Things in Glocca Morra

by Peter Collier

  “With Geist?” Selkirk guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “Have fun bathing in that mongrel’s bathwater.”

  He escorted us to the door, and as we were heading toward the car he called out: “When you’re writing your story, remember this: When this thing is over, there’ll be one man standing and that man will be me!”

  On the drive to interview Geist in Burbank, Jack evaluated Selkirk’s chances. “Dad has always believed that the human factor doesn’t count. For him, life is mechanics—it’s leverage and torque and pneumatics. And it’s material advantage—how many shares you own, how many votes you can buy, how many politicians you control. My brother Joe saw things Dad’s way. I always tried to argue that belief can be powerful too. It was never a popular position inside the family, except for my mother and her religious fanaticism. But think of Selkirk. Some of the things he believes in are wrong, but he believes and his belief has allowed him to build an army. That’s why he has a chance.”

  “If he succeeds, Molotov will be over here making sure all the movies are set in tractor factories.”

  “This isn’t about art,” Jack reproached me. “It isn’t even about politics. It’s about who you can do business with. Who is most like you. What the studios hate about someone like Selkirk is not so much the Communist ideas, but the way these ideas keep him from making the easy deal.”

  He paused, and then shrugged: “But the problem with belief—in Marx or God or anything else—is that you wind up looking like a horse’s ass if you’re wrong. Who the hell wants that?”

  Geist operated out of a bar called El Verdugo on Riverside Drive, about a mile from Warners. It was probably named for the land-grant family that once dominated this part of the San Fernando Valley, but I had enough Spanish to know that verdugo was also the word for “executioner.”

  It was dim inside and suffused with the faint maraschino smell of well drinks. When my eyes adapted, I saw an Indian sitting at the bar, along with two carny barkers, a gladiator, and a Civil War soldier. It took me a beat to realize they were extras who had run over here from Warners and Universal during lulls in the shooting to pound down a drink or two and then duck behind a heavy green curtain that only partly smothered the chinking payoff sounds of a half dozen illegal slot machines lined up in a small lounge.

  As we were taking in the scene, Geist appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. He was a short man with a simian’s body—long arms, short legs. His Buddha face was organized around eyes so narrowed they looked almost epicanthic. They seemed sleepy until you realized this was a con that allowed him to secretly study the impression he was making.

  I was struck by how well put together he was in a hound’s-tooth sport coat, dark shirt and darker tie, and alligator shoes—the uniform George Raft wore in Scarface and his other gangster films, which functioned as fashion shows for real-life mobsters to learn how to dress the part.

  “How about a Manhattan?” he gestured with a glass holding a cola-colored drink.

  Jack shook his head.

  “Well, how about a Shirley Temple then? Shirley tastes good. John Agar told me so himself.”

  When Jack didn’t bother to suppress a look of disgust, Geist flamed out at him: “Why shouldn’t he taste her? They’re fucking getting married next week. And your shit don’t exactly smell like ice cream either, sonny.”

  Then he got control and tried to reset: “Enough about the silver screen. So how’s your old man anyway? I knew Joseph P. a little bit back in the good old days when we were all so bad. Our circles sometimes looped over each other.”

  “His footprints are everywhere,” Jack looked away, irritated that Geist had a handhold in his personal life.

  “A shame he’s not out here now to remind the studio guys what side of their bread has all the butter on it.”

  As the remark settled, Geist led us through a double door to a back room whose walls were filled with autographed photos of movie stars and shots of Chicago street scenes from the early 1900s. He sat down at a pub table and motioned us to straight-backed chairs. A black cat with a white mustache and boots jumped onto his lap, raising its tail like a ship’s mast when he scratched the base of its spine. Two bulky sallow-skinned men in cheap suits suddenly materialized, assuming positions on either side of him. At first I didn’t realize they were twins because one had a face so disfigured by a deep scar meandering from the corner of his eye down to his chin that he seemed of different lineage. They both stared at Geist with intense, almost drooling attentiveness.

