I was a child of the fifties; when raising kids was easily defined. Mommy stayed home and made sure the kids didn’t burn the house down. Daddy went to an office to make money to pay for the house, and children waited until they were grown up to find out anything really useful. It was before the generation-gap was coined, or children knew how to be witty and sharp. In our air-tight neighborhood of Bel Air, Los Angeles, we were naïve, privileged, kids; bogged down with falling off bicycles, not being chosen for the school play, and bringing home the most candy at Halloween.
I believed in Santa Clause, the Easter bunny, and if I was good, Mommy would let me stay up and watch the Sunday night Variety Show.
America was threatened by the Russian Communists and Organized crime. Public enemy Number One was New York Mafia Boss, Frank Costello. Frank became super famous when he refused to testify on national television for Senator Estes Kefauver. The Kefauver Committee delivered explosive headlines between 1950 and 1951, as the government unveiled the hidden hand of the Mafia in the United States.
The first twenty-four hours. I stepped out of the cab and into the froth of a seasonally warm Saturday night Halloween crowd. The Chelsea Hotel Bell Captain trotted over to greet me.
“I’ll get those.” He grabbed the bag.
“You go inside.”
The pathway to the lobby entrance was red carpeted; a very old skeletal one that had been stepped on by plaque famous artists, writers, and bohemian debutantes. The Chelsea was built in 1883 as an apartment house. The neighborhood of 7th and 23rd Street used to be the theatre district. The theatre crowd was replaced by the literati, and more recently by film and television celebrity. The hotel is crumbling with novelettes. Even though it has recently been restored, it has the feel of a craggy lady of the street.
The lobby was crusading with costumed ready to party extras. My traveling ensemble and exhausted expression didn’t fit into the scene. I needed to eat, drink, and take off my coat. The desk clerk was very young,
“Your in Room 624–you’ll like the room, it’s a really nice one. Here’s the key.” When I opened the door, my vision parachuted as if the room was expanding the closer I got. It looked staged rather than decorated: minimal pieces, colors that drew the eye in, and nothing to get in the way of feeling insignificant. The walls were bare and the drapes partially opened. I pulled them back to see the city; a jagged puzzle of gray brick buildings staring back at me. I watched the faint silhouette of people moving behind the glass and suddenly felt very alone and uncertain. In haste I added a smudge of lipstick and left the room. The clerk looked up as I came out of the elevator,
“You like the room?” I nodded a bit falsely, because I wasn’t sure I really liked it. The room had more to say to me.
“Where is the closest Bistro?”
“Next door.”
I stepped across the red carpet and into the restaurant. At that moment I landed in Manhattan; the gravity sucked me down into a red leather cushioned booth. Then I remembered why I was here, the next day was the Copa reunion.
Twenty-four hours later Room 624 was mine. Victor, one of three Chelsea staff doorman who zapped formality with the grace of a king met me at the entrance. He had time to wave to half a dozen people passing by, hail a taxi from the middle of 23rd street, open the door for a guest, and still talk to me.
“Hey! How you doing today?”
” I’m rested and on my way now.” A young girl stepped out of the lobby.
“Hi honey,” Victor said,” Where areyou going? I worry about you.”
“Shopping,” she answered unconvincingly. “I like your outfit,” she said to me.
“Thank you. I’m going to an event I’ve waited for a very long time.”
“Oh yea, where to?” she asked.
“Have you heard of the Copa?”
”Sure, the Copacabana.” Victor started to hum the lyrics from the song and I dug out the book from my purse.
“I’m going to a Copa reunion–my mother danced there in the 40s.”
They looked at the photographs of the original Copa for the first time. New Yorkers will stop anything for New York anecdotes, especially history. Moments later the cab pulled up and I waved good-bye. I sat in the taxi and thought about my mother. She was seated next to me; an imaginary yet distinct vision that kept returning.
The moment I walked into the Copafest reception room a voice called out, “Louellen!” It was Kris, the author of the book. We embraced as our first meeting converged with written correspondence over the last year. The Copa dancers inched closer and I was anointed with their acceptance and love.
“This is them–they met at the Copa,” I said and showed them the photograph I had brought. One woman examined the photo and turned to me, I recognize him,” and she pointed to my father.
“And I recognize the man next to him.” It was someone I’d never been able to identify.
“Yep, I knew them. Your mother was beautiful, she was here before me.” Terri Stevens took my hand in hers and led me to the place where she was seated.
“What did you say your mother’s name was?”
“Lucille Casey.”
“Girls-girls! Come over here and meet Lucille Casey’s daughter.” Engulfed in their presence for the next five hours, I had time to talk with each one. I’d written about these women in fictional detail eighteen years ago. Now it was there turn to talk.
When I was eleven, our home burnt to the ground in the Bel Air fire, and everything we owned burned to ash. Shortly after my mother moved us to an apartment in Brentwood, a mammoth carton arrived and was placed in the center of the living room. My mother cut it open and urged me to look inside. I sat cross-legged on the avocado green carpeting, and discovered bundles of garments; Bermuda shorts, blouses, sweaters, and shirts.
I quickly shed my worn trousers and stepped into a new outfit, dancing about as I zipped myself in. My mother watched, and echoed my childish yelps of elation.
“Mommy, who are these from?”
“They’re from your Aunt Millicent.”
“Who is she? I don’t remember her.”
“You were a little girl. She loves you very much.”
Years later, my father, Allen Smiley, called and told me to come over to his apartment in Hollywood.
“Why Dad?”
“Millicent is coming by; I told you she moved here, didn’t I?”
I’d learned Millicent was Benjamin Siegel’s daughter, and Ben was my father’s best friend. Dad was sitting on the same chintz covered sofa the night Ben was murdered.
“You mean Ben Siegel’s daughter?”
