Playland (52 page)
“I’m going to New York for a few days,” Jacob King said. “When I get back, I’m going out to Playland. I want you out there with me.”
“I’ll be working,” Blue said. She still had the makeup Kleenex around her neck.
“You’ll be finished.”
Blue took the Kleenex from her neck and wadded it in her hand. “You ever think maybe we’re finished?”
Jacob watched her for a moment. Her gaze did not waver. Then without a word he turned and headed for the stage door.
“Chuckie, how much longer do I have to fucking wait around here?” Blue said.
Did she cry? I asked.
She only cried on cue, Chuckie O’Hara said.
It was the first time Jacob King had been to New York since he arrived in California on the Super Chief. Whether he drove to Bay Ridge to see Lillian King and Matthew and Abigail King is unknown. It is known—this from Melba Mae Toolate—that Jacob and Lillian talked more or less regularly on the telephone, business usually involving the children, or finances, or repairs on the house. Their last exchange, however, became so acrimonious that all communication between them had ceased. Soon after which a lawyer in New York contacted Jacob about working out a financial settlement for a legal separation, leading ultimately to divorce, with Lillian Aronow King having full custody of Matthew and Abigail King. The lawyer’s name was Ze’ev
Boorstin, and in due course Ze’ev Boorstin was contacted by James Francis Riordan, attorney-at-law, who told him that separation and divorce were no longer contemplated, and that any expenses Mr. Boorstin had accumulated would be paid by Lefkowitz For Fur, M. M. Lefkowitz, Prop. Moreover, if Ze’ev Boorstin pursued the matter with Mrs. King further, a complaint would be lodged with the New York State Bar Association. Lefkowitz For Fur, Ze’ev Boorstin said. Is that Morris Lefkowitz? It’s enough for you to know that it’s M. M. Lefkowitz, Jimmy Riordan said.
What was the reason for all this sudden acrimony? I asked.
Jacob told her he wanted his brats out for the opening of Playland, Melba Mae Toolate said, and the bitch wife said I’m not sending them out to meet your new whore.
Jacob told you this? I asked.
I was listening on an extension, and I said, Who’re you calling a whore, you fat bitch. I couldn’t help myself.
“Every prick out there’s on overtime, twelve hours a day, seven days a week,” Jimmy Riordan said. “You got plasterers in from Detroit. Detroit, for Christ’s sake. Carpenters from Cleveland. Fucking Cleveland. In fucking Nevada.” Profanity was an indulgence to which Jimmy Riordan rarely resorted, but there were times it got the attention he wanted it to get. “I didn’t know you were trying to end unemployment in the Cleveland locals. They’re having a hard time in Buffalo, too, you want to help them out. Will you just explain to me why? Why? In simple no-bullshit English?”
“You been in touch with Jackie,” Jacob King said. “You went behind my back. I would’ve given you the figures, you just asked me. I know how much we’re over. It’s the price you pay, you want a Christmas opening. We got a building boom in California, everybody’s short work crews, that’s why we bring in Detroit, Cleveland. You just asked me, I would’ve told you that. But no, you go behind my back, you go to Jackie.”
“Of course we’ve been in touch with Jackie. That’s what you
do, Jake, you go four million dollars over budget. What’re you going to do now? You going to work Jackie over, like you worked Lilo over? That was smart, real smart, they do that in all the big companies these days. Merrill works over Lynch, Kuhn beats up Loeb.” He wondered if Jacob even knew what Merrill, Lynch and Kuhn, Loeb were. “Now I hear you want to be a fucking movie producer.” He started to say Your brains are in your dick, but thought better of it. “And I hear you want to buy your suits in England.”
Morris Lefkowitz sat behind his desk, hands folded in front of him, his head swiveling between Jimmy and Jacob, saying nothing, taking everything in. He had aged since Jacob had last seen him. There were brown spots on his hands and on his scalp that he did not remember from before. There was no point in carrying on an argument with Jimmy. Morris would make the final decision. “Morris …”
“Jimmy talks sense, Jacob.”
“You know what you’re telling me, Morris?” Jacob King never thought the day would come when he would confront Morris Lefkowitz. You argued with Morris, but once his mind was made up you did not cross him. Morris knew best. “You’re telling me you’re an old man.”
Oh, God, Jimmy Riordan thought to himself, I didn’t hear that. Morris Lefkowitz’s subjects showed him more deference than was shown to kings and popes, or paid the price if they did not. Jacob of all people should know that, he had pulled the trigger on Philly Wexler for a less heinous heresy. Lilo’s right. He’s crazy.
“That’s the way you speak to Morris, then don’t speak,” Morris Lefkowitz said with difficulty.
“I’m in touch with Lilo, Morris,” Jimmy Riordan said quickly. “He can move somebody out there tomorrow, bring the thing under control. Somebody who knows how to add and subtract.”
