Playland (38 page)

“Hello, Lilo.”

Lilo looked around as Jacob King pulled out a chair and sat down beside him. “Jake, what a nice surprise,” Lilo said equably. Part of his success was predicated on his never being fazed by the unexpected. “Rita said something about you being in town. I been trying to get hold of you.”

“Really.”

“I knew you were free I would’ve asked you here tonight. It just didn’t occur to me the Red Menace was in your line.”

“I’m here on business.”

Lilo removed a leather cigar case from his jacket and offered a cigar to Jacob King. “Cuban. Great town, Havana.”

“Someone just told me that. Offered me a cigar, just like you did. Havana, this person I am acquainted with said. Rum and Coca-Cola. Beautiful señoritas. Regular Latin spitfires.”

“Whoever told you that told you right.”

Jacob King watched the dance floor for a moment. “I was thinking more along the lines of Nevada.”

“You were?”

“This new place you got out there. I think you call it La Casa Nevada.”

Lilo Kusack contemplated his cigar. “Actually we call it ours.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“I’m told you have a cash flow problem trying to finish it.”

“You were told wrong …”

“A cash flow problem Morris is willing to help you solve with all the resources he has available.”

Lilo Kusack regarded Jacob, then cupped his ear and cocked his head toward the orchestra. “What’s the name of that song they’re playing?”

“ ‘Bewitched,’ ” Jacob King said immediately. “ ‘Bothered and bewildered.’ Why?”

“You can hear it, then?”

“Sure.”

“Oh. I thought you were hard of hearing is why I asked.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you didn’t hear me when I said we had no cash flow problem.” Lilo rolled the cigar around in his mouth. “You know, they’re working on this new quiz show over at NBC Radio, you ought to think about it, Jake, you know all the songs.
Name That Tune
, I think it’s going to be called.” He removed a piece of loose leaf from the cigar. “If it works, they’re going to put it on the television. You’d be a natural.” When Jacob King did not reply, Lilo mimed spraying the ballroom with a tommy gun. “The
Hit Parade
, though. Maybe that’s more your line.”

Jacob King took a handful of walnuts from the nut-and-fruit-bowl centerpiece and began cracking them one by one in his fist, never taking his eyes from Lilo Kusack. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Mr. King,” Blue Tyler said. She was standing beside his chair with Arthur French, who had his arm around her waist, as if ready to pull her away if Jacob made a move.

“Miss Tyler,” Jacob King said, brushing the walnut shells from his hands and trying to rise.

“Please, stay where you are,” Blue said. “You forgot to tell me Mr. King was going be here tonight, Arthur, you should remember to tell me these things.” To Jacob she said, “You were such a good dancer. Is your dance card full?”

“Yours is, Blue,” Arthur French said quickly. “J.F. wants his driver to take you home. Chuckie says you have to be on the set by eight tomorrow.”

She made no argument. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. King.” Her throaty voice as always held the promise of deviant behavior. “Arthur’s told me so many …” (a Chuckie O’Hara line reading) “… interesting …” (a second, almost imperceptible,
pause) “… things about you. Maybe you can come out to the studio and watch me shoot.”

“I’d like that, Miss Tyler. It’s nice to see you again, too.”

Lilo Kusack watched as Arthur guided Blue toward the ballroom door. “You made an impression, Jake. Remind me to ask Arthur what he told her about you. He should tell her you’ve seen a lot of shooting in your time.” He pushed his chair back and stood as Rita returned to the table, followed by Shelley Flynn and J. F. French. “You know, Rita, Jake. Of course, you know Rita.”

“Bet the house he knows Rita,” Shelley Flynn said in a voice one had to strain to hear. Sotto voce was his normal conversational tone so that in the event anyone took offense at one of his gibes he could always claim to have been misunderstood.

“And Shelley Flynn, I know you know Shelley. From the Latin Quarter. All you New York guys know one another.” Shelley Flynn nodded equivocally at Jacob King. He owed his livelihood to J. F. French and he would wait to see how J.F. and Lilo reacted before any demonstrative welcome. “J. F. French you don’t know. J.F. is Cosmopolitan Pictures …”

“This is not exactly a social visit, Lilo,” Jacob King said quietly.

“I didn’t think it was, Jake,” Lilo said. “So let me lay it out for you so there’s no misunderstanding. The place in the desert is ours, it’s closed, hands off.”

“It’s also unfinished,” Jacob King said. “So let me”—he paused for emphasis—“lay it out for you. We can help you finish it. Or”—he leaned closer to Lilo—“we can build our own joint that’ll make yours look like a pizza palace.”

“I see definite problems with that, Jake. Here’s Benny,” Lilo said, as Benny Draper took a seat next to J. F. French and glowered at Jacob King. “Benny can help me explain it to you. Benny, Jake was just saying he might build a place in the desert, so tell him how hard it’s going to be.”

Arthur French slipped quietly into the empty chair beside Rita Lewis. Onstage Bob Crosby had put on a red-white-and-blue
skimmer and was doing a buck-and-wing, singing, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy …”

“I thought you had security, Lilo, keep New York shit like this out of here,” Benny Draper said over the music.

“… Yankee Doodle do or die …”

Jacob reached and took an apple from the fruit bowl. As the rest of the table watched, he polished it carefully on the lapel of his tuxedo, then suddenly tossed it to Benny Draper, who bobbled it as if were a hand grenade and let it fall to the floor.

“For such a tough guy, Benny, your coordination isn’t much,” Jacob King said.

“… a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s …”

Lilo put his hand firmly on Benny Draper’s shoulder to keep him in his chair.