  “The Dragon Boys,” he head-gestured at them. “They’re my helpers.”

  “Dragon Boys?” I couldn’t help asking.

  Geist squinted at me. “Charley and Joe Draco. Dragon in Sicilian.”

  The scarred one mumbled something indecipherable except to his brother, who smiled and nudged him with an elbow and said something equally cluttered in return.

  “You ought to get subtitles for these guys,” Jack said to Geist.

  This caused the unscarred one to frown and mutter something that sounded vaguely like “Beat your ass.”

  Jack gave him a smirking little bow: “And fuck you very much for those kind sentiments.”

  The bodyguard started forward but Geist stopped him with a hand on the sleeve.

  “Your old man still have his helper?” he asked. “The spud with the girl’s name.”

  “Molly Maguire?” Jack shrugged. “Yeah, he’s still in the picture.”

  Geist nodded slowly. “I remember him. Big rawboned guy. He and Charley Dragon here would be a good match.”

  At this, the scarred twin mumbled something again and raised a fist. The gesture opened the front of his unbuttoned jacket momentarily and I caught a glimpse of the pistol holstered under his arm.

  Geist saw my look and sent me a hooded smile: “Don’t worry. It’s like my friend Benny Siegel says—We only kill each other.”

  Then he raised a leg slightly as he squeezed out a petite fart and incongruously mumbled, “Excuse me.” The cat jumped down and ran out of the room.

  Jack got out his pad. “It was Paul Ricca who sent you out here, right?”

  Geist hid behind his drowsy eyes: “Yeah, I got to know Mr. Ricca when I was a young man in Chicago, and yeah, he was interested in developments in the entertainment business.”

  “How come … ,” Jack groped for a way of saying it, “… why not another Italian?”

  Geist gave a laryngitic laugh. “A chip off the old block—always wondering what the Chosen People are up to. The studios out here were being run by Jews, so maybe Mr. Ricca figured it takes one to know one. Maybe he knew my work and felt I was dependable, whatever tribe I happened to belong to. Maybe he felt that outside another Italian, a Jew is more Italian than anyone else. We sweat when we eat, we flap our arms when we talk, we love our kids and hate our enemies.”

  Jack ignored the hokum. “When you were in Chicago, did you know Fortunato?”

  “Nicky?” Geist blinked a couple of times. “Yeah, I knew him.”

  “And?”

  “And what? He was my gombah.”

  “Was?”

  Geist considered the request for clarification, then plunged into a story.

  “Nicky and I have known each other forever. Jews and Italians lived in different countries in Chicago back when we were coming up. One day when I was twelve or thirteen, me and my buddies Izzy Abramowitz and Jacob Rubenstein were feeling full of ourselves and we decided to do a little trespass over the border where these two countries met on Roosevelt Road. We’ve left Jewland and gotten maybe fifty feet into Italianland when we’re jumped by four dagos who are older and bigger and stronger than us. We’re down on the ground in a flash, getting stomped bloody.

  “Then Nicky happens to walk by. He’s about our age and fresh off the boat and living in the Grand Crossing area where Calabrian people dominated until the colored started crowding in. I guess he still has a sense of old-world justice that tells him four big
against three little isn’t copacetic, so he starts pulling his fellow guineas off me and Izzy and Jack, talking a kind of Italian to them they pretend not to capish. One of them in particular, the leader of this group, is offended at being told not to kick the shit out of Jews who have strayed into his territory, and he pulls a knife. Nicky pulls one too and slices this guy right across the chest. The last we saw this guy is dribbling blood and the other dagos are carrying him off. Then Jacob and Izzy and Nicky and me head back to Jewland for a sausage roll.

  “Nicky makes us his team right away. He takes a look at Jacob and renames him ‘Sparky’ because he’s built like a spark plug. He calls Izzy ‘Nano’—that’s Italian for midget—because Izzy is about five feet tall and has this squeaky voice. Me he calls ‘Mone’ with an accent on the ‘e’ because they say my name Salmone where he comes from.”

