PROLOGUE
Quogue 1965
ON PALM SUNDAY, one year after the Great War
against the Santadio, Don Domenico Clericuzio
celebrated the christening of two infants
of his own blood and made the most important
decision of his life.
He invited the greatest Family chiefs in America,
as well as Alfred Gronevelt, the owner of
the Xanadu Hotel in Vegas, and David Redfellow,
who had built up a vast drug empire in the
United States.
All his partners to some degree.
Now the most powerful Mafia Family head in
America, Don Clericuzio planned to relinquish
that power, on the surface.
It was time to play a different hand; obvious
power was too dangerous.
But the relinquishing of power was dangerous
in itself.
He had to do it with the most skillful benignity
and with personal goodwill.
And he had to do it on his own base.
The Clericuzio estate in Quogue comprised
twenty acres surrounded by a ten-foot-high
redbrick wall armed by barbed wire and electronic
sensors.
It held, besides the mansion, the homes for
his three sons as well as twenty small homes
for trusted Family retainers.
Before the arrival of the guests, the Don
and his sons sat around the white wrought-iron
table in the trellised garden at the back
of the mansion.
The oldest, Giorgio, was tall, with a small,
fierce mustache and the lanky frame of an
English gentleman, which he adorned with tailored
clothes.
He was twenty-seven, saturnine, with savage
wit and closed face.
The Don informed Giorgio that he, Giorgio,
would be applying to the Wharton School of
Business.
There he would learn all the intricacies of
stealing money while staying within the law.
Giorgio did not question his father; this
was a royal edict, not an invitation to discussion.
He nodded obedience.
The Don addressed his nephew, Joseph “Pippi”
De Lena, next.
The Don loved Pippi as much as he did his
sons, for in addition to blood—Pippi being
his dead sister’s son—Pippi was the great
general who had conquered the savage Santadio.
“You will go and live permanently in Vegas,”
he said.
“You will look after our interest in the
Xanadu Hotel.
Now that our Family is retiring from operations,
there will not be much work here to do.
However you will remain the Family Hammer.”
He saw Pippi was not happy, that he must give
reasons.
“Your wife, Nalene, cannot live in the atmosphere
of the Family, she cannot live in the Bronx
Enclave.
She is too different.
She cannot be accepted by them.
You must build your life away from us.”
Which was all true, but the Don had another
reason.
Pippi was the great hero general of the Cleri-cuzio
Family, and if he continued to be “Mayor”
of the Bronx Enclave, he would be too powerful
for the sons of the Don when the Don no longer
lived.
“You will be my Bruglione in the West,”
he told Pippi.
“You will become rich.
But there is important work to do.”
He handed Pippi the deed to a house in Las
Vegas.
The Don then turned to his youngest son, Vincent,
a man of twenty-five.
He was the shortest of the children, but built
like a stone door.
He was spare in speech, and he had a soft
heart.
He had learned all the classic peasant Italian
dishes at his mother’s knee, and it was
he who had wept so bitterly at his mother’s
dying young.
The Don smiled at him.
“I am about to decide your destiny,” he
said, “and set you on your true path.
You will open the finest restaurant in New
York.
Spare no expense.
I want you to show the French what real food
is all about.”
Pippi and the other sons laughed, even Vincent
smiled.
The Don smiled at him.
“You will go to the best cooking school
in Europe for a year.”
Vincent, though pleased, growled, “What
can they teach me?”
The Don gave him a stern look.
“Your pastries could be better,” he said.
“But the main purpose is to learn the finances
of running such an enterprise.
Who knows, someday you may own a chain of
restaurants.
Giorgio will give you the money.”
The Don turned finally to Petie.
Petie was the second and the most cheerful
of his sons.
He was affable, at twenty-six no more than
a boy, but the Don knew he was a throwback
to the Sicilian Clericuzio.
“Petie,” the Don said, “Now that Pippi
is in the West, you will be Mayor of the Bronx
Enclave.
You will supply all the soldiers for the Family.
But also, I have bought you a construction
company business, a large one.
You will repair the skyscrapers of New York,
you will build state police barracks, you
will pave the city streets.
That business is assured but I expect you
to make it a great company.
Your soldiers can have legitimate employment
and you will make a great deal of money.
First you will serve an apprenticeship under
the man who now owns it.
But remember, your primary duty is to supply
and command soldiers of the Family.”
He turned to Giorgio.
“Giorgio,” the Don said, “You will be
my successor.
You and Vinnie will no longer take part in
that necessary part of the Family which invites
danger, except when it is abso-lutely necessary.
We must look ahead.
Your children, my children, and little Dante
and Croccifixio must never grow up in this
world.
We are rich, we no longer have to risk our
lives to earn our daily bread.
Our Family will now serve only as financial
advisors to all the other Families.
We will serve as their political support,
mediate their quarrels.
But to do this we must have cards to play.
We must have an army.
And we must protect everyone’s money, for
which they will let us wet our beaks.”
He paused.
“Twenty, thirty years from now, we will
all disappear into the lawful world and enjoy
our wealth without fear.
Those two infants we are baptizing today will
never have to commit our sins and take our
risks.”
“Then why keep the Bronx Enclave?”
Giorgio asked.
“We hope someday to be saints,” the Don
said.
“But not martyrs.”
An hour later Don Clericuzio stood on the
balcony of his mansion and watched the festivities
below.
The huge lawn, carpeted with picnic tables
crowned with winglike green umbrellas, was
filled with the two hundred guests, many of
them soldiers from the Bronx Enclave.
Christenings were usually joyful affairs,
but this one was subdued.
The victory over the Santadio had cost the
Clericuzio dearly.
The Don had lost his most dearly beloved son,
Silvio.
His daughter Rose Marie had lost her husband.
Now he watched the crowds of people mulling
around the several long tables filled with
crystal urns of deep red wine, bright white
tureens of soups, pastas of every kind, platters
laden with a variety of sliced meats and cheese,
and crispy fresh breads of all sizes and shapes.
He allowed himself to be soothed by the soft
music of the small band playing in the background.
Directly in the center of the circle of picnic
tables, the Don saw the two baby carriages
with their blue blankets.
How brave the two babies were, they had not
flinched when struck with Holy Water.
Beside them were the two mothers, Rose Marie
and Nalene De Lena, Pippi’s wife.
He could see the babies’ faces, so unmarked
by life, Dante Clericuzio and Croccifixio
De Lena.
He was responsible for ensuring that these
two children would never have to suffer to
earn a living.
If he succeeded, they would enter the regular
society of the world.
It was curious, he thought, that there was
no man in the crowd paying homage to the infants.
He saw Vincent, usually dour with a face like
granite, feeding some small children from
the hot dog cart he had built for the feast.
It resembled the New York street hot dog carts,
except that it was bigger, it had a brighter
umbrella, and Vincent gave out better food.
He wore a clean white apron, and he made his
hot dogs with sauerkraut and mustard, with
red onions and hot sauce.
Each small child had to give him a kiss on
the cheek for a hot dog.
Vincent was the most tenderhearted of his
sons, despite his rough exterior.
On the boccie court, he saw Petie, playing
with Pippi De Lena, Virginio Ballazzo, and
Alfred Gronevelt.
Petie was a practical joker, which the Don
disapproved of; it always seemed a dangerous
business to him.
Even now Petie was disrupting the game with
his tricks as one of the boccie balls flew
into pieces after the first hit.
Virginio Ballazzo was the Don’s underboss,
an executive officer in the Clericuzio Family.
He was a high-spirited man and was pretending
to chase Petie, who was pretending to run.
This struck the Don as ironic.
He knew his son Petie was a natural-born assassin,
and that the playful Ballazzo had a certain
reputation in his own right.
But neither of them was a match for Pippi.
The Don could see the women in the crowd glancing
at Pippi.
Except for the two mothers, Rose Marie and
Nalene.
He was such a fine-looking man.
As tall as the Don himself, a rugged strong
body, a brutally handsome face.
Many of the men were observing him also, some
of them his soldiers from the Bronx Enclave.
Observing his air of command, the litheness
of his body in action, knowing his legend,
The Hammer, the best of the “Qualified Men.”
David Redfellow, young, rosy-cheeked, the
most powerful drug dealer in America, was
pinching the cheeks of the two infants in
their carriages.
Finally, Alfred Gronevelt, still clad in his
jacket and tie, was obviously ill at ease
at playing a strange game.
Gronevelt was the same age as the Don himself,
near sixty.
Today Don Clericuzio would change all their
lives, he hoped for the better.
Giorgio came to the balcony to summon him
to the first meeting of the day.
The ten Mafia chiefs were assembling in the
den of the house for the meeting.
Giorgio had already briefed them as to Don
Clericuzio’s proposal.
The christening was an excellent cover for
the meeting, but they had no real social ties
with the Clericuzio and wanted to be on their
way as soon as possible.
The den of the Clericuzio was a windowless
room with heavy furniture and a wet bar.
All ten men looked somber as they sat around
the large dark marble conference table.
They each in turn greeted Don Clericuzio and
then waited expectantly to hear what he had
to say.
Don Clericuzio summoned his sons, Vincent
and Petie, his executive officer, Ballazzo,
and Pippi De Lena to join the meeting.
When they arrived, Giorgio, cold and sardonic,
made a brief introductory remark.
Don Clericuzio surveyed the faces of the men
before him, the most powerful men in the illegal
society that functioned to supply the solutions
to the true needs of the people.
“My son Giorgio has briefed you on how everything
will work,” he said.
“My proposal is this.
I retire from all my interests with the exception
of gambling.
My New York activities I give to my old friend
Virginio Ballazzo.
He will form his own Family and be independent
of the Clericuzio.
In the rest of the country I yield all of
my interests in the unions, transportation,
alcohol, tobacco, and drugs to your Families.
All my access to the law will be available.
What I ask in return is that you let me handle
your earnings.
They will be safely held and available to
you.
You will not have to worry about the Government
tracking down the money.
For it I ask only a five percent commission.”
This was a dream deal for the ten men.
They were thankful that the Clericuzio were
retreating when the Family could just as well
have gone forward to control or destroy their
empires.
Vincent walked around the table and poured
each of them some wine.
The men held their glasses up and toasted
the Don’s retirement.
After the Mafia dons made their ceremonious
farewells, David Redfellow was escorted into
the den by Petie.
He sat in the leather armchair opposite the
Don, and Vincent served him a glass of wine.
Redfellow stood out from the other men not
only because of his long hair but because
he wore a diamond earring and a denim jacket
with his clean, pressed jeans.
He had Scandinavian blood.
He was blond with clear blue eyes and always
had a cheerful expression and a casual wit.
The Don owed a great debt of gratitude to
David Redfellow.
It was he who proved that lawful authorities
could be bribed on drugs.
“David,” Don Clericuzio said, “You are
retiring from the drug business.
I have something better for you.”
Redfellow did not object.
“Why now?”
he asked the Don.
“Number one,” the Don said, “the government
is devoting too much time and trouble to the
business.
You would have to live with anxiety the rest
of your life.
More importantly, it has become too dangerous.
My son Petie and his soldiers have served
as your bodyguards.
I can no longer permit that.
The Colombians are too wild, too foolhardy,
too violent.
Let them have the drug business.
You will retire to Europe.
I will arrange for your protection there.
You can keep yourself busy by buying a bank
in Italy and you will live in Rome.
We will do a lot of business there.”
“Great,” Redfellow said.
“I don’t speak Italian and I know nothing
of banking.”
“You will learn both,” Don Clericuzio
said.
“And you will live a happy life in Rome.
Or you can stay here if you wish, but then
you will no longer have my support, Petie
will no longer guard your life.
Choose as you like.”
“Who will take over my business?”
Redfellow asked.
“Do I get a buyout?”
“The Colombians will take over your business,”
the Don said.
“That cannot be prevented, that is the tide
of history.
But the government will make their life misery.
Now, yes or no?”
Redfellow thought it over and then laughed.
“Tell me how to get started.”
“Giorgio will take you to Rome and introduce
you to my people there,” the Don said.
“And through the years he will advise you.”
The Don embraced him.
“Thank you for listening to my advice.
We will still be partners in Europe and believe
me, it will be a good life for you.”
When David Redfellow left, the Don sent Giorgio
to summon Alfred Gronevelt to the den.
As the owner of the Xanadu Hotel in Vegas,
Gronevelt had been under the protection of
the now defunct Santadio Family.
“Mr. Gronevelt,” the Don said.
“You will continue to run the Hotel under
my protection.
You need have no fear for yourself or your
property.
You will keep your fifty-one percent of the
Hotel.
I will own the forty-nine percent formerly
owned by the Santadio and be represented by
the same legal identity.
Are you agreeable?”
Gronevelt was a man of great dignity and great
physical presence, despite his age.
He said carefully, “If I stay, I must run
the Hotel with the same authority.
Otherwise I will sell you my percentage.”
“Sell a gold mine?” the Don said incredulously.
“No, no.
Don’t fear me.
I’m a businessman above all.
If the Santadio had been more temperate, all
those terrible things would never have happened.
Now they no longer exist.
But you and I are reasonable men.
My delegates get the Santadio points.
And Joseph De Lena, Pippi, gets all the consideration
due him.
He will be my Bruglione in the West at a salary
of one hundred thousand a year paid by your
hotel in any manner you see fit.
And if you have trouble of any kind with anyone,
you go to him.
And in your business, you always have trouble.”
Gronevelt, a tall, spare man, seemed calm
enough.
“Why do you favor me?
You have other and more profitable options.”
Don Domenico said gravely, “Because you
are a genius in what you do.
Everyone in Las Vegas says so.
And to prove my esteem I give you something
in return.”
Gronevelt smiled at this.
“You’ve given me quite enough.
My hotel.
What else can be as important?”
The Don beamed at him benevolently, for though
he was always a serious man, he delighted
in surprising people with his power.
“You can name the next appointment to the
Nevada Gaming Commission,” the Don said.
“There is a vacancy.”
Gronevelt for one of the few times in his
life was surprised, and also impressed.
Most of all he was elated, as he saw a future
for his hotel that he had not even dreamed
of.
“If you can do that,” Gronevelt said,
“we will all be very rich in the coming
years.”
“It is done,” the Don said.
“Now you can go out and enjoy yourself.”
Gronevelt said, “I’ll be getting back
to Vegas.
I don’t think it’s wise to let everyone
know I’m a guest here.”
The Don nodded.
“Petie, have someone drive Mr. Grone-velt
to New York.”
Now, besides the Don, only his sons, Pippi
De Lena, and Virginio Ballazzo were left in
the room.
They looked slightly stunned.
Only Giorgio had been his confidant.
The others had not known the Don’s plans.
Ballazzo was young for a Bruglione, only a
few years older than Pippi.
He had control over unions, garment center
transportation, and some drugs.
Don Domenico informed him that from now on
he was to operate independently of the Clericuzio.
He had only to pay a tribute of 10 percent.
Otherwise, he had complete control over his
operations.
Virginio Ballazzo was overcome by this largesse.
He was usually an ebullient man who expressed
his thanks or complaints with brio, but now
he was too overcome with gratitude to do anything
but embrace the Don.
“Of that ten percent, five will be reserved
by me for your old age or misfortune,” the
Don told Ballazzo.
“Now forgive me, but people change, they
have faulty memories, gratitude for past generosities
fades.
Let me remind you to be accurate in your accountings.”
He paused for a moment.
“After all, I am not the tax people, I cannot
charge you those terrible interests and penalties.”
Ballazzo understood.
With Don Domenico, punishment was always swift
and sure.
There was not even a warning.
And the punishment was always death.
After all, how else could one deal with an
enemy?
Don Clericuzio dismissed Ballazzo, but when
the Don escorted Pippi to the door, he paused
for a moment, then pulled Pippi close to him
and whispered in his ear, “Remem-ber, you
and I have a secret.
You must keep it a secret forever.
I never gave you the order.”
On the lawn outside the mansion, Rose Marie
Clericuzio waited to speak to Pippi De Lena.
She was a very young and very pretty widow,
but black did not suit her.
Mourning for her husband and brother suppressed
the natural vivacity so necessary to her particular
kind of looks.
Her large brown eyes were too dark, her olive
skin too sallow.
Only her newly baptized blue-ribboned son,
Dante, resting in her arms, gave her a splash
of color.
All through this day she had maintained a
curious distance from her father, Don Clericuzio,
and her three brothers, Giorgio, Vincent,
and Petie.
But now she was waiting to confront Pippi
De Lena.
They were cousins, Pippi ten years older,
and when she was a teenager, she had been
madly in love with him.
But Pippi was always paternal, always off-putting.
Though a man famous for his weakness of the
flesh, he had been too prudent to indulge
that weakness with the daughter of his Don.
“Hello Pippi,” she said.
“Congratulations.”
Pippi smiled with a charm that made his brutal
looks attractive.
He bent down to kiss the infant’s forehead,
noticing with surprise that the hair, which
still held the faint smell of incense from
the church, was thick for a child so young.
“Dante Clericuzio, a beautiful name,”
he said.
It was not so innocent a compliment.
Rose Marie had taken back her maiden name
for herself and her fatherless child.
The Don had convinced her to do this with
an impeccable logic, but still she felt a
certain guilt.
Out of this guilt, Rose Marie said, “How
did you convince your Protestant wife to have
a Catholic ceremony and such a religious name?”
Pippi smiled at her.
“My wife loves me and wants to please me.”
And it was true, Rose Marie thought.
Pippi’s wife loved him because she did not
know him.
Not as she herself had known him and once
loved him.
“You named your son Croccifixio,” Rose
Marie said.
“You could have pleased her at least with
an American name.”
“I named him after your grandfather, to
please your father,” Pippi said.
“As we all must,” Rose Marie said.
But her bitterness was masked by her smile,
her bones structured in such a way that a
smile appeared naturally on her face and gave
her an air of sweetness that took the sting
out of anything she said.
She paused now, faltering.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
Pippi stared at her blankly for a moment,
surprised, slightly apprehensive.
Then he said softly, “You were never in
any danger,” and he put his arm around her
shoulder.
“Believe me,” he said.
“Don’t think about these things.
Forget everything.
We have happy lives ahead of us.
Just forget the past.”
Rose Marie dipped her head to kiss her infant
but really to hide her face from Pippi.
“I understand everything,” she said, knowing
that he would repeat the conversation to her
father and her brothers.
“I have made peace with it.”
She wanted her family to know that she loved
them still and that she was content her infant
had been received into the Family, sanctified
now by Holy Water, and saved from everlasting
Hell.
At that moment Virginio Ballazzo gathered
Rose Marie and Pippi up and swept them to
the center of the lawn.
Don Domenico Clericuzio emerged from the mansion,
followed by his three sons.
Men in formal dress, women in gowns, infants
in satin, the Clericuzio Family formed a half
circle for the photographer.
The crowd of guests clapped and shouted congratulations,
and the moment was frozen: the moment of peace,
of victory, and of love.
Later the picture was enlarged and framed
and hung in the Don’s study room, next to
the last portrait of his son Silvio, killed
in the war against the Santadio.
The Don watched the rest of the party festivities
from the balcony of his bedroom.
Rose Marie wheeled her baby carriage past
the bowlers, and Pippi’s wife, Nalene, slim,
tall, and elegant, came along the lawn carrying
her infant, Croccifixio, in her arms.
She put the child in the same carriage with
Dante, and the two women gazed down lovingly.
The Don felt a surge of joy that these two
infants would grow up sheltered and safe and
would never know the price that had been paid
for their happy destiny.
Then the Don saw Petie slip a baby bottle
of milk into the carriage and everyone laughed
as the two babies fought for it.
Rose Marie raised her son Dante from the carriage,
and the Don remembered her as she was just
a few short years before.
The Don sighed.
There is nothing so beautiful as a woman in
love, nor so heartbreaking as when she is
made a widow, he thought with regret.
Rose Marie was the child he had most loved,
she had been so radiant, so full of cheer.
But Rose Marie had changed.
The loss of her brother and her husband was
too great.
Yet, in the Don’s experience, true lovers
would always love again and widows grew tired
of black weeds.
And now she had an infant to cherish.
The Don looked back on his life and marveled
it had come to such glorious fruition.
Certainly he had made monstrous decisions
to achieve power and wealth, but he felt little
regret.
And it all had been necessary and proved correct.
Let other men groan over their sins, Don Clericuzio
accepted them and placed his faith in the
God he knew would forgive him.
Now Pippi was playing boccie with three soldiers
from the Bronx Enclave, men older than him,
who had solid business shops in the Enclave,
but who were in awe of Pippi.
Pippi with his usual high spirits and skill
was still the center of attention.
He was a legend, he had played boccie against
the Santadio.
Pippi was exuberant, shouting with joy when
his ball jostled the opposing ball away from
the target bowl.
What a man Pippi was, the Don thought.
A faithful soldier, a warm companion.
Strong and quick, cunning and withholding.
His dear friend Virginio Ballazzo had appeared
on the boccie court, the only man who could
rival Pippi’s skill.
Ballazzo gave a great flourish as he let his
ball go, and there was a loud cheer as he
made the successful hit.
He raised his hand to the balcony in triumph,
and the Don clapped.
He felt a sense of pride that such men flowered
and prospered under his rule, as had all the
people who had gathered together on this Palm
Sunday in Quogue.
And that his foresight would protect them
in the difficult years to come.
What the Don could not foresee were the seeds
of evil in as yet unformed human minds.
BOOK I
.
Hollywood
Las Vegas 1990
CHAPTER 1
.
BOZ SKANNET’S RED cap of hair was sprayed
by the lemon-colored sunlight of California
spring.
His taut, muscular body throbbed to enter
a great battle.
His whole being was elated that his deed would
be seen by more than a billion people all
over the world.
In the elastic waistband of Skannet’s tennis
slacks was a small pistol, concealed by the
zippered jacket pulled down to his crotch.
That white jacket blazed with vertical red
lightning bolts.
A blue-dotted scarlet bandana bound his hair.
In his right hand he held a huge, silvery
Evian bottle.
Boz Skannet presented himself perfectly to
the showbiz world he was about to enter.
That world was a huge crowd in front of the
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles,
a crowd awaiting the arrival of movie stars
to the Academy Awards ceremony.
Specially erected grandstands held the spectators,
the street itself was filled with TV cameras
and reporters who would send iconic images
all over the world.
Tonight people would see their great movie
stars in the flesh, shed of their manufactured
mythic skins, subject to real-life losing
and winning.
Uniformed security guards with shiny brown
batons tucked neatly in holsters formed a
perimeter to keep the spectators in check.
Boz Skannet didn’t worry about them.
He was bigger, faster, and tougher than those
men, and he had the element of surprise.
He was wary of the TV reporters and cameramen
who fearlessly staked out territory to intercept
the celebrities.
But they would be more eager to record than
prevent.
A white limousine pulled up to the entrance
of the Pavilion, and Skannet saw Athena Aquitane,
“the most beautiful woman in the world,”
according to various magazines.
As she emerged, the crowd pressed against
the barriers, shouting her name.
Cameras surrounded her and charged her beauty
to the far corners of the earth.
She waved.
Skannet vaulted over the grandstand fence.
He zigzagged through the traffic barriers,
saw the brown shirts of the security guards
start to converge, the pattern familiar.
They didn’t have the right angle.
He slipped past them as easily as he had the
tacklers on the football field years before.
And he arrived at exactly the right second.
There was Athena talking into the microphone,
head tilted to show her best side to the cameras.
Three men were standing beside her.
Skannet made sure that the camera had him,
and then he threw the liquid from the bottle
into Athena Aquitane’s face.
He shouted, “Here’s some acid, you bitch.”
Then he looked directly into the camera, his
face composed, serious, and dignified.
“She deserved it,” he said.
He was covered by a wave of brown-shirted
men with their batons at the ready.
He knelt on the ground.
At the last moment Athena Aquitane had seen
his face.
She heard his shout and turned her head so
that the liquid struck her cheek and ear.
A billion TV people saw it all.
The lovely face of Athena, the silvery liquid
on her cheek, the shock and the horror, the
recognition when she saw her attacker; a look
of true fear that for a second destroyed all
her imperious beauty.
The one billion people around the world watched
as the police dragged Skannet off.
He looked like a movie star himself as he
raised his shackled hands in a victory salute,
only to collapse as an enraged police officer,
finding the gun in his waistband, gave him
a short, terrible blow to the kidney.
Athena Aquitane, still reeling from shock,
automatically brushed the liquid from her
cheek.
She felt no burning.
The liquid drops on her hand began to dissolve.
People were crashing all around her, to protect
her, to carry her away.
She pulled loose and said to them calmly,
“It’s only water.”
She licked the drops off her hand to be sure.
Then she tried to smile.
“Typical of my husband,” she said.
Athena, showing the great courage that helped
make her a legend, walked quickly into the
Pavilion of the Academy Awards.
When she won the Oscar for best actress, the
audience rose and clapped for what seemed
like forever.
In the chilled penthouse suite of the Xanadu
Casino Hotel of Las Vegas, the eighty-five-year-old
owner lay dying.
But on this spring day, he thought he could
hear, from sixteen floors below, an ivory
ball clacking through red and black slots
of roulette wheels, the distant surf of crapshooters
hoarsely imploring tumbling dice, the whirring
of thousands of slot machines devouring silver
coins.
Alfred Gronevelt was as happy as any man could
be while dying.
He had spent nearly ninety years as a hustler,
dilettante pimp, gambler, accessory to murder,
political fixer, and finally as the strict
but kindly lord of the Xanadu Casino Hotel.
For fear of betrayal, he had never fully loved
any human being, but he had been kind to many.
He felt no regrets.
Now, he looked forward to the tiny little
treats left in his life.
Like his afternoon journey through the Casino.
Croccifixio “Cross” De Lena, his right-hand
man for the last five years, came into the
bedroom and said, “Ready Alfred?”
And Gronevelt smiled at him and nodded.
Cross picked him up and put him in the wheelchair,
the nurse tucked the old man in blankets,
the male attendant took his post to wheel.
The nurse handed Cross a pillbox and opened
the door of the penthouse.
She would remain behind.
Gronevelt could not abide her on these afternoon
jaunts.
The wheelchair rolled easily over the false
green turf of the penthouse garden and entered
the special express elevator that descended
the sixteen floors to the Casino.
Gronevelt sat straight in his chair, looking
right and left.
This was his pleasure, to see men and women
who battled against him with the odds forever
on his side.
The wheelchair made a leisurely tour through
the blackjack and roulette area, the baccarat
pit, the jungle of crap tables.
The gamblers barely noticed the old man in
the wheelchair, his alert eyes, the bemused
smile on his skeletal face.
Wheelchair gamblers were common in Vegas.
They thought fate owed them some debt of luck
for their misfortune.
Finally the chair rolled into the coffee shop/dining
room.
The attendant deposited him at their reserved
booth and then retired to another table to
await their signal to leave.
Gronevelt could see through the glass wall
to the huge swimming pool, the water burning
a hot blue in the Nevada sun, young women
with small children studding its surface like
colored toys.
He felt a tiny rush of pleasure that all this
was his creation.
“Alfred, eat a little something,” Cross
De Lena said.
Gronevelt smiled at him.
He loved the way Cross looked, the man was
so handsome in a way that appealed to both
men and women, and he was one of the few people
that Gronevelt had almost trusted during his
lifetime.
“I love this business,” Gronevelt said.
“Cross, you’ll inherit my points in the
Hotel and I know you’ll have to deal with
our partners in New York.
But never leave Xanadu.”
Cross patted the old man’s hand, all gristle
beneath the skin.
“I won’t,” he said.
Gronevelt felt the glass wall baking the sunlight
into his blood.
“Cross,” he said, “I’ve taught you
everything.
We’ve done some hard things, really hard
to do.
Never look back.
You know percentages work in different ways.
Do as many good deeds as you can.
That pays off too.
I’m not talking about falling in love or
indulging in hatred.
Those are very bad percentage moves.”
They sipped coffee together.
Gronevelt ate only a flaky strudel pastry.
Cross had orange juice with his coffee.
“One thing,” Gronevelt said.
“Don’t ever give a Villa to anyone who
doesn’t make a million drop.
Never forget that.
The Villas are legendary.
They are very important.”
Cross patted Gronevelt’s hand, let his hand
rest on the old man’s.
His affection was genuine.
In some ways he loved Gronevelt more than
his father.
“Don’t worry,” Cross said.
“The Villas are sacred.
Anything else?”
Gronevelt’s eyes were opaque, cataracts
dimming their old fire.
“Be careful,” he said.
“Always be very careful.”
“I will,” Cross said.
And then, to distract the old man from his
coming death, he said, “When are you going
to tell me about the great Santadio War?
You worked with them then.
Nobody ever talks about it.”
Gronevelt gave an old man’s sigh, barely
a whisper, almost emotionless.
“I know time’s getting short,” he said.
“But I can’t talk to you yet.
Ask your father.”
“I’ve asked Pippi,” Cross said.
“But he won’t talk.”
“What’s past is past,” Gronevelt said.
“Never go back.
Not for excuses.
Not for justification, not for happiness.
You are what you are, the world is what it
is.”
Back in the penthouse suite, the nurse gave
Gronevelt his afternoon bath and took his
vital signs.
She frowned and Gronevelt said, “It’s
only the percentages.”
That night he slept fitfully, and as dawn
broke he told the nurse to help him to the
balcony.
She settled him in the huge chair and wrapped
him in blankets.
Then she sat beside him and took his hand
to check his pulse.
When she tried to take her hand back, Gronevelt
continued to hold it.
She permitted it and they both watched the
sun rise above the desert.
The sun was a red ball that turned the air
from blue-black to dark orange.
Gronevelt could see the tennis courts, the
golf course, the swimming pool, the seven
Villas gleaming like Versailles and all flying
the Xanadu Hotel flag: forest green field
with white doves.
And beyond, the desert of endless sand.
I created all this, Gronevelt thought.
I built pleasure domes in a wasteland.
And I made myself a happy life.
Out of nothing.
I tried to be as good a man as possible in
this world.
Should I be judged?
His mind wandered back to his childhood, he
and his chums, fourteen-year-old philosophers,
discussing God and moral values as boys did
then.
“If you could have a million dollars by
pushing a button and killing a million Chinamen,”
his chum said triumphantly, as if posing some
great, impossible moral riddle, “would you
do it?”
And after a long discussion they all agreed
they would not.
Except Gronevelt.
And now he thought, he had been right.
Not because of his successful life but because
that great riddle could not even be posed
anymore.
It was no longer a dilemma.
You could pose it only one way.
“Would you push the button to kill ten million
China-men”—why Chinamen?—“for a thousand
dollars?”
That was now the question.
The world was turning crimson with light,
and Gronevelt squeezed his nurse’s hand
to keep his balance.
He could look directly into the sun, his cataracts
a shield.
He drowsily thought of certain women he had
known and loved and certain actions he had
taken.
And of men he had to defeat pitilessly, and
the mercies he had shown.
He thought of Cross as a son and pitied him
and all of the Santadio and the Cleri-cuzio.
And he was happy he was leaving it all behind.
After all, was it better to live a happy life
or a moral life?
And did you have to be a Chinaman to decide?
That last confusion destroyed his mind utterly.
The nurse, holding his hand, felt it grow
cold, the muscles tense.
She leaned over and checked his vital signs.
There was no doubt he was no more.
Cross De Lena, heir and successor, arranged
the state funeral of Gronevelt.
All the luminaries of Las Vegas, all the top
gamblers, all of Gronevelt’s women friends,
all the staff of the Hotel, had to be invited
and notified.
For Alfred Gronevelt had been the acknowledged
genius of gambling in Las Vegas.
He had spurred and contributed funds to build
the churches of all denominations, for as
he often said, “People who believe in religion
and gamble deserve some reward for their faith.”
He had forbidden the building of slums, he
had built first-rate hospitals and top-notch
schools.
Always, he claimed, as a matter of self-interest.
He despised Atlantic City, where under the
guidance of the state they pocketed all the
money and did nothing for the social infrastructure.
Gronevelt had led the way in convincing the
public that gambling was not a sordid vice
but a middle-class source of entertainment,
as normal as golf or baseball.
He had made gambling a respectable industry
in America.
All of Las Vegas wanted to honor him.
Cross put aside his own personal emotions.
He felt a deep sense of loss; there had been
a genuine bond of affection between them throughout
his whole life.
And now Cross owned fifty-one percent of the
Hotel Xanadu.
Worth at least $500 million.
He knew his life must change.
Being so much more powerful and rich, he would
have to be in more danger.
His relationship with Don Clericuzio and his
Family would become more delicate, in that
he was now their partner in an enormous enterprise.
The first call Cross made was to Quogue, where
he spoke to Giorgio, who gave him certain
instructions.
Giorgio told him that none of the Family would
attend the funeral except Pippi.
Also, Dante would be on the next flight out
to complete the mission already discussed,
but he was not to attend the funeral.
The fact that Cross now owned half the Hotel
was not mentioned.
There was a message from his sister, Claudia,
but when he called, he got her answering service.
There was another message from Ernest Vail.
He liked Vail and was carrying fifty grand
of his markers, but Vail would have to wait
until after the funeral.
There was also a message from his father,
Pippi, who was a lifelong friend of Gronevelt.
And whose advice he needed on how to conduct
his future life.
How would his father react to his new status,
his new wealth?
That would be as ticklish a problem as dealing
with the Clericuzio, who would have to adjust
to the fact that their Bruglione in the West
was so powerful and wealthy in his own right.
That the Don himself would be fair, Cross
had no doubt; that his own father would support
him was almost a given.
But the Don’s children, Giorgio, Vincent,
and Petie, how would they react, and the grandson,
Dante?
He and Dante had been enemies since they were
baptized together in the Don’s private chapel.
It was a running joke in the Family.
And now Dante would be arriving in Vegas to
do the “job” on Big Tim the Rustler.
That bothered Cross because he had a perverse
fondness for Big Tim.
But his fate had been decided by the Don himself,
and Cross worried about how Dante would do
the job.
The funeral for Alfred Gronevelt was the grandest
ever seen in Las Vegas, a tribute to genius.
His body lay in state in the Protestant church
his money had built, which combined the grandness
of European cathedrals with brown slanting
walls from Native American culture.
And with famed Vegas practicality, a huge
parking lot, decorated with Native American
motifs rather than European religious.
The choir that sang the praises of the Lord
and recommended Gronevelt to Heaven was from
the university where he had endowed three
chairs in the humanities.
Hundreds of mourners who had graduated from
college because of scholarships Gronevelt
had funded looked truly grieved.
Some of the crowd were high rollers who had
lost fortunes to the Hotel and seemed mildly
cheered that at last they had triumphed over
Gronevelt.
Women, on their own, some middle-aged, wept
silently.
