“CIROS” NITECLUB...HOLLYWOOD...AUGUST 14th 1947

Johnny Roselli, the Syndicate’s ‘Capo di Celluloid’ had just been sprung from a ten year toot for extortion at Leavenworth, his sentence stripped down for a taxi dance chorus of less than five.

His ‘Pardon’, an ‘Oscular Familiaris’ from the President himself.
Truman’s ‘Prendergast Combine’ had been dance partners with Roselli’s Chicago outfit for years.
But this was one sweet little assignation of which both parties would never boast to the American Public.

Still a dowry was expected to be returned.
As it was.
For the Cosa Nostra would send Truman another four year bouquet in ’48, delivering ‘Chi’ and the rest of the allegiance of America, when they hammered that other presidential pretender Dewey at the polls.
A mucho bellissimo double whammy.

Their ‘man’ now permanently back in the ‘Casa de Blanca’, and the engineered election win, a king hit on Dewey himself, that same fagelah D.A. who’d sent their paisano capo Lucky Luciano down on a trumped up hooker and narco charge back in '35.

It all came down to an Andy Hardy style happy ending.
Johnny’s ‘Prison Break Party’ was held in the upstairs room of Herman Hover’s ‘Ciros’.

The returning ‘Caliph of Hollywood’ exchanging the grey fetid stonewalls of Leavenworth for the regal blue velvet womb of the Sunset Strip’s more salubrious boites.

Johnny swang it swell…Sleek saturnine, tanned and fanned.
His cobalt eyes cindering power.
Hair sharked with pomade, a touch of grey flinting at his side vents, adding a subtle caesarean maturity he had not possessed when I had seen him in Chicago ten years before.
Resplendent, now in liberation pin-stripe, after ditching the two tone denim drag.
His four year vacation at Leavenworth, on account of his extorting the five major studios back between '37 and ’41, now glossed and simonized, into the sharp fin sculpt of his face, adding a 'padrone' stature to his aura.

Hookers, scribblers and politicos, 2nd-tier studio goombahs, Z-Reel Bogarts, 44 cup DD peroxide Cleo Moores, and west coast triggers all came mooching for the favors and prestige of being seen in Johnny’s orbit, bending their joints to kiss his ruby ring.
It may as well have been his other.
All layin' the hosanna on him, like he was the head pope at ‘Jesus' resurrection.’
And indeed it was.

An assumption that the Syndicate’s Machiavelli of the movies had come back to claim what was his.
And, I guess I too was riding hitch ’n’ rail on the float of that expectation, introduced by Jack Dragna, West Coast Padrone, on the transparent veil of me and my combo the Black Mariah’s to supplement the soundtrack for his coming out party.

Johnny R, all leer and cheer.
A ridiculous showgirl's candy striped garter circled his head, with his San Vinegro two C dollar black brogues, tap swaying to our discordia of tarantellas, mambos and schwartzie show toons.
During the band break, Jack D. grabbed-pulled me through the calvacade, presenting me like a prize guinea at a Sicilian holy festiva.

The shark tressed Don, arose and gave me the double cheek graze-up, his arm swavelling around my neck, as a bonhomie noose, muscle-muzzling me over to the corner of the room.
A détente over the piano.

His teeth all white keys.
His voice black ivory, oiled like the Romano pomade that sleeked his hair.
“Jack D. says we got to give you thanks…”

I played it careful.
“You mean there’s another gig you want us to play?”

He grooved his fingers around gash of mouth.
“Yeah maybe…maybe at that…But I was talking about the other thing “

“Other thing Johnny?”

“That little fandango with Benny Siegel not yet two months back…You helped clear it up for us.”

I nodded like a Coney Island Clown.
It was my inside rattle that found Siegel was using Syndicate money for a big skateroo with a turkish combine importing heroin.
Stake money that was lent on the premise that it would be directed into the building of their post atomic gambling haven…the Flamingo in Las Vegas.
With this little foil of information, Jack D. was able to get the blessing from Charley Luciano and Meyer Lansky to pepper the Bugster with a bye bye valentine from their pretty blue gats, and reclaim power over the West Coast rackets, that had been hoisted off him, by Siegel way back in ’38.

“So you didn’t dig him either Johnny eh?…Sounds like you and Jack had a hate convention for the mobster matinee idol.”

Johnny R looked at me crab like.
“He fucked us.”

“How?”

His mitt slammed his chest, in a rite of benediction.
“We started this town…We primed it, built it for our thing, before that East Coast cowboy rode in.”

“Rumor was he muscled your action.”

“Rumor was right.”

The Caesar of cool reached for a cigarello, lit, the blue smoke haloing his face wistfully.
“I’d been in Hollywood since Capone and the Chicago combine sent me out here in ’24 to corner some action…Nearly fucken starved…There was nothin…”

“How did you survive?”

He notioned to an old Moustachio Pete with an festy ancient Homburg plonked on his head in the corner, dribbling lasagna over a hooker starlet.
One of those Nouvelle atomic peroxide types.
Loud on the brasso, Quiet on the classo.
“Anthony…Antonio Cornero …he saved my ass…You know Tony the Hat?”

I nodded the obligatory.
“…Well we did some bootlegging, gambling in the early days.”

“No studio work?”

“Nah…Jimmee, that was much later…We sold the Stars “Playtime on the Installment plan.”

“Play-time as?”

