The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  But he had been with them.

  Although he had lived an amazingly successful life, on his own terms, Willie had never lost the feeling of terrible injustice and immeasurable loss. Couldn’t they have seen how much he needed what they so casually gave to each other: friendship, a shared pride and pleasure in all his accomplishments?

  Willie knew that in Dante’s mind, he had taken care of Willie: gotten him the driver’s job with his uncles, then gotten him out to Hollywood. But none of that was for Willie. All for the good of Dante.

  When he had produced Gene O’Brien’s television show, Gene was cool and crisp and professional. He could never be led to talk about the old days. Gene’s life had always been remote, even from his own family. But he’d acted as though there had never been that cold December night on Snake Hill.

  Willie had watched Gene carefully. He was damned good at what he did, a natural. And so fucking beautiful. He remembered the encounter in the storeroom, Gene not only terrified of Walter, but sexually excited by him. That was a long time ago, and Gene had been an inexperienced boy. By the time he did the TV show, he had had a lifetime of situations and opportunities.

  Hell, it was a known secret: priests either grabbed the altar boys or waylaid the little schoolgirls or comforted the frustrated housewives. Willie had a feeling about Gene.

  But he was wrong.

  Willie had tried to set Gene up with a homosexual stagehand, but it had backfired. Gene was not interested, except in the welfare of the very shaken young man. As quickly as he could, Willie had had him transferred to the East Coast with some extra cash in his pocket.

  Willie got the facts about Gene’s days at the Vatican. Successful money-raiser, darling of the wealthy widows and wives whose husbands stayed home to earn more money, he had led a life of luxury: tailor-made clothes, cars, expensive restaurants, vacations in the villas of the rich and famous. Willie had amassed names, dates, locations, and the amounts of money expended on Father O’Brien, who was soon to be a monsignor, and surely soon a bishop. It wasn’t a great stretch of the imagination to assume that Gene gave these women favors other than his mere presence. That was the beauty of allegations. You put someone in the position of having to deny one incident after another; explain; justify; testify; swear; deny. The more defensive the accused became, the more harm was done.

  When Gene was the television bishop in Hollywood, he was always in demand by the movers and shakers, Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Gene would have been a real killer on the big screen. He had star quality, but he had made his choice a long time ago.

  Now it was well known that Gene was awaiting the demise of the pleasant, sweet-faced cardinal who relied on Gene more and more as a slow death interfered with even the simplest of his commitments. And after a few years as the most glamorous cardinal in the church, how did Gene see himself? First American Pope, Gene?

  Then there were Ben Herskel and Charley O’Brien—always a team in Willie’s mind. They had taken equal part in Walter’s death, one coming to the aid of the other, each smashing at the huge drunkard with hard and deadly accuracy. It was amazing, the way they met in Germany. Especially since Herskel was a captain and Charley, always the loser, was only a corporal. But they were a team. It was nice how they did it, the murdering of the SS officers. Ben had taken care of the first alone, but Charley had helped with the second. Willie was surprised, in a way. He hadn’t thought they had the balls for what they accomplished.

  Charley had been a fireman: brave and daring “Snuffy” O’Brien, for God’s sake. He was the only real dud among them; he had been promoted to lieutenant before his retirement, big fucking deal. And turning Jew—that was a real puzzle to Willie at first, even though Charley’s mother was an unconverted Jew. But one of the leads on Charley paid off—it explained it all.

  For nearly twenty years, Charley O’Brien had been an intermediary in Israel’s illicit arms trade. Innocent, wide-eyed Charley, with his sweet tenor voice and pleasant personality, was one of the biggest underground movers of money for arms in the world. His trips to Israel “to visit his in-laws” were supposedly nice family get-togethers, but were in fact missions undertaken to conclude illegal deals.

  They were quite a team, Ben and Charley. What they also were was big-time illegal: that would be heavy federal time. Well, what the hell. They’d had a good long run. Time to pay up. It wouldn’t look too good politically for Ben Herskel, would-be Prime Minister of Israel, to be implicated in a world-wide criminal conspiracy. Along with his ex-fireman of a brother-in-law.