There were representatives from the Jewish
synagogues and Catholic churches he had helped
to build.
It would have been against everything Gronevelt
believed in to shut down his casino, but there
were those managers and croupiers who were
not on the day shift.
Even some recipients of the Villas made their
appearance and were accorded special respect
by Cross and Pippi.
The governor of the state of Nevada, Walter
Wavven, attended the funeral, escorted by
the mayor.
The Strip itself was cordoned off so that
the long procession of silver hearses, black
limos, and mourners on foot could follow the
body to the cemetery and Alfred Gronevelt
could pass through, for the last time, the
world he had created.
That night the citizen visitors of Vegas gave
Gronevelt the final tribute he would have
most loved.
They gambled with a frenzy that set a new
record for the “Drop,” except of course
for New Year’s Eve.
They buried their money with his body to show
their respect.
At the end of that day, Cross De Lena prepared
to begin his new life.
That night, sitting alone in her beach house
in the Malibu Colony, Athena Aquitane tried
to decide what to do.
The breeze from the ocean coming through the
open doors made her shiver as she sat on the
couch thinking.
It is hard to imagine a world-famous movie
star as she was when she was a child.
Hard to imagine her going through the process
of becoming a woman.
A movie star’s charisma is so powerful that
it seems as if their adult images as heroes,
as beauties, had sprung full grown out of
the head of Zeus.
They never had a history of bed-wetting, never
had acne, never had an ugly face to grow out
of, never had the shrinking shyness and nerdiness
of adolescence, never masturbated, never begged
for love, never were at the mercy of fate.
It was very hard, now, for Athena even to
remember such a person.
Athena thought that she had been born as one
of the luckiest people on earth.
Everything came to her naturally.
She had a wonderful father and mother, who
recognized her gifts and nurtured them.
They adored her physical beauty but did everything
in their power to educate her mind.
Her father tutored her in sports, her mother
in literature and the arts.
She could never remember a time in her childhood
that she had been unhappy.
Until she was seventeen years old.
She fell in love with Boz Skannet, who was
four years older, a regional football star
at his college.
His family owned the biggest bank in Houston.
Boz was almost as handsome as Athena was beautiful,
plus he was funny, he was charming, he adored
her.
Their two perfect bodies came together like
magnets, nerve endings high voltage, flesh
all silk and milk.
They entered a special heaven and, to ensure
that this would last forever, they married.
Within a few short months Athena became pregnant,
yet with her usual bodily perfection, she
gained very little weight; she never felt
sick and enjoyed the idea of having a baby.
So she continued going to college, studying
drama, and playing golf and tennis.
Boz could overpower her in tennis, but she
beat him easily in golf.
Boz went to work in his father’s bank.
Once she had the baby, a little girl whom
she’d named Bethany, Athena continued going
to school, since Boz had enough money to hire
a nanny and a maid.
Marriage made Athena even more hungry for
knowledge.
She read voraciously, especially plays.
She was delighted by Pirandello, dismayed
by Strindberg; she wept over Tennessee Williams.
She grew more vibrant, her intelligence framed
her physical beauty by giving it dignity that
beauty sometimes does not have.
It was not surprising that many men, young
and old, fell in love with her.
Boz Skannet’s friends envied him having
such a wife.
Athena prided herself in her perfection, until
in later years she found that this very perfection
irritated many people, including friends and
lovers.
Boz joked that it was like a Rolls that he
had to park in the street every night.
He was intelligent enough to know that his
wife was destined for greater things, to know
that she was extraordinary.
And he could see very clearly that he was
fated to lose her, as he had lost his own
dreams.
There had been no war to prove his courage,
though he knew himself to be fearless.
He knew he had charm and good looks but no
particular talent.
He was not interested in amassing a huge fortune.
He was jealous of Athena’s gifts, her certainty
of her place in her world.
So Boz Skannet went forward to meet his fate.
He drank to excess, he seduced his colleague’s
wives, and at his father’s bank, he initiated
shady transactions.
He became proud of his cunning, as any man
does of a newly acquired skill, and used it
to hide his growing hatred of his wife.
For was it not heroic to hate one so beautiful
and perfect as Athena?
Boz’s health was extraordinary despite debauch.
He clung to it.
He worked out in the gym, took boxing lessons.
He loved the physicality of the ring, where
he could smash his fist into a human face;
the cunning of switching from jab to hook;
the stoicism of receiving punishment.
He loved hunting, the killing of game.
He loved the seduction of naÏve women, the
schematism of romance.
Then with his newfound cunning he thought
of a way out.
He and Athena would have more children.
Four, five, six.
That would bring them together again.
That would stop her from leaping up and away
from him.
But by that time Athena could see this for
what it was and said no.
She said more.
“If you want children, have them with the
other women you’re screwing.”
It was the first time that she had spoken
coarsely to him.
He was not surprised that she knew of his
unfaithfulness, he had not attempted to hide
it.
In fact, that was his cunning.
Then it would be he who had driven her away,
not she who had left.
Athena observed what was happening to Boz,
but she was too young and too intent on her
own life to give it the necessary attention.
It was only when Boz turned cruel that Athena,
at twenty years of age, found the steel in
her character, an impatience with stupidity.
Boz started playing those clever games of
men who hate women.
And it seemed to Athena that he was actually
going insane.
He always picked up their dry cleaning on
his way home from work, because as he often
said, “Honey, your time is more valuable
than mine.
You have all your special classes in music
and drama besides your degree work.”
He thought she would not detect his spiteful
reproach because of the offhand tone of his
voice.
One day Boz came home carrying an armload
of her dresses while she was taking a bath.
He looked down at her, all gold hair and white
skin, rounded breasts and buttocks decorated
with foamy soap.
His voice thick, he said, “How would you
like it if I threw this shit right into the
tub with you?”
But instead, he hung the clothes in the closet,
helped her out of the water, and rubbed her
dry with rosy pink towels.
Then he made love to her.
A few weeks later the scene was repeated.
But this time he threw the clothes in the
water.
One night he threatened to break all the dishes
at dinner but did not.
A week later, he smashed everything in the
kitchen.
He always apologized after these instances.
Always tried to make love afterward.
But now Athena refused him and they slept
in separate bedrooms.
Another night at dinner Boz held up his fist
and said, “Your face is too perfect.
Maybe if I broke your nose, it would have
more character, like Marlon Brando.”
She ran into the kitchen, and he followed
her.
She was terribly frightened and picked up
a knife.
Boz laughed and said, “That’s the one
thing you can’t do.”
And he was right.
He easily took the knife away from her.
“I was only kidding,” he said.
“You’re only fault is you have no sense
of humor.”
Athena, at twenty, could have turned to her
parents for help, but she did not, nor did
she confide in friends.
Instead she carefully thought things out,
she trusted her intelligence.
She saw that she would never finish college,
the situation was too dangerous.
She knew the authorities could not protect
her.
She considered briefly a campaign to make
Boz truly love her again so that he would
be the old Boz, but now she had such a physical
aversion to him that she couldn’t stand
even the thought of him touching her, and
she knew that she would never be able to give
a convincing performance of love, though that
option appealed to her dramatic sense.
What Boz did that finally forced her hand
and made her certain she had to leave didn’t
have to do with her, it concerned Bethany.
He often tossed their one-year-old daughter
into the air playfully and then pretended
he was not going to catch her, only doing
so with a last-minute lunge.
But once he let the infant bounce, accidentally
it seemed, on the sofa.
And then finally one day he quite deliberately
let the little girl fall to the floor.
Athena gasped with horror and rushed to pick
the baby up, to hold her, to comfort her.
She stayed awake all night sitting beside
the crib of the infant to be certain she was
all right.
Bethany had a fearful lump on her head.
Boz tearfully apologized and promised he would
no longer tease in such a fashion.
But Athena had come to a decision.
The next day she cleared out her checking
account and her savings account.
She made intricate travel arrangements so
that her movements could not be followed.
Two days later, when Boz came home from work,
she and the baby had disappeared.
Six months later Athena surfaced in Los Angeles,
without a baby, and started her career.
She easily got a mid-level agent and worked
in small theater groups.
She starred in a play at the Mark Taper Forum
that led to small parts in small movies, and
then was cast in a supporting role in an A
movie.
In her next picture she became a Bankable
Star, and Boz Skannet re-entered her life.
She bought him off for the next three years,
but she wasn’t surprised by what he did
at the Academy.
An old trick.
This time just a little joke . . . but the
next time, that bottle would be full of acid.
“There’s a big flap at the Studio,”
Molly Flanders told Claudia De Lena that morning.
“A problem with Athena Aquitane.
Because of the attack at the Academy Awards,
they’re worried she won’t go back to work
on her picture.
And Bantz wants you at the Studio.
They want you to talk to Athena.”
Claudia had come to Molly’s office with
Ernest Vail.
“I’ll call her as soon as we finish here,”
Claudia said.
“She can’t be serious.”
Molly Flanders was an entertainment lawyer,
and in a town of fearsome people she was the
most feared litigator in the motion picture
business.
She absolutely loved fighting in the courtroom,
and she nearly always won because she was
a great actress and had a superb grasp of
the law.
Before getting into entertainment law, she
had been the premier defense attorney in the
state of California.
She had saved twenty murderers from the gas
chamber.
The worst any of these clients had to suffer
was a few years for different degrees of manslaughter.
But then her nerves had given way and she
had switched to entertainment law.
She often said it was less bloody and it had
greater and more witty villains.
Now she represented A-picture directors, Bankable
Stars, top-notch screenwriters.
And on the morning after the Aca-demy Awards,
one of her favorite clients, Claudia De Lena,
was in her office.
With her was her screenwriting partner of
the moment, a once famous novelist, Ernest
Vail.
Claudia De Lena was an old friend, and though
one of the least important of Flanders’s
clients, the most intimate.
So when Claudia asked her to take on Vail,
she agreed.
Now she regretted it.
Vail had come with a problem that even she
couldn’t solve.
Also, he was a man she could feel no affection
for, though she usually learned to like even
her murder clients.
Which made her feel a little guilty about
giving him bad news.
“Ernest,” she said, “I went over all
the contracts, all the legal papers.
And there is no point in your continuing to
sue LoddStone Studios.
The only way you can get the rights back is
to croak before your copyright expires.
Which means sometime in the next five years.”
A decade before, Ernest Vail had been the
most famous novelist in America, praised by
critics, read by a vast public.
One novel had a franchise character LoddStone
had exploited.
They bought the rights, made the picture,
and achieved an enormous success.
Two sequels also made a fortune in profit.
The Studio had on its drawing board four more
sequels.
Unfortunately for Vail his first contract
had given all the rights to the characters
and title to the Studio, on all planets in
the universe, in all forms of entertainment,
discovered and undiscovered.
The standard contract for novelists who had
not yet amassed clout in movies.
Ernest Vail was a man who always had a grim,
sour expression on his face.
For which he had good reason.
The critics still acclaimed his books, but
the public no longer read them.
Also, despite his talent, he had made a mess
of his life.
During the last twenty years his wife had
left, taking their three children with her.
On the one book that had become a successful
movie, he had made a one-time score, but the
Studio would make hundreds of millions over
the years.
“Explain that to me,” Vail said.
“The contracts are foolproof,” Molly said.
“The Studio owns your characters.
There’s only one loophole.
Copyright law states that when you die all
rights to your works revert to your heirs.”
For the first time Vail smiled.
“Redemption,” he said.
Claudia asked, “What kind of money are we
talking about?”
“On a fair deal,” Molly said, “five
percent of gross.
Figure they get five more pictures out of
it and they are not disasters, total rentals,
a billion worldwide, so we’re talking around
thirty or forty million.”
She paused for a moment and smiled sardonically.
“If you were dead, I could get your heirs
a much better deal.
We’d really have a gun to their heads.”
Vail said, “Call the people at LoddStone.
I want a meeting.
I’ll convince them that if they don’t
cut me in, I’ll kill myself.”
“They won’t believe you,” Molly said.
“Then I’ll do it,” Vail said.
“Talk sense,” Claudia said amiably.
“Ernest, you’re only fifty-six years old.
That’s too young to die for money.
For principle, for the good of your country,
for love, sure.
But not for money.”
“I have to provide for my wife and kids,”
Vail said.
“Your ex-wife,” Molly said.
“And for Christ’s sake, you’ve been
married twice since.”
“I’m talking about my real wife,” Vail
said.
“The one who had my kids.”
Molly understood why everybody in Hollywood
disliked him.
She said, “The Studio won’t give you what
you want.
They know you won’t kill yourself, and they
won’t be bluffed by a writer.
If you were a Bankable Star, maybe.
An A director, maybe.
But never a writer.
You’re just shit in this business.
Sorry, Claudia.”
Claudia said, “Ernest knows that and I know
that.
If everybody in this town wasn’t scared
to death of a blank piece of paper, they’d
get rid of us entirely.
But can’t you do something?”
Molly sighed and put in a call to Eli Marrion.
She had enough clout to get through to Bobby
Bantz, the president of LoddStone.
Claudia and Vail had a drink together afterward
in the Polo Lounge.
Vail said reflectively, “Big woman, Molly.
Big women are easier to seduce.
And they’re much nicer in bed than small
women.
Ever notice?”
Not for the first time Claudia wondered why
she was so fond of Vail.
Not many people were.
But she had loved Vail’s novels, still did.
“You’re full of shit,” she said.
Vail said, “I meant big women are sweeter.
They bring you breakfast in bed, they do little
things for you.
Feminine things.”
Claudia shrugged.
Vail said, “Big women are good-hearted.
One brought me home from a party one night
and really didn’t know what to do with me.
She looked around the bedroom exactly like
my mother used to look around her kitchen
when there was nothing in the house to eat
and she was figuring out how to throw a meal
together.
She was wondering, how the hell we were going
to have a good time with the materials at
hand.”
They sipped their drinks.
As always, Claudia warmed to him when he was
so disarming.
“You know how Molly and I became friends?”
Claudia said.
“She was defending some guy who had murdered
his girlfriend and she needed some good dialogue
for him to use in the courtroom.
I wrote the scene just as if it were a movie,
and her client got manslaughter.
I think I wrote the dialogue and the plotline
for three other cases before we stopped.”
“I hate Hollywood,” Vail said.
“You just hate Hollywood because LoddStone
Studios screwed you on your book,” Claudia
said.
“Not just that,” Vail said.
“I’m like one of those old civilizations
like the Aztecs, the Chinese empires, the
Native American Indians, who were destroyed
by a people with more sophisticated technology.
I’m a real writer, I write novels to appeal
to the mind.
That kind of writing is a very backward technology.
It can’t stand up against movies.
Movies have cameras, they have sets, they
have music and they have these great faces.
How can a writer conjure that up with just
words?
And movies have narrowed the field of battle.
They don’t have to conquer the brain, only
the heart.”
“Fuck you, I’m not a writer,” Claudia
said.
“A screenwriter is not a writer?
You just say that because you’re not good
at it.”
Vail patted her on the shoulder.
“I’m not putting you down,” he said.
“I’m not even putting down film as an
art.
I’m just defining.”
“It’s a lucky thing I love your books,”
Claudia said.
“It’s no wonder nobody out here likes
you.”
Vail smiled amiably.
“No, no,” he said.
“They don’t dislike me.
They just have contempt for me.
But when my estate gets the rights to my characters
back on my death, they’ll have respect.”
“You’re not serious,” Claudia said.
“I think I am,” Vail said.
“It’s a very tempting prospect.
Suicide.
Is it politically incorrect these days?”
“Oh shit,” Claudia said.
She wrapped her arm around Vail’s neck.
“The fight is just beginning,” she said.
“I’m sure they’ll listen when I ask
for your points.
Okay?”
Vail smiled at her.
“No hurry,” he said.
“It will take me at least six months just
to figure out how to do myself in.
I hate violence.”
Claudia realized suddenly that Vail was serious.
She was surprised at the panic she felt at
the thought of his death.
It was not that she loved him, though they
had been lovers briefly.
It was not even that she was fond of him.
It was the thought that the beautiful books
he had written were to him less powerful than
money.
That his art could be defeated by such a contemptible
foe as money.
Out of that panic she said, “If worse comes
to worst, we’ll go to Vegas and see my brother,
Cross.
He likes you.
He’ll do something.”
Vail laughed.
“He doesn’t like me that much.”
Claudia said, “He has a good heart.
I know my brother.”
“No, you don’t,” Vail said.
Athena had come home from the Dorothy Chandler
Pavilion the night of the Academy Awards without
celebrating and had gone right to bed.
She tossed and turned for hours, but she couldn’t
sleep.
Every muscle in her body felt taut.
I won’t let him do this again, she thought.
Not again.
I won’t live in terror again.
She made herself a cup of tea and tried to
drink it, but when she saw the small tremor
in her hand, she became impatient, walked
outside, and stood on the balcony looking
into the dark night sky.
She stood for hours, but her heart still raced
in terror.
She dressed.
In white shorts and tennis shoes.
And as the red sun began to show itself over
the horizon, she ran.
She ran faster and faster along the beach,
trying to stay on the hard wet sand, trying
to follow the coastline as the cold water
washed over her feet.
She had to clear her head.
She couldn’t let Boz beat her.
She had worked too hard and too long.
And he would kill her, she never doubted that.
But first he would play with her, torment
her, finally he would disfigure her, he would
make her ugly, thinking it would make her
his again.
She felt her own fury beating in her throat,
and then the cool wind spraying ocean water
in her face.
No, no!
She thought about the Studio, they’d be
frantic, they’d threaten her.
But it was money, not her, they were concerned
about.
She thought about her friend Claudia, how
this could have been her big break, and she
felt sad.
She thought about all the others, but she
knew she couldn’t afford the luxury of compassion.
Boz was crazy, and people who weren’t crazy
would try to reason with him.
He was smart enough to make them think they
could win, but she knew better.
She couldn’t take the chance.
She couldn’t allow herself to take that
chance.
. . .
By the time she reached the large black boulders
that meant the north beach ended, she was
completely out of breath.
She sat, trying to slow her heart down.
She looked up when she heard the caw of seagulls
as they swept down and seemed to glide along
the water.
Her eyes filled, but she pulled herself back
with determination.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat.
And for the first time in a long time she
wished her parents weren’t so far away.
Some part of her felt like a small child and
wished desperately to run home to safety,
to someone who could put their arms around
her and just make everything better.
She smiled at herself then, a crooked, wry
smile, remembering when she really believed
that was possible.
Now, she was so loved by everyone, so admired,
so adored . . . and so what?
She felt more empty than she thought any human
was capable of feeling, more lonely.
Sometimes when she found herself passing an
ordinary woman with her husband and children,
a woman living an ordinary life, she felt
such longing.
Stop! she told herself.
Think.
It’s up to you.
Come up with a plan and carry it through.
It’s not only your life that depends on
you.
. . .
It was midmorning before she walked back home.
And she walked with her head held high and
her eyes staring straight ahead: She knew
what she had to do.
Boz Skannet was kept in custody overnight.
His lawyer organized a press conference when
he was released.
Skannet told reporters that he was married
to Athena Aquitane, though he had not seen
her for ten years, and that what he had done
was just a practical joke.
The liquid was only water.
He predicted that Athena would not press charges,
intimating he possessed a terrible secret
about her.
In this he proved correct.
No charges were filed.
That day Athena Aquitane informed LoddStone
Studios, the studio making one of the most
costly pictures in movie history, that she
would not return to work on that film.
Because of the attack made on her, she feared
for her life.
Without her, the film, a historical epic called
Messalina, could not be completed.
The fifty million dollars invested would be
a total loss.
It also meant that because of this no major
studio would ever dare cast Athena Aquitane
in a movie again.
LoddStone Studios released a statement that
their star had suffered extreme exhaustion
but that in a month she would be recovered
enough to resume shooting.
CHAPTER 2
.
LODDSTONE STUDIOS WAS the most powerful movie-making
entity in Hollywood, but Athena Aquitane’s
refusal to go back to work was a costly treachery.
It was rare that mere “Talent” could deal
such a damaging blow, but Messalina was the
Studio “Locomotive” for the Christmas
season, the big picture that would power all
the Studio’s releases through the long,
hard winter.
It happened that the next Sunday was the date
of the annual Festival of Brotherhood charity
party, held at the Beverly Hills estate of
Eli Marrion, major shareholder and chairman
of LoddStone Studios.
Far back in the canyons above Beverly Hills,
Eli Marrion’s huge mansion was a showplace
of twenty rooms, but the oddity of it was
that it had only one bedchamber.
Eli Marrion never liked anyone sleeping in
his house.
There were guest bungalows, of course, along
with two tennis courts and a large swimming
pool.
Six of the rooms were devoted to his large
collection of paintings.
Five hundred of the most eminent people in
Hollywood were invited to this charity festival
with an admission fee of one thousand dollars
per person.
There were bars and buffet tents and dancing
tents spread over the grounds, and there was
a band.
But the house itself was off-limits.
Toilet facilities were provided by portable
units in gaily decorated, wittily designed
tents.
The mansion, the guest bungalows, the tennis
courts, and the swimming pool were roped off
and barred by security men.
None of the guests were offended by this,
Eli Marrion was too lofty a personage for
offense to be taken.
But as guests frolicked on the lawns, gossiping
and dancing for an obligatory three hours,
Marrion was in the huge conference room of
the mansion with a group of people most concerned
with the completion of the film Messalina.
Eli Marrion dominated this gathering.
His body was eighty years old but so cleverly
disguised you took it for no more than sixty.
His gray hair was perfectly cut and tinted
to silver, his dark suit broadened his shoulders,
added flesh to his bones, insulated his pipe-thin
shanks.
Mahogany shoes anchored him to earth.
A white shirt was vertically cut with a rose-colored
tie that pinked his grayish pallor.
But his rule over LoddStone Studios was absolute
only when he wanted it to be.
There were times when it was more prudent
to let mere mortals exercise their free will.
Athena Aquitane’s refusal to complete a
film in progress was a problem serious enough
to command even Marrion’s attention.
Messalina, a hundred-million-dollar production,
the studio Locomotive, with video, TV, cable
and foreign rights presold to cover the cost,
was a golden treasure that was about to sink
like an old Spanish galleon, never to be retrieved.
And there was Athena herself.
At the age of thirty, a great star, already
signed to do another blockbuster for LoddStone.
A true Talent, of which there was nothing
more valuable.
Marrion adored Talent.
But Talent was like dynamite, it could be
dangerous and you had to control it.
You did that with love, with cajolery in its
most abject form, you showered it with worldly
goods.
You became a father, a mother, a brother,
a sister, even a lover.
No sacrifice was too great.
But there came a time when you could not be
weak, when indeed you must be merciless.
So now in this room with Marrion were the
people to enforce his will.
Bobby Bantz, Skippy Deere, Melo Stuart, and
Dita Tommey.
Eli Marrion, facing them in this familiar
conference room, twenty million dollars worth
of paintings, tables, chairs, and rugs, the
crystal goblets and jugs totaling at least
a half million more, could feel his bones
crumbling within.
Each day he was astonished how difficult it
was to present himself to the world as the
all-powerful figure he was presumed to be.
Mornings were no longer refreshing, it was
fatiguing to shave, to knot his tie, to button
the buttons on his shirt.
More dangerous was the mental weakness.
This took the form of pity for people less
powerful than himself.
Now he was using Bobby Bantz more, giving
him more power.
After all, the man was thirty years younger
and was his closest friend, loyal to him for
so long.
Bantz was president and chief executive officer
of the Studio.
For over thirty years, Bantz had been Marrion’s
hatchet man, and through the years they had
become very close, like father and son, as
it is said.
They suited each other.
After the age of seventy, Marrion had become
too tenderhearted to do the things that absolutely
had to be done.
It was Bantz who took over from movie directors
after their artistic cut and made their films
acceptable to audiences.
It was Bantz who disputed percentages of directors,
stars, and writers and made them either go
to court to collect or settle for somewhat
less.
It was Bantz who negotiated very tough contracts
with Talent.
Especially writers.
Bantz refused to give even the standard lip
service to writers.
It was true you needed a script to start,
but Bantz believed that you lived and died
by casting.
Star power.
Directors were important because they could
steal you blind.
Producers, no slouches when it came to thievery,
were necessary for the manic energy that started
a movie.
But writers?
All they had to do was make that initial tracing
on blank white paper.
You hired another dozen to work it over.
Then the producer shaped the plot.
The director invented Business (sometimes
a whole new picture), and then the stars came
up with inspired bits of dialogue.
Then there was the Creative Staff of the Studio
who, in long, carefully thought out memos,
gave writers insights, plot ideas, and wish
lists.
Bantz had seen many a million-dollar script
from a big-shot screenwriter paid a million
dollars, only to find when the picture was
finished it contained not a single plot incident
or word of dialogue of the writer’s.
Sure, Eli had a soft spot for writers, but
that was because they were so easy to screw
on their contracts.
Marrion and Bantz had traveled the world together
selling movies to film festivals and market
centers, to London and Paris and Cannes, to
Tokyo and Singapore.
They had decided the fate of young artists.
They had ruled an empire together, as Emperor
and chief vassal.
Eli Marrion and Bobby Bantz agreed that Talent,
those who wrote, acted in, and directed movies,
were the most ungrateful people in the world.
Oh, those hopeful pure artists could be so
engaging, so grateful for their chance, so
accommodating when they were fighting their
way up, but how they could change after achieving
fame.
Honey-making bees turned into angry hornets.
It was only natural that Marrion and Bantz
kept a staff of twenty lawyers to throw a
net over them.
Why were they always so much trouble?
So unhappy?
There was no doubt about it, people who pursued
money rather than art had longer careers,
got more pleasure in life, were much better
and more socially valuable people than those
artists who tried to show the divine spark
in human beings.
Too bad you couldn’t make a movie about
that.
That money was more healing than art and love.
But the public would never buy it.
Bobby Bantz had gathered them all up from
the festival going on outside the mansion.
The only Talent there was the director of
Messalina, a woman named Dita Tommey, in the
A class and known as the best with female
stars, which in Hollywood today meant not
homosexual but feminist.
The fact that she was also a lesbian was irrelevant
to all these men in the conference room.
Dita Tommey brought in her pic-tures under
budget, her pictures made money, and her liaisons
with females caused far less trouble on a
picture than a male director screwing his
actresses did.
Lesbian lovers of the famous were docile.
Eli Marrion sat at the head of the conference
table and let Bantz lead the discussion.
Bantz said, “Dita, tell us exactly how we
stand on the picture and what your thoughts
are on solving the situation.
Hell, I don’t even understand the problem.”
Tommey was short and very compact and always
spoke to the point.
She said, “Athena is scared to death.
She is not coming back to work unless you
geniuses come up with something that can erase
that fear.
If she doesn’t come back, you guys are out
fifty million bucks.
The picture cannot be finished without her.”
She paused for a moment.
“I’ve shot around her in the past week,
so I’ve saved you money there.”
“This fucking picture,” Bantz said.
“I never wanted to make it.”
This provoked other men in the room; the producer,
Skippy Deere, said, “Fuck you, Bobby,”
and Melo Stuart, Athena Aquitane’s agent,
said, “Bullshit.”
In truth, Messalina had been enthusiastically
supported by everyone.
It had received one of the easiest “green
lights” in history.
Messalina told the story of the Roman Empire
under the Emperor Claudius from a feminist
point of view.
History, written by males, painted the Empress
Messalina as a corrupt and murderous harlot,
who one night took on the whole population
of Rome in sexual debauch.
But in the movie creating her life almost
two thousand years later, she was revealed
as a tragic heroine, an Antigone, another
Medea.
A woman who, using the only weapons available
to her, tried to change a world in which men
were so dominant that they treated the female
sex, half the human race, as if they were
slaves.
It was a great concept—rampant sex acts
in full color and a highly relevant and popular
theme—but it needed a perfect package to
make the whole thing credible.
First Claudia De Lena wrote a script that
was witty and had a strong story line.
Dita Tommey as director was a pragmatic and
politically correct choice.
She had a dry intelligence and was a proven
director.
Athena Aquitane was perfect as Messalina and
had completely dominated the picture so far.
She had the beauty of face and body, and the
genius of her acting made everything plausible.
More important, she was one of the three female
Bankable Stars in the world.
Claudia, with her own offbeat genius, had
even given her a scene in which Messalina,
seduced by the growing Christian legends,
saved martyrs from the sure death of the amphitheater.
When Tommey read the scene she said to Claudia,
“Hey, there’s a limit.”
Claudia grinned at her and said, “Not in
the movies.”
Skippy Deere said, “We have to shut down
the picture until we get Athena back to work.
That will cost a hundred fifty grand a day.
The situation is this.
We’ve spent fifty million.
We’re halfway through, we can’t write
Athena out and we can’t double her.
So if she doesn’t come back, we scrap the
picture.”
“We can’t scrap it,” Bantz said.
“Insurance doesn’t cover a star refusing
to work.
Drop her out of a plane, then insurance pays.
Melo, it’s your job to get her back.
You’re responsible.”
Melo Stuart said, “I’m her agent but I
can only have so much influence on a woman
like her.
Let me tell you this.
She is genuinely frightened.
This is not one of your temperamental things.
She’s scared, but she’s an intelligent
woman, so she must have a reason.
This is a very dangerous, a very delicate,
situation.”
Bantz said, “If she torpedoes a hundred-million-dollar
movie, she can never work again, did you tell
her that?”
“She knows,” Stuart said.
Bantz asked, “Who’s the best person to
talk sense into her?
Skippy, you tried and failed.
Melo, you did.
Dita, I know you did your best.
I even tried.”
Tommey said to Bantz, “You don’t count,
Bobby.
She detests you.”
Bantz said sharply, “Sure, some people don’t
like my style but they listen to me.”
Tommey said kindly, “Bobby, none of the
Talent likes you, but Athena doesn’t like
you personally.”
“I gave her the role that made her a star,”
Bantz said.
Melo Stuart said calmly, “She was born a
star.
You were lucky to get her.”
Bantz said, “Dita, you’re her friend.
It’s your job to get her back to work.”
“Athena is not my friend,” Tommey said.
“She is a colleague who respects me because
after I tried to make her, I desisted gracefully
when I failed.
Not like you, Bobby.
You kept trying for years.”
Bantz said amiably, “Dita, who the hell
is she not to fuck us?
Eli, you have to lay down the law.”
All attention was fixed on the old man, who
seemed bored.
Eli Marrion was so thin that one male star
had joked he should wear an eraser on his
skull, but this was more malicious than apt.
Marrion had a comparatively huge head and
the broad gorilla face of a much heavier man,
a broad nose, thick mouth, yet his face was
curiously benign, somewhat gentle, some even
said handsome.
But his eyes gave him away, they were cold
gray and radiated intelligence and an absolute
concentration that daunted most people.
It was perhaps for this reason that he insisted
that everyone call him by his first name.
Marrion spoke in an emotionless voice.
“If Athena won’t listen to you people,
she won’t listen to me.
My position of authority won’t impress her.
Which makes it all the more puzzling that
she is so frightened over such a senseless
attack by such a foolish man.
Can’t we buy our way out of this?”
“We will try,” Bantz said.
“But it makes no difference to Athena.
She doesn’t trust him.”
Skippy Deere, the producer, said, “And we
tried muscle.
I got some friends in the police department
to lean on him, but he’s tough.
His family has money and political connections
and he’s crazy in the bargain.”
Stuart said, “Exactly how much does the
Studio lose if it closes down the picture?
I’ll do my best to let you recoup on future
packages.”
There was a problem about letting Melo Stuart
know the extent of the damages; as Athena’s
agent, it would give him too much leverage.
Marrion did not answer but nodded to Bobby
Bantz.
Bantz was reluctant, but spoke.
“Actual money spent, fifty million.
Okay, we can eat fifty million.
But we have to give back the foreign sales
money, the video money, and there’s no Locomotive
for Christmas.
That can cost us another . . .” He paused,
not willing to give that figure, “and then
if we add the profits that we lose . . . shit,
two hundred million dollars.
You’d have to give us a break on a lot of
packages, Melo.”
Stuart smiled, thinking he would have to jack
up his price for Athena.
“But actually, in real cash put out, you
only lose fifty,” he said.
When Marrion spoke his voice had lost its
gentleness.
“Melo,” he said, “How much will it cost
us to get your client back to work?”
They knew what had happened.
Marrion had decided to act as if this was
just a scam.
Stuart read the message.
How much are you going to stick us up for
on this little scheme?
This was an attack on his integrity but he
had no intention of getting on his high horse.
Not with Marrion.
If it had been Bantz, he would have been wrathfully
indignant.
Stuart was a very powerful man in the movie
world.
He didn’t have to kiss even Marrion’s
ass.
He controlled a stable of five A directors,
not strictly Bankable but very powerful indeed;
two male Bankable Stars; and one female Bankable
Star, Athena.
Which meant he had three people who could
assure a green light for any movie.
But still it was not wise to anger Marrion.
Stuart had become powerful by avoiding such
dangers.
Certainly this was a great situation for a
stickup but not really.
This was a rare time when straightforwardness
could pay off.
Melo Stuart’s greatest asset was his sincerity,
he truly believed in what he sold, and he
had believed in Athena’s talent even ten
years before, when she was an unknown.
He believed in her now.
But what if he could change her mind and bring
her back before the cameras?
Surely that was worth something, surely that
option should not be closed off.
“This is not about money,” Stuart said
with passion.
He felt a rapture for his own sincerity.
“You could offer Athena an extra million
and she would not go back.
You must solve the problem of this so-called
long-absent husband.”
There was an ominous silence.
Everybody paid attention.
A sum of money had been mentioned.
Was it an opening wedge?
Skippy Deere said, “She won’t take money.”
Dita Tommey shrugged.
She didn’t believe Stuart for a moment.
But it wouldn’t be her money.
Bantz simply glared at Stuart, who coolly
kept looking at Marrion.
Marrion analyzed Stuart’s remark correctly.
Athena would not come back for money.
Talent was never so cunning.
He decided to wrap up the meeting.
He said, “Melo, explain very carefully to
your client, if she does not come back in
one month’s time the Studio abandons the
picture and takes the loss.
Then we sue her for everything she owns.
She must know she can’t work again for a
major American studio afterwards.”
He smiled around the table.
“What the hell, it’s only fifty million.”
They all knew he was serious, that he had
lost his patience.
Dita Tommey panicked, the picture meant more
to her than anyone.
It was her baby.
If it succeeded she would be among those directors
who would be Bankable.
Her OK could get a green light.
Out of her panic, she said, “Get Claudia
De Lena to talk to her.
She’s one of Athena’s closest friends.”
Bobby Bantz said contemptuously, “I don’t
know what’s worse, a star fucking somebody
below the line or being friends with a writer.”
