Playland (55 page)

Eddie Binhoff was standing at the picture window, staring out at the
KING’S PLAYLAND
sign.

“Eddie. I been looking all over for you, where you been, you want a drink, something to eat?”

“Come over here, Jake, take a look at this.”

Jacob walked to the window. Outside the marquee, neon was lighting up the night sky. He had planted a dozen palm trees around the Playland sign, five grand a tree, take it out of my end, he had said to Jimmy Riordan, and the fronds were now waving gently in the night breeze. It was the right thing to do.

“You did it, Jake,” Eddie Binhoff said.

“Goddamn,” Jacob King said after a moment. “It’s beautiful.” He would deal with details tomorrow. Right now he just wanted to enjoy the moment. “We’ve come a long way from Red Hook, Eddie.”

“A long way.” Eddie Binhoff moved to the bar and turned on the radio. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians live from the Starlight Roof at the Waldorf-Astoria, Carmen Lombardo on the vocal. I’m wild again, beguiled again … “Calls for a drink.”

 … a simpering, whimpering child again …

Jacob stood by the window, mesmerized by the sign. He wondered if the lights should blink on and off. No. They should stay on, as they were now, reflecting off his face, like neon sunlight. “Eddie, Guy Lombardo’s the kind of class guy I want here, I’ll call him tomorrow.” He turned, and there was Eddie Binhoff standing by the bar, the double-barreled shotgun he
had stored in the bar cabinet in his hand. “Oh, no,” Jacob King said. “It had to be you, didn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, Jake,” Eddie Binhoff said, and he was sorry, even as he pulled the triggers, and the force of the shotgun pellets propelled Jacob backward against the wall, down which he slid until he came to rest against his still-unhung portrait.

 … bewitched, bothered, and bewildered …

M
orris Lefkowitz flew out for the funeral, his first trip on an airplane. He booked under his own name on United, then under the name Schmuel Leibrandt on TWA, and of course with Jimmy Riordan took the TWA flight, sending Lillian King and Matthew and Abigail on United. Just in case. Lilo, Jimmy Riordan had said on the telephone from New York, Morris doesn’t want the press there, and Lilo Kusack had said, not to worry, we put an announcement in the paper that the service will be at Forest Lawn, I know a place in Van Nuys, it’s where Schlomo Buchalter was buried out of, they do a nice little service, no crowds, you don’t mind if I don’t show up, Barry Tyger’s busy, too. Morris said that was fine, he understood Lilo’s reluctance, and then, because he did not trust Lilo Kusack, made still other arrangements, under Schmuel Leibrandt’s name, to hold the service at the Heyer & Sobol Funeral Home & Mortuary in Studio City, the name of the deceased being Yakov Kinovsky, whose body was to be cremated and his ashes placed in a mortuary crypt.

Lillian King and her two children, along with Morris Lefkowitz, Jimmy Riordan, and Eddie Binhoff, were the only mourners at the mortuary, except for Rita Lewis, her face hidden
behind a thick black veil, and Chuckie O’Hara, who that very morning had been served with a subpoena to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was Rita who had found out where the service was actually being held, a call from a pay phone to Jimmy Riordan so that Lilo could not overhear, and the promise, Listen, Jimmy, I’m not the fucking lady in red, I’m not going to finger Morris, Jake was a friend of mine. She had called Chuckie, and he had said Jake was a friend of his, too, of course he would go, and by the way I got my subpoena today. What’re you going to do? Rita had asked on the way to Studio City, and Chuckie had said, Auntie Charlton will think of something crowd-pleasing, darling, you can count on that.

The rabbi in his prayer shawl recited the kaddish, and said a few words about Yakov, a generous contributor to Jewish causes, and then the service was over. “Thank you, Morris,” Lillian said, dry-eyed through the ceremony, Matthew and Abigail each clinging to a hand, neither quite sure what it all meant, and then Lillian had asked Jimmy if the woman in the veil was one of Jacob’s whores, why not let him die in peace, and what about the fairy with the gimp, there were children here, they shouldn’t be exposed to such things. Right, Lillian, Jimmy Riordan had said, you are absolutely right, it shows a definite lack of respect, all the while thinking the only benefit of this unhappy occasion was that he would never have to see Lillian King again.

Morris Lefkowitz hung back until after Lillian departed, then approached the urn containing Jacob King’s ashes, which rested in the still-open crypt. There was a typewritten card on the door of the crypt:
YAKOV KINOVSKY
(1907–1948), and under Jacob’s name, the words, chosen the night before by Jimmy Riordan from a dictionary of quotations, “But westward, look, the land is bright.”

Morris’s face was ashen, his hand unsteady, and the wattles on his neck hung over the collar of his shirt. He’s going to die soon, Jimmy Riordan thought suddenly, a calculation he had disciplined himself not to entertain, even as the evidence of
Morris’s physical decay had become steadily more apparent, even as, concomitantly, his fabled mental agility flashed only sporadically, like the filament in a lightbulb that blazed brightest just before it burned out. Jacob had made the mistake of calling Morris old to his face, while Lilo would only whisper it into Jimmy’s ear, a messenger certain that his message would not be passed on. Loyalty was a virtue Jimmy valued, and his loyalty to Morris Lefkowitz had always been total and unquestioning. For fifty years, Morris had been a master puppeteer whose marionettes danced to the tune of his supple fingers, with never a misstep. Now there were too many puppets falling in a heap. First Philly Wexler, then Jacob, with all the attendant litter. Morris was on borrowed time, and if Morris, his protector, was, then so too was Jimmy Riordan. The difference was that Jimmy knew it, while Morris seemed to comprehend it only fleetingly, as when he made Jacob’s funeral arrangements, Morris whose entire life had always been governed by his sense of self-preservation. It was for Jimmy to make the deals ensuring that Morris died in bed, a field marshal emeritus. And at the same time put into place a deal for himself, after Morris was gone, commuting his self-exile to the country of crime, where Morris Lefkowitz had reigned for so many decades as absolute monarch, and where James Francis Riordan had served twenty years and then some as the monarch’s chief minister.

