Wilson shook his head, disgustedly. “Yeah, with a nice wife, nice- lookin’ wife, kid on the way… I like Bobby, man. I mean, he’s a regular joe, but, shit-that’s friggin’ low.”
“Did Beth Short know Bobby was married?”
“Not at first… and Bobby told her he wanted to marry her, too. Can you believe this, before she found out he was married, they were engaged for a while-he even gave her a ring.”
“A diamond?”
“Yeah. Bobby’s connected to these jewelers-ice is never no problem for the group.”
“The group?”
Wilson paused, his deer-in-the-headlights expression indicating he’d spoken too freely. But he continued, anyway, saying, “Yeah, uh-the McCadden Group. It’s a bunch of guys that hang out here at the cafe.”
Sort of like the Elks or Kiwanis, except for the part where they went out on heists with guns.
“What happened to her diamond ring?”
Wilson shrugged. “I heard she hocked it. She was raising money.”
“Do you know why?”
“I dunno… I think maybe she had Bobby’s bun in her oven.”
“Fertile fucker, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. He’s a fucker, period-but I like the guy, don’t ask me why… Listen, she wasn’t in here since November, first week of December at the latest. I mean, you could ask Henry’s wife, her and Beth were tight… Maybe she could tell you something.”
“Henry’s wife? Mrs. Henry Hassau, right, the guy who was arrested with Bobby?”
Now Wilson knew he’d spoken too freely. “Oh-so you know about that.”
“It was in the papers. It’s no secret, Arnold-or that your boss Al Greenberg is in county lockup, too.”
Too casually, he said, “Yeah, for that Mocambo robbery.”
“How tall are you, Arnold?”
The slitted eyes blinked, several times. “I dunno. Six four maybe.”
“Funny-that’s just how tall the witnesses said one of the thieves was. He had bad acne scars, too.”
Wilson thrust out a big hand, palm up. “Let’s have the double sawbuck-I’m through talkin’.”
I gave him a pleasant smile. “Look, Arnold-I have no interest in turning your skinny ass over to the cops… By the way, how the hell did they miss you, if they’re arresting guys left and right out of this joint?”
The Adam’s apple jumped again. “I was in San Francisco for a week. Al called me and asked me to come watch the joint while he was in stir. He’ll be out soon-the Ringgolds’ll post bail.”
“The Ringgolds. And who are the Ringgolds?”
The eyes widened and rolled and he shook his head, apparently pissed at himself. “I already said too much… How about that double sawbuck?”
“There’s a Ringgold Jewelry Store in Beverly Hills, isn’t there? Wouldn’t happen to be the jewelry store whose display merchandise at the Mocambo got taken in that robbery?”
A shooing hand waved the air. “You better get on outa here, now-I got work to do ’fore four.”
So the Mocambo heist had been primarily an insurance scam: steal jewelry for its owners who can claim the loss and keep the stones. I wondered how many other jewelry robberies the McCadden Group had pulled for the Ringgolds. This little heist crew was definitely more impressive than these meager surroundings.
“Arnold, a whisper from me in Harry the Hat’s ear would land you in the cell next to your boss.”
Wilson jerked back, almost hitting his head on the wooden booth. “Are you threatening me?”
“I wouldn’t do that, Arnold-you and me, fellow vets and all. But this conversation-this private conversation, which goes no further than just the two of us-ends when I say it ends. Understood?”
He sighed. And nodded.
I swirled the last of the beer in its glass. “I just want to ask you a question-simple question, obvious question, that just happens to be one nobody’s asking…”
I looked right at him-hard.
“Arnold, do you think Beth Short was murdered to send a message to Bobby?”
Wilson didn’t answer right away, and when he did, it was pitiful: “How would I know?”
“Just looking for an informed opinion, Arnold.”
Words tumbled out: “Bobby was blabbing to the cops and the papers about Jack Dragna trying to muscle him into hitting Mickey Cohen. Next day, Bobby’s girl friend turns up dead in a vacant lot in Dragna’s backyard with her mouth slashed, informer style. What the fuck do you think?”
“You think Dragna did it?”
Wilson shrugged one scarecrow shoulder. “Had it done. Who else but Dragna?”