“Don’t refer to her that way ever again; do you hear me? She is Aunt Millicent to you.”
When my father answered the door, I watched as they embraced. Millicent had tears in her eyes. She walked over to me, and took my hand. I looked into her swimming pool blue eyes and felt as if I was drowning. She sat on the edge of the sofa and lit a long brown Sherman cigarette. I studied her frosted white nails, the way she crossed her legs at the ankles, her platinum blonde hair, and the way her bangs draped over one eye. What impressed me most was her voice; like a child’s whisper, her tone was delicate as a rose petal.
I spent the rest of that afternoon memorizing her behavior. She emanated composure and a reserve that distanced her from uninvited intrusion.
Over the next few years, Millicent and I were joined through my father’s arrangements, but I was never alone with her. When he died in 1982, she was one of only three friends at his memorial service.
As the years passed, and my tattered address books were replaced with new ones, I lost Millicent’s phone number. I had been researching my father’s life in organized crime, and had gained an understanding of my father’s bond with Ben Siegel. My discoveries were adapted into a memoir and recently into a film script about growing up with gangsters. During this time, I had reconnected with several of Dad’s inner-circle, but Millicent was underground, and now I understood why.
Last year I received an email from Cynthia Duncan, Meyer Lansky’s step-granddaughter. She told me about Jay Bloom, the man behind the Las Vegas Mob Experience, a state of the art museum that will take visitors into the personal histories of Las Vegas gangsters. Cynthia contributed her significant collection of Meyer Lansky memorabilia, and assured me Jay was paying tribute to the historical narrative of these men by using relatives rather than government and media sources. She wanted me to be involved.
Despite my apprehensions about the debasing and one-sided publicity that characteristically surrounds gangster history, I contacted Jay. In his return note, he invited me to participate, and added, “Millicent would like to contact you.”
A month later I was seated in Jay’s office waiting for Millicent. When she walked in, I stood to embrace her, and this time the tears were in my eyes.
Millicent’s voice was unchanged and so was her regal posture. “Our fathers were best friends, attached at the hip. Your Dad was at the house all the time. I’ll never forget when he and my mother met me at the train station to tell us about my father’s… death. Smiley was very good to us. My mother adored him too.”
Jay took me on a tour of the collection warehouse, and the history I’d read about unfolded before my eyes. The preview room was like a family room to me, because some of the men had been my father’s lifelong friends and protectors. I stopped in front of the Ben Siegel display case and saw an object that was very familiar.
“My father has the identical ivory figurine of an Asian woman. I still have it.” So much of their veiled history was exposed; between these two men was a brotherly bond that transcended their passing and was even evident in their shared taste in furnishings.
Jay showed me a layout of the Mob Experience in progress. I turned to him and asked, “Is it too late to include my father? All the rooms are assigned.”
“Millicent and I already spoke about it. She wants your Dad in Ben’s room.”
After I returned home, Millicent and I talked on the phone.
“Your father belongs in my Dad’s room. They’ll just have to make Mickey Cohen’s room smaller.”
“My father hated Mickey,” I said.
“So did mine! When are you coming back? I’ll kill you if you don’t become part of this.”
This is an excerpt from the memoir I’ve been working on many years. The first manuscript was 800 pages; about three of them were worth reading. The book mutated about 2000 times.
“What’s it like knowing your father is a gangster? Did you know when you were a teenager? Did your father kill anyone? Did you ever meet Bugsy? Aren’t you afraid of his friends? You know they kill people.”
I was thirteen years old when my best friend told me my father was a gangster. She didn’t mean any harm. We told each other everything. We were standing in the Brentwood Pharmacy one day in 1966, and we turned the book rack around until we found ”The Green Felt Jungle.”
“That’s the book, let me look first and see what it says.” She whispered. I waited while she flipped trough the pages.
“Oh my God, there he is,” she said grasping my shoulders. We hunched over the book and read the description of my father beneath his photograph.
“Allen Smiley was the only witness to the murder of Bugsy Siegel.”
“What does that mean, who is Bugsy Siegel?” I asked.
“Shush, not so loud, I’m afraid to tell you this Luellen, it’s awful. I don’t believe it. “
“What is it? Tell me.”
“Bugsy Siegel was a gangster, he killed people. Your father was his friend.”
I don’t think I should read this, “I said replacing the book on the rack.
“Don’t tell your father I told you,” she warned.
“Why not?”
“My mother told me not to tell you, swear to me you won’t tell your father.”
“I swear, come on let’s go.”
My father called himself Allen Smiley. The FBI tagged him “armed and dangerous.” The Department of Justice referred to him as the “Russian Jew.” I called him Daddy. e had salty sea blue eyes blurred by all the storms he’d seen. When I said something funny, his eyes crystallized and flattened like glass, smoothing out the bad memories. He was always a different color, dressed in perfectly matched shades of pink, silver and blue. My small child eyes rested cheerfully on his silk ties, a collage of jewel tones. The feel of his fabric was soft like blankets. He was very interesting to look at when I was a child and open to all this detail.
In my home there is one large staircase window that faces east. Each morning before I descend the stairs I stop at the landing, to watch the day begin. The sun must rise past an assortment of tree limbs and trunks, and up over the hillside of the mountains. By the time I’ve had my coffee, the sun has risen above the obstructions. I am now jerked awake, like a slight nudge a parent might give you, ‘Come on–wake up! You have school.” The sunlight guides me through the morning, and argues with my disagreement of the days activity.
The moment the café took effect, I want to begin writing, but shameless sunlight in my eyes and the dance of the birds are tempting me to step outdoors. When you live in seasonal climate, days and nights lure you outside, like old lovers that you must see again. The gradual awakening unfolds layers of thoughts, beginning with the anxiety of the times. The impending hardship oozes out like a bad smell. Some mornings I cannot look at the newspaper, the headlines read like promotional movie advertisements, banks bankrupt, homes foreclosing, woman commits suicide, the shocking prick of national disasters is a surgical awakening.
