Playland (23 page)

Jacob King was washing his face in the compartment’s tiny bathroom. “I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Ask you.”

It was as if Jimmy Riordan had not heard. “Nobody goes to Harlem anymore,” he said. “Even in broad daylight. Particularly
in broad daylight. I say the reason is the LP record. You had the seventy-eights, you had to get up to change the goddamn record every few minutes. Up and down, sooner or later you’d get irritated, you’d go out, see a show, tie on a load. With the LP, you just sit there like a turnip. It’s like the whole town’s on the nod. Count your blessings you’re getting out, you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you that, either.”

Jimmy Riordan closed the briefcase and handed it to Jacob. “You want to count it?”

“No. You’re not going to cheat Morris. Or me. You value living too much.”

The train gave a bump and then began to move slowly down the tracks.

“Look, Jake, this is really a straightforward proposition,” Jimmy Riordan said. “
A-B-C. A
is, the California guys are building a place in Las Vegas—”

“La Casa Nevada—”

“
B
is, we think we have the means to assist them—”

“—in maximizing their profit potential. You told me that. What’s
C
?”

“
C
is, what’s your problem?”

“It’s not the way I’d play it. Morris wants Nevada, I can give him Nevada. Take over La Casa Nevada. How far can I push is what I want to know.”

Jimmy Riordan closed and locked the briefcase and flipped the key to Jacob King, who attached it to his watch chain. The train was gathering speed. “You’re not going out there to take over La Casa Nevada,” Jimmy Riordan said quietly. “You’re not going out there to push. You’re going out there to make nice. Make a few friends.”

“And what happens when Benny Draper and Lilo Kusack and them tell me they got all the friends they need?”

“Jake. One step at a time …”

“Walk before I run,” Jacob King said.

“That’s it exactly,” Jimmy Riordan said. If he caught the
sardonic edge in Jacob’s voice, he chose not to acknowledge it. “It’s a question of cooperation. Negotiation. Accommodation. If you anticipate a negative resolution, then the conditions become favorable for a negative resolution. I give you the seed money. I lay out the figures for you. I take you to the train just so I can give you the five-year projection, the ten-year projection, what more do I have to do to make you understand?”

Jacob smiled and straightened his loosened tie. “I love to hear you Fordham guys talk.”

The Limited had come out of the Grand Central tunnel and was speeding toward the 125th Street Station. Jimmy Riordan put on his jacket, his hat, and his overcoat. “You get to Chicago, the train pulls into the LaSalle Street Depot, then you pick up the Chief at the Dearborn Street Station, you got a three-hour layover, so go to the Pump Room, you want, but just don’t miss the goddamn train, the Dearborn Street Station, not LaSalle Street, LaSalle Street’s where you get off the Limited, and make sure they get your luggage on the Chief, it’s the Chief you pick up, the Super Chief, not the Limited, you just got off the Limited.”

“And went to the Pump Room,” Jacob King said. “I listen to you, I think you think you’re sending me to that summer camp all you
goyim
send your kids to. Put a tag around my neck, Jimmy, so the
schwartze
porter knows what train I’m supposed to be on. And where my valises are supposed to go. His name is George, by the way, see, I already found that out, you can go home now.”

“Whose name?”

“The
schwartze
.”

“Jake, all the coloreds on the train are called George. On this train and all the other trains. They call them all George so you don’t have to waste any time trying to remember them by their colored names.” Jimmy Riordan paused. “What I’m trying to say is, you don’t know as much as you think you know.”

Jacob put on Morris Lefkowitz’s vicuña coat and followed Jimmy Riordan down the corridor to the door of his car. On the
125th Street platform, Jimmy gave the porter a ten-dollar bill, then another ten. “You get to Chicago, George, you make sure Mr. King’s bags get on the Chief, you hear?”

“Yessir.”

“I know you for a long time, Jake,” Jimmy Riordan said, shivering in the early evening cold. “I know what you’re like. You’re always looking to hit the ball out of the park. That’s how you’d play it. So I want you to understand something. This isn’t your play. We’re building an organization. We’re planning on leaving a legacy. Morris isn’t sending you out there to push. To build an empire for yourself. Morris is sending you out there because we want you to show the L.A. people, illustrate to them, that the kind of security and management an asset like Nevada requires can best be achieved by national cooperation. As it were.”

“So long, Fordham,” Jacob King said. He watched Jimmy Riordan walk to the stairs and disappear down the steps leading to 125th Street. The porter was clapping his arms against the cold. “Hey, George,” Jacob said, removing his coat.

“Yessir.”

Jacob handed him the vicuña coat. “Take it.”

“Take it where, Mr. King?”

“It’s yours.”

“I couldn’t take it, Mr. King.”

“You know any poor people?” Jacob King said, climbing back aboard the Limited. “Then give it to a poor person.”

Morris Lefkowitz placed a call to Los Angeles even before the Twentieth Century Limited had cleared the New York City limits. Person-to-person, Morris never being one to waste money on long distance if the party he was calling was not at home.

Jenkins, the butler, said, “A Mr. Lefkowitz is calling from New York City.”

Rita Lewis looked at Lilo Kusack, who peered over the top of the legal brief he was reading, thought for a moment, and then
nodded. “See what he has to say,” Lilo Kusack said. He was wearing white swimming trunks, and his face and legs and his hairy chest glistened with suntan oil. Like many affluent men in Southern California, he appeared to have stopped aging at forty, which made it difficult to guess exactly how old he was. Rita Lewis sat in a chair next to his chaise painting her fingernails as she waited for the butler to bring the telephone and plug it into the poolside jack. She was a woman of some mileage but she was well kept, like a classic automobile. Her figure filled her bathing suit, and she shielded her face from the sun with a wide-brimmed straw hat and sunglasses, off which the sun-dappled water in the swimming pool was reflected. The butler plugged in the telephone and handed her the receiver. “Morris,” Rita Lewis said, holding the phone carefully so that her nail polish would not run, “it’s been a long time.”