“You used to have big dreams, Morris,” Jacob said. “You used to be a gambler. Now you sit here and tell me you’re
turning your big dreams over to the accountants. To the lawyers. You’re letting the Fordham guys place your bets.”
“Jacob, you are causing me such pain,” Morris said.
“Your choice, Morris.” Jacob was relentless. “Is that what you really want out there, somebody, the only thing he knows”—Jacob looked directly at Jimmy Riordan—“is how to add and subtract. Put it together right, and it will last long after you and I are gone.”
“His idea of right will break us, Morris,” Jimmy Riordan said. “Go on this way, California will pull their money out, and we’re back where we started. We got to think savings.”
“Savings,” Jacob exploded. “What is this fucking savings you’re talking about.”
“It’s a word you must’ve been in reform school the day it was taught,” Jimmy Riordan said, and immediately regretted it. The ad hominem was not his style. It placed him on the same level as his antagonists, and Jimmy Riordan detested a level playing field.
Morris tented and untented his hands, rhythmically, as if keeping time. “Jimmy,” he said at last. “We give Jacob some leeway.”
As always Morris Lefkowitz spoke in tongues. Leeway was for Jimmy to interpret. Leeway was granted to Jacob King as it would be to an unruly son. The son Morris Lefkowitz never had. The son from whom he would ultimately exact tribute for the offense of calling him old. “I’ll work out the figures, Morris.”
“You work out the figures, Jimmy.” He raised his hand, as a pontiff might, a sadness in the gesture. “
Mazel
, Jacob.” It was what Morris Lefkowitz had said when Jacob King left this same office for California, but then it was a benediction, and now it had the sense of a farewell.
The rain slanted down at La Guardia. Morris Lefkowitz’s black customized four-door Oldsmobile slid into a No Parking zone outside the departure entrance, and his driver, Rocco, put a
hundred-dollar bill in his lap to give any policeman who asked him to move. Jimmy Riordan raised the window between the front and the back seat so that Rocco could not hear what he had to say, then put his hand on Jacob King’s arm. “Jake, I want to tell you something,” Jimmy said quietly. “I haven’t always worked for Morris. I wasn’t always a Mob lawyer. My first job out of Fordham Law School was working for the New York State Banking Commission. I started out checking the books at the First National Bank of Oneonta, New York. I look at something that’s costing too much, I get a funny feeling. A little buzz.”
“You think I’m cooking the books?”
“No. Cooking the books I understand. What I don’t understand is why you think you got to build the Taj Mahal out there.”
Jacob almost said he wanted to be respectable, but caught himself. At his center of gravity, he knew that respectability would always elude him. He was who he was, and he would carry the tag Jacob King, with all it implied, to his last day. “Because I want to hear people say, Jake King built the Taj Mahal out there,” he said finally. It was not respectability, but as close as he could ever come to it.
“At least you’re honest, Jake. Okay. So let me explain something, something I didn’t want to, but …” Jimmy Riordan lowered the window to the front seat. “Rocco, go inside, find out when Jake’s plane is leaving.”
“Eight-thirty, Mr. Riordan.”
“It’s raining, Rocco, it could be delayed.”
“I got you, Mr. Riordan.” The driver opened the door and ran toward the departure lounge.
“The Italians, you got to tell them things twice,” Jimmy Riordan said.
Jacob smiled. It was a complaint he had heard often from Jimmy in days when life was easier, and Morris was younger. New York days.
“Jake, you want to be something you’re not,” Jimmy Riordan
said. “You’re a hood. A smart hood. In time, maybe very smart, smart enough to cross over and be like Morris. That’s why Morris said okay today. Morris still believes in you. But Morris is also still a businessman. And there’s a point at which any businessman …” Jimmy paused. He knew Jacob well enough to know that he would understand the meaning of what he was about to say. He repeated, “… there’s a point at which any businessman will cut his losses.”
Jacob King opened the car door. The rain splashed inside. “Morris is old.”
“Jake, Morris wants you to be old, too. I want you to be old. Believe me.”
“So long, Jimmy.”
F
rom the continuing testimony of Lyle Ledbetter, appearing before the federal grand jury impaneled in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, to investigate matters pertaining to the shooting death of Jacob King o/a December 1, 1948. Court was called to order at 10:42
A.M
., May 30, 1949, in Department C, U.S. District Courthouse, Las Vegas, Nevada, the Honorable Lucius Klinger, presiding. Stanley Prince, assistant United States attorney for southern Nevada, appeared for the government:
T
HE
C
OURT
:
Good morning. I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Mr. Ledbetter, you are still sworn. Mr. Prince, you may proceed.
M
R
. S
TANLEY
P
RINCE
(hereinafter referred to as “Q”): How are you, Mr. Ledbetter?
M
R
. L
YLE
L
EDBETTER
(hereinafter referred to as “A”): All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.
Q:
: I think W. C. Fields has copyright on that joke, Mr. Ledbetter. Now, before we recessed Friday, you said
you would ransack your memory about the state of affairs at Playland in the weeks after Jacob King moved here more or less permanently to oversee the finishing touches of construction. Where was Jackie Heller during all of this? He at least had a construction background?