There is no time to waste, no money to squander, it is a time of reduction and refusal. How can I not spend money today.
This is what brings me to the sunrise of prosperity, I have to keep studying the illumination of light, and I’ll move forward, and diffuse the chaos.
As the interruption of minor mishaps knock on my door, my head turns away from it. I’ve learned to erase the panic, and do what I have to do, and that is write.
Last week, while I was upstairs, prone on the sofa, figuring out a transition between two men, whom I love, someone came to the door, knocking, ringing the bell fiercely, oh what is that. I open the door,
“ Yes,”
“ Are you all right? I’m from the security company, your alarm isn’t connected. We came to check on you.”
I stood there with a dumber than dumb expression, and assured him I wasn’t held captive or about to throw myself out the window. When I returned to the desk, I kept seeing his expression, he really didn’t believe me. I turned the alarm off when Rudy left for San Diego. Real estate agents our showing our house because it’s up for lease. My mind is a closet of mafia memoir notes, and I can’t remember to close the refrigerator door.
Later in the day, if I haven’t ventured outdoors, I take a walk around the plaza, and muse over the herds of tourists, and search their expressions for interior moods. I don’t see panic and anxiety, I see relief; couples are rigid from ice and chill, and they shuffle in boots, directionless, gaping at the churches and adobe arches, they shoot photographs, standing in the middle of the street. Vacation is bliss in the middle of discontent.
When I return to my desk, it is time to print the days work. This is always a ritual of great expectation, filled with disappointments, surprise, and sometimes a whiff of elation. The sun has made it’s journey to the other side of the house, the back porch is like starched light, it burns the eyes and flesh, like hardship, the immediate effect is callous. There I sit and review the pages. The transition worked; the crawl from uncertainty to confidence broke through. Now is the time to slouch in the chair, close my eyes, and rewind a few scenes back.
Hardship is like the sun, unmerciful when it is met face to face, and transforming when we are protected. That translates to less spending and more creating.
While I am lounging in this beautifully historic old home, one track of time keeps appearing in my images. It is a time when space was limited, finances on a string as long as my finger, and uncertainty a nightmare that became a lullaby. It is that time again, nothing at all unfamiliar With the same resources I had then, all is well, the sunset can go down, and I can laugh because the adventure has risen above the circumstances.
Dreams we all have; comfort, love, and health, peak through the brown stalked winter trees, through the blinding white cloud cover pushing through icy winds, and snow storms that settle on the lonely sidewalk, and rise to my drape-less window.
On such a Saturday, I am slacking on the downstairs sofa with a tray of coffee, and all that separates me from my dreams is the rustle of fear. The windows reflect snippets of promising outcomes to developing friendships, travel, a script in progress, and properties on the edge of default. Overlapping these is a mirage of life experiences tucked into memory prescriptions you take on a stormy day. A relic of my history rises, and reminds me of the fear I once broke through.
It was 1982, and I was poised on a terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Venice Beach. It was March, the month my father died, and I stared at the horizon at dusk, and imagined my freedom taking flight. Where would I go? Without his presence in Los Angeles, and my sister who had already moved to New York, I was terribly alone. The replacement came in summer flings, with men who had crossed my path; a photographer, a New Jersey computer technician with a brassy voice and Joe Pesci humor, and every few days, Kenny, a former boyfriend, dropped by to smoke his pipe of philosophy and blow long-winded ideas on where I should move.
“I really want to move to Canada.” I said.
“For what? To go ice-skating?” He said between puffs.
“I have family in Vancouver.”
“What family? You’re an orphan now.”
“I am not. I have cousins in Vancouver. My father’s nephews.”
“Oh Yea. When was the last time you saw them?”
“When I was twelve.”
“Terrific! That’s a solid-ass plan. So what will you do in Canada?”
“Get a job in real estate.”
“Lue! Wake-up. You can’t get work in Canada unless you’re a citizen. Forget that idea. You’re better off staying here; look where you are; Santa Monica, the beach at your feet. Are you crazy?”
“I don’t belong here any longer.”
“You don’t belong to anywhere; what you need is to stop trying to be a big-shot like your father.”
“I am not.”
“When was the last time you left the country; when you were eighteen? Go to Rio, you’ll have the time of your life, or Italy, or Greece–it doesn’t matter. Just take the chance and see how you land on your feet. You’re a dreamer, it’s about time you made one of your dreams come true.”
In the next few weeks, I met with Larry, my boss, who was liquidating his real estate portfolio to retire at forty-five years old. Larry wasn’t just an investment visionary; he was passionate about social, political, medical, scientific and human interests. He was a genius.
“You can stay here another year–I’ll find something for you to do, but you’ll be bored.” Larry told me.
“Larry, I don’t know where to go.” I wiped a tear. He ignored it.
“You have to get out of LA. You’ll never meet anyone here. You think you’ll be introduced to someone riding up and down the elevator in Century City. I’ve spent a lot of time in Del Mar, and Rancho Santa Fe. They’re nice people. You have a chance there, go down and spend a few days and tell me what you think. I’ll help you. Now, stop crying. “
I drove down in Dad’s black El Dorado, and parked at Del Mar Beach right next to the life guard station at the Poseidon Restaurant. I opened my suitcase, took out a bathing suit and went into the beach bathroom. The tile was wet and smelled of seaweed and salt. I walked barefoot down to the beach. It was early spring, the sand was unmarked. A few surfers jogged past me, blonde and bronzed like the Beach Boys. I followed them down to the seashore. In every direction, there was this untouched canvas of light and color; even the beach houses retained their natural sandy simplicity.
