Daughter of the King (26 page)

To pass the time, I started hanging out at the Hollywood Dog Track. I not only loved the greyhounds, but I also developed a fondness for the son of the recently deceased founder, a charming but married young Irishman named Billy Syms. Daddy and Billy’s father went way back. They owned a dog track in New Jersey in the thirties, another in Iowa in the forties, and I’m sure Daddy owned part of this dog track in Florida as well. While Billy and I were like family, that didn’t stop him from jumping on me. His aphrodisiac was giving me money to bet on the races with. I discovered that I loved to gamble, but I hated to lose, even with other people’s money. I was a sore loser.

Although Billy’s wife was pregnant, he was the one who looked like he was carrying the child. He had a big stomach that kept getting bigger. Billy would get a bottle of brandy, and we’d go out to his car in the dark parking lot and make out like teenagers. Of course, I was still a teenager, so the style had a touch of logic to it. The thing about the Hollywood Dog Track that stayed in my mind was not Billy Syms, but the statue of a naked woman in the middle of the field. The model for that statue had been Jeannie Biegger, the former Orange Bowl Queen who was currently the wife of my “lover” Dean Martin.

My other lover that winter of divorce was the comedian Dick Shawn. Dick was one more married star for me. I met him when he was headlining at the La Ronde room of the Fontainebleau. I had
become friends with the two maître d’s of the showrooms of the two rival hotels, Andre at the Fontainebleau and Jacques at the Eden Roc. Jacques had been a captain at the Riviera in New Jersey, working with Marvin’s Spindletop partner Joe Marsh. The two maître d’s fought for my patronage. Having Meyer Lansky’s daughter in the house was apparently, and surprisingly to me, something to brag about. Andre was the one who set me up with Dick, taking me backstage, after which Dick took me upstairs. He was a cheapskate, unwilling to pay my cab fare home, which detracted from his otherwise witty allure and huge athletic build.

For all my flings, I had to behave a bit like Superman, wearing very casual clothes to go out, pretending I was going shopping, and then stopping at a gas station to change into something fancy to wear to the nightclubs, and then stopping at the gas station on the way home in the early morning and change back again. When Daddy was in town, he would always do an “inspection,” knocking at my door between seven and eight in the morning to make sure I was safely in bed, alone. Cuba was keeping Daddy so busy that he didn’t have very much time to distrust me.

The divorce came through in June 1957. Marvin didn’t even show. Daddy’s powerful criminal lawyer Joe Varon handled things, in a case of overkill. I had two witnesses, Flo Alo and a bookmaker pal of Daddy’s named Joe “Niggy” Flax, so called again because of his dark tan. Niggy ran the cabanas and all the concessions on Hollywood Beach. No wonder he was so dark; he spent his whole day in the sun. At night he took bets. Marvin was assessed lots of child support, which he never paid, and was ordered to pay Daddy a small fortune he had borrowed, which he never did.

My disastrous marriage had no deterrent effect on my brothers. Six months after Paul married Edna Shook in Tacoma, Buddy tied the knot in Miami at a big party at a restaurant called The House of Prime Ribs. That may have sounded like a roast beef emporium. It
was actually a Chinese restaurant that was renowned for its barbecued spareribs. The House of Prime Ribs was a classic part of Miami kitsch. So was the place where Buddy met his bride, Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House, reputedly the greatest Jewish delicatessen in the world, including the Stage and the Carnegie. My future sister-in-law, Annette, was a tall and very pretty hostess at the Rascal House. She always moved Buddy to the front of the endless lines and gave him the prime red leatherette banquette. Divorced, she was raising a young son. Like Buddy, she was in her mid-twenties. And Jewish. Which mattered to no one except Grandma Yetta.

Buddy had wanted to marry Annette when they first met in 1955. Because Daddy didn’t trust anything Buddy did, he had made him wait for nearly two years before he gave them his blessing. Daddy realized that Buddy would always need someone to look after him. Even if Annette was a fortune hunter, she probably was a better deal than all the nurses and drivers Daddy had hired over the years. Because she was a hard worker, there was a chance she could be the good influence Buddy had yet to find. Although, as usual, no Citrons showed up for the wedding, a lot of Lanskys did. Micki Marlo flew down to sing for the party. Grandma Yetta had the time of her life, gorging on pork spareribs that we told her were lamb, kosher lamb. Some Old World habits died hard.

By late summer 1957, I was back in New York with Gary and Frances, Nappy and Maria. I was now an officially unmarried woman. I was ready to start a new life. Too bad I had absolutely no idea what kind of life I wanted. I was back to the same dilemma I faced when Marvin left me. Daddy had given me the choice of school or work. My answer turned out to be none of the above. Then what? Diet pills, alcohol, cigarettes, and sex with celebrities may have made me feel more “adult” but they didn’t lead me to any insights.

The only consolation I had was that I was not alone in my confusion and lack of direction. With Frances, Mommy, Aunt Ruth, and
other maids taking care of little Gary, I had lots of time on my hands. I became something of a barfly. One day at the cocktail lounge of the Essex House Hotel, near the St. Moritz on Central Park South, I met a very blonde young man who was literally crying in his cups. He looked like the quintessential California golden god, a forerunner of the Beach Boys. When he introduced himself, I saw I had made the right call. He was Gary Crosby, son of Bing. If I was gangland royalty, Gary Crosby was Hollywood aristocracy of the highest order.

Who was a harder act to follow, Bing Crosby or Meyer Lansky? The difference between my brothers and me and Gary was that we knew not to try. Hollywood was the most powerful siren in America. Nobody there seemed to have a more charmed life and an inside track than Gary. A Stanford graduate who costarred in a movie with Bing when he was nine, Gary recorded a double-sided gold record with his father when he was sixteen and had appeared on
The Jack Benny Show
. After that, he had minor parts in a string of B-movies that no one ever saw. Worst of all, his beloved father, the Oscar-winning priest in
Going My Way
, had just stolen, and married, the love of Gary’s life, Kathy Grant, an ambitious Texas beauty over thirty years Bing’s junior. Daddy marrying Teddy was bad taste. What Bing Crosby had done to his son was damage, serious damage.

Gary and I became drinking buddies but never lovers. He was too traumatized to try anything with another woman at this point. I was still holding a futile torch for Dean. We saw each other for another six months or so, but the sex-and-only-sex, fun and good as the sex was, lost its novel allure over time. I would have liked someone more soulful, like Gary, but he was coping with more pain than I could begin to handle, probably even more pain than Buddy, who at least had seemingly found a path to happiness.

The best thing about Gary Crosby was his horror stories somehow made me feel much better about myself. Nothing I could tell him about Marvin could compare to what Bing had put him through. And
compared to Bing Crosby, Daddy was a saint. For example, Gary had had a lifelong weight problem. The skinny, aquiline Bing would taunt Gary as “Bucket Butt,” then pull Gary’s pants down and whip him until he bled badly. His recurring fantasy was to kill Bing. I was glad he didn’t carry a gun, for fear he would use it on himself.

In 1957 Daddy was fifty-five. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was considered the elder statesman of American crime, a dubious distinction. But his imminent transformation of Havana into the Monte Carlo of the Western Hemisphere promised to give him the global respect and honor that he had long deserved, if not craved. Little did any of us know that a reversal of fortune was in the wings that would make my father the most hunted and haunted senior citizen in American history.

CHAPTER NINE

G
IRL
G
ONE
W
ILD

“M
y-ah, I had no i-de-ah you had such a splendid daw-tah.” The tall, peppy but elder Bostonian looked me up and down, with a keen regard that reminded me of a judge evaluating thoroughbreds at a horse show.

“That’s why they made him ambassador,” Daddy said to me. “He says nice things.” Daddy was unused to flattery. He didn’t want me to get a swelled head.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Ambassador,” I said. I had never met an ambassador before. I hoped I was calling him the right thing.

“The ple-zhah, my de-ah, is all my-an. And you must call me Joe.” He kept looking me up and down, with a twinkle behind those round horn-rimmed glasses. I kept noticing him as well, with his florid face and fancy glasses and clothes that were even nicer than Daddy’s. Aside from Uncle Abe Zwillman, I’d never seen a man so perfectly tailored. Ambassadors, I assumed, had to dress the part. Still, those looks were leers, and, if the ambassador weren’t clearly very important and a very old friend, Daddy might have well given him the bum’s rush as a dirty old man.

It was early fall, 1958. Daddy was up in New York from Havana, where his Riviera was a roaring success. Out on a shopping spree, I
had dropped by his suite at the Warwick, unannounced, not expecting to find him in. But there he was, with the man he introduced to me as Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. Introductions and compliments aside, I could see that I had interrupted some serious business. I quickly took my leave, made a long tour of Saks and Best’s and Bonwit’s, then returned to find Daddy alone.

“He wants his son to be president,” Daddy told me about the reason for the ambassador’s visit. Daddy explained that although Joseph Kennedy may have stepped down as ambassador to England nearly two decades ago, just at the outset of World War II, once an ambassador, always an ambassador. Daddy didn’t say much, never did. He did tell me that he and the ambassador had both been in the liquor business “way back” and that Kennedy had owned a film studio, RKO. Now Daddy called him a “banker,” which might have been what Daddy may have called himself, if pressed.

That dirty old man, though I didn’t dare say that, was now around seventy and had led a great life, Daddy said. Most of his dreams had come true, and his biggest dream was to see his son Jack, a war hero in the Pacific and now a senator from Massachusetts, succeed President Eisenhower in the White House. I was sure Daddy would have liked to see Paul in the White House someday, too, though Paul seemed to have his head in the clouds with his passion for flying. Besides, Daddy’s career and his life with my uncles had put a ceiling on Paul’s ambitions. Getting into West Point was amazing enough. Paul was so idealistic. Politics, to him, would have seemed too much like business, Daddy’s business.

And he would have been right. Here was one of the richest, most powerful men in America, a Harvard man, I found out, and former chairman of the SEC, coming to Daddy for help. These were early days, but presidential campaigns had to be planned long in advance. And here was Daddy, being asked to be on the ground floor. What on earth, I wondered aloud, could Daddy do for him?

“I know a few people,” was all Daddy would say. I knew he was dissembling, as usual. This sharp-eyed, predatory Joseph Kennedy wouldn’t have been at the Warwick unless Daddy could call some key shots for him.

“What would they do in return?” I asked my father.

“He’s an old friend,” Daddy said.

There didn’t have to be a deal. Daddy went on to tell me how the ambassador had lost his oldest son in a plane crash during the war. He had never gotten over that. Daddy liked doing favors. However, I would have loved to see Daddy get some respect in his life. Maybe if Jack Kennedy ran and won with Daddy’s help, he could make Daddy an ambassador himself. Ambassador to Cuba! That would have been perfect. That would have shown Estes Kefauver, who had run for vice president and lost very badly. “Come on, Daddy, won’t they do something for you?”

“Yeah. Leave me alone.” That was his fondest wish. It would never come true.

The Riviera opened, on schedule, in December 1957 and quickly become one of the hottest tourist destinations in the whole world. Ginger Rogers was the first headliner at the Copa Room, but Daddy said she stunk. She could dance, but, in his opinion, she couldn’t sing a note. Daddy was an armchair talent scout. Whenever we’d watch Ed Sullivan together, he was the fiercest, cruelest critic. I guess his clubs had hired enough talent that he of all people would know good from bad. Ginger Rogers may have been bad, but she was a legend, and her presence helped put the Riviera on the map.

After Ginger, Dad had brought down people like Vic Damone, Steve Allen, Abbott and Costello, and Cantinflas, David Niven’s costar in
Around the World in 80 Days
. Daddy hired the Mexican comic to attract the rich Mexican gamblers who were the biggest tourist group in Cuba after the Americans. Lots of stars, people like Ava Gardner and William Holden, flew in from New York and Hollywood to gamble
and to play and to mambo the night away. Why wasn’t
I
there? Because Daddy was, and Teddy was, and they would have been watching me like hawks. Besides, I was having too much fun, out of sight in New York City.

I had found my first post-Marvin boyfriend, a real boyfriend and not a married fling. His name was Wynne Lassner, but everyone called him “Brownie.” I don’t know why. In his early forties, he was a theatrical manager who handled a lot of black talent, like Duke Ellington. That may have been the origin of his nickname. People had no idea how racist they would sound today. Brownie had offices in the Brill Building in Tin Pan Alley, which was the Tower of Babel of the music business. He had just gotten a divorce from the singer Eileen Barton, who’d had the biggest hit in the country in 1950 with
If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake
. She never followed that up, and the marriage dissolved.