“… born on the Fourth of July …”

“Jake, you’re not being diplomatic,” Lilo said. “You come out here like you own the place, you start making waves, you go over to Vegas—”

“What’re you going to build over there, a sand castle?” Benny Draper said. “I run every union between here and Chicago. A hammer don’t hit a nail over there I don’t give the sayso. A waiter don’t pick up a tray, a truck don’t get loaded, except I give the okay. Jakey King don’t get the okay, you understand that, you fuck?”

“… I am the Yankee Doodle boy …”

“You see the problems, Jake,” Lilo said soothingly. “Say you managed to build a place. Who’s going to play it? Shelley, you going to play Jake’s place?”

“Whose place?” Shelley Flynn said. He now knew what side to come down on. “The only place I see is La Casa Nevada. What’re you going to call your joint, Jake. Casa Lefkowitz?”

Benny Draper exploded into laughter. “Shelley, you got to stop, you’re going to make me wet my pants. Casa Lefkowitz, oh, Jesus …”

Bob Crosby and the Bobcats segued into a patriotic medley. “Over there, over there …”

“Moe,” Lilo Kusack said. “What kind of talent you going to make available to Jake?”

“When I was in theaters in the Lower East Side, I had a dog act once,” J. F. French said. “Danny Doberman and His Pinschers. It might still be available. Arthur, make a note, check it out in the morning.” Arthur stared at his father. “I said make a note, Arthur.”

“Right, J.F.” Arthur took a pencil and scribbled something on the inside of a matchbook.

“… the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming over there …”

Rita Lewis took a lighter from her purse, tapped a cigarette on her case, and waited to see how Jacob would respond. He seemed contained, even faintly amused. It was the way she suspected he would be before he hurt someone. Moments like this excited Rita. It was like watching a cockfight. She would like to get a bet down on the outcome. She would bet Lilo was doing something he rarely did, overplaying his hand, and she wondered if it was because he knew she had fucked Jacob when he got into town, and was wondering if she was still fucking him. He wouldn’t ask, and would not believe her if she said no, which in fact was true.

“So, Jake,” Lilo said, “let’s enjoy ourselves. We’ll order some champagne, I’m buying.” He whistled for a waiter, took a money clip from his pocket and laid it on the table. “This is a swell town to visit. Grab a little sun, go down to the beach, I have a place out past Zuma, get a broad, take her out there, you’ll go back to New York a new man, you can tell Morris thanks, but no thanks, we don’t need his money.”

With a flourish, Bob Crosby sang, “… and we won’t be back till it’s over over there,” then, without a pause for breath, moved into “It’s a grand old flag, it’s a high-flying flag …”

Jacob picked up Lilo’s money clip and removed a hundred-dollar bill.

“If you’re a little short, Jake,” Lilo said, “I’ll be glad to help you out, we like to give our tourists a good time.”

Benny Draper giggled. Everyone else at the table watched but did not say a word.

“Give me your lighter, Rita,” Jacob King said.

Rita passed him her lighter without hesitation. Jacob lit it, looked at the flame, and then held it under Lilo’s nose. “I’m going to tell Morris …” He took the hundred-dollar bill and lit it with Rita’s lighter.

“What the fuck’re you …” Lilo said.

Jacob removed the rest of the cash from the money clip and set it on fire with the burning bill.

“I’m going to tell Morris that you people out here’ve got money to burn.”

Bob Crosby whipped his microphone cord. “… the land I love …”

“You act like you’re still on the fucking Brooklyn docks,” Lilo said, as he tried to stamp out the flames and save what bills he could.

Jacob King rose and looked at Lilo. “Don’t you ever forget it,” he said.

As Jacob King walked toward the exit, Arthur French remembered, Bob Crosby said, “Everybody join in,” and all over the ballroom, voices were raised.

“… the land of the red, white, and blue …”

Arthur, I said skeptically. Not really “A Grand Old Flag.”

Well, it could’ve been “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,” Arthur French said. You read the clips. They all said it was an evening full of patriotic songs. And there was this enormous American flag and I remember Jake walking out underneath it.

You remember it, or that’s the way you’d shoot it.

Jack Ford always said print the legend.

Marty Magnin had a more direct concern.

Speaking as a filmmaker, the producer of twenty-one major motion pictures, and for Sydney Allen, an auteur, one whose
films had garnered three best-picture Oscar nominations, although none had ever won, the reason he had never been a winner, always implied by Sydney but never stated outright, being the Industry’s bias against a New York director who would not tolerate the usual Hollywood bullshit interference, he had only one question:

When are Jake and Blue going to fuck?

B
lue remembered it happening the night after La Casa Nevada burned down.

Mysterious
was the adjective most often used in the newspaper accounts of the predawn fire that consumed and destroyed La Casa Nevada.
Mysterious
is a word encouraging speculation of the wilder sort, and at the city desks and in the gossip columns and in the studio commissaries and at the gin rummy games at Hillcrest and at Brenda Samuel’s whorehouse in the Hollywood Hills, where the Industry elite gathered to fornicate in an ambiance of complete privacy and where it was said that Jacob King was a volume customer, much of the speculation had to do with the same Jacob King.

Jacob King would always claim that he had never met Brenda Samuels, and that he had not paid for a piece of ass since the two dollars he gave at the age of ten to Philly Wexler for the use of his sister.

It was Chuckie O’Hara who was the source of this information. While I am willing to accept the first part of the claim, I have trouble with Jacob taking Chuckie into his confidence about Ruth Wexler.