by Howard Fast
Mark Levy was still in his office at seven-thirty that night when Polly Anderson buzzed and informed him that Inspector Crowther of the San Francisco Police was on the phone and would like to talk to him. Ever since Feng Wo had left, Mark had worked late. They had already hired and fired a replacement, and Mark had come to realize that any valid replacement was out of the question. Feng Wo had traced the intricacies of their operation from the day it began, and there was no one who could step into his shoes and do what he had done. Dan would never stoop to details; everything he did was in the grand manner. If money was needed, he would say to Mark that they needed so much and let it go at that; if money had to be spent, he would spend it. It was up to Mark to plan and connive and juggle.
Now, irritated, he asked what the devil Inspector Crowther wanted.
“He’ll only talk to you.”
“Put him on, put him on.”
Crowther was respectfully troubled. “It’s about Mr. Lavette, Mr. Levy–”
“Dan Lavette?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Well, what about him? Is he hurt?”
“Well, yes, he’s hurt, not too badly. Trouble is, he hurt a lot of other people. He wrecked a speakeasy and he put two men in the hospital. We got him here, and it adds up to aggravated assault, but we didn’t want to charge him or book him until we got a better picture, and I think you’d better come down here.”
“God Almighty,” Mark whispered. “What happened?”
“Well, sir, as near as we can make out, he got drunk and became violent.”
“Are there any newspapermen there?”
“Not yet. I understand. We’re keeping a lid on it.”
“Now listen, please, inspector,” Mark said. “I’m going to try to find Mayor Rolph, and if I do, we’ll both come down to headquarters. I’ll come anyway–right now. But for God’s sake, try to keep this quiet, and don’t book him. I ask that as a personal favor and I know the mayor will be with me on this. You do that for me, and I’ll remember it.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Levy.”
Bolting out of his office, he paused to enlist Polly Anderson, who pleaded, “It’s almost eight already, Mr. L, and I have a dinner date, which happens once a month–”
“Look, they’ve arrested Mr. Lavette–”
“Good heavens, why?”
“I’ll explain another time. I want you to track down Mayor Rolph and get him to meet me at Police Headquarters, and don’t take no for an answer, and I swear I’ll buy you the best dinner the Fairmont can put on the table. Will you?”
“I will.” She sighed. “I hope it comes out all right. He won’t go to jail, will he?”
“I hope not.”
At least they hadn’t put Dan in a cell. Crowther took Mark to an interrogation room, where Dan sat slumped over a table, his cut cheek held together with a piece of cornplaster, his shirt and suit torn and soaked with blood.
Crowther said, “I swear, I don’t know what to do with this one, Mr. Levy. We’re just lucky it happened in a speak, because maybe no one will bring any charges. That is, if nobody dies.”
“What do you mean, if nobody dies?”
“Well, these two in the hospital. One is a bouncer, whose skull he fractured with a beer mug, and the other is a bartender who he ruptured with a kick in the balls. Jesus God, here’s one of the leading men in the city in this kind of a brawl. I never ran into nothing like this before.”
“How many were there?”
“Five as near as we can make out.”
“Then it’s self-defense.”
“In a courtroom, Mr. Levy, in a courtroom. And like I say, if nobody dies.”
Now, in the interrogation room, Dan stared bleakly at his partner.
“How on God’s earth did you get into this?”
“Don’t lecture me,” Dan whimpered. “I’m sick as a dog. Look at me. I vomited up my guts, and my belly feels like a mule kicked me there. I’m almost forty years old, Mark, and I’m soft and flabby, and I got no business in a fight. Christ, I haven’t been in a fight since I was a kid.”
“Well, just tell me what happened.”
“What’s the use? I got shit in my blood–I always have. I’m no better than some lousy gunsel. May Ling’s gone. Gone.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I tried to get drunk, and I got in a fight. I felt ugly and I acted ugly. That’s all.”
The door opened, and Crowther entered with the mayor. Mark was so happy to see Sunny Jim Rolph that he almost embraced him. Rolph was in formal attire, white tie, and tails, and, as always, his shoes were polished to a dazzling shine. He said sadly, “Only for you, Danny Lavette, you poor dumb guinea slob. Look at yourself. A man who should be an example to the youth of the nation.”
“I need that,” Dan said.
“Five of them, and Danny Lavette puts two in the hospital where they may never see the light of day again. You dumb bastard.”
“Thank you.”
“The point is,” Crowther said, “what do I do?”
“The point is that there is no perpetrator,” Rolph decided. “A gentleman is attacked in a speakeasy and beaten half to death. They know that if they open their yaps, we’ll close them down. They won’t bring charges, and the thing to do with this captain of finance is to get him the hell out of here.”
“And if they die?”
“People die. They still won’t bring charges.”
“There are a dozen cops know he’s here.”
“Do they know his name?”
“Some of them do–and Sergeant Murphy.”
“Then tell them and Murphy they’re mistaken.”
“And what do I tell Chief O’Brien?”
