by Charles Fox
The Calabresi had been watching and now decided to get into this lucrative, low-risk business. They pushed the Sardis off the mainland by first selling “protection” and then capturing selected victims who refused to pay. Sardis who refused to pay received a shot in the head.
The Calabresi, regarded as a group by many Italians as the most stubborn and violent factions on “Il Continente,” vented their hatred for all other citizens by abusing captives. With the Sardis, the victim usually returned, if stressed and in poor physical health. With the Calabresi, some victims never returned even if full ransom had been paid.
Those who survived came back with permanent, incurable psychophysical problems.
* * *
I did not write of Martine’s abduction. Our Midwestern readers at True counted on us not to print sleaze like this. They said that the great thing about True was that their fourteen-year-old boy could pick it up in the barber shop and not become contaminated. Gangsters snorting coke, watching porn, and jerking off over captive women would surely contaminate their boys. That’s how I justified my decision. I didn’t discuss it with my fellow editors. I knew what they would say and I knew how rare it was that we were presented with the opportunity to make some real difference, for I couldn’t forget Marcello’s words: If he can get to his money, he will do great things for his generation. On the strength of these words and my own feelings, I was unwilling to condemn this youth based upon an indiscretion he had made at fifteen—the mark would stay with him forever. I thought of all those who would benefit from Paul’s money and I thought that if I could in any way assist him to get to his money, I should. I also thought that there was a distinct possibility that I was just another sycophant, fallen under the spell of the Getty millions. For us it was just another story in another issue of a magazine. So the piece became another “almost-true story,” as the editors of the magazine used to say.
There was an account of his kidnapping in Rolling Stone. It was superficial, given what I knew, and some of it lifted from my True piece. I called the writer and confronted him. I told him, “You used my quotes.”
He said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I said, “No one else got those quotes.”
Over the next twelve months, I followed the further adventures of Paul and Martine through People magazine, the National Enquirer, and Rolling Stone. They were married. This didn’t surprise me, but I wondered how happy it had made Gail. It was, judging by reports in the press, an unorthodox wedding; the Golden Hippie came suddenly back to life. Now he was celebrated, an Odyssean figure, a symbol of revolt, an heir for the sixties, and hordes of delighted hippies showed up. Then they disappeared from the headlines.
When they next showed up, I was surprised. They looked robust and content, as if their misadventure had never happened. They were photographed skiing in Zürs, riding camels in Morocco. Ah, Morocco, the dream that had brought them down.
As Christmas came around once more, I was awakened just before dawn by the doorbell ringing repeatedly. I rose and opened the door to see the face of a man I knew well though we had not met: J. Paul Getty III. He looked gaunt, surprisingly tall; bedraggled auburn hair fell about his thin shoulders. He wore an unusual long, green woolen cloak, its hood thrown back—the cloak was embellished with a pattern of reindeer-shaped symbols in light brown—a dark shirt unbuttoned at the throat, and calf-high boots over Levi’s. His right eye blinked sporadically. The face of Martine peeped over his shoulder. For an instant my reality was suspended. As they came in I saw Martine was very pregnant.
We sat around in the living room, he on a beanbag, grasping his long legs, chin on knees, watching me. Martine said in her Germanic English, “We had so much trouble to find you. We came to San Francisco and looked for a long time. Do you remember what you said in Rome?”
Paul interrupted, “Can we get a coffee?”
We walked together down Telegraph Hill to Caffe Trieste, frequented by the remnants of the Beats. An aria was playing on the jukebox. We sat by the window, looking out across upper Grant Street.
Paul leaned forward across the table, scrutinizing me; the air about him seemed to crackle. “I read your story in True magazine. I like it. Would you write mine?”
I had long given up on the idea.
I said, “I read the account in Rolling Stone.”
He shook his head, “I mean my life, the story of my life. People will never understand the kidnapping unless they know the rest. I promise you. The kidnapping didn’t just happen all by itself. It wasn’t like I was in a library reading a book and they came in the window, you know?”