“You make me wait, Rita,” Morris Lefkowitz said. “You never used to make Morris wait.”

“This is California, Morris. I’m talking to you from beside the swimming pool. Taking in the sun. I go inside, then I miss the sun, get a chill. So Jenkins brings the phone out here from the house. It takes time. It’s not like New York, Morris.”

“Who is this Jenkins?” Morris Lefkowitz said.

Rita put her hand over the receiver and trying not to laugh, she said, “He wants to know who Jenkins is.”

“Tell him Jenkins is my whacker,” Lilo Kusack said. “He’ll understand that.”

“The butler, Morris.” Lilo Kusack beckoned her and she took the telephone and sat on the edge of his deck chair.

“Little Rita has a butler?” Morris Lefkowitz said. And then he said, “If that’s Russian sable, then I’m Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“Who are you talking to, Morris?”

“My grandnephew Mickey. I’m trying to teach him the fur business.”

“He’s teaching his nephew the fur business,” Rita whispered to Lilo Kusack.

“Because fur is forever,” Lilo Kusack said. “Fur is legitimate.
That old man’s been spinning that line since before I got my first piece of ass.”

“Nice talk for a lawyer,” Rita Lewis said. “Yes, Morris, I’m still here, it’s not a bad connection.” She screwed the brush back into the nail polish bottle. “Now, listen, Morris, I know you didn’t call just to tell me about your nephew in the fur business.”

“Rita, I’d like a favor.”

“You know, Morris, I figured that out all by myself, that this wasn’t a social call, just to bring me up to date on what you’ve been doing, maybe invite me out to look at the family jewels.”

“You still got a mouth on you,” Morris Lefkowitz said. “You always had a mouth, I give you that.” He paused. “Jacob is coming to California, Jacob King, you know Jacob, he was a friend of yours.” He paused for effect. “A special friend of yours.”

“I hear he’s coming out,” Rita Lewis said. “So what’s the favor, Morris?”

“It’s important to Morris that Jacob meet the right people,” Morris Lefkowitz said. “Remember, Rita, it was Morris that took you out of the showroom, allowed you to make something out of yourself. I want Jacob to meet nice people, the right people …” Before she could answer, she heard Morris Lefkowitz say, “How do you expect to learn this business, Mickey, if you think dyed mink is Russian sable.” Suddenly he began to cough so hard that she had to hold the telephone away from her ear. As she did, Lilo started to move his thigh up and down against her back. “No,” she said softly. “The lotion stains my suit.” Lilo smiled, put down his brief and began stroking his crotch. “So I buy you another suit.” Then Morris was back on the line. “Rita, you I know would never think dyed mink is Russian sable. Morris gave you your first mink, Rita. And Morris gave you your first sable. Morris would be extremely grateful, and if Morris is grateful, Morris is prepared to be extremely helpful—Mickey, some seltzer water for Morris, for the indigestion you give me—extremely helpful.”

“Oh, swell, Morris. That’s all we need out here is another
hood from New York who beats a murder rap because a witness just happens to have an accident, like running into a bullet when he’s sitting on the can. I bet that cost you more than a sable.”

“That California’s made you cynical, Rita. It must be the sun. It wrinkles the skin. I didn’t know it wrinkled the brain cells, too.”

“I’m not getting cynical out here, Morris. I’m getting realistic. You don’t get the distinction, I’m sorry.”

“So, Rita, you don’t owe Morris a favor?”

On the lounger, Lilo Kusack’s stroking had produced a bulge in his trunks.

“All right, Morris, give it a rest, I’ll introduce him around. How about Chuckie O’Hara? He’s a fairy, but he’s a war hero, you remember the war, Morris, and what the Nazis did to the Jews? You bought Jake a 4-F is what I hear, so he didn’t have to fight the Nazis that were gassing your people.”

“It was the flat feet Jacob had.”

“Flat feet. My mistake. How about Jack Ford then? The Sons of the Pioneers. Adolphe Menjou? Jacob’s not a Communist, is he? Adolphe hates Reds. Gangsters are okay, gangsters are party favorites this year. I’ll give a costume party. Everybody can bring a gun.”

“You didn’t used to always make with the jokes, Rita,” Morris Lefkowitz said quietly. “Not when I was around.”

In truth, Rita Lewis would not have dared talk this way to Morris Lefkowitz if there had not been three thousand miles separating them. She knew it, and she knew that Morris knew it, too.

“All right, Lilo, too. I’ll get Lilo to see him, it’s so important to you.” A well-honed survival instinct told her that it was time to make amends. She had a new life, but she knew it was pointless and perhaps even dangerous to continue insulting an important player from her past life, that even from three thousand miles away Morris Lefkowitz had the ability, if he had the inclination, to make her new life unpleasant. “Lilo’s like the chamber
of commerce. Lilo sells the advantages of California.” Next to her Lilo began to laugh, and tried to place her free hand on the bulge in his trunks. “A land of fresh starts.”

“You’re a good girl, Rita.”

“I’m always a good girl, Morris. That’s how I got out of your showroom. All those nice old guys trying to goose me and feel me up. When all I wanted to do was save myself for you. It makes me wonder if that’s why you gave me the mink coat.”

“Thank you for the favor, Rita.”

“Morris, no more favors. I figure I paid enough for that fur already.”