At this Marrion again lost his patience.
“Bobby, don’t bring irrelevancies into
a business discussion.
Have Claudia talk to her.
But let’s wrap this thing up one way or
another.
We have other pictures to make.”
But the next day a check for five million
dollars arrived at LoddStone Studios.
It was from Athena Aquitane.
She had returned the advance money she had
been paid to do Messalina.
Now it was in the hands of the lawyers.
In just fifteen years Andrew Pollard had built
the Pacific Ocean Security Company into the
most prestigious protection organization on
the West Coast.
Starting in a suite of hotel rooms, he now
owned a four-story building in Santa Monica
with over fifty permanent HQ staff, five hundred
investigators and guards under freelance contracts,
plus a floating reserve group who worked for
him a good part of the year.
Pacific Ocean Security provided services for
the very rich and very famous.
It protected the homes of movie magnates with
armed personnel and electronic devices.
It provided bodyguards for stars and producers.
It supplied uniformed men to control the crowds
at great media events such as the Academy
Awards.
It did investigative work in delicate matters
such as providing counterintelligence to ward
off would-be blackmailers.
Andrew Pollard became successful because he
was a stickler for details.
He planted ARMED RESPONSE signs on the grounds
of his rich clients’ houses that flashed
in the night with an explosion of red light,
plus he had patrols in the neighborhoods of
the walled-in mansions.
Careful in picking his personnel, he paid
high enough wages so that they worried about
being fired.
He could afford to be generous.
His clients were the richest people in the
country and paid accordingly.
He was also clever enough to work closely
with the Los Angeles Police Department, top
and bottom.
He was a business friend of Jim Losey, the
legendary detective, who was a hero to the
rank and file.
But most important, he had the backing of
the Clericuzio Family.
Fifteen years before, while still a young
police officer, still a little careless, he
had been entrapped by the Internal Affairs
Unit of the New York City Police Department.
It was small graft, almost impossible to avoid.
But he had stood fast and refused to inform
on his superiors who were involved.
The Clericuzio Family underlings observed
this and set in motion a series of judicial
moves so that Andrew Pollard was given a deal:
Resign from the New York Police Department
and escape punishment.
Pollard migrated to Los Angeles with his wife
and child, and the Family gave him the money
to set up his Pacific Ocean Security Company.
Then the Family sent out word that Pollard’s
clients were not to be molested, their houses
could not be burglarized, their persons were
not to be mugged, their jewelry was not to
be stolen and if stolen in error must be returned.
It was for this reason that the flaming ARMED
RESPONSE signs also flashed the name of the
protection agency.
Andrew Pollard’s success was almost magical,
the mansions under his protection were never
touched.
His bodyguards were as nearly well trained
as FBI men, so the company was never sued
for inside jobs, sexual harassment of their
employers, or child molesting, all of which
happened in the world of security.
There were a few cases of attempted blackmail,
and there were some guards who sold intimate
secrets to the scandal sheets, but that was
unavoidable.
All in all, Pollard ran a clean, efficient
operation.
His company had computer access to confidential
information about people in all walks of life.
And it was only natural that when the Clericuzio
Family needed data, it would be supplied.
Pollard earned a good living and he was grateful
to the Family.
Plus the fact that every once in a while there
was a job he could not ask his guards to do,
and he would then make application to the
western Bruglione for some help in the way
of strong-arm.
There were slyer predators for whom Los Angeles
and Hollywood were like some Edenesque jungle,
teeming with victims.
There were the movie executives lured into
blackmailers’ honey traps, the closeted
movie stars, sadomasochistic directors, pedophile
producers, all frightened their secrets would
get out.
Pollard was noted for dealing with these cases
with finesse and discretion.
He could negotiate the lowest possible payment
and ensure that there would be no second dip.
Bobby Bantz summoned Andrew Pollard to his
office the day after the Academy Awards.
“I want all the info you can get on this
Boz Skannet character,” he told Pollard.
“I want all the background on Athena Aquitane.
For a major star, we know very little about
her.
I also want you to make a deal with Skannet.
We need Athena for another three to six months
on the picture, so structure a deal with Skannet
so that he goes far away.
Offer him twenty grand a month but you can
go as high as a hundred.”
Pollard said quietly, “And after he can
do what he wants?”
“Then it’s a job for the authorities,”
Bantz said.
“You have to be very careful, Andrew.
This guy has a powerful family.
The movie industry cannot be accused of any
off-color tactics, it might ruin the picture
and hurt the Studio.
So just make the deal.
Plus we are using your firm for her personal
security.”
“And if he doesn’t go for the deal?”
Pollard asked.
“Then you have to guard her day and night,”
Bantz said.
“Until the picture is done.”
“I could lean on him just a little,” Pollard
said.
“In a legal way of course.
I’m not suggesting anything.”
“He’s too well connected,” Bantz said.
“The police authorities are leery of him.
Even Jim Losey, who’s such a good buddy
of Skippy Deere, won’t use any muscle.
Aside from public relations, the Studio could
be sued for enormous amounts of money.
I’m not saying you should treat him like
a delicate flower but . . .”
Pollard got the message.
A little rough stuff to scare the guy but
pay him what he wanted.
“I’ll need contracts,” he said.
Bantz took an envelope from his desk drawer.
“He signs three copies and there’s a check
in there for fifty thousand dollars as a down
payment.
The figures in the contract are open, you
can fill it in when you make the deal.”
As he went out Bantz said after him, “Your
people didn’t help at the Academy Awards.
They were sleeping on their fucking feet.”
Pollard did not take offense.
This was vintage Bantz.
“Those were just crowd-control guards,”
he said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll put my top crew around
Miss Aquitane.”
In twenty-four hours Pacific Ocean Security
computers had everything on Boz Skannet.
He was thirty-four years old, a graduate of
Texas A&M, where he had been Conference All-Star
running back and then gone on to one season
of professional football.
His father owned a bank in Houston, but more
important, his uncle ran the Republican political
machine in Texas and was a close personal
friend of the president.
Mixed into all of this was a lot of money.
Boz Skannet was a piece of work in and of
himself.
As a vice president in his father’s bank,
he had narrowly escaped indictment in an oil
lease scam.
He had been arrested for assault six times.
In one case he had beaten two police officers
so severely they had to be hospitalized.
Skannet was never prosecuted because he paid
damages to the officers.
There was a sexual harassment charge settled
out of court.
Before all this he had been married at twenty-one
to Athena and had become the father of a baby
girl the next year.
The child was named Bethany.
At age twenty, his wife disappeared with their
daughter.
All this gave Andrew Pollard a picture.
This was a bad guy.
A guy who carried a grudge against his wife
for ten years, a guy who fought armed police
officers and was tough enough to send them
to the hospital.
The chances of scaring such a guy were nil.
Pay him the money, get the contract signed,
and stay the hell out of it.
Pollard called Jim Losey, who was handling
the Skannet case for the Los Angeles PD.
Pollard was in awe of Losey, who was the cop
he would have liked to become.
They had a working relationship.
Losey received a handsome gift every Christmas
from Pacific Ocean Security.
Now Pollard wanted the police dope, wanted
to know everything Losey had on the case.
“Jim,” Pollard said, “Can you send me
an info sheet on Boz Skannet?
I need his address in L.A. and I’d like
to know more about him.”
“Sure,” Losey said.
“But the charges against him have been dropped.
What are you in this for?”
“Protection job,” Pollard said.
“How dangerous is this guy?”
“He’s fucking crazy,” Losey said.
“Tell your bodyguard team that if he gets
close they should start shooting.”
“You’d arrest me,” Pollard said, laughing.
“It’s against the law.”
“Yeah,” Losey said, “I’d have to.
What a fucking joke.”
Boz Skannet was staying in a modest hotel
on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, which worried
Andrew Pollard because it was only a fifteen-minute
drive to Athena’s house in Malibu Colony.
He ordered a four-man team to guard Athena’s
house and put a two-man team into Skannet’s
hotel.
Then he arranged to meet with Skannet that
afternoon.
Pollard took three of his biggest and toughest
men with him.
With a guy like Skannet you never knew what
might happen.
Skannet let them into his hotel suite.
He was affable, greeted them with a smile,
but did not offer any refreshment.
Curiously enough, he was wearing a tie, shirt,
and jacket, perhaps to show that after all
he was still a banker.
Pollard introduced himself and his three bodyguards,
all three showing their Pacific Ocean Security
IDs.
Skannet grinned at them and said, “You guys
are sure big.
I’ll bet a hundred bucks I can kick the
shit out of any one of you in a fair fight.”
The three bodyguards, well-trained men, gave
him small acknowledging smiles, but Pollard
deliberately took offense.
A calculated umbrage.
“We’re here to do business, Mr. Skannet,”
he said.
“Not to endure threats.
LoddStone Studios is prepared to pay you fifty
thousand down right now and twenty thousand
a month for eight months.
All you have to do is leave Los Angeles.”
Pollard took the contracts and the big green-and-white
check out of his briefcase.
Skannet studied them.
“Very simple contract,” he said.
“I don’t even need a lawyer.
But it’s also very simple money.
I was thinking a hundred grand in front and
fifty thousand a month.”
“Too much,” Pollard said.
“We have a judge’s restraining order against
you.
You get within a block of Athena and you go
to jail.
We have security around Athena twenty-four
hours a day.
And I’ve set up surveillance teams to keep
track of your movements.
So for you this is found money.”
“I should have come to California sooner,”
Skannet said.
“The streets are paved with gold.
Why pay me anything?”
“The studio wants to reassure Miss Aquitane,”
Pollard said.
“She really is that big a star,” Skannet
said musingly.
“Well, she was always special.
And to think I used to fuck her five times
a day.”
He grinned at the three men.
“And brainy in the bargain.”
Pollard looked at the man with curiosity.
The guy was handsome as the rugged Marlboro
man in the cigarette ads, except that his
skin was red with sun and booze and his body
build was bulkier.
He had that charming drawl of the South, which
was both humorous and dangerous.
A lot of women fell in love with such men.
In New York there had been some cops with
the same kind of looks, and they had scored
like bandits.
You sent them out on murder cases and in a
week they were consoling the widows.
Jim Losey was a cop like that, come to think
of it.
Pollard had never been so lucky.
“Let’s just talk business,” Pollard
said.
He wanted Skannet to sign the contract and
take the check in front of the witnesses,
then maybe later if they had to, the Studio
could make a case for extortion.
Skannet sat down at the table.
“Have you got a pen?” he asked.
Pollard took his pen out of the briefcase
and filled out the figures of twenty thousand
a month.
Skannet noted him doing so and said cheerfully,
“So, I could have gotten more.”
Then he signed the three copies.
“When do I have to leave L.A.?”
“This very night,” Pollard said.
“I’ll take you to your plane.”
“No thanks,” Skannet said.
“I think I’ll drive to Las Vegas and gamble
with this check.”
“I’ll be watching,” Pollard said.
Now was the time he felt he should show some
muscle.
“Let me warn you, if you show up in Los
Angeles again, I’ll have you arrested for
extortion.”
Skannet’s red face brimmed with glee.
“I’d love that,” he said.
“I’ll be as famous as Athena.”
That night the surveillance team reported
that Boz Skannet had left but only to move
into the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that he
had deposited the fifty-thousand-dollar check
in an account he had at the Bank of America.
This indicated a number of things to Pollard.
That Skannet had influence, because he had
gotten into the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that
he didn’t give a shit about the deal he
had made.
Pollard reported this to Bobby Bantz and asked
for instructions.
Bantz told him to keep his mouth shut.
The contract had been shown to Athena to reassure
her and persuade her to go back to work.
He did not tell Pollard she had laughed in
their faces.
“You can stop the check,” Pollard said.
“No,” Bantz said, “he cashes it and
we got him in court on fraud, extortion, whatever.
I just don’t want Athena to know he’s
still in town.”
“I’ll double the security on her,” Pollard
said.
“But if he’s crazy, if he really wants
to harm her, that won’t help.”
“He’s a bluffer,” Bantz said.
“He didn’t do it the first time, why would
he do anything now?”
“I’ll tell you why,” Pollard said.
“We burglarized his room.
Guess what we found?
A container of real acid.”
“Oh shit,” Bantz said.
“Can you tell the cops?
Jim Losey maybe.”
Pollard said, “Having acid is not a crime.
Burglary is.
Skannet can put me in jail.”
“You never told me anything,” Bantz said.
“We never had this conversation.
And forget what you know.”
“Sure, Mr. Bantz,” Pollard said.
“I won’t even bill you for the information.”
“Thanks a lot,” Bantz said sarcastically.
“Keep in touch.”
Claudia was briefed by Skippy Deere.
And instructed as was proper to their roles
as producer and writer on a picture.
“You have to absolutely kiss Athena’s
ass,” Deere said.
“You have to grovel, you have to cry, you
have to have a nervous breakdown.
You have to remind her of everything you’ve
ever done for her as an intimate and true
friend and as a fellow professional.
You must get Athena back on the picture.”
Claudia was used to Skippy.
“Why me?” she said coolly.
“You’re the producer, Dita is the director,
Bantz is president of LoddStone.
You guys go kiss her ass.
You’ve had more practice than me.”
“Because it was your project all the way,”
Deere said.
“You wrote the original screenplay on spec,
you got me and you got Athena.
If the project fails, your name will always
be associated with that failure.”
When Deere left and she was alone in her office,
Claudia knew Deere was right.
In her desperation she thought of her brother,
Cross.
He was the only one who could help her, help
make the problem of Boz disappear.
She hated the thought of trading on her friendship
with Athena, and knew Athena might refuse
her but Cross never would.
He never had.
She put in a call to the Xanadu Hotel in Vegas,
but she was told that Cross would be in Quogue
and would not be back until the next day.
This brought back all the childhood memories
she always tried to forget.
She would never call her brother in Quogue.
She never would voluntarily have anything
to do with the Clericuzio again.
She never wanted to remember her childhood
again, never to think of her father or any
of the Clericuzio.
BOOK II
.
The Clericuzio and
Pippi De Lena
CHAPTER 3
.
THE CLERICUZIO FAMILY legend of ferocity had
been established more than a hundred years
ago in Sicily.
There the Clericuzio had waged a twenty-year
war with a rival family over the ownership
of a piece of forest.
The patriarch of the opposing clan, Don Pietro
Forlenza, was on his deathbed, having survived
eighty-five years of strife only to suffer
a stroke, which his doctor predicted would
end his life within a week.
A member of the Clericuzio penetrated the
sick man’s bedchamber and stabbed him to
death, shouting that the old man did not deserve
a peaceful death.
Don Domenico Clericuzio often told this old
story of murder to show how foolish were the
old-fashioned ways, to point out that ferocity
without selection was mere braggadocio.
Ferocity was too precious a weapon to waste,
it must always have an important purpose.
And indeed he had the proof, for it was ferocity
that led the Clericuzio Family in Sicily to
destruction.
When Mussolini and his Fascists came to absolute
power in Italy, they understood that the Mafia
had to be destroyed.
They did it by suspending due process of law
and by using irresistible armed force.
The Mafia was broken at the cost of thousands
of innocent people going to jail or exile
with them.
Only the Clericuzio clan had the courage to
oppose Fascist decrees with force.
They murdered the local Fascist prefect, they
attacked Fascist garrisons.
Most infuriating of all, when Mussolini gave
a speech in Palermo they stole his prized
bowler hat and umbrella imported from England.
It was this peasant humor and contempt, which
made a laughingstock of Mussolini in Sicily,
that finally led to their ruin.
There was a massive concentration of armed
forces in their province.
Five hundred members of the Clericuzio clan
were killed outright.
Another five hundred were exiled to the arid
islands in the Mediterranean that served as
penal colonies.
Only the very heart of the Clericuzio survived,
and the family shipped young Domenico Clericuzio
to America.
Where, proving that blood will tell, Don Domenico
built his own empire, with far more cunning
and foresight than his ancestors had shown
in Sicily.
But he always remembered that a lawless state
was the great enemy.
And so he loved America.
Early on he had been told the famous maxim
of American justice, that it was better that
a hundred guilty men go free than that one
innocent man be punished.
Struck almost dumb by the beauty of the concept,
he became an ardent patriot.
America was his country.
He would never leave America.
Inspired by this, Don Domenico built the Clericuzio
empire in America more solidly than the clan
had in Sicily.
He ensured his friendship to all political
and judicial institutions with great gifts
of cash.
He did not rely on one or two streams of income
but diversified in the finest tradition of
American business enterprise.
There was the construction industry, the garbage
disposal industry, the different modes of
transportation.
But the great river of cash came from gambling,
which was his love, in contrast to the income
from drugs which, though most profitable,
he distrusted.
So in later years it was only in gambling
that he allowed the Clericuzio Family to be
involved operationally.
The rest wetted the Clericuzio beak with a
tithe of 5 percent.
After twenty-five years the Don’s plan and
the dream was coming true.
Gambling was now respectable and, more important,
increasingly legal.
There were the ever-burgeoning state lotteries,
those swindles perpetrated by the government
on its citizens.
The prizes stretched over twenty years, which,
in effect, amounted to the state never paying
the money at all, just the interest on the
money withheld.
And then that was taxed in the bargain.
What a joke.
Don Domenico knew the details, because his
Family owned one of the management companies
that ran the lottery for several states at
a very good fee.
But the Don was banking on the day when gambling
on sports would become legal in all the United
States as it was now legal only in Nevada.
He knew this from the tithe he collected on
illegal gambling.
Profits on the Super Bowl football game alone,
if gambling became legal, would come to a
billion dollars, in just one day.
The World Series with its seven games would
yield equal profit.
College football, hockey, basketball, all
rich streams.
Then there would be intricate, tantalizing
lotteries on sports events, legal gold mines.
The Don knew he would not live to see that
glorious day, but what a world it would be
for his children.
The Clericuzio would be the equal of the Renaissance
princes.
They would become the patrons of art, advisors
and leaders of government, respectable in
history books.
A trailing cloak of gold would brush out its
origins.
All his descendants, his followers, his true
friends, would be secure forever.
Certainly the Don had the vision of a civilized
society, the world, as this great tree shedding
the fruit that must feed and shelter humanity.
But in the roots of this great tree would
be the immortal python of the Clericuzio,
sucking nourishment from a source that could
never fail.
If the Clericuzio Family was the Holy Church
for the many Mafia empires scattered over
the United States, then the head of the Family,
Don Domenico Clericuzio, was the Pope, admired
not only for his intelligence but for his
strength.
Don Clericuzio was also revered for the strict
moral code he enforced in his Family.
Every man, woman, and child was completely
responsible for his actions, no matter the
stress, the remorse, or the hard circumstances.
Actions defined a man; words were a fart in
the wind.
He disdained all social sciences, all psychology.
He was a devout Catholic: payment for sins
in this world, forgiveness in the next.
Every debt had to be paid, and he was strict
in his judgment in this world.
As in his loyalty.
The creatures of his blood first; his God
second (did he not have his own chapel in
the house?); and third, his obligation to
all the subjects in the domain of the Clericuzio
Family.
As for the society, the government—patriot
though he was—never entered the equation.
Don Clericuzio had been born in Sicily, where
society and the government were the enemy.
His concept of free will was very clear.
You could will yourself as a slave to earn
your daily bread without dignity or hope,
or you earned your bread as a man who commanded
respect.
Your Family was your society, your God was
your punisher, and your followers protected
you.
To those on earth you owed a duty: that they
would have bread to put in their mouths, respect
from the world, and a shield from the punishment
of other men.
The Don had not built his empire so that his
children and his grandchildren would someday
recede into a mass of helpless humanity.
He built and kept building power so that the
Family name and fortune would survive as long
as the Church itself.
What greater purpose could a man have in this
world than to earn his daily bread, then in
the next world to present himself to a forgiving
deity?
As for his fellow man and their faulty structures
of society, they could all swim to the bottom
of the ocean.
Don Domenico led his Family to the very heights
of power.
He did so with a Borgia-like cruelty and a
Machiavellian subtleness, plus solid American
business know-how.
But above all with a patriarchal love for
his followers.
Virtue was rewarded.
Injuries avenged.
A livelihood guaranteed.
Finally, as the Don had planned, the Clericuzio
reached such a height that it no longer took
part in the usual operations of criminal activity
except in the most dire circumstance.
The other Mafia Families served chiefly as
executive Barons, or Brugliones, who when
in trouble went to the Clericuzio hat in hand.
In Italian the words “Bruglione” and “baron”
rhyme, however in the Italian dialect “Bruglione”
means someone who fumbles the smallest tasks.
It was Don Domenico’s wit, sparked by the
Barons’ constant pleas for help, that changed
the word “baron” to Bruglione.
The Clericuzio made peace between them, sprang
them from jail, hid their illegal gains in
Europe, arranged foolproof ways for them to
smuggle their drugs into America, used its
influence with judges and different government
regulators, both federal and state.
Help with municipalities was usually not required.
If a local Bruglione could not influence the
city he lived in, he was not worth his salt.
The economic genius of Don Clericuzio’s
oldest son, Giorgio, cemented the Family power.
Like some divine laundress he washed the great
spouts of black money that a modern civilization
spews from its guts.
It was Giorgio who always tried to moderate
his father’s ferocity.
Above all, Giorgio strove to keep the Clericuzio
Family out of the glare of public notice.
So the Family existed, even to the authorities,
like some sort of UFO.
There were random sightings, rumors, tales
of horror and benignity.
There were mentions in FBI and police department
files, but there were no newspaper stories,
not even in those publications that gloried
in depicting the exploits of various other
Mafia Families who, through carelessness and
ego, came to misfortune.
Not that the Clericuzio Family was a toothless
tiger.
Giorgio’s two younger brothers, Vincent
and Petie, though not as clever as Giorgio,
had almost the Don’s ferocity.
And they had a pool of enforcers who lived
in an enclave of the Bronx that had always
been Italian.
This enclave of forty square blocks could
have been used in a film of Old Italy.
There were no bearded Hasidic Jews, blacks,
Asians, or bohemian elements in the population,
nor did any of these own a business establishment
there.
There was not one Chinese restaurant.
The Clericuzio owned or controlled all real
estate in the area.
Of course some of the Italian families’
progeny sprouted long hair and were guitar-playing
rebels, but these teenagers were shipped to
relatives in California.
Every year, new, carefully screened immigrants
from Sicily arrived to repopulate.
The Bronx Enclave, surrounded by areas with
the highest crime rate in the world, was singularly
free of evildoing.
Pippi De Lena had risen from Mayor of the
Bronx Enclave to Bruglione of the Las Vegas
area for the Clericuzio Family.
But he remained directly under the rule of
the Clericuzio, who still needed his special
talent.
Pippi was the very essence of what was called
Qualificato, that is, a Qualified Man.
He had started early, making his “bones”
at the age of seventeen, and what had made
the deed even more impressive was he had done
so with the garrote.
For in America, young men in their callow
pride disdained the rope.
Also, he was very strong physically, of good
height and with intimidating bulk.
He was, of course, expert with firearms and
explosives.
All this aside, he was a charming man because
of his zest for life; he had a geniality that
put men at ease, and women appreciated his
gallantry, which was half rustic Sicilian
and half movie American.
Though he took his work very seriously, he
believed that life was to be enjoyed.
He did have his little weaknesses.
He drank heartily, he gambled always, he was
excessively fond of women.
He was not as merciless as could be wished
by the Don, perhaps because Pippi enjoyed
too much the social company of other people.
But all these weaknesses somehow made him
more potent as a weapon.
He was a man who used his vices to drain poison
out of his body rather than to saturate it.
It helped his career, of course, that he was
the nephew of the Don.
He was of the blood, and that was important
when Pippi broke the family tradition.
No man can live his life without making mistakes.
Pippi De Lena, at the age of twenty-eight,
married for love, and to compound that error
he chose as a wife a completely inappropriate
woman for a Qualified Man.
Her name was Nalene Jessup, and she danced
in the show at the Las Vegas Xanadu Hotel.
Pippi always proudly pointed out that she
was not a showgirl who presented herself in
the front line with her tits and ass showing,
she was a dancer.
Nalene was also an intellectual, by Vegas
standards.
She was bookish, took an interest in politics,
and since her roots were in the particularly
WASP culture of Sacramento, California, had
old-fashioned values.
They were complete opposites.
Pippi had no intellectual interests, he rarely
read, listened to music, or attended movies
or theater.
Pippi had the face of a bull, Nalene the face
of a flower.
Pippi was extroverted, full of charm, yet
he exuded danger.
Nalene was so gentle in nature that not one
of her fellow showgirls and dancers had ever
been able to pick a fight with her, as they
often did with each other to pass the time.
The only thing Pippi and Nalene had in common
was dancing.
For Pippi De Lena, the feared Clericuzio Hammer,
was a veritable idiot savant when he stepped
onto the ballroom floor.
This was the poetry he could not read, the
medieval gallantry of Holy Knights, the tenderness,
the exquisite refinement of sex, the only
time he reached out to something he could
not understand.
For Nalene Jessup, it was a glimpse into his
innermost soul.
When they danced together for hours before
making love, it made their sex ethereal, a
true communication between kindred souls.
He talked to her when they danced, alone in
her apartment, or on the dance floors of the
Vegas hotels.
He was a good storyteller with good stories
to tell.
He expressed his adoration of her in a flattering
and witty way.
He had an overwhelming masculine presence,
which he laid at her feet as a slave, and
he listened.
He was proud and interested when she talked
of books, the theater, the duties of democracy
to lift up the down-trodden, the rights of
blacks, the liberation of South Africa, the
duty to feed the unfortunate poor of the Third
World.
Pippi was thrilled by these sentiments.
They were exotic to him.
It helped that they suited each other sexually,
that their opposites attracted each other.
It was helpful to their love that Pippi saw
the true Nalene but that Nalene did not see
the real Pippi.
What she saw was a man who adored her, who
showered gifts upon her, who listened to her
dreams.
They married a week after they met.
Nalene was only eighteen, she knew no better.
Pippi was twenty-eight and truly in love.
He, too, was brought up with old-fashioned
values, certainly from different poles, and
they both wanted a family.
Nalene was already an orphan, and Pippi was
reluctant to include the Clericuzio in his
newfound rapture.
Also, he knew they would not approve.
Better to face them with the deed and work
things out gradually.
They were wed in a Vegas chapel.
But here was another lapse in judgment.
Don Clericuzio approved that Pippi married.
As he often said, “A man’s primary duty
in life is to earn his own living,” but
to what purpose if he did not have a wife
and children?
The Don took umbrage that he had not been
consulted, that the wedding had not been celebrated
as part of the Clericuzio Family.
After all, Pippi had Clericuzio blood.
The Don peevishly commented, “They can dance
to the bottom of the ocean together,” but
nevertheless he sent lavish wedding presents.
A huge Buick, the ownership of a collection
agency that yielded the princely income for
that time of one hundred thousand dollars
a year; a promotion.
Pippi De Lena would continue to serve the
Clericuzio Family as one of its closely affiliated
Brugliones in the West, but he was banished
from the Bronx Enclave, for how could this
alien wife live in harmony with the faithful.
She was as foreign to them as the Muslims,
the blacks, the Hasidim, and the Asians who
were banned.
So in essence, though Pippi remained the Cleri-cuzio
Hammer, though he was a local Baron, he lost
some influence in the palace in Quogue.
The best man at the little civil ceremony
of marriage was Alfred Gronevelt, owner of
the Xanadu Hotel.
He gave a small dinner party afterward, where
bride and groom danced the night away.
In the years following, Gronevelt and Pippi
De Lena developed a close and loyal friendship.
The marriage lasted long enough to produce
two children: a son and a daughter.
The eldest, christened Croccifixio but always
called Cross, at age ten was the physical
image of his mother, with a graceful body
and an almost effeminately handsome face.
Yet he had the physical strength and superb
coordination of his father.
The younger, Claudia, at the age of nine,
was the image of her father, blunt features
only saved from ugliness by the freshness
and innocence of childhood, yet without her
father’s gifts.
But she had her mother’s love of books,
music, and theater, and her mother’s gentleness
of spirit.
It was only natural that Cross and Pippi were
close to each other, and that Claudia was
closer to her mother, Nalene.
In the eleven years before the De Lena family
broke apart, things went very well.
Pippi established himself in Vegas as the
Bruglione, the Collector for the Xanadu Hotel,
and he still served as Hammer to the Clericuzio.
He became rich, he lived a good life, though
by the Don’s edict not an ostentatious one.
He drank, he gambled, he danced with his wife,
he played with his children and tried to prepare
them for their entry into adulthood.
Pippi had learned in his own dangerous life
to look far ahead.
It was one of the reasons for his success.
Early on he saw past Cross as a child to Cross
as a man.
He wanted that future man to be his ally.
Or perhaps he wanted at least one human being
close he could fully trust.
And so he trained Cross, taught him all the
tricks of gambling, took him to dinner with
Gronevelt so that he could hear stories of
all the different ways a casino could be scammed.
Gronevelt always opened up by saying, “Every
night, millions of men lie awake figuring
out how to cheat my casino.”
Pippi took Cross hunting, taught him how to
skin and gut animals, made him know the smell
of blood, see his hands red with it.
He made Cross take boxing lessons so that
he could feel pain, taught him the use and
care of guns but drew the line at teaching
him the garrote; that was after all an indulgence
of his own and not really useful in these
modern days.
Plus there could be no way of explaining such
a rope to the boy’s mother.
The Clericuzio Family owned a huge hunting
lodge in the mountains of Nevada, and Pippi
used it for his family’s vacations.
He took the children hunting while Nalene
studied her books in the warmth of the lodge.
On the hunt Cross easily shot wolves and deer
and even some mountain lions and bears, which
revealed that Cross was capable, that he had
a good aptitude for guns, was always careful
with them, always calm in danger, never flinched
when he reached into the bloody guts, the
slimy intestines.
Dissecting limbs and heads, dressing the kill,
he was never squeamish.
Claudia displayed no such virtues.
She flinched at the sound of a gun and threw
up while skinning a deer.
After a few trips she refused to leave the
lodge and spent time with her mother reading
or walking along a nearby brook.
Claudia refused even to fish, she could not
bear to put the hard steel hook into the soft
center of a worm.
Pippi concentrated on his son.
He briefed the boy on basic behavior.
Never show anger at a slight, tell nothing
of yourself.
Earn respect from everyone by deeds, not words.
Respect the members of your blood family.
Gambling was recreation, not a way to earn
a living.
Love your father, your mother, your sister,
but beware of loving any other woman than
your wife.
And a wife was a woman who bore your children.
And once that happened to you, your life was
forfeit to give them their daily bread.
Cross was such a good pupil that his father
doted on him.
And he loved that Cross looked so much like
Nalene, that he had her grace, that he was
a replica of her without the intellectual
gifts that were now destroying the marriage.
Pippi had never believed in the Don’s dream
that all of the younger children would disappear
into legitimate society; he did not even believe
it to be the best course of action.
He acknowledged the old man’s genius, but
this was the romantic side of the great Don.
After all, fathers wanted their sons to work
with them, to be like them; blood was blood,
that never changed.
And in this Pippi proved himself to be right.
Despite all of Don Clericuzio’s planning,
even his own grandson, Dante, proved to be
resistant to the grand design.
Dante had grown to be a throwback to the Sicilian
blood, thirsting for power, strongwilled.
He never feared breaking the laws of society
and of God.
When Cross was seven and Claudia six, Cross,
aggressive by nature, fell into the habit
of punching Claudia in the stomach, even in
front of their father.
Claudia cried for help.
Pippi, as the parent, could resolve the problem
in different ways.
He could order Cross to stop, and if Cross
did not, he could pick him up by the scruff
of the neck and dangle him in midair, which
he often did.
Or he could order Claudia to fight back.
Or he could cuff Cross against the wall, which
he had done once or twice.
But one time, perhaps because he had just
had dinner and was feeling lazy, or more likely
because Nalene always argued when he used
force on the children, he lit up his cigar
calmly and said to Cross, “Every time you
hit your sister, I give her a dollar.”
As Cross continued punching his sister, Pippi
rained dollar bills on the gleeful Claudia.
Cross finally stopped in frustration.
Pippi swamped his wife with gifts, but they
were gifts a master gives to his slave.
They were bribes to disguise her servitude.
Expensive gifts: diamond rings, fur coats,
trips to Europe.
He bought her a vacation house in Sacramento
because she hated Vegas.
When he gave her a Bentley, he wore a chauffeur’s
uniform to deliver it to her.
Just before the end of their marriage, he
gave her an antique ring certified as part
of the Borgia collection.
The only thing he restricted was her use of
credit cards, she had to pay them out of her
household allowance.
Pippi never used them.
He was liberal in other ways.
Nalene had complete physical freedom, Pippi
was not a jealous Italian husband.
Though he would not travel abroad except on
business, he allowed Nalene to go to Europe
with her women friends, because she so desperately
wanted to see the museums in London, the ballet
in Paris, the opera in Italy.
There were times that Nalene wondered about
his lack of jealousy, but over the years she
came to realize that no man in their circle
would dare pay court to her.
On this marriage Don Clericuzio had commented
sarcastically, “Do they think they can dance
all their lives?”
The answer proved to be no.
Nalene was not a good enough dancer to rise
to the top, her legs paradoxically too long.
She was of too serious a temperament to be
a party girl.
All this had made her settle for marriage.
And she was happy for the first four years.
She took care of the children, she attended
classes at the University of Nevada and read
voraciously.
But Pippi no longer was interested in the
state of the environment, had no concern about
the problems of whining blacks who couldn’t
even learn to steal without getting caught,
and as far as the Native Americans, whoever
they were, they could drown them at the bottom
of the ocean.
Discussions of books or music were completely
beyond his horizon.
And Nalene’s demand that he never strike
their children left him bewildered.
Young children were animals; how could you
make them behave in a civilized way without
flinging them against a wall?
He was always careful never to hurt them.
So in the fourth year of their marriage, Pippi
took on mistresses.
One in Las Vegas, one in Los Angeles, and
one in New York.
Nalene retaliated by getting her teaching
degree.
They tried hard.
They loved their children and made their lives
pleasant.
Nalene spent long hours with them reading
and singing and dancing.
The marriage was held together by Pippi’s
good humor.
His vitality and animal exuberance somehow
smoothed over the troubles of man and wife.
The two children loved their mother and looked
up to their father: the mother because she
was so sweet and gentle, beautiful and full
of natural affection; the father because he
was strong.
Both parents were excellent teachers.
From their mother, the children learned the
social graces, good manners, dancing, how
to dress, grooming.
Their father taught the ways of the world,
how to protect themselves from physical harm,
how to gamble and train their bodies in athletics.
They never resented their father for being
physically rough with them, mainly because
he did so only as discipline, never got angry
when he did so, and then never held a grudge.