A:
Correction. The joint was no longer called Playland.
Q:
Explain, Mr. Ledbetter.
A:
Well, when Jake gets back from New York, the first thing he does is take down the old sign that says
PLAYLAND
and put up a new one that says
KING’S PLAYLAND
. I thought he’d gone nuts. His whacker—
Q:
For the record, explain
whacker
, Mr. Ledbetter.
A:
His shooter. Bang, bang. It’s a word the guys use.
Whacker
.
Q:
For the record then,
whacker
means designated killer, would that be fair to say?
A:
Yeah. I suppose.
Whacker
just sounds nicer. The guys know what it means.
Q:
And you, too.
A:
It’s a word I hear. Where was I?
Q:
Mr. King had just returned from New York and the first thing he did was change the name of the hotel from Playland to King’s Playland. At which point, his designated killer, or whacker, as you so colorfully put it, said … what is this whacker’s name by the way?
A:
Eddie something. I don’t even like to look at him, I mean he looks like if he hurts someone he won’t lose much sleep over it.
Q:
Your Honor, this will be the last interruption, but let the record reflect that Mr. King’s alleged whacker has variously been identified as Eddie Binhoff or Eddie Binyon, and there is a possibility that he has also been known as Allie Lazar. We have been unable to locate him so we could serve a subpoena. You can continue, Mr. Ledbetter.
A:
Okay. So anyway Jake takes down the old sign and puts up the new one,
KING’S PLAYLAND
, and this Eddie says to him, Jake, I hope you know what you’re doing, Morris has had guys hit for less than that …
Q:
For the record, Morris is Morris Lefkowitz of Lefkowitz For Furs in New York City. Now let’s get back to Jackie Heller. Where was he?
A:
Making scarce. He’d done something to piss Jake off, excuse my language, Your Honor, Jackie said it was nothing, just a misunderstanding, but this Eddie guy mentioned he’d like to rip Jackie’s tongue out and have it for a sandwich, and Jake says they only do that in B-pictures, Eddie. I mean, you want to know what kind of guy this Eddie was, Jackie was no day at the beach, he killed a guy once in Jersey with his bare hands, and messing with Eddie was not on his agenda. What I hear is that Eddie once cut off some guy’s hands in New Jersey, but that’s only something I hear. Eventually, Jackie and Jake make up, because he goes back to work at Playland, I think if he doesn’t, he thinks he’ll get whacked himself, and so everything seems to be going all right, two shifts a day.
Q:
Then progress was being made at the hotel?
A:
When I’m there, yes. There’s this decorator, he’s a … let’s just say he’s a little light on his feet, he wears a polka dot bandanna around his neck, he calls everyone
by a girl’s name. Like he calls Eddie the whacker Edna. Not to his face, he’s not that dumb. And he’s showing swatches to Jake for the main showroom. Your Honor, can I say this in my own words, I hope the members of the jury won’t be offended, you know what I mean?
T
HE
C
OURT
:
I’ll tell you when you’re out of order, Mr. Ledbetter.
A:
Okay. He says, this decorator, What I’m thinking, Mr. King, is a carpet in ecclesiastical red and the ceiling in persimmon. And Jake says, I wanted a whorehouse, I don’t need some
fageleh
that’s never been in one to tell me what it looks like. Scratch the ecclesiastical red, scratch the other one too, try peach, I always liked peach. And things are coming along so good, his entertainment director’s interviewing showgirls for the line. It’s the little things, Lyle, he says to me, I’ve got to know him by now, he calls me Lyle, I call him Jake, he’s okay, I never saw the bad side people talk about so much. It’s the little things, he says, take that chick over there, the one that says she worked at the Chez in Chicago and the Copa in New York, she’s a human mattress, for Christ’s sake, and he says to her, Honey, I bet the last place you worked had a carpet in ecclesiastical red. He’s got this guy working for him, a vice cop from L.A. doing some free-lance, Crotty I think his name was, and Crotty’s checking the girls out, and Jake tells this guy Crotty anyone with a vice conviction is out.
Q:
A class operation.
A:
Definitely. There was one other thing.
Q:
Do tell us, Mr. Ledbetter.
A:
This is late in the game. Jackie tells him a cat got caught in the swimming pool pump, caused the water
in the pool to drain out. Like somebody pulled the plug in a bathtub. I’d like to tear that cat’s heart out, Jackie says, we got to rip out the plumbing in the pool and start all over again. And Jake says, How long’s it going to take, and Jackie says, Four days and it’s going to cost a bundle. And Jake says, Two days, and one thing, Jackie, I want you to let the cat go, it’s bad luck for a gambler to touch a cat.
Q:
And?
A:
Just at that moment, one of the construction guys comes out from the drain, he’s holding the cat in his hand, and he’d strangled it.
