Mob Girl

THREE

AN HONEST WOMAN

Arlyne had not worked out all the details of her reform. The centerpiece of the plan, however, involved giving up men. For a good month or so after the return from Miami, she was virtuous. The memory of her humiliation at the hands of Jimmy Doyle was still fresh in her mind and she gave her old haunts a wide berth. She stayed home nights, deferring to her parents. Gradually, however, virtue began to wear on her nerves. She thrived on the excitement generated by discord. She would rather receive a cuff on the ears than a pat on the head. She missed the rush.

Arlyne renewed her old acquaintances at the Carlton Terrace, partying there until 3:00 A.M. Billie resumed her vigils in the foyer but became more resigned with the knowledge that Arlyne, now eighteen, was slipping beyond her control. The daughter grew wilder, until a trick of fate temporarily clipped her wings in a way her mother never could.

Arlyne had been having a bed affair—she coined the term “bed affair” to indicate a more serious involvement than a roll in the back seat of a Cadillac—with Moishe, the racketeer who was a regular at the Terrace. Arlyne was not serious about Moishe. She found his thin, angular body and pale skin revolting. Moishe, furthermore, was a serious cheater. At the time they met, he had not only a wife but a girlfriend. Arlyne could see cheating on a wife, but a man who double-crossed his girlfriend was beneath contempt. Moishe, however, was high up in the unions and he got her around to places where she wanted to be seen. The arrangement was tolerable until Arlyne missed her period.

For several days she lay around in a kind of stupor. How could it have happened? she wondered. This was no real mystery, since she had never in her six preceding years of sexual activity used birth control. But just the fact of having gone so long without a mishap had left her feeling she led a charmed life. Now she was caught. Mustering her resolve she called Moishe and arranged to meet him at the Terrace. She laid out the problem calmly.

“Moishe,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

Moishe did not blink and he replied without emotion, “Do what you gotta do.”

He did not believe the child was his and he clearly did not intend to help her.

Arlyne walked out of the Carlton Terrace in disbelief. Taking a cab home, she was relieved to find that Sadie had not yet left for Harlem. She burst into a tearful confession. Arlyne had found that she could count on Sadie at times like these. A little wild in her own right, the housekeeper proved a willing partner in crime and together they decided that they should try to take care of matters without telling Billie, who was vacationing in Florida. Sadie had a few time-tested remedies up her sleeve. First she made a trip to the druggist and came home with a bottle of enormous black tablets that she called “elephant pills.” Arlyne didn’t ask what they contained. She just swallowed a couple of them with water. She did the same thing the following day and the day after. A week passed and still her period did not materialize.

So Sadie came up with another plan. Taking out a tin of turpentine with a long nozzle, she squeezed three drops into a spoonful of sugar and told Arlyne to swallow it. If she did that for nine days, Sadie promised, the blood would return. Before the treatment was complete, however, Arlyne was seized with violent stomach cramps and fever. Sadie became frightened and allowed as it was time to get help. It was decided that the wisest course was to tell Ida and have her relay the news to Billie, since Billie would not dare yell at her mother. The plan worked admirably. The unflappable Ida issued her usual comforting assurances. “Dahhlling, don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.” She summoned Billie from Florida and the two arranged for a discreet visit to a reputable doctor located through a family friend.

Thanks to her abundant natural vitality, Arlyne recovered from both the turpentine poisoning and the abortion in a matter of days. Her father, whom everyone agreed should be spared the facts, was none the wiser.

The episode frightened Arlyne. But having come through it without any apparent consequences curiously increased her sense of invulnerability. She resumed her promiscuous habits, disdaining birth control, convinced against all reason that the odds were with her. But she was ever the unlucky gambler. Over the next four or five years, she was to become pregnant eight more times, each time, she was convinced, with a Jewish racketeer (a pattern that increased her preference for Italians). Each time she came home crying that she had gotten caught, Ida and Billie would mobilize their forces. They found her a doctor in Philadelphia. They found her a doctor in Manhattan. They found her a Cuban doctor who had dirty instruments. Each time, Arlyne limped home to spend several days in bed sipping soup and meditating upon her crimes. During the fever and pain that followed each of those furtive operations, she would vow to be good. But as soon as she felt better, she was back on the circuit.

The last of these illegitimate pregnancies occurred when she was twenty-three. She had been sleeping with one of her father’s friends, a car dealer from Manhattan, when she discovered that she was once again “caught.” The father, like all the others, denied responsibility. And once again, Arlyne appealed to her mother for help. This time Billie, who by now knew her way around the medical underworld, turned up a physician known as Dr. Sunshine. He performed only abortions and made a fortune at it. Billie made the necessary arrangements and one gloomy winter morning she accompanied her daughter to Dr. Sunshine’s office located in a hotel next to the Roxy Theater.

