Title: Cradle of Crime Author: Luellen Smiley Print Length: 264 Publication Date: November 19, 2016 Sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC Language: English Formats: Paperback, Kindle Goodreads Genre…
Source: Cradle of Crime #BookReview
Category: ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS
PUBLISHED
SOME OF YOU may have already seen my announcement on Facebook. For those that have not, my memoir CRADLE OF CRIME- A Daughter’s Tribute, is now available on Amazon in the USA, Canada, and the UK.
I began writing my way home in 1996.
If you choose to read I’d love to hear back from you!
ELECTION?
I have never written about politics. I don’t understand the rules to qualify. My political thinking is this; the election is a reflection of our integrity, what’s left of it. Whomever wins is sabotaged. They will be brutalized by the opposing party, and the News will report it.
We are
divided now, opponents on the same team. That’s more than I can tolerate. Either I will go underground wherever that is, or move to a farm and pet goats. I mean really! How much more can we take?
THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER IS…
SEASONAL AND SENSUAL OVERTURE TO REVERIE.
SUMMER is not a memory yet; my skin too sensitive, and my heart still attached to the moments. I’ve misplaced my journals and so I have to read my to-do list to recall the events. Let’s go back to June; well my head was bent like a candle wick in this memoir. By then I was into the first rewrite, the worst of the next ten. That first one is deceivingly promising, the chapters line up, the suspense tickled, and it was five-hundred pages. The first draft was actually two books, as I dared to try and run the 100 meter in two different directions.
I must have had some standout memories, but I don’ recall June being amusing. Writing about my deceased parents was not summer reading. A year had already passed since I began, and I was now at the last stretch. My sense of completion was annoying. I began to hate the word focus. My body ached for water, in any form, a pool, a river, and the ocean. June was also the month when rejection letters arrived. For a moment, I’d forgotten. Whoa! Stay away from LouLou, her nerves are visible! On the flip, it was also acceptance of those letters. I had to prove to myself that I could take it, and continue writing.
Outside my window, Palace Avenue raised to motorcycles, skateboarders, conversational bicycle riders, and families out for a walk. My concentration was beguiled. So I turned on the fan, the loud kind that screens the room in a hum. I tried to imagine as waves just after they have capitulated into bubbles.
Memorial weekend was gemstone sunlit of color and clarity. I’d decided to break and go to a party at La Posada. Yes, that was my first grasp of summer, the sudden appearance of flowers, greenness of the landscape, flowers, and light. I think it was warm enough to sit outdoors all night. We were not yet ready to kick and scream, it was more of a real memorial kind of party. For our troops who finally are reaching us through the news, the films, and the books.
Most every evening I’d walk across the street to La Posada, have a glass of wine while listening to the chattering guests, age-out themselves by immobilizing a very liberated and young spirit. It’s a beautiful sight. Most people in my experience, come to Santa Fe and strip 
down to vulnerable. They invite conversation and are genuinely interested. I am asked, ‘What’s it like living in Santa Fe?’ To be continued.
IT’S UNLIKE ANY OTHER CITY I’VE EXPERIENCE.D It’s called the city different, it is also the city difficult. She ( I see Santa Fe in the feminine gender) has to be treated gently. Her weather patterns resemble a menopausal woman,her stature demands respect, and she can be congenial and patient.
You can walk this city as if it were a neighborhood. If you do that consistently you’ll meet people, and get to know them. Unless you’re like me, a standoffish fast walker dazed by the outdoors.
If you’re dazed and illusional you can master this city very well, as the drowsy pace and cordiality allow freakish freedom. I ‘ve seen the liberating soul of Santa Fe, teenagers racing down the middle of a commercial street one foot on the skateboard, bad-ass bikers talking with bad-ass cops, women with parrots on their shoulder, dogs in baby carriages, cats in a bag, and women on horseback galloping up Palace Avenue.
