by Lenox Parker
“Just pack your stuff, quickly, we really need to go soon. I’m sorry for this,” Jessica said, peering out the window.
“You know you look paranoid. I thought everything was ok with your article. That man in California you said was taking care of it all.”
“Ma, you don’t understand. There’s a lot of moving parts to this whole thing.”
It was totally cliché that I jumped 20 feet in the air when my cellphone rang. Thankfully it was just Alan.
“I landed, I’m at the hotel, you should come into the city where we can talk. There are a few more things you should know about,” he said, not sounding as calm as I would have liked.
“Listen, I’m getting out of town, with my mother, because I don’t feel safe. I don’t trust these guys—and they don’t trust me.”
“I understand—that’s probably not a bad idea, but you can’t run away forever. And plus, there’s the thing about the play, it’ll be a diversion—”
“Play?”
“Yeah, that’s the other thing I’m telling you. Howie wrote and is producing a play. It starts tonight—”
“No previews? We didn’t know about this before?”
“No, it’s apparently a rush-job.”
“It looks like we planned this all together—”
“No it’s fine. Listen, what’s in the play is more disturbing to Mo, Frank and Art than what’s on the tapes. I am convinced you don’t need to be worried about them, but I understand if you want to go under the radar for a while. But you need to keep me in the loop where you are so I can get in touch—hold on, there’s a call, don’t move—”
I sat there on my mother’s bed in utter disarray. I literally didn’t know which way to go. And fucking Alan has me on hold. It’s not even lunchtime and I want to kill myself. I thought about this unbelievable turn of events: Had he been planning a publicity boost for Howie’s career? Was this all a part of his plan?
“Jess, you have just sold the rights to your article for a new Universal film. The whole deal looks to be in the millions, with points. My assistant is faxing me the paperwork. You can put your worries aside.”
“I’m delighted, but I’d like to have my kneecaps follow me to fame, so if you would please help me focus on what the fuck to do so these gorillas don’t come after me because of the fucking tapes you stole and leaked, that’d be great, really.”
I could feel my voice quiver as my pitch increased, with that tone of near-hysteria that can only come from sheer panic. My mother stopped fussing with her bag to come sit on the bed and hold my hand. She had no idea what was going on. She’s been in a fog since the night she came home and found Dad upstairs a few weeks ago. I could feel my throat tightening and the air was getting harder to breathe. My mother picked up the phone since I hadn’t quite hung up and I could hear Alan shouting into the other end.
“Yes—this is Adele Plotkin—I don’t know what’s going on. But if you got my Jessica into trouble you need to get her out, and that’s all I’m saying about this, Shiner, you hear me? Are you there?”
Go Mom.
“Fix it, just fix it. That’s all you need to do, just fix it. We’ll be out of town, you have her number, call us when everything’s settled. Bye now.”
Adele had such a way about her, I keep forgetting how smooth she is. All these years, that’s how she put up with Dad and his compulsiveness, and Josh and I, and the world. Adele could make someone quake in their shoes when she had to—but only when she had to, when all other options ran out the door, Adele hit in the clutch.
“That man mentioned something about a play in Soho—I think it’s the same name as your article, title, dear. Maybe you should think about going, or no. Think about what your father would do.”
What would my father do? He would get on the phone and get everyone together and talk it out. I’m afraid things have gone too far down the line. Sour. But in light of the tapes being leaked, I thought I should reach out to Frank, Mo and Art. By retreating they might think I leaked them on purpose and it would give them all the more reason to come after me.
I had 28 voicemail messages and needed to start going through them soon. Things are moving so quickly that I’m not sure I have the confidence to make the right decisions.
One message was from Art:
“Hi, Art Raimi here, yeah, I heard about the tapes. I just want to let you know that I know you didn’t leak them. I hope you’re ok. Whatever happens with everything going on, you’ll know that I think you did OK, kiddo, so congrats on the article. The other thing is this play in Soho that Howie’s producing. It’s tomorrow night, I’m going to be there. Give me a call when you can.”
The message was from yesterday—though I wanted to be relieved, I wasn’t, since he wasn’t really the one I was so nervous about with the contents of the tapes. Before I called him back, in thinking about whether I was going to tell him that my own agent stole the tapes in an act of retribution that backfired, I lay back on my mother’s bed and watched a ladybug crawl up the curtains. It seemed to get lost in the fabric, but a minute or two later it re-emerged on the wall, walking casually between the ceiling and the wall. I blinked, and it disappeared altogether.