“The story of your life.”
“Yes.”
Martine was watching us.
“The biography of an eighteen-year-old?”
He nodded again. “They want me to go to college. I just want to make my own money, write a good book, and stop people from asking me a lot of questions. It was their money I was kidnapped for. Fucked up my whole life. I was the one that got in trouble for all their shit.”
I was being invited into a family feud. They had probably come to me because I’d omitted Martine’s account of her own kidnapping from my almost-true story. I’d been sympathetic.
Paul went on. “I need money, I’m sick of having to ask them for money every month.”
I heard myself saying, “I’ll lend you some.” It just came out of my mouth.
“Al Ruddy has offered me ten thousand bucks for my story.”
Al Ruddy was the producer of the Godfather films. I said, “If Al Ruddy offered you that much, imagine what it’s really worth.”
He smiled. “I’ll introduce you to my mother.”
2.
San Francisco, 1956
Baghdad by the Bay was the name Herb Caen used to call San Francisco, referring to its ethnic diversity. It was a modest town of pastel houses built upon the hills around the harbor. Its citizens back then were a slightly self-conscious and provincial crowd. A smattering of “smart” people, business tycoons, lumber and silver barons, they lived on Nob Hill and Pacific Heights, presiding over a union town of longshoremen, Teamsters, and warehousemen. Prisoners were incarcerated on Alcatraz. This was the home port for the Pacific fleet, and for drag queens and fairies from all over America.
Paul, son of Big Paul and grandson of Old Paul, was born here on November the fourth, 1956. Soon after, a package came in the mail from Old Paul in England. In the package, wrapped in tissue paper was a teething ring in the form of a silver rabbit inscribed to Paul. Oilman J. Paul Getty, America’s richest private citizen, disappointed that Roosevelt did not appoint him Secretary of the Navy, had left America after WWII and moved to Europe, ostensibly to better tend his oilfields in the Middle East and his two hundred companies.
Paul’s maternal grandfather, U.S. District Court Justice George V. Harris, a shrewd and affable fellow, had seemed certain to be seated on the State Supreme Court, until in 1950 he misruled in the appeal of longshoreman labor leader Harry Bridges against his conviction for being a Communist. This misruling cost him what had seemed a certain future.
The Harrises lived in Pacific Heights near the Gettys—Ann Rork Getty and her two sons, Paul and Gordon. These families were California aristocracy. Theirs was a comfortable life in which can be seen the roots of all the trouble that would come.
Gail’s mother, Aileen—a willowy, determined woman—had been inordinately ambitious for her husband. She was bitterly disappointed when he was passed over for the State Supreme Court. These thwarted ambitions she passed on to her only child, Gail.
Ann, daughter of a Hollywood movie mogul, was the third of J. Paul Getty’s five wives. He left her in 1936. She drank, worshipped her elder son, and bitterly opposed his marriage to Gail. This effectively drove the young couple away, into J. Paul Getty’s business world, a world Big Paul (as Gail called her husband) had no taste for. Big Paul did not inherit his father’s business acumen or parsimony. He did, however, inherit his fathe
r’s youthful good looks and taste for women, and his mother’s taste for drink.
Gail was beautiful in a businesslike fashion, with large amber eyes and a strength to the line of her jaw that appeared almost masculine. She was clearly accustomed to authority. A mixture of her father’s shrewdness and confidence and her mother’s determination and ambition made for a most potent character.