“Tell him to talk to me. Crowther, I’m due to speak to Rotary in thirty-five minutes. Don’t argue with me. Do it.”
Mark tried to tell Rolph that he would not forget this.
“Forget it?” Rolph said. “Who the hell could ever forget this? I’ll sure put it in my memory book.”
“Driving to Mark’s place in Sausalito, Dan asked him what he thought this would cost them. They had already decided that Dan could not go home, and Mark had phoned to have a doctor waiting at Sausalito.
“In time, a lot. Rolph’s a gentleman. He won’t press. But sure as God, we are the number-one supporters of his next campaign.”
“I’m sorry, Mark. God, I’m sorry. If this should break in the press.”
“It won’t. Rolph put the fear of God into Crowther. What the hell. We been together almost twenty years. You’re entitled to at least one grade-A binge.”
“And suppose I killed those two clowns? Poor dumb bastards, I had nothing against them. I had a few shots and started to talk loud and nasty and they decided to throw me out. That’s their job.”
“We’ll just hope they live.”
“Where are they?”
“San Francisco General. We’ll call when we get home.”
In the Levys’ kitchen, Dr. Frank Saltzman was waiting. He peeled off the plaster and cleaned the cut on Dan’s face. “That’s a beauty,” he said. “What did it?”
“Brass knuckles.”
“You live an interesting life, Mr. Lavette.”
“More interesting than you could imagine,” Sarah said.
“I’ll have to take a couple of stitches.”
“Be my guest,” Dan said sourly.
“Give you distinction.”
“Take off your shirt,” Sarah told him. “I’ll have it washed.”
“Sarah, do me a favor. Call Jean. Tell her I been in a car accident. Mark’s car.”
“She’s a rotten liar,” Mark said. “I’ll do it.”
“And make her sick with worry?” Sarah asked.
“Not Jean,” Dan said. “Just tell her I’m alive and walking.”
Saltzman prodded the black-and-blue marks on Dan’s stomach. “You haven’t been spitting blood?”
“No. I threw up
a couple of times.”
“Any blood?”
“No. But it hurts like hell what you’re doing.”
“It’ll hurt more tomorrow. You’ll be all right. Wait four days and your doctor can take out the stitches.”
The doctor left. Mark took Dan upstairs, where he got out of his clothes and sponged himself. Then, wrapped in one of Mark’s robes, which came to above his knees, he sat in the kitchen and drank Sarah’s coffee under the fascinated scrutiny of Martha. At twenty-three, Martha had only Dan for a real-life hero. She lived more in the dramas she created than in the quiet house at Sausalito, and she peopled her dramas with an idealized Dan Lavette. She had enrolled in a dramatic school for film acting in Hollywood, and she resented each day that remained before October 1, when the course would begin. Dan, with two stitches in his cheek, a veritable Cyrano fighting off the savage attack of five brutal thugs, was a romantic dream come true. “The scar will make you better-looking, truly, Dan,” she assured him. “Not that you aren’t good-looking–but it will give you a certain something, I mean–”
“I know what you mean,” Sarah said. “I want to talk to Dan very privately. So please leave us, Martha.”
“Why?”
“Because I say so.”
“I’m not a kid anymore.”
“None of us are,” Mark said. “Come on, Martha, beat it.”
She stalked out of the room, and Dan said, “I know what you’re going to say, Sarah. Do me a favor. Let it go.”
“No, you don’t know what I’m going to say, and even if you do, I’ll say it anyway. Mark tells me May Ling left for Los Angeles and took your son with her. Now I’m not even ten years older than you, Danny, but I’m the closest thing to a mother you’ve had since your own mother died, and if you will permit me, I’ll talk bluntly. I think you have done a stupid and terrible thing.”
“Sarah, for God’s sake!” Mark exclaimed.
“Let her say it,” Dan told him. “She’s right.”
“Then why? Why?”
“I couldn’t stop her. It was either that or leave Jean.”
“Oh? And why don’t you leave Jean?”
“I can’t.”
“Why?” Sarah insisted.
“Christ, I can’t explain it.”
“Because she’s Chinese.”
“No, Sarah, no! Not because she’s Chinese. Don’t you understand? Everything Mark and I have, everything we built, a whole lifetime of making something that’s going to be the biggest thing in this state, maybe in the whole country–and we’ve just begun, it’s just starting to roll. I leave Jean, and she washes it out. She told me this. It’s not just a question of community property–we’re in hock almost fifteen million dollars to her father’s bank.”
“Danny, it’s just a business. It’s nothing. It’s a golem that has both of you by the throat. Why can’t you and Mark see that?”
“It’s not just a business. It’s my life. Without it, I’m nothing.”
“God help you,” Sarah whispered.
“Mark, call the hospital,” Dan cried, almost wildly. “Find out what happened.”
He left the room to make the call, and Dan sat there, looking at Sarah. She covered her face with her hands and began to cry softly.
“Don’t,” Dan begged her. “I’m not worth it.”
“I’m not crying for you, Danny. I’m crying for myself.”
