Playland (32 page)

Gianni Pontecorvo, Chuckie said to me in a conversational tone, confident his mother could not hear a word he said. And then to Vera, enunciating every word carefully, Because Gianni had a palace in Venice and the most beautiful boys I have ever seen, dozens of them.

Well, then, Vera O’Hara said, he had children and you didn’t, that’s one good thing you can say about him, and I never even thought he liked pussy.

The word caught me by surprise.

She does that, Chuckie O’Hara said. It’s hilarious. Her mind. Slips in and out. I didn’t even know she knew those words until she was eighty-six. I bet she’s a tomb of dirty stories. Then loudly to Vera, Aren’t you, Mother? And I want to hear every single dirty one.

What? Vera O’Hara said, but it was time for her nap and a nurse took her away.

Vamp, Chuckie repeated.

All right, I said. This is tricky, because no one really knows what happened. Jacob is in Las Vegas, checking out La Casa Nevada. That we have to assume. And that’s where Morris arranges for him to find Eddie Binhoff …

A wonderful character, Eddie Binhoff, Chuckie said.

Absolutely. A find.

Real?

Absolutely. In the essentials.

A composite.

Well, I said, you look at the clips, and Jacob seems not to have known anyone except the women he was fucking, and Morris Lefkowitz and Jimmy Riordan, who were back in New York, and the people who didn’t want him out on the Coast …

Moe and Lilo and Benny Draper, Chuckie said.

And there had to be someone he could trust, someone he could talk to …

The Walter Brennan part, Chuckie said. Someone he could bounce ideas off of …

His muscle …

I understand. Perfect …

 … and there was this guy named Eddie Binhoff who had done some work for Morris …

In Nevada?

I would think so. Probably. Yes. In Nevada. And other places.

(In fact, I had found Eddie Binhoff’s name in
The Index of American Crime and Criminals
, cross-referenced both to Jacob King and to Morris Lefkowitz. The authorities claimed he had hit Rocco Mingus and Dominic Conti, among others, for Morris Lefkowitz, and had served two terms at Attica State Penitentiary in New York for manslaughter and aggravated assault. He seemed to have known Jacob in Brooklyn, and on one of her tapes, Blue had mentioned an Eddie, although she couldn’t remember his last name. That Eddie person, she called him, I think he was Jacob’s shooter, he was always around, he gave me the creeps. There was no Eddie Binhoff in either the Raul Flaherty or the Waldo Kline biography. The records of the Nevada Gaming Commission, however, indicated that an “Eddie Binyon,” sometimes known as “Allie Lazar,” formerly a blackjack dealer at the Bronco Club in Las Vegas, had been sought for questioning in connection with Jacob King’s death, but he had not come forward voluntarily and his whereabouts were never discovered.)

I have no problem with Eddie Binhoff, Chuckie O’Hara said. I think we go with him. There was some strong, silent, dangerous type always with Jake, his name could have been Eddie, I can’t remember, and you’ve fleshed him out. It’s an under-the-title part anyway.

(I could not help noticing that he was now talking in the first person plural, as in “We go with him.” Directors never change.)

We’d only be taking a few liberties, Chuckie said. It’s the inner truth that matters. After all, Cary did play Cole Porter. And she played her butch, my dear.

(I wondered how he had gone from Eddie Binhoff to Cole Porter, but didn’t press it.)

I see them, Jake and Eddie, Chuckie said, going out to the site of La Casa Nevada. It’s night, of course. Wonderful images, night shooting in the desert. And we have those people who are following Jake, we mustn’t forget them. And Jake has to be formulating a plan …

Jacob King peered through the darkness beyond the chain-link construction fence. Instinctively he wiped the dust from his shoes against his trouser legs, as if there in the sand he could maintain their gloss. Caught in the high beam of the Continental’s headlights, he could make out the outlines of a complex in the initial stages of construction. The contractor’s sign read:

Eddie Binhoff had positioned himself behind the open door on the passenger’s side of the Continental, the door offering a shield of sorts. He tensed as a car sped by, and then another, but neither one slowed down. A white Cadillac convertible had followed them from the Bronco to the city limits, then had turned off. A dumb fucking car to use as a tail. Maybe they just wanted Jacob to know they were there. As if Jacob would give a fuck. That was one thing that hadn’t changed. He had never given a fuck about anything. Behind him he heard Jacob King curse, and when he turned he saw Jacob at the top of the chain-link fence, examining a rip in his pants. Eddie Binhoff smiled. Jacob hated any imperfection in his wardrobe, and even claimed that an allergy to dry cleaning fluid justified his endless purchases of new clothing. As Eddie watched, Jacob jumped from the top of the fence and disappeared into the darkness.

The night was turning cold. There were few things that frightened Eddie Binhoff, but the outdoors was one of them. He hated the desert, hated its vast emptiness and the creatures he imagined populating it. Of all the places where Morris Lefkowitz might have exiled him, he could not think of a worse place than Nevada. He heard the sound of another car and felt reassured. He was comforted by the weapon in his belt, comforted as well by his ability to inflict pain without remorse. He almost wished the car would stop, offering him an opportunity to threaten and cause hurt, but like the others it did not even slow down. Somehow it reminded him of the night he did Dominic Conti over in Jersey. On the spur of the moment, before he buried Dominic in a lime pit in Essex County, he cut his hands off and threw them in the trunk of his car. When he got back to Brooklyn, he wrapped up the hands and put them on ice at Curly Aderholt’s delicatessen in Brighton Beach. Curly was too scared to complain. Then when he did Albert Torrio, who had taken out Jack Caplan and had to be whacked, he placed the prints from Dominic Conti’s gun hand on the piece he left at the scene. The
Mirror
said that its police sources had privately indicated that Dominic Conti was a prime suspect in the murder of Jack Caplan. And all that was left of Dominic was in a lime pit in Essex County, New Jersey. It was nice the way things worked out sometimes.

