One Shining Moment

by Gilbert, Morris

  But Lylah was not smiling. “We’ve tried them all, Jesse. There’s got to be some other way.”

  Two weeks after Jerry left, Lylah was in her kitchen drinking coffee. She dreaded going to the studio, for this was the day she had to sign the contract to do three more pictures—and she disliked the thought of it. She felt drained and tired, and she wished she didn’t have to tell Jesse that there would be no movie. It had become a real thing in his life, for he’d thrown himself into writing the script with passion. When Lylah had tried to warn him that it might never be filmed, he’d merely said, “We’ve got to do it, Lylah!”

  A knock came at her door and she got up, expecting it was the milkman. It was his morning to collect, and she got the money to pay him, then went to the door. Opening it, she said, “You’re early—” and then broke off in astonishment.

  “Hello, Sis!” Amos stepped in, hugged her, then stepped back. “You fellas take your turn—but hurry up, I’m starving!”

  Lylah was overwhelmed as Gavin and Owen stepped in, kissed her, then stood there grinning.

  “What in the world are you three doing here?”

  Owen waved his steel hook in the air. “Game for breakfast.”

  “And after that,” Gavin said, “we’re going to have a talk with this fellow Jesse Hart. See if his intentions are honorable.”

  “And after that—” Amos smiled, his eyes sparkling, “we’re gonna make a movie!”

  Lylah looked from one grinning face to another, mystified. “I think you’ve all gone crazy,” she announced. “Now, tell me what this is all about.”

  “All right, Lylah,” Amos said. “Jerry came to me as soon as he got back to Chicago. He told me all about your plan to make a movie. Did you get the funds yet?”

  “No, Amos.”

  “Well, I guess it’s going to have to be a family affair. Tell her, Owen.”

  Owen shook his head in wonder. “Never thought I’d get involved with anything like this, but Jerry convinced us all. He says you want to make a movie that’s good—and we’re going to help you do it.”

  “But . . . it takes an enormous amount of money to make a movie!” Lylah protested. “You don’t have it!”

  “Wrong!” Amos shook his head. “I’ve been squirreling away money, and so have these two. We’ve got enough to get started.” He pulled out a check and handed it to her. “This enough for that?”

  Lylah stared at the check, then shook her head. “I can’t let you risk your life savings!” she protested. Her eyes began to glow, and she suddenly threw herself into Amos’s arms, then attacked Gavin and Owen, laughing and crying.

  “Logan and Pete said they’d come in a flash if you need them,” Amos finally said. He paused, then said, “I guess this family can do just about anything it sets its mind to.”

  “It’s all set then,” Gavin nodded. “You’ll have to move to Chicago—and I think it’s time we met the future bridegroom. See if he’s good enough for you, Sis!”

  Lylah looked around at the three strong faces. “I’m not good enough for him—or for you three either!” Then she laughed, and it made her look very young. “Come on—I’m anxious to see how Jesse will stand up to the three of you. He’ll probably take off running when he sees what a family he’s getting into!”

  Owen shook his head, smiling at her. “I don’t think so, Sis. I think a man would have to be crazy to give up a woman like you!”

  A LITTLE WARNING

  On January 1, 1925, Notre Dame defeated Stanford 27 to 10 in the Rose Bowl.

  But Lylah Stuart was not there to see the game as she had planned. She was walking the streets of Little Italy on Chicago’s West Side. A sharp, chilling wind whipped her skirts and caught at her hat, and she shivered as she said, “I miss the sunshine in California, Amos.”

  Amos had been absently humming “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” but at her comment, he took his eyes from the grubby buildings that lined the street. “Could be worse,” he shrugged. He noted her outfit, a plain black overcoat and a cloche hat, plus a pair of sensible-looking and very plain black shoes. “You don’t look much like a movie star,” he commented. “Nobody’s recognized you.”

  “Good! I hope it stays that way,” Lylah nodded. She glanced around at a group of boys playing some sort of game, hitting a can with sticks. “It all looks pretty dirty, Amos. We grew up poor, but at least we had a place to play. We could go fishing or trapping. Those kids have no place but the street.”