Dragna was the answer I kept coming up with, myself.
“Arnold, I don’t get this. Why would Jack Dragna go to Bobby Savarino to do this?”
Wilson shrugged both shoulders this time. “Maybe ’cause Bobby was friends with the Meatball.”
Benny the Meatball Gamson was a renegade bookie who had been bumped off, not long ago, reportedly at Mickey Cohen’s behest.
“Still,” I said, “why would a savvy mob boss like Dragna try to enlist the help of somebody in Al Greenberg’s gang?”
“Which don’t make sense to you,” Wilson said, nodding, “because Greenberg is an East Coast guy and a crony of Ben Siegel’s, whose boy Cohen is.”
“Yeah!”
“Well, for one thing, Bobby coulda got close to Cohen… Mickey wouldn’ta suspected one of Greenberg’s group. And Al, well him and Siegel were friends, sure, but Al did a stretch in Sing Sing, was one of the handful of them Murder, Inc., guys unlucky enough to do time. Al don’t owe any of those guys nothing.”
“But in the end, Savarino didn’t want anything to do with hitting Cohen.”
Wilson was shaking his head, but it was an affirmative gesture. “Bobby’s no hitman. He’s just a thief, knockin’ over scores.”
I took the last sip of beer, and said, “I’d like to talk to Bobby. You think the Ringgolds’ll post his bail?”
“Maybe. You want me to set up a meet, if they do?”
I reached in my pocket and withdrew the twenty and held it up. “There’ll be another one of these in it for you.”
Wilson took the twenty. I told him where he could find me, and I got out of the booth, thanking him for the beer.
“Arnold, you got a phone I can use?”
“Sure-behind the bar.”
I called Fred.
“You won’t believe this,” he said, “but Welles wants to see you. How do you know this guy?”
“He got his start in Chicago.”
“Well, he’s anxious to meet with you. And it seems he is out at Columbia, strike or no strike. Write down these directions…”
I did.
Moments later, ceiling fans churning the stale air, the cadaverous Arnold Wilson was walking me out, the limp not slowing him down appreciably. Perhaps our conversation had got him excited-or that double sawbuck.
“You know, if Jack Dragna’s the one that had the Black Dahlia butchered,” Arnold said, unlocking the door, “the cops won’t touch it. Nobody’ll do a damn thing about it, a Mafia guy like that responsible.”
“Arnold,” I said, already halfway out the door, reaching back to pat him on his bony shoulder, “don’t count on it.”
14
Horse operas, crime melodramas, horror pictures, comedies, and every other stripe of B-movie were still churned out by the independent studios on Sunset Boulevard, near Gower Street. Despite the ongoing strike by the CSU-the Conference of Studio Unions-the usual parade of featured players was crossing Sunset in full makeup to grab a bite at a hamburger or hot-dog stand; Brittingham’s, the popular eatery in Columbia Square, at the corner of Sunset and Gower, was servicing its usual clientele of actors and extras, including western gunfighters with empty holsters (prop men having confiscated their sixshooters) and starlets in sunglasses and white blouses and dark slacks, freshly waved hair tucked under colorful kerchiefs.
This lack of
support for the strike came as no surprise to me, and was in fact why a bit player like Peggy was getting chauffeured to the studio, daily. The CSU was a militant leftist coalition that included carpenters, painters, and machinists; they were an alternative to the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, IATSE having been organized by Nitti racketeers Willie Bioff and George Browne, both currently still in stir. Under the leadership of new Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan, however, the CSU had been left twisting in the wind, and SAG actors-among other union and guild members-were crossing the picket lines.
Which was how Peggy could be working at Paramount, during a strike, and I could be keeping an appointment with Orson Welles at the giant of Gower Gulch, Columbia. A Poverty Row weed that had blossomed under the firm hand of Harry Cohn, Columbia was now a major force in Tinsel Town, and had been ground zero for the strike last October, when fifteen hundred picketers laid siege to the studio, with nearly seven hundred strikers arrested on charges ranging from unlawful assembly to assault with a deadly weapon.
But now, several months later, sold out by Dutch Reagan and SAG, the picketers were a halfhearted, signs-on-their-shoulders bunch, a sea of Reds who quickly parted to allow me to check in at the guard gate. My unionist pop would have been ashamed of this lackluster picket line-and ashamed of me, for crossing it.
