Inside of six seconds I saw the fourth richest man in America go from heartsick puppy dog to hardcase robber baron and back at least a dozen times. Finally he jammed his hands in his pockets, fished out a wad of C-notes, and handed them to me. He said, “Find me another one just like her,” and walked back to his limo.
I worked the door for the next few hours, chasing crashers and autograph hounds away, watching Gretchen/Glenda and Sid Weinberg work the crowd, instant velvet for the girl, youth recaptured for the sad old man. Gretchy laughed, and I could tell she did it to hold back tears; when she squeezed Sid’s hand I knew she didn’t know who it belonged to. I kept wishing I could be there when her tears broke for real, when she became a real little girl for a while, before going back to being a stock maven and a whore. Mickey showed up just as the movie was starting. Davey Goldman told me he was pissed: Mo Hornbeck got himself bumped off by a Kraut trigger from Milwaukee who later nose dived out a window; the Mariposa Street hideout had been burglarized, and Lavonne Cohen was back from Israel three days early and henpecking the shit out of the Mick. I barely heard the words. Gretchy and Sid were cooing at each other by the cold cut table — and Mickey was headed straight toward them.
I couldn’t hear their words, but I could read the three faces. Mickey was taken aback, but paid gracious respect to his beaming host; Gretch was twitching with the aftershocks of her old man’s death. LA’s #1 hoodlum bowed away, walked up to me, and flicked my necktie in my face. “All you get is a grand, you hump. You shoulda found her quicker.”
So it worked out. Nobody made me for snuffing the Milwaukee shooter; Gretchy walked on the Steinkamp killing and her complicity in Voyteck Kirnipaski’s demise — the chemical-sizzled stiffs, of course, were never discovered. Mo Hornbeck got a plot at Mount Sinai Cemetery, and Davey Goldman and I stuffed Janet into the casket with him at the mortuary — I gave the rabbi a hot tip on the trotters, and he left the room to call his bookie. I paid off Leotis Dineen and promptly went back into hock with him; Mickey took up with a stripper named Audrey Anders; Howard made a bundle off airplane parts for the Korean War and cavorted with the dozen or so Gretchen Rae Shoftel look-alikes I found him. Gretchy and Sid Weinberg fell in love, which just about broke the poor pilot-mogul’s heart.
Gretchen Rae and Sid.
She did her light dusting — and must have thrown him a lot on the side. She also became Sid’s personal investment banker, and made him a giant bundle, of which she took a substantial percentage cut, invested it in slum property, and watched it grow, grow, grow. Slumlord Gretch also starred in the only Sid Weinberg vehicle ever to lose money, a tear jerker called “Glenda” about a movie producer who falls in love with a starlet who disappears off the face of the earth. The critical consensus was that Gretchen Rae Shoftel was a lousy actress, but had great lungs. Howard Hughes was rumored to have seen the movie over a hundred times.
In 1950 I got involved in a grand jury investigation that went bad in an enormous way, and I ended up taking it on the road permanently, Mr. Anonymous in a thousand small towns. Mickey Cohen did a couple of fed jolts for income tax evasion, got paroled as an old man, and settled back into LA as a much-appreciated local character, a reminder of the colorful old days. Howard Hughes ultimately went squirrelshit with drugs and religion, and a biography that I read said that he carried a torch for a blonde whore straight off into the deep end. He’d spend hours at the Bel Air Hotel looking at her picture, playing a torchy rendition of “Since I Don’t Have You” over and over. I know better: It was probably scads of different pictures, lung shots all, the music a lament for a time when love came cheap. Gretchy was special to him, though. I still believe that.
I miss Howard and Mickey, and writing this story about them has only made it worse. It’s tough being a dangerous old man by yourself — you’ve got nothing but memories and no one with the balls to understand them.