  “They’ve got the factories,” Amos responded bitterly. He drew the collar of his overcoat tighter, adding, “Child-labor abuse is a long way from dead. We’ve got kids twelve or thirteen years old working twelve-hour days—and women, too.” He nodded toward a group of young men lounging outside a pool hall, matching pennies. “You need to get shots of things like that,” he commented. “It’s the sort of background that Capone grew up in. But matching pennies was too tame for Al. He graduated to armed robbery and worse before he was out of his teens.”

  The movie that Lylah had come to Chicago to make was to be based on the life of Al Capone, the most flamboyant of the Chicago gangsters. Amos had volunteered to do the research on Capone, and he fed the information to Jesse, who wrote it into the script. Jesse and Bonnie had come to Chicago with Lylah, and they threw themselves into the making of the film with great enthusiasm.

  Lylah listened carefully as Amos related the history of the mob, and later he pointed to a flower shop. “See that flower shop—right there across the street from the Holy Name Cathedral?”

  “What about it, Amos?”

  “It belonged to a man named Dion O’Banion. A gangster, grew up right here in Chicago.” Amos stared at the shop carefully, adding, “He was one of Capone’s competitors. Last year he tapped the police, and Johnny Torrio and Capone were caught.”

  “I didn’t read about them going to jail.”

  “Because they didn’t. Some money changed hands—and they walked out of court without being charged. Capone’s got more lawyers on his payroll than they’ve got in Harvard Law School.”

  The two of them walked toward the flower shop, and Amos noted the blood red roses in the window. “Wait a minute—” he said, then darted into the shop. Lylah peered through the window but could see little. When Amos came out, he had a single long-stemmed rose in his hand. “Here—” he broke the stem short and pinned it to the lapel of Lylah’s coat. “To celebrate your new career.”

  Lylah smiled and lowered her head to smell the rose. “Beautiful! Thank you, Amos.” She took her glove off and touched the delicate flower, then looked up. “The gangster—he owns a flower shop? The two don’t seem to go together.”

  “All Dion O’Banion owns now is six feet of ground.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Sure. I wrote the story. Got some of it here in my briefcase for Jesse.”

  “How did he die, Amos?”

  “He was right in the back of the shop, clipping some chrysanthemums,” Amos related. “A dark blue, nickel-trimmed Jewett sedan pulled up in front of the cathedral, and three men got out and went into the shop. An eleven-year-old schoolboy was playing in the street. He told the police that two of them were dark and looked like foreigners, and he said the other man had a light complexion. A Negro porter named Crutchfield was sweeping the floor. He said at the hearing that O’Banion walked toward the men. Crutchfield left the room, and as soon as he did, the shooting started.”

  Amos looked with distaste at the flower shop, adding, “When he went back in, he found O’Banion dead in the middle of a lot of crushed flowers—he’d knocked over some containers of carnations and lilies. Crutchfield told me O’Banion’s blood dyed some white peonies red. For some reason I can remember the lab report word for word: ‘Two bullets passed through the victim’s chest, the third through the right cheek, the fourth and fifth through his larynx. The sixth was fired into his brain at such close range the powder scorched his skin.’”

  “How dreadful!”
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  “Typical gangster killing, Lylah. They shot him through the larynx so if he failed to die immediately he wouldn’t be able to speak.” In disgust he swept the street with an impetuous gesture. “This place is worse than Verdun back in the war! And my boss makes a fortune off it!” He suddenly fumbled in his briefcase, found a paper, then thrust it toward Lylah. “That’s the account of the funeral that came out in the paper I work for! Read it!”

  Lylah read the account, which said:

  The casket of the deceased was purchased from a Philadelphia firm and rushed to Chicago in a special express freight car carrying no other cargo. It was equipped with solid silver and bronze double walls, inner sealed and air tight, with a heavy plate glass above and a couch of white satin below, with a tufted cushion extra for his left hand to rest on.

  At the corners of the casket are solid silver posts, carved in wonderful designs. Modest is the dignified silver gray of the casket, content with the austere glory of the carved silver posts at its corners, and broken only by a line across one side that reads “Dion O’Banion, 1892–1924.”

  Silver angels stood at the head and feet with their heads bowed in the light of ten candles that burned in the solid golden candlesticks they held in their hands, and over it all the perfume of flowers.

