A Conversation with the Mann (53 page)

I took the LIRR out to the island, looking forward to seeing Frank. Most guys in life wouldn't be caught dead talking to a
moolie. Frank had done everything he could to help me. He had always been a decent guy. Extremely so for a mob boss.

And being decent was the reason he was now an ex-mob boss.

When the other heads of New York's big five wanted to expand their trade to include hard narcotics, Frank nixed it. Not strictly
because he was a thug with a heart of gold. He knew that drugs were as much trouble for the people who sold them as the people
who took them. Cops might look the other way with prostitution, gambling—probably they were the best customers—but toss some
heroin into the mix, all of a sudden all the greased palms in town can't keep the law off your back.

The other bosses didn't care. The other bosses thought Frank was getting old and should take a rest, and told him so Mafia-style—
a bullet to the back of the head. Only, Frank had luck riding with him. The slug tore some flesh, chewed up his fedora, but
otherwise didn't do much damage. Still, Frank didn't need things explained to him twice. He got the message just fine and
took a retirement out on Long Island. He had a nice house, a nice quiet life, but, I hoped, not so quiet that he couldn't
help me with a few things.

Forty minutes out of the city, and you were
out
of the city. Concrete and skyscrapers replaced with trees, grass, yards … suburban whites eyeballing the stray black who'd
wandered into their neighborhood.

Real quick I got myself to Frank's.

“Jackie! ” Frank's big hands swallowed mine as he welcomed me to his place. He guided me by the shoulder to his wife, Bobbie,
did an introduction, and asked her to pour us some lemonade, then gave me a quick tour of the house—brick traditional down
to the shuttered windows and front-yard birdbath. That, and huge—while we caught up some. He asked me how things were going,
how the Copa was.

“Good,” I told him. “Not like the old days.”

“The old days, listen to you. Make it sound like you been in the business since the silents.”

“You know, it's not even like a few years back. The room's not as jammed. Don't see people climbing all over each other to
get in the door.”

“Television,” Frank lamented. “Television's gonna be the death of clubs. Sit at home, see whatever the hell you wantjust by
changin' the channel. The box is the future,” he prophesied.

Me, having zero television in my history and not seeing me with any in the days to come, was made nervous by the thought.

“But you didn't come all the way out here to talk about the Copa.”

No, I hadn't. “Mr. Cos … Frank, you've always been decent to me. You helped me out early on with things for no good reason
except you thought I was funny, and I appreciate that. … I could use some helping out now.” I was very straightforward with
my delivery. “And the kind of help I need, you're the only one I could think to turn to.”

Frank nodded. He got my meaning.

He walked us over to some chairs out on the patio.

I sat. I said: “A few years back, when I was in Florida this one time—”

Brushing air with a hand: “I don't need the specifics. Don't want 'em.”

“There's a guy causing me trouble. He can cause me—”

Bobbie came 'round with those lemonades. I thanked her, exchanged a few pleasantries.

When she was gone: “He can cause me a whole lot more trouble if he felt that way.”

“And you want…?”

“I would like … I want him to stop causing me trouble.” I was not at all dramatic about that. Not dire, not desperate or weepy
in my request. I was simply asking a favor. Could I borrow a cup of sugar? Would you pick up my newspapers while I'm out of
town? Mind shaking up the guy who's trying to shake me down?

And that's how Frank took it, just one cat asking another for a favor. He made an offhanded gesture, said: “You gotta understand,
Jackie, I'm sort of out of the life.”

“I know.”

“The thing you're asking—”

“What I'm asking-—”

“You want things explained to this guy. Explained so they don't need explainin' again.”

“I want him off my back.”

A bird chose that moment to give a little whistle. Up the block I could hear some kids playing. Someone started a car. For
a split second I had become hypersensitive to the whole world. Nothing escaped me.

Frank asked: “This guy, you know where to find him?”

I told Frank yes, told him Dighton's name and where he was staying, the Waldorf, courtesy of me.

Frank didn't follow that up with anything, didn't say he was going to help me or that he wasn't. We did talk on some, but
completely off the subject and about nothing in particular. Movies. Frank S. What a bastard Kennedy was for making his no-good
crumb of a headline-grabbing kid brother the AG.

Finally, from Frank: “Well, good of you to visit, Jackie.” He said it without moving an inch from where he sat. I would be
finding my own way out.

I thanked Frank for his time and asked that he give my good-bye to his wife. I started to go. As I made my way:

“Jackie …”

I turned back.

“You really don't look so good. You should take a vacation, get out of town for a week.”

“I'm working the Copa. I don't think I ca—”

“You need to get out of town for a week.”

Frank may have been mostly out of the life, but, by nature, his suggestions carried the weight of a command. Truth was, I
could use a break. Things could wait. The clubs weren't going anywhere. I had a feeling Dighton wasn't going anywhere. Me,
I sure wasn't going anywhere.

I used the train ride back to figure on where I should be getting myself to.

I
DECIDED TO GET MYSELF TO
H
AWAII
. I had never been, and, therefore, unlike most every other state in America, it held no memories for me.

