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  “So, John, you have a history of violence?”

  “Look, I just want to call a lawyer.”

  “Why? You haven’t been charged with anything yet. We’re just having a fucking chat here, trying to find out what happened, why you busted Mr. Doe, what’d he do to you got you so pissed off.”

  “Don’t I get my rights read to me?”

  “Hey, you must’ve seen too many movies, you want your rights read to you, that’s what Robert Redford does in the movies, ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ and all that shit.”

  “I write them.” A big mistake. Wrong place to list your credits.

  “Hey, Leo, this guy writes movies for Robert Redford.”

  Leo was the bad cop in the good-cop/bad-cop tandem, although his partner Al was no day at the beach. Leo said, “I suppose you think knowing Robert Redford is going to get you a free fucking ride, cowboy.”

  I tried to parse how Robert Redford had got into this conversation and then thought there was nothing to be gained by saying that actually I did know him, we talked about doing a picture once, and nothing came of it. Just nod and keep cool. Easier said than done.

  Leo again: “So what’ve you got against niggers, you like to beat them up on the street so much?”

  “Look, can we take this from the top again?”

  “Is that what they say in your movies, take it from the top? That’s cute, right, Al?”

  “Cute as shit.”

  “You ever done this sort of thing before?”

  “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with not liking niggers, John, a lot of guys don’t.” Al, the good cop. “For that matter, a lot of cops.” An exegesis of police racial attitudes was an aspect of the good-cop role that I had never considered. “So you say you don’t like niggers, there’s guys in the department will say, ‘Welcome to the club,’ you know what I mean?”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean. Look, all I am telling you is there was this woman—”

  “He’s taking it from the top again, Al.”

  “Like Robert Redford. He a good guy?”

  “She was coming down Fifty-eighth Street—”

  “You got to give us a name, John …”

  “I don’t know her name. She was carrying a Bottega Veneta bag.”

  “Say again.”

  “An expensive leather handbag.” I knotted my fingers to indicate the meshing pattern. I must have been mad. “The leather is all meshed.”

  “What the fuck is this Bodega Venta, you ever heard of it, Al?” To me: “You jerking my chain or something, cowboy?”

  “It’s a store. Bottega Veneta. On Madison Avenue. They sell leather bags. She was carrying one. This guy grabs it.”

  “The John Doe.”

  “I don’t know his name. She just took her bag and left.”

  “What bag?”

  “The bag the guy grabbed.”

  “That must be the bodega bag, Leo.”

  “Bottega Veneta—”

  “How do you spell that, cowboy?”

  “B-O-T-T-E-G-A V-E-N-E-T-A.”

  “He knows how to spell, Al. Even in spic.”

  “He’s a writer is why, Leo. You got to be a good speller to be a writer, right, cowboy?”

  “You find this woman—”

  Al said, “What woman?”

  Leo said, “What bag?”

  “The one he took—”

  “We didn’t find any bag.”

  “She took it. She grabbed it back, and took off.”

  “I thought you said he took it,” Al said.

  “Got to keep your stories straight, cowboy,” Leo said.

  “There were people in the street, somebody must’ve seen what happened.”

  Leo said, “Well, they’re not busting down the door of the precinct, cowboy, so I wouldn’t count on that. Anyway, you see this coon—”

  “Leo …”

  “Sorry, I forget you’re so sensitive, Al.” To me: “So anyway, you see this colored guy with the curls.”

  Al on cue: “Those fucking curls can really get to you—”

  “And you just boil over, you hit him with the sheets, it happens, right, Al?”

  “All the time.”

  “Look, if you can just find this woman—”

  “What woman? You’re the only one who’s seen her. What does she look like then?”

  Great tits, nice ass, and put your money on a bush with a bikini cut. No. Hold that. I did not need an additional charge of sexual deviation added to my rap sheet. “Young.”

  “Hey.”

  “Hair. Short. I mean, above the shoulder. Brown, I think.”

  “That really narrows it down. I thought writers were supposed to have powers of description, didn’t you, Leo.”

  I was losing control. “I’m telling you, he took her fucking bag.”

  “What bag?”