After I swam in the ocean, I went back to the bathroom, changed into dry clothes and walked into town. A man with a beard rode past me on a horse and waved. I picked up a Reader and read the rental advertisements on the patio of Carlos n Charlie’s, corner café. A roommate advertisement caught my eye; “Roommate Wanted to Share large two bedroom overlooking Torrey Pines Reserve.” I called and a man who went by the name of Smokey answered the phone. He invited me to come by for a look. His voice was predominantly ranch friendly, so I took a drive over. It did occur to me on the drive that I was taking that chance Ken was blowing in my ear, and I was listening to Larry who told me that people in San Diego were different.
“Hi, I’m Smokey. Come in—would you like something to drink? Too early for cocktails, unless you want one.”
“No thanks. How long have you lived here?”
His eyes were animal alert, his face tanned and his hair cut short but made to look long. His smile was unfiltered with hidden motives, and he was bull-legged.
”I moved from Pittsburgh; I’ll never go back except to see my folks. This is paradise. Don’t you think? I’ve lived her two years. I rent out one room, because I hate full time work. I’m more entrepreneurial. You don’t have to worry about my motives. I have a girl-friend, and I’m in love with her. She doesn’t stay here. I go to her house. You’ll have your space, and if you need a friend I’m here. Come out on the balcony.”
I followed Smokey and we stood on the terrace overlooking the lagoon and marshlands of the reserve. To the west, the ocean and the stump of Torrey Pines Mountain.
“Wait till sunset; you’ll never want to leave. Come look at your room. I can help you move if you want.”
The room was downstairs, his upstairs, and a stairway of trust in between.
I was about twenty-three at the time, living in one of the blandest bachelor apartments in Westwood, working in an office cubicle, and daydreaming about places in Travel & Leisure magazine. My father called one afternoon with a no reply command to come to his apartment.
“I have something to discuss with you.” Growing up with gangsters involves many face-to-face meetings because the telephones are tapped. It is of no consequence what I happen to be doing at 7:00 PM that night– if Dad has something to discuss, we have to meet in person.
“What about?” I ask.
“What did I say? Didn’t I say we have to discuss it here?”
In those years, my head was waxed with false perceptions that Daddy was what Daddy told me – in the oil business. It did not occur to me that all those meetings at his apartment, in restaurants and parks were because he did not want any uninvited listeners from the FBI or other government agency.
After clearing my passage with the receptionist, I rode up the elevator to his Century City Park apartment. After peaking through the peephole, and asking if I was alone, he opened the door. I greeted him with a kiss on the cheek, and he asked, what kind of out fit is that. My attire on any given occasion should be a colorful coordinated double-breasted pants suit.
“I have some zucchini and rice in the refrigerator –will you make your old dad that vegetable dish? My father didn’t cook anything beyond boiled eggs, and broiled fish. I nodded and started for the kitchen.
“Wait a second, I’m not through talking–sit down. Well– I’m finally able to do what I’ve wanted to do for some time. It hasn’t been possible until now; I’m sending you to New York. Can you take a week off work?”
“I will of course-but aren’t you going?
“No. I’ve lived New York in the best years and wouldn’t go back if you paid me a million dollars.
‘Why?”
“Why? Because I did it all, and now it’s your turn.” I moved closer to him on the couch so I could wrap my arms around and kiss his cheek.
“The first thing you have to do is get a new outfit. You won’t go to Manhattan in those jeans-for crying out loud. You’re staying at the St. Regis Hotel… I have it arranged, the guy owes me a favor and I had a bit of a windfall this month. Your mother and I stayed there. ”
“When? Where is the St. Regis?”
“Don’t interrupt-don’t you think I know where to send you? As I was saying, I booked a week for you. Now, I have it all set-up. You’ll have a driver, and do not get into a cab or any other car, you stay with the driver I hired, do you hear me Luellen?”
“Can’t I walk?
“You can walk after he takes you to the places you want to go. Do not argue with me, I know what I’m doing. You’re just a little naïve about New York. Anything can happen; it’s a jungle and you’re little red-riding hood. A fella will walk pass you on the street, clip your purse, and you’ll never know, a guy will carry your bag for you, and you’ll never see it again.”
The year was 1978, but I cannot remember which month. It was still cold enough to wear the mink coat he had given me for this occasion. I wrapped that mink around me everyday for a week. The Hotel Valet was familiar with the name Smiley, as was the hotel manager and the driver he hired was a double agent. He was also a bodyguard. The black Lincoln continental never left my sight.
The St. Regis is on West 55th, a few short blocks from Tiffany’s. That was my destination of choice, not for the diamonds, but a glimmer of where Audrey Hepburn sipped coffee and nibbled on a doughnut. I didn’t really care where the driver led me; I was visually climaxing on the traffic cops, the horses in central park, the side walkers streaming in one band as if all connected, horns blaring, lights flashing and the hi-rise silhouettes against slices of the sky.
My father expected me to have lunch at the World Trade Center, dinner at La Cirque, and in between long drives through Little Italy, Central Park, and Riverside Drive. My breath stopped when we were launched into the sky to have lunch at Windows on the World. While sipping my first Manhattan the city spun me around and for the first time I realized I was a real nobody-that I’d been no where– if I hadn’t been to Manhattan, and the impression cut off my short tail of confidence. The psychological departure that turned me from Daddy’s little girl into Luellen the woman will continue.
a continuation.
Windows on the World for anyone who has not been there supplied even the sourest puss, a great big slice of hope, because you were on the same level as the tallest building.
I wish I would have saved the matches or the napkins from that day. The fact that my father and Bobby Short are both gone, the World Trade Center is gone, and I am still a nobody amplifies the memory.