Gail:
I met Paul through a girlfriend. He was going to St. Ignatius High School. He was good-looking, tall and slim, quiet and bright, a lot of fun. When young men fetched the girls after school, they’d come over to my house and sit around and listen to music and talk. Paul Getty; his full brother, Gordon; and his half sister, Donna, lived with their mother, Ann, on Clay Street. It was nothing luxurious, but comfortable. Ann had been beautiful. Her father, Sam Rork, started what is now Warner Bros. He died quite young. It may have been suicide. Ann had been an only child, and spoiled. Hollywood when she was growing up was very exciting. She did a couple of films and then she met Old Paul. She married him whilst he was in Los Angeles, during his playboy period. Paul, her first son, was born in 1932. Gordon was born thirteen months later. When Paul was six and a half, he was sent to a military academy. He’s a very gentle person and he was put into this academy. They never saw very much of their mother. They have vague memories of their father, memories of not being able to go into the drawing room because nothing was supposed to be touched. All very severe. The parents were always going out and the children were left with nannies. After the divorce, when the boys wrote to him, he returned their letters with the spelling corrected. Paul also has memories of his grandmother, Sarah Getty, and going to see her. She was sweet to them, but even she was a shock. She was so old, and in a wheelchair. His best memory is their maternal grandmother, who apparently was a marvelous woman. She had moved in with them. She gave any sense of love and family stability that there was. Paul used to go and see her all the time. She died just before we announced our engagement. It was hardly an ordinary existence: no father, very gay mother. She had grown up in this Babylon movie world that had really turned her head, and drinking was a problem. She said, “I go to a party as Beauty and come back as the Beast.” She didn’t seem to understand her responsibilities to her children. Her answer was to put them in boarding school.
One afternoon Paul, his mother, and I were in the sitting room when a young man came downstairs singing. He wore a dressing gown and scarf. He was Paul’s younger brother, Gordon. His mother made fun of him. He went back upstairs. He wasn’t part of the group, part of the boys. It was awful. Gordon was very involved in opera. He spent most of his time singing and was looked upon as something of a freak, and this was invariably pointed out by the mother.
The brothers were close. The mother put Gordon down. Paul was the favorite. His mother thought he was fantastic. She took him everywhere. Everyone loved him. He was the pride of Mummy.
Paul started coming over in the afternoons. He had a more sophisticated, freer life than I. People told me, “Paul Getty would really like to take you out.” I said, “That’s nice, but he drinks too much.” It was a big problem with a lot of them.
That summer I went to the Russian River as usual to stay with friends. Paul’s mother had a house there and Paul asked me out. I said, “I’d be delighted to go out with you if you don’t drink.” It was silly, a really horrible sort of thing to say. Paul said, “Fine.” We went out and he didn’t drink. He couldn’t have been sweeter. Then he and his brother left to study French in Paris for six months. He wrote often and sent me sweet little things. When he returned he came over to see me. We resumed going out. He enrolled in the University of San Francisco. He didn’t do anything really brilliant with his education. It’s too bad, he could have. He was very bright. If you were one of the gay ones or the funny people, you weren’t really involved in whether you were learning very much. It was more important to be running around doing nonsense. He was called into the Army. I remember saying good-bye to him and that was that. He arrived in Korea the day the war ended.
I went to university and then to New York. On my return, he asked me to marry him. My parents loved Paul. They still do. I was thrilled.
A couple of nights later we went out and Paul had much too much to drink. I said, “I’m going to break it off unless you stop.”
He was upset. He sent a big bunch of roses with promises he would be more considerate. He said, “As long as we’re together I’ll never again have a drop of hard liquor.”
We had a large engagement party. At this party he had his whiskey sour or whatever it was and that was it.
Ann liked me enormously until she realized that I was going to marry her son. Then, she called my father. “I don’t want your daughter to marry him. It’s going to be a disaster for her.” We didn’t know what to do. It was violent and horrible.
We did not invite Paul’s mother to the wedding. It was a quiet affair in Woodside, a country town down on the Peninsula south of San Francisco.
We had had no communication with Paul’s father, except for a telegram when we were married. I think he even sent us a wedding gift—unusual. Ann was left to read about the marriage in the society column of the Chronicle.
Ann’s never met the children, and I’ll never have it. She called me two years ago to wish me a merry Christmas. I can’t imagine why. I saw her at Trader Vic’s the other day. I walked into the ladies’ room and there she was. I ran into the loo. I don’t think she recognized me.
