurine of Mary cradling Jesus, a rocker, some chairs missing spindles, a couch that had given up the fight to support any weight, and a framed needlepoint expressing the hopes of an oppressed people: “When all is done, there is God.”

T-Bone’s mother, bedridden with emphysema, asked to meet her son’s newfound friend. A white-haired handsome woman, she shook Jay’s hand and apologized for not getting out of bed.

“Too many cigarettes,” she wheezed.

“You gonna be all right, Mamma, you just wait and see.”

“In heaven, maybe, but not here.”

“Everything happens for the best, Mamma. Trust in God.”

She took her son’s hand and beamed. “I do. And you also.”

Shortly after T-Bone’s work crew transferred to another ward, she died. Jay attended the funeral out of respect, the only white person present. Held in the basement of a church, the funeral took place in a room that had about twenty folding chairs, a table with crackers and cheese, and two pitchers of nonalcoholic punch. The mourners, in their frayed Sunday best, sat with hands folded through the service. Then two brass players—trombone and trumpet—played “Amazing Grace” as T-Bone, whose real name was Randall, wiped the tears from his cheeks.

On Saturday, March 17, 1934, around eight p.m., Puddy and Jay drove to a party in West Orange. It was a date Jay would never forget. Puddy had said a pal of his wanted friends to join him for a festive occasion.

“Who is this guy?”

“You’ll meet him, just hold your horses.”

“He doesn’t know me from Adam.”

“Relax, Spider. He said to bring friends. You’re a friend, ain’t you?”

“Yeah.”

They drove down Beverly Road, and pulled up at a Tudor mansion with decorated half timbering, tall narrow windows, massive chimneys, and a roof pitched steeper than a ski jump. Dozens of cars had spilled over from the street onto the expansive lawn. Just outside the front door stood two Cadillacs, one red and the other an all-weather black phaeton.

A butler led them into the house, which was overflowing with raucous guests and booze. A rainbow of balloons floated overhead; three musicians on piano, trombone, and sax played swing. Ladies wore fur stoles and beaded evening gowns that reflected the lamps glowing like golden apples, their necks and wrists dripping diamonds and pearls and rubies, with gents in dark English suits and silk shirts—white on white, black, silver, blue—sporting bloated pinky rings and smoking foot-long Habana cigars that they lit from platinum Ronson lighters. Two priests and a man wearing a white satin yarmulke moved easily through the room, stopping at the sideboards stocked with roast beef, cold lamb chops, pastrami, chopped chicken liver, smoked salmon, and whitefish. One table held just fresh fruits and desserts: lemon meringue pies, cheese cakes, cherry, apple, and blackberry pies, chocolates, Danish pastry, custards, cream puffs, and vats of ice cream standing in iced tubs. Amused to see three men of faith at this shindig, Jay moved close enough to listen. The Jewish man was talking.

“We really must stand together and rally public opinion. From our Berlin sources, I understand the Nazis so fear a boycott that they have dispatched undercover agents to different countries to suppress dissent—any way they can.”

The younger of the two priests, a wispy fellow, agreed on the importance of unity. “With Jeremiah Mahoney behind the boycott, other Catholics will follow.”

“Brundage,” said the Jewish man, “is immune to reason and dogmatically insists the games must go on. I do begin to wonder whether his scheduled trip to Germany is to promote the glory of sport or himself.”

The older priest, completely bald, laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Rabbi Wise, the Olympic Committee may follow Avery Brundage, but the Amateur Athletic Union will have the final say. And Mahoney is the president of the AAU.”

Of course: Rabbi Stephen
Wise! His face had looked familiar. But here in this house . . . unbelievable! In his early sixties and Hungarian by birth, the good man was strikingly handsome with sharp features and dark hair. Shortly after Hitler took power in January 1933, Wise had denounced the National Socialists and had organized an anti-Nazi protest in Madison Square Garden. Calling for a boycott of the Berlin Olympics, he was meeting with resistance from Brundage and his ilk.

The older priest continued. “Catholics stand with Mahoney, who is, after all, a former New York State supreme court justice and the head of the Committee on Fair Play.”

To which his colleague added, “And Jeremiah has started a letter-writing campaign in support of the boycott.”

“For the life of me,” said Rabbi Wise, “I can’t understand why Brundage would want to hold the games. They will only glorify the Nazi regime. The man’s a college graduate, an engineer, rich. What does he stand to gain?”

The older priest replied softly, “Avery regards the opposition as Communists and, pardon the slander, self-serving Jews.”

A bar with a brass foot rail held a prominent place in the living room, manned by three Negroes dressed in white jackets and shirts, black trousers, and red bow ties. Every conceivable drink from ginger ale and beer to Bols could be had for the ordering. Half a dozen waiters, all in black tuxes, appeared, evaporated, and then materialized at a guest’s elbow with a tray bearing a drink. Glancing around the room, Jay had the impression of exotically colored cocktails floating through the smoky light. Puddy identified the famous gangsters in attendance. Awed by the company, Jay was all ears.