  But, vying with that perfume was the fragrance of perfumed women, wrapped in furs from ears to ankles, who tiptoed down the aisle, escorted by soft-stepping, tailored gentlemen with black, shining pompadours.

  And also treading, deftly changing places, were more well-formed gentlemen in tailored garments, with square, blue steel jaws and shifting glances.

  In the soft light of the candles at the head of the $10,000 casket sat Mrs. O’Banion, a picture of patient sorrow.

  “They live like animals—no—worse!” Amos said grimly. “But when they die they want to be buried like Roman emperors!”

  Lylah handed the clipping back to Amos. As he shoved it back into his briefcase, she said, “You hate all of this, don’t you, Amos?”

  “Yes! It’s not what we fought a war for! I thought we were fighting for freedom, but these thugs are worse than any enemies we had in France!” As the two moved toward his car, he tried to find words to explain it to Lylah. When they were in it and had left Little Italy, he sighed heavily. “I love this country, Lylah, and it’s being torn apart. Capone and Torrio and men like them are vermin—but the public heaps adulation on them! They’re as famous as . . . as movie stars! Kids who can’t name the presidents of the United States can give you the names of every big-time racketeer in the country! And my boss has to answer for his part of that!”

  “Why does he do it? And why do you keep on working for him if you feel that way?”

  “He got his start with what’s called ‘yellow journalism,’ which simply means, give the public all the garbage you can dredge up. He got rich and famous—and when I asked him why he didn’t lift the standards of his newspapers, he said, ‘We sell what they want.’” Amos swerved to miss a covey of nuns, saying with surprise, “They remind me of a flock of penguins!”

  “Why do you stay with him?”

  “Well, he pays well—” Amos grinned sourly. “But to tell the truth, I’ve thought of quitting. When I mentioned it to him, he got pretty upset.”

  “A fine compliment for you!”

  “I guess so, Lylah. Why don’t I leave? I guess I keep hoping he’ll change. And he did give me the go-ahead for doing a series of stories on the mob here in Chicago—which will probably make a few more people go to see The Gangster.” This was the title Jesse had insisted on for the movie, and Amos noted, “That’s a good title—short and blunt.”

  As they pulled up in front of the big barnlike structure Lylah had rented to use for a studio, she asked abruptly, “What about you, Amos? Won’t it get you in trouble—writing an exposé of Capone?”

  “I don’t think Al will be pinning any medals on me. But I’d hate to think I’d do anything Capone would admire.”

  This was an element that Lylah had not considered, and as they got out of the car, she waited for him to come to stand beside her. “If he’s as ruthless as everyone says, he might—”

  “Have me bumped off?” Amos shrugged. “Always a chance of that when you’re dealing with people like Capone. But they seem to handle the press pretty carefully. Don’t worry about it, Sis.”

  Amos’s answer did not completely satisfy Lylah, and she filed the thought for future reference. The door was locked, and when she rang a bell, they waited for some time before a hasp grated and they were admitted. Peter Stuart, wearing carpenter’s overalls, closed the door behind them. “Just in time to stop a fight, Lylah,” he grinned. “Jesse and that director fellow, Mr. Thomas, are just about to scalp each other.”

  The sight of her brother Peter gave Lylah a warm feeling. He’d dropped his job in the oil fields and come to Chicago, announcing he was going to be in show business. He’d brought his wife and two children along, and he had been a gift from heaven, or so Lylah said. The huge lot she’d leased had once housed a variety of businesses, but on a limited budget, she’d been baffled as to how to turn the structures into sets for the movie.

  Pete had swarmed into the job, bossing the carpenters, plumbers, and the rest. He had been obliged to whip one hulking carpenter who jeered at his methods and his accent, but afterwards the two had become good friends. Now as Lylah looked around, she was pleased to see that the sets were all taking form.

  “What’s the argument about?” Lylah asked as she and Amos hurried to keep up with her long-legged brother.

  “Got no idea,” Pete shrugged. “Something about an ambulance.”