The night I went to see Bobby Short I was seated at a table, and while I tried to inhale the glitterati of the evenings crowd, I was ineffectually blowing cigarette smoke into the thick stream of smoke lingering above our heads. The room was New York jammed every table a colorful mixture of cocktails, handbags, and beautiful arms adorned with strands of gold. I had been on the town in Hollywood, seen movie stars up close, and dined with them. This crowd generated more mystery. Their body language was fluid; they did not purposely draw attention, because they were not there to be discovered by Lefty Lazar, or Robert Altman.
Bobby Short was a nightclub piano player after everyone went home. You could picture him sitting at the piano, as you would Will Rogers on his horse, long after the image was diluted. His eyes tap-danced with the eyes of the audience; they were all together. I was young, naïve and impressionable, and that is why my father sent me so I would get the impression.
During the day we were driven around by the tight lipped body guard, and we watched New York. It wasn’t until we met Al Davis (not the Raiders Owner) but a man who owned a distillery in Kentucky and liked my father enough to buy him a new Cadillac. Dad told us we were to meet Al at the Carlyle for Sunday Brunch. There is a stage like ambiance walking on 5th Avenue on a Sunday in New York. New Yorkers dress for a walk and I was again impressed at how sophisticated everyone looked so early in the morning.
Al Davis brought along a tall good looking man, that reminded me of a run around guy; he does everything he’s told and is of good temperament until somebody insults his boss. He poured Champagne, made phone calls, and Al Davis was WC Fields liquored by the time the eggs benedict arrived. He was not only a prankster, and a tease, he was bloated with years of drink and laughter, and anything else was just not worth his time. Knowing that my father was not going to walk in and surprise us, allowed us to feel slightly deserving of fanning that freedom. Al’s associate moved closer to me, and taunted my feminine prowess, which until that particular day had not been taunted by any friend of my father’s. It was then that I felt like a woman in New York. I have not felt that particular brand of womanliness since. No offense to any other gentlemen that spoiled me on occasion. It was that Sunday in New York, sitting in a booth, with worldly older men that made the lasting impression my father didn’t anticipate. During the brunch Al kept repeating, “ Don’t tell your father, he’ll have me shot.”
Several weeks later Al and his friend were in town and asked me to join them at a nightclub for dinner. Was I to tell my father, or just go along. I decided to go. We ended up going to Pip’s, an exclusive night club in West Hollywood. That evening, I tossed my adolescence around and swirled on the dance floor with frightening vulnerability. I didn’t get home until very late. The next day, my father called.
“ What time did you get home?”
“ I went out with Al Davis, he kept me there.”
“ I know where you were, and I know who you were with, and everything else you do. Don’t you ever accept an invitation from one of my friends unless I am with you! What kind of idiot are you? Haven’t I taught you anything? I cannot be responsible for a guy like Davis if I’m not there! I’m too upset to look at you; don’t bother coming to see me. ”
I returned to the Carlyle one more time to see Bobby Short, but I have never enjoyed a more outrageously mischievous Sunday in New York like that day with Al Davis.
It seems once a month; I am jarred into this part of my family history. Just last week, a woman emailed me information she pulled off a website that I’d never seen. There in the document, was a story about my mother and father.
I began my research fourteen years ago. It started with what I had, one of my father’s books; “The Mark Hellinger Story.” I leafed through the index and there was my father’s name along with Ben Siegel’s. According to the biographer, my father visited Mark at his home the night before he died. Mark had stood up in court for my father and Ben at one of their hearings. He was fond of Ben, like so many people were, that aren’t here to tell their story.
After reading the book I rented, The Roaring Twenties, written by Mark, and from there the connections, relationships, and characters began to leap out from all directions. I submerged myself in history and photocopied pictures of my father’s movie star friends, George Raft, Eddie Cantor, Clark Gable, and his gangsters friends. I found photographs of the nightclubs he frequented, the Copacabana, El Morocco, and Ciro’s and nightclubs that he referred to in his mysterious conversations. I made a collage of the pictures and posted them board above my desk. I played Tommy Dorsey records while I wrote. This microcosm of life that was created, allowed me to listen to the whispers and discover the secrets.
I dug into my father’s history 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. I needed to break into the files in order to break my silence, and discover real people, not glamorized stereotypes that fit into the category of Copa dancer and gangster. No matter what I uncovered, I always knew it would be ambiguous, and controversial. I did not expect to find a record of murder, dope peddling, and prostitution. I believed that his crimes were around the race track, and in gambling partnerships. Even so, I could never understand the similarities we shared, unless I knew them as people. Though I have not rebelled against authority as my father did, I‘m not a team player, I resist authority, and I don’t like waiting in lines.
I had to reinvent my mother through the subconscious. I skated over thin ice trying to set her truth apart, from what I had invented, dreamed, or had been told. I listened to Judy Garland’s recordings, and premonitions surfaced, of how my mother loved Judy, how it felt to be under the spot lights of MGM, and dancing in ginger bread musicals while her own life was draped with film noir drama.
I studied my mother’s face in all her films, rewinding and stopping the tape, as if she might suddenly return my glance. She had dancing and background shots in the musicals produced by Arthur Freed. I remembered dad talking about Arthur, and how prestigious it was to be in his department.
When I discovered the Museum of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, I went down and filled out a slip of paper with my mother’s name on it and waited for my number to be called. I felt something like a mother discovering her child’s first triumph. They handed me a large perfectly stainless manila envelope, and a pair of latex gloves to handle the file. I had to look through it in front of a clerk.
“That’s my mother,” I proclaimed. He blinked and returned his attention to a memo pad. Inside the envelope were black and while glossy studio photographs, press releases, and studio biographies of my mother. The woman who pressed my clothes, washed my hair, and made my tuna sandwiches. There she was in front of the train, for Meet Me in St. Louis, and a promotional photograph in TheSecret Life of Walter Mitty, dated 1947. That was the year Ben was shot. I looked further to find more clues. I needed to know where she was the night Ben was murdered. Maybe she was on location when it happened. Maybe she was in New York at the opening of the film. I could not place her on June 20, the day Ben was murdered. I imagined my father called her and told her the news. The marriage plans were postponed, their engagement suspended. My father had to get out of town.