The doctor’s waiting room was rather small and soon after arriving Arlyne noticed a man sitting across from her. He was in his late thirties, with wavy hair turning a premature gray. While short, he was a stylish dresser. He was with a woman who appeared to be more than ten years his junior. Out of habit, Arlyne threw him a seductive glance. Soon, he was engaged in animated conversation with her mother.

His name was Norman Brickman. He and his father, he said, owned a fur business in Midtown. As Norman and Billie found they knew people in common, they exchanged phone numbers. Then Arlyne heard her name called by the receptionist, and she put the furrier out of her mind.

A few days later as she was convalescing, Arlyne received a call from Brickman, who asked her if she would like to go out. She found this a little odd in light of the circumstances of their meeting. Norman, she assumed, was involved with the young woman in the waiting room. (Arlyne had to admit that the sight of a man standing by a woman he had knocked up was endearing and certainly without precedent in her own experience.) The woman, Norman explained, was just a “friend.” Over dinner he elaborated on his personal life. He was married but unhappily. He and his wife were legally separated. After dinner he took her home early and asked if he could see her again.

Arlyne liked Norman Brickman. He was courteous, attractive and impressively generous. Shortly after they started to date he began giving her furs. A white fox stole. A platina fox coat. Then a mink jacket. What’s more, he reminded her in some inexplicable way of her father. There were no physical similarities except for the fact that Norman was approaching middle age. But the presence of an older man was enough to evoke in Arlyne Weiss the yearnings of her youth.

In early January, less than two months after they had met, Brickman proposed marriage. At the time Arlyne did not stop to ask herself why he might be moving so fast. She was preoccupied by her own agenda. Her sister, Barbara, had just announced her engagement to a very good-looking boy from a straight family. This impending union was, of course, everything that Billie and Irving had wanted for their daughters—both of them—and there was a great stir in the Weiss household in anticipation of an August wedding. The prospect of Barbara monopolizing the family’s attention for an entire summer galled Arlyne. She reasoned that she might steal her sister’s thunder by marrying first. With this invidious intent, she accepted Norman Brickman’s proposal.

On hearing the news, Billie was alarmed. Norman, she felt, was inappropriate on several counts. First was the obvious age difference. Beyond that was his complicated personal situation, which included, as far as she could see, both an estranged wife and a once-pregnant girlfriend. Arlyne assured her mother that Norman’s divorce was due to become final soon, but that did not put Billie’s mind at rest. At the bottom of her uneasiness, however, lay a suspicion that she could not verify: that Norman was hoping to get his hands on Irving’s money.

Billie pleaded with her daughter to reconsider, but Arlyne was adamant. In the face of Arlyne’s resolve, the family set a date during the first week of April. It was nothing special, just a “hit-and-run” wedding in Greenwich, Connecticut, where there were marriage statutes favorable to the recently divorced. Arlyne wore a beige Chanton suit with mink stole. Bride and groom trudged through a snowstorm to a justice of the peace. After the ceremony, the wedding party gathered at an inn for a champagne breakfast. Everyone got drunk, less out of high spirits than to take the edge off the discomfort. Billie wept continuously. The only one who seemed happy was Ida, whose years as a funeral director had steeled her to rise to any emotion that convention demanded.

Although Irving was dubious of his new son-in-law, he put the best face on things, unveiling his wedding gift to the newlyweds—a pink Cadillac. Amid the farewells of well-wishers, Arlyne and Norman climbed into their new auto and drove off into the blizzard.

They honeymooned at the Concord, Ida’s old haunt and a spot that Arlyne had always associated with gaiety. But the mood was sour. Norman drank and sulked. She had never seen him that way. Arlyne attributed it to the uncivil treatment he had received at the hands of her family and redoubled her efforts to raise his spirits. She was determined to be a good wife, although her motives were not altogether pure. On one hand, she had seen enough of the two-timers at the Carlton Terrace to realize that a good marriage was something worth having. Her own parents had a relationship to envy. They were loving and fiercely loyal to each other. Like any other couple, they had gone through some rough times. When Arlyne was in her early teens, she had learned that Irving was having an affair. The phone had rung one evening and a woman asked for Irving. Billie came on the line and delivered the coup de grace. “I am still Mrs. Irving Weiss.” After that, Billie never let on that anything had happened. At the time Arlyne marveled at the coldblooded cruelty of a mistress who called a man at home. But she never thought less of her father. It was only, she figured, a momentary lapse in an otherwise exemplary marriage.

