Read an Excerpt

1
My business plan calls for long periods of inactivity


Irwin Dressler crossed one eye-agonizing plaid leg over the
other, leaned back on a white leather couch half the width of the
Queen Mary, and said, “Junior, I’m disappointed in you.”
If Dressler had said that to me the first time I’d been hauled
up to his Bel Air estate for a command appearance, I’d have
dropped to my knees and begged for a painless death. He was,
after all, the Dark Lord in the flesh. But now I’d survived him
once, so I said, “Well, Mr. Dressler—“
A row of yellow teeth, bared in what was supposed to be
a smile but looked like the last thing many small animals see.
“Call me Irwin.”
“Well, Mr. Dressler, at the risk of being rowed into the center
of the Hollywood Reservoir wired to half a dozen cinder blocks
and being offered the chance to swim home, what have I done
to disappoint you?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem.” Despite the golf slacks and
the polo shirt, Dressler was old without being grandfatherly, old
without going all dumpling, old without getting quaint. He’d
been a dangerous young man in 1943, when he assumed control
of mob activity in Los Angeles, and he’d gone on being dangerous
until he was a dangerous old man. Forty minutes ago, I’d
been snatched off a Hollywood sidewalk by two walking biceps
and thrown into the back seat of a big old Lincoln Town Car,
and when I’d said, “Where’s your weapon?” the guy in the front
said, “Irwin Dressler,” and I’d shut up.
Dressler gave me a glance I could have searched for hours
without finding any friendliness in it. “You got yourself a franchise,
Junior, a monopoly, and you’re not working it.”
I said, “My business plan calls for long periods of inactivity.”
“That’s not how this country was built, Junior.” Like many
great crooks, even the very few at his stratospheric level, Dressler
was a political conservative. “What made America great? I’ll tell
you: backbone, elbow grease, noses to the grindstone.”
“Sounds uncomfortable.”
Dressler had lowered his head while he was speaking, perhaps
to demonstrate the approved nose-to-the-grindstone position.
Only his eyes moved. Beneath heavy white eyebrows, they
came up to meet mine, as smooth, dry, and friendly as a couple
of river stones. He kept them on me until the back of my neck
began to prickle and I shifted in my chair.
“This is amusing?” he said. “I’m amusing you?”
“No, sir.” I picked up the platter of bread and brie and said,
“Cheese?”
“In my own house he’s offering me cheese.” Dressler
addressed this line to some household spirit hovering invisibly
over the table. “It’s true, it’s true. I’ve grown old.”
“No, sir,” I said again. “It’s, uh, it’s . . .”
“The loss of American verbal skills,” he said, nodding, “is
a terrible thing. Even in someone like you. I remember a time,
this will be hard for you to believe, when almost everyone could
speak in complete sentences. In English, no less. What have I
done, Junior, that you should laugh at me? Get so old that I
don’t frighten you any more?”
“I wasn’t—”
“I bring you here, I give you cheese, good cheese—is the
cheese good, Junior?”
“Fabulous,” I said, seriously rattled. This had the earmarks
of one of Irwin’s legendary rants, rants that frequently ended
with one less person alive in the room.
“Fabulous, he says, it’s fabulous. What are you, a hat maker?
Of course, it’s fabulous. The Jews, you know, we’re a desert
people. The two gods everybody’s killing each other over now,
Jehovah and the other one, Allah, they’re both desert gods, did
you know that, Junior?”
“Um, yes, sir.”
“Desert gods are short on forgiveness, you know? And we Jews,
we’re the chosen people of a desert god and hospitality is part of
our tradition, and now I’m going to get badmouthed for my cheese
by some pisher, some vonce—you know what a vonce is, Junior?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s a bedbug, in Yiddish, great language for invective. I’ll
tell you, Junior, I could flay the skin off you using Yiddish alone,
I wouldn’t even need Babe and Tuffy in the next room there,
listening to everything we’re saying so they can come in and kill
you if I get too excited. My heart, you know? A man my age, I
can’t be too careful. Someone gets me upset, better for Babe and
Tuffy just to kill them first, before my heart attacks me.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dressler. I wasn’t thinking.”
“But thinking, Junior, that’s what you’re supposed to be
good at.” He reached out and took some bread off the platter,
which I was apparently still holding, and said, “Down, put it
down. Did I offer you wine?”
“Yes, sir.” He hadn’t, but I wasn’t about to bring it up. I put
the tray in front of him on the table. Inched it toward him so he
wouldn’t have to lean forward.
“I still got arms,” he said, tearing some bread. “What were
we talking about before you got so upset?”
“My franchise.”
“Right, right. You may not know this, Junior, but you’re the
only one there is. You’re like Lew Winterman when he—did you
know Lew?”
“Not personally.” Lew Winterman had been the head of
Universe Pictures and long considered the most powerful man
in Hollywood, at least by those who didn’t know that the first
thing he did every morning and the last thing he did every night
was to phone Irwin Dressler.
“When he and I thought of packaging, we had to get horses
to carry it to the bank, that’s how much the money weighed,”
Dressler said. “You know packaging? You can have Jimmy Stewart
for your movie, but you also gotta take some whozis, I don’t
know, John Gavin. And every other actor in your picture and
also the cameraman and the writers, and he represented them
all, Lew did. For about a year after we figured it out, he was the
only guy in Hollywood who knew how to do it, and he did it ten
hours a day, seven days a week. You know how much he made?”
“No, sir. How much?”
“Don’t ask. You can’t think that high. So you’re like that
now, like Lew, but on your own level, and what are you doing?
Sitting around on your tuchis, that’s what you’re doing. That
whole thing you got going? Solving crimes for crooks? And
living through it? You got Vinnie DiGaudio out of the picture
for me with every cop in L.A. trying to pin him. You helped
Trey Annunziato with her dirty movie, although she didn’t
like it much, the way you did it. When four hundred and
eighty flatscreens got bagged out of Arnie Muffins’ garage in
Panorama City, you brought them back, and without a crowd
of people getting killed, which is something, the way Arnie is.
You’re it, Junior, you’re the only one. And you’re not working
it.”
“Every time I do it,” I said, “I almost get killed.”
“Ehhh,” Dressler said. “You’re a young man, in the prime of
life. What’re you, thirty-eight?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Prime of life. Got your reflexes, got all your IQ, at least
as much as you were born with. You’re piddling along with a
franchise that, I’m telling you, could be worth millions. Where’s
the wine?”
I said, “I’ll get it.”
“You’ll get it? You think I’m going to let you in my cellar?”
He picked up a silver bell and rang it. A moment later, one of
the bruisers who’d abducted me and dragged me up here came
into the room. He was roughly nine feet tall and his belt had to
be five feet long, and none of it was fat.
“Yes, Mr. Dressler?”
“Tuffy,” Dressler said. “You I don’t want. Where’s Juana?”
“She’s got a headache.” Despite being the size of a genie in
The Thousand and One Nights, Tuffy had the high, hoarse voice
of someone who gargled thumbtacks.
“So mix her my special cocktail, half a glass of water, half a
teaspoon each of bicarbonate of soda and cream of Tartar. Stir it
up real good, till it foams, and take it to her with two aspirins.
And get us a bottle of—what do you think, Junior? Burgundy
or Bordeaux?”
“Ummm—”
“You’re right, it’s not a Bordeaux day. Too drizzly. We need
something with some sunshine in it. Tuffy. Get us a nice Hermitage,
the 1990. Wide-mouthed goblets so it can breathe fast. Got it?”
Tuffy said, “Yes, Mr. Dressler.”
I said, “And put on an apron.”
Tuffy took an involuntary step toward me, but Dressler
raised one parchment-yellow hand and said, “He just needs to
pick on somebody. Don’t take it personal.”
Tuffy gave me a little bonus eye-action for a moment but
then ducked his head in Dressler’s direction and exited stage left.
Dressler said, “So. People try to kill you.”
“Occupational hazard. I’m working for crooks, but I’m also
catching crooks. If I solve the crime, the perp wants to kill me. If
I don’t solve it, my client wants to kill me.”
“Nobody’s really tough any more,” Dressler said, shaking his
head at the Decline of the West. “You know how we took care
of the Italians?”
I did. “Not really.”
“Kind of a long way to say no, isn’t it? Three syllables instead
of one. So, okay, the Italians came out to California first, and
when we got here from Chicago it was like Naples, just Guidos
everywhere, running all the obvious stuff: girls, betting, alcohol,
unions, pawnshops, dope. Well, we were nice Jewish boys who
didn’t want to make widows and orphans everywhere so you
know what we used? Never mind answering, we used baseball
bats. Didn’t kill anybody except a few who were extra-stubborn,
but we wrapped things up pretty quick. See, that’s tough, walking
into a room full of guns with a baseball bat. Ask a guy to do
that these days, he’d have to be wearing Depends.”
I said, “Huh.”
Dressler nodded a couple of times, in total agreement with
himself. “But let’s say the people who want to kill you, give them
the benefit of the doubt, let’s say they could manage it. And all that
nonsense with a different motel every month isn’t really going to
cut it, is it? What’s the motel this month? Valentine something?”
“Valentine Shmalentine,” I said, feeling like I was drowning.
“In Canoga Park.”
“Valentine Shmalentine? Kind of name is that?”
“Supposed to be the world’s only kosher love motel.”
“What’s kosher mean for a love motel? No missionary position?”
“Heh heh heh,” I said. He wasn’t supposed to know about
the motel of the month. Nobody was, beyond my immediate
circle: my girlfriend, Ronnie; my daughter, Rina; and a couple
of close friends and accomplices, such as Louie the Lost. But, I
comforted myself, even if word about the motels had leaked, I
still had the ultra-secret apartment in Koreatown. Nobody in
the world knew about that except for Winnie Park, the Korean
con woman who had sublet it to me, and Winnie was in jail in
Singapore and had been for seven years.
“So the motels don’t work,” Dressler said, “not even taking
the room next door like you do, with the connecting door and
all, to give you a backup exit. It’s a cute trick though, I’ll give
you that. So I’ll tell you what you need. Since you can’t hide,
I mean. You need a patron, so people know you’re under his
protection. Somebody who wouldn’t kill you even if they caught
you playing kneesie with their teenage daughter, and you know
how crooks are about their daughters.”
“What I need,” I said, “is to quit. Just do the occasional burglary,
like a regular crook.”
“Not an option,” Dressler said. “You agree that everyone,
even a schmuck like Bernie Madoff, has the right to a good
defense attorney?”
I examined the question and saw the booby trap, but what
could I do? “I suppose.”
“Then why don’t they deserve a detective when some ganef
steals something from them? Or tries to frame them, like Vinnie
De Gaudio? You remember helping Vinnie Di Gaudio?”
“Sure. That was how I met you.”
“See? You lived through it. You got told to keep Vinnie out
of the cops’ eyes for a murder even though it looked like he
did it, and you kept me out of the picture so my little line to
Vinnie shouldn’t attract attention. This was a job that required
tact and finesse, and you showed me both of those things, didn’t
you? And now you’re eating this nice cheese and you’re about to
drink a wine, a wine that’ll put a choir in your ear. So quitting
is not an option.”
“What is an option?” I held up the platter, feeling like I
was making an Old-Testament sacrifice. “Cheese? It’s terrific
cheese.”
“You can lighten up on the cheese. I know it’s good. You
thought this dodge up all by yourself, Junior, and I respect that.
Something new. Gives me hope for your generation. Like I said,
a patron, patronage, that’s what you need. And an A-list client,
somebody nobody’s going to mess with.”
“A client and a patron,” I said. “Two different people?”
“That’s funny,” Dressler said gravely. “You gotta work with
me here, Junior. I’ve got your best interests in mind.”
“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it. But I—”
“I do think you don’t appreciate it,” Dressler said, “and I
don’t give a shit.”
I said, “Right.”’
“And also, I gotta tell you, this is a job I wouldn’t give to just
anybody. The client, for example—”
“I thought you were the client.”
“Literal, you’re too literal. I’m the client in the sense that I’m
the one who chose you for the job and the one who’ll foot the
bill. But think about it, Junior. Am I somebody some crook’s
going to hit?”
“No.”
“How stupid would anybody have to be to hit me?”
“Someone would have to be insane to take your newspaper
off your lawn.”
“Not bad. Sometimes I get glimpses of something that makes
me think maybe you’re smart after all. No, the client, in the
sense that she’s the one who got ripped off, the client is—are you
ready, Junior?” He sat back as though to measure my reaction
better.
I put both hands on the arms of my chair to demonstrate
readiness. “Ready.”
“Your client is . . . Dolores La Marr.”
There was a little ta-daaa in his voice and something expectant
in his expression, something that tipped me off that this was
a test I didn’t want to fail. So I said, “You’re kidding.”
“Dolores,” he said, nodding three times, “La Marr.”
I said, “Wow. Dolores La Marr.”
“The most beautiful woman in the world,” Dressler said,
and there was a hush of reverence in his voice. “Life magazine
said so. On the cover, no less.”
Life ceased publication on a regular basis in 1972, which
I know because I once stole a framed display of the first issue,
from 1883, paired with the last, both in mint condition. I got
$6500 for it from the Valley’s top fence, Tetweiler, and Stinky
turned it around to a dealer for $14 K. A year later it fetched
$22,700 at auction while I gnashed my teeth in frustration. So it
seemed safe to ask Dressler, “What year was that?”
“Nineteen-fifty. April 10, 1950. She was twenty-one then.
Most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life.”
The penny dropped. Dolores La Marr. Always referred to as
“Hollywood starlet Dolores La Marr” in the sensational coverage
of the Senate subcommittee hearings into organized crime at
which she testified, reluctantly, during the early 1950s.
I said, “She’d be what now, eighty?”
“She’s eighty-three,” Dressler said. “But she admits to sixty-six.”
“Sixty-six?” I said. “That would mean Life named her the
most beautiful woman in the world when she was four. I know
journalism was better back then, but—”
“A lady has her privileges,” Dressler said, a bit stiffly. “She’s
as old as she wants to be.”
“Well, sure.”
“I gotta admit,” Dressler said, “I didn’t expect you to know
who she was. “What’re you, thirty-eight?”
“Thirty-seven,” I said again.
“Oh, yeah, I already asked that. Don’t think it’s cause I’m
getting old. It’s cause I don’t care. But you know, you’re practically
a larva, but you remember Dolly.”
“Dolly? Oh, sorry, Dolores. I remember her because I’m a
criminal. I read a lot about crime. I pay special attention to that,
just like some baseball players can tell you the batting averages
of every MVP for fifty years. I read the old coverage of the Congressional
hearings into organized crime like it was a best-seller.”
Tuffy came in with an open bottle of wine and a couple of
glasses on a tray. To me, he said, “Say one cute thing, and you’ll
be drinking this through the cork.”
I asked Dressler, “You let the help talk to your guests like
that?”
“Tuffy, be nice. If Mr. Bender and I don’t reach a satisfactory
conclusion to our chat, you have my permission to put him in a
full-body cast.” Dressler looked at me. “A little joke.”
I waited while Tuffy yanked the cork and poured. Then I
waited until he’d left the room. Then I waited until Dressler
picked up his glass and said, “Cheers.” Only then did I pick
up my own glass and drink. An entire world opened before me:
fine dust on grape leaves in the hot French sun, echoing stone
passageways in fifteenth-century chateaus, the rippling laughter
of Emile Zola’s courtesans.
“Jesus,” I said. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dressler said. “They wouldn’t deal with
you. Tell you what. You take care of Dolores and I’ll see you get
a case of this.”
“And a case of the one we had last time,” I said. “I’ve thought
about it every day since I drank it.”
“You drive a hard bargain. Done. If you can fix things for
Dolores. If not, I’ll let Tuffy pay you.”
“I don’t need threats,” I said, feeling obscurely hurt. “If I say
I’ll do something, I’ll do it. And I’ll do it the best I can.”
“That’s fine,” Dressler said. “But I might need better than

2
And Makes Me Poor Indeed
“So,” I said, halfway into the second glass, “what did somebody
do to Dolores La Marr?”
“What’s the most valuable thing we’ve got, Junior?”
“We?” I asked. “Or me?”
“Let’s start with you.” Dressler rang the bell again.
“My daughter,” I said. “Rina.”
“Okay, that’s you. That’s good, family should always come
first, but think bigger. Look, there’s one thing you’ve got that
someone can steal, you listening? Of course, you’re listening.
And once they steal it, they’re no richer, but you’re a lot poorer.
You know what it is?” Tuffy came into the room. “Be a nice
guy,” Dressler said to him, “and get us some green olives. The
big ones with that weird red thing in it.”
“Pimento,” I said.
Dressler said, “Did I ask you?”
“Sorry.”
“In the refrigerator. In the door, second shelf down, on the
right. Jar with a green label. Don’t bring us the jar, just put three
olives each on six of the big toothpicks, in the second drawer
to the left of the sink, put them on the good china with some
napkins, and bring them in. That’s eighteen olives on six toothpicks.
And don’t touch them with your fingers.”
Tuffy’s forehead wrinkled in perplexity, and I thought he
probably did that a lot. “How do I get them on the toothpick
without touching them?”
Dressler said, “You want I should come in and do it
myself?”
Tuffy took a step backward. “No, no, Mr. Dressler.”
“Good. You figure it out. Every time I have to do something
myself, I figure that’s one less person I need.”
As Tuffy scurried from the room, and I said, “I admire your
management style.”
“We’ll see how much you admire it when it’s aimed at you.
Answer my question. What do you have that somebody can steal
and it hurts you but doesn’t give them bupkes?”
“Oh,” I said. Rephrased, there was something familiar about
it. “I’ve got a kind of tingle.”
“So tell your neurologist. Do you read Shakespeare?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me, one eye a lot smaller than the other. “And?
What is it?”
“My good name,” I said. The window to my memory opened
noiselessly, and in my imagination I dropped gratefully to my
knees in front of it. I closed my eyes, and said,
“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and da-da, da-da,-da-da—”
“Has been slave to thousands,” Dressler prompted, and I finished
it up:
“But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
“Iago,” I said. “Not someone who deserves a good rep.”
“If he hadn’t had one,” Dressler said, “he’d have been hung
before the end of Act One. Play should have been called Iago,
not Othello. Why name a play after the mark?” He drank the
wine as if it were Kool-Aid. “Who needs a good reputation better
than a crook?”
“Good point.”
“That was a question.”
Context is everything, and we’d been talking about Dolores
La Marr. “An actress.”
“I could learn to like you,” Dressler said, “maybe. First the
Shakespeare, then the common sense. They shouldn’t call it
common sense, you know? Nobody’s got it any more.”
I didn’t think there had ever been a period in human history
when common sense had been thick on the ground, but it
didn’t seem like an observation that would interest Dressler. So I
said something he’d undoubtedly heard a lot of. I said, “You’re
right.”
“Everything, the girl lost everything. She was getting good
parts in bad movies, working up to bad parts in good movies,
and then Lew was going to give her a good part in a good movie.
Her whole life, she wanted one thing, just one thing, and she
worked like a bugger to get it. And then somebody took it all
away from her. He that filches from me my good name,” Dressler
declaimed, “Robs me of that which not enriches him—”
“And makes me poor indeed,” I said in unison with him.
We both gave it a little extra, since the wine had kicked in, and
Tuffy, coming in with a plate in his hands, stopped as though
he’d found the two of us sitting shoulder to shoulder at the
piano, playing “Chopsticks.”
“I couldn’t do it,” he said, looking worried. “I brought the
olives and the toothpicks, but the olives are just rolling around
on the dish ‘cause I couldn’t get them on the toothpicks. I ate the
ones I touched. I figure the genius here can figure it out.”
“In my sleep,” I said.
“Just put it down,” Dressler said. “Where’s Babe?”
“He’s, uh, he’s taking a nap.”
“What is this? Juana’s got a headache, Babe’s asleep, and you
can’t put olives on a toothpick. I’ve gotten old, I’ve gotten old.
Nobody’s afraid of me any more.”
“I am,” I said.
“You don’t count. Wake Babe up. He can sleep tonight.”
“Yes, Mr. Dressler.” Tuffy was backing up.
“Aahhh, let him sleep,” Dressler said. “They got a baby at
home. Probably up all night.”
“Yes sir.” Tuffy licked his lips and fidgeted.
“Just fucking say it,” Dressler said.
“Kid’s teething,” Tuffy said.
Dressler lifted a hand and let it drop. “Achh, I remember. My
sister, two of my nieces and nephews. Misery, it’s misery. Okay,
let him sleep.”
Tuffy left the room rather quickly, and Dressler said to me,
“Give me an olive.”
“I don’t know how to do it, either,” I said. “How to get them
on the toothpicks without touching them.”
He pulled his head back, a snake preparing to strike. “Yeah?
And suppose you’d been Tuffy just now, and I gave you an order
you didn’t know how to carry out. What would you have done?”
“I’d have been all over the olives with my fingers.”
“And then lied about it?”
“Absolutely. That’s why God gave us lies. So we could get
out of things.”
“The hell with the toothpicks,” Dressler said. “Just give me
a goddamn olive.”

Forty minutes later, there was a second bottle of wine on the
table and Dressler and I were discussing techniques for soothing
a teething baby, and Tuffy was in the kitchen, singing Barry
Manilow’s “Copacabana” and heating some chicken noodle
soup. Outside, a long summer afternoon had done its slow fade,
and the windows had gone a glassy black. Dressler’s house was
completely surrounded by hedges and fences, with gates front
and back, so there were no lights to blemish the darkness.Tuffy
had gotten to the verse about feathers and long hair, and he was
giving it quite a bit. He had a lot of vibrato.
“Is Tuffy married?” I asked.
“No, and it’s not in the cards,” Dressler said. “Not until they
change the law.” He harpooned an olive. “But that doesn’t mean
he couldn’t whip you thin enough to spread on matzoh.”
He’d said it cheerfully enough, so I thought I’d give it another
try. “You really think I should do this Dolores La Marr thing.”
“I not only think you’re going to do it,” he said. “I know you
will. I like you, Junior, although it’s probably mostly the wine,
but you’re going to do this for me. If you don’t, you’re going to
have to find a new place to hide, and wait there until I’m dead.”
Dressler, as near as I could figure, was 92. That wouldn’t be
so long to wait, and I already had the perfect hiding place, in the
Wedgwood Apartments in Koreatown. It was the most successful
secret of my life. So I listened a bit smugly.
“And you should do it even if I didn’t want you to do it,” he
said. “She’s your neighbor, Dolly is. Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself,” he said. “Jesus said that, right?”
“I guess so.” I thought about the block in Tarzana where
Rina lived with my ex-wife, Kathy, and then I ticked off the
names of the people who lived in the nearby houses. “Dolores
La Marr lives in Tarzana?”
“No, stupid,” Dressler said, quite a bit less cheerfully. “In the
Wedgwood, same as you. In Koreatown.”