I spent everyday picking through the myths I’d heard and read. I heard a clear chord of scorn, for exposing family secrets, “It’s nobody’s business what goes on in our family, don’t discuss our family with anyone, Do You Hear Me!” I must have heard that a thousand times.
I began to dig with an iron shovel. I asked every question I wasn’t supposed to ask, and preyed into every sector of their life. I wanted to know about his childhood, where he grew up, and why he left home when he was thirteen years old. Who were my grandparents, and why didn’t he talk about them. How did he meet Ben Siegel and Johnny Roselli, and when did he cross over into the rackets?
I contacted historians, archivists, judges, attorneys, Police Chiefs, FBI agents, authors and reporters across the United States. He always said, “Reporters can destroy your life overnight.” And here I was, uncovering what he had sheltered all his life.
I wrote to the INS in WDC and asked for their assistance. Six months later I received a letter from the INS in Los Angeles. They acknowledged his file, it was classified and they could not locate it. The progress was tediously slow, and the waiting oppressive.
While I waited for the files, I read Damon Runyon, and Raymond Chandler stories and attempted to identify which character personified which gangster. The stories were about the people that came to my birthday parties, Swifty Morgan, Nick the Greek, Frank Costello and Abner Zwillman,(the Boss of the New Jersey syndicate.) The dialect of Runyon and Winchell mimicked the same anecdotes my father used over and over! By understanding Runyon’s characters I began to know my father. At night I watched old gangster movies and that opened another door of familiarity.
I read almost every book in print about the Mafia and ordered out of print books from all over the country. They began to topple on my head from the shelf above the desk. Allen Smiley was in dozens of them. Every author portrayed him differently, he was a Russian Jew, a criminal, Bugsy’s right hand man, a dope peddler, a race track tout, and sometimes the words bled on my arm. To me, he was a benevolent father, a wise counselor and a man who worshipped me.
The INS claimed my father was one of the most dangerous criminals in the United States. They said he was Benjamin Siegel’s assistant. They said he was taking over now that Ben was gone.
That day I put the file away, and looked into the window of truth. How much could I bear to hear more?
Adventures in beginnings, starting over, and rewriting a story you’ve lived many years is the same as re-writing a story. It takes the same blind courage.
About half between forty and fifty years old, you hear people say, “It’s too late to start over,” It’s not true. I hope it never feels like that when I wake up. Just thinking about it makes me run in circles. Behavioral change is essential to living a full life. In the middle of the night I woke up as if it was morning. When I looked out the window, the moon was white as a laundered tablecloth, staring back at me. It said get up and write.
I retreated to my corner of the world, a tiny room bathed a blush pink and gold, and wrote from beneath the goose down comforter. The moon watched. Now that the lights and decorations are placed in the cartons, the wrapping and ribbon tossed away, a landfill of disturbing, distressing, and terrifying global news is dumped on us. I do not understand the external world of political and international power, wealth, and motivation.
I fled that world a long time ago when I learned that men who controlled the paths of others were dangerously self-serving. I recall my father sitting on that green velvet sofa, holding the remote in one hand and watching a news program. He turned it off and said to me, “Luellen, everything that goes on is fixed; you cannot hide your head in the sand and think otherwise.” I nodded my head in understanding, while internally I thought my father was suffering from his usual psychosis. Eventually I crossed over, and forfeited my interest in politics. The forces of evil have shattered that glass of indemnity.
This year is not about vapid resolutions catering to our comfort, it is about survival. It’s about transforming behavior and habits, excesses and denial. Doing it in a group, makes us feel less traumatized. Imagine, all the thousands of people paddling the same current; forcing back the mortgage lender, relinquishing precious possessions, driving a car with a shattered windshield, wearing coats without any down feathers left, and wondering when the pink slip will arrive. Alienation and neurosis are at the root of people’s aggression and discontent. It can lead to unexpected violence, and then to massacre and war. It is a collection neurosis that grows worse every year.
The inner world, where each of us faces a truth no one else knows, is ruptured. All I can think of is bringing a little bit of light to someone you know is in darkness.
“Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.”
Anais Nin. 1931
Expecting snow, expecting pleasure… we are all in some range of expectation. Where you may be hunched under an umbrella waiting for the light to turn green, so you can find shelter inside a café, a shop, where someone else waits for the arrival of a friend, the death of a loved one, the offer in writing, the publication, the house to sell, the decision to resonate, the pain and suffering to subside.
I think of something my father used to say, “You made your bed, now you lie in it.” And another one, “It’s your lot in life.” I began writing Smiley’s Dice in 2002 from a desk in a Solana beach rental. Maybe in two years I’ll have a column in a newspaper or magazine, and maybe I won’t. It’s my lot: to not give up.
Santa Fe is blistery cold, the street dry and the sidewalks baking sheets of white snow. Out my window is a metallic sky that hints of more snow. This sky slows the rhythms of the body and mind; it invades the hurried motions of pedestrians, vendors and hotel staff. There is an absence of light that intercepts outward vision, so we turn inwards. I do anyway. And because I gorge myself on the emotionalism, and interior life, I have not slid into home base.
That is why it has taken me longer to launch my writing for worldly consumption. Some of us are not in a rush to wave the “I made it” flag. Some favor holding back, until the other elements of our character life are lived; our destructiveness, fear, pettiness, falsity, greed, so many steps to climb.
You and I have to trust in the pattern of our lives, the invisible thread that taunts us, teases us, and even torments us. My lot, postponed progress, maturity, development.