Cross was fearless but could bend.
Claudia did not have her brother’s physical
courage but had a certain stubbornness.
It helped that there was never any lack of
money.
As the years went on, Nalene observed certain
things.
At first very small.
When Pippi taught the children how to play
cards—poker, blackjack, gin—he would stack
the deck and clean them out of their allowance
money, then at the end he would give them
a glorious streak of luck so that they could
fall asleep flushed with victory.
What was curious was that Claudia as a child
loved gambling far more than Cross.
Later Pippi would demonstrate how he had cheated
them.
Nalene was angry, she felt he was playing
with their lives as he played with hers.
Pippi explained it was part of their education.
She said it was not education but corruption.
He said he wanted to prepare them for the
reality of life, she wanted to prepare them
for the beauty of life.
Pippi always had too much cash in his wallet,
as suspicious a circumstance in the eyes of
a wife as in the eyes of the tax collector.
It was true that Pippi owned a thriving business,
the Collection Agency, but they lived on too
rich a scale for such a small operation.
When the family took vacations in the East
and moved in the social circles of the Clericuzio
Family, Nalene could not miss the respect
with which Pippi was treated.
She observed how careful men were with him,
the deference, the long meetings the men held
in private.
There were other little things.
Pippi had to travel on business at least once
a month.
She never knew any of the details of his travel,
and he never talked about his trips.
He was legally licensed to carry a firearm,
which was logical for a man whose business
it was to collect large sums of money.
He was very careful.
Nalene and the children never had access to
the weapon, he kept the bullets locked in
separate cases.
As the years went by, Pippi took more trips,
Nalene spent more time in her home with the
children.
Pippi and Nalene grew more apart sexually,
and since Pippi was more tender and understanding
in lust, they grew further and further apart.
It is impossible for a man to hide his true
nature over a period of years from someone
close to him.
Nalene saw that Pippi was a man completely
devoted to his own appetites, that he was
violent in nature though never violent to
her.
That he was secretive, though he pretended
openness.
That though he was amiable, he was dangerous.
He had small personal follies that sometimes
were endear-ing.
For instance, other people had to enjoy what
he enjoyed.
Once they had taken a couple to dinner to
an Italian restaurant.
The couple did not particularly care for Italian
food and ate sparingly.
When Pippi observed this he could not finish
his meal.
Sometimes he talked about his work at the
Collection Agency.
Nearly all the major hotels in Vegas were
his clients, he collected delinquent gambling
markers from customers who refused to pay
up.
He insisted to Nalene that force was never
used, only a special kind of persuasion.
It was a matter of honor that people pay their
debts, everybody was responsible for their
actions, and it offended him that men of substance
did not always meet their obligations.
Doctors, lawyers, heads of corporations, accepted
the complimentary services of the hotel and
then reneged on their side of the bargain.
But they were easy to collect from.
You went to their offices and made a loud
fuss so that their clients and colleagues
could hear.
You made a scene, never a threat, called them
deadbeats, degenerate gamblers who neglected
their professions to wallow in vice.
Small-business men were tougher, nickel-and-dime
guys who tried to settle for a penny on a
dollar.
Then there were the clever ones who wrote
checks that bounced and then claimed there
had been a mistake.
A favorite trick.
They gave you a check for ten thousand when
they only had eight thousand in their account.
But Pippi had access to bank information,
so he would merely deposit the extra two thousand
into the man’s account and then draw out
the whole ten thousand.
Pippi would laugh delightedly when he explained
such coups to Nalene.
But the most important part of his job, Pippi
explained to Nalene, was convincing a gambler
not only to pay his debt but to keep gambling.
Even a busted gambler had value.
He worked.
He earned money.
So you simply had to postpone his debt, urge
him to gamble in your casino without credit,
and pay off his debt whenever he won.
One night Pippi told Nalene a story he thought
enormously funny.
That day he had been working in his Collection
Agency office, which was in a small shopping
mall near the Xanadu Hotel, when he heard
gunfire in the street outside.
He ran out just in time to see two masked
armed men escaping from a neighboring jewelry
shop.
Without thinking Pippi drew his gun and fired
at the men.
They jumped into a waiting car and escaped.
A few minutes later the police arrived, and
after interrogating everyone, they arrested
Pippi.
Certainly they knew his gun was licensed,
but by firing it he had committed a crime
of “reckless endangerment.”
Alfred Gronevelt had gone down to the police
station to bail him out.
“Why the hell did I do that?”
Pippi asked.
“Alfred said it was just the hunter in me.
But I’ll never understand.
Me, shooting at robbers?
Me, protecting society?
And then they lock me up.
They lock me up.”
But these little revelations into his character
were to some extent a clever ruse on Pippi’s
part, so that Nalene could glimpse part of
his character without penetrating to the true
secret.
What made her finally decide on divorce was
Pippi De Lena’s arrest for murder.
. . .
Danny Fuberta owned a New York travel agency
that he had bought with his earnings as a
loan shark under the protection of the now
extinct Santadio Family.
But he earned most of his livelihood as a
Vegas junket master.
A junket master signed an exclusive contract
with a Vegas hotel to transport vacationing
gamblers into their clutches.
Danny Fuberta chartered a 747 jet every month
and recruited approximately two hundred customers
to fly on it to the Xanadu Hotel.
For a flat rate of a thousand dollars, the
customer got a free round-trip flight from
New York to Vegas, free booze and food in
the air, free hotel rooms, free food and drink
in the hotel.
Fuberta always had a long waiting list for
these junkets, and he picked his customers
carefully.
They had to be people with well-paying jobs,
though not necessarily legal ones, and they
had to gamble in the casino at least four
hours every day.
And, of course, where possible they had to
establish credit at the Cashier’s cage in
the Hotel Xanadu.
One of Fuberta’s greatest assets was his
friendship with scam artists, bank robbers,
drug dealers, cigarette smugglers, garment
center hustlers, and other lowlifes who made
handsome livings in the cesspools of New York.
These men were prime customers.
After all, they lived lives of great stress,
they needed a relaxing vacation.
They earned huge sums of black money, in cash,
and they loved to gamble.
For every junket plane filled with two hundred
customers that Danny Fuberta delivered to
the Xanadu, he received a flat fee of twenty
thousand dollars.
Sometimes he received a bonus when the Xanadu
customers lost heavily.
All this in addition to the initial package
charge provided him with a handsome monthly
income.
Unfortunately, Fuberta also had a weakness
for gambling.
And there came a time when his bills outpaced
his income.
A resourceful man, Fuberta soon thought of
a way to make himself solvent again.
One of his duties as junket master was to
certify the casino credit to be advanced to
the junket customer.
Fuberta recruited a band of extremely competent
armed robbers.
With them Fuberta hatched a plan to steal
$800,000 from the Xanadu Hotel.
Fuberta supplied the four men with false credentials
identifying them as garment center owners
with huge credit ratings, the particulars
culled from his agency files.
On the basis of these credentials, he certified
them for the two-hundred-grand credit limit.
Then he put them on the junket.
“Oh, they all had a picnic,” Gronevelt
said later.
During the two-day stay, Fuberta and his gang
ran up huge room service bills, treated the
beautiful chorus girls to dinner, signed for
presents at the gift shop, but that was the
least of it.
They drew black chips from the casino, signed
their markers.
They split into two teams.
One team bet against the dice, the other team
bet with the dice.
In that way all they could lose was the percentage
or break out even.
So they drew a million dollars’ worth of
chips from the casino signing markers, which
Fuberta later turned into cash.
They looked like they were gambling furiously
but were really treading water.
In all this they created a great flurry of
action.
They fancied themselves actors, they implored
the dice, they scowled when they lost, cheered
when they won.
At the end of the day they gave their chips
to Fuberta to cash and signed markers to draw
fresh chips from the cage.
When the comedy ended two days later, the
syndicate was $800,000 richer, they had been
happy consumers of another twenty thousand
in goodies, but they had a million dollars
in markers in the cage.
Danny Fuberta, as the mastermind, got four
hundred grand, and the four armed robbers
were well satisfied with their share, especially
when Fuberta promised them another shot.
What could be better, a long weekend in the
grand hotel, free food and booze, beautiful
girls.
And a hundred grand to boot.
It was certainly better than robbing a bank
where you risked your life.
Gronevelt uncovered the scam the very next
day.
The daily reports showed the markers high
even for Fuberta’s junket.
The Drop at the table, the record of money
kept after the night’s play, was a figure
too low for the amount of money wagered.
Gronevelt called for the videotape from the
“Eye in the Sky” surveillance camera.
He didn’t have to watch more than ten minutes
before he understood the whole operation and
knew that the million dollars of markers was
so much cigarette paper, the identities false.
His reaction was one of impatience.
He had suffered countless scams over the years,
but this one was so stupid.
And he liked Danny Fuberta; the man had earned
many dollars for the Xanadu.
He knew what Fuberta would claim: that he,
too, had been deceived by the false IDs, that
he, too, was an innocent victim.
Gronevelt was annoyed by the incompetence
of his Casino personnel.
The Stick at the crap table should have caught
on, and certainly the Box man should have
picked up the cross-betting.
It was not that clever a trick.
But people went soft with good times, and
Vegas was no exception.
He thought regretfully that he would have
to fire the Stick and the Box man, at least
send them back to spinning a roulette wheel.
But one thing he could not duck.
He would have to turn the whole matter of
Danny Fuberta over to the Clericuzio.
First he summoned Pippi De Lena to the hotel
and showed him the documents and the film
of the Eye in the Sky.
Pippi knew Fuberta but not the other four
men, so Gronevelt had snapshots made from
isolated video stills and gave them to Pippi.
Pippi shook his head.
“How the hell did Danny think he could get
away with this?
I thought he was a smart hustler.”
“He’s a gambler,” Gronevelt said.
“They believe their cards are always winning
cards.”
He paused for a moment.
“Danny will convince you he’s not in on
this.
But remember, he had to certify that they
were good for the money.
He’ll say he did it on the basis of their
ID.
A junket master has to certify that they are
who they are.
He had to know.”
Pippi smiled and patted him on the back.
“Don’t worry, he won’t convince me.”
They both laughed.
It didn’t matter if Danny Fuberta was guilty.
He was responsible for his mistakes.
Pippi flew to New York the next day.
To present the case to the Clericuzio Family
in Quogue.
After passing through the guarded gates, he
drove up the long paved road that cut through
a long plateau of grass, its wall armed with
barbed wire and electronics.
There was a guard at the door of the mansion.
And this was in a time of peace.
Giorgio greeted him, and he was led through
the mansion into the garden at the rear.
In the garden were tomato and cucumber plants,
lettuce, and even melons, all framed by large-leafed
fig trees.
The Don had no use for flowers.
The Family was seated at the round wooden
table eating an early lunch.
There was the Don, glowing with health despite
his near seventy years, visibly drinking in
the fig-perfumed air of his garden.
He was feeding his ten-year-old grandson,
Dante, who was handsome but imperious for
a boy the same age as Cross.
Pippi always had the urge to give him a smack.
The Don was putty in the hands of his grandson;
he wiped his mouth, crooned endearments.
Vincent and Petie looked sour.
The meeting could not start until the kid
finished eating and was led away by his mother,
Rose Marie.
Don Domenico beamed at him as the boy walked
away.
Then he turned to Pippi.
“Ah, my Martèllo,” he said.
“What do you think of Fuberta, that rascal?
We gave him a living and he grows greedy at
our expense.”
Giorgio said placatingly, “If he repays,
he could still be a moneymaker for us.”
The only valid plea for mercy.
“It’s not a small sum of money,” the
Don said.
“We must have it back.
Pippi, what do you think?”
Pippi shrugged.
“I can try.
But these are people who don’t save for
a rainy day.”
Vincent, who hated small talk, said, “Let’s
see the photos.”
Pippi produced the pictures and Vincent and
Petie studied the four armed robbers.
Then Vincent said, “Me and Petie know them.”
“Good,” Pippi said.
“Then you can straighten out those four
guys.
What do you want me to do with Fuberta?”
The Don said, “They have shown contempt
for us.
Who do they think we are?
Some helpless fools who have to go to the
police?
Vincent, Petie, you help Pippi.
I want the money back and these mascalzoni
punished.”
They understood.
Pippi was to be in charge.
The sentence on the five men was death.
The Don left them for his walk in the garden.
Giorgio sighed.
“The old man is too tough for the times
we live in.
This is more risk than the whole thing is
worth.”
“Not if Vinnie and Pete handle the four
hoods,” Pippi said.
“That OK with you, Vince?”
Vincent said, “Giorgio, you’ll have to
talk to the old man.
Those four won’t have the money.
We have to make a deal.
They go out and earn and pay us back and they’re
home free.
If we bury them, no money.”
Vincent was a realistic enforcer who never
let the lust for blood overcome more practical
solutions.
“OK, I can sell Pop that,” Giorgio said.
“They were just helpers.
But he won’t let Fuberta off.”
“The junket masters have to get the message,”
Pippi said.
“Cousin Pippi,” Giorgio said smiling,
“what bonus do you expect on this?”
Pippi hated when Giorgio called him cousin.
Vincent and Petie called him cousin out of
affection, but Giorgio only did so when in
negotiation.
“For Fuberta it’s my duty,” Pippi said.
“You gave me the Collection Agency and I
get wages from the Xanadu.
But getting the money back is hard so I should
get a percentage.
Just as Vince and Petie if they get some from
the hoods.”
“That’s fair,” Giorgio said.
“But this is not like collecting markers.
You can’t expect fifty percent.”
“No, no,” Pippi said, “just let me wet
my beak.”
They all laughed at the old Sicilian idiom.
Petie said, “Giorgio, don’t be cheap.
You don’t want to chisel me and Vincent.”
Petie now ran the Bronx Enclave, chief of
the Enforcers, and he was always promoting
the idea that the button men should get more
money.
He would split his share with his men.
“You guys are greedy,” Giorgio said with
a smile.
“But I’ll recommend twenty percent to
the old man.”
Pippi knew that meant it would be fifteen
or ten.
It was an old story with Giorgio.
“How about we pool it?”
Vince said to Pippi.
Meaning the three of them would share whatever
money was recovered no matter from whom.
It was meant as a friendly gesture.
There was a far better chance of recovering
money from people who were to live than people
who were to die.
Vincent understood Pippi’s value.
“Sure, Vince,” Pippi said.
“I’d appreciate that.”
He saw Dante walking hand in hand with the
Don far off at the edge of the garden.
He heard Giorgio say, “Isn’t it amazing
how Dante and my father get along?
My father was never that friendly to me.
They whisper to each other all the time.
Well, the old man is so smart, the kid will
learn.”
Pippi saw that the boy had his face turned
up to the Don.
The two looked as if they shared a terrible
secret that would give them dominion over
Heaven and Earth.
Later Pippi would believe that this vision
put on him the evil eye, and triggered his
misfortune.
Pippi De Lena had gained his reputation over
the years by his careful planning.
He was not just some rampaging gorilla but
a skilled technician.
As such he relied on psychological strategy
to help in the physical execution of a job.
With Danny Fuberta there were three problems.
First of all he had to get the money back.
Second, he had to coordinate carefully with
Vincent and Petie Clericuzio.
(That part was easy.
Vincent and Petie were extremely efficient
in their work.
In two days they tracked down the hoods, forced
a confession, and arranged for compensation.)
Then third, he had to kill Danny Fuberta.
It was easy for Pippi to run into Fuberta
accidentally, to turn on his charm and insist
the man be his guest for lunch at a Chinese
restaurant on the East Side.
Fuberta knew Pippi was a collector for the
Xanadu, they had necessarily done business
over the years, but Pippi seemed so delighted
to run into him in New York that Fuberta could
not refuse.
Pippi played it in a very low key.
He waited until they had ordered and then
he said, “Gronevelt told me about the scam.
You know you have a responsibility for those
guys being certified for credit.”
Fuberta swore his innocence, and Pippi gave
him a big grin and slapped him on the shoulder
in a comradely way.
“Come on, Danny,” he said, “Gronevelt
has the tapes, and your four buddies already
fessed up.
You’re in big trouble but I can square things
if you give back the money.
Maybe I can even keep you in the junket business.”
To back up his statement, he took out the
four photos of the hoods.
“These are your boys,” he said, “and
right now they are spilling out their guts.
Laying all the shit on you.
They told us about the split.
So if you come up with your four hundred grand,
you’re clear.”
Fuberta said, “Sure, I know these boys,
but they’re tough guys, they wouldn’t
talk.”
“It’s the Clericuzio who are asking,”
Pippi said.
“Oh shit,” Danny said.
“I didn’t know they had the Hotel.”
“Now you know,” Pippi said.
“If they don’t get the money back, you’re
in big trouble.”
“I should just walk out of here,” Fuberta
said.
“No, no,” Pippi said.
“Stick around, the Peking duck is great.
Look, this can be straightened out, it’s
no big deal.
Everybody tries to scam once in awhile, right?
Just get the money back.”
“I don’t have a dime,” Fuberta said.
For the first time Pippi showed some irritation.
“You have to show a little respect,” Pippi
said.
“Give a hundred thousand back and we’ll
take your marker for the other three hundred.”
Fuberta thought it over as he munched a fried
dumpling.
“I can give you fifty,” he said.
“That’s good, that’s very good,” Pippi
said.
“You can pay off the rest by not taking
your fee for running junkets to the Hotel.
Is that fair?”
“I guess,” Fuberta said.
“Don’t worry any more, enjoy the food,”
Pippi said.
He rolled some duck into a pancake, anointed
it with black sweet sauce, and handed it to
Fuberta.
“This is terrific, Danny,” he said.
“Eat.
Then we do business.”
They ate chocolate ice cream for dessert and
made arrangements for Pippi to pick up the
fifty grand at Fuberta’s travel agency after
working hours.
Pippi grabbed the lunch check, paying cash.
“Danny,” he said, “you notice how chocolate
ice cream in a Chinese restaurant has so much
cocoa?
The best.
You know what I think?
The first Chinese restaurant in America got
the recipe wrong and the ones that came after
just copied that first wrong recipe.
Great.
Great chocolate ice cream.”
But Danny Fuberta had not hustled for the
forty-eight years of his life without being
able to read the signs.
After leaving Pippi he dived underground,
sending a message that he was traveling to
collect the money he owed the Xanadu Hotel.
Pippi was not surprised.
Fuberta was only using tactics common in such
cases.
He had disappeared so that he could negotiate
in safety.
Which meant he had no money and there would
be no bonus unless Vincent and Petie collected
on their end.
Pippi drew some men from the Bronx Enclave
to scour the city.
The word was put out that Danny Fuberta was
wanted by the Clericuzio.
A week went by, and Pippi became more and
more irritated.
He should have known that Fuberta would only
be alerted by the demand for repayment.
That Fuberta had figured out that fifty grand
would not be enough, if he even had fifty
grand.
After another week, Pippi became impatient,
so that when the break came he moved more
daringly than was prudent.
Danny Fuberta surfaced in a small restaurant
on the Upper West Side.
The owner, a Clericuzio soldier, made a quick
call.
Pippi arrived just as Fuberta was leaving
the restaurant and, to Pippi’s surprise,
drew a gun.
Fuberta was a hustler, had no experience in
strong-arm.
So when he fired, the shot was wide.
Pippi put five bullets in him.
There were a few unfortunate things about
this scene.
One, there were eyewitnesses.
Two, a patrol car arrived before Pippi could
make his getaway.
Three, Pippi had made no preparation for a
shooting, he had meant to talk Fuberta into
a secure location.
Four, though a case could be made for self-defense,
some witnesses said that Pippi shot first.
It came down to the old truism that you were
more in danger with the law when you were
innocent than when you were guilty.
Also, Pippi had a silencer on his gun, in
preparation for his final friendly chat with
Fuberta.
It helped matters that Pippi reacted perfectly
to the disastrous arrival of the patrol car.
He did not try to shoot his way out but followed
the guidelines.
The Clericuzio had a strict injunction: Never
fire at an officer of the law.
Pippi did not.
He dropped his gun to the pavement, then kicked
it away.
He submitted peacefully to arrest and denied
completely any connection with the dead man
lying just a few feet away.
Such contingencies were foreseen and planned
against.
After all, no matter how much care was taken,
there was always the malignancy of fate.
Pippi now seemed to be drowning in a typhoon
of ill fortune, but he knew he had only to
let himself relax, that he could count on
the Clericuzio Family to tow him to shore.
First there were the high-priced defense lawyers
who would get him out on bail.
Then there were the judges and prosecutors
who could be persuaded to become stalwart
in the defense of fair play, the witnesses
whose memory could be made to fail, the staunchly
independent American jurors who if given the
slightest encouragement would refuse to convict
in order to foil authority.
A soldier of the Clericuzio Family did not
have to shoot his way out of trouble like
some mad dog.
But for the first time in his long service
to the Family, Pippi De Lena had to stand
trial in a court of law.
And the usual legal strategy was that his
wife and children must attend the trial.
The jurors must know that on their decision
rested the happiness of this innocent family.
Twelve men and women tried and true had to
harden their hearts.
“Reasonable doubt” was a godsend to a
juror wrung by pity.
During the trial, the police officers testified
they had not seen Pippi with the gun or kicking
it.
Three of the eyewitnesses could not identify
the defendant, the other two were so adamant
in their identification of Pippi that they
alienated jury and judge.
The Clericuzio soldier who owned the restaurant
testified that he had followed Danny Fuberta
out of the restaurant because the man had
not paid his check, that he had witnessed
the shooting, and that the shooter definitely
was not Pippi De Lena, the defendant.
Pippi had worn gloves at the time of the shooting,
which was why there were no prints on the
gun.
Medical evidence was given for the defense
that Pippi De Lena suffered from intermittent
skin rashes, mysterious and incurable, and
that the wearing of gloves had been recommended.
As maximum insurance a juror had been bribed.
After all, Pippi was a high executive in the
Family.
But this final precaution had not been needed.
Pippi was acquitted and deemed forever innocent
in the eyes of the law.
But not by his wife, Nalene De Lena.
Six months after the trial, Nalene told Pippi
they must divorce.
There is a cost for those who live on a high
level of tension.
Physical parts of the body wear down.
Excessive eating and drinking tax the liver
and heart.
Sleep is criminally evasive, the mind does
not respond to beauty and will not invest
in trust.
Pippi and Nalene both suffered from this.
She could not bear him in her bed, and he
could not enjoy a partner who did not share
his enjoyment.
She could not hide the horror of knowing he
was a murderer.
He felt an enormous amount of relief that
he did not any longer have to hide his true
self from her.
“OK, we’ll divorce,” Pippi said to Nalene.
“But I’m not losing my kids.”
“I know who you are now,” Nalene said.
“I won’t see you again and I will not
have my children living with you.”
This surprised Pippi.
Nalene had never been forceful or outspoken.
And it surprised him that she dared to speak
to him, Pippi De Lena, in such a fashion.
But women were always reckless.
He then considered his own position.
He was not equipped to bring up children.
Cross was eleven and Claudia was ten, and
he recognized the fact that, despite his closeness
with Cross, both children loved their mother
more than they did him.
He wanted to be fair to his wife.
After all, he had received from her what he
wanted, a family, children, a bedrock to his
life, which every man needed.
Who knew what he would have become if it had
not been for her?
“Let’s reason this out,” he said.
“Let’s split without any bad feelings.”
He turned on the charm.
“What the hell, we’ve had a good twelve
years.
We’ve had some happy times.
And we have two wonderful kids, thanks to
you.”
He paused, surprised again by her stern face.
“Come on Nalene, I’ve been a good father,
my kids like me.
And I’ll help you in whatever you want to
do.
Naturally you can keep the house here in Vegas.
And I can get you one of the shops in the
Xanadu.
Dresses, jewelry, antiques.
You’ll earn your two hundred grand a year.
And we can sort of share the kids.”
Nalene said, “I hate Las Vegas.
I always did.
I have my teaching degree and a job in Sacramento.
I’ve already enrolled the children in school
up there.”
It was at that moment that Pippi, with a sense
of astonishment, realized that she was an
opponent, she was dangerous.
It was a concept completely foreign to him.
Women, in his frame of reference, were never
dangerous.
Not a wife, not a mistress, not an aunt, not
the wife of a friend, not even the daughter
of the Don, Rose Marie.
Pippi had always lived in a world where women
could not be an enemy.
Suddenly he felt that rage, that flow of energy,
that he could feel toward men.
Out of that he said, “I’m not going to
Sacramento to see my kids.”
He always became angry when someone rejected
his charm, refused his friendship.
Anyone who refused to be reasonable with Pippi
De Lena was courting disaster.
Once he decided on confrontation, Pippi took
it to the limit.
Also, he was astonished that his wife had
already made plans.
“You said you know who I am,” Pippi said.
“So be very careful.
You can move to Sacramento, you can move to
the bottom of the ocean for all I care.
But you take only one of my children with
you.
The other stays with me.”
Nalene looked at him coolly.
“The court will decide that,” she said.
“I think you should get a lawyer to talk
to my lawyer.”
She almost laughed in his face when she saw
his astonishment.
“You have a lawyer?”
Pippi said.
“You’re taking me to the law?”
Then he began to laugh.
His laughter seemed to carry him away.
He was almost hysterical.
It was strange to see a man who for twelve
years had been a supplicating lover, a beggar
for her flesh, her protection from the cruelties
of the world, turn into a dangerous and threatening
beast.
At that moment she finally understood why
other men had treated him with such respect,
why they feared him.
Now his ugly charm had none of that geniality
that was so disarming.
Oddly, she was not so much frightened as she
was hurt that his love for her could so easily
vanish.
After all, for twelve years they had cradled
each other’s flesh, laughed together, danced
together, and nurtured their children together,
and now his gratitude for the gifts she had
given him counted for nothing.
Pippi said to her coldly, “I don’t care
what you decide.
I don’t care what a judge decides.
Be reasonable and I’ll be reasonable.
Be tough and you won’t have anything.”
For the first time she was terrified of all
the things she loved; his powerful body, his
large, heavy-boned hands, the irregular, blunt
features she had always thought manly, that
other people called ugly.
All through their marriage, he had been more
courtier than husband, had never raised his
voice to her, had never even made a mild joke
at her expense, had never scolded when she
ran up bills.
And it was true he had been a good father,
only rough with the kids when they did not
show respect for their mother.
She felt faint, but Pippi’s face became
more distinct, as though framed in some shadow.
Extra flesh padded his cheeks, the very slight
cleft in his chin seemed to be filled in with
a tiny dot of black putty.
His thick eyebrows had spears of white in
them, but the hair on his massive skull was
black, each strand as thick as horsehair.
His eyes, usually so merry, were now a merciless
flat tan.
“I thought you loved me,” Nalene said.
“How can you frighten me so?”
She began to weep.
This disarmed Pippi.
“Listen to me,” he said.
“Don’t listen to your lawyer.
You go to court, let’s say I lose all the
way down the line.
You’re still not going to get both kids.
Nalene, don’t make me be tough, I don’t
want to be.
I understand you don’t want to live with
me anymore.
I always thought I was so lucky to have you
as long as I did.
I want you to be happy.
You’ll get far more from me than you’ll
get from any court judge.
But I’m getting old, I don’t want to live
without a family.”
For one of the few times in her life Nalene
could not resist malice.
“You have the Clericuzio,” she said.
“So I have,” Pippi said.
“You should remember that.
But the important thing is, I don’t want
to be alone in my old age.”
“Millions of men are,” Nalene said.
“And women too.”
“Because they’re helpless,” Pippi said.
“Strangers decide their lives.
Other people veto their existence.
I don’t let anyone do that.”
Nalene said scornfully, “You veto them?”
“That’s right,” Pippi said.
He smiled down at her.
“That’s exactly right.”
“You can visit them all you want,” Nalene
said.
“But they both have to live with me.”
At that he turned his back and said quietly,
“Do what you want.”
Nalene said, “Wait.”
Pippi turned to her.
She saw on his face something so terrible
in its soulless ferocity that she murmured,
“If one of them wants to go with you, then
OK.”
Pippi suddenly became exuberant, as if the
problem were resolved.
“That’s great,” he said.
“Your kid can visit me in Vegas and my kid
can visit you in Sacramento.
That’s perfect.
Let’s settle it tonight.”
Nalene made a last effort.
“Forty is not old,” she said.
“You can start another family.”
Pippi shook his head.
“Never,” he said.
“You’re the only woman who ever had the
Indian sign on me.
I married late and I know I’ll never marry
again.
You’re lucky I’m smart enough to know
I can’t keep you, and I’m smart enough
to know I can’t start over again.”
“That’s true,” Nalene said.
“You can’t make me love you again.”
“But I could kill you,” Pippi said.
He was smiling at her.
As if it were a joke.
She looked into his eyes and believed him.
She realized this was the source of his power,
that when he made a threat people believed
him.
She summoned her last reserve of courage.
“Remember,” she said, “if they both
want to stay with me, you have to let them
go.”
“They love their father,” Pippi said.
“One of them will stay here with their old
man.”
That evening after dinner, the house iced
with air conditioning, the desert heat outside
too strong, the situation was explained to
Cross, eleven years old, and Claudia, ten.
Neither seemed surprised.
Cross, as handsome as his mother was beautiful,
already had the inner steeliness of his father,
and his wariness.
He was also completely without fear.
He spoke up instantly.
“I’m staying with Mom,” he said.
Claudia was frightened by the choice.
With a small child’s cunning, she said,
“I’m staying with Cross.”
Pippi was surprised.
Cross was closer to him than to Nalene.
Cross was the one who came hunting with him,
Cross liked to play cards with him, to golf
and box.
Cross had no interest in his mother’s obsession
with books and music.
It was Cross who came down to the Collection
Agency to keep him company when he had to
catch up on paperwork on Saturday.
In fact he had been sure that Cross would
be the one he would get to keep.
It was Cross he was hoping for.
He was tickled by Claudia’s cunning answer.
The kid was smart.
But Claudia looked too much like himself,
he didn’t want to look at an ugly mug so
much like his every day.
And it was logical that Claudia go with her
mother.
Claudia loved the same things Nalene did.
What the hell would he do with Claudia?
Pippi studied his two children.
He was proud of them.
They knew their mother was the weaker of the
two parents, and they were sticking up for
her.
And he noticed that Nalene, with her theatrical
instinct, had prepared cleverly for the occasion.
She was dressed severely in black trousers
and a black pullover, her golden hair was
bound severely with a thin black headband,
her face framed into a narrow, heartbreaking
white oval.
He was conscious of his own brutal appearance
as it must appear to small children.
He turned on his charm.
“All I’m asking is for one of you to keep
me company,” he said.
“You can see each other as much as you want.
Right, Nalene?
You kids don’t want me living here in Vegas
all alone.”
The two children looked at him sternly.
He turned to Nalene.
“You have to help,” he said.
“You have to choose.”
And then he thought angrily, Why do I give
a shit?
Nalene said, “You promised that if they
both wanted to go with me, they could.”
“Let’s talk this out,” Pippi said.
His feelings were not hurt—he knew his children
loved him, but they loved their mother more.
He found that natural.
It did not mean they had made the right choice.
Nalene said scornfully, “There’s nothing
to talk about.
You promised.”
Pippi did not know how terrible he looked
to the other three.
Did not know how cold his eyes became.
He thought he had controlled his voice when
he spoke, he thought he spoke reasonably.
“You’ve got to make a choice.
I promise that if it doesn’t work out, you
can have your own way.
But I have to have a chance.”
Nalene shook her head.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said.
“We’ll go to court.”
At that moment Pippi made up his mind what
he had to do.
“It doesn’t matter.
You can have your way.
But think about this.
Think about our life together.
Think about who you are and who I am.
I beg of you to be reasonable.
To think about all our futures.
Cross is like me, Claudia is like you.
Cross would be better off with me, Claudia
would be better off with you.
That’s the way it is.”
He paused for a moment.
“Isn’t it enough for you to know they
both love you better than me?
That they would miss you more than they would
me?”
The last phrase hung in the air.
He did not want the children to understand
what he was saying.
But Nalene understood.
Out of terror, she reached out and pulled
Claudia close to her.
At that moment Claudia looked at her brother
beseechingly and said, “Cross . . .”
Cross had an impassive beauty of face.
His body moved gracefully.
Suddenly he was standing beside his father.
“I’ll go with you, Dad,” he said.
And Pippi took his hand gratefully.
Nalene was weeping now.
“Cross, you’ll visit me often, as much
as you want.
You’ll have a special bedroom in Sacramento.
Nobody else will use it.”
It was, finally, a betrayal.
Pippi almost bounded into the air with exuberance.
It was such a weight lifted from his soul
that he would not have to do what he had for
one instant decided to do.
“We have to celebrate,” he said.
“Even when we divorce, we’ll be two happy
families instead of one happy family.
And live happily forever after.”
The others stared at him stony faced.
“Well, what the hell, we’ll try,” he
said.
Claudia never visited her brother and father
in Vegas after the first two years.
Cross went every year to Sacramento to visit
Nalene and Claudia, but by his fifteenth year
the visits dwindled to the Christmas holidays.
The two different parents were two different
poles in life.
Claudia and her mother became more and more
alike.
Claudia loved school; she loved books, the
theater, films; she reveled in her mother’s
love.
And Nalene found in Claudia her father’s
high spiritedness, his charm.
She loved her plainness, which had none of
the brutality of her father.
They were happy together.
Claudia finished college and went to live
in Los Angeles to try her hand in the film
business.
Nalene was sorry to see her go, but she had
built up a satisfactory life with friends
in Sacramento and had become an assistant
principal at one of the public high schools.
Cross and Pippi had also become a happy family,
but in a far different way.
Pippi weighed the facts.
Cross was an exceptional athlete in high school
but an indifferent student.
He had no interest in college.
And although he had extraordinarily good looks,
he was not excessively interested in women.
Cross enjoyed life with his father.
Indeed, no matter how ugly the decision that
had been made, it seemed to have turned out
to be the right one.
Indeed two happy families, but not together.
Pippi proved to be as good a parent to Cross
as Nalene was to Claudia, that is, he made
Cross in his image.
Cross loved the workings of the Xanadu Hotel,
the manipulation of customers, the fight against
scam artists.
And Cross did have a normal appetite for the
showgirls; after all, Pippi must not judge
his son by himself.
Pippi decided that Cross would have to join
the Family.
Pippi believed the Don’s oft-repeated words,
“The most important thing in life is to
earn your bread.”
Pippi took Cross in as a partner in the Collection
Agency.
He brought him to the Xanadu Hotel for dinner
with Grone-velt and maneuvered so that Gronevelt
would take an interest in his son’s welfare.