Paul decided he would work in the Stock Exchange, because my father could find him a position through an old friend. He got the costume together, the suit and hat, did the whole San Francisco number. He’d come home and laugh, “It’s all so silly!” Paul and I spent our time with painters, sculptors, and writers—people who amused us and who liked us. Not businessmen. Paul and business was a contradiction. I said to him, “Why don’t you open a little bookshop, serve tea or whatever.”
We bought a lovely house on Baker Street. Stanford White had designed it. Then I was pregnant. We were so excited. It was as if nobody else had ever had a child. Paul was beside himself with joy. Little Paul was born on November fourth, 1956.
Old Paul was really excited, Paul was his first grandson.
I then said to Paul, “Why not get in touch with your father about working for Getty Oil?” He wasn’t enthusiastic. He liked music; his record collection covered a whole wall, and he liked sailing. Not business. But on the other hand, he now felt a compunction to be a Getty and make money.
He thought he should try, and if it worked, fine. Finally he called his half-brother, George, who was running Getty Oil in Los Angeles. George said he would have to start at the bottom.
We saw a lot of George in those days. As a young man, he was very highly considered and worked very hard. He was the son, a company man. Whether he really wanted to or not, I’ll never know, but certainly business was his life: business, business. He therefore had a very serious, almost stuffy demeanor.
Baby Paul went everywhere with us. We had a nanny, Mrs. Taylor, for the first couple of months, and then if we wanted to go out at night, or for a weekend if we wanted to go skiing, she would come and stay. But otherwise we took him with us everywhere.
We decided it would be nice if we lived in the country. So we bought a house on the island of Belvedere and Paul went to work at the Tidewater gas station there, at the crossing where you come off the highway into Tiburon, and there he was, Paul Getty, pumping gas. I have photographs of him in the white uniform with the black hat and tie.
After a while, they moved him to the warehouse operation. We were happy, given a little money every month from Grandfather Getty. It was from a trust, or his good will, I don’t know. Then the money just stopped. We found that Paul’s mother had telephoned her ex-husband and told him that it was shocking how we were living way above our means, that we had a huge sailboat and we were living a gay life. We had a tiny boat, a sort of dinghy, bought with a fr
iend, Norman Matson, for three hundred and fifty dollars. I urged Paul to talk to his father, find out what was happening. Paul had done everything there was to do for the company in America, other than going to L.A. He’d done the gas-station number, he’d done a factory, he’d done the warehouse (he hadn’t gone into the office, he decided he just couldn’t do that). He contacted his father, who invited us to Paris. His father said he was going to send us to the desert, the neutral zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, where they have the oil concession. Old Paul had been very ill. It would be their first meeting in a long, time. I stayed in Belvedere with Little Paul. We arranged to sublet the house and the furniture to the Matsons.
In February of ’58, Paul left to see his father, whose portrait had just appeared on the cover of Time.
He had been born in the right place at the right time. The year was 1892. His father was rich. Oil was starting to become a universal currency. Getty came down from Oxford in 1914 with degrees in economics and political science and began operating as a wildcatter in Oklahoma. He made his first million by the age of twenty-four and retired to become a playboy in Hollywood. In the 1920s he was married three times. His horrified Scots Presbyterian father all but disowned him and then died. With the Wall Street crash in 1929, Getty began gobbling up deflated oil stock, persuading his reluctant mother to lend him two million dollars. She did so on condition that he put up a million of his own and form the Sarah C. Getty Trust. It was this trust that allowed Getty to evade Teddy Roosevelt’s antitrust laws, laws that had brought down John D. Rockefeller in his attempt to make Standard Oil the only oil company in the world. In his defense, Rockefeller declared, “Remember, gentlemen, the American Beauty Rose in all its splendor is only created by snipping away all the little buds surrounding it.” Getty was the sole trustee of the Sarah C. Getty Trust, and it was this trust that owned the majority interest in his enterprises, so that he effectively controlled them without appearing to do so. By now that three million dollars had turned into three billion. Sarah’s great-grandchildren would divide up the principal when the last of the parents died.