I was an A cup until college, without direction, a major in English, Art, and Psychology, before dropping out. My major interest was the countryside beyond Sonoma State campus walls, the roaming cows, and flock of geese over the swamps, the crooked paths winding through eucalyptus woods, the poetry pasted on bulletin boards in the coffee house, the farmers in the pasture.
“When are you going to start taking your life seriously?” My father asked this question every few years, and every few years, I lied.
I was adulterated when I was first employed at the old Gibraltar Savings & Loan on Wilshire Boulevard. I was serious about how they measured my performance, and was vicariously unconcerned with personal gratification. How excited could I be about trust deeds? I cannot even recall what I was doing; just the name of the department, the Beneficiary Demand department.
All that restrictive training, in punctuality, production, and prudence, exploded late in life. I did not discover my passionate interest in writing until I was forty.I didn’t own a home until I was forty-seven, did not stop biting my nails until I was fifty-four, did not learn to love and trust until last year.
I developed friendships late in life, now I honor a treasure chest of sterling gems that glitter from near and far. Friends that abandon tasks to listen to me talk about moving the furniture again, and consent to my absence because the victor of writing has kidnapped me.
It is a day later, the sky is unchanged; still the cloud cover is nailed to the sky. In random conversations I have heard of people’s hardships, of sacrifice and compromise during this holiday season. No more travel talk about Paris, and the Orient. No more extended vacations or extravagances. We have to give ourselves a holiday from lament, from error, and from exasperation. I tell myself not to be combative, not this year, and don’t polish the guilt and remorse, just let it fade away. Don’t open those links to real estate values, retirement funds and investments; open the link to History. Remember what the greatest generation was handed; remember soup lines, suicides, and World War II.
Mostly don’t reprimand your partner for unrealized expectations; They are most fragile to your voice and touch. The adventure in livingness is to look at your lot; and ride it with amusement and wonder.
A LITERARY AGENT I know emphasized the importance of rounding up readers. That’s not so easy when you’re exposing your own guarded family secret.
My mother married my father two years after Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was murdered. Sitting beside Ben the night of the murder provoked an immediate response from my father; it was time to get the hell out. He promised to reform, and she agreed to marry him. One of her compromises was her religious faith. She was Irish Catholic. She stopped going to church, and she didn’t convert. It was a bitter irritation between them. My father raised us Jewish, we attended Hebrew School and went to Synagogue every Saturday morning. The complexity of being half Jewish and half Catholic surfaced, when some classmate told me I wasn’t really Jewish. I told this to my father. I still remember his answer coming at me like a round of bullets.
” That’s an idiot! It doesn’t matter if you’re half Jewish or a quarter, you’re a Jew! Don’t you ever forget it, and don’t let anyone tell you different. DO YOU HEAR ME?” To this day when people remind me that I’m not really Jewish I say,” For my father, God made an exception.”
Friends are different for men in the Mafia, and for their wives. Real friends have to be connected. You cannot trust anyone else. My mother had three friends. Marianne was married to Gus Alex a powerful political fixer in the Chicago syndicate. She had been a model like my mother. She was the stunning Grace Kelly sort of beauty with coolness much like my mother. She and my mother whispered when I was in the room.
More than any other person, Aunt Bess was beholden to my mother. She wasn’t really an aunt. Bess was Benjamin Siegel’s little sister. The one he favored over the others. I suppose Bess met my mother way before I was born, when Benjamin was alive. She had the same bedroom eyes of her brother, big hound dog eyes that swept sentiment in every glance. She had a heart too big for the turmoil in her life, and she cried about everything. She squeezed my face, and forever referred to me as her gorgeous baby. Bess was as content crying as she was laughing. There wasn’t any in between. She dressed in high heels, tailored suits and carried a hand bag with lots of tissue. She and my Nana, my mother’s mother were very close friends. Bess, her husband, and daughter lived in a house on Doheny Drive that Ben Siegel bought for her. Bess’s husband Solly never uttered a word, and worked for Ben doing odd jobs.
In later years I would live across the street from them, but by then my father had distanced Bess’s family for reasons never revealed.
How I loved to watch Miriam; a saucy brassy Italian from Brooklyn. She propped up her bosom like two statues, waved a long red lacquered nail, and smoked one cigarette after another without ever taking a breath. She shopped everyday, charged everything, and when we were in the room she did not change her act, she let us see what it was really like to be a gangsters wife. Beneath all the enamel and cosmetics she loved my mother unconditionally. Although their characters were strikingly different, they shared that bond. Miriam was married to Doc Stacher, who rose in the ranks to become enforcer for Abner “Longy” Zwillman, the boss of New Jersey. Doc walked with his hands clasped behind, a cigar stub lived on his lip, and he was bald and heavy lidded. He lived in short pants and little white sneakers. Beneath his somewhat harsh and metallic skin was a wreath of worship for Joanne. He didn’t restrict her humor, appetite, or spirit. The more outrageous her behavior the more he approved.
Mafia men make the most outrageously entertaining hosts; nothing is ever out of the question. All they have to do is pick up the phone, and someone in the network will make it happen.
Mafia men don’t get up and go to work. Not one day in his life did my father ever report to an office. When I wasn’t in school, he took me with him in the powder blue Cadillac and we drove the streets of Hollywood visiting friends in delicatessens. We sat in big leather booths while my father and the owners talked. I didn’t know what work was all about. No doubt the conversation was the rackets, the races, or Vegas. I was a very good decoy. What kind of a man takes his daughter to mob meetings? The kind that doesn’t want to look like a mob guy. My father didn’t think I was listening, but I heard a lot.