He made Cross one of the foursome in his golf
games with high-rolling gamblers at the Xanadu,
always pairing Cross against himself.
Cross, at the age of seventeen, had that particular
virtue of the golf hustler, he played much
better on a particular hole where the bets
were high.
Cross and his partner usually won.
Pippi accepted these defeats with good grace;
though they cost him money, they earned his
son an enormous amount of goodwill.
He took Cross to New York for the social occasions
of the Clericuzio Family: all holidays—particularly
the Fourth of July, which the Clericuzio Family
celebrated with great patriotic fervor; all
the Clericuzio weddings, and funerals.
After all, Cross was their first cousin, he
had the blood of Don Cleri-cuzio running in
his veins.
When Pippi made his once-a-week foray at the
tables of the Xanadu to win his eight-thousand-dollar
weekly retainer with his special dealer, Cross
sat watching.
Pippi instructed him in the percentages of
all forms of gambling.
He taught him the management of the gambling
bankroll, never to play when he felt unwell,
never to play for more than two hours a day,
never to play more than three days a week,
never to bet heavily when he was on a losing
streak, and always to ride a winning streak
with a cautious intensity.
It did not seem unnatural to Pippi that a
father should let his son see the ugliness
of the real world.
As the junior partner in the Collection Agency,
it was very necessary for Cross to have such
knowledge.
For the collections were sometimes not as
benign as Pippi had described to Nalene.
On a few of the more difficult collections,
Cross showed no signs of abhorrence.
He was yet too young and too pretty to inspire
fear, but his body looked strong enough to
enforce any orders Pippi might give.
Finally Pippi, to test his son, sent him out
on a particularly tough case, where only persuasion,
not force, could be used.
The sending of Cross was in itself a signal
that the collection would not be pressed,
a sign of goodwill to the debtor.
The debtor, a very small Mafia Bruglione in
the northern corner of California, owed a
hundred grand to the Xanadu.
It was not a big enough matter to involve
the Clericuzio name, things had to be handled
on a lower level, the velvet glove rather
than the iron fist.
Cross caught the Mafia Baron at a bad time.
The man, Falco, listened to the reasoned approach
made by Cross, then took out a gun and held
it to the young man’s throat.
“Another word out of you and I’ll shoot
out your fucking tonsils,” Falco said.
Cross, to his own surprise, felt no fear.
“Settle for fifty grand,” he said.
“You wouldn’t want to kill me for a lousy
fifty grand?
My father wouldn’t like it.”
“Who’s your father?”
Falco asked, his gun still steady.
Cross said, “Pippi De Lena, and he’s going
to shoot me anyway for settling for fifty
grand.”
Falco laughed and put his gun away.
“OK, tell them I’ll pay the next time
I come to Vegas.”
Cross said, “Just call me when you come
in.
I’ll give you your usual comp RFB.”
Falco had recognized Pippi’s name, but there
had also been something in Cross’s face
that had stopped him.
The lack of fear, the coolness of his response,
the little joke.
All of this smacked of someone whose friends
would avenge him.
But the incident persuaded Cross to carry
a weapon and a bodyguard on his future collections.
Pippi celebrated his courage with a vacation
for both of them at the Xanadu.
Gronevelt gave them two good suites and a
purse of black chips for Cross.
At this time Gronevelt was eighty years old,
white-haired, but his tall body was vigorous
and still supple.
He also had a pedagogical streak.
He delighted in instructing Cross.
When he handed him the purse of black chips,
he said, “You can’t win so I’ll get
these back.
Now listen to me, you have one chance.
My hotel has other diversions.
A great golf course, gamblers from Japan come
here to play on it.
We have gourmet restaurants and wonderful
girlie shows in our theater with the greatest
stars from film and music.
We have tennis courts and swimming pools.
We have a special tour plane that can fly
you over the Grand Canyon.
All free.
So there’s no excuse that the five grand
you have in that purse should be lost.
Don’t gamble.”
On that three-day vacation, Cross followed
Gronevelt’s advice.
Every morning he golfed with Gronevelt, his
father, and a high roller staying at the Hotel.
The betting was always substantial but never
outrageous.
Gronevelt noted with approval that Cross was
at his best when the stakes were highest.
“Nerves of steel, nerves of steel,” Gronevelt
said admiringly to Pippi.
But what Gronevelt approved of most was the
kid’s good judgment, his intelligence, his
knowing the proper thing to do without being
told.
On the last morning, the high roller playing
with them was in a sullen mood and with good
reason.
A skillful and ardent gambler, tremendously
wealthy from a lucrative string of porn houses,
he had lost nearly $500,000 the night before.
It was not so much the money itself that bothered
him as the fact that he had lost control in
the middle of a streak of bad luck and had
tried to press himself out of it; the mistake
of a callow gambler.
That morning when Gronevelt proposed the moderate
stake of fifty dollars a hole, he sneered
and said, “Alfred, with what you took off
me last night, you could afford a grand a
hole.”
Gronevelt was offended by this.
His early-morning golf was a social occasion;
linking it to the business of the Hotel was
bad manners.
But with his usual courtesy he said, “Of
course.
I’ll even give you Pippi as your partner.
I’ll play with Cross.”
They played.
The porn house magnate shot well.
So did Pippi.
So did Gronevelt.
Only Cross failed.
He played the worst game of golf the others
had ever seen.
He hooked his drives, he dived into the bunkers,
his ball sailed into the little pond (built
on the Nevada desert at enormous expense),
his nerve broke completely when he putted.
The porn-house magnate, five thousand dollars
richer, his ego restored, insisted on them
sharing breakfast.
Cross said, “Sorry I let you down, Mr. Gronevelt.”
Gronevelt looked at him gravely and said,
“Someday, with your father’s permission,
you’ll have to come work for me.”
Cross, over the years, had observed closely
the relationship between his father and Gronevelt.
They were good friends, had dinner together
once a week, and Pippi always deferred to
Gronevelt in a very obvious way, which he
did not do even with the Clericuzio.
Gronevelt in his turn didn’t seem to fear
Pippi yet gave him every courtesy of the Xanadu,
except a Villa.
Plus Cross had caught on to Pippi’s winning
eight thousand dollars every week at the Hotel.
Cross then made the connection.
The Clericuzio and Alfred Gronevelt were partners
in the Xanadu Hotel.
And Cross was aware that Gronevelt had some
special interest in him, showed him extra
consideration.
As witness the gift of black chips on this
vacation.
And there had been many other kindnesses.
Cross had total comp at the Xanadu for himself
and his friends.
When Cross graduated from high school, Gronevelt’s
present had been a convertible.
From the time he was seventeen, Gronevelt
had introduced him to the showgirls of the
Hotel with obvious affection, to give him
some weight.
And Cross, over the years, came to know that
Gronevelt himself, old as he was, often had
women to his penthouse suite for dinner, and
from the gossip of the girls, Gronevelt was
a catch.
He never had a serious love affair, but he
was so extraordinarily generous with his gifts
that the women were in awe of him.
Any woman who stayed in his favor for a month
became rich.
Once in one of their teacher and pupil talks,
as Gronevelt instructed him in the lore of
running a great casino hotel like the Xanadu,
Cross dared to ask him about women in the
context of employee relations.
Gronevelt smiled at him.
“I leave the women in the shows to the entertainment
director.
The other women I treat exactly as if they
were men.
But if you’re asking advice about your love
life, I must tell you this.
An intelligent, reasonable man in most cases
has nothing to fear from women.
You must beware of two things.
Number one and most dangerous: the damsel
in distress.
Two: a woman who has more ambition than you
do.
Now don’t think I’m heartless, I can make
the same case for women, but that’s not
to our purpose.
I was lucky, I loved the Xanadu more than
anything else in the world.
But I must tell you I regret not having any
children.”
“You seem to live the perfect life,” Cross
said.
“You think so?”
Gronevelt said.
“Well, I pay the price.”
At the mansion in Quogue, a great fuss was
made over Cross by the females of the Clericuzio
Family.
At the age of twenty he was in the full flower
of youthful maleness—handsome, graceful,
strong, and for his age, surprisingly courtly.
The Family made jokes, not entirely free from
Sicilian peasant malice, that thank God he
looked like his mother and not his father.
On Easter Sunday, while more than a hundred
relatives were celebrating Christ’s resurrection,
the final piece of the puzzle about his father
was made clear to Cross by his cousin Dante.
In the vast walled garden of the Family mansion,
Cross saw a beautiful young girl holding court
with a group of young men.
He watched his father go over to the buffet
table for a platter of grilled sausage and
make a friendly remark to the girl’s group.
He saw the girl visibly shrinking away from
Pippi.
Women usually liked his father; his ugliness,
his good humor and high spirits disarmed them.
Dante had also observed this.
“Beautiful girl,” he said, smiling.
“Let’s go over and say hello.”
He made the introductions.
“Lila,” he said, “this is our cousin
Cross.”
Lila was their age but not yet fully developed
as a woman; she had the slightly imperfect
beauty of adolescence.
Her hair was the color of honey, her skin
glowed as if refreshed from some inner stream,
but her mouth was too vulnerable, as if not
fully formed.
She wore a white angora sweater that turned
her skin to gold.
Cross fell in love with her for that moment.
But when he tried to speak to her, Lila ignored
him and walked to the sanctuary of matrons
at another table.
Cross said a little sheepishly to Dante, “I
guess she doesn’t like my looks.”
Dante smiled at him wickedly.
Dante had turned into a curious young man
with enormous vitality and a sharp, cunning
face.
He had the coarse black hair of the Clericuzio,
which he kept confined underneath a curious
Renaissance-style cap.
He was very short, no more than five feet
and a few inches, but he had an enormous confidence,
perhaps because he was the favorite of the
old Don.
He carried with him always the air of malice.
Now he said to Cross, “Her last name is
Anacosta.”
Cross remembered the name.
A year before, the Anacosta Family had suffered
a tragedy.
The head of the family and his oldest son
had been shot to death in a Miami hotel room.
But Dante was looking at Cross, waiting for
some sort of answer.
Cross made his face impassive.
“So?” he said.
Dante said, “You work for your father, right?”
“Sure,” Cross said.
“And you try to date Lila?”
Dante said.
“You’re sick.”
He laughed.
Cross knew this was danger of some kind.
He remained silent.
Dante went on, “Don’t you know what your
father does?”
“He collects money,” Cross said.
Dante shook his head.
“You have to know.
Your Dad takes people out for the Family.
He’s their number one Hammer.”
It seemed to Cross that all the mysteries
of his life were blown away on a sorcerer’s
wind.
Everything was very clear.
His mother’s disgust of his father, the
respect shown Pippi by his friends and the
Clericuzio Family, his father’s mysterious
disappearances for weeks at a time, the weapon
he always carried, sly little jokes he had
not understood.
He remembered his father’s trial for murder,
dismissed from his childhood memories in some
curious way the night his father had taken
his hand.
Then, a sudden warmth for his father, a feeling
that he must protect him in some way now that
he was so naked.
But over all this Cross felt a terrible anger
that Dante had dared to tell him this truth.
He said to Dante, “No, I don’t know that.
And you don’t know that.
Nobody knows that.”
He almost said, And you can go fuck yourself
you little creep, but instead he smiled at
Dante and said, “Where the hell did you
get that fuckin’ hat?”
Virginio Ballazzo was organizing the children’s
Easter egg hunt with the panache of a born
clown.
He gathered the children around him, beautiful
flowers in Easter garb, their tiny faces like
petals, skin like eggshells, hats beribboned
with pink, and their faces rosy with excitement.
Ballazo gave each of them a straw basket and
a fond kiss and then shouted to them, “Go!”
The children scattered.
Virginio Ballazzo himself was a treat to look
at, his suits made in London, his shoes in
Italy, shirts in France, his hair cut by a
Michelangelo of Manhattan.
Life had been good to Virginio and had blessed
him with a daughter almost as beautiful as
the children.
Lucille, called Ceil, was eighteen years old
and on this day served as her father’s assistant.
As she handed out baskets, the men on the
lawn whistled to themselves over her beauty.
She was in shorts and an open white blouse.
Her skin was dark with an undertone of rich
cream.
Her black hair was twisted around her head
like a crown, and so she stood a youthful
queen created by superb health, youth, and
the genuine happiness that high spirits can
give.
Now out of the corner of her eye she could
see Cross and Dante quarreling, and she saw
that for a moment Cross had suffered a crushing
blow, his mouth crumpling.
She had one basket left on her arm, and she
walked over to where Dante and Cross were
standing.
“Which one of you wants to hunt for eggs?”
she asked, her smile flashing with good humor.
She held out the basket.
The two of them looked at her with dazed admiration.
The late-morning light turned her skin to
gold, her eyes danced in delight.
The white blouse swelled invitingly and yet
so virginally, her round thighs milky white.
At that moment, one of the little girls began
to scream.
They all looked toward her.
The child had found a huge egg, as big as
a bowling ball and painted with vivid reds
and blues.
The child had been struggling to put it in
her basket, her beautiful white straw hat
askew, her face wide-eyed with astonishment
and resolution.
But the egg broke and a small bird flew out,
which is what made the child scream.
Petie ran across the lawn and scooped up the
young child to comfort her.
It was one of his practical jokes, and the
crowd laughed.
The little girl carefully straightened her
hat, then shouted in a treble voice, “You
tricked me,” and slapped Petie in the face.
The crowd roared with laughter as she ran
away from Petie, who was still pleading for
forgiveness.
He caught her up in his arms and gave her
a jeweled Easter Egg dangling from a gold
chain.
The little girl took it and gave him a kiss.
Ceil took Cross by the hand and led him to
the tennis court, which was a hundred yards
from the mansion.
They sat in the three-walled tennis hut, its
exposed side away from the festivities, so
they could have privacy.
Dante watched them go with a sense of humiliation.
He was very conscious that Cross was more
attractive, and he felt snubbed.
Yet he felt proud to have such a handsome
cousin.
To his surprise he found himself holding the
basket, so he shrugged and joined the Easter
egg hunt.
Hidden in the tennis shack, Ceil took Cross’s
face in her hands and kissed him on the lips.
They were tender, brushing kisses.
But when he put his hands under her blouse,
she pushed him away.
She had a brilliant smile on her face.
“I wanted to kiss you since I was ten years
old,” she said.
“And today was such a perfect day.”
Cross was aroused by her kisses but only said,
“Why?”
“Because you’re so beautiful and so perfect,”
Ceil said.
“Nothing is wrong on a day like today.”
She slipped her hand into his.
“Don’t we have wonderful families?”
she said.
Then abruptly she asked, “Why did you stay
with your father?”
“It was just the way it worked out,” Cross
said.
“And did you just have a fight with Dante?”
Ceil asked.
“He’s such a creep.”
“Dante is OK,” Cross said.
“We were just kidding around.
He’s just a practical joker like my Uncle
Petie.”
“Dante is too rough,” Ceil said, then
kissed Cross again.
She held his hands tight.
“My father is making so much money, he’s
buying a house in Kentucky and a 1920 Rolls-Royce.
He has three antique cars now and he’s going
to buy horses in Kentucky.
Why don’t you come over tomorrow and see
the cars?
You always loved my mother’s cooking.”
“I have to go back to Vegas tomorrow,”
Cross said.
“I work in the Xanadu now.”
Ceil gave his hand a tug.
“I hate Vegas,” she said.
“I think it’s a disgusting city.”
“I think it’s great,” Cross said, smiling.
“Why do you hate it if you’ve never been
there?”
“Because people throw away hard-earned money,”
Ceil said with youthful indignation.
“Thank God my father doesn’t gamble.
And all those sleazy showgirls.”
Cross laughed.
“I wouldn’t know,” he said.
“I just run the golf course.
I’ve never seen the inside of the casino.”
She knew he was making fun of her, but she
said, “If I invite you to visit me at college
when I go away, will you come?”
“Sure,” Cross said.
In this game he was far more experienced than
she was.
And he felt a tenderness about her innocence,
her holding of his hands, her ignorance of
her father and the Family’s true purpose.
He understood that she was just staking out
a tentative claim, the lovely weather, the
explosion of celebration in her body of womanhood,
and he was touched by the sweet, unsexy kisses.
“We better go back to the party,” he said,
and they strolled hand in hand to the picnic
area.
Her father, Virginio, was the first to notice
them and rubbed one finger against another
and said, “Shame, shame,” gleefully.
Then he embraced them both.
It was a day Cross always remembered for its
innocence, the young children chastely clad
in white to announce the resurrection, and
because he finally understood who his father
was.
When Pippi and Cross went back to Vegas, things
were different between them.
Pippi obviously knew that the secret was out,
and he paid Cross some attentions of extra
affection.
Cross was surprised that his feeling toward
his father had not changed, that he still
loved him.
He could not imagine a life without his father,
without the Clericuzio Family, without Gronevelt
and the Xanadu Hotel.
This was the life he had to lead, and he was
not unhappy to lead it.
But there began to build up in him an impatience.
Another step had to be taken.
BOOK III
.
Claudia De Lena
Athena Aquitane
CHAPTER 4
.
CLAUDIA DE LENA drove from her apartment on
the Pacific Palisades toward Athena’s Malibu
house and pondered what she would say to persuade
Athena to come back to work on Messalina.
It was as important to her as it was to the
Studio.
Messalina was her first truly original script;
her other work had been adaptations of novels,
rewrites or doctoring of other scripts, or
collaborations.
Also, she was a coproducer of Messalina, which
gave her a power she had never previously
enjoyed.
Plus an adjusted gross of the profits.
She would see some really big money.
And she could then take the next step, to
producer-writer.
She was perhaps the only person west of the
Mississippi who did not want to direct; that
required a cruelty in human relationships
that she could not tolerate.
Claudia’s relationship with Athena was a
true intimacy, not the professional friendship
of fellow workers in the movie industry.
Athena would know how much the picture meant
to her career.
Athena was intelligent.
What really puzzled Clau-dia was Athena’s
fear of Boz Skannet.
Athena had never been afraid of anything or
anyone.
Well, one thing she would accomplish.
She would find out exactly why Athena was
so fearful, and then she could help.
And certainly, she had to save Athena from
ruining her own career.
After all, who knew more about the intricacies
and traps of the movie business than she did?
Claudia De Lena dreamed of a life as a writer
in New York.
She was not discouraged when, at the age of
twenty-one, her first novel was turned down
by twenty publishers.
Instead, she decided to move to Los Angeles
and try her hand at movie scripts.
Because she was witty and vivacious and talented,
she soon made many friends in Los Angeles.
She enrolled in a movie-script writing course
at UCLA and met a young man whose father was
a famous plastic surgeon.
She and the young man became lovers, and he
was bewitched by her body and intelligence.
He revised her status from comradely bed partner
to “serious relationship.”
He brought her home to his family for dinner.
His father, the plastic surgeon, was enchanted
by her.
After dinner the surgeon put his hands around
her face.
“It’s unfair that a girl like you is not
as pretty as you should be,” he said.
“Don’t take offense, it’s a perfectly
natural misfortune.
And it’s my business.
I can fix it if you let me.”
Claudia was not offended, but she was indignant.
“Why the hell should I be pretty?
What good does that do me?” she said with
a smile.
“I’m pretty enough for your son.”
“All the good in the world,” the surgeon
said.
“And when I get through with you, you’ll
be too good for my son.
You are a sweet and intelligent girl, but
looks are power.
Do you really want to spend the rest of your
life standing around while men flock to good-looking
women who have not one tenth of your intelligence?
And you have to sit around like a dummy because
your nose is too thick and you have a chin
like a Mafia hood.”
As he said this he patted her cheek and said
gently, “It won’t take much doing.
You have beautiful eyes and a beautiful mouth.
And your figure is good enough for a movie
star.”
Claudia flinched away from him.
She knew she resembled her father; the Mafia
hood remark had touched a nerve.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“I can’t pay your fee.”
“Another thing,” the surgeon said.
“I know the movie business.
I have prolonged the careers of stars male
and female.
Now when the day comes for you to pitch a
movie at a studio, your looks will play an
important part.
That may seem unfair to you, I know you’re
talented.
But that’s the movie world.
Just think of it as a professional move, not
some male-female thing.
Though of course it is.”
He saw that she still hesitated.
“I’ll do it without a fee,” he said.
“I’ll do it for you and for my son.
Even though I fear that once you’re as pretty
as I think you will be, he will lose a girlfriend.”
Claudia had always known she was not pretty,
now the memory of her father preferring Cross
came back to her.
If she had been pretty, would her destiny
have been changed?
For the first time she took a good look at
the surgeon.
He was a handsome man, his eyes were gentle
as if he understood everything she was feeling.
She laughed.
“Okay,” she said.
“Turn me into Cinderella.”
The surgeon didn’t have to do that much.
He thinned her nose, rounded her chin, and
scaled her skin.
When Claudia reentered the world, she was
a handsome, proud-looking woman with a perfect
nose, a commanding presence, perhaps not quite
pretty but somehow even more attractive.
The professional results were magical.
Claudia, despite her youth, obtained a personal
interview with Melo Stuart, who became her
agent.
He got her minor rewrites on scripts and invited
her to parties where she met producers, directors,
and stars.
They were enchanted by her.
In the next five years, despite her youth,
she was ranked as a Class A writer on A films.
In her personal life the effect was equally
magical.
The surgeon had been right.
His son could not meet the competition.
Claudia had a string of sexual conquests—some
really submissions—that would have made
a film star proud.
Claudia loved the movie business.
She loved working with other writers, she
loved arguing with producers, cajoling directors:
the first with how to save money doing the
script a certain way, the other with how a
script could be done on the highest artistic
level.
She was in awe of actresses and actors, how
they were attuned to her words, making them
sound better and more touching.
She loved the magic of the set, which most
people found boring, she enjoyed the camaraderie
of the crew and had no compunction about screwing
“below the line.”
She was thrilled with the whole process of
opening a movie and watching its success or
failure.
She believed in movies as a great art form,
and when called in to do a rewrite, she fancied
herself a healer and did not look to make
changes solely to get screen credit.
At the age of twenty-five she had an enormous
reputation and friendships with many stars,
the closest one being with Athena Aquitane.
What was more of a surprise to her was her
ebullient sexuality.
Going to bed with a man she liked was as natural
to her as any act of friendship.
She never did it for advantage, she was too
talented; she sometimes joked that stars slept
with her to get her next script.
Her first adventure had been with the surgeon
himself, who proved to be much more charming
and adept than his son.
Perhaps enchanted by his own handiwork, he
offered to set her up in an apartment with
a weekly allowance, not only for the sex but
for the enjoyment of her company.
Claudia refused good-humoredly and said, “I
thought there was no fee.”
“You’ve already paid the fee,” he said.
“But I hope we can see each other now and
then.”
“Of course,” Claudia said.
What she found extraordinary in herself was
that she could make love to so many different
kinds of men, of varying ages, types, and
looks.
And enjoy all of it.
She was like an aspiring gourmet, who explored
all sorts of strange delicacies.
She played mentor with budding actors and
screenwriters, but that was not the role she
liked.
She wanted to learn.
And she found older men far more interesting.
On a memorable day, she had a one-night stand
with the great Eli Marrion himself.
She enjoyed it, but it was not truly successful.
They met at a LoddStone Studio party, and
Marrion was intrigued with her because she
was not afraid of him and made some penetrating
and disparaging remarks on the Studio’s
latest blockbuster production.
Also, Marrion had heard her repel Bobby Bantz’s
amorous advances with a witty remark that
left no ill feelings.
Eli Marrion had given up sex the last few
years.
It was more work than fun, since he was nearly
impotent.
When he invited Claudia to come with him to
the Beverly Hills bungalow owned by LoddStone,
he assumed that she accepted because of his
power.
He had no idea that it was her sexual curiosity.
What would it be like to go to bed with so
powerful a man who was so old?
That would not have been enough, but in addition
she found Marrion attractive despite his age.
His gorilla-like face could actually turn
handsome when he smiled, which he did when
he told her that everyone called him Eli,
including his grandchildren.
His intelligence and his natural charm intrigued
her because she had heard about his ruthlessness.
It would be interesting.
In the bedroom of the downstairs apartment
of the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, she observed
with amusement that he was shy.
Claudia rejected any coyness, she helped him
undress, and while he folded his clothes over
a stuffed chair, she got herself naked, gave
him a hug, and followed him beneath the bedcovers.
Marrion tried to joke, “When King Solomon
was dying, they sent virgins to his bed to
keep him warm.”
“Well, then, I’m not going to help you
much,” Claudia said.
She kissed him and fondled him.
His lips were pleasantly warm.
His skin had a dryness and waxiness that was
not distasteful.
She had been surprised by his tinyness when
he shed his clothing and shoes, and she considered
for a moment what a three-thousand-dollar
suit could do for a man in power.
But his smallness with the huge head was also
endearing.
She was not at all put off.
After ten minutes of fondling and kissing
(the great Marrion kissed with the innocence
of a child), they both realized that he was
now fully impotent.
Marrion thought, This is the last time I will
ever be in bed with a woman.
He sighed and relaxed as she cradled him in
her arms.
“Okay, Eli,” Claudia said.
“Now I’ll tell you in detail why your
movie is lousy from a money standpoint and
an artistic one.”
Still gently fondling him, she delivered a
penetrating analysis of the script, the director,
and the actors.
“It’s not that it’s just a bad movie,”
Claudia said.
“It’s an unwatchable movie.
Because it has no story sense and so all you
have is some fucking director giving you a
slide show of what he thinks is a story.
And the actors just go through the motions
because they know it’s bullshit.”
Marrion listened to her with a benign smile.
He felt very comfortable.
He realized that an essential part of his
life was over, finished by an approaching
death.
That he would never again make love to a woman,
or even try, was not humiliating.
He knew Claudia would not talk about this
night, and if she did, what would it matter?
He still retained his worldly power.
He could still change the destinies of thousands,
as long as he remained alive.
And now he was interested in her analysis
of the film.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“I can bring a picture into existence but
I can’t execute the picture.
You’re quite right, I will never hire that
director again.
The Talent doesn’t lose money, I do.
But Talent has to take the blame.
My question is, Will a movie make money?
If it becomes a work of art, that’s just
a happy accident.”
As they spoke, Marrion got out of bed and
began to dress.
Claudia hated it when men put on their clothes,
they were so much more difficult to talk to.
Marrion, to her, was infinitely more lovable
naked, strange as that seemed; his spindly
legs, his meager body, his huge head, all
made her feel an affectionate pity.
Oddly enough, his penis, flaccid, was bigger
than that of most men in a similar state.
She made a mental note to ask her surgeon
about that.
Did a penis grow larger as it grew more useless?
Now she saw how fatiguing it was for Marrion
to button his shirt and put in his cuff links.
She jumped out of bed to help him.
Marrion studied her nakedness.
Her body was better than many of the stars
he had gone to bed with, but he felt no mental
flicker and the cells of his body did not
react to her beauty.
And he did not really feel regret or sadness.
Claudia helped put on his trousers, button
his shirt, put in the cuff links.
She straightened his maroon tie and brushed
back his gray hair with her fingers.
He slipped on his suit jacket and there he
stood, all his visible power restored.
She kissed him and said, “I had a good time.”
Marrion was studying her as though she were
some sort of opponent.
Then he smiled his famous smile that erased
the ugliness of his features.
He accepted the fact that she was truly innocent,
that she had a good heart, and he believed
that it was because of her youth.
It was just too bad that the world she lived
in would change her.
“Well, at least I can feed you,” Marrion
said.
He picked up the phone to call room service.
Claudia was hungry.
She polished off a soup, duck with vegetables,
and then a huge bowl of strawberry ice cream.
Marrion ate very little but did his share
in polishing off the bottle of wine.
They talked about movies and books, and Claudia
learned to her astonishment that Marrion was
a far better reader than she was.
“I would have loved to be a writer,” Marrion
said.
“I love writing, books give me so much pleasure.
But you know I’ve rarely met a writer I
could like personally, even when I adore their
books.
Ernest Vail for instance.
He writes beauti-ful books but he’s such
a pain in the ass in real life.
How can that be?”
“Because writers are not their books,”
Claudia said.
“Their books are the distillation of the
very best that is in them.
They’re like a ton of rocks that you have
to crush to get a little diamond, if that’s
what you do to get a diamond.”
“You know Ernest Vail?”
Marrion asked.
Claudia appreciated that he said this without
a trace of salaciousness.
He must have known about her love affair with
Vail.
“Now, I love his writing but I can’t stand
him personally.
And he has a grudge against the Studio that
is insane.”
Claudia patted his hand, a familiarity that
was permissible since she had seen him naked.
“All the Talent has a grudge against the
Studio,” she said.
“It’s not personal.
And besides, you’re not exactly a sweetheart
in business relationships.
I may be the only writer in town who really
likes you.”
They both laughed.
Before they parted, Marrion said to Claudia,
“Any time you have a problem, please call.”
It was a message that he would not wish to
pursue their personal relationship.
Claudia understood.
“I’ll never take advantage of that offer,”
she said.
“And if you have trouble with a script,
you can call me.
Free advice but you have to pay my deal price
if I have to write.”
Telling him that professionally he would need
her more than she would need him.
Which of course was not true but told him
that she had her own faith in her talent.
They parted friends.
On the Pacific Coast Highway, traffic was
slow.
Claudia looked to her left to see the sparkling
ocean and marveled at how few people were
on the beach.
How different from Long Island, where she
had visited when she was younger.
Above her head she could see the hang gliders
sailing just over the power lines and onto
the beach.
On her right side she saw a crowd around a
sound truck and huge cameras.
Somebody was shooting a movie.
How she loved the Pacific Coast Highway.
And how Ernest Vail had hated it.
He said driving on that highway was like catching
a ferry to Hell.
. . .
Claudia De Lena first met Vail when she was
hired to work on the movie script of his bestselling
novel.
She had always loved his books, his sentences
were so graceful, they flowed into each other
like musical notes.
He understood life and the tragedies of character.
He had a novelty of invention that always
delighted her as fairy stories had enchanted
her in her childhood.
So she had been thrilled to meet him.
But the reality of Ernest Vail was another
thing entirely.
Vail was then in his early fifties.
His physical presence had none of the grace
of his prose.
He was short and heavy and had a bald spot
that he didn’t bother to hide.
He may have understood and loved the characters
in his books, but he was totally ignorant
of the niceties of everyday life.
This was perhaps one of his charms, his childlike
innocence.
It was only when she got to know him better
that Claudia discovered that beneath this
innocence was an offbeat intelligence that
could be enjoyed.
He could be witty as a child is unconsciously
witty, and he had a child’s fragile egotism.
Ernest Vail seemed to be the happiest man
in the world at that breakfast at the Polo
Lounge.
His novels had earned him a solid critical
reputation and good but unimportant money.
Then this latest book had broken through and
become an enormous bestseller and was now
being made into a movie by LoddStone Studios.
Vail had written the script, and now Bobby
Bantz and Skippy Deere were telling him how
wonderful it was.
And to Claudia’s astonishment, Vail was
swallowing their praise like some starlet
headed for the casting couch.
What the hell did Vail think Claudia was doing
at this meeting?
What dismayed her was that this was the same
Bantz and Deere who had the day before told
her that the script was a “piece of shit.”
Not being cruel or even pejorative.
A Piece of Shit was simply something that
didn’t quite work.
Claudia was not put off by Vail’s homeliness,
after all she herself had been homely until
she blossomed into handsomeness under the
surgeon’s knife.
She was even somewhat charmed by his credulity
and his enthusiasm.
Bantz said, “Ernest, we’re bringing in
Claudia to help you.
She’s a great technician, the best in the
business, and she’ll make it a real movie.
I smell a big hit.
And remember—you have ten percent of the
net.”
Claudia could see Vail swallow the hook.
The poor bastard didn’t even know that 10
percent of the net was 10 percent of nothing.
Vail seemed to be genuinely grateful for help.
He said, “Sure, I can learn from her.
Writing scripts is a lot more fun than writing
books but it’s new to me.”
Skippy Deere said reassuringly, “Ernest,
you have a natural flair.
You can get a lot of work out here.
And you can get rich on this picture, especially
if it’s a hit and especially if it wins
the Academy.”
Claudia studied the men.
Two pricks and a dope, not an unusual trio
in Hollywood.
But then she had not been any smarter.
Hadn’t Skippy Deere screwed her, literally
and figuratively?
Yet she couldn’t help admiring Skippy.
He seemed so absolutely sincere.
Claudia knew the project was already in serious
trouble and that the incomparable Benny Sly
was working behind her and that Sly was turning
Vail’s intellectual hero into a franchise
by writing him into a James Bond–Sherlock
Holmes–Casanova.
There would be nothing left of Vail’s book
but the bare bones.
It was out of this pity that Claudia agreed
to have dinner with Vail that night to plan
how they would work on the screenplay together.
One of the tricks in collaboration was to
stave off any romantic involvement, and she
did this by presenting herself as unattractively
as possible in work sessions.
Romance was always distracting to her when
writing.
To her astonishment the two months they spent
working led to an enduring friendship.
When they were both fired from the project
on the same day, they went to Vegas together.
Claudia had always loved gambling, and Vail
had the same vice.
In Vegas she introduced him to her brother
Cross and was surprised that the two men hit
it off.
There was absolutely no basis for their friendship
that she could see.
Ernest was an intellectual who had no interest
in sports or golf.
Cross hadn’t read a book for years.
She asked Ernest about this.
“He’s a listener and I’m a talker,”
he said.
Which struck Claudia as being not a real explanation.
She asked Cross; though he was her brother,
he was the greater mystery.
Cross pondered the question.
Finally he said, “You don’t have to keep
an eye on him, he doesn’t want anything.”
And as soon as Cross said it, she knew it
was true.
To her it was an astonishing revelation.
Ernest Vail, to his misfortune, was a man
who had no hidden agendas.
Her affair with Ernest Vail was different.
Though he was a world-renowned novelist, he
had no power in Hollywood.
Also, he had no social gifts; indeed, he inspired
antagonism.
His articles in magazines addressed sensitive
national issues and were always politically
incorrect, but ironically this angered both
sides.
He jeered at the American democratic process;
writing about feminism, he declared that women
would always be subjugated by men until they
became physically equal, and advised feminists
to set up paramilitary training groups.
On racial problems, he wrote an essay on language
in which he insisted the blacks should call
themselves “coloreds” because “black”
was used in so many pejorative ways—black
thoughts, black as hell, black countenance—and
that the word always had a negative connotation
except when used in the phrase “simple black
dress.”
But then he enraged both sides when he maintained
that all Mediterranean races be designated
as “colored.”
Including Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, et
cetera.
When he wrote about class, he claimed that
people with a great deal of money had to be
cruel and defensive, and that the poor ought
to become criminals since they had to fight
laws written by the rich to protect their
money.