  BILLIONAIRE BRODERICK HEIR IN RACIALLY MOTIVATED MURDER INVESTIGATION was one of the more muted headlines, in the Times, page one, below the fold. The rest of the press was in what it likes to call, in retrospect, when it examines its collective conscience and absolves itself of its excesses, a feeding frenzy, with me the sacrificial offering. I was a Broderick and I carried all the overweight baggage of my family’s history and wealth and arrogance and entitlement. Beginning with my father the billionaire. After his stroke, which kept his natural litigiousness in check, and even more so after his death, Hugh Broderick was the stuff of cheap headlines, the spotlight focusing on how he had made his money, and who he had fucked (the real object of interest, you can be sure), practically everyone (and here the inventiveness soared, a sonata of sexual fantasy) from Eleanor Roosevelt to Mother Theresa, Mme. Nehru to Mrs. Thatcher, from Blue Tyler to Marilyn Monroe (the ground somewhat firmer here), even my first wife, Leah Kaye, although this was more in the form of sly innuendo than outright allegation, as my own disposition for litigation had not been tested. Leah, the radical lawyer shot and killed in San Francisco with my brother, Bro, the Benedictine priest and adviser to presidents. A saga of license, tragedy, and meaningless death, with all the opportunities it offered for prurience and sentimental vulgarity. I had thought that with Lizzie’s death the narrative had played itself out. I had not counted on Shaamel Boudreau. The story was made for tabloid ironies. The Broderick fortune and the homeless indigent felled by $331 worth of Bergdorf-Goodman sheets and pillow slips. Silk sheets, the Post insisted, naturally. For a few days I was on the evening news once again, of course with an insert of my mug shots, along with the number NYPD-45-23-9387.

  Of course it finally got straightened out.

  “Nice of that chick to show up,” Marty Magnin said.

  “Finally,” I said. Charges had been quickly dropped, and for a moment the former murder suspect became an urban hero. Citizen action against street crime. “After I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life in Attica.”

  “She just got scared. She’s not a bad kid.”

  “Oh?”

  “We schmoozed, her and me. After she came forward. She did the right thing, Jack. She did right by you. You know, she’s a broker. A securities analyst at Drexel. Motion picture stocks. We had lunch. I gave her a few tips. Who’s in, who’s out. Touted Sydney Allen’s new picture. A blockbuster, Jack, and I’ve got his next under his old deal.”

  By his smirk I knew he wanted me to ask if he had fucked her, screwing everything available and then talking about it was a tropistic instinct with him, but I really didn’t care if he had. “You weren’t going to call, were you? Until I got my name in the paper.”

  “I had a lot of appointments, Jack. I had to make time. And I made it, right? That’s what friends do.”

  “I’m honored you could fit me in, Marty.” We were making our way up Fifty-seventh Street toward the Russian Tea Room. The skies were leaden and threatened snow. A cab slowed and the driver shouted at me through the open window, “How to go, killer,” and then flashed the V sign before speeding off.


  “Jesus,” I winced.

  “Go with it, Jack. You’re a hero. Answer me this. How many times does a writer get to be a hero?”

  “The man is dead, Marty.”

  In Marty Magnin’s mind an irrelevancy. Perhaps he was right. Maybe I was making too much of a meal out of it. How much of a pose was this ostentatious show of regret? Was it only because I thought this was the way I was supposed to feel? Guilt is a luxury of the entitled.

  “What kind of name is Shaamel anyway?” Marty Magnin asked.

  “I never got a chance to ask.”

  “They got funny names, these people. The Rams have got two guys in the defense secondary, Tyreese Snipes and Safrican Smith. You think they knew him?”

  I pretended not to hear.

  “He could have been named after his parents. They do that. Shana and Mel, say. That gives you Shaamel, right?”

  “Give it a rest, would you?”

  “Salou. Salou Magnin.”

  “What?”

  “Sadie and Lou. My parents. If they’d named me like the schwartzes do, I’d be Salou Magnin. You like that? I like it.”

  We entered the Tea Room and took a booth across from Sydney Allen and Sam Cohn. Marty went over and kissed them on both cheeks and then I heard him try out Salou Magnin on them and the agents in the adjoining booths. Much laughter. Two of the agents whistled at me and made the pumping gesture tennis players make after winning a big point at Wimbledon. I wondered if Sydney Allen would incorporate my sheets adventure into the picture he was working on with Marty Magnin. If not there, I knew he would use it at some future time in some other project. Sydney was a born gonif.