“Hello, this is Jessica Plotkin calling you back. I’m so glad to know you know I didn’t release the tapes, the whole thing has been awful. I will try to get to the play tonight, I don’t have a ticket but I think I can finagle one as a member of the press. I hope to see you there. I have a question though, that I hope you can help me with, and it’s about Frank and Mo, and whether I should be afraid of, um, concerned if—” BEEEEP. Ok, well said, then.
The rest of the messages were unimportant right now. I had hoped Howie would have called, but I knew of course he wouldn’t. I felt a little lost right now.
What if I show up tonight and they’re all there? Fired up and angry—embarrassed, lives changed? Frank talks about his affairs and girlfriends, how fucked up his kids are, how fat his wife is, how he paid bribes for no-bid contracts with the city and how he took bribes from suppliers. Mo talks about his drug dealing, his enemies, his ex-wife who he’s still fucking and her billionaire husband, his years in prison. Art just talks about how messed up Howie is and always was—what he did to girls, stuff he stole just to steal it, all the drugs he did. Endless. And Dad, well, dad really kept his cool. It’s like he knew to hold back—whether it was to protect me or just to keep composure. Maybe he just didn’t feel strongly one way or the other and didn’t care about Howie that much to spend too much time thinking about it.
Chapter 35
Getting the Old Gang Back Together
“It’s exactly what happened—look, the restaurant, us, everything. He didn’t even bother changing our names?” Frank barked at Art.
“SSSShhhhhh!” sh’d the lady behind him.
He turned and glared at her with his signature look that would quiet anyone. Frank couldn’t sit still in the seat. He’s too large and kept shifting his legs.
“I don’t believe this. Word for word, our conversations. He’s making us look like buffoons, Frank, buffoons,” Art said, not bothering to whisper, in shock.
Nearly every line in the play evoked a response from either Frank or Art.
Alan stood at the back of the theater with hand cupped on his forehead, agape at the dialogue which was lifted right from the Duck House dinner they had together; but with added emphasis making them all look like caricatures, except Howie.
“Frank followed me around like a puppy-dog ever since we were kids. I couldn’t get rid of the guy. And now that we’re in our ‘60s, you’d think he got his own life by now? Apparently not—he watches my movies every weekend with his friends in his basement. This puppy-dog never grew up…”
“I can’t sit through this—Art, this is humiliating—it’s lies—how could he do this to us?“ Frank choked up and stood up to leave.
“And the worst part was his wife—I couldn’t believe he married this girl. She
looked like a Mac truck and acted like one, too.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, you fuck!” Frank shouted from the aisle, arms up like he was going to fight with the actors on stage. “That’s me! That’s my life you’re fucking with! We were friends—don’t ever forget that, Howie, you fuck!”
The actors stopped for a moment. The actor playing Howard who was narrating the play and was upstage and closest to Frank shaded his eyes from the stage lights to try to see, but he couldn’t. Art stood up to try to hold Frank back, or somehow control him when the two ushers came charging down the aisle. Frank shook them all off and walked up the aisle to the exit. Art stood in the aisle for a moment, knowing all eyes in the theater were on him. He reached down for his coat and walked slowly up the aisle. He looked back once and then continued to the back of the theater. The actors took a minute to compose, and then continued with the scene.
Art stood at the back holding his coat in his arms, after peering out the theater doors to spot Frank, who had already left and was out of sight. Art noticed someone else standing along the back wall of the theater.
Alan tried to stay out of sight, but noticed just then that Art had spotted him. He looked away quickly hoping to avoid Art’s gaze and the potential of a confrontation. Alan was already so upset from the situation that he couldn’t possibly deal with more complications. Jessica had already decided not to show up, still in fear.
The second act tackled exactly what Art was afraid it would—his relationship with Howie as teens. There was more than a heavy intimation that Art was gay at this point, so he knew what direction the rest of the scene would go. He didn’t want to be there to see it. If he left now, there was a chance that no media would see him leaving the theater. Yuri was seated in the mezzanine—they planned to keep separate in public for a while and Yuri knew someone at the New York Times who scored him a ticket.
As Art stepped out of the theater he checked his cellphone and had intended on calling Mo, whose scene in the play had come first and shocked both Art and Frank with the details of Mo’s drug dealing, testimonies and indictment, connections with the mob, and current relationships with younger women. It was brutal. Before he had a chance to find Mo’s number, someone grabbed him by the elbow and rushed him across the street dodging a speeding cab by inches.
“I know what’s going on in there, so don’t think you were going to keep this from me,” Mo said in the shadows of a shuttered marquee.
“You think I have anything to do with this? Are you nuts?” Art replied as calmly as he could given the circumstances.