I parked and strolled past surprisingly ramshackle-looking offices onto a typically bustling backlot-workshops, cutting rooms, projection rooms, soundstages. But-despite following Fred Rubinski’s detailed directions-I soon found myself wandering amid chattering extras in costume and bored grips and gaffers in work clothes, ducking cars and trucks transporting people and equipment. Finally I was just standing there, scratching my head, a detective who could have used a detective, when I felt something-or somebody-tug at my sleeve.
I glanced down and a large adult male face was looking up at me.
“You’re Mr. Heller, ain’tcha?” the hunchbacked dwarf asked. His accent said New York, Lower East Side.
“Uh, yes.”
He grinned up at me; he had a pleasant, well-lined face-blue eyes, high forehead, gray hair, late fifties.
“The boss is expectin’ ya.” He shuffled around in front of me and extended a hand. He was wearing white pants and a white shirt and white shoes, and looked like a little ice-cream man-the shirt, however, was spattered with red. “Shorty Chivello, Mr. Heller-I’m Mr. Welles’ chauffeur and personal valet.”
I shook his hand, which was of normal size, his grip firm and confident. “Chauffeur, huh?”
He laughed, saying, “Hey, I’ll save you the embarrassment of askin’ how I manage that, Mr. Heller-I got these special wooden blocks strapped to the pedals.”
“Cut yourself shaving, Shorty?” I asked, as I followed him toward a nearby soundstage.
“Aw, it’s just paint, Mr. Heller.”
“Make it ‘Nate.’ ”
“Naw, that’s okay. I’m ‘Shorty,’ but you’re ‘Mr. Heller.’ The boss likes certain respect paid… He says you’re an old friend.”
“That may be overstating, Shorty. But he was barely out of that prep school in Woodstock when I first met him in Chicago.”
“Jeez, was the boss the boy genius they say he was?”
“Shorty, he still is.”
Shorty opened the door for me and I stepped into the mostly darkened soundstage, and what I saw gave me a start: out of the gloom emerged another giant head-not another hunchbacked dwarf’s, something even better, even stranger… the profile of a wild-eyed, vaguely Chinese dragon, hovering above me, perhaps forty feet off the floor, the head itself thirty feet high, angled skyward, a shiny slide extending from its open mouth like an endless silver tongue snaking its way up into the darkness where the ceiling presumably was; disturbingly, the silver slide also exited the back of the beast’s head, emptying into a vast pit.
“Christ!” I said. My eyes adjusting to the near dark, I could see that the whole preposterous serpentine affair was constructed on roller-coaster-style scaffolding.
Shorty was shuffling around in front me, saying, “Watch your step, Mr. Heller. The boss had ’em dig that pit right through the cement… Ya shoulda heard them jackhammers!”
We skirted the edge of the mini-abyss, which was a good eighty feet long, and half again as wide, perhaps as deep.
“The boss made the cameramen slide down that thing on their stomachs,” Shorty was saying. “Put the camera on a mat. So you could get a whaddayacallit, objective view.”
I figured he meant “subjective,” but I never argue with hunchbacked dwarfs, particularly on soundstages dominated by dragons. Just as a general policy.
Moving past the towering slide, I followed the little man, the movement of his body seeming more side-to-side than straight ahead, to a door in the midst of portable walls that were clearly the back of a set-about a third of the soundstage was blocked off behind these “wild” walls, which could be moved to facilitate filming from varied angles.
Shorty opened the door and revealed a black-haired man in baggy black trousers and loose white shirt and loosened black tie, a big man at least six two and easily pushing two hundred and fifty pounds, standing at a small work table, dabbing red paint onto the wide grin of a grotesque clown mask which lay like a shield on the table. The lighting-provided by occasional work lamps hanging like fruit from extension cords vanishing up into the same darkness that swallowed the ceiling-was harsh and spotty and shadow inducing. The walls were decorated with a scratchy black-and-white mural replete with nightmarish, violent images-medical-text anatomical diagrams and grinning clown faces juxtaposed with the death smiles of dancing skeletons.