  “Sydney’s sending over a bottle of Dom Perignon,” Marty said when he slipped back into the booth.

  “And charging it to the budget of whose picture?”

  “You’re very touchy, you know?”

  The waiter brought the champagne and handed me a note. “ ‘You’ve made our town a safer place. Thanks. Sydney A.’ ” As opposed to Sydney P. I swirled the amber liquid around in the champagne tulip and then raised the glass in the direction of Sydney A. “Ciao, bene,” Sydney Allen mouthed from across the room.

  “What kind of name is Sydney Allen anyway?” I suddenly said to Marty Magnin.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve got to get out of here, Marty.”

  “You going to be sick?”

  “No. I mean out of here. Out of town. I’m sick of cabdrivers blowing their horns at me in the street and asshole directors sending me bottles of Dom Perignon on someone else’s fucking tab. I got asked for my fucking autograph yesterday in the park. And a fucking Japanese tour group wanted to take my fucking picture. Jesus. The guy with the name you think is so fucking funny is dead.”

  “Calm down, Jack.” Marty Magnin was smiling at the room and talking like a ventriloquist trying to throw his voice. “People are looking.”

  “Let them look.”

  Marty suddenly rose. “Sydney, ciao. See you on the Coast.” Beads of sweat appeared on Marty’s brow as he sat down. It was as if I were a bomb he was afraid would go off at any minute. “Listen, Jack, you want to get out of town?” He snapped his fingers as if a lightbulb had just gone off in his brain. “I’ve got a great idea. Detroit.”

  “Detroit? Detroit’s not the out of town I had in mind, Marty. Australia. Tuscany. Antarctica. Not fucking Detroit. I’ve never been to Detroit, I don’t know anybody in Detroit, what am I supposed to do in Detroit?”

  “You remember that idea we kicked around once? The cop and the basketball player. A schwartze, his knees are fucked up, he can’t play anymore, he and the cop become a team, the cop’s not crazy about darkies, the schwartze’s into black power, you can see the conflict already. I mean, he’s seven feet two, this guy, this schwartze, who’s going to fuck with him? I see Kareem, maybe, he’s got some film I can look at. I already got a title registered. Murder One.”

  A title I had given him, but to Marty that was only a technicality. “So?”

  “There’s this cop I know in Detroit …”

  “How?”

  “Say again.”

  “How do you know a cop in Detroit?”

  “We were doing publicity on Cave Man. The cop assigned to us had a million stories. A homicide cop …”

  An alarm bell. “What’s a homicide cop doing babysitting a movie press junket anyway?”

  “Temporary desk job. They took away his gun for shooting some spade …” Marty glanced quickly at me. “That going to be a problem? It was all cleared up. Investigation board. The whole shmeer. A good shoot. A hell of a good shoot, they said. A great shoot.”

  “You make it sound like a picture, like a fucking production schedule.”

  Marty was in overdrive. “Two weeks in Detroit, you drive around with him, you soak up a little atmosphere, you’re good at that, Jack, the best, you come back, we go to the Kahala, we work out a story …”

  “An awful lot of we in this, Marty. It’s me who’ll be doing all the work.”

  Marty Magnin smiled and without answering directly picked up his champagne flute. He knew I had agreed. “Detroit,” he said, “the Paris of the Midwest …”

  IV

  Maury Ahearne on tape (Tape 3, 12:14:27 to 13:21:09):

  “There’s this guy, Elephant, he’s the worst. Five hundred fucking pounds he weighs. He whacked a guy once just by sitting on his face, suffocated the bastard, he can’t even breathe and he’s got Elephant dropping farts down his windpipe. Another guy, a hype, he’s got a bulletproof vest he stole someplace, and he says to Elephant he’ll trade it for some crack. Elephant, he says the vest won’t stop shit, the crackhead says no, it’ll stop the best you got. So Elephant says we’ll try it out, and he takes the crackhead down into the cellar, tells him to stand against the wall with the vest on, then he shoots him with this big fucking cannon, with a solid brass round, can penetrate thirty layers of Kevlar. Nearly drove the fucker through the wall. Carried the vest into the wound channel, halfway through his fucking body, the shock waves even ruptured some blood vessels in his brain. Elephant, he was happy as shit, he saved himself the crack he promised this deadbeat, and now he knows for sure his hardware will take down a cop in a vest, research and development, I think, is what he called it, R&D, like he was working out at GM …”

  “So how’s it going?”