“Whatever fandango they hankered for…”

His eyebrows caterpillared, a digit to the nostril, a sniff and a wink
“…If you know what I mean.”

I schmirked an “Uh-huh”.

“Well anyway Cornero was the one who introduced me to Longy Zwillman…”

I knew that name and that face, as the image of a dark gaunt high priest of the East Coast combination, news-reeled through my cranium projector, while Johnny voice-overed.
“…I became Longy’s West Coast guy…looked after his ladies, Jean Harlow, Lina Basquette, Mae Clarke, he liked them blond and all–American…So, when he was out of town, I kept an eye on ‘em, so that they didn’t step outa line ya know? It was Longy who got me into the circle, hooked me up with Harry Cohn at Columbia, Joe Schenck…all the players…”

Johnny oiled his lips with a slurp of Donatella, I mused my peepers around the room.
There was no Hollywood aristocracy flexing the tux and ermine tonight.
They’d stayed in their mansions.

I pricked at the conquering hero's balloon.
“So where are all the studio Caesars, you used to count on as your pallys? Cohn and Schenck?”

“Cohn?…” Johnny spritzed the champagne, a typhoon of invective bubbles across the left lapel of my plaid Sy Devore. “…Him? I used to be his fucken bodyguard, his gambling buddy…Used to give him tips on sure winners a week before the races…Jesus ! Even the Feds thought we were business partners… we were that close…Hell! Don’t talk to me about fucken Harry Cohn…It was my lettuce and Longy Zwillman’s who got Harry his half a mille stake to buy Joe Brandt out of control of Columbia…Without me Harry woulda gone back to peddling advertising space…”

I try to cool him.
“Maybe his no-show was just for business reasons you know how hoi polloi these studio fuehrer’s get, when they fear being seen with a guy who’s done the five to ten dance.”

Johnny in full bull roar.
“Nah…We were blood brothers…You see when Harry divorced, I found him a pad over at Sunset Plaza, got him out of the rough and set him straight.”

He ditched the glass, then took a long swig from the bottle, working it way past the plimsol line of the bottom of the label.
Then he primped his pinky in front of my moosch, flashing a gold star ruby ring.
“You see this?”
The liqueur burning bile verbs from his throat.

I nodded.
“Yeah.”

He maneuvered his arm around me in a forceful slurch, my proboscis nuzzling his digit of ore.
“This is a matching ring I bought for Harry…”
Roselli, turned away in a kind of morose respect for something that was dead, surveyed the carnival mood of the room, that he did not feel.

I try to burlesque the embarrassingly obvious, and lighten him up a little.
“You guys queer for each other or sumpthin eh? Setting him up in a room on the swingin Strip, got him a ring?”

Johnny’s vein popped at the top of his head, a scarlet rage mounting, then as he was turning back to me, he caught his own reflection in the mirror, saw the absurdity of his own rage, looked at me looking at his reflection, the rage dissolved, turned on itself and got gorged by our subsequent laughter.

“Nah, Jimmy..It’s an old Italian custom… that symbolizes friendship for life.”

I filled in the crosswords of his vacant relationship with Cohn.
“So when the extortion case came up…he bailed eh?”

“Yeah.” He slumped dejected.

It was my turn to put a soothing arm around him, pointing out the convivacity of the room that was a celebration of him.
“Hey …Johnny…your own people are here tonight…they ain’t gonna let you down.”

Johnny looked up bereavedly, for a moment as a shadow shell, maybe the real him was still slumped in that cavernous cold of a desolate Leavenworth cell.
And silence as a curfew descended between us.
I was wondering why Johnny was telling me all this, maybe it was the seven beers that had unzipped his ‘omerta’ caution or perhaps that the old ways that he always stood for and upheld, the Sanctic muscle of his family wasn’t there to protect him, and used him as a fall guy for their Hollywood interests.
Yeah maybe his braggadocio was not just fueled courtesy of “Azzura” beer courage.

Jack D. meanwhile was hippopotamo-heaving a tarantella with a rubenesque brunette, looked across at Johnny and noticing his morosity, saluted him with the swivel stick from his highball.

Roselli nodded his head, half smile obligation to Jack, the sight stirring him out of an alcho-melancholica.

I turned back to the guest of honour.
“So how did you meet the D. Man?”

The sad Caesar face drew a warm flush again in a benign glow.
“In the early days here in L.A., through the Unione Siciliane, an organization set up here to help Italian immigrants look for a job.”

I grimaced.
“You mean recruitment agency for triggers…?”

He laughed when he could have plugged me for insolence, a second time.
“Yeah…something like that…Yeah, me and Jack go back a long way… Between him, me and Tony the Hat, we set up the first off-shore gambling…here on the West Coast.”

“Those floating casinos?”

Johnny took a fresh glass of sangria, and looked kinda wistful nostalgic in the ripples of red, as he sloshed it around the crystal. Those scarlet ripples could have been the blood of ‘cafones’ turfed into the Pacific Ocean, after they blew a bundle, and couldn’t or wouldn’t pay.
“Uh-huh…The first one…The Monfalcone, we called it …We sure rolled ourselves a fortune…Me…Antonio and Jack…Nobody could touch us, the Feds could only stand by lookin like stronzos, cause we were outside the three mile limit…”

(c) JIMMY VARGAS (2011)...Excerpt from TEMPLE OF LILY Novella
Available on the JIMMY VARGAS dvd REQUIEM FOR MY SHADOW BRIDE