He wrote that all welfare was simply a necessary
bribe to keep the poor from starting a revolution.
About religion, he wrote that it should be
prescribed like medication.
Unfortunately nobody could ever figure out
whether he was joking or serious.
None of these eccentricities ever appeared
in his novels, so a reading of his works gave
no insights.
But when Claudia worked with him on the screenplay
of his bestselling novel, they established
a close relationship.
He was a devoted pupil, he gave her all the
deference, and she on her part appreciated
his somewhat sour jokes, his seriousness about
social conditions.
She was struck by his carelessness about money
in practice and his concern about money in
the abstract; his pure dumbness about how
the world worked in terms of power, especially
Hollywood.
They got along so well that she asked him
to read her novel.
She was flattered when he came to the studio
the next day with notes on his reading.
The novel had finally been published on the
strength of her success as a screenwriter
and the arm twisting of her agent, Melo Stuart.
It had received a few reviews of faint praise
and some derisive ones merely because she
was a screenwriter.
But Claudia still loved her book.
It did not sell, nor did any-one purchase
the movie rights.
But it was in print.
She inscribed one to Vail: “To America’s
greatest living novelist.”
It didn’t help.
“You’re a very lucky girl,” Vail said.
“You’re not a novelist, you’re a screenwriter.
You will never be a novelist.”
Then without malice or derision he spent the
next thirty minutes trying to strip her novel
bare and showing her that it was a piece of
nonsense, that it had no structure, no depth,
no resonance in characterization, and that
even her dialogue, her strong point, was terrible,
witty without point.
It was a brutal assassination but carried
out with such logic that Claudia had to recognize
its truth.
He ended up with what he thought was a kindness.
“It’s a very good book for an eighteen-year-old
woman,” Vail said.
“All the faults I’ve mentioned can be
repaired by experience, simply by getting
older.
But there’s one thing you can never repair.
You have no language.”
At this Claudia, though crushed, took offense.
Some of the reviewers had praised the lyrical
quality of the writing.
“You’re wrong on that,” she said.
“I tried to write perfect sentences.
And the thing I admire most in your books
is the poetry of your language.”
For the first time Vail smiled.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I wasn’t trying to be poetic.
My language sprang out of the emotion of the
characters.
Your language, your poetry in this book is
imposed.
It’s completely false.”
Claudia burst into tears.
“Who the fuck are you?” she said.
“How can you say something so terribly destructive.
How can you be so fucking positive?”
Vail seemed amused.
“Hey, you can write publishable books and
starve to death.
But why, when you’re a genius screenwriter?
As for my being so positive, this is the only
thing I know, but I know it absolutely.
Or I’m wrong.”
Claudia said, “You’re not wrong but you
are a sadistic prick.”
Vail eyed her warily.
“You’re gifted,” he said.
“You have a great ear for movie dialogue,
you’re expert in story line.
You really understand movies.
Why would you want to be a blacksmith instead
of an automobile mechanic?
You are a movie person, you are not a novelist.”
Claudia looked at him with wide-eyed wonder.
“You don’t even know how insulting you
are.”
“Sure I do,” Vail said.
“But it’s for your own good.”
“I can’t believe you’re the same person
who wrote your books,” she said venomously.
“Nobody could believe you wrote them.”
At this Vail broke into a delighted cackle.
“That’s true,” he said.
“Isn’t that wonderful?”
All through the next week he was formal with
her while they worked on the script.
He assumed their friendship was over.
Finally Claudia said to him, “Ernest, don’t
be so stiff.
I forgive you.
I even believe you’re right.
But why did you have to be so brutal?
I even thought you were making one of those
male power moves.
You know, humiliate me then push me into bed.
But I know you’re too dumb for that.
For Christ’s sake, give a little sugar with
your medicine.”
Vail shrugged.
“I have only one thing going for me,”
he said.
“If I’m not honest about those things
then I’m nothing.
Also, I was brutal because I’m really very
fond of you.
You don’t know how rare you are.”
Claudia said smilingly, “Because of my talent,
my wit, or my beauty?”
Vail waved his hand dismissively.
“No, no,” he said.
“Because you are blessed, a very happy person.
No tragedy will ever bring you down.
That is very rare.”
Claudia thought about it.
“You know,” she said, “there’s something
vaguely insulting about that.
Does that mean I’m basically stupid?”
She paused for a moment.
“It’s considered more sensitive to be
melancholy.”
“Right,” Vail said.
“I’m melancholy and so I’m more sen-sitive
than you?”
They both laughed and then she was hug-ging
him.
“Thank you for being honest,” she said.
“Don’t get too cocky,” Vail said.
“Like my mother always said, ‘Life is
like a box of hand grenades, you never know
what will blow you to kingdom come.’
”
Claudia was laughing when she said, “Christ,
do you always have to sound the note of doom?
You’ll never be a movie writer and that
line shows it.”
“But it’s more truthful,” Vail said.
Before they finished their collaboration on
the script, Claudia dragged him into bed.
She was fond enough of him that she wanted
to see him with his clothes off so they could
really talk, really exchange confidences.
As a lover Vail was far more enthusiastic
than he was expert.
He was also more grateful than most men.
Best of all, he loved to talk after sex, his
nakedness did not inhibit his lecturing, his
intemperate judgments.
And Claudia loved his nakedness.
With his clothes off he seemed to have a monkey’s
agility and impetuousness, and he was very
hairy: a matted chest, patches of furry hair
on his back.
Also, he was as greedy as a monkey, clutching
her naked body as if she were a fruit hanging
from a tree.
His appetite amused Claudia.
She relished the inherent comedy of sex.
And she loved that he was famous all over
the world, that she had seen him on TV and
thought him a little pompous on literature,
the grievous moral state of the world, so
dignified clutching the pipe he rarely smoked
and looking very professorial in his tweed
jacket with sewn-leather elbow patches.
But he was far more amusing in bed than on
TV; he did not have an actor’s projection.
There was never any talk of true love, of
a “relationship.”
Claudia had no need for it and Vail had only
a literary sense of the term.
They both accepted that he was thirty years
the elder and, aside from that, no bargain
really except for his fame.
They had nothing in common except literature,
perhaps the worst basis for establishing a
marriage, they agreed.
But she loved arguing with him about movies.
Vail insisted that moving pictures were not
art, that they were a regression to the primitive
paintings found in lost caves.
That film had no language, and since the progression
of the human species depended on language,
it was merely a regressive, minor art.
Claudia said, “So painting is not an art,
Bach and Beethoven are not art, Michelangelo
is not art.
You’re talking bullshit.”
And then she realized he was teasing her,
that he enjoyed provoking her, though prudently
only after sex.
By the time they were both fired from the
script, they were really close friends.
And before Vail went back to New York, he
gave Claudia a tiny, lopsided ring with four
different colored jewels.
It didn’t look expensive but it was a valuable
antique that he spent a lot of time looking
for.
She always wore it thereafter.
It became in her mind a lucky talisman.
But when he left, their sexual relationship
was over.
When and if he ever returned to L.A. she would
be in the middle of another affair.
And he recognized that their sex had been
more friendship than passion.
Her farewell gift to him was a thorough education
in the ways of Hollywood.
She explained to him that their script was
being rewritten by the great Benny Sly, the
legendary rewriter of scripts, who had even
been mentioned for a special Academy Award
for rewrites.
And that Benny Sly specialized in turning
uncommercial stories into one-hundred-million-dollar
blockbusters.
Undoubtedly he would turn Vail’s book into
a movie that Vail would hate but that would
surely make a lot of money.
Vail shrugged.
“That’s okay,” he said.
“I have ten percent of the net profits.
I’ll be rich.”
Claudia looked at him with exasperation.
“Net?” she cried out.
“Do you buy Confederate money too?
You’ll never see a penny no matter how much
the movie makes.
LoddStone has a genius for making money disappear.
Listen, I had net on five pictures that made
a ton of money and I never saw a penny.
You won’t either.”
Vail shrugged again.
He did not seem to care, which made his actions
in the years to follow even more puzzling.
Claudia’s next affair made her remember
Ernest saying life was like a box of hand
grenades.
For the first time, despite her intelligence,
she fell guardedly in love with a completely
unsuitable man.
He was a young “genius” director.
After that she fell deeply and unguardedly
in love with a man who most women in the world
would have fallen in love with.
Equally unsuitable.
The initial flush of ego that she could attract
such primary alpha males was quickly dampened
by how they treated her.
The director, an unlikable ferret of a man
only a few years older than she, had made
three offbeat movies that not only were critical
successes but had made a goodly sum of money.
Every studio wanted a relationship with him.
LoddStone Studios gave him a three-picture
deal and also gave him Claudia to rewrite
the script he was planning to shoot.
One of the elements of the director’s genius
was that he had a clear vision of what he
wanted.
At first he condescended to Claudia because
she was a woman and a writer, both inferior
in the power structure of Hollywood.
They quarreled immediately.
He asked her to write a scene she felt did
not belong to the structure of the plot.
On its own Claudia recognized that the scene
would be a flashy bit that would be just a
show-off scene for the director.
“I can’t write that scene,” Claudia
said.
“It does nothing for the story.
It’s just action and camera.”
The director said curtly.
“That’s why they’re movies.
Just do it the way we discussed it.”
“I don’t want to waste your time and mine,”
Claudia said.
“Just go write with your fucking camera.”
The director didn’t waste time even getting
angry.
“You’re fired,” he said.
“Off the picture.”
He clapped his hands.
But Skippy Deere and Bobby Bantz made them
reconcile, which was only possible because
the director had become intrigued by her stubbornness.
The picture was a success, and Claudia had
to admit this was more because of the director’s
talent as a moviemaker than hers as a writer.
Quite simply she had not been able to see
the director’s vision.
They fell into bed almost by accident, but
the director proved to be a disappointment.
He refused to be naked, he made love with
his shirt on.
But still Claudia had dreams of the two of
them making great movies together.
One of the great director-writer teams of
all time.
She was quite willing to be the subordinate
partner, to make her talent serve his genius.
They would create great art together and become
a legend.
The affair lasted a month, until Claudia finished
her “spec” script of Messalina and showed
it to him.
He read it and tossed it aside.
“A piece of feminist bullshit with tits
and ass,” he said.
“You’re a clever girl but it’s not a
picture I want to waste a year of my life
making.”
“It’s only a first draft,” Claudia said.
“Jesus, I hate people taking advantage of
a personal relationship to get a movie made,”
the director said.
In that moment Claudia fell completely out
of love with him.
She was outraged.
“I don’t have to fuck you to make a movie,”
she said.
“Of course you don’t,” the director
said.
“You’re talented and you have your reputation
of being one of the great pieces of ass in
the movie business.”
Now Claudia was horrified.
She never gossiped about her sexual partners.
And she hated his tone, as if women were somehow
shameful for doing what men did.
Claudia said to him, “You have talent, but
a man who fucks with his shirt on has a worse
reputation.
And at least I never got laid by promising
someone a screen test.”
That was the end of their relationship, and
it had started her thinking of Dita Tommey
as the director.
She decided that only a woman could do justice
to her script.
Well, what the hell, Claudia thought.
The bastard never got totally naked and he
didn’t like to talk after sex.
He was truly a genius in film but he had no
language.
And for a genius he was a truly uninteresting
man, except when he talked movies.
Now Claudia was approaching the great curve
of the Pacific Coast Highway that showed the
ocean as a great mirror by reflecting the
cliffs to her right.
It was her favorite spot in the world, natural
beauty that always thrilled her.
It was only ten minutes to the Malibu Colony,
where Athena lived.
Claudia tried to formulate her plea: to save
the movie, to make Athena return.
She remembered that at different times in
their lives they had had the same lover, and
she felt a flush of pride that the man who
had loved Athena could love her.
The sun was at its most brilliant now.
It polished the waves of the Pacific into
huge diamonds.
Claudia braked suddenly.
She thought one of the gliders was coming
down in front of her car.
She could see the glider, a young girl with
one tit hanging out of her blouse, give a
demure wave as she sailed onto the beach.
Why were they allowed, why didn’t the police
appear?
She shook her head and pressed the gas pedal.
Traffic was loosening and the highway swerved
so that she could no longer see the ocean,
though in a half mile it would reappear.
Like true love, Claudia thought smilingly.
True love in her life always reappeared.
When she truly fell in love, it was a painful
but educational experience.
And it was not really her fault, for the man
was Steve Stallings, a Bankable Star and idol
of women all over the world.
He had a fearful masculine beauty, genuine
charm, and an enormous vivacity that was fueled
by the prudent use of cocaine.
He also had great talent as an actor.
More than anything else, he was a Don Juan.
He screwed everything in sight—on location
in Africa, in a small town in the American
West, in Bombay, Singapore, Tokyo, London,
Rome, Paris.
He did this in the spirit of a gentleman giving
alms to the poor, an act of Christian charity.
There was never any question of a relationship,
no more than a beggar would be invited to
a benefactor’s dinner party.
He was so enchanted by Claudia that the affair
lasted twenty-seven days.
It was a humiliating twenty-seven days for
Claudia despite the pleasure.
Steve Stallings was an irresistible lover,
with the help of cocaine.
He was more comfortable being naked than even
Claudia.
The fact that he had a perfectly proportioned
body helped.
Often Claudia caught him inspecting himself
in the mirror in much the same way as a woman
adjusting her hat.
Claudia knew she was just a lesser concubine.
When they had dates he would always call her
to say he would be an hour late and then would
arrive six hours later.
Sometimes he would cancel altogether.
She was only his fallback position for the
night.
Also, when they made love he would always
insist she use cocaine with him, which was
fun but turned her brain into such mush she
could not work the next few days, and what
she did write, she distrusted.
She realized that she was becoming what she
detested more than anything else in the world:
a woman whose whole life depended on the whims
of a man.
She was humiliated by the fact that she was
his fourth or fifth choice, but she didn’t
really blame him.
She blamed herself.
After all, at this point in his fame Steve
Stallings could have almost any woman in America
and he had chosen her.
Stallings would grow old and less beautiful,
he would become less famous and use more and
more cocaine.
He had to cash in during his prime.
She was in love and, for one of the few times
in her life, terribly unhappy.
So on the twenty-seventh day when Stallings
called to say he would be an hour late, she
told him, “Don’t bother, Steve, I’m
leaving your geisha house.”
There was a pause, and when he answered he
did not seem surprised.
“We part friends I hope,” he said.
“I really enjoy your company.”
“Sure,” Claudia said and hung up.
For the first time she did not want to remain
friends at the end of an affair.
What really bothered her was her lack of intelligence.
It was obvious that all his behavior was a
trick to make her go away, that it had taken
her too long to take the hint.
It was mortifying.
How could she have been so dumb?
She wept, but in a week she found she did
not miss being in love at all.
Her time was her own and she could work.
It was a pleasure to get back to her writing
with a head clear of cocaine and true love.
After her director genius of a lover had rejected
her script, Claudia worked furiously for six
months on the rewrite.
Claudia De Lena wrote her original screenplay
of Messalina as a witty propaganda piece for
feminism.
But after five years in the movie business
she knew that any message had to be coated
with more basic ingredients, such as greed,
sex, murder, and a belief in humanity.
She knew she had to write great parts not
only for her first choice, Athena Aquitane,
but for at least three other female stars
in lesser roles.
Good female roles were so scarce that the
script would attract top-name stars.
And then, absolutely essential, the great
villain—charming, ruthless, handsome, and
witty.
Here she drew on memories of her father.
Claudia at first wanted to approach a female
independent producer with clout, but most
studio heads who could green-light a picture
were males.
They would love the script but they would
worry it would turn into too overt a propaganda
piece with a female producer and a female
director.
They would want at least one male hand in
there somewhere.
Claudia had already decided that Dita Tommey
would direct.
Tommey would certainly accept because it would
be a megabudget film.
Such a film if successful would put her in
the Bankable class.
Even if it failed it would enhance her reputation.
A huge budget film that failed was sometimes
more prestigious for a director than a small
budget picture that made money.
Another reason was that Dita Tommey loved
women exclusively and this picture would give
her access to four beautiful famous women.
Claudia wanted Tommey because they had worked
together on a picture a few years ago and
it had been a good experience.
She was very direct, very witty, very talented.
Also she was not a “writer killer” director,
who called in friends to rewrite and share
credit.
She never filed for writing credit on a film
unless she contributed her fair share, and
she was not a sexual harasser as were some
directors and stars.
Though the term “sexual harassment” could
not really be used in the movie business,
where the selling of sex appeal was part of
the job.
Claudia made sure she sent the script to Skippy
Deere on a Friday, he only read scripts carefully
on weekends.
She sent it to him because, despite his betrayals,
he was the best producer in town.
And because she could never let go completely
on an old relationship.
It worked.
She got a call from him on Sunday morning.
He wanted her to have lunch with him that
very day.
Claudia threw her computer into her Mercedes
and dressed to work: blue denim man’s shirt,
faded blue jeans, and slip-on sneakers.
She tied her hair back with a red scarf.
She took Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica.
In the Palisades Park that separated Ocean
Avenue from Pacific Coast High-way, she saw
the homeless men and women of Santa Monica
gathering for their Sunday brunch.
Volunteer social workers brought their food
and drink to them every Sunday in the fresh
air of the park at wooden tables and benches.
Claudia always took this route to watch them,
to remind herself of that other world where
people did not have Mercedeses and swimming
pools and did not shop on Rodeo Drive.
In the early years she often volunteered to
serve food in the park, now she just sent
a check to the church that fed them.
It had become too painful to go from one world
to the other, it blunted her desire to succeed.
She could not avoid watching the men, so shabbily
dressed, their lives in ruins, yet some of
them curiously dignified.
To live so without hope seemed to her an extraordinary
thing, and yet it was just a question of money,
that money she earned so easily writing movie
scripts.
What she earned in six months was more money
than these men saw in their entire lives.
At Skippy Deere’s mansion in the Beverly
Hills canyons, Claudia was led by the housekeeper
to the swimming pool, with its bright blue-and-yellow
cabanas.
Deere was seated in a cushioned lounge chair.
Beside him was the small marble table that
held his phone and a stack of scripts.
He was wearing his red-framed reading glasses
that he only used at home.
In his hand was a tall frosted glass of Evian
water.
He sprang up and embraced her.
“Claudia,” he said, “we have business
to do fast.”
She was judging his voice.
She could usually tell the reaction to her
scripts by the tones of voices.
There was the carefully modulated praise that
meant a definite “No.”
Then there was the joyful, enthusiastic voice
that expressed an unrestrained admiration
and was almost always followed by at least
three reasons why the script could not be
bought; another studio was doing the same
subject, the proper cast could not be assembled,
the studios would not touch the subject matter.
But Deere’s voice was that of the determined
business man latching onto a good thing.
He was talking money and controls.
That meant “Yes.”
“This could be a very big picture,” he
told Claudia.
“Very, very big.
In fact it can’t be small.
I know what you’re doing, you’re a very
clever girl, but I have to sell a studio on
the sex.
Of course I’ll sell it to the female stars
on feminism.
The male star we can get if you soften him
a little, give him more moments as a good
guy.
Now I know you want to be an associate producer
on this, but I call the shots.
You can have your say, I’m open to reason.”
“I want to have my say on the director,”
Claudia said.
“You, the studio, and the stars,” Deere
said, laughing.
“I don’t sell it unless I get approval
of the director,” Clau-dia said.
“Okay,” Deere said.
“So first tell the studio you want to direct,
then back down, and they’ll be so relieved
that they’ll give you the approval.”
He paused for a moment.
“Who do you have in mind?”
“Dita Tommey,” Claudia said.
“Good.
Clever,” Deere said.
“Female stars love her.
The Studio too.
She brings everything in on budget, she doesn’t
live off the picture.
But you and I do the casting before we bring
her on.”
“Who will you bring it to?”
Claudia asked.
“LoddStone,” Deere said.
“They go with me pretty much so we won’t
have to fight too much about casting and directors.
Claudia, you’ve written a perfect script.
Witty, exciting, with a great point of view
on early feminism and that’s hot today.
And sex.
You justify Messalina and all women.
I’ll talk to Melo and Molly Flanders about
your deal and she can talk to Business Affairs
at LoddStone.”
“You son of a bitch,” Claudia said.
“You’ve already talked to LoddStone?”
“Last night,” Skippy Deere said with a
grin.
“I brought the script over to them and they
gave me the green light if I can put everything
together.
And listen, Claudia, don’t shit me.
I know you’ve got Athena in your pocket
on this, that’s why you’re being so tough.”
He paused for a moment.
“That’s what I told LoddStone.
Now let’s go to work.”
That had been the beginning of the great project.
She could not let it go down the drain now.
Claudia was approaching the traffic light
where she would have to take a left turn onto
the side road that would lead her to the Colony.
For the first time, she felt a sense of panic.
Athena was so strong-willed, as stars must
be, that she would never change her mind.
No matter; if Athena refused, she would fly
to Vegas and ask her brother, Cross, to help.
He had never failed her.
Not when they were growing up, not when she
went to live with her mother, not when their
mother died.
Claudia had a memory of the great festive
occasions at the Clericuzio mansion on Long
Island.
A setting from a Grimm’s fairy tale, mansion
enclosed by walls, she and Cross playing among
the fig trees.
There were two groups of boys ranging from
eight to twelve years old.
The opposing group was led by Dante Clericuzio,
grandson of the old Don who had stationed
himself at an upstairs window like a dragon.
Dante was an aggressive boy who loved to fight,
who loved to be a general, and the only boy
who dared to challenge her brother, Cross,
in physical combat.
Dante had Claudia on the ground, hitting her,
trying to beat her into submission, when Cross
appeared.
Then Dante and Cross had fought.
What had struck Claudia then was how confident
Cross had been in the face of Dante’s ferocity.
And Cross won easily.
And so Claudia could not understand her mother’s
choice.
How could she not love Cross more?
Cross was so much more worthy.
Proving his worth by electing to go with his
father.
And Claudia never doubted that Cross had wanted
to stay with his mother and her.
In the years that followed the disruption,
the family still maintained a relationship
of sorts.
Claudia came to know, by conversations, by
the body language of the people around them,
that her brother Cross had to some degree
achieved their father’s eminence.
The affection between her and her brother
remained constant, though they were now completely
different.
She realized that Cross was part of the Clericuzio
Family, she was not.
Two years after Claudia moved to L.A., when
she was twenty-three, her mother, Nalene,
was diagnosed with cancer.
Cross, then working with Gronevelt at the
Xanadu after making his bones for the Clericuzio,
came to spend the last two weeks with them
in Sacramento.
Cross hired nurses around the clock and a
cook and housekeeper.
The three of them lived together for the first
time since the breakup of the family.
Nalene forbade Pippi to visit her.
The cancer had affected Nalene’s eyesight,
so Claudia read to her constantly, from magazines,
from newspapers and books.
Cross went out to do the shopping.
Sometimes he had to fly to Vegas for an afternoon
to take care of Hotel business, but he always
returned at evening.
During the night, Cross and Claudia would
take turns holding their mother’s hand,
comforting her.
And though she was heavily medicated, she
continually pressed their hands.
Sometimes she hallucinated and thought her
two children were little again.
One terrible night she wept and begged forgiveness
of Cross for what she had done to him.
Cross had to hold her in his arms and reassure
her that everything had turned out for the
best.
During the long evenings when their mother
was deep into a drugged sleep, Cross and Claudia
told each other the details of their lives.
Cross explained that he had sold the Collection
Agency and left the Clericuzio Family, though
they had used their influence to get him his
job at the Xanadu Hotel.
He hinted at his power and told Claudia that
she was welcome at the Hotel anytime, RFB—room,
food, and beverage free.
Claudia asked how he could do that and Cross
told her with just a touch of pride, “I
have the Pencil.”
Claudia found that pride comical and a little
sad.
Claudia seemingly felt their mother’s death
far more strongly than Cross, but the experience
had brought them together again.
They regained their childhood intimacy.
Clau-dia frequently went to Vegas over the
years and met Gronevelt and observed the close
relationship the old man had with her brother.
During these years Claudia saw that Cross
had a certain kind of power, but that he never
linked his power with the Clericuzio Family.
Since Claudia had severed all ties with the
Family and never attended the funerals, weddings,
and christenings, she didn’t know that Cross
still was part of the Family social structure.
And Cross never spoke of it to her.
She rarely saw her father.
He had no interest in her.
New Year’s Eve was the biggest event in
Vegas; people all over the country flocked
there, but Cross always had a suite for Claudia.
Claudia was not a big gambler, but one New
Year’s Eve she got carried away.
She had brought an aspiring actor with her
and was trying to impress him.
She lost control and signed fifty thousand
dollars in markers.
Cross had come down to the suite with the
markers in his hand, and there was a curious
look on his face.
Claudia recognized it when he spoke.
It was his father’s face.
“Claudia,” Cross said, “I thought you
were smarter than me.
What the hell is this?”
Claudia felt a little sheepish.
Cross had often warned her to gamble only
for small stakes.
Also to never increase her bets when she was
losing.
And to spend no more than two or three hours
gambling every day, because the length of
time spent gambling was the greatest trap.
Claudia had violated all his advice.
. . .
She said, “Cross, give me a couple of weeks
and I’ll pay it off.”
She was surprised by her brother’s reaction.
“I’ll kill you before I let you pay off
these markers.”
Very deliberately he tore up the slips of
paper and put them in his pocket.
He said, “Look, I invite you down here because
I want to see you, not to take your money.
Get this through your head, you cannot win.
It has nothing to do with luck.
Two and two make four.”
“Okay, okay,” Claudia said.
“I don’t mind having to tear up these
markers, but I hate your being dumb,” Cross
said.
They had left it at that, but Claudia wondered.
Did Cross have that much power?
Would Gronevelt approve or would he even know
about this?
There had been other such incidents, but one
of the most chilling involved a woman named
Loretta Lang.
Loretta had been a singing and dancing star
in the Xanadu Follies show.
She had an abundance of verve and a natural
humorous perkiness that charmed Claudia.
Cross introduced them after the show.
Loretta Lang was as charming in person as
she was on the stage.
But Claudia noticed that Cross was not as
charmed, in fact seemed a little irritated
by her vivacity.
On Claudia’s next visit, she brought along
Melo Stuart for an evening in Vegas where
they could catch the Follies show.
Melo had come merely to indulge Claudia, not
expecting much.
He watched appraisingly and then told Claudia,
“This girl has a real shot.
Not singing or dancing, but she’s a natural
comic.
A female with that is gold.”
Backstage to meet Loretta, Melo put on his
game face and said, “Loretta, I loved you.
Loved you.
Understand?
Can you come to L.A. next week?
I’ll arrange to have you on film to show
to a studio friend of mine.
But first you have to sign a contract with
my agency.
You know I have to put in a lot of work before
I make any money.
That’s the business, but remember I love
you.”
Loretta threw her arms around Melo.
There was no witty mocking of devotion here,
Claudia noted.
A date was set and the three of them had dinner
together to celebrate, before Melo caught
his early morning plane back to L.A.
During supper Loretta confessed that she was
already under an airtight contract with an
agency that specialized in nightclub entertainment.
A contract with three years to run.
Melo assured Loretta that everything could
be ironed out.
But things could not be ironed out.
Loretta’s showbiz agency insisted on controlling
her career for the next three years.
Loretta, frantic, astonished Claudia by asking
her to appeal to her brother, Cross.
“What the hell can Cross do?”
Claudia asked.
Loretta said, “He has a lot of clout in
this town.
He can get a deal I can live with.
Please?”
When Claudia went up to the penthouse suite
on the roof of the Hotel and presented the
problem to Cross, her brother looked at her
with disgust.
He shook his head.
“What the hell’s the big deal?”
Claudia asked.
“Just put the word in, that’s all I’m
asking.”
“You are dumb,” Cross said.
“I’ve seen dozens of dames like her.
They ride friends like you up to the top and
then you’re history.”
“So what?”
Claudia said.
“She’s really talented.
This could change her whole life for the better.”
Cross shook his head again.
“Don’t ask me to do this,” he said.
“Why not?”
Claudia asked.
She was used to asking people favors for other
people, it was part of the movie business.
“Because once I get into it, I have to succeed,”
Cross said.
“I’m not expecting you to succeed, I’m
just asking you to do your best,” Claudia
said.
“At least then I can tell Loretta we tried.”
Cross laughed.
“You really are dumb,” he said.
“Okay, tell Loretta and her agency to come
and see me tomorrow.
Ten A.M. sharp.
And you might as well be there too.”
At the meeting the next morning, Claudia met
Loretta’s showbiz agent for the first time.
His name was Tolly Nevans, and he was dressed
in the casual Vegas style, modified by the
seriousness of the meeting.
That is, he wore a blue blazer over a collarless
white shirt and blue denim pants.
“Cross, a pleasure to see you again,”
Tolly Nevans said.
“We’ve met?”
Cross asked.
He never had handled the business details
of the Follies show personally.
“A long time ago,” Nevans said smoothly.
“When Loretta opened her first time at the
Xanadu.”
Claudia noted the difference between the L.A.
agents who dealt with big-time film talent
and Tolly Nevans, who managed the much smaller-time
world of nightclub entertainment.
Nevans was a little more nervous, his physical
appearance not so overpowering.
He did not have the complete confidence of
Melo Stuart.
Loretta pecked Cross on the cheek but did
not say anything to him.
Indeed she showed none of her usual vivacity.
She sat next to Claudia, who sensed Loretta’s
tension.
Cross was in a golf outfit, white slacks,
a white T-shirt, and white sneakers.
He wore a blue baseball cap on his head.
He offered drinks from the wet bar but they
all refused.
Then he said quietly, “Let’s get this
business settled.
Loretta?”
Her voice trembled.
“Tolly wants to keep his percentage of everything
I earn.
That includes any movie work.
But the L.A. agency naturally wants their
full percentage of any movie work they get
me.
I can’t pay two percentages.
And then Tolly wants to call the shots on
anything I do.
The L.A. people won’t stand for that and
neither will I.”
Nevans shrugged.
“We have a contract.
We just want her to live up to that contract.”
Loretta said, “But then my film agent won’t
sign me up.”
Cross said, “It seems simple to me.
Loretta, you just buy your way out of the
contract.”
Nevans said, “Loretta is a great performer,
she makes a lot of money for us.
We’ve always promoted her, we always believed
in her talent.
We’ve invested a lot of money.
We can’t just let her go now when she’s
paying off.”
Cross said, “Loretta, buy him out.”
Loretta almost wailed, “I can’t pay two
percentages.
It’s too cruel.”
Claudia tried to control the smile on her
face.
But Cross did not.
Nevans looked hurt.
Finally Cross said, “Claudia, go get your
golf gear.
I want you to shoot nine holes with me.
I’ll meet you downstairs at the Cashier’s
cage when I’m finished here.”
Claudia had wondered at Cross being dressed
for the meeting in such a cavalier way.
As if he were not taking it seriously.
It had offended her and she knew it offended
Loretta.
But it had reassured Tolly.
The man had not proposed any compromise.
So Claudia said to Cross, “I’ll stick
around, I want to see Solomon at work.”
Cross could never get angry at his sister.
He laughed and she smiled back at him.
Then Cross turned to Nevans.
“I see you’re not bending.
And I think you’re right.
How about a percentage of her movie earnings
for one year?
But you have to relinquish control or it won’t
work.”
Loretta burst in angrily, “I’m not giving
him that.”
Nevans said, “And that’s not what I want.
The percentage is okay but what if we have
a great booking for you and you’re tied
up in a movie?
We lose money.”
Cross sighed and said almost sadly, “Tolly,
I want you to let this girl out of her contract.
It is a request.
Our hotel does a lot of business with you.
Do me a favor.”
For the first time Nevans seemed alarmed.
He said in almost a pleading tone, “I’d
love to do you this favor, Cross, but I have
to check with my partners at the Agency.”
He paused for a moment.
“Maybe I can arrange a buyout.”
“No,” Cross said.
“I’m asking a favor.
No buyout.
And I want your answer now so I can go out
and enjoy my golf game.”
He paused.
“Just say yes or no.”
Claudia was shocked by this abruptness.
Cross was not threatening or intimidating
as far as she could see.
In fact he seemed to be giving up the whole
affair, as if he had lost interest.
But Claudia could see that Nevans was shaken.
What Nevans replied was surprising.
“But that’s unfair,” he said.
He shot a reproachful glance at Loretta, she
lowered her eyes.
Cross pulled his baseball cap sideways in
a swaggering manner.
“It’s just a request,” he said.
“You can refuse me.
It’s up to you.”
“No, no,” Nevans said.
“I just didn’t know you felt so strongly,
that you were such good friends.”
Suddenly Claudia saw an amazing change in
her brother.
Cross leaned over and gave Tolly Nevans a
half hug of affection.
His smile warmed his face.
That bastard is handsome, she thought.
And then Cross said in a voice full of gratitude,
“Tolly, I won’t forget this.
Look, you have carte blanche here at the Xanadu
for any new talent you want to showcase, third
billing at the least.
I’ll even arrange to have a special night
at the Follies with all the talent from you
and on that night, I want you and your partners
to have dinner with me at the Hotel.
Call me anytime and I’ll leave word you
get through.
Direct.
Okay?”
Claudia realized two things.
Cross had deliberately shown his power.
And that Cross had been careful to recompense
Nevans to some degree but only after he had
knuckled under, not before.
Tolly Nevans would have his special night,
would bask in power for that one night.
Claudia realized further that Cross had allowed
her to see that power to show his love for
her and that that love had a material force.
And she saw in his beautifully planed face,
in that beauty she had envied from childhood,
of the sensual lips, the perfect nose, the
oval eyes, all slightly hardening as if turning
into the marble of ancient statues.
Claudia turned off the Pacific Coast Highway
and drove to the gate of the Malibu Colony.
She loved the Colony, the houses right on
the beach, the ocean sparkling in front of
them, and far off on the water, she saw again
the reflections of the mountains behind them.
She parked the car in front of Athena’s
house.
Boz Skannet was lying on the public beach
south of the Malibu Colony fence.
That fence of plain wire mesh ran down the
beach for about ten steps into the water.
But this fence was only a formal barrier.
If you went out far enough, you could swim
around it.
Boz was scouting for his next attack on Athena.
Today would be a probing foray and so he had
driven out to the public beach, bathing suit
covered with a T-shirt and tennis slacks.
His beach bag, really a tennis bag, held the
vial of acid wrapped in towels.
From his spot on the beach he could look through
the mesh fence at Athena’s house.
He could see the two private security guards
on the beach.
They were armed.
If the back was covered, certainly the front
of the house was covered.
He didn’t mind hurting the guards but he
didn’t want to make it seem like a madman
slaughtering a whole bunch of people.
