Dreams Bigger Than the Night (9 page)

“Some of the story but not all of it.”

“One of these days we’ll go to the diner and talk.”

Half a dozen kids, taking advantage of the shining night, were biking down the “Sugar Bowl,” a favorite hill in winter for the Flexible-Flyer crowd. He had done the same himself and, as a very young child, had often spent many a summer day rolling down the grass and arriving at the bottom in a vertiginous state.

Mr. Magliocco stopped the car. “Kristina came from money and would’ve liked another child,” Piero said offhandedly. “But her health wouldn’t take it. So she put all her mothering into Arietta: a tutor, music lessons, dancing classes, etiquette, religion . . .”

“She must have been lovely. You can tell from the photograph that Arietta’s very much like her.”

“Yes, though Kristina was blonde.” Piero lapsed into memory. “She wore her yellow hair in a long braid down her back, not looped on top. Me, I resemble a Turk. Her skin was white as porcelain. Perfect teeth, thin face, dark eyes, high cheek bones, like royalty.” Pause. “When she disapproved of my behavior, she called me ‘Mr. M.’”

A boy came flying down the hill. A
pproaching the gully at the bottom of the Sugar Bowl, the kid bailed out, letting his bike nosedive into the trench.

“Once they discovered the cancer, she went fast. Toward the end, she spoke only German.” Tears welled in his eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to have your dying wife whisper to you, and you can’t understand?”

“You don’t speak German?”

“Never learned. Arietta did . . . she always wanted to be just like her mom.”

In the ensuing silence, Jay thought about how a woman’s eyes purloin a man’s love. Intuitively, he knew that eventually Arietta would steal all of him, even his faith in free love.

“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to take a drive with me. If I was in your place I’d wanna know.”

“Well, to tell you the truth it did cross my mind.”

Jay turned to face him squarely, and in doing so, his knee hit—and opened—the small cabinet at the end of the instrument board provided for gloves or parcels. Mr. Magliocco leaned over and closed it, but not before Jay saw a pair of black gauntlet gloves.

Mr. M. lit a Wings cigarette, rolled down the window a couple of inches, and flipped the match outside. Jay noticed the matchbook: Kinney Club. Piero took a long draw as if he needed to fill his lungs to come out smoking. On the exhale began the lesson.

“Arietta’s mother, like I said, made me promise to see that she grew up right. I don’t want her falling into bad company. My own background is raw enough, first the priesthood business and then the bootlegging.”

Knowing very well what had prompted his comment, Jay tried to evade it by waxing sentimental. “My parents have few equals for kindness and goodness. They never judge people by their purses. They respect all churches. My mother would cut off her right hand before she would ever say an unkind word to anyone, and my father would rather die than steal. That’s the kind of family I come from, Mr. Magliocco.”

To Jay’s amazement, Mr. M. produced a business card for the Jeanette Powder Puff Company. “I checked into your father’s factory. He’s everything you say. Honest Ike, right?”

Like a landed fish gulping the unfamiliar element of air, Jay opened and closed his mouth soundlessly. He felt overwhelmed by Piero’s genuine concern for his daughter.

“Nothing’s too good for Arietta. I check out all her friends—and their friends. The rackets taught me never to sleep.” Mr. M. took another monster pull on his cigarette and exhaled. “You never went to the Park movie house. You spent the evening at the Kinney Club—and ran into some people I don’t want my daughter around. It’s bad enough I know those people.”

No question: Mr. M. had Jay dead to rights, but who had spilled the beans, Arietta or someone else? It mattered. If she’d yakked, he might as well forget about their ever playing the dirty blues. But if the snitch came from the crowd at the club, which one? He decided then that the first commandment of the underworld should read: “Be extra careful when dealing with people who survive by knowing more than you.”

“If you want to see Arietta again, take a page from your father’s book. Don’t lie. Understand?”

“I apologize, Mr. Magliocco. It will never happen again.”