“No, I just don’t want anyone protecting that bastard fuck, Howie.”
“I have no intention. I feel awful for you and Frank, but what Howie’s done to me in this play is—”
“He outed you?”
“Yes—wait, how did you know?”
“Art I’ve known you were a fag since we were kids. I don’t give a shit. I’m just sorry you didn’t realize it back then. You would have been more fun.”
“Or dead.”
“Yeah, I suppose that’s true too. What do you plan on doing about this guy?”
“Mo, the last goddamned thing I’m concerned about now is what to do about Howie. I need to do some damage control or find a big rock to crawl under. I can’t let this get out on his terms. I have to manage the information here and I don’t even know where to start,” Art said, beginning to come unhinged.
“Take it easy, Art, take it easy. One thing at a time.”
“And you, what he said about you—isn’t that stuff that shouldn’t be, uh, talked about? Like, settlements and non prosecution agreements under seal or something?”
“Right, none of it. I have my lawyer in there now.”
“You’re not going to do anything--?” Art said.
“Don’t worry about me.”
Chapter 36
THE END
“Get the fuck out of here,” Dee shouted in between her tears and hair streaming across her reddened face, contorted in anger, “I have to read about you in the paper? Are you kidding me? I have to READ about you? You can’t come to me first and warn me this storm is coming? Forty-five years, Frank, 45 years—”
“I don’t know what to say, Dee, it shouldn’t have happened like this—”
“Everyone we know saw it. I’m so humiliated. And what you said about the kids! How could you tell other people? The four of them—you were relentless—”
She broke down and pushed Frank out of the room. She pushed him out for the last time.
** *
Art just assumed the call was going to come, he just had to wait. There was nothing he felt he could do and resigned to the fact that MLB wouldn’t have a gay commissioner. He went into a static mode for a few days. While Yuri collected the media reports of Art’s character in the play, and in follow-on interviews that Howie did with the press. There were several.
He took one meeting; the end of the Players Association negotiations on new contracts. There was a distinct sense in the room the entire afternoon of Howie’s demise. He didn’t have the command he once did—primarily because he didn’t have confidence in himself. Here was a secret he had guarded his whole life and constructed an immense false exterior. That exterior fell to pieces in the wake of the coverage on Howie’s play. He didn’t even follow Yuri’s advice to deny it because two publicists and disaster recovery specialists he consulted with felt he could get through the whole episode by ignoring it. He learned in the conference room that day that ignoring it was impossible.
Art submitted his resignation. Yuri suggested he write a book. But until he could manage the depression that set in once he no longer was involved in baseball, he was paralyzed with indignation.
** *
Mo didn’t have any problem deciding what to do about Howie. The only problem was in doing it fast enough: before they came after him. There was no sense pretending that Howie’s play was fictional—these guys knew better. And even if it was fiction, the implication that a character resembling Mo was involved in the kind of information-trafficking that could bring down an organization was enough evidence they needed to justify taking him out.
Within a week of the play debuting and the media circus that followed it, Mo awoke to a series of sirens that jolted him from bed. His curiosity got the best of him. He threw on his coat and peeked out of his boat and saw the tremendous blaze the enlightened the night sky. He scrambled off the boat and jolted down the dock only to confirm his worst fear: the health club was engulfed in flames. The club was all he had. His insurance policy was leveraged. He was done.
The noise and lights of the fire engines and police dulled his senses until a huge blast shocked all the spectators and first responders. Mo turned back to the bay and he knew it was his boat that was blown to pieces.
Mo was already too late to get back at Howie. He’d be gone soon, too.
** *
The Vanity Fair article backfired—at least as a ship-sinker for Howie. The release of the tapes served as a publicity stunt for the play rather than support for the article. Though the article was well-received, it too was just fodder for Howie’s publicity machine to generate attention around the play, which was soon to become adapted for the screen. Brad Siegel represented Howie going forth and benefited tremendously from the last-minute push he made for attendance at the un-previewed play. This demonstrated the power of word-of-mouth among the chattering class.
Howard returned to Los Angeles briefly to meet with studio execs and sign the play away to Hollywood. He returned to the circuit as the new Howard Kessler, raised above the fray he caused for himself, this time as a reinvented character for Hollywood to fawn over: Howard Kessler the Director. He would be directing himself in the film about his life.
Getting the Old Gang Back Together was to be the next smash hit and set Howie off on a long career of directorial successes.
He left Brooklyn behind as easily and as quickly as he had 50
years before. This time, though, with so much more at stake, the cost to his friends was much higher than it was when they were 18. He felt no regrets.