Rory Calhoun was one of the characters that stood out. He was a western movie star; the Clint Eastwood of his day. Rory was also in the same reformatory as my father as a teen. The Calhoun family and ours spent a lot of time together. They had two daughters and lived in an exotic Spanish villa on a corner of Sunset Boulevard. Inside it was like a movie set, with animal rugs, oil paintings of Spanish Troubadours and Moorish decorations. Rita, Rory’s wife, wore tiny stacked high heels and she clicked across the Spanish tiles like a flamenco dancer. The whole family was blessed with dreamy looks. I remember looking at my reflection in the mirror as Rita combed my hair, and discovering I was not at all pretty. I didn’t realize that I was surrounded with extraordinary beauty; everyone had these exceptional vogue looks. The importance placed on that kind of beauty was just as distorted.
Rita exhumed a stern feminine demeanor, extremely seductive but not without a battle. I learned my first lessons about temptation just by watching her. She fanned the room with perfume and laughter, and men just succumbed like drugged animals. I felt my first tingle of sexuality in the arms of Rory. He was a treasure of natural emotion, conversation, and jokes. They both gambled, borrowed money from the other, and bet on everything.
FLAMINGO HOTEL WEDDING 1949.
My mother was raised in East Orange, New Jersey, before the neighborhood changed. My grandmother always said that East Orange used to be a very nice place to live. There is a photograph of my mother at age seven or eight posing in the garden with her German Shepard. She is holding a ruffled parasol, and dressed like a doll. Her face is a bud of innocence, but with a hint of pained modesty. She didn’t flaunt her beauty; it was more of an embarrassment. When her father died suddenly, she elected to help her family financially, and entered her photograph in a Redbook magazine contest. At seventeen years old she won a modeling contract with John Robert Powers in New York City. My mother ascended to an identity that suited her in some ways and restricted her in others. The Powers girls were invited to grand openings of hotels, restaurants and nightclubs. She appeared on stage at New York’s Copacabana Night Club in 1943. On one of those nights my father was in the audience, and that was where the Smiley Casey bridge from East Orange to Hollywood began.
Déjà vu made a sounding explosion when I was seated in the Del Mar Turf Club with my friend Rudy. I wore the best outfit I had, which was Victorian compared to other dolls at the track. After observing the fans for a few minutes, I noticed one table of serious bettors that looked authentic. That’s when the memory of me and Dad at Santa Anita came rising up, and the expression he wore the entire time we sat through six races. He never took off his tinted shades, and he did not speak to me at all, not once, except to hand me a twenty-dollar bill and say, “Play the Trifecta,” and named the horses. I ran off assured I’d be a winner, and returned to my seat anxiously. Dad gave me his binoculars when my race came up, and within two-minutes, I’d gone from winner to loser. I looked at him and he said in a neutralized manner, “Now you know nothing is a sure thing; even with your old dad.”
The horse races were the one secret he couldn’t keep. He talked about the races, the jockey’s, and his handicapping because he couldn’t repress that part of his life. It was like asking a woman not to talk about her ex-boyfriend or husband. Rudy was not inflamed with the fury of the races, but he stayed there, and gave me money to pick the winners. When the Shoe entered the Winner’s Circle, I said to Rudy, “My Dad was close to Willie, one of his trainers used to be around us a lot.
“Go over and introduce yourself.”
“Not now. Maybe afterward if I see him.”
“Come on, let’s go stand by the exit so you can get close.”
“I don’t want to. I’m not sure what their relationship was.”
“What could it be? Your Dad played the track.”
I followed Rudy and when Willie rode by waving at the people, I waved back.
“No, it’s not right to approach him now.”
“Your wrong; but it’s your decision.”
I didn’t go looking for Willy because he was Dad’s friend, not mine. We didn’t socialize like I did with Johnny Roselli or his other pals. My dad did tell me that “Meyer had a great saying: You don’t inherit friends,’” and I felt that was the situation. The rest of the day; while the scenery liquefied into a nostalgia of the nineteen forties, my eyes were unblinking at all the activity.
I’d read enough about the tracks to know that it was the club to join back then, and if you were on the inside, the parties lasted all night. And so did the gambling and practical jokes, and staged busts. I understood what drew my Dad, because the same thrills were touching me, and I liked it a lot. I took notes on what I’d experienced that day, because it was a new culture I’d just discovered.
I wasn’t interested in winning really, I just adored the characters behind the scenes; the speaker calling out the race, the girls leaping out of their seats and kissing their betting boyfriends, the waiters in tuxedos serving salads, and champagne, the oldies music, horses, costumes, and the Jockey’s, those little guys who control a two thousand pound animal going thirty-five miles an hour and more.
The next day I took the notes out and wrote a few pages about the track. It wasn’t researched or reported, just the ad-lib observation of a gal with a gangster past. It came so easy, it was like writing about a familiar subject. Rudy read it and said to send it to the local newspaper. I fought him a few rounds, and then finally succumbed to the idea of publishing my writing.
A few days later the editor called and asked me to submit more pieces… and he’d pay me twenty-five dollars a column. He mentioned I’d have a press pass to go to the track galas, and write about the track. I got off the phone feeling empowered and drove to Office Depot to buy a tape recorder. I’d just finished reading the Damon Runyon stories, and so I thought, here’s my chance. I started taking morning runs around the track when the horses are warming-up. It is one of the most exhilarating sensations, to see that polished hide bursting through the entrance to the track, nostrils flared, lips crunching the bite, and those burning brown eyes pointed to the track. In the afternoon I walked around the track with my press pass and knocked on barn doors. The reception was immediate, yes, they would love to be interviewed. So I spent one whole summer writing about the Del Mar Race Track, and didn’t bet a dime. I did begin more research into the horse-racing industry and was eager to see a movie about this spectacular sport. Seabiscuit was a treat because I attended the Premier in Saratoga Spring’s, NY and met the trainer’s grand-daughter. Now I am looking forward to LUCK, premiering this month on HBO.
ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 