At night you’ll see raging midnight ramblers dancing on the sidewalk, and all of this is appealing to an LA transplant. I have driven in my robe, danced in the street and broken the heels on most of my shoes because of the pot-holes. They are always working on a street, but never the sidewalks. I ‘ve been bounced out of the locals night-howl El Farol for accidently pushing a dancer, who knew the manager, who came running after me and took down my license plate.
So many of us are loners, the serious kind, that have to be rigged out of our nests. Luckily I live on a commercial street and have no choice but to be commercially friendly. After nine years, my seasonal behavior is obvious: sprite in summer, blissful in fall, giddy in spring, and withdrawan in winter. I’ve learned patience, understanding, and adopted a mixture of cultural traditions. I’m close to fifty percent certain I’ll miss Santa Fe terribly when I do leave.
Has living in Santa Fe given me more than I’ve given back? Yes, it has and that’s why when I’m asked what’s it like living in Santa Fe, I try to reveal the blessings here and not the bullshit. 
A MEMOIR HAS TO END book 2
The sunlight shatters the curtain-less bedroom window and burns into my eyes at daybreak. From this unsheltered spot I rise to see a pot of blue sky over the rooftops, and the expectant afternoon showers building up in the clouds. The sky is filled with crows, eagles, and magpies lingering overhead weightless and free-falling, beyond all of us caught behind electronics. The days filled with desert showers that drench the soil and turn the arid dry land green and lush. For this I am thankful. At the end of the day, I am inclined to sit in the courtyard and watch the sky manifest colors unmatched by any Dunn Edwards collection. By the time dinner is topical, I have substituted preparing food, to just snacking, This August underscores the need to sit down, to sort of bob my head to Nancy Wilson music, and do very little. I’m self publishing Cradle of Crime- My Father, Me, and the Mob. 
EDITING LIFE
There are reasons to quit and more reasons not to. The one reason that hovers above all is that everything we do in life needs revision. We are never through evolving into more thoughtful, loving, or wise human beings. Every day there is an opportunity to revise your valor and conviction.
Revising the position you sit, walk, talk, judge, form opinions, contribute to your home, friends, partners, and discovering what you’ve learned, dreamed, and mastered, is your novel. How to write a chapter when you feel caught; trapped by decisions that are outdated. Antiquities of a former persona.
Changes in life are like photographic images. Looking at old photographs and what I see is someone else. Some are recalled with approval and others are works that led me astray. I’m not alone. Life is a runaway that we have to catch for ourselves.
The puzzle is how to live, where to live, and for whom. It is the same with manuscripts; they improve with each revision.
TRIPPING ON TAOS, NEW MEXICO
1998 WAS ALL RIGHT
AWAKENING ON THE ROADRUNNER SHUTTLE as we chugged up the steep grade highway, the red skin of Taos peeled back the imposing medieval Gorge crack. The cavity unzipped and five thousand feet below was the Rio Grande. I felt the altitude filling my lungs, and my eyes twitching from one scenic masterpiece to another. Everyone in the shuttle was giving me a history lesson about Taos. Before I knew it, the shuttle door opened, and the driver yelled, ‘Smiley.”
At the end of a two-mile dirt road the shuttle dropped me off and I was shouldered on either side by melting banks of snow. It was April. Unexpected snow storms arrived the same week.
The FBI boxes I’d shipped were in front of my casita. Darting from room to room, thoroughly satisfied with a two-story loft, floor-to-ceiling windows, and sunlight in all the right spots. I unpacked in the sedated silence. Was I all alone out here? A few other casitas were on the property, but they looked vacant. A pang of anxiety seized and then I realized, I had a cell phone, a credit card, and cash. I could always call a cab right. It was winter in April; the first time I’d lived in falling
snow. In the dining room, I unpacked the boxes and arranged them in a circle around the table. It was a heavy southwestern oak table, twelve feet long, and to the right were sliding glass doors that let the light stream across the black-and-white print. I was left to unravel two thousand more pages on Dad’s criminal life.
The trip was extended to two months. I read all the files and left Taos a different woman. I came back, persuaded Rudy to come visit, and he was hooked within minutes. He bought the Live Work Studio and fulfilled my dream of opening a Gallery of Black & White Photography of our 60s Rock & Roll legends.. One of Lou Reed shooting up heroin.