  “An ambulance?” Lylah stared at Pete. “We don’t have an ambulance in the script, do we?” But Pete only shrugged and led her into one of the big frame buildings that had once housed a wagon wheel factory. When they were inside she was pleased to see that it had been transformed by Pete and his men into a fine restaurant. “Oh, Pete, this is a miracle!” She half ran into the midst of the tables set with red and white tablecloths, adorned with candles imbedded in wine bottles. It was a classic replica of a rather fancy Italian restaurant such as one might find in Little Italy. “Where did you get the props—the tablecloths and candles?”

  “Bonnie and Jerry dug ’em up. Think they talked a friend of Gavin’s out of the lot.” Pete cast a professional eye on the set, then nodded. “When you get the restaurant shots done, I’ll turn this into a speakeasy. Won’t be hard.”

  Lylah pulled Pete’s head down and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re priceless! You’ll never have to go back to roughneck work in the oil fields!”

  “Ah, shoot, Lylah, this ain’t my style. But I couldn’t miss out on this picture making! Why, you got almost the whole family working on it!” Then he nodded toward the end of the large room. “You hear ’em, Lylah?”

  Lylah could hear Jesse and Carl arguing before she saw them. As she and Amos moved down the set, they heard Carl’s high-pitched voice protesting strenuously, then Jesse’s lower baritone answering. They found them in a room still filled with some of the equipment used to make wheels, standing over a door that had been placed on two sawhorses, on which were spread several large drawings.

  “What’s this about an ambulance?” Lylah broke into the argument. “I don’t remember any ambulance in the script, Jesse.”

  “Ambulance?” Jesse turned to her, his eyes lighting as they always did when she came to him. “Who said anything about an ambulance?” He was wearing a pair of twill pants and a white shirt under a brown pullover sweater. His eyes were red, for he slept little since the project had started. All day long he raced from one set to another, then dashed away to get a taste of some portion of Chicago’s high-crime section. Then he would stay up most of the night working on the script. He had become an expert scriptwriter by sheer determination, but he and Carl were constantly at loggerheads.

  Carl was wearing a pair of gray flannel slacks, an immacula
te white shirt, a colorful tie, and a carefully tailored navy blue coat. His face was red, and he said loudly, “Ambulance? Where did you hear that?”

  “Pete said you were arguing about an ambulance.”

  Suddenly Jesse laughed, his eyes crinkling. “I know what it was. He was working close to us, and Carl kept trying to tell me that the ambiance of the gangster’s room was wrong. Ambiance, not ambulance!”

  Lylah laughed, saying, “Well, he said the way the two of you were fighting, one of you would need an ambulance!”

  Thomas’s eyes bulged out, and his tiny chest swelled with anger. “Look at this, Lylah—just look! It’s all wrong!”

  “No, it’s all right!” Jesse protested. “Look, Carl, this is the room of a gangster, not an art collector!” He turned to Lylah, his brown eyes snapping. “Carl wants to put the Mona Lisa on the wall—and I keep telling him a tough like Capone would be more likely to have a picture of Clara Bow on his wall.”

  “No, he would not!” The short man stood on tiptoe to emphasize his words. “These gangsters, they are uncouth, but they are rich. I have been in the home of Big Jim Colosimo—and I tell you he had masterpieces on the walls! Right out of museums. They want to buy respectability.”

  Amos nodded at once. “I’m afraid Carl’s right, Jesse. These killers surround themselves with symbols of culture. They buy the best in art, just like they buy the best in guns.”

  Jesse soaked up information like a sponge, and when Amos finished, said instantly, “You’re right, then, Carl.” “Of course I’m right!”

  Jesse grinned at the pout of the small man who’d taken the job as director of the picture. “But how about this—” he said quickly. “We show one of the great works of art in the gangster’s room, then we shift from that to a close-up of his gun—show that despite his collection of fine art, he still lives by the gun. How about that?”

  Carl stared at the younger man. He’d been insulted when Lylah told him he’d have to work with Jesse Hart—a man who’d never even seen a picture made. He’d privately felt that Hart was Lylah’s “pet,” and that it was a mistake to use him on the picture. He’d been stiff and unyielding for the first few days, but he soon discovered that Hart was a man who wanted to learn—and also a man with creative juices. He saw at once the greatness of the shot and nodded, “Now, that’s a great idea.” He turned his head, winked slyly at Amos, and nodded, saying loudly, “I’m glad I thought of it!”