  Geist turned to point at one of the photos on the wall. It was a sepia shot of four teenagers in floppy newsboy caps with cigarettes dangling out of their lips as they lounged in various attitudes of defiance against a wall. Two were strangers, but a third boy, hawk-faced and louring, was obviously an early version of Fortunato and another was Geist himself thirty or so years and as many pounds earlier, with that Buddha smile and a body like a projectile.

  “The Dead End Kids,” Jack said.

  “No, the Alley L Boys, named for the first stop on the Chicago elevated. We put a thumbprint on our neighborhood.”

  “You all still friends?” It was another way for Jack to ask about Fortunato.

  “Not like in the old days, but yes. I saw Izzy a few times during the war when he was in the Air Corps working as a mechanic at March Field. He was the one of us that was really smart, secretly playing the piano and getting good grades to honor his parents and then hitting the streets with us at night to honor Nicky. Knows everything about planes now and just got hired by Grumman Aircraft to work in the international operation they’re setting up in Europe.

  “Sparky, not so bright but loyal. I lost track of him for a few years, then he recently came out here for a little while when he was bumming around after getting discharged from the Army. He and Nano have always been closer to Nicky than to me. They idolize the guy.”

  “What do you make of him going to war?” Jack’s interest in Fortunato was winning out over his distaste for Geist.

  “What can I say? All that commando stuff surprised the shit out of me.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  Geist gave it some thought and then said, “Listen, Nicky is one of those guys who don’t do things just for one reason, okay? Sure, he loves America. Who doesn’t? Land of the free, a great fucking place. But come on, he’s Niccolo Fortunato! He still thinks like an Italian and talks Italian half the time. Someone pisses him off and he doesn’t say, ‘Hey you, I’m mad as hell.’ He says, ‘Non capisci una fava’—‘You’re stupid as a bean.’ I halfway learned Italian myself just by running with him all those years.

  “Anyhow, Nicky wasn’t too crazy about all those Brown Shirt cock-suckers running the old country down and then allowing Hitler to call the shots from his rathole in Berlin. Probably had some other reasons for going over there too.”

  “The girl?” Jack asked. “Where does she factor in?”

  “Valentina?” Geist seemed surprised to be asked about her. “She had a hard time of it in the old country. Nicky thinks she has talent and brought her over here to make her a star. He believes that stars can’t be touched.”

  “You agree?”

  His eyes grew even more hooded: “Anybody can be touched.”

  Then he presented his palms: “But what are you writing, a gossip column?”

  “No,” Jack saw an opening to use what he’d just learned from Selkirk, “but speaking of gossip, what about the rumor that the main reason Fortunato’s out here is because Chicago feels you might be losing the fight with the ASE?”

  “So finally we get to the subject—Hollywood’s labor problems.”

  “According to Selkirk, you are Hollywood’s labor problem.”

  “Write down this prediction on your little pad. Selkirk is going to get his off-button pushed pretty goddamn soon if he doesn’t watch himself.”

  He glowered at Jack while recovering his composure and then continued: “Okay, now I’ll tell you who’s who and what’s what. The International Brotherhood of Technicians and Actors, of which I’m an officer, is legit. It’s part of the AF of L, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say for Selkirk’s little branch office of the Comintern. We unionized this town. We’ve been here walking the walk all these years and now this Bolshevik parachutes in to fuck our thing up. There’s just one question: whether the studios think they can use Selkirk to break us. They try that and there’s going to be blood in the streets.”

  “There was blood in the streets yesterday,” I interjected.

  “What you saw was just basic training. Wait till the real war starts.”

  Seeing Jack’s skepticism, Geist added, “Why don’t you run all this by your old man? He can tell you who’s who and what’s what.”

  Jack scowled: “I don’t check out every idea with my father before I have it.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Geist chuckled derisively.