Santa Fe today
Santa Fe today, Friday the 13th. Listening to soundtrack of Man & a Woman, my lyrics, my movie. The end is what I imagine mine. The day was blowing cottonwood and white wisteria in a blow glow of dance. There is a certainty about my movements, different than yesterday. I declare this day of summer, sandals,pedicure, trying on my bathing suit, making a palette change, and putting on the ritz. The gloss and bronze, and maybe even going outdoors. Shopping and going to the Lowriders Day in Santa Fe.
FLOOR IT
If we experience disappointment our inner oars, the ones that carry us over the tidal waves, must be accessible, we must pick them up and bash the waves. If you are at a red light in life-like me, get a tune-up and then floor it!
YOU’LL FEEL BETTER IF YOU TALK ABOUT IT
The throw of the dice this week lands on Adventures in Livingness. The last time I wrote a column about life beyond the book was the Malibu series. I’m still tainted by the U-Turn out of Malibu, but as Dad always said, ‘If you fall off the horse you get back on!’ That’s what this book is all about; just how impressionable we are as children.
My pals who have commented after reading this material in six different memoirs are immensely important to this writer. Word press followers, you are recognized with every comment! Pals, Baron, Blair, and Stone who took my hand into the offices of agents and editors thank you for believing in my dice!
Santa Fe. NM 3/26/2016
A photographic day for capturing the stillness of light on the rose ![20160311_112156[1]](https://odysseyofadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/20160311_1121561.jpg?w=300)
buds. Winter was a lot of writing, editing, and films. I must have seen a hundred this winter. All easy paved paths to escape. The one I’d recommend is Divided We Fall; a Polish film set during the occupation of Poland. The Director managed to weave suffering and horror with extraordinary hope and brotherhood. If you like mystery-crime dramas, Nine Queens, an Argentinian film that rattles the roots of a cheaters.
A FEW DAYS LATER
Today is sprayed gray and white cloud cover, and tiny drops of wet snow. I call the climate of Santa Fe, a woman with PMS. I’m listening to Nat King Cole and withering under a hang-over after a sensational evening with Brother Marc, (the son I wanted) White Zen, his Mother, and Rudy. I’ve watched Marc grow up. Over the last seven years he’s transformed from a shy, confused young adult, into a man of the mountain; wilderness is his passion. He drives those big snow plow machines and grooms the mountains in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He works at night and when he takes a break he looks at the stars. Six-foot thin muscle, shoulder brown curls, and eyes shaped like two row boats filled with blue water. He’s not only handsome, his instincts, original expression, and amusing bellowing deep voice tie this lad up in someone you love. He’s an original. You never get the question or answer you expect; he pulls wisdom from his head and heart as easily as folding a napkin. One two three–a brand of thinking shoots out and I just look at him bewildered. Marc is a twenty-nine year old frontiersman and has been since he was knee high on a San Francisco skateboard. The Revenant!
Easter brings people together and I’ve sensed a developing surge to be in a group. Distanced friends come closer, family is the bread and butter of vacation, I see so many of them at La Posada, and couples are cooperating. No one needs to hug a pillow when they go to sleep is my motto.
My rise above familiar surroundings and comfort began the day Brussels was terror stricken and all Belgians became one. I checked on Twitter that day, and was touched so deeply when I read the dozens of tweets offering shelter, food, and clothes for those in need. If I were a lifestyle journalist I’d go there and write about the emotional and physical patterns that will change over time. Imagine the consciousness’ of those personally affected after experiencing a bomb exploding beside them. I’ve asked a few people how they feel about terrorism. Some are inflamed and others refuse to discuss the matter as it elicits political commentary. Terrorism has infiltrated the shuffle of disappointment and raised the inner riot in my head to world events. The importance of conversation so we don’t feel alone is vibrating. I don’t mean in text and twitter. It is too instant to embrace. What happened to,
‘You’ll feel better if you talk about it’ psychology?