Gravy Train
Out of the Honor Farm and into the work force: managing the maintenance crew at a Toyota dealership in Koreatown. Jap run, a gook clientele, boogies for the shitwork and me, Stan “The Man” Klein, to crack the whip and keep on-duty loafing at a minimum. My probation officer got me the gig: Liz Trent, skinny and stacked, four useless Masters degrees, a bum marriage to a guy on methadone maintenance and the hots for yours truly. She knew I got off easy: three convictions resulting from the scams I worked with Phil Turkel — a phone sales racket that involved the deployment of hard core loops synced to rock songs and naugahyde bibles embossed with glow-in-the-dark pictures of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a hot item with the shvartzes. We ran a drug recovery crashpad as a front, subhorned teenyboppers into prostitution, coerced male patients into phone sales duty and kept them motivated with Benzedrine-laced espresso — all of which peaked at twenty-four grand jury bills busted down to three indictments apiece. Phil had no prior record, was strung out on cocaine and got diverted to a drug rehab; I had two G.T.A. convictions and no chemical rationalizations — bingo on a year County time, Wayside Honor Rancho, where my reputation as a lackluster heavyweight contender got me a dorm boss job. My attorney, Miller Waxman, assured me a sentence reduction was in the works; he was wrong — counting “good time” and “work time” I did the whole nine and a half months. My consolation prize: Lizzie Trent, Waxman’s ex-wife, for my P.O. — guaranteed to cut me a long leash, get me soft legitimate work and give me head before my probationary term was a month old. I took two out of three: Lizzie had sharp teeth and an overbite, so I didn’t trust her on the trifecta. I was at my desk, watching my slaves wash cars, when the phone rang.
I picked up. “Yellow Empire Imports, Klein speaking.”
“Miller Waxman here.”
“Wax, how’s it hangin’?”
“A hard yard — and you still owe me money on my fee. Seriously, I need it. I lent Liz some heavy coin to get her teeth capped.”
The trifecta loomed, “Are you dunning me?”
“No, I’m a Greek bearing gifts at 10 % interest.”
“Such as?”
“Such as this: a grand a week cash and three hots and a cot at a Beverly Hills mansion, all legit. I take a tensky off the top to cover your bill. The clock’s ticking, so yes or no?”
I said, “Legit?”
“If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’. My office in an hour?”
“I’ll be there.”
Wax worked out of a storefront on Beverly and Alvarado — close to his clientele — dope dealers and wetbacks hot to bring the family up from Calexico. I doubleparked, put a “Clergyman on Call” sign on my windshield and walked in.
Miller was in his office, slipping envelopes to a couple of Immigration Service goons — big guys with that hinky look indigenous to bagmen worldwide. They walked out thumbing C-notes; Wax said, “Do you like dogs?”
I took a chair uninvited. “Well enough. Why?”
“Why? Because Phil feels bad about lounging around up at the Betty Ford Clinic while you went inside. He wants to play catch up, and he asked me if I had ideas. A plum fell into my lap and I thought of you.”
Weird Phiclass="underline" facial scars and a line of shit that could make the Pope go Protestant. “How’s Phil doing these days?”
“Not bad. Do you like dogs?”
“Like I said before, well enough. Why?”
Wax pointed to his clients’ wall of fame — scads of framed mugshots. Included: Leroy Washington, the “Crack King” of Watts; Chester Hardell, a TV preacher indicted for unnatural acts against cats; the murderous Sanchez family — scores of inbred cousins foisted on L.A. as the result of Waxie’s green card machinations. In a prominent spot: Richie “The Sicko” Sicora and Chick Ottens, the 7-11 Slayers, still at large. Picaresque: Sicora and Ottens heisted a convenience store in Pacoima and hid the salesgirl behind an upended Slurpee machine to facilitate their escape. The machine disgorged its contents: ice, sugar and carcinogenic food coloring; the girl, a diabetic, passed out, sucked in the goo, went into sugar shock and kicked. Sicora and Ottens jumped bail for parts unknown — and Wax got a commendation letter from the ACLU, citing his tenacity in defending the L.A. underclass.