  For the next twenty minutes, Jack questioned Geist closely about what he mockingly called his “union philosophy,” and Geist taunted him with minimal answers.

  Finally Geist stood up, and his twin bodyguards reflexively moved in closer.

  “Hope I’ve helped you out.”

  “You have,” Jack replied with equal insincerity. “Very illuminating.”

  “I leave you with two things,” Geist said. “One, Selkirk’s goose is in the oven just waiting to be cooked. And two”—here he held up the index and middle fingers of his right hand tight against each other—“there’s not even this much space between Nicky and me. He’s out here on his own business, not on mine.”

  Then he walked out, with his Dragon Boys following close behind.

  SIX

  It took us about five minutes to get to Warners. It seemed half asleep after the pitched battle of the previous afternoon. A pair of guards indolently eyed the handful of pickets standing sullenly on the sidewalk outside the entry; a single Burbank policeman sat in a cruiser parked across the street reading a book and eating a banana. I noticed how different the vehicle was from our beat-up East Coast cop cars—brightly waxed and riding on fat whitewalls.

  We were heading to Harry Warner’s office when I heard Jack’s sharp intake of breath. I looked up and saw what he did: the girl from yesterday’s party coming toward us.

  She appeared to be in her film costume—black peep-toe heels and a sleeveless white dress with a full skirt—and walked in a kind of trance, her lips moving slightly as she worried a spot on her left forearm where the raw skin had been disguised by thick makeup. Close up, she was thinner and more delicate than I’d realized in the sighting the previous day, and although her body was frank and supple her beauty weighed on her like a birth defect. When she saw that we were staring she winced slightly and averted her eyes.

  Jack stepped forward. “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”

  She was startled.

  “I’ve seen you in your slip,” he blushed as an even more sophomoric pickup line slipped out.

  At first I thought she was going to run, but instead she crossed her arms protectively over her breasts and faced us head on.

  “I mean that I saw your screen test,” Jack continued lamely. “Mr. Warner showed it to us yesterday. It was wonderful. I’m Jack Kennedy, by the way, and this is my chauffeur, Billings.”

  I tipped the bill of an imaginary cap when she looked my way.

  “I must go now.” She took a couple of steps, but Jack impeded without actually blocking her.

  “Don’t leave yet, Delphine.”

  Again she looked surprised. “Delphine is what they named me. It i
s not my name,” she said coolly. The words carried just enough accent—“nameed”—that I thought if she actually made it in the movies, she’d probably spend her career playing not only French, but Hungarians, Tunisians, Gypsies, white Russians and other exotics.

  “What is your name then?” Jack pretended not to know it.

  “Valentina,” she said reluctantly, like someone who considers it an obligation to honestly answer questions asked of her.

  “Valentina,” Jack mouthed the word like a gumdrop, then crooned softly, “My funny Valentine, sweet comic Valentine. You make me smile with my heart…”

  She looked at him as if he were deranged, but I could tell that she was fighting against the undertow of that brilliant Kennedy smile.

  “You have a hard day at the office today?” he asked.

  “I have been here since before six o’clock.” When she was less guarded, her voice became husky. “Since before there was sun. During that time I am before the camera for maybe five minutes only.”

  “I’m sure you were wonderful,” Jack worked to deepen his conversational foothold.

  She scratched at her arm and seemed about to become lost in thought again.

  “Can I call you Val?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she frowned. “I don’t think it necessary that you call me anything at all.”

  He ignored the rebuff: “Are you finished dazzling the camera for today?”

  She gave a minimalist nod.

  Jack pointed back at the Zephyr in the distant parking area: “I have a very nice car. Why don’t I have Billings drive you home?”

  She shook her head: “No, I must meet someone.”

  “This someone you have to meet—is it a friend or more than a friend?”

  “You ask very many personal questions.” Her cheeks reddened with annoyance as she stepped onto the lawn to get around us, wobbling slightly as her sharp heels sank into the grass, then returned to the pavement and briskly walked away.