Mark came back into the kitchen, a grin on his face. “Both of them off the critical list,” he said. “They’ll be all right. Lady luck is with us, Danny.”
The next morning, dressed in an old pair of Jake’s army trousers–the only pants in the house that fit him–and his washed, mended shirt, Dan came downstairs to be informed that Jean was on the phone.
“How do you feel?” she asked him.
“All right. I have a cut cheek and some black-and-blue marks, but otherwise I’m all right. I look ridiculous. I’m wearing Jake’s old army pants. They washed my suit, and if it still fits, I’ll be home this afternoon.”
“Was Mark hurt?” she asked.
“No, no, he’s all right.”
“Shall I come for you? I’ll have to break a luncheon date.”
“Forget it. I’ll take the ferry and a cab.”
He put down the phone and turned to Sarah, who was watching him and listening.
“She’d have to break a luncheon date to pick me up,” Dan said.
Sarah shook her head and turned away. “Breakfast in ten minutes,” she said shortly.
At the breakfast table, helping her mother serve, Martha said to Dan, “I wish you’d put your oar in. It’s absolutely great. We’re as rich as God, but my mother won’t have a servant in this place. It’s bad enough with me here, but in a month I’ll be leaving for Hollywood. Then she’ll be in this great barn of a place by herself.”
“And when that time comes, I’ll think about it,” Sarah said mildly.
“Hollywood? What for?”
“What does anyone go to Hollywood for? I want to act.”
“Can’t you act here?”
“Dan, I’m going to school–where the movies are. And films are only in one place, in Hollywood.”
“It’s a pesthole,” Dan said.
“Well, it would be less of a pesthole if you and pop would buy a studio there instead of all the other silly things you do with your money.”
“That will be the day,” Dan said.
Stephan Cassala’s first child, a boy, was born at the end of August in 1927. He had been married to Joanna for nine years before the child came, and those nine empty years had been a source of grief and anxiety and for a time a mystery to all four parents. For Joanna, it was a specific misery, since for the first three years she alone knew that as far as she was concerned, her husband was impotent. Her knowledge came about with such agony and guilt on the part of Stephan that it broke her heart, and she hastened to assure him that she loved him and that this fact would make no difference in their relationship. The second disappointment in Joanna’s married life came from an unwillingness on Stephan’s part to leave his father’s house at San Mateo. Rosa, Stephan’s sister, had married a teller in her father’s bank, Frank Massetti–who was promptly promoted to assistant cashier–and they had taken an apartment in San Francisco and dutifully produced three children. The great house at San Mateo, with its seven bedrooms, gave Stephan all the room and comfort he required. He had no desire for a place of his own, and Joanna found it increasingly difficult to communicate with him.
He had never fully emerged from the depression that resulted from his army experience, and since that was a time when the name and philosophy of Sigmund Freud was known to few in Northern California and the practice of psychiatry to even fewer, it never occurred to Stephan or to the people around him that his persistent gloom could be an illness or might yield to treatment.
Meanwhile, Maria Cassala and Joanna’s mother, Dolores Vincente, discussed the matter woefully and endlessly, brought it to their priests and prayed earnestly. They also put pressure upon Joanna, who had lost weight and become a wraith of a woman from her own helplessness and grief. Finally, after three years, Joanna told them the crux of the problem. She also told them that Stephan had honorably offered a church annulment if she so desired. But that was more than either parent could contemplate, and in a difficult discussion in which all four parents were involved, they decided to do nothing and let time cure the situation.
Time cured nothing. Joanna, a silent, dutiful, sad woman, lived on in the house. Stephan took a small apartment in San Francisco, spending an occasional night there at first and then remaining there more and more frequently. His windows overlooked the bay. He often worked until seven or eight o’clock at night in the bank office, ate alone at Gino’s Restaurant on Jones Street, and then went to his apartment to sit and stare out of the window, occasionally contemplating suicide, occasionally fantasying a relationship with Martha Levy–a curious dreamlike relationship that was without se
x or passion. Once, with the excuse of illness, he stayed in the apartment for three days, without shaving or eating.
Usually he would spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night at San Mateo, but he had conceived an unresolved and unspoken hatred for the church, and he refused to go to mass or confession–in spite of the evident pain it caused his mother. He slept poorly–in a separate room after the first few years–and frequently he would awaken during the night and go downstairs and read.
One such night he went to the kitchen for some warm milk–his stomach still bothered him–and noticed that the door to the housemaid’s room was open, a light burning. Gina was twenty-seven now, rather heavy, but full-breasted and firm, someone who had always been there, whom he had looked at a thousand times and never seen. Curious, he stepped to the door of her room and glanced in. She lay in bed, her radio turned so low it was almost inaudible, her nightgown pushed up carelessly, revealing her legs and the edge of the dark triangle of hair in her crotch. Her eyes met his as he stood there; she smiled at him but made no motion to cover herself. He stood there and the minutes ticked by, yet neither of them said a word; and then at last she said, “Come in, Stevey, and close the door behind you.”