But there was a more pressing reason why Arlyne could not fail. If she gave any impression that her marriage was in trouble so soon after the wedding, Barbara’s August nuptials would appear all the more glorious. With this in mind, Arlyne threw herself into being Mrs. Norman Brickman. Upon their return from the Catskills, she found an apartment on Manhattan’s fashionable Upper East Side. She prevailed upon her mother to loan her Sadie for a couple of days a week, but it was Arlyne herself who oversaw the management of the household. All of her slovenly habits disappeared. Where she used to toss her custom-made clothes in careless piles behind the door, she would not now suffer anything to be out of place. She became a fanatic about cleanliness, getting down on her hands and knees to scrub. Every day she ordered fresh flowers from the neighborhood florists and filled the rooms with huge, aromatic bouquets. Flowers always suggested innocence.

Though Arlyne waited on her husband like a servant, he was not an easy man to please. He was particular about his shirts, which had to be hand-washed and hand-ironed. It took both Sadie and Arlyne working full-time to keep Norman’s wardrobe in the condition he demanded. He was equally fussy about his meals. Sadie did most of the cooking but every so often Arlyne, who was no mean cook herself, would make him his favorite dinner of veal cutlets and mashed potatoes. Then she would sit and wait for praise, which never came. Instead, if she tried to make conversation, Norman would raise his hand as if to strike her.

Arlyne could have taken her husband’s cruelties in stride had it not been for one peculiarity that threatened to drive her insane. On Friday nights she would normally send Sadie home early and prepare what she hoped would be an intimate dinner for two. Only a few weeks into the marriage, however, Norman started leaving in the middle of dinner. He would rise from the table, his meal half-eaten, to announce that he was going out for a pack of cigarettes. Arlyne would sit alone listening to the clock strike nine, ten, eleven. Midnight. Norman would not return that night nor, indeed, the next day. It was not until Sunday that he would wander back, cigarettes in hand. Without a word of explanation he would walk to the phonograph and put on his favorite song, “Let there be you. Let there be me. Let there be oysters under the sea.” Then he would ask for the rest of his dinner.

Arlyne was mesmerized. Either Norman was crazy or he was engaging in this charade to drive her over the edge. Whatever the case she felt she needed independent verification of his bizarre behavior. One Friday afternoon, she asked Sadie if she could stay the weekend. “You’re going to see he’s going to come back Sunday night like nothing happened. He’s trying to do a Gaslight on me.” Sadie thought it sounded queer, but she stayed in the shadows and bore witness as Norman walked out on Friday night and returned two days later.

Satisfied that she had the forces of reason on her side, Arlyne seized the initiative. She hired a detective to follow her husband. The private eye tracked Norman to a Brooklyn apartment right around the corner from where Arlyne went to the beauty parlor. The apartment belonged to a woman named Chickie. Arlyne studied the photos of her purported rival. Chickie was a real Brooklyn broad with long silvery-white hair. Nothing special to look at except that she was conspicuously pregnant. Arlyne decided it was time to sit her husband down for a little talk.

Norman Brickman professed outrage that his wife had hired a private eye to spy on him. Arlyne, however, was not to be diverted so easily and did not let conversation stray from the subject of his pregnant girlfriend. After much arguing, Norman promised to give the other woman up. But the situation proved not entirely within his control. When she didn’t hear from Norman for a few days, Chickie showed up in front of the Brickmans’ apartment, in broad daylight, brazenly flaunting her stomach. When she did not get an answer to the doorbell, she stood under the window shouting, “Norrrrman!” Arlyne watched from behind the curtain, fascinated and appalled. Norman sat in his armchair reading, as if nothing was happening.

Finally, Arlyne opened the window and shouted “go away,” but Chickie ignored her. She was determined to get at Norman and she would not be deterred by his wife’s opinion of her. In short, Chickie had no shame and showed up several times in weeks thereafter, standing under the window, calling Norman’s name. When Arlyne asked her husband what he intended to do about this situation, he insisted that he had already ended the affair. Arlyne earnestly wanted to believe this and in her heart she hoped that Chickie’s determination would simply burn itself out. She never asked Norman if the baby was his. If he said “yes,” he would be acknowledging an obligation that he might feel compelled to honor. Arlyne worried that her husband might be a man of scruples. However, those fears were soon dispelled by the appearance of a new caller.

There had been a temporary pause in Chickie’s siege. Still, every ring of the doorbell gave Arlyne a start. One afternoon it rang and she peeked out from behind the curtains. Standing in the doorway was a tall, very attractive blond. Not a cheap blond like Chickie, but a broad with some class. Arlyne opened the door and found herself staring into the forlorn face of another very pregnant woman.

Arlyne invited her in for a cold drink and learned that her name was Frances. She was an Irish girl from the Bronx. She had met Norman two years earlier in the fur district where she was working as a model. Now, she was pregnant and Norman wouldn’t return her calls. She wouldn’t have imposed, she explained, but she was about to deliver and had no money. Arlyne was moved. Unlike Chickie, who had stormed the gates like a Hun, Frances was simply trying to find some justice. Rather than a rival, she seemed more like a fellow sufferer.