After a few weeks of submitting the book and reading rejection emails, I realized I wasn’t as prepared as I thought. Not taking rejections personally is like a handshake after you’ve been swindled. I moused over to JK Rowlings and read a few rejection letters she posted after submitting a manuscript under the name of Richard Galbraith. One of the letters suggested she join a writers workshop! Anonymous writers like actors, musicians, artists, and photographers are caught in the storm of celebritism. If you are unrecognized the brick and mortar you have to break through is an Olympian challenge.
I was writing a lengthy portrayal of Ben Siegel one day and it occurred to me that he had become a major character in my life. He played a role that someone else should have; a noted author, or journalist, or poet. Ben Siegel changed my history because I had to learn to love him. Learning to love him meant erasing everything I had read or heard. It is said he was a ruthless killer, a savage, violent, and that he loved to kill. I turned to look at a photograph of my mother. I was told that she loved Ben too. Where once I believed my mother was naïve and uninformed, I know this wasn’t the case. She knew from the beginning. Mom fit into this strangely singular and controversial group of people. I see her in the full frame of who she was. (she is on the right in MGM Ziegfeld Follies 1946)
I like her this way because it raised my self esteem; my rebelliousness came from both parents.
While writing about Dad I questioned my prolonged interest in his choices, behavior, and his secrecy. I asked Uncle Myron who shared the same history. Myron reaffirmed that my father was a true to the code gangster. No one ever got him to talk about what he knew or had seen.
Children feel the repression of truth as clearly as they do the pain of bruise. The more you hide or bandage the more they seek and peek. At my root is the inclination to question the world around me, and to mend the breaks in life that molded my identity.
Along the way of the first chapter, I discovered that people like to know how it works; how we write in a state of solitude and selfishness. A story or any work of art lives in the artist and God. Miracles do happen!
EXCERPT FROM CRADLE OF CRIME BOOK
Submerged in film and gangster history, assembling photographs of my father’s movie star friends, his gangsters’ friends, photographs of the nightclubs he frequented, I pasted these into a collage and posted it above my desk. I played Tommy Dorsey and all the big band leaders of the thirties records imagining these props would provoke memories and a sense of identity to my parents.
Without knowing how deep I had to go or what shattering evidence would cross my path, in my heart, I felt this was crossing a spiritual bridge to my parents. The flip side was a gripping torment tied to my prying mind. Dad’.s compulsorily privacy was in my hands now and so was voice. He was inside my head reading his lines. “Stay out of my room–out of my affairs–out of my life!”
“I have to break into your life to break my silence. I want to understand you and Mommy.”
“Don’t expect any help from me! Put your nose in another book, the Allen Smiley story isn’t for sale.”
No matter what I uncovered I knew it would be ambiguous and controversial. I was certain there would be no record of murder, dope peddling, or prostitution. Even so, I could never understand the similarities we shared, unless I knew them as people. The ethereal staging did more than provoke memories; a sense of belonging rooted me to the golden years of Hollywood.
I was completely uneducated in the craft of research. My first phone call was to the Beverly Hills Police Department. They were not very helpful after I told them who my father was.
‘The Bugsy Siegel case is still open. We cannot release any files on your father. Call the Criminal District Office; they’ll have records of him there.’ The case was open? Sounded a bit squishy to me.
On a stormy day when the queen palms whipped though torrential rain, flooded streets and metallic clouds hanging low like a net over the sky I was on my way to the Criminal District Office in the Hall of Justice on Spring Street. Unfamiliar to me, but somehow as I walked up the prolonged steps it was recognizable from films and television. The Courthouse, the County Jail, all that authority in an unmarked white stucco building. Not a blade of grass out of place. When I arrived at the entrance my heart was racing. My father’s voice did not interfere with my direction but I felt his disapproval. The first person I confronted was an imposing woman with a sternness that studied me.
“May I help you?”
“I hope so. I apologize for the intrusion. I don’t have an appointment.”
“What are you asking?”
“I am looking for whatever files you have on my father.”
She reached for the desk drawer and passed me a form. She asked me to step aside and fill it out.