Charles Luciano’s drooping right eye was a souvenir of knife-wielding kidnappers who’d severed his cheek muscles. Having survived that “ride” five years before had earned him the nickname “Lucky.” Puddy said the guy could barely read a newspaper, but had had the moxie to arrange the deaths of Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, the Mustache Petes. Lucky stood listening to Meyer Lansky or, as Puddy respectfully called him, “the little man,” who was saying:

“They never learn, do they? Traditions are fine, but what holds men together is money, not rituals.”

The third member of this trio, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, agreed. “That
omerta
stuff’s old world. Come out to California and see the future. Los Angeles . . . that’s where it’s being made. Palms and pineapples and pinochle.”

A handsome guy with slicked-down hair, Bugsy was reputed to have a ferocious temper and was regarded as a cold-blooded killer. Frankly, Jay thought the man looked more like a movie star than a hit man.

Gerry Catena, said to be a business associate of Abner Zwillman, slapped Puddy’s shoulder and paused just long enough for Jay to be introduced, then vanished in the crowd.

A short, round-faced, cigar-chomping spark plug held up his dukes as Puddy approached. Jay recognized him immediately from the newspapers, where his mug had appeared more than once for his involvement in fights, in and out of the ring. A retired prizefighter, Nat Arno now worked for Longie Zwillman’s Third Ward Gang as an enforcer and as the head of a group of toughs, the Minutemen, dedicated to breaking up pro-Nazi meetings and busting heads. Nat whispered in Puddy’s ear and shook Jay’s hand like a vise.

“Arno’s the name. Nat. Ever see me fight?”

“’Fraid not.”

“Nat does his best fighting on the street,” Puddy chuckled.

“You know my motto, Pud, persuasion when possible, violence when necessary.”

Nat shifted the cigar in his mouth and moved off.

A fellow in his early thirties walked up and shoved his paw in Puddy’s. A moment later Jay met Morris “Moe” Dalitz, who led the Cleveland mob. Conservatively dressed in a blue suit and tie, Moe seemed interested mostly in criticizing the house owner’s collection of paintings.

“Run of the mill stuff.”

“What do you like?” asked Puddy.

“The real, not the idealized.”

Dalitz, despite his cruel eyes, extended lower lip, and small, hard body, could have passed for a cultured art collector. Apparently, a few days before, Moe had been in the Village trying to persuade the painter Edward Hopper to part with an oil,
Room in New York
.

“On the left side of the canvas,” Moe explained, gesturing with manicured hands, “a man in a dark vest and tie slumps in a parlor chair reading a newspaper. On the right, a woman in a spiffy red dress sits at a piano with one hand on the keys. The lower part of her body is turned toward the man, the upper faces the piano. A table stands between them. His interest in the paper and her posture suggest that he’s indifferent and she’s sad. The haunting loneliness . . .”

Moe would undoubtedly have continued had all the revelers not been interrupted by Luciano calling for everyone’s attention.

“You ain’t seen your host yet and that’s ’cause he’s been tied up with a surprise. Ladies and gents, Abe Zw
illman
and
Jean Harlow!”

As the crowd applauded, Jean Harlow appeared in a sheer white dress that reminded Jay of a joke making the rounds: “I’m dying to see what the well-dressed girl will leave off this season.” Clearly visible were her breasts and nipples and more. The movie critics said that she had a perfect body and never wore underwear, observations any fool could have arrived at; the critics also said that she used peroxide, ammonia, Clorox, and Lux Flakes to bleach not only her famous platinum tresses but also her pubic hair. Though Jay couldn’t attest to the formula, he could to the color. Equally eye-catching was her creamy complexion, which resembled pink ivory and shone with a mysterious luminosity. On her left wrist she wore a jeweled charm bracelet featuring a pig, and on her left ankle a chain. She spoke like a guttersnipe and referred to herself in the third person, but her fans could never tell whether they were hearing her movie voice or her real one.

“You wouldn’t mind, would ya, if Jean had a carrot?”

The guests all roared because the rich repast did not include vegetables. “Miss Harlow,” she joshed, “has to keep her figure.”

One of the Negro bartenders made a beeline for the kitchen and returned a minute later with a plate of tomatoes, carrots, celery, mushrooms, and asparagus spears.

People immediately surrounded her, leaving Zwillman, called
Der Langer
, Yiddish for “The Tall One,” peering over the heads of her admirers. Though handsome, with black curly hair and bright observant eyes, Zwillman was no Clark Gable. A few years before, he and Harlow had been lovers. The columnists said Longie had paid movie directors to cast her and even invested in a film company for the sole purpose of advancing her career.

“How did you meet?” a breathless woman asked Harlow. The inquisitor, wearing a yellow dress with spaghetti straps, leaned so close to Jean they nearly bumped heads.

“In Chicago. I was appearing at the Oriental Theater. My host, Al Capone, took Abe backstage to meet me.”

“
The
Al Capone?” a strawberry blonde said with such longing that she looked as though she’d embrace Harlow.