A noise behind him, and then Jacob King was scrambling back over the fence. More cursing as he once more tore his trousers. Then he was at Eddie Binhoff’s side. “The place is nothing. Unless you’re a fucking rattlesnake.”

“Nothing?” Eddie Binhoff said, yanking his thumb back toward the construction site. “I’ve been in penitentiaries smaller than that.”

“That’s what it looks like. Exactly. A fucking pen. It’s got no pools. It’s got no golf course. It’s got no tennis courts. It’s nothing.”

“Jake, the game out here isn’t fun in the sun. The game is gambling.”

“I told you, you don’t have any vision, Eddie,” Jacob King said, again examining his trousers. They were so torn that his undershorts were showing. He suddenly turned and kicked the fence, as if it was responsible for tearing his pants. The display of temper seemed to calm him. “Say you wanted to talk to the union guys on this,” he asked deliberately, “who would you talk to?”

“You know who you see. You see Lilo. In L.A. And Lilo sees Benny Draper.”

“I mean here. I mean, say you wanted to talk to them direct?”

Eddie Binhoff suspected he knew where Jacob was heading and tried to contemplate the ultimate cost of the favor he owed Morris Lefkowitz. “Lilo talks to them direct.”

“I mean, say you wanted to go around Lilo. Say you wanted to slow things down.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Eddie Binhoff said. “I’m too attached to my kneecaps.”

“Who?”

It was exactly as Eddie had suspected. “You told anyone you’re thinking this way, Jake? You told Morris? You told Jimmy?”

“Who would you see?” Jacob King insisted.

Eddie wondered if Jacob was carrying. Something he should have checked out. Something he would have checked without even thinking about it if he was still in New York. He thought the desert sun was making him brain-dead, even though he rarely went out in it. What he heard was that Jacob did not carry regularly anymore. Like Morris. He was a fucking executive now. When his piece used to be like a second dick. A good bet he wasn’t carrying, then. A good bet but not a cinch bet. And he never did anyone unless it was a cinch. Give it a chance. Think it through. He could do him out here, put him in the Continental, drive back to Vegas, leave the car on the street, catch a bus out. To Elko. Elko was a place Morris Lefkowitz might not know someone who owed him a favor. No. Morris
would know someone even in Elko. Or he’d know somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody in Elko. And who the fuck would want to die in Elko? Another car. Eddie raised his hands against the glare of the headlights. I’ve been in the desert too long, he thought. The old days I would have had all this figured out. Like when he put Dominic Conti’s hands on ice. An investment in the future. He watched as the car took the curve without braking. The driver was a born wheelman. A professional’s appreciative appraisal.

To business.

“Who would I see?” Eddie Binhoff considered Jacob King’s question. “Jackie Heller. He tells the locals here what to do.”

“Jackie Heller,” Jacob said, snapping his fingers impatiently. “His brother Leo used to work for Morris, right? He got whacked out.”

“I took out his hitter,” Eddie Binhoff said slowly. “Willie Posner. That was my second time in the joint.”

“So let’s go see Jackie.” A smile creased Jacob King’s face. “He owes you one.”

HELLER, JACOB (“JACKIE”)
Union Organizer, Racketeer (1903–1948)

BACKGROUND
: Born Jacob Hiss, Hunt’s Point, the Bronx, New York. Minor public education. Younger brother of Leo (Hiss) Heller, reputed hit man for Morris (“The Furrier”) Lefkowitz. Leo Heller was found shot to death outside Yankee Stadium on December 25, 1939, with a note attached to his body saying “Happy Hanukkah.” The murder of Leo Heller was never solved, although the fatal shootings of Wilhelm (“Slow Willie”) Posner and Dino Montepulciano in the week between Christmas and New Year’s in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn were said to be in retaliation for his death.
DESCRIPTION
: brown hair, brown eyes, short, well built.
ALIASES
: none,
RECORD
: many arrests, no convictions. Active as an enforcer in the construction trades and on the New York docks. Reportedly beat a man to death with his fists on a Hoboken pier in 1935. The victim, Terry Mulvehill, was said to be trying to organize the longshoremen. Fourteen eyewitnesses testified that Mulvehill had fallen from a ladder even after the Hudson County
medical examiner said the traumas were not consistent with a fall from a six-foot ladder. In 1940, for reasons of health (he was diagnosed with tuberculosis), he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and formed Heller Sanitation Services, which on a contract from local authorities hauled all the garbage in Clark County. Heller was found shot to death in the desert outside Las Vegas in February 1949. His body was badly decomposed, and desert animals had carried off most of his appendages. He was identified from dental records. No one was ever charged with his murder.

ALSO SEE
, LEFKOWITZ, M
ORRIS
; DRAPER, B
ENJAMIN
; KING, J
ACOB
.

The Index of American Crime and Criminals

Jackie Heller lit Jacob King’s cigar. He had the general dimensions of the Coca-Cola machine that sat in one corner of the dispatcher’s office overlooking the Heller Sanitation garage. “You like that cigar, Jake? It’s Havana. You’re interested in casinos, Havana’s the place. I was down there over New Year’s. Definitely. Havana. That’s where you want to go.”