“My father died twelve years ago. I don’t have any other family to explain things to me.”
“I’m not at liberty to give you any information.”
“I know that. Can you tell me if you have files on Benjamin Siegel?”
“You mean Bugsy?”
“Yes.”
“Was your father Bugsy?”
“No, he was … his friend.”
“What was his name?”
“Allen Smiley.” She turned to her computer and entered something. She read from the screen and then removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes.
“Your father is in the system.”
I gave her the form with his FBI number and started to leave.
“Here, come back. I found the criminal case numbers. The numbers are 19778, 19926, and she read out nine different cases. As I watched her write these down I thought they know things about my father that I don’t.
“Bring these to the National Archives in Laguna Nigel.” She said.
Outside the clouds converged over the San Bernadino Mountains. The strain to see through reminded me of my own predicament; how to see through the fog of secrecy and ambiguity. The following day I drove to the National Archives. I didn’t know such a place existed. A polite man took my case numbers and when he returned he was wheeling a shopping cart of files. His name was Bill Doty.
“So your Dad was Allen Smiley?”
“Yes. You’ve heard of him?”
“There’s a lot written about him in Johnny Roselli’s files. I know he was very close to Johnny. We have ten-thousand pages on him.”
I looked at the brown manila files he stacked on a desk for me.
“I’ll be here all day.”
“We close at four o’ clock. Do you want to see the Roselli files?”
“Not just yet–I have to read these first.” The files took me on a criss-cross chase of a man I didn’t know. The case files included testimonies, court transcripts, appeals, and newspaper articles.
“How’s it going?” Bill appeared.
“This is a novel. Like reading about some one else.”
“Do you recognize any of the names?”
“Oh yea.”
Even now twenty-two years later I can conjure up the exact image of that sterile polished reading room, my stomach churning, the sound of the doors opening and closing, and Bill’s footsteps on the waxed tile floor. Crunched over the stack of documents I read my father’s answers to Examining Officers questions, from an Immigration and Naturalization Agency (INS) hearing in 1962.
“ Were you closely associated with Benjamin Siegel for the three years prior to his murder?”
“The only way I could explain it, was a friendly association.”
“Friendly business association or friendly social association?”
“Just the same type of friendly association that I have with people in every occupation of life. By the same token, I have had the occasion to have the President of Notre Dame in my home, Father Cavanaugh, Doctors, Lawyers, people of every description. I go by the golden rule. I treat people the way I like to be treated.”
The faded black type on his three page arrest record elevated my distress; assault, bookmaking, operating without a liquor license, robbery, extortion, contempt of court, suspicion of robbery, suspicion of murder, the words blurred. Suspicion of murder? Maybe Jack was right; Dad had more involvement than a friendly association. Every few hours I went outdoors and sat on a bench to breathe. My stomach was stiff as those fastened files. It was a feeling I’d never experienced in my life.
Bill circled around me as I slumped further into the past, the florescent lights blinding me. When I closed the files, and told him I’d be back in a week, Bill insisted I see the Johnny Roselli archives. There were eight shelves on either side of the aisle, and while I gazed at this galactic inventory the face of Johnny erupted. Seated in a red leather booth at La Dolca Vita, sipping red wine, his eyes
watery pools filled with the density of his life.
“Have you read Ed Becker’s book, All American Mafioso?” Bill asked. He randomly pulled a file from the rack.
“No.”
“You should; your Dad is in it. Look at this history so few people know about. The government hired Roselli to assassinate Castro! You have to read these files.”
EXCERPT FROM CRADLE OF CRIME
Our family histories bled through the second generation. Passed on by fathers and grandfathers; a convergence of contrasting truths now seated next to each other on a velvet ottoman in the Mob Experience. Years of distance was shattered, and we can talk to one another, and admire each other’s families;
with the blood and the love. We cannot understand one another if we don’t reveal our personal histories. At some point in life, we rewind, step back into the plot of our childhood, where we were most protected, most attended to, and most loved.
Here’s to you Cynthia, Carl, and Jimmy.
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ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 