  “So far so good.”

  “You getting good stuff?”

  “Great.”

  “The cat got your tongue or something? Give me a taste.”

  “I really haven’t listened to the tapes, Marty.”

  “There’s nothing you can remember?”

  “A few things.”

  “Like what, for Christ’s sake? I got to pay long-distance rates to get the runaround?”

  “Well, let’s see.” I had been exposed to so much of man’s inhumanity to man, directly and indirectly, in the two weeks I had been in Detroit that I had begun to think of the aberrant as the norm. “There’s a rapist loose around town, the cops call Fido. That’s because he—”

  “… fucks them up the ass, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Doggie style, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So they can’t see him, the chicks, right?”

  “Right.” Marty was not usually that swift. I suspected that Maury Ahearne had already told him the same story that time he was babysitting Marty’s publicity junket. Showing him the goods, so to speak, there’s more where this came from. Maury Ahearne’s stories, as polished and smooth as old stones, were a kind of black-market currency, selling at less than the official rate. He was like a sidewalk vendor looking for a mark, and in Marty and me I think he saw the main chance.

  “I like that. Tough to shoot, but a good dialogue scene. A bunch of the guys bullshitting around the precinct …” He made a noise into the telephone, something like ba-ba-ba-BOOM, I am sure miming at his end of the line the pelvic thrust he i
magined the detective (or his actor surrogate) performing in the squad room. “Anything else?”

  “Nothing else I can really think of,” I said. Not for Marty, not over the telephone, make him wait. “Offhand.”

  “Say again.”

  “Nothing else I can really think of. Offhand.”

  “That’s it? Two weeks in Detroit living in the lap of luxury, and that is it, that is all?”

  “That’s funny.”

  “I wanted funny, Jack, I could hire Letterman, he’s funnier, save myself some expense money.”

  “No, I mean you’re thinking living in downtown Detroit is the lap of luxury. That is really funny. Hilarious.” When he did not immediately reply, I said, “Marty, what exactly is your deal with Maury Ahearne?”

  “What do you mean what’s my deal with him? He’s a pal. I slipped him a couple of Jacksons that time I was in Detroit, he said anytime I needed anything, just give him a call, he’d help me out. You trying to tell me I’m out two cees?”

  I loved Marty when he tried to be street hip. He was incapable of ever getting the dialogue right. “Forty bucks,” I said. “That explains it then.”

  “You have a hearing problem? I said two hundred.”

  “That’d be two Franklins, Marty.”

  As expected bluff and bluster. “What the fuck are you talking about? You back to writing those nut letters again? They have any shrinks in Detroit? Maybe you can find some Polack. They got a lot of them there, I hear.”

  His heart was not really in it. I laid out for him exactly what Maury Ahearne had said. It was simplicity itself.

  “So, Jack, how much you getting paid for this movie?” Maury Ahearne stared at me over the cup of lukewarm coffee he held in his strangely soft hands. His fingers were manicured, I noticed for the first time. Cuticles trimmed, moons perfectly shaped. I suddenly remembered an article of faith from my childhood: Someone with no moons on the fingernails had Negro blood. Was it the nuns at St. Peter Klaber’s parochial school in San Francisco who had spun this old wives’ tale? Or my mother? More likely my mother. Gertrude Mary Mahoney Broderick, living saint though she was (and indeed so eulogized at her funeral), would occasionally reveal an antipathy to those she invariably referred to as “people of color.” The prissy choice of words betrayed perhaps more than she intended, and in a spasm of penance she was always adopting some “little pickaninny” (again her words) with large eyes and a famine-distended stomach she had seen staring from the back pages of the Catholic magazines she subscribed to and read from cover to cover, America and Maryknoll and Commonweal. Every month she would dutifully write to little Joseph in Senegal or tiny Moise in Ghana, occasionally receiving in reply a letter from the nuns who took care of them, Joseph had died of diphtheria or Moise of dysentery, and please keep your contributions coming, dear Mrs. Broderick, our work is never ended, and your reward will come in the kingdom of heaven.