Losing patience with her, he blurted, “Yeah, you read my mind perfectly.”
The same waiter began to eye them, so he ordered another beer; but Arietta held up her hand indicating that she had had enough. Disgruntled, the waiter went off for one beer. Jay told himself that when the guy returned, he would slip him a buck and ask him to leave them alone.
“During Prohibition my father trucked in beer from the shore to Newark. He has friends among the Zwillman gang.”
But that didn’t explain how she knew Longie had hired him to write reviews for the Newark Evening News. The only two people present at that meeting were Jean Harlow and Abe. And the only person he’d told was Puddy. Crap! Puddy probably told Moretti. “Does your father know a Willie Moretti?”
“It’s the Italian connection,” she said. “They both began small. Moretti advanced, my father didn’t.”
“If your father trucked booze, then why are you grilling me about knowing a few gangsters?”
“You admit, then, that you know those men.”
He could see that he wasn’t helping his case. She seemed intent on twisting his words.
“Until a few minutes ago, I never laid eyes on them.”
“They were certainly chummy with your friend in the blue dress.”
Ah, maybe her real beef was not the hoods but Margie? That argued she might have a yen for him. He smiled.
“Margie,” he said casually, trying to assuage her jealousy, “has a husband and two kids.” But once again he misjudged her cleverness.
“Then why the hell is she hanging out with other men? The morals of your friends leave much to be desired.”
He lied. “Her old man is out of work. She has to support him—any way she can.”
“What’s her husband’s name? I’ll ask my father if he can find him work. Hungry kids are no joke.”
“That won’t be necessary . . . because, you see, uh, um, the guys Margie’s sitting with have agreed to give him a job. That’s what the powwow was all about.”
Arietta said simply and without anger, “I don’t believe you.”
A disconcerting pause ensued; he then laughed and admitted that his embarrassment had led him to lie. She made him promise that he would always level with her. Encouraged by that word “always,” he convinced himself that if she cared about his future behavior, then maybe she’d agree to return with him to the Riviera Hotel. So when the band took a break, he used the occasion to ask. She lowered the lids over her fascinating eyes and peered at him as if she couldn’t make out the person in front of her.
“Please, Jay, we hardly know each other.”
He wanted to say “What better way to get acquainted,” but sensed that beneath her skin was a mystery that sex was unlikely to solve. For a moment, he entertained the idea of telling her how much she entranced him, but guessed that, if she knew, he would be her toy, always at her beck and call. Maybe he was already. . . . The wiser course, he decided, was to act nonchalantly, pretending that all gentlemen, as a matter of form, propositioned their dates. In response to her comment, he replied, “Since we have so much ground to make up, let’s go out next Saturday.”
“Any place special?” she said rising from the table and pocketing the book of matches that had been lying in the ashtray.
“The Park movie house to see Bombshell.”
He dressed in a tan suit and draped around his neck a brown silk muffler. As the cab passed the B’nai Abraham Synagogue, the spectral worshippers sparkled in the illumination of the incandescent moon. His thoughts became reflective. Terrible events were unfolding in Italy and Germany, but the Lord gave no sign of His displeasure. What would it take, he wondered, to disabuse people of their belief that the Almighty would protect them? At the door, not Arietta but Mr. Magliocco greeted him, scowling as if somehow the old guy knew about Jay’s propositioning Arietta. Instead of retiring to the living room, Mr. Magliocco led him to the back of the house and into the damp and moldy air of the garage, where autumn flies buzzed in the light of an old standing lamp that illuminated a motorcycle and a “Toga Maroon” Waterhouse 1929 DuPont Model G five-passenger sedan, in mint condition.
“DuPont Motors made only about 625 of them,” Mr. Magliocco said, “from ’29 to ’32. It’ll go 125.”
With its six “Borgia Wine” wire wheels, two of them spares resting in the fender wells, a rearview mirror strapped atop each, silvery aluminum bumpers, and the glowing maroon exterior finish, one could see that the car had been lovingly cared for.
“A reminder of adventures past,” Mr. Magliocco said. “If this car could talk, the tales it could tell. . . . Shall we take a spin? We could circle the park . . . and talk privately.”
Jay’s confidence fled. What could he say if Arietta had told her father about his forwardness? Perhaps her father merely objected to a Jewish suitor with shady connections. Or maybe Piero just wanted to learn whether the lad’s intentions were honorable. This much Jay knew: He wanted to take her to the hotel, not to the altar. At least not yet. Marriage happened when one had the means, and never before the age of twenty-five.
Driving smoothly and deliberately through the city, the old guy chatted about joyful felonies, bootlegging in particular, and the death of his wife from cancer—“she made me promise I’d raise Arietta a good Catholic.” Like a kid who digresses but eventually returns to the subject, Piero kept coming back to the DuPont Model G Waterhouse. It fascinated him, particularly its pedigree.
“I understand you know Longie Zwillman.”
“He got me my job at the paper.” Hoping to look like an innocent, Jay added, “Though I’m not sure why.”
“Longie has a big heart. He gives lots of money to the Catholic soup kitchens, and believe me they need it in these times.” Slowing the auto to a crawl as they entered Weequahic Park, Mr. Magliocco said, “He gave me this car.”
“Really?”
“Zwillman bought it from a guy in Pennsylvania, a fellow by the name of Robertson. Family owned thousands of acres. Abe figured that since most of the leggers hauled liquor in ‘Henry’s Lady,’ a classier car like this one wouldn’t be stopped—or caught, because it could outrun the feds. Zwillman originally got it to move liquor from Canada to Kansas City, but when the Pendergast people started buying from the local shiners, he used it to carry booze from Quebec to Atlantic City. I worked as a hauler. It suited me fine because I’d sneak off to visit a friend from Italy, Luigi Baldini, who had a farm near a small town not too far from Vineland, called Norma. Once his wife died, he hired a Negro housekeeper to keep up the place. He eventually gave the farm to her. That was Luigi: generous. Would you believe . . . ‘Hump’ McManus once hid out in Luigi’s bunkhouse after he shot Rothstein in the stomach. Ever hear how the Big Bankroll refused to tell the cops who plugged him?”
“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 beh
avior, she called me ‘Mr. M.’”
A boy came flying down the hill. Approaching 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, Ar
ietta 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?
Dreams Bigger Than the Night Page 8