The first thing I noticed changing planes in Honolulu was the air. Never in my life had I ever smelled anything so clean.
Even in out-of-the-way burgs—Minneapolis, Lincoln—the air was good, but not like this. Hawaiian air was so sweet it was fragrant,
a blend of tropical flowers, the ocean, rain, and sun. It was like a message to the senses: Forget the rest of the world.
You're somewhere else now.

I took a hopper over to Maui, where I was going to make my stay for five days.

I dug Maui. Besides being beautiful and good-smelling and all that, I dug Maui because it was underdeveloped, quiet, and short
on people. What people there were, the locals,
kamaainas
they called each other, were nothing but warm and friendly. Cousins you didn't know you had. They didn't care who you were.
They didn't care what color you were. Treat them decent, they treated you decent right back.

Forget the rest of the world. You're somewhere else now.

By day number two, I was like Charlie Local, doing everything aloha-style: going barefoot, relaxing instead of rushing around.
Not worrying. How are you going to worry when the sun's up, the breeze is cool? How are you going to have any concerns when
your only concern is resting in the shade versus on the beach?

On the beach.

I was sitting out on the beach one evening, sitting, just watching the sun go down for no other reason than that's what I
felt like doing just then, when I caught a man walking in my direction from up the shore. Walking. Taking his time. Not in
any hurry. He was an Asian fellow, but veiy dark in skin. Very tan, as if he'd spent the last bunch of years doing nothing
but walking along one beach or another. When he came upon me, he stood for a bit, looking out into the ocean, then he took
up a seat in the sand. Not too close to me, but not so far off he wasn't trying to be in my presence.

He said to me: “Howzit?”

“Good,” I said back.

He kept looking out at the water, looking at the falling sun bouncing off the Pacific. In a real low voice, like he didn't
want to disturb nature's work: “Dat's sumtin', yah, bruddah?” His accent was stricdy local. Pidgin.

“It's something,” I agreed. “I could stare at that all day. Makes me feel like … you know, makes me feel not everything in
the world is all that bad.”

The man asked where I was from. I told him New York but that I traveled a lot. He wanted to know if I'd ever been to California,
and I told him that I had.

Then he told me he used to live in California. Los Angeles. He had moved his family there decades ago, opened a small business—
an antique shop—that had done fairly well. He never would have gotten rich off of it, he said, but they were nowhere near
starving.

Then the war broke out.

He and his family were herded up with the rest of the Japanese-Americans, his business sold off for pennies on the dollar.
They got shipped off to an internment camp—war relocation center, it was euphemized—in Manzanar. They were interned—relocated—no
matter that his ancestors weren't strictly Japanese. They were from Okinawa. The government didn't know the difference. Didn't
know, didn't care. And no matter that their own government locked them up, the man's two sons—one named Jeff, the other Tony—signed
up for military service soon as they could to prove to every Jap hater out there that Japanese-Americans were good Americans.
They fought with the 442nd Infantry in Europe—the Nisei Brigade.

Late in 1944, the man told me, he got a telegram at Manzanar telling him Tony had been KIA. Less than a week later he got
another telegram. Jeff.

War over, the man was allowed to return to Los Angeles. There was nothing left there for him anymore, and he had no money
to start over. He worked odd jobs, saved what he could, returned with what remained of his family to Hawaii. These days he
worked as a handyman. He said he would never get rich doing it, but then, he added, he wasn't starving either.

At the horizon, the sun went down below the water, was doused.

The man picked himself up from the sand. “Take 'er easy, brud-dah.” He walked on down the beach.

I stayed in Hawaii three more days. I didn't enjoy it as much.

I
RETURNED TO
N
EW
Y
ORK
. The city was much the same as I'd left it, only now camouflaged with the unknown. I didn't know if— when—Dighton was going
to come around sweating me for more cash. I didn't know if Frank had seen his way to making a call, arranging for someone
to talk to my tormenting hick. Talk to him and talk to him until he got his pale behind back below the Mason/ Dixon, never
to come sniffing around for my green again.

So not knowing anything about anything, I tried to get on with the daily business of Jackie Mann, which I accomplished poorly
at best. I couldn't ignore the redneck monkey on my back. So many times I'd reach for the phone to dial up Dighton, find out
if he'd been paid a visit, if he'd gotten a message, but each time I stopped myself. If he was still around, what was the
point of talking to him, reminding him that Jackie Mann, the human bank, was present and cash-ready anytime he needed? I was
paralyzed. I couldn't move and wouldn't know which way to anyhow. All there was to do was sit and wait and hope that every
day without hearing from Dighton would bring me one day closer to the time when I would never hear from him again.

I lived that way minute by minute.

There was a morning, routine like every morning: waking up too early from a bad night's sleep. Trying to write new bits but
having no heart for it. Trying to watch television but having no stomach for it. An errant copy of
The Times
at my door the only part of my day that strayed from monotony.

I had to get out. I had to go into the city and lose myself. I had to go and shop and buy and spend money and slather myself
with shiny items to distract me from my preoccupations.

Useless.

Everything I did seemed useless for getting me beyond …

Something wasn't right. Besides everything else that was wrong, something was shrewing at the flesh of my mind, dull and slow,
but persistentiy demanding my attention. Something …

The Times
at my door. Why was
The Times
at my door? I wasn't a subscriber. So why was the paper … It wasn't. It wasn't the whole paper …