That would detract from his justified destruction
of Athena.
Boz Skannet took off his slacks and T-shirt
and stretched out on his blanket, staring
over the sand and the blue sheet of the Pacific
Ocean beyond.
The warmth of the sun made him drowsy.
He thought of Athena.
In college he had heard a professor lecturing
on Emerson’s essays and quoting, “Beauty
is its own excuse.”
Was it Emerson, was it Beauty?
But he had thought of Athena.
It is so rare to find a human being so beautiful
in physical form and so virtuous in other
parts of her nature.
And so he thought of Thena.
Everybody had called her Thena in those days
of her girlhood.
He had loved her so much in his youth that
he lived in a dream of happiness that she
loved him.
He could not believe that life could be so
sweet.
And little by little everything had been tarnished
with decay.
How did she dare to be so perfect?
How did she dare to be so demanding of love?
How did she dare to make so many people love
her?
Didn’t she know how dangerous that would
be?
And Boz wondered at himself.
Why had his own love turned to hate?
It was simple really.
Because he knew he could not possess her to
the end of their lives; that one day he must
lose her.
That one day she would lie down with other
men, that one day she would disappear from
his Heaven.
And never think of him again.
He felt the sun’s warmth move off his face
and opened his eyes.
Looming above him was a very large, well-dressed
man who was carrying a folding chair.
Boz recognized him.
It was Jim Losey, the detective who had interrogated
him after he threw the water in Thena’s
face.
Boz squinted up at him.
“What a coincidence, both of us swimming
on the same beach.
What the fuck do you want?”
Losey unfolded the chair and sat on it.
“My ex-wife gave me this chair.
I was interrogating and arresting so many
surfers she said I might as well be comfortable.”
He looked down at Boz Skannet almost kindly.
“I just wanted to ask you a few questions.
One, what are you doing so close to Miss Aquitane’s
house?
You’re violating the judge’s restraining
order.”
“I’m on a public beach, there’s a fence
in between us, and I’m in a bathing suit.
Do I look like I’m harassing her?”
Boz said.
Losey had a sympathetic smile on his face.
“Hey, look,” he said, “if I was married
to that broad, I couldn’t stay away from
her either.
How about if I take a look in your beach bag?”
Boz put the beach bag beneath his head.
“No,” he said.
“Unless you have a warrant.”
Losey gave him a friendly smile.
“Don’t make me arrest you,” he said.
“Or just beat the shit out of you and take
the bag.”
This aroused Boz.
He stood up, he offered the bag to Losey,
but then he held it away from him.
“Try and take it,” he said.
Jim Losey was startled.
In his own estimation he had never met anybody
tougher than himself.
In any other situation he would have drawn
his blackjack or his gun and beaten the man
to a pulp.
Perhaps it was the sand under his feet that
made him uncertain, or perhaps it was the
utter fearlessness of Skannet.
Boz was smiling at him.
“You’ll have to shoot me,” he said.
“I’m stronger than you.
Big as you are.
And if you shoot me, you won’t have probable
cause.”
Losey admired the man’s perceptiveness.
In a physical struggle the issue might be
in doubt.
And there was no cause to draw a weapon.
“Okay,” he said.
He folded up his chair and started to walk
away.
Then he turned and said admiringly, “You’re
really a tough guy.
You win.
But don’t give me a good probable cause.
You see I haven’t measured your distance
from the house, you may be just out of range
of the judge’s order.
. . .”
Boz laughed.
“I won’t give you cause, don’t worry.”
He watched Jim Losey walk off the beach to
his car and drive away.
Boz put his blanket into the beach bag and
returned to his own car.
He put the beach bag in the trunk, took the
car key off its ring, and hid it under the
front seat.
Then he went back to the beach for his swim
around the fence.
CHAPTER 5
.
ATHENA AQUITANE HAD earned her way to stardom
in the traditional way that the public seldom
appreciates.
She spent long years in training: acting classes,
dance and movement classes, voice lessons,
extensive reading in dramatic literature,
all necessary to the art of acting.
And of course the scut work.
She made the rounds of agents, casting directors,
mildly lecherous producers and directors,
the more dinosaur-like sexual advances of
studio wheels and chiefs.
In her first year she earned her living by
doing commercials, and some modeling, as a
skimpily clad hostess for automotive expositions,
but that was only her first year.
Then her acting skills began to pay off.
She had lovers who showered her with gifts
of jewelry and money.
Some of them offered marriage.
The affairs were brief and ended on friendly
terms.
None of this had been painful or humiliating
to her, not even when the buyer of a Rolls-Royce
assumed she came with the car.
She had put him off with the joke that she
had the same price as the car.
She was fond of men, she enjoyed sex, but
only as a treat and reward for more serious
endeavor.
Men were not a serious part of her world.
Acting was Life.
Her secret knowledge of herself was serious.
The dangers of the world were serious.
But acting came first.
Not the tiny movie roles that enabled her
to pay expenses, but the great acting parts
in great plays put on by local theater groups
and then the plays at the Mark Taper Forum
that finally propelled her toward major film
roles.
Her real life was the parts she played, she
felt more alive as she brought her characters
to life, carried them around inside her while
living out her ordinary existence.
Her love affairs were like amusements, playing
golf and tennis, dining with friends, dreamlike
substances.
Real life was only in the cathedral-like theater:
putting on makeup, adding one splash of color
to her costume, her face contorting with emotions
of the lines of the play running through her
head, and then, looking into that deep blackness
of the audience—God finally showing his
face—she pleaded her fate.
She wept, fell in love, screamed with anguish,
begged forgiveness for her secret sins, and
sometimes experienced the redemptive joy of
happiness found.
She hungered for fame and success to obliterate
her past, to drown her memories of Boz Skannet,
of the child they had together, of the betrayal
by her beauty; a sly fairy godmother’s boon.
Like any artist, she wanted the world to love
her.
She knew she was beautiful—how could she
not, her world constantly told her so—but
she knew also she was intelligent.
And so from the beginning she believed in
herself.
What she really could not believe, at the
beginning, was that she had the indispensable
ingredients of true genius: enormous energy
and concentration.
And curiosity.
Acting and music were Athena’s true loves,
and to be able to concentrate on these things
she used her energy to make herself expert
in everything else.
She learned to fix a car, became a superb
cook, excelled at sports.
She studied lovemaking in the literature and
in life, knowing how important it was in her
chosen profession.
She had a flaw.
She could not bear to inflict pain on a fellow
human being, and since in this life this was
impossible to avoid, she was an unhappy woman.
Yet she made hard-nosed decisions that furthered
her place in the world.
She used her power as a Bankable Star; she
sometimes had a coldness that was as intense
as her beauty.
Powerful men beseeched her to appear in their
movies, men begged to climb into her bed.
She influenced, even demanded, the choosing
of directors and costars.
She could commit minor crimes without punishment,
outrage custom, defy nearly all moralities,
and who was to say who was the real Athena?
She had the inscrutability of all Bankable
Stars, she was a twin, you could not separate
her real life from the lives she lived on
screen.
All this and the world loved her, but that
was not enough.
She knew her inner ugliness.
There was one person who did not love her
and that caused her to suffer.
It is part of the definition of an actress
that she will despair if she gets one hundred
positive reviews and a single hateful one.
At the end of her first five years in Los
Angeles, Athena got her first starring role
in film and made her greatest conquest.
Like all top male stars, Steven Stallings
had a veto over the female leading role of
each of his pictures.
He saw Athena in a Mark Taper Forum play and
recognized her talent.
But even more he was struck by her beauty,
and so he chose Athena to costar with him
in his next film.
Athena was completely surprised and flattered.
She knew this was her big break, and initially
she did not know why she had been chosen.
Her agent, Melo Stuart, enlightened her.
They were in Melo’s office, a wonderfully
decorated room with Oriental bric-a-brac,
gold-threaded carpets, and heavy comfortable
furniture all bathed in artificial lights
since the curtains were closed to cut out
daylight.
Melo liked an English tea in his office rather
than going out for lunch and picked up the
little sandwiches and popped them into his
mouth as he talked.
He only went out to lunch with his really
famous clients.
“You deserve this break,” he told Athena.
“You’re a great actress.
But you’ve only been in this town a few
years and despite your intelligence you’re
a little green.
So don’t take offense about what I’m going
to say—here’s what happened.”
He paused for a moment.
“Usually I would never explain this, usually
it’s not necessary.”
“But I’m so green,” Athena said smiling.
“Not green exactly,” Melo said.
“But you’re so focused on your art, you
sometimes seem unaware of the social complexi-ties
of the industry.”
Athena was amused.
“So tell me how I got the part.”
Melo said, “Stallings’s agent called me.
He said Stallings saw you in the Taper play
and was knocked out by your performance.
He definitely wants you in the picture.
Then the producer called me to negotiate and
we made the deal.
Straight salary, two hundred grand, no points,
that comes later in your career, and no strings
for any other picture.
That’s a really great deal for you.”
“Thank you,” Athena said.
“I really shouldn’t have to be saying
this,” Melo said.
“Steven has a habit of falling madly in
love with his costars.
Sincerely, but he’s a very ardent wooer.”
Athena interrupted him.
“Melo, don’t spell it out.”
“I feel I must,” Melo said.
He gazed at her fondly.
He himself, usually so impervious, had fallen
in love with Athena at the beginning, but
since she had never acted seductively, he
had taken the hint and not revealed his feelings.
She was, after all, a valuable piece of property
that would in the future earn him millions.
“Are you trying to tell me that I’m supposed
to jump on his bones the first time we’re
alone?”
Athena said dryly.
“Isn’t my great talent enough?”
“Absolutely not,” Melo said.
“And absolutely.
A great actress is a great actress, no matter
what.
But you know how someone becomes a great star
in film?
At some time they have to get the great part
at exactly the right moment.
And this is that great part for you.
You cannot afford to miss it.
And what’s so hard about falling in love
with Steven Stallings?
A hundred million women all over the world
love him, why not you?
You should be flattered.”
“I’m flattered,” Athena said coolly.
“But if I really hate him, then what?”
Melo popped another tea sandwich into his
mouth.
“What’s to hate?
He’s really a sweet man, I swear to you.
But at least dally with him until they’ve
shot you enough in the picture so they can’t
cut you out.”
“What if I’m so good they won’t want
to cut me?”
Athena said.
Melo sighed.
“To tell the truth, Steven won’t wait
that long.
If you’re not in love with him after three
days, you’ll be out of the picture.”
“That’s sexual harassment,” Athena said,
laughing.
“There can be no sexual harassment in the
movie business,” Melo said.
“In one form or another you’re offering
your ass for sale by just going in.”
“I meant the part where I have to fall in
love with him,” Athena said.
“Straight screwing is not enough for Steven?”
“He can get all the screwing he wants,”
Melo said.
“He’s in love with you so he wants love
in return.
Until the shoot is over.”
He sighed.
“Then you’ll both fall out of love because
you’ll be too busy working.”
He paused for a moment.
“It won’t be insulting to your dignity,”
he said.
“A star like Steven indicates his interest.
The recipient, yourself, responds or shows
a lack of interest in that interest.
Steven will send you flowers the first day.
The second day after rehearsal he invites
you to dinner to study the script.
There’s nothing forced about it.
Except, of course, that you will be cut from
the picture if you don’t go.
With a full payoff, I can do that for you.”
“Melo, don’t you think I’m good enough
to make it without selling my body?”
Athena said with mock reproach.
“Of course you are,” Melo said.
“You’re young, only twenty-five.
You can wait two or three, even four or five
years.
I have absolute faith in your talent.
But give it a chance.
Everybody loves Steven.”
It went exactly as Melo Stuart predicted.
Athena received flowers the first day.
The second day they rehearsed with the whole
company.
It was a dramatic comedy where laughter led
to tears, one of the hardest things to do.
Athena was impressed with Steven Stallings’s
skill.
He read his part in a monotone with no effort
to impress but still the lines came alive,
and on the variations he invariably picked
the one most true.
They played one scene a dozen different ways
and responded to each other, followed each
other like dancers.
At the end, he muttered, “Good, good,”
and smiled at her with respectful acknowledgment
that was purely professional.
At the end of the day Steven finally turned
on his charm.
“I think this may be a great movie because
of you,” he said.
“How about getting together tonight and
really doing a number on this script?”
He paused for a moment and then said with
a boyish smile that was endearing, “We were
really good together.”
“Thank you,” Athena said.
“When and where?”
Immediately Steven’s face expressed a polite,
playful hor-ror.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“Your choice.”
At that moment Athena decided to accept her
role and to play it as a true professional.
He was the superstar.
She was the newcomer.
But all the choices were his and it was her
duty to choose what he wanted.
Ringing in her ears was Melo saying, “you
wait two, three, four, five years.”
She couldn’t wait.
“Would you mind coming to my place?”
Athena asked.
“I’ll make dinner simple so we can work
while we eat.”
She paused for a moment, then said, “At
seven?”
Because she was a perfectionist, Athena prepared
for the mutual seduction physically and mentally.
Dinner would be light so it would not affect
their work or their sexual performance.
Though she rarely touched alcohol, she bought
a bottle of white wine.
The meal would show off her talent as a cook,
but she could prepare while they worked.
Clothes.
She understood that the seduction was supposed
to be accidental, with no prior intent.
But they should not be used as a signal to
ward him off either.
As an actor, Steven would be looking to interpret
every sign.
So she wore faded blue jeans that showed her
buttocks to advantage, the mottled blue and
faded white invitingly cheer-ful.
No belt.
Above, a frilly white silk blouse that though
it showed no cleavage, indicated the milkier
color of her breasts beneath.
Her ears she decorated with small round clip-ons,
green to match her eyes.
Still it was just a little too severe, a little
standoffish.
It left room for doubt.
Then she had a stroke of genius.
She painted her toenails a scarlet red and
greeted him barefoot.
Steven Stallings arrived carrying a bottle
of good red wine, not super but very good.
He was also dressed for business.
Baggy brown corduroy trousers, blue denim
shirt, white sneakers, his dark black hair
carelessly combed.
Under his arm was the script with yellow note
slips peeking out demurely.
The only thing that gave him away was the
faint scent of cologne.
They ate casually at the kitchen table.
He complimented her on the food, as well he
should.
And as they ate they leafed through their
scripts, comparing notes, changing dialogue
for smoother delivery.
After dinner they moved to the living room
and played out specific scenes they had targeted
as trouble areas in the script.
Through all this they were very conscious
of each other, and it affected their work.
Athena noticed that Steven Stallings was playing
his part perfectly.
He was professional, respectful.
Just his eyes betrayed his genuine admiration
of her beauty, his appreciation of her talent
as an actress, of her mastery of the material.
Finally he asked her if she was too tired
to play the crucial love scene in the movie
script.
By that time the dinner had been comfortably
digested.
By that time they had become close friends,
like the characters in the script.
They played the love scene, Steven kissing
her slightly on the lips but leaving out the
body gropings.
After the first chaste kiss, he looked deeply
and sincerely into her eyes, and with perfect
husky emotion in his voice, he said, “I
wanted to do that the first time I saw you.”
Athena held his eyes with her own.
Then she lowered them, pulled his head down
gently and gave him a chaste kiss.
The necessary signal.
They were both surprised by the genuine passion
with which he responded.
Which proved she was the better actor, Athena
thought.
But he was skillful.
As he undressed her, his hands smoothed her
skin and his fingers probed, his tongue tickled
the inside of her thigh and her body responded.
This wasn’t so terrible, she thought as
they moved into the bedroom.
And Steven was so startlingly handsome, his
classic face, suffused with passion, had an
intensity that could not be duplicated on
film, indeed on film this would be degraded
into lecherousness.
When he made love on screen it was far more
spiritual.
Athena had now worked herself into the part
of a woman overcome with mad physical passion.
They were perfectly in sync and in one blinding
moment rose to a simultaneous climax.
Lying back in exhaustion, both wondered how
the scene would have appeared on film and
decided it would not have been good enough
for a take.
It had not revealed character as it should,
or advanced the story as it should.
It had lacked the inner tender emotion of
true love or even true lust.
There would have to be another take.
Steven Stallings fell in love, but he often
did that.
Athena, despite the fact that it was in some
sense professional rape, felt pleased that
things had turned out so well.
There was no real downside except the question
of free will.
And it could be said of any life that the
suppression of free will, judiciously exercised,
was often necessary for human survival.
Steven was happy that now in the shooting
of his new film he had all his ducks in a
row.
He had a good working partner.
They would have a pleasant relationship, he
wouldn’t have to look around for sex.
Also, he had rarely had a woman so blessed
with talent and beauty as Athena, and also
so good in bed.
And obviously madly in love with him, which
of course could be a problem later on.
What happened next cemented their love.
They both jumped out of bed and said, “Let’s
go back to work.”
They picked up their scripts and, naked, perfected
their readings.
However, one disconcerting note for Athena
was when Steven put on his shorts.
They were scalloped pink, especially designed
to show off his shapely buttocks, those buns
that were the source of ecstasy to his female
fans.
Another odd note was when he proudly told
her that he had used a condom made especially
for him, manufactured by a company he had
invested in.
You could never detect he was wearing one.
They were also absolutely impregnable.
And he asked her what would be the best marketing
name for them: Excalibur or King Arthur.
He liked King Arthur.
Athena thought it over for a moment.
Then she said with mock seriousness, “Maybe
a more politically correct name?”
“You’re right,” Steven said.
“They’re so expensive to make we have
to sell them to both sexes.
Our tag marketing line will be ‘Condom of
the Stars.’
How about that for a name?
Star Condoms.”
The movie and their affair were both huge
successes.
Athena had successfully climbed the first
rung of the ladder to stardom, and each picture
she made over the next five years solidified
that success.
The affair, as most star affairs go, was also
a success but naturally short-lived.
Steven and Athena loved each other with help
from the script, but their love had the humor
and detachment made necessary by his fame
and her ambition.
Neither could afford to be more in love than
the other and this equality in love was death
to their passion.
Also there was the question of geography.
The affair ended when the picture ended.
Athena went on location to India, Steven on
location to Italy.
There were phone calls and Christmas cards
and gifts, they even flew to Hawaii for a
weekend of ecstasy.
Working together on a movie was like being
Knights at the Round Table.
Searching for fame and fortune was looking
for the Holy Grail, you had to do it on your
own.
There had been speculation that they might
marry.
Of this there was no possibility.
Athena enjoyed the affair but always saw its
comic side.
Though she made it her business as a professional
actor to appear more in love than Steven,
it was almost impossible for her not to giggle.
Steven was so sincere, so perfect as an ardent
and sensitive lover, that she could just as
well have gone to one of his films.
His physical beauty could be enjoyed but not
constantly admired.
His constant use of drugs and liquor was so
controlled it was impossible to pass judgment.
He treated cocaine as a prescription drug,
alcohol made him more charming.
Even his success had not made him willful
or moody.
So it was a great surprise when Steven proposed
marriage.
Athena refused with good humor.
She knew that Steven screwed everything that
moved, on location, in Hollywood, and even
at the rehabilitation clinic when his drug
problem got out of control.
He was not a man she wanted to have as a semipermanent
part of her life.
Steven took her refusal well.
It had been a momentary weakness springing
from an excess of cocaine.
He was almost relieved.
Over the next five years, as Athena shot up
to the top rank of stardom, Steven began to
fade.
He was still an idol to his fans, especially
women, but he was unlucky or unintelligent
in picking his roles.
Drugs and alcohol made him more careless in
his work habits.
Through Melo Stuart, Steven had asked Athena
for the male lead in Messalina.
The shoe was now on the other foot.
Athena had approval of her costar and she
gave him the role.
She said yes out of a perverse sense of gratitude
and because he was perfect for the part, however
with the proviso that he did not have to sleep
with her.
During the last five years Athena had had
short affairs.
One had been with a young producer, Kevin
Marrion, the only son of Eli Marrion.
Kevin Marrion was her age but a veteran of
the movie business.
He had produced his first major film at the
age of twenty-one and it had been a hit.
Which convinced him he had a genius for movies.
Since that time he had produced three flops,
and now only his father gave him credibility
in the industry.
Kevin Marrion was extremely good-looking;
after all, Eli Marrion’s first wife had
been one of the greatest beauties in the business.
Unfortunately his looks iced out in the camera
and he failed all his screen tests.
As a serious artist his future was as a producer.
Athena and Kevin met when he asked her to
star in his new film.
Athena listened to him in rapt wonder and
horror.
He talked with the particular innocence of
the very serious-minded.
“This is the best movie script I have ever
read,” Kevin said.
“I must tell you in all honesty that I helped
rewrite it.
Athena you are absolutely the only actress
that deserves this role.
I could have any actress in the industry but
I want you.”
He looked sternly at her to convince her of
his sincerity.
Athena was fascinated by his pitching of the
script.
It was the story of a homeless woman living
on the streets who is redeemed by the finding
of an abandoned infant in a garbage pail and
who then goes on to become the leader of the
homeless in America.
Half of the film consisted of her pushing
the shopping cart that held all her possessions.
And after surviving alcohol, drugs, near starvation,
rape, and a government attempt to take away
her foundling, she goes on to run for president
of the United States on an independent ticket.
Not winning, however—that was the class
of the script.
Athena’s fascination had really been horror.
This was a script that would require her to
be a homeless, despairing woman in a desolate
background in old clothes.
Visually, a disaster.
The sentimentality was rank, the intelligence
level of dramatic construction, idiotic.
It was a bewildering, hopeless mess.
Kevin said, “If you play this part, I will
die happy.”
And Athena thought, Am I crazy or is this
guy a moron?
But he was a powerful producer.
Obviously sincere, and obviously a man who
could get things done.
She looked despairingly at Melo Stuart, and
he smiled back at her encouragingly.
But she could not speak.
“Wonderful.
Wonderful idea,” Melo said.
“Classic.
Rise and fall.
Fall and rise.
The very essence of drama.
But Kevin, you know how important it is for
Athena after her breakthrough to select the
proper follow-up.
Let us read the script and we’ll get back
to you.”
“Of course,” Kevin said and handed both
of them copies of the script.
“I know you’ll love it.”
Melo took Athena to a small Thai restaurant
on Melrose.
They ordered their meal and flipped through
the script.
“I’ll kill myself first,” Athena said.
“Is Kevin retarded?”
“You still don’t understand the movie
business,” Melo said.
“Kevin has intelligence.
He’s just doing something he is not equipped
to do.
I’ve seen worse.”
“Where?
When?”
Athena said.
“I can’t recall offhand,” Melo said.
“You’re a big enough star to say no but
you’re not big enough to make unnecessary
enemies.”
“Eli Marrion is too smart to back his son
up on this one,” Athena said.
“He must know how terrible this script is.”
“Sure,” Melo said.
“He even jokes that he has a son who makes
flop commercial movies and a daughter who
makes serious movies that lose money.
But Eli has to make his children happy.
We don’t.
We say no to this movie.
But there’s a catch.
LoddStone owns the rights to a big novel that
has a great role for you.
If you turn Kevin down, you may not get that
other part.”
Athena shrugged.
“This time I’ll wait.”
“Why not take both parts?
Make it a condition you do the novel first.
Then we’ll find an out on making Kevin’s
picture.”
“And that won’t make enemies?”
Athena asked him smiling.
“The first picture will be a big hit so
it won’t matter.
Then you can afford to make enemies.”
“Are you sure I can get out of Kevin’s
picture afterwards?”
Athena said.
“If I don’t get you out, you can fire
me,” Melo said.
He had already made the deal with Eli Marrion,
who could not give the direct no to his son
and had chosen this way out of the disaster.
Eli wanted to make Melo and Athena the villains.
And Melo didn’t mind.
Part of any movie agent’s job was to be
the villain in the script.
Everything worked out.
The first part, the film of the novel, made
Athena an absolutely first-rank star.
But unfortunately the consequences made her
decide on a period of celibacy.
During the sham of the preproduction of Kevin’s
movie that would never be made, it was predictable
that he would fall in love with Athena.
Kevin Marrion was a relatively innocent young
man for a producer, and he pursued Athena
with unabashed sincerity and ardor.
His enthusiasm and his social conscience were
his greatest charm.
One evening, in a moment of weakness compounded
by the guilt she felt about betraying the
picture, Athena took him to bed.
It was enjoyable enough and Kevin insisted
on marriage.
Meanwhile Athena and Melo had persuaded Claudia
De Lena to rewrite the script.
She rewrote it as farce and Kevin fired her.
He was so angry that he became a bore.
For Athena the affair was convenient.
It fitted in nicely with her working schedule.
And Kevin’s enthusiasm was pleasurable in
bed.
And his insistence on marriage even without
a prenuptial agreement was flattering, since
he would inherit LoddStone Studios one day.
But one night after listening to him talk
incessantly about the movies they were going
to make together, a sudden insight flashed
through Athena’s mind: “If I have to listen
to this guy one more minute, I will kill myself.”
Like many kind people exasperated into being
unkind, she went all the way.
Knowing she would feel guilty, she made it
a package.
In that moment, she told Kevin that not only
would she not marry him, but she would not
sleep with him anymore and that also she would
not appear in his movie.
Kevin was stunned.
“We have a contract,” he said.
“And we’ll enforce it.
You are betraying me in every way.”
“I know,” Athena said.
“Just talk to Melo.”
She was disgusted with herself.
Of course, Kevin was right, but she found
it interesting that he was more worried about
his movies than his love for her.
It was after this affair, her film career
assured, that Athena lost interest in men.
She remained celibate.
She had more important things to do, things
in which the love of men had no part.
Athena Aquitane and Claudia De Lena became
close friends solely because Claudia was persistent
in her pursuit of friendship with women she
liked.
She first met Athena while rewriting the script
of one of her early movies, when Athena was
not quite yet a great star.
Athena insisted on helping her with the script,
and although this was usually a scary process
for the writer, she proved to be intelligent
and a great help.
Her instincts on character and story were
always good and nearly always unselfish.
She was intelligent enough to know that the
stronger the characters around her, the more
she would have to play with in her own role.
They often worked in Athena’s home in Malibu,
and it was there they discovered they had
many things in common.
They were athletes: strong swimmers, top amateur
golfers, and very good on the tennis court.
The two of them played doubles together and
beat most of the male doubles on the Malibu
Beach tennis courts.
So when the picture finished shooting, they
continued their friendship.
Claudia told Athena everything about herself.
Athena told Claudia little.
It was that kind of friendship.
Claudia recognized this but it didn’t matter.
Claudia told of her affair with Steve Stallings.
Athena laughed delightedly and they compared
notes.
They agreed, yes, Steve had been great fun,
great in bed.
And so talented, he was a marvelously gifted
actor and a really sweet man.
“He was almost as beautiful as you,” Claudia
said.
She generously admired beauty in others.
Athena seemed not to have heard.
It was a habit she had when somebody mentioned
her beauty.
“Is he a better actor though?”
Athena said teasingly.
“Oh no, you’re a really great actor,”
Claudia said.
And then to provoke Athena into revealing
more of herself, she added, “But he’s
a lot happier person than you.”
“Really?”
Athena said.
“That may be.
But someday he will be a hell of a lot unhappier
than I ever will be.”
“Yeah,” Claudia said.
“The cocaine and booze will get him.
He’s not going to age well.
But he’s intelligent, maybe he’ll adapt.”
“I don’t ever want to become what he’s
going to be,” Athena said.
“And I won’t.”
“You’re my hero,” Claudia said.
“But you’re not going to beat the aging
process.
I know you don’t drink and booze or even
fool around much but your secrets will get
you.”
Athena laughed.
“My secrets will be my salvation,” she
said.
“My secrets are so banal they’re not even
worth telling.
We movie stars need our mystery.”
Every Saturday morning when they were not
working, they went shopping together on Rodeo
Drive.
Claudia was always amazed at how Athena could
disguise herself so that she would not be
recognized by fans or the clerks in the stores.
She wore a black wig and loose clothes to
disguise her figure.
She changed her makeup so her jaw seemed to
be thicker, her lips fuller, but most interesting
of all, it seemed as if she could rearrange
the features on her face.
She also wore contact lenses that changed
her brilliant green eyes to a demure hazel.
Her voice became a soft Southern drawl.
When Athena bought something, she put it on
one of Claudia’s charge cards and then reimbursed
her with a check when they had their late
lunch.
It was wonderful to relax in a restaurant
as complete nobodies; as Claudia joked, no
one ever recognized a screenwriter.
Twice a month Claudia spent the entire weekend
at Athena’s Malibu beach house for swimming
and tennis.
Claudia had let Athena read the second draft
of Messalina, and Athena had asked for the
lead role.
As if she were not a top star and Claudia
should not be begging her.
So when Claudia arrived in Malibu to persuade
Athena to go back to work on the picture,
she felt some hope for success.
After all, Athena would not only ruin her
own career but damage Claudia’s.
The first thing that shook Claudia’s confidence
was the tight security around Athena’s house,
in addition to the usual guards at the Malibu
Colony gates.
Two men with Pacific Ocean Security Company
uniforms were at the gate of the house itself.
Two additional guards patrolled the huge garden
inside.
When the little South American housekeeper
led her to the Ocean Room, she could see two
more guards on the beach outside.
All the guards had batons and holstered guns.
Athena greeted Claudia with a tight hug.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
“In a week I’ll be gone.”
“Why are you being so crazy?”
Claudia said.
“You’re going to let some jerk of a macho
man ruin your whole life.
And mine.
I can’t believe you’re so chicken.
Listen, I’ll stay with you tonight and tomorrow
we’ll get gun permits and start training.
In a couple of days we’ll be sharpshooters.”
Athena laughed and gave her another hug.
“Your Mafia blood is coming out,” she
said.
Claudia had told her about the Clericuzio
and her father.
They made drinks and sat in the stuffed chairs
that gave them a view of the ocean that was
like looking at some deep blue-green portrait
of water.
“You can’t change my mind and I’m not
chickenshit,” Athena said.
“Now, I’ll tell you the secret you wanted
to know and you can tell the Studio and then
maybe you’ll both understand.”
Then she told Claudia the whole story of her
marriage.
Of Boz Skannet’s sadism and cruelty and
deliberate humiliation and of her running
away.
. . .
With her astute, storyteller mind, Claudia
felt there was something missing in Athena’s
story, that she was deliberately leaving out
some important elements.
“What happened to the baby?”
Claudia asked.
Athena’s features arranged themselves into
a movie-star mask.
“I can’t tell you anything more about
that right now, in fact what I did tell you
about me having a baby is just between you
and me.
That’s the one part you mustn’t tell the
Studio.
I trust you with that.”
Claudia knew she couldn’t press Athena on
this.
“But why are you quitting the picture?”
Claudia asked.
“You’ll be protected.
Then you can disappear.”
“No,” Athena said.
“The Studio will only protect me while the
picture’s shooting.
And that won’t matter.
I know Boz.
Nothing will stop him.
If I stay, I’ll never finish the picture
anyway.”
At that moment they both noticed a man in
bathing trunks walking up from the water to
the house.
The two security guards intercepted him.
One of the guards blew a whistle and the two
guards in the garden came running around.
With the odds at four to one, the man in the
bathing trunks seemed to retreat slightly.
Athena was standing up, obviously shaken.
“It’s Boz,” she said to Claudia quietly.
“He’s doing this just to scare me.
It’s not his real move.”
She went out onto the deck and looked down
at the five men.
Claudia followed her.
Boz Skannet looked up at them, his eyes squinting,
his bronzed face painted by the sun.
His body, in the bathing trunks, looked lethal.
He smiled and said, “Hey, Athena, how about
inviting me in for a drink?”
Athena gave him a brilliant smile.
“I would if I had poison.
You’ve broken the court order—I could
have you locked up.”
“Nah, you wouldn’t,” Boz said.
“We’re too close, we have too many secrets
together.”
Though he smiled, he looked savage.
Claudia was reminded of the men who came to
the Cleri-cuzio feasts in Quogue.
One of the guards said, “He swam around
the fence from the public beach.
He must have a car there.
Or we can have him locked up.”
“No,” Athena said.
“Take him to his car.
And tell the Agency I want four more guards
around my house.”
Boz still had his face tilted up, his body
seemed to be a great statue rooted in the
sand.
“See you, Athena,” he said.
And then the guards led him away.
“He is frightening,” Claudia said.
“Maybe you’re right.
We would have to shoot cannons to stop him.”
“I’ll call you before I flee,” Athena
said, making it actressy.
“We can have one last dinner together.”
Claudia was almost in tears.
Boz had really frightened her, had reminded
her of her father.
“I’m going to fly to Vegas and see my
brother Cross.
He’s smart and knows a lot of people.
I’m sure he can help.
So don’t leave until I come back.”
“Why should he help?”
Athena said.
“And how?
Is he in the Mafia?”
“Of course not,” Claudia said indignantly.
“He’ll help because he loves me.”
She said this with pride in her voice.
“And I’m the only person he really loves
except for my father.”
Athena looked at her with a frown.
“Your brother sounds just a little shady.
You’re very innocent for a woman working
in the movies.
And, by the way, how come you sleep with so
many men?
You’re not an actress and I don’t think
you’re a tramp.”
“That’s no secret,” Claudia said.
“Why do men screw so many women?”
Then she hugged Athena.
“I’m off to Vegas,” she said.
“Don’t move till I get back.”
That night Athena sat on the deck and watched
the ocean, black beneath the moonless sky.
She went over her plans and thought fondly
of Claudia.
It was really funny that she could not see
through her brother, but that’s what love
did.
When Claudia met with Skippy Deere later that
afternoon and told him Athena’s story, they
both sat in silence for a while.
Then Deere said, “She left some things out.
I went to see Boz Skannet to buy him off.
He refused.
And he warned me that if we tried any funny
stuff, he’d give the papers a story that
would ruin us.
How Athena dumped their kid.”
Claudia flew into a rage.
“That’s not true,” she said.
“Anyone who knows Athena knows she couldn’t
do such a thing.”
“Sure,” Deere said.
“But we didn’t know Athena when she was
twenty.”
“Fuck you too,” Claudia said.
“I’m going to fly to Vegas and see my
brother Cross.
He has more brains and more balls than any
of you guys.
He’ll straighten this out.”
“I don’t think he can scare Boz Skannet,”
Deere said.
“We already gave it a good try.”
But now he saw another opportunity.
He knew certain things about Cross.
Cross was looking to get into the movie business.
He had invested in six of Deere’s pictures
and lost money overall, so Cross wasn’t
that smart.
It was rumored Cross was “connected,”
that he had some influence in the Mafia.
But everybody was connected with the Mafia,
Deere thought.
That didn’t make them dangerous.
He doubted that Cross could help them with
Boz Skannet.
But a producer always listened, a producer
specialized in long shots.
And besides he could always pitch Cross to
invest in another picture.