The black-haired man smiled over his shoulder at me, puckishly, dark hard eyes melting in a soft baby face where strong cheekbones struggled to be seen, dark slashes of eyebrow expressed constant irony, and an upturned nose seemed to thumb itself, all punctuated by a dimpled chin.
“Nathan, darling,” he said, in that sonorous voice radio listeners all over America adored, including many who disliked the young man who possessed it, “what do you think of my Crazy House?”
“What was that remark that got you in so much trouble?” I asked, moving next to him as he reddened the clown’s grin with a Chinese brush. “Something about a movie studio being your personal train set?”
“Well, now it’s my personal erector set.” He flashed me that raffish smirk of his that seemed to invite you in on every private joke. “Did you know that the definition of one word has kept our two noble unions from coming together? And what is that single word over which our carpenters and painters and set dressers and other skilled artisans have, shall we say, come to blows? Erection, my dear.” He sighed and smiled and lifted his eyebrows as he bent over the clown mask, touching it up skillfully.
“Erection?”
“Yes, they can’t make up their minds-does it mean, the building of sets, or does it refer to simply assembling that which has already been built?” He gave me an amused pixie look. “Perhaps I should point out to them that, in my experience, a woman who is ‘built’ can cause an erection to quite naturally occur. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Shorty had moved in between Orson and myself, paint can in hand, tending his master like a medieval apprentice.
“I think Mr. Heller and I may require some privacy,” Welles said gently to his factotum. “Would you mind terribly leaving us alone?”
Shorty set the paint can on the table, gestured “o.k.,” then trundled off.
“Why’s that little guy a deaf mute, all of a sudden?” I asked. “He was talkative as hell, all the way in here.”
Welles twitched his tiny smile. “Yes, Shorty’s loquaciousness-even his bluntness-can be something of a problem. That’s why I’ve instituted my docking procedure.”
“Your what?”
“I dock Shorty ten dollars every time he speaks around any guest or business associate I’m entertaining.” He carefully set the brush acr
oss the open paint can. “Care for the nickel tour?”
The pudgy, congenial, vaguely arrogant man showing me around his film set had, at thirty-one, already made history in theater, radio, and film. His dynamic Broadway productions for the Federal Theater Project and his own Mercury Theater had made him famous; his War of the Worlds radio broadcast, duping thousands into thinking Martians had invaded earth, had made him infamous. His Hollywood achievements included directing and cowriting three movies-two of which were already acknowledged as modern classics, if not box-office favorites-as well as condescending to star on occasion in films for other directors. He was widely considered a genuine genius-and, in the executive suites of the movie industry, a genuine pain-in-the-ass, starting with his ill-advised, barely veiled attack on press lord William Randolph Hearst by way of his film Citizen Kane.
How Welles had come to be directing a movie at Columbia could be explained only one way: his wife, Rita Hayworth, was Harry Cohn’s biggest star… and she was starring in this picture.
For perhaps ten minutes, Welles guided me through his “Crazy House,” a fully operable carnival funhouse, with sliding doors, tilting floors, slanting walls, and a seemingly endless hall-of-mirrors maze. The latter was equipped with plate-glass mirrors seven feet by four feet, one after another, dozens and dozens of them, and several more dozen of the distorting variety, turning Welles razor-thin and making a short fat fool of me.
“I discovered at an early age,” he told me, leading me mischievously through the labyrinth, “that almost everything in this world was phony-done with mirrors.”
Images of each other seemingly blocking our every path, I asked him how in hell he could shoot in here, with all this glass.
“They’re mostly two-way mirrors,” he said, “and those that aren’t have tiny peepholes drilled for the camera operators. Not that way, dear! This way… follow me…”
Welles’ funhouse had a distinctly macabre flavor-he led me gleefully through rooms of flimsy canvas walls and spongy plywood floors that were weirdly angled, painted with skewed faux windows, creating a warped Caligari perspective. He grinned like a naughty child as he ushered me through hanging beads and drooping chains and gauzy half-shredded curtains, past black-and-white murals with STAND UP OR DIE lettered in the quaint fashion of turn-of-the-century circus posters, into areas decorated with papier-mache skeletons and cattle skulls and grotesque grinning clown heads.
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