  Payback time, guys.

  Megan Magee Kelly. The damn little cripple who thought she was better than anybody. They also protected her, the little girl hanging around the boys. Well, Willie knew about Megan, the would-be boy.

  She and that friend of hers, Patsy Wagner, were queer for each other for years, but Patsy got away. Got married early and had a lot of kids and never saw Megan again (as far as Willie could find out) until the last day of her life. The way he figured it, Patsy must have been sick of her damn suburban life, her husband, all those kids, whatever. She’d probably read something in the paper about Megan; she was a name in the damn women’s movement. Willie pictured the scenario, the way he’d have set it up. Patsy looking at her former “friend,” now living in Greenwich Village, married to a successful writer of kids’ books. Surrounded by exotic people, doing whatever the hell she wanted to do and getting rich and famous for it.

  In Willie’s movie of the end of Patsy’s life, he could see unhappy Patsy envying Megan. Maybe saying, Hell, let’s get back to where we were. Let’s … you know. Who’d ever know? And Megan laughing. Too late, baby. But lotsa luck. It was good drama, what happened next. Patsy—whatever her married name was, Willie couldn’t remember—had gone from Megan’s office to the Empire State Building and jumped. Great timing.

  Why the hell would Megan want her back? She’d had her lover, that Suzy Ginzberg, that lesbo she’d met down in Warm Springs who probably showed her things Megan could never even imagine. She was the one, Suzy, who’d introduced Megan to Mike Kelly.

  Mike Kelly, world-renowned children’s author and drug addict. Megan Magee Kelly, psychiatrist, had her husband hooked on drugs from the first year they were married. Wouldn’t his publishers, not to mention the parents of all his little readers, like to know the guy was a head?

  Willie wondered if Megan had ever told her husband about her role in the murder of Walter Stachiew. Oh, that’s right. Megan wasn’t there. The gang protected her. But, of course, she was there and she sure as hell did her part.

  The fact that Megan and Mike Kelly had a son didn’t mean shit. Megan was still queer. The kid was probably just to make things look normal. Willie knew about things like that.

  Megan, Megan. Willie’d offered her the most incredible opportunity to become rich beyond her imagination, with a stable of famous nut cases. She could have been right smack in the middle of all the glamour and excitement Willie lived in. He had offered it to her and she had turned it down as though he’d insulted her.

  He knew, too, about her aunt Catherine: rich man’s whore and baby-killer. The latter he assumed from some information handed to him: while she was in medical school, Megan was pregnant. But guess what? No baby. That aunt of hers would have been the one to see to it that was taken care of, right? A rich old lady now, living in Florida with her ill-gotten gains.

  Megan’s old man, Frank Magee—it was no secret that he carried the cash to the Bronx bosses, the money to buy judgeships and commissioner’s appointments. You want a city job, qualified or not; you’re trying for a city contract, low bidder or not; see Frankie Magee. He was the man. Clear it with Frankie.

  Willie had the goods on her old man.

  Megan, Megan, it could have all been so different.

  Willie was amazed sometimes at all the information he had on all of them. Did people really think that what they did in the dark of night or behind closed doors would remain there? If t
wo or more people knew something, it was always possible to find out, if not the whole true story, at least enough facts or details to ruin a reputation.

  Then there was Dante D’Angelo, United States senator from New York, with his Italian eye on the White House. Dante, with the crazy sister and a mother-in-law he’d never met because she’d died murdering her newborn son. Drowned him in his mother’s blood, the whole thing covered up because Don Aldo Santini, his wife’s father, was an important man. The power of the Church extended even to the Church’s wine merchant.

  Dante, who’d delivered a couple of death blows of his own on Walter Stachiew’s skull, had then told them all to forget about it. It had never happened.

  Dante, with the Rucci uncles who didn’t have to be “connected.” They were a law unto themselves, those Ruccis.

  Dante D’Angelo, who made a baby with Maryanne Radsinski and shrugged: Who, me? Never heard of her.

  That son would be his father’s ruin and Willie’s finest retaliation.

  Willie waited in nervous anticipation for the kid to arrive at the villa. He hadn’t seen him in five, maybe six years. He wasn’t a kid anymore, not in any sense of the word. He was close to thirty, and he had made a great success of his life. Changed his birthname—Daniel William Paycek—to Danny Williams, and without even a high school education he had achieved his own growing fame as a columnist.

  Willie always kept an eye on Danny. When he was twenty, Willie got him into the stagehands’ union, where he looked after him to a limited extent. Danny Williams would be important to Willie for his own reasons.

  He was glad Danny was an independent, bright guy who worked his own game, and kept his eyes open and his mouth shut. It was funny how in some ways Danny reminded Willie of himself—not physically, but in the clever way he took control of his own life.

  At first he moonlighted as a source of information to a couple of movie columnists. It was amazing, the kind of things any bright craftsman on a set could pick up. He held back a lot of stuff, though, saving it for another day. By the time he was twenty-six, Danny was a successful, well-established (if not particularly well-respected) syndicated columnist with his own small organization of gofers and private sources.

  It could be helpful or harmful to get your name in Danny Williams’s column. Everyone wanted to get on his good side, and often the easiest way to do that was to give away—to sacrifice—others. He didn’t deal so much anymore with show biz. God knew, it was getting harder to shock people when everyone, all over the world, was doing anything and everything with anyone, anyplace. What Danny learned early on—in his teens he had a hundred years of raw experience—was that it was the politicians, the makers and upholders of public morality, who made the best copy. You had to be high up to fall hard.

  Danny did some sensational interviews with public figures for reputable magazines. Advisers told the interviewees, What the hell, this kid has a reputation; he gets read; just make sure he spells your name right. That’s all anyone remembers, that your name was in his column, when they go to pull the lever or make that contribution or buy your latest book.

  People smarter than he, more successful, more important had it all figured out. They could use Williams. They would come away from a couple of hours with Danny a little dazed—some easy time, some laughs, some serious, gut-wrenching, unanticipated stuff. It went okay. It would be all right. But in the dead of night, unable to sleep, the interviewee would sit up in bed and say, Oh, my God, did I tell that rotten little bastard that? I couldn’t have. Oh, shit, I couldn’t have.

  But they did. One after another, his targets agreed to Danny Williams’s interviews. You’d have to be stupid to let this little nobody get the best of you, right?

  Willie, sitting by his pool in the hot Mediterranean sun, was surprised at his uneasiness. The transatlantic phone call had had a hollow, mechanical sound. Yeah, Danny had gotten Willie’s letter, he just hadn’t had a chance to reply, but he had thought it over. Yes, he would come over to see Willie. He’d never been to Europe, and when would he get a chance for an all-expenses-paid vacation again?

  Willie leaned back and closed his eyes. He could hear little Mischa, tapping away in the coolness of the marble-floored entrance hall. What the hell, the poor thing still thought he’d win contests, make movies, become a dancing star. He had no idea that all he did was bang his feet back and forth, that the clicking steel plates attached to the heels and toes of his dancing shoes gave off no rhythmic beat, nothing but an annoying banging clatter.

  Willie thought about his family for the first time in years. When his blond, blue-eyed, pretty brothers and sisters had grown up and contacted him in Hollywood, he’d refused to see them. Let them get themselves a couple of tourist maps, hunt for the homes of the living stars and the graves of the dead. They were no more a part of his life than his mother, who had married one drunk after another and spent her life getting beaten senseless once a month. One sister had come out to the studio in the sixties with an overweight, uncomfortable truckdriver of a husband and two white-haired little girls in tow. She’d thought maybe Willie could make the girls into movie stars or something. Yeah. Something. He’d studied his sister’s hungry face, remembered her the day before their father’s execution. She had had a nun’s face, had poked and glared and corrected the manners of the other kids, had looked with undisguised disgust at their mother and right through Willie as though he were invisible.

  He told his relatives bluntly what he could do for the little nieces. Just give them a few years and they’d be of age, but keep them young-looking. That went over better. It was the last time he ever saw any of his family. With the exception of little Mischa.

  And now he was awaiting Danny Williams, whose birth certificate bore Willie Paycek’s name as father and Maryanne Radsinski’s as mother.

  Willie’s children were scattered throughout the world. Four of them had been by three of his wives. Two girls, two boys, and none of them promising in any way. He had, in addition, maybe four or five illegitimate children, and every year some hopeful starlet tried to add to the number with a paternity suit. Sometimes, for a short period, he’d pay some support, sometimes not. It was all the same to Willie. They’d either make it on their own or not. Hey, it was a tough world.

  Danny Williams arrived exhausted from his long trip and jet lag. Willie sent a limo to drive him from the airport to the villa, and met him very briefly to make sure he was comfortable in the large, airy bedroom overlooking the pool. He sent him some supper on a tray; late the next morning they met for breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean.

  Willie studied him with a director’s eye. He would be a natural for the street-wise, tough-but-tender, mysterious, slightly menacing, and sexy working-class hero. He was just under six feet, well dressed in a lightweight dark suit, a good white shirt, and a silk tie. There was a certain cockiness in the way he moved and held himself. With a slight shrugging of his shoulders, as though settling his jacket, he seemed to be releasing tension. Nice move; Willie missed nothing. His black hair and eyes were in startling contrast to his fair complexion. His nose, obviously broken, gave his face a rugged look at odds with his sensuous mouth. He had a strong jawline, and though he had just shaved—he smelled of lemon after-shave lotion—there was a dark, shadowy edge to his face that women would find attractive.

  He had a nice style, cool and impressive. A civilized punk with something dangerous and exciting beneath the well-groomed surface. Danny shook a cigarette directly from the pack into his mouth, then lit it with a sleek gold lighter. He had the timing and awareness of a movie star; for a fleeting moment, forgetting the hard and terrible history of the young man’s life, Willie wished he could be Danny Williams.

  Willie indicated the plates of fresh fruit and pastries, the steaming black coffee, the pitcher of cream. Danny sipped the coffee black, then regarded Willie with open curiosity. He had a mocking tone, a pleasureless grin.

  “Well, Papa Willie. You
look like the end of the line. Why am I here?”

  Willie swallowed, then choked on a piece of peach, the juice running lushly down his chin. He dabbed at himself with a linen napkin, then hunched forward slightly.

  “You’re here in pursuit of truth—of a sort, Danny. I got a lotta things I wanna tell you.”

  For nearly six months, Danny listened to Willie’s taped life story, discussed parts of it with Willie. When he came to the story of his own conception, Danny jotted down a few questions. “Did Dante D’Angelo ever know I was born?”

  “He shoulda. It was why they sent Maryanne to the Coast, with me as her blushing groom.” And then, catching something, a tightening of the young man’s mouth, a hardening of his eyes, Willie asked, “What did your mother ever tell you about … ya know, about Dante. And her and me.”

  Softly, Danny said, “My mother told me lots of things. Oh, by the way, Willie, I’m having my youngest sister, Dolores, come over to type the manuscript.”

  “Why? I thought you—”

  “Hey, I’m not a typist, Willie. Don’t look so worried. Dolores has worked with me on a lot of my columns and articles. I trust her completely. She’s just turned twenty, and I know I don’t have to warn you in any way …”

  Willie shrugged. “A coupla years ago, you’d have to warn me. Now …” The feeble shrug spoke for him.

  But he could still take pleasure in the sight of the girl. She was tall and slender, with a healthy, graceful body. Oh, how Willie regretted his dying. He studied Danny’s half sister, her Mexican heritage evident in her tawny skin, dark hair, and bright eyes. She was one of Maryanne Radsinski’s four Mexican-adventure children. He could hear the hum and click of the electric typewriter and visualize the lovely girl concentrating on her work.