Without telling Norman about this visit, Arlyne gave Frances some money to tide her over and sent her back to the Bronx, calling every few days to inquire about her condition. When Frances went into labor, Arlyne took her to the hospital and, seeing that the girl did not have a decent nightgown, went out and bought her one. On the Feast of St. Jude, the saint of impossible causes, Frances had a son. Arlyne held the baby briefly. Then, giving Frances another substantial sum of money, she walked out of the hospital never to see her again.

Arlyne could not bring herself to discuss Norman’s mistresses with her parents. That would be an admission of failure. Instead, she invited her parents to dinner on Friday night with the intent of presenting a tableau of domestic bliss. Throughout the meal she was in a state of nerves, wondering if her husband might not wander out for cigarettes. But in the presence of Irving Weiss, whose wealth and influence he admired, Norman behaved like a model husband. Although the Weisses earnestly wanted to believe in their daughter’s marriage, in the hopes that it would settle her down, they were not so easily fooled. Rumors of Norman’s wrongdoing had filtered back by way of Sadie. Arlyne, however, refused to discuss her troubles, until events forced her hand.

Soon after their marriage, Arlyne had realized that Norman’s business was in trouble. He and his father had fought about something, she wasn’t sure what, and for days at a time Norman stayed away from the shop. One afternoon in mid-June the doorbell rang. Norman was lounging around the apartment relaxing in his favorite blue boxer shorts, so Arlyne answered the door. She met two New York City detectives with a warrant for her husband’s arrest.

Norman did not seem surprised. He calmly pulled on his pants, gave her instructions for arranging bail and left with the detectives. That night after she had managed to retrieve him, he explained his difficulties. He had taken a bundle of furs on consignment, sold them and pocketed the money. In the process he had ruined his father and now he himself stood to go to prison.

Norman related all this dispassionately. Still, the prospect of her husband behind bars was so disturbing to Arlyne that she threw herself on her father’s mercy, begging him to intervene. Accordingly, Irving prevailed upon one of his own friends, a congressman, to take on his son-in-law’s case.

Convinced that her husband at last needed her, Arlyne felt closer to him than at any time since their marriage. When he came out on bail, his behavior was exemplary. He was thoughtful, kind, attentive. In early July, she discovered she was pregnant. For once she was happy about it. It was not a sentiment shared by Billie Weiss, who, sensing impending disaster, begged her daughter to get another abortion. But Arlyne would hear none of it. Although she had regarded her previous pregnancies with fear and revulsion, she now felt maternal yearnings. She wanted something of her own. As usual, Arlyne’s motives were not unalloyed. Having a baby, Ida Blum’s first grandchild no less, would assure her of a position of esteem within the family, one that Barbara could not preempt.

When Arlyne told Norman about the baby he seemed delighted and, concerned for her delicate condition, suggested she should remove herself from his legal troubles as far as possible by spending a few weeks with her grandmother at the Concord. Arlyne agreed, but once there she was restless and worried about her husband. His next hearing was approaching and she felt guilty that he would be facing it alone. It would be a nice surprise, she thought, if she showed up to meet him after he got out of court.

When Arlyne’s rented limo pulled up next to their apartment on the Upper East Side, the lights were out. She turned her key in the lock and called Norman’s name. There was no reply. The place looked much the same as when she had left it. Norman, unlike many men, was no clutterer. The instant she passed from the living room to the bedroom, however, she could tell something was wrong. Her favorite nightgown, a turquoise peignoir, was thrown across the bed. She would never have tossed it so casually, nor would Sadie, who knew her mistress required her lingerie to be laundered after each wearing, have treated it with such disregard. It had been worn by another woman.

She was enraged with Norman, who, it was now clear, had tricked her into leaving town so he could play house with Chickie. Repenting any sympathy, she waited in the darkened house until she heard him walk in the door. He was alone. When he turned on the light, he saw her and froze. Arlyne had no intention of giving him the opportunity to explain himself. Brandishing the incriminating nightgown, she launched into a tirade against his lechery. Norman struck her. Then he stormed out the door.

All that night, Arlyne nursed her wounds and seethed. By morning, she had decided upon a course of action. She called the assistant district attorney in charge of prosecuting Norman’s case and told him she had information to offer concerning her husband’s misconduct in the fur business. The prosecutor ushered her into his office, where she recited a litany of Norman’s “crimes.”

Arlyne had not reckoned with the consequences of her own revenge. Years later as she tried to reconstruct the tumultuous aftermath of her trip to the prosecutor’s office, she would recall that Norman was taken back to the city jail. She had ratted out her own husband. She was mortified. She would set things right, she decided. She would recant her statement. But first she would bail her husband