It was always a great help to have minor partners
who had no control over the making of the
picture and the finances.
Skippy Deere paused, then said to Claudia,
“I’ll go with you.”
Claudia De Lena loved Skippy Deere despite
the fact that Deere had once screwed her out
of a half-million dollars.
She loved Deere for his faults and the diversity
of his corruption and because Skippy was always
good company, all admirable qualities in a
producer.
Years ago they had worked on a picture together
and had been buddies.
Even then, Deere had been one of the most
successful and colorful producers in Hollywood.
One time on a set, the star of the movie had
boasted of fucking Deere’s wife and Deere,
listening off a ledge on the set three stories
above him, had jumped and landed on the star’s
head and broken his shoulder in addition to
then smashing his nose with a good right-hand
punch.
Claudia had another memory.
The two of them had been walking down Rodeo
Drive and Claudia had seen a blouse in the
window.
It was the most beautiful blouse Claudia had
ever seen.
It was white with almost invisible stripes
of green, so lovely it could have been painted
by Monet.
The store was one of those that required an
appointment before you could even go in and
shop, as if the owner were some great physician.
No problem.
Skippy Deere was a personal friend of the
owner as he was a great friend of studio chiefs,
the great corporate heads, the rulers of countries
throughout the Western world.
When they were in the store, the clerk told
them the blouse was five hundred dollars.
Claudia staggered back, held her hands on
her chest.
“Five hundred dollars for one blouse?”
she asked.
“Don’t make me laugh.”
The clerk was staggered in his turn by Claudia’s
impudence.
“It’s of the finest fabric,” he said,
“handmade.
. . . And the green stripe is a green like
no other fabric in the entire world.
The price is very reasonable.”
Deere was smiling.
“Don’t buy it, Claudia,” he said.
“Do you know how much it costs to get it
laundered?
At least thirty bucks.
Every time you wear it, thirty bucks.
And you have to take care of it like a baby.
No food stains, and definitely you can’t
smoke.
If you burn a hole, bang, there goes your
five hundred.”
Claudia smiled at the clerk.
“Tell me,” she said, “do I get a free
gift if I buy the blouse?”
The clerk, a beautifully dressed man, had
tears in his eyes and said, “Please leave.”
They walked out of the store.
“Since when can a store clerk throw a customer
out?”
Claudia asked, laughing.
“This is Rodeo Drive,” Skippy said.
“You’re lucky you even got in.”
The next day when Claudia arrived for work
at the studio, there was a gift box on her
desk.
In it were a dozen of the blouses and a note
from Skippy Deere: “Not to be worn except
at the Oscars.”
Claudia knew that the clerk at the store and
Skippy Deere were both full of shit.
She had later seen that same beautiful green
stripe on a woman’s dress and on a special
hundred-dollar tennis bandanna.
And the picture she was working on with Deere
was a schlock love-action film that would
never come closer to an Academy Award than
Deere’s appointment to the Supreme Court.
But she was touched.
And then there was the day that the picture
they had worked on reached the magical one-hundred-million-dollar
gross and Claudia had thought she would be
rich.
Skippy Deere invited her to dinner to celebrate.
Skippy was bubbling over with good humor.
“This is my lucky day,” he said.
“The picture goes over a hundred, I got
a great blow job from Bobby Bantz’s secretary,
and my ex-wife got killed in a car accident
last night.”
There were two other producers at dinner with
them and they both winced.
Claudia thought Deere was making a joke.
But then Deere said to the two producers,
“I see your eyes green with envy.
I save five hundred grand a year in alimony
and my two kids inherit her estate, the settlement
she got from me, so I don’t have to support
them anymore.”
Claudia was suddenly depressed and Deere said
to her, “I’m being honest, it’s what
every man would think but never say out loud.”
Skippy Deere had paid his dues in the movie
business.
The son of a carpenter, he had helped his
father work on the houses of movie stars in
Hollywood.
In one of those situations that are probable
only in Hollywood, he became the lover of
a middle-aged female star, who got him a job
as an apprentice in her agent’s company,
a prelude to getting rid of him.
He worked hard, learning to control his fiery
nature.
Most of all, how to coddle Talent.
How to beg hot new directors, fast-talk fresh
young stars, become best friend and mentor
to horseshit writers.
He made fun of his own behavior, citing a
great Renaissance cardinal pleading the Borgia
Pope’s cause with the King of France.
When the King exposed his derriere, then defecated
to show his contempt for the Pope, the Cardinal
exclaimed, “Oh, the ass of an angel,”
and rushed to kiss it.
But Deere mastered the indispensable hardware.
He learned the art of negotiation, which he
simplified to “Ask for everything.”
He became literate, developing an eye for
those novels that would make good movies.
He could spot acting talent.
He scrutinized the details of production,
the different ways to steal money from the
budget of a film.
He became a successful producer, one who could
put 50 percent of the script and 70 percent
of the budget on the screen.
It was helpful that he enjoyed reading and
also that he could screen-write.
Not on a totally blank piece of paper, but
he was adept at crossing out scenes and revising
dialogue, and could actually create pieces
of action, little set pieces, which sometimes
played brilliantly but were seldom necessary
to the story being told.
What he prided himself on, what helped his
pictures achieve financial success, was that
he was especially good at endings, which were
almost always triumphant, the exaltation of
good over evil—and if that didn’t fit,
the sweetness of defeat.
His masterpiece had been the ending of a film
that dealt with the atom-bomb destruction
of New York, in which all the characters came
out as better human beings dedicated to the
love of their fellow man, even the one who
had exploded the bomb.
He had to hire five extra writers to get that
done.
All this would have been worth very little
to him as a producer if he had not been especially
astute about finance.
He pulled investment money out of thin air.
Rich men doted on his company, as did the
beautiful women who hung on his arm.
Stars and directors enjoyed his honest and
bawdy appreciation of the good things in life.
He charmed development money out of studios,
and he learned that it was possible to get
a green light out of some studio heads with
an enormous bribe.
His Christmas card and Christmas gift lists
were endless, to stars, to critics on newspapers
and magazines, even to high-ranking law enforcement
people.
He called them all dear friends and when they
no longer became useful he cut them from the
gift list but never from the card list.
One of the keys to being a producer was to
own a property.
It could be an obscure novel, unsuccessful
in print, but it was something concrete you
could talk about to the studio.
Deere secured rights to these with five-year
options at five hundred dollars a year.
Or he would option a screenplay and work with
the writer to shape it into something a studio
would buy.
That was real ditch-digging work, writers
were so fragile.
“Fragile” was his favorite word for people
he thought jerks.
It was especially useful with female stars.
One of his most successful relationships had
been with Claudia De Lena, and one of the
most enjoyable.
He had really liked the kid, wanted to teach
her the ropes.
They had spent three months together working
on the script.
They went out to dinner together, they played
golf together (Deere had been surprised when
Claudia beat him).
They went to the Santa Anita race track.
They swam in Skippy Deere’s pool with secretaries
in bathing suits to take dictation.
Claudia had even taken Deere to Vegas for
a weekend at the Xanadu to meet her brother,
Cross.
They sometimes slept together, it was convenient.
The picture was a great financial success,
and Claudia assumed she would earn a great
deal of money on the back end.
She had a percentage of Skippy Deere’s percentage,
and she knew that he was always positioned
“upstream,” as Deere liked to call gross
percentage.
But what Claudia did not know was that Deere
had two different percentages, one on gross,
the other on net.
And Claudia’s back end deal called for a
piece of Skippy Deere’s net position.
Which, though the picture made over $100 million,
came to nothing.
The Studio’s accounting procedure, Deere’s
percentage of the gross, and the cost of the
picture easily wiped out net profits.
Claudia sued, and Skippy Deere settled for
a small sum to preserve their friendship.
When Claudia reproached him, Deere said, “This
had nothing to do with our personal relationship,
this is between our lawyers.”
Skippy Deere often said, “I was human once,
then I got married.”
More than that, he had fallen truly in love.
His excuse was that he was young, and that
he had married her because even then his keen
eye knew she was a talented actress.
In this he was correct, but his wife, Christi,
did not have that magic quality on film that
translated into a star.
The best she could achieve was the third female
lead.
But Deere really loved her.
When he became a power in the movie industry,
he did his best to make Christi a star.
He called in favors from other producers,
from directors, from studio chiefs, to get
her big parts.
In a few pictures he got her up to second
female lead.
But as she got older, she worked less.
They had two children, but Christi became
more and more unhappy and this took up a fair
amount of Deere’s work time.
Skippy Deere, like all successful producers,
was insanely busy.
He had to travel all over the world supervising
his pictures, getting financing, developing
projects.
Coming in contact with so many beautiful,
charming women, and needing companionship,
he often had romantic liaisons, which he enjoyed
with gusto, but still he loved his wife.
One day a Development girl brought him a script
that she said was perfect for Christi, a foolproof
star role that would exactly suit her talent.
It was a dark movie, a woman who murdered
her husband for love of a young poet and then
had to escape the grief of her children and
the suspicions of her in-laws.
Then of course found redemption.
It was very outrageous baloney, but it could
work.
Skippy Deere had two problems: convincing
a studio to make the movie and then convincing
it to cast Christi in the part.
He called in all his favors.
He took all his money on the back end.
He persuaded a top male star to take a part
that was really a featured role and got Dita
Tommey to direct.
Everything went like a dream.
Christi played the part perfectly, Deere produced
the film perfectly, that is to say, 90 percent
of the budget actually got up on the screen.
During that time Deere was never unfaithful
to his wife except for one night he spent
in London arranging distribution, and then
he fell only because the English girl was
so thin he was intrigued by the logistics.
It worked.
The picture was a commercial success, he made
more on the sacrificial back end than he would
have on a straight deal, and Christi won the
Academy Award as best actress.
And, as Skippy Deere later said to Claudia,
that was where the movie should have ended:
Happily Ever After.
But now his wife had found real self-esteem,
now she sensed her true worth.
The proof was that she became a vehicle star,
she now received scripts delivered by messenger,
with roles for beautiful, celluloid-magic
personalities.
Deere advised her to look for something more
suited to her, the next picture would be crucial.
He had never worried about her being faithful,
indeed had conceded her the right to have
fun when she was on location.
But now in the few months after her Award—the
toast of the town, invited to all the top
parties, appearing in all the showbiz columns,
courted by young actors struggling to get
roles—she blossomed into a fresh young womanhood.
She went out, openly, on dates with actors
fifteen years her junior.
The gossip journalists took note, the feminists
among them cheering her on.
Skippy Deere seemingly took this very well.
He understood the whole thing.
After all, why did he himself keep screwing
young girls?
So why begrudge his wife equal pleasure?
But then again why should he continue his
extraordinary efforts to further Christi’s
career?
Especially after she actually asked him for
a role for one of her young lovers.
He stopped looking for scripts for her, he
stopped campaigning for her with other producers
and directors and studio heads.
And they, being older men, took umbrage for
him in masculine brotherhood and no longer
gave Christi any special consideration.
Christi made two more pictures in a starring
role; both were flops because she was miscast.
And so she spent the professional credit the
Award had earned for her.
In three years, she was back to playing third
female leads.
By this time she had fallen in love with a
young man who aspired to be a producer, indeed
was very much like her husband, but he needed
capital.
So Christi sued for divorce, winning a huge
settlement and $500,000 a year in alimony.
Her lawyers never found out about Skippy’s
assets in Europe, so they parted friends.
And now, seven years later, she had died in
an automobile accident.
By that time, although she had remained on
Deere’s Christmas card list, she was on
his famous “Life Is Too Short” list, signifying
he would not return her phone calls.
So Claudia De Lena had a twisted affection
for Deere.
For his exposing his true self to others,
for his living his life so blatantly in his
own self-interest, for his ability to look
you in the eye and call you his friend while
not caring that you knew he would never perform
a true act of friendship.
That he was such a cheerful, ardent hypocrite.
And besides, Deere was a great persuader.
And he was the only man she knew who could
match wits with Cross.
They took the next plane to Vegas.
BOOK IV
.
Cross De Lena
The Clericuzio
CHAPTER 6
.
BY THE TIME Cross reached the age of twenty-one,
Pippi De Lena was impatient for Cross to follow
his destiny.
The most important fact in a man’s life,
conceded by all, was that he must make a living.
He must earn his bread, put a roof over his
head and clothes on his back, and feed the
mouths of his children.
To do that without unnecessary misery, a man
had to have a certain degree of power in the
world.
It followed then, as night the day, that Cross
must take his place in the Clericuzio Family.
To do that, it was absolutely necessary he
“make his bones.”
Cross had a good reputation in the Family.
His answer to Dante when Dante told him that
Pippi was a Hammer was quoted happily by Don
Domenico himself, who savored the words almost
with ecstasy.
“I don’t know that.
You don’t know that.
Nobody knows that.
Where did you get that fuckin’ hat?”
What an answer, the Don exclaimed with delight.
So young a man to be so discreet, and so witty,
what a credit to his father.
We must give this boy his chance.
All this had been related to Pippi, and so
he knew the time was ripe.
He started to groom Cross.
He sent him out on collection assignments
that were difficult and required force.
He discussed the old history of the Family
and how operations were executed.
Nothing fancy, he stressed.
But when you had to get fancy, it must be
planned in extreme detail.
Simple was extreme simplicity.
You sealed off a small geographic area and
then you caught the target in that area.
Surveillance first, then car and hit man,
then blocking cars for any pursuers, then
going to ground for a time afterward so that
you could not be immediately questioned.
That was simple.
For fancy, you got fancy.
You could dream up anything but you had to
back it up with solid planning.
You only got fancy when it was absolutely
necessary.
He even told Cross certain code words.
A “Communion” was when the victim’s
body disappeared.
That was fancy.
A “Confirmation” was when the body was
found.
That was simple.
Pippi gave Cross a briefing on the Clericuzio
Family.
Their great war with the Santadio Family,
which established their dominance.
Pippi said nothing of his part in that war
and was indeed scarce on details.
Rather he praised Giorgio and Vincent and
Petie.
But most of all he praised Don Domenico for
his farsightedness.
The Clericuzio had spun many webs, but its
most extensive was gaming.
It dominated all forms of casino and illegal
gambling in the United States.
It had a very subtle influence on the Native
American casinos, it had a serious influence
on sports betting, legal in Nevada and illegal
in the rest of the country.
The Family owned slot machine factories, had
an interest in the manufacture of dice and
cards, the supply of chinaware and silverware,
the laundries for the gambling hotels.
Gambling was the great jewel of their empire,
and they ran a public relations campaign to
make gambling legal in every state of the
union.
Legal gambling all over the United States
by federal law was now the Holy Grail of the
Clericuzio Family.
Not only casinos and lotteries but also wagering
on sports: baseball, football, basketball,
and all others.
Sports were holy in America, and once gambling
was legalized that holiness would descend
on gambling itself.
The profits would be enormous.
Giorgio, whose company managed some of the
state lotteries, had given the Family a breakdown
on the expected numbers.
A minimum of two billion dollars was bet on
the Super Bowl all over the United States,
most of it illegally.
The sports books in Vegas, legal betting alone
ran up over fifty million.
The World Series, depending on how many games
were played, totaled about another billion.
Basketball was much smaller, but the many
playoff games carried another billion, and
this was not counting the everyday betting
during the season.
Once made legal, all this could be easily
doubled or tripled with special lotteries
and combination betting, except for the Super
Bowl, whose increase would be tenfold and
might even provide a net revenue for one day
of $1 billion.
The overall total could reach $100 billion,
and the beauty was that there was no productivity
involved, the only expenses were marketing
and administration.
What a great deal of money for the Clericuzio
Family to rack up, a profit of at least $5
billion a year.
And the Clericuzio Family had the expertise
and the political connections and pure force
to control a great deal of this market.
Giorgio had charts to show the complicated
prizes that could be constructed based on
big sports events.
Gambling would be a great magnet to draw the
money from the huge gold mine that was the
American people.
So gambling was low-risk and had great growth
potential.
To achieve legal gambling, cost was no object
and even greater risks were considered.
The Family was also made rich with income
from drugs, but only at a very high level,
it was too risky.
They controlled European processing, provided
political protection and judicial intervention,
and they laundered the money.
Their position in drugs was legally impregnable
and extremely profitable.
They dropped the black money in a chain of
banks in Europe and a few banks in the United
States.
The structure of the law was outflanked.
But then, Pippi cautiously pointed out, despite
all this there came times when risks had to
be taken, when an iron fist must be shown.
This the Family did with the utmost discretion
and with terminal ferocity.
And that was when you must earn the good life
you led, when you truly earned your daily
bread.
Shortly after his twenty-first birthday, Cross
was finally put to the test.
One of the most prized political assets of
the Clericuzio Family was Walter Wavven, the
governor of Nevada.
He was a man in his early fifties, tall and
lanky, who wore a cowboy hat but dressed in
perfectly tailored suits.
He was a handsome man and though married had
a lusty appetite for the female sex.
He also enjoyed good food and good drink,
loved to bet sports, and was an enthusiastic
casino gambler.
He was too tender of public feelings to expose
these traits, or to risk romantic seductions.
So he relied on Alfred Gronevelt and the Xanadu
Hotel to satisfy these appetites while preserving
his political and personal image of the God-fearing,
steadfast believer in old-fashioned family
values.
Gronevelt had recognized Wavven’s special
gifts early on and provided the financial
base that enabled Wavven to climb the political
ladder.
When Wavven became governor of Nevada and
wanted a relaxing weekend, Gronevelt gave
him one of the prized Villas.
The Villas had been Gronevelt’s greatest
inspiration.
. . .
Gronevelt had come to Vegas early, when it
was still basically a western cowboy gambling
town, and he had studied gambling and gamblers
as a brilliant scientist might study an insect
important to evolution.
The one great mystery that would never be
solved was why very rich men still wasted
time gambling to win money they did not need.
Gronevelt decided they did so to hide other
vices, or they desired to conquer fate itself,
but more than anything it was to show some
sort of superiority to their fellow creatures.
Therefore he reasoned that when they gambled
they should be treated as gods.
They would gamble as the gods gambled or the
kings of France in Versailles.
So Gronevelt spent $100 million to build seven
luxurious Villas and a special jewel-box casino
on the grounds of the Xanadu Hotel (with his
usual foresight he had bought much more land
than the Xanadu needed).
These Villas were small palaces, each could
sleep six couples in six separate apartments,
not merely suites.
The furnishings were lavish: hand-woven rugs,
marble floors, gold bathrooms, rich fabrics
on the walls; dining rooms and kitchens staffed
by the Hotel.
The latest audiovisual equipment turned living
rooms into theaters.
The bars of these Villas were stocked with
the finest wines and liquors and a box of
illegal Havana cigars.
Each Villa had its own outdoor swimming pool
and inside Jacuzzi.
All free to the gambler.
In the special security area that held the
Villas was the small oval casino called the
Pearl, where the high rollers could play in
privacy and where the minimum bet in baccarat
was a thousand dollars.
The chips in this casino were also different,
the black one-hundred-dollar chip was the
lowest denominator; the five hundred, pale
white threaded with gold; a gold-barred blue
chip for the thousand; and the specially designed
ten-thousand-dollar chip, with a real diamond
embedded in the center of its gold surface.
However, as a concession to the ladies, the
roulette wheel would change hundred-dollar
chips into five-dollar chips.
It was amazing that enormously wealthy men
and women would take this bait.
Gronevelt figured that all these extravagant
RFB comps ran the Hotel fifty thousand dollars
a week on the cost sheet.
But these were written off on tax reports.
Plus the prices of everything were inflated
on paper.
Figures (he kept a separate accounting) showed
that each Villa made an average profit of
a million dollars a week.
The very fancy restaurants that served the
Villas’ and other important guests also
made a profit as tax write-offs.
On the cost sheets, a dinner for four totaled
over a thousand dollars, which since the guests
were comped, was written off as business expense
for that amount in taxes.
Since the meal cost the Hotel no more than
a hundred dollars counting labor, there was
a profit right there.
And so, to Gronevelt, the seven Villas were
like seven crowns that he bestowed on the
heads of only those gamblers who risked or
made a Drop of over a million dollars on their
two- or three-day stay.
It didn’t matter that they won or lost.
Just that they gambled it.
And they had to be prompt in paying their
markers or they would be relegated to one
of the suites in the Hotel itself, which,
however plush, were not comparable to the
Villas.
Of course there was a little more.
These were Villas where important public men
could bring their mistresses or boyfriends,
where they could gamble in anonymity.
And strange to say there were many titans
of business, men worth hundreds of millions
of dollars, even with wives and mistresses,
who were lonely.
Lonely for carefree feminine company, for
women of exceptional sympathy.
And for these men, the Villas would be furnished
by Gronevelt with the proper beauty.
Governor Walter Wavven was one of these men.
And he was the only exception to Gronevelt’s
rule of the million-dollar Drop.
He gambled modestly and then with a purse
supplied privately by Gronevelt, and if his
markers exceeded a certain amount they were
put on hold to be paid by his future winnings.
Wavven came to the Hotel to relax, to golf
on the Xanadu course, and to drink and court
the beauties supplied by Gronevelt.
Gronevelt played it very long with the governor.
In twenty years he had never asked an outright
favor, just the special access to present
his arguments for legislation that would help
the casino business in Vegas.
Most of the time his point of view prevailed;
when it did not, the governor gave him a detailed
explanation of the political realities that
had denied him.
But the governor provided a valuable service
in that he introduced Gronevelt to influential
judges and politicians who could be swayed
with hard cash.
Gronevelt nurtured in his secret heart the
hope that, against long odds, Governor Walter
Wavven might someday be the president of the
United States.
Then the rewards could be enormous.
But Fate foils the most cunning of men, as
Gronevelt always acknowledged.
The most insignificant of mortals become the
agents of disaster to the most powerful.
This particular agent was a twenty-five-year-old
young man who became the lover of the governor’s
eldest child, a young woman of eighteen.
The governor was married to an intelligent,
good-looking woman who was more fair, more
liberal in her political views than her husband,
though they worked well as a team.
They had three children, and this family was
a great political asset for the governor.
Marcy, the eldest, was attending Berkeley,
her choice and her mother’s, not the governor’s.
Freed from the stiffness of a political household,
Marcy was entranced by the freedom of the
university, its orientation toward the political
left, its openness to new music, the insights
offered by drugs.
A true daughter of her father, she had a frankness
of sexual interest.
With that innocence and the natural instinct
for fair play in the young, her sympathies
were with the poor, the working class, the
suffering minorities.
She also fell in love with the purity of art.
It was therefore very natural for her to hang
out with students who were poets and musicians.
It was even more natural that after a few
casual encounters she fell in love with a
fellow student who wrote plays and strummed
the guitar and was poor.
His name was Theo Tatoski and he was perfect
for a college romance.
He had dark good looks, he came from a family
of Catholics who worked in Detroit’s auto
factories and, with a poet’s alliterative
wit, always swore he would rather fuck than
fit a fender.
Despite this he worked part-time jobs to pay
his tuition.
He took himself very seriously, but this was
mitigated by the fact that he had talent.
Marcy and Theo were inseparable for two years.
She brought Theo to meet her family in the
governor’s mansion and was delighted that
he was unimpressed by her father.
Later in their bedroom in the state mansion,
he informed her that her father was a typical
phony.
Perhaps Theo had detected their condescension;
the governor and his wife had both been extra
friendly, extra courteous, determined to honor
their daughter’s choice, while privately
deploring so unsuitable a match.
The mother was not worried; she knew Theo’s
charm would fade with her daughter’s growth.
The father was uneasy but tried to make up
for it with a more-than-common affability,
even for a politician.
After all, the governor was a champion of
the working class, per his political platform,
the mother was an educated liberal.
A romance with Theo could only give Marcy
a broader view of life.
Meanwhile Marcy and Theo were living together,
and planned to get married after they graduated.
Theo would write and perform his plays, Marcy
would be his muse and a professor of literature.
A stable arrangement.
The young people did not seem to be heavily
into drugs, their sexual relationship was
no big deal.
The governor even thought idly that if worse
came to worst their marriage would help him
politically, an indication to the public that
despite his pure WASP background, his wealth,
his culture, he democratically accepted a
blue-collar son-in-law.
They all made their adjustments to a banal
situation.
The parents just wished that Theo was not
such a bore.
But the young are perverse.
Marcy, in her final year of college, fell
in love with a fellow student who was rich
and socially more acceptable to her parents
than Theo.
But she still wanted to keep Theo as a friend.
She found it exciting to juggle two lovers
without committing the technical sin of adultery.
In her innocence, it made her feel unique.
The surprise was Theo.
He reacted to the situation not as a tolerant
Berkeley radical, but like some benighted
Polack.
Despite his poetic, musical bohemianism, the
teachings of feminist professors, the whole
Berkeley atmosphere of sexual laissez-faire,
he became violently jealous.
Theo had always been moodily eccentric, it
was part of his youthful charm.
In conversation, he often took the extremely
revolutionary position that blowing up a hundred
innocent people was a small price to pay for
a free society in the future.
Yet Marcy knew Theo could never do such a
thing.
Once when they came to their apartment after
a two-week vacation, they had found a litter
of newborn mice in their bed.
Theo had simply put the tiny creatures out
into the street unharmed.
Marcy found that endearing.
But when Theo found out about Marcy’s other
lover, he struck her in the face.
Then he burst into tears and begged her forgiveness.
She forgave him.
She still found their lovemaking exciting,
more exciting because now she held more power
with his knowledge of her betrayal.
But he became progressively more violent,
they quarreled often, life together was no
longer such fun, and Marcy moved out of their
apartment.
Her other lover faded.
Marcy had a few other affairs.
But she and Theo remained friends and slept
together occasionally.
Marcy planned to go East and do her master’s
in an Ivy League university, Theo moved down
to Los Angeles to write plays and look for
movie-script work.
One of his short musical plays was being produced
by a small theater group for three performances.
He invited Marcy to come to see it.
Marcy flew to Los Angeles to see the play.
It was so terrible half the audience walked
out.
So Marcy stayed over that night in Theo’s
apartment to console him.
What exactly happened that night could never
be established.
What was proven was that sometime in the early
morning, Theo stabbed Marcy to death, knife
wounds in each eye.
Then he stabbed himself in the stomach and
called the police.
In time to save his life, but not Marcy’s.
The trial in California was, naturally, a
huge media event.
A daughter of the governor of Nevada murdered
by a blue-collar poet who had been her lover
for three years and was then dumped.
The defense lawyer, Molly Flanders, successfully
specialized in “passion” murders, though
this case proved to be her last criminal case
before she entered entertainment law.
Her tactics were classic.
Witnesses were brought in to show that Marcy
had at least six lovers, while Theo believed
they were to be married.
The rich, socially prominent, sluttish Marcy
had dumped her sincere blue-collar playwright,
whose mind then snapped.
Flanders pleaded “temporary insanity”
on her client’s behalf.
The most relished line (written for Molly
by Claudia De Lena) was “He is forever not
responsible for what he has done.”
A line that would have incited Don Clericuzio
into a fury.
Theo looked properly stricken during his testimony.
His parents, devout Catholics, had persuaded
powerful members of the California clergy
to take up the cause, and they testified that
Theo had renounced his hedonistic ways and
was now determined to study for the priesthood.
It was pointed out that Theo had tried to
kill himself and was therefore self-evidently
remorseful, thus proving his insanity, as
if the two went together.
All this was varnished by the rhetoric of
Molly Flanders, who painted a picture of the
great contribution Theo could make to society
if he was not punished for a foolish act triggered
by a woman of loose morals who broke his blue-collar
heart.
A careless rich girl, now unfortunately dead.
Molly Flanders loved California juries.
Intelligent, well-educated enough to understand
the nuances of psychiatric trauma, exposed
to the higher culture of theater, film, music,
literature, they pulsed with empathy.
When Flanders got through with them, the outcome
was never in doubt.
Theo was found not guilty by reason of temporary
insanity.
He was immediately signed to appear in his
life story for a miniseries, not as the primary
actor but as a minor one who sang songs of
his own composition to link the story together.
It was a completely satisfactory ending to
a modern tragedy.
But the effect on Governor Walter Wavven,
the girl’s father, was disastrous.
Alfred Gronevelt saw his twenty-year investment
going down the drain, for Governor Wavven
in the privacy of his Villa announced to Gronevelt
that he would not stand for reelection.
What was the point of acquiring power when
any son-of-a-bitch low-life white trash could
stab his daughter to death, almost cut off
her head, and live his life a free man?
Even worse, his beloved child had been dragged
through the papers and TV as a silly cunt
who deserved to be killed.
There are tragedies in life that cannot be
cured, and for the governor this was one of
them.
He spent as much time as possible at the Xanadu
Hotel but was not his old jolly self.
He was not interested in showgirls, or the
roll of the dice.
He simply drank and played golf.
Which posed a very delicate problem for Gronevelt.
He was deeply sympathetic to the governor’s
problem.
You cannot cultivate a man for over twenty
years, even out of self-interest, without
having some affection for him.
But the reality was that Governor Walter Wavven,
resigning from politics, was no longer a key
asset, had no future potential.
He was simply a man destroying himself with
booze.
Also, when he gambled he did so distractedly,
Gronevelt held two hundred grand of his markers.
So now had come the time when he must refuse
the governor the use of a Villa.
Certainly he would give the governor a luxury
suite in the Hotel, but it would be a demotion,
and before doing that Gronevelt took a last
stab at rehabilitation.
Gronevelt persuaded the governor to meet him
for golf one morning.
To complete the foursome he recruited Pippi
De Lena and his son, Cross.
Pippi had a crude wit the governor always
appreciated, and Cross was such a good-looking
and polite young man that his elders were
always glad to have him around.
After they played they went to the governor’s
Villa for a late lunch.
Wavven had lost a great deal of weight and
seemed to take no pride in his appearance.
He was in a stained sweatsuit and wore a baseball
cap with the Xanadu logo.
He was unshaven.
He smiled often, not a politician smile, but
a sort of shameful grimace.
Gronevelt noticed that his teeth were very
yellow.
He was also extremely drunk.
Gronevelt decided to take the plunge.
He said, “Governor, you are letting your
family down, you are letting your friends
down, and you are letting the people of Nevada
down.
You cannot go on like this.”
“Sure I can,” Walter Wavven said.
“Fuck the people of Nevada.
Who cares?”
Gronevelt said, “I do.
I care about you.
I’ll put the money together and you must
run for senator in the next election.”
“Why the hell should I?”
the governor said.
“It doesn’t mean anything in this fucking
country.
I’m governor of the great state of Nevada
and that little prick murders my daughter
and goes free.
And I have to take it.
People make jokes about my dead kid and pray
for the murderer.
You know what I pray for?
That an atom bomb wipes out this fucking country
and especially the state of California.”
Pippi and Cross remained silent during all
this.
They were a little shaken by the governor’s
intensity.
Also, both understood Gronevelt was working
to a purpose.
“You have to put all of that behind you,”
Gronevelt said.
“Don’t let this tragedy destroy your life.”
His unctuousness would have irritated a saint.
The governor threw his baseball cap across
the room and helped himself to another whiskey
at the bar.
“I can’t forget,” he said.
“I lie awake at night and dream about squeezing
that little cocksucker’s eyes out of his
head.
I want to set him on fire, I want to cut off
his hands and legs.
And then I want him to be alive so I can do
it again and again.”
He smiled drunkenly at them, almost fell,
they could see the yellow teeth and smell
the decay in his mouth.
Wavven now seemed less drunk, his voice became
quiet, he spoke almost conversationally.
“Did you see how he stabbed her?” he asked.
“He stabbed her through the eyes.
The judge wouldn’t let the jury see the
photos.
Prejudicial.
But I, her father, could see the photos.
And so little Theo goes free, with that smirk
on his face.
He stabbed my daughter through the eyes but
he gets up every morning and he sees the sun
shining.
Oh, I wish I could kill them all—the judge,
the jurors, the lawyers, all of them.”
He filled his glass and then walked around
the room furiously, his speech a crazy ramble.
“I can’t go out there and bullshit about
what I no longer believe.
Not while the little bastard is alive.
He sat at my dinner table, my wife and I treated
him like a human being even though we disliked
him.
We gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Never give anybody the benefit of the doubt.
We took him into our home, gave him a bed
to sleep in with our daughter and he was laughing
at us all the time.
He was saying, ‘Who gives a fuck if you’re
the governor?
Who gives a fuck if you have money?
Who gives a fuck that you are civilized, decent
human beings?
I will kill your daughter whenever I like
and there is nothing you can do.
I’ll bring you all down.
I’ll fuck your daughter, then I’ll kill
her, and then I’ll stick it up your ass
and go free.’
” Wavven staggered and Cross quickly went
to hold him.
The governor looked up beyond Cross, to the
high mural-decorated ceiling above, all pink
angels and white-clad saints.
“I want him dead,” the governor said and
burst into tears.
“I want him dead.”
Gronevelt said quietly, “Walter, it will
all go away, give it time.
File for senator.
You have the best years of your life ahead
of you, you can still do so much.”
Wavven shook himself away from Cross and said
quite calmly to Gronevelt, “Don’t you
see, I don’t believe in doing good anymore.
I’m forbidden to tell anyone how I really
feel, not even my wife.
The hatred I feel.
And I’ll tell you something else.
The voting public has contempt for me, they
perceive me as a weak fool.
A man who lets his daughter get murdered,
then can’t get him punished.
Who would trust the welfare of the great state
of Nevada to such a man?”
He was sneering now.
“That little fuck could get elected easier
than me.”
He paused for a moment.
“Alfred, forget it.
I’m not running for anything.”
Gronevelt was studying him carefully.
He was catching something that Pippi and Cross
did not.
Passionate grief so often led to weakness,
but Gronevelt decided to take the risk.
He said, “Walter, will you run for senator
if the man is punished?
Will you be the man you were?”
The governor seemed not to understand.
His eyes rolled slightly toward Pippi and
Cross, then stared into Gronevelt’s face.
Gronevelt said to Pippi and Cross, “Wait
for me in my office.”
Pippi and Cross quickly left.
Gronevelt and Governor Wavven were alone.
Gronevelt said to him gravely, “Walter,
you and I must be very direct for the first
time in our lives.
We’ve known each other twenty years, have
you ever found me to be indiscreet?
So answer.
It will be safe.
Will you run again if that boy is dead?”
The governor went to the bar and poured whiskey.
But he did not drink.
He smiled.
“I’ll file the day after I go to that
boy’s funeral to show my forgiveness,”
he said.
“My voters will love that.”
Gronevelt relaxed.
It was done.
Out of relief, he indulged his temper.
“First, go see your dentist,” he told
the governor.
“You have to get those fucking teeth cleaned.”