“Sometimes, Jimmy,” Morris Lefkowitz said, turning away from the crypt, “I wish I was in another business than the fur business.”

As Morris started for the door, his step faltered and Jimmy quickly motioned for Eddie Binhoff to go with him. Eddie nodded, then stopped, and for a second placed both hands on the ceramic urn holding the last remains of Jacob King.

Jimmy stared at the urn and made a mental note that as soon as Morris was on the plane back to New York, Eddie Binhoff should take care of the Jackie Heller problem and then get lost for a while.

As for the future, speed was as much a priority as skill. The
extortioner’s skill he did not doubt he possessed, and he thought that time, though short, was still on his side. First however he had to pay homage to the dead, and ask forgiveness.

Rita told him they would all be at Chasen’s that evening, she was giving it a pass, it was a show of solidarity that she did not wish to attend, a way of letting the community know that life went on, and it was at Chasen’s that Jimmy Riordan found them, sitting in the first banquette on the left inside the door, Blue Tyler and her court, J. F. French on one side of her, Arthur on the other, and Lilo Kusack next to Moe.

“This little girl’s starving,” J. F. French said. “Get us a plate of shrimp … then the hobo steak …”

“I’m fine,” Blue Tyler said, demure in Edith Head’s black wool jersey, and the two strands of natural pearls around her neck, and the small hat with the
point d’esprit
veil.

“Of course you’re fine,” Arthur French said. “Nobody said you weren’t fine.” He snapped a finger. “Waiter, get us some shrimp …”

“Why do you think we’re at Chasen’s, little girl?” J. F. French said, and then answered his own question. “We’re at Chasen’s because you’re fine.”

Lilo Kusack half rose. “Jimmy,” he said to Jimmy Riordan, who was sliding into the booth next to Arthur French. “Swell to see you. You know Moe and his son, Arthur. Blue, this is Jimmy Riordan from New York, Jimmy, this is Blue Tyler.”

She knew she was not supposed to speak, but only nod and smile as if Jimmy Riordan was just another fan seeking an autograph, but she could not help it, she had to ask. “You were a friend of—”

“God rest him, we were all his friends,” J. F. French interrupted. “Where’s that shrimp, Arthur?”

“A big dreamer,” Arthur French said, ignoring his father.

“A pioneer,” Lilo Kusack said, “you have to admire that.” He raised a glass of champagne. “Here’s to him.”

“Wait a minute, Lilo, Jimmy doesn’t have a glass,” J. F. French said. “Arthur, a glass for Mr. Riordan.”

A waiter brought a champagne flute and filled it. The table was wrapped in silence. All over the front room people were looking at them, and Dave Chasen was whispering to favored customers who the stranger with the battered nose was at the Frenches’ booth. Blue tried, but could not take her eyes off Jimmy Riordan. She wanted to ask him what Jacob was like in New York, and if what happened was her fault, and would it have happened if they had never met.

“To Playland,” Lilo Kusack said.

“I can drink to that,” J. F. French said.

Arthur and Lilo and J. F. French clinked their glasses, and so, after a kick under the table from J. F., did Blue.

“And to Jake,” Arthur French said, the unspeakable finally mentioned. “He was what he was.”

Jimmy Riordan tapped a fingernail against his flute but did not raise it with the others. He looked at them all, one by one, troubled not so much by the decisions he had made, even by their cost, as by a residual sense of loyalty, and guilt. He had to say what he came to say. “You know what he was?” Jimmy slid from the booth and stood, staring down at them. “He was worth this whole goddamn table. He was worth this whole goddamn town.”

Lilo put his glass down, and then so did the others. No one said a word. Blue Tyler lowered the veil over her eyes, and after a moment Jimmy Riordan walked out of Chasen’s.

His
me absolvo
speech, Arthur French said forty years later, his smirk scarcely contained. The Great Gatzberg had his Nick Carraway, and his name was Jimmy Riordan.

T
he plan had been for her to cross over, to make that leap so many child actresses had failed to make, from children’s roles to those of adult women. Blue Tyler was never cute, and that was to her advantage. There was always in her a knowingness her contemporaries did not possess, a latent sexual component that allowed the audience to fantasize that when the adults in her pictures might be getting it on, she conceivably was peeking through the keyhole. Unlike the other child stars of her time, she made her better pictures when she was an adolescent, when she had tits and a working twat, as Chuckie O’Hara later said, and the popcorn eaters somehow knew it, however much Cosmopolitan Pictures tried to disguise the fact. The plan, however, was not to be.
Broadway Babe
was postponed for a year (the official reason was that the score had to be thrown out; the real reason I did not find out until I was able to pull it out of Arthur French), and then first Chuckie O’Hara and later Blue herself became victims of history. Winchell was out front. “Say, didja hear where pinkostinko director Chuckie O’Hara lives in El Lay. In a part of Hollywood they call the Swish Alps!!!!” Preproduction was halted when Chuckie went to Washington to testify, and after he took off his leg in the
HUAC hearing room he was fired by J. F. French, and replaced by Victor Higgins. Blue then quit
Broadway Babe
in protest, and was immediately put on suspension by the studio. Some months later she too was subpoenaed and summoned to Washington. Her primary interrogator was Congressman Theodore (“Ted”) Wilder, the first recipient of the “I Am an American” award, at whose dinner Blue had led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance. The congressman was particularly interested in her performance, when she was eight, in
Little Sister Susan: