The Million-Dollar Wound

“Aren’t you the boss?” Dean said.

“I have to take responsibility for it, I know. That story got through, which to you says I broke my word. But please believe there was no intention not to take care of you, as you have of me.”

Dean said nothing.

“It was a horrible mistake,” the man continued, filling the awful silence, “and I stand willing to rectify it. Please. Command me.”

“Forget it. All is forgiven.”

The little man smiled, almost crumpling under the humiliation, and said good evening, and moved quickly away.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Billy Wilkerson,” Dean said. “He owns the joint.”

And the Hollywood Reporter. That had been about the negative piece on the IA that Montgomery mentioned had run in the Reporter yesterday. These boys did have clout.

Half an hour on the second and Browne was getting out of the booth again, saying, “Excuse.”

“Anyway, Heller,” Dean said. “You must not have a car out here. Maybe we can drop you off at your hotel?”

I didn’t think there was anything sinister in that; and, if there was, I couldn’t think of a graceful way out, so I said, “That’d be swell.”

“Maybe you’d like to show Dixie your etchings.”

Dixie, whose fingers were working in Dean’s hair, smiled at me shyly. Maybe she did have a future as an actress. As for whether or not I took Dean and Dixie up on this, I’m not going to say. You might be disappointed in me, either way.

Browne came back and settled his fat ass in the booth and said, “Willie wants to see you while you’re out here.”

I didn’t know that was directed toward me, at first; then Browne repeated it, saying he’d phoned Willie at home to say Wilkerson had eaten crow, and I said, “Bioff’s out here, too?”

“Sure,” he said. “Kind of unofficially these days, but he’s out here.”

“Willie and I go way back.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “You hate each other’s goddamn guts.”

“I don’t hate anybody,” I said, smiling, sipping some rum. “I haven’t seen Willie in years. If he’s making good, more power to him.”

“He’s making good,” Dean said.

“Anyway,” Browne said, wiping some foam off his face, “he wants to see you.”

“Why would he want to see me?”

“I don’t know. When I called him, I mentioned we run into you. He wants you to come out to his place.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon.”

“Go out to his place at Bel Air tomorrow morning. Hell, I’ll drive you out there myself. He says to tell you it’s worth a C-note minimum.”

The thought of George Browne driving a car was a sobering thought.

But I said, “Call him back and tell him sure,” anyway.

“In half an hour I will,” Browne said, and lifted another bottle.

Browne driving was no problem: he picked me up in a chauffeured limo, a big shiny black Caddy. I tried not to make anything out of the fact that the last big shiny black car I went riding in was E. J. O’Hare’s. Besides, that was overcast, chilly Chicago and this was warm, sunny Hollywood.

There was plenty of legroom, despite the extra passenger that sat between us on the floor: a tub of ice and beer. It was ten o’clock in the morning and Browne was already at it. Maybe the tale about him putting away one hundred bottles of imported beer a day wasn’t an exaggeration; maybe it was an understatement.

Probably it was the constant drinking that did it, but he showed no signs of the night before having taken any effect; he was wearing a baggy brown suit and had a glow in his cheeks, not to mention his nose. We were on our way to Westwood, on the other side of Beverly Hills, and we had plenty of time to talk.

“You have any idea why Willie wants to see me, George?”

“Not a clue,” he said, cheerfully, bottle in hand. “But Willie always has his reasons.”

“You guys been partners a long time.”

Swigging, nodding, he said, “Long time.”

“Even before the soup kitchen?”

In 1932 the Stagehands Union, which is to say Browne and Bioff, had opened up a soup kitchen in the Loop, at Randolph and Franklin Streets to be exact, two blocks west of City Hall. The 150 working members of the local would pay 35 cents a meal, which-along with the donations of food from merchants and money from theater owners-helped ensure that the 250 unemployed members could eat free.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Browne said, “before that. Willie was running a kosher butchers union, similar to what I was doing with the gentile poultry dealers.”

“You were already head of the Stagehands local, though.”

“Yeah, sure. My ‘Poultry Board of Trade’ was just a sideline. No, the soup kitchen was what taught me to listen to Willie, what taught me Willie had brains. That was a sweetheart idea, that soup kitchen.”

“Made you a lot of friends,” I said agreeably. “Nice publicity.”

Browne’s smile was a proud fold in his flabby face. “We served thirty-seven hundred meals a week, most of ’em free. The biggest actors in the land passed through our portals-Harry Richman, Helen Morgan, Texas Guinan, Jolson, Cantor, Olson and Johnson, everybody.”

“So did a lot of politicians and reporters.”

Browne swigged and swallowed and grinned. “Being close to City Hall didn’t hurt. It’s like Willie always says: never seen a whore who wasn’t hungry or a politician who wasn’t a whore. So we let the politicians eat for nix. And the reporters.”

That bought the boys a lot of good will-particularly considering the Bioff-Browne chefs maintained a deluxe menu for celebrities and politicos and press, including such first-rate fare as orange-glazed roast duck, prime rib and porterhouse steaks. What the hell-even a cynical soul like me had to hand it to ’em: the out-of-work stagehands ate the majority of the meals, in a time when otherwise God knows where or how they’d have eaten at all. Still, I always suspected Bioff and Browne were squeezing more out of the deal than just the means to keep the newspapers and politicians friendly.

Three beers later we were in Westwood, which was just more of the Beverly Hills same except less rolling, and Bioff’s estate, which we pulled into the driveway of, was an impressive sprawling double-story wood-and-stone ranch-style which (Browne informed me) Bioff had dubbed “Rancho Laurie,” after his wife. Compared to Montgomery’s mansion, it came in a fairly distant second; next to a room at the Morrison Hotel, it was paradise. The little pimp from South Halsted Street had gone Hollywood, all right.

I followed Browne around the side of the perfectly tended, gently sloping grounds, an occasional tree throwing some shade on us, and there, reclining on a lounge chair, next to a kidney-shaped pool somewhat smaller than Lake Michigan, was Willie Bioff.

I’d always thought of him as fat, and I guess he was fat, but not in the dissipated George Browne way. His barrel chest was covered with tight curls of black hair as were his muscular arms and legs; he was neckless, stocky but hard, like a wrestler-he had once been a union slugger, after all. Under the black body hair, the flesh I remembered as Illinois pasty was California tan. He wore money-green bathing trunks and blood-red house slippers-not a bead of water on him; my guess was he didn’t swim much-and sunglasses and had a cigarette in one hand and a glass of ice water in the other.

He rose quickly as we approached and smiled broadly and extended a hand to me. “Thanks for coming out here, Heller.”

We shook hands. His was a strong grip. Stronger than mine.

“I was surprised to be invited, Willie. We aren’t exactly pals.”