Piero smoked in silence, trying to decide whether to give Jay a second chance. “How come you live at the Riviera Hotel?”

Jay interpreted the question to mean: Where does your money come from? To lead him off the scent, he replied, “Are you asking why I don’t live at home?”

“A lot of big shots live in that hotel.”

Jay had guessed right. Mr. M. wanted to know how he could afford it. Having just promised to be straight with him, he now found himself in a position where he had to lie. If he told him that Longie paid his rent, Mr. M. would surely conclude that he was one of Longie’s boys, one of the toughs, and ask for an explanation. (“You see, Mr. Magliocco, Longie’s putting me up so that I can write glowing reviews about Miss Harlow.” And Mr. M. would reply, “You gotta be kidding. All that dough for a movie review?”) Street life had taught him, when in doubt, dissemble.

“I moonlight as assistant super of the hotel,” he said, figuring that Longie could arrange with the owner to back up his story. “In return they give me a place to stay.”

Mr. M. looked skeptical, said nothing, and lit another cigarette from the previous one. “A place to stay,” Piero ruminated, “yes, I know the importance of that. I joined the priesthood as a young man to escape poverty. The Jesuits gave me shelter. But on a trip to Rome, a thunderbolt struck me, as the Sicilians say. In front of St. Peter’s, a young woman stopped to ask me the way to the Sistine Chapel. I gave her directions but wound up following her. One thing led to another.

“Once I could no longer pass as a celebrant of chastity, I was defrocked—and brought her to the United States. Her family disowned her. Though she had a tiny inheritance from a sympathetic aunt, the money went on hospital bills.” Here Piero broke off and began to speculate whether his wife’s death came as a result of his sin or for some other reason. Jay tried to assure him that the Lord does not despise lovers. But what proof did he have, what right to speak for the Almighty? When he asked Mr. Magliocco how one reconciles faith and fact, the former priest gave him a peculiar reply.

“A beautiful aria proves that something greater than ourselves made it possible for the composer to create the music.”

Jay left the subject. On the way back to the Magliocco house, they passed St. Lucy’s Church, where a line of poorly clothed people stood waiting for bread and soup.

“Longie’s money,” said Mr. M.

“I suppose that gives a new meaning to laundering money. A good cause cleans it.”

Mr. Magliocco looked surprised. “Yes, that’s it, the source of the money doesn’t matter, only what it’s used for.” Jay could see that some moral quandary had just been cleared up in Piero’s mind.

At the house, they sat down to a cup of coffee with Arietta, resigned to missing the first movie,
Little Caesar
, but catching the second,
Bombshell
. As they chatted about films, Arietta said suddenly, “Did you know, but of course you don’t, that my mother knew Mary Astor’s parents, Otto and Helen Langhanke? She met them in Manhattan. Mother had a cousin in Quincy, Illinois, where the Langhankes once lived. She always tried to keep up her German connections.”

Mr. M. insisted on driving them to the theater. Jay told him they would take a cab home, but Piero wouldn’t hear of it. The wily ex-priest had checked on the movie, knew when it ended, and would pick them up. Enticing Arietta to the Riviera Hotel seemed a fading hope.

In the Park movie house, he saw standing at the popcorn concession the short, tattooed, dark-haired man with whom Arietta had been dancing before he quit and she took Jay as her partner. He gave Arietta a nudge and a come-hither smile. The tendons in her pedestal neck tightened, and her face turned ashen. Squeezing Jay’s arm, she led him into the darkened theater, where she whispered that she wanted nothing to do with him.

“Just because he ran out of steam on the dance floor?”

“No, because he’s called several times since and won’t take no for an answer.”

Jay, now jealous, led her to a seat at the back, some distance from the closest person, hoping to snuggle her when the movie got hot. The credits began with a background shot of a burning fuse on a bomb and ended when the bomb went off.

“I asked him to drop out of the marathon.”

“Who?”

“Charlie Fernicola, the man you just saw.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but before Jay could question her, the bomb dust cleared, and the film opened with splashes in newspapers and magazines of Lola Burns (Jean Harlow). Cut to a wealthy California home. A colored maid wakes Lola, who has an interview with a woman reporter representing a movie magazine. Absorbed in the action, Arietta and Jay began to mimic Harlow’s slang.

“Why dump him?” he whispered.

“He’s a twit.”

“If he’d hung on you might’ve made a load of clams.”

“Don’t make me feel like a skunk.”

Lola’s publicity man, Space Hanlon, keeps her in the news by scandalizing her life. At the Coconut Grove, she is dancing with a European gent who is arrested. Publicity ensues.

“Where did you meet the rummage-sale Romeo?”

“At our church.”

“He doesn’t look the type.”

“If I’m lying you can cut out my appendix without ether.”

Space Hanlon talks about the speed of news reporting. A few minutes after an event occurs, it appears in the papers.

“What did he say when you dumped him?”

“That he felt like a worm.”

“I’d be sore as hell.”

“I guess I did play him for a chump.”

“You really are a corker.”

“And yet he keeps calling. He refuses to see daylight.”

“Just give it to him right from the shoulder.”

“He doesn’t believe me. Says it’s all feminine guff.”

“Does he come to the house?”

“No, but if he did I’d bust him one in the bugle.”

Lola’s designing father and family enrich themselves by exploiting her, until everything collapses like a punctured balloon.

Before they left the theater, Arietta ducked into the ladies’ room. By the time she reappeared, the place had emptied out, and Jay could see her father parked at the curb. Pausing in the foyer, he asked:

“Was he really a twit?”

She turned her pixy peepers on him and smiled. “He moved like a patent-leather peanut vendor. Besides, I wanted to dance with you.”

“What a lotta banana oil.”

“It’s true. I saw your partner faint, and I’d noticed that you danced a lot better than Charlie.”

As they moved toward the car, he felt strangely affected by the movie, almost as if he had just been a part of it, and, like Harlow, thought he’d been used. Her explanation about the guy she’d been dancing with sounded phonus-balonus. She had sworn him to truth, but what about her?

“Arietta!”

She stopped.

“What’s the grift? I think you’re just giving me a line about your partner at Dreamland.”

Looking hurt, she said, “In that case, fade.”

And fade he did—for several weeks. During that time, he wrote a glowing review of
Bombshell
, remarking how the movie mirrored Jean’s offscreen life and how the language captured the wise-cracking spirit of people trying to make the best of a beastly Depression. It must have been a good piece, because the editor of the
Evening News
dropped by his desk to congratulate him on the way he had used the review to comment on conditions in the country. The editor then asked whether Jay knew Jean Harlow well enough to grill her about Zwillman and the Jewish gangsters trying to squash the upcoming Olympics. According to him, Abe and others were putting money in the mouths of politicians to persuade them to call for a boycott of Berlin. Jay admitted to being aware of Zwillman’s concern, but was dark to any details. His editor then went on to say that it was a story Jay might want to cover. Apparently, Zwillman and some other Jewish gangsters had created a network of like-minded people across the country to persuade their representatives, local and national, to introduce legislation that would keep the U.S. team at home. Avery Brundage, having got wind of this tactic, was, not surprisingly, inveighing against the Jewish influence in government and newspapers—and threatening to call for an investigation.

“It’s not just the Jews,” Jay said, “plenty of Irish and Italians agree with Abe.”

“Brundage says they’re all members of the same gangster class.”

“I suppose I could ask around.”

“According to the little information we have, Zwillman has some heavy hitters working for him who are respectable citizens.”

“I would hope so.”

“One rumor has it that he’s even put some women on the payroll. That’s why I thought of Harlow.”

“Beats me.”

The editor left and Jay made a beeline for High Street, to Polly’s brothel, the Parrot. With Arietta gone, he needed to keep up his spirits and a part of his anatomy; he also wanted to ask Margie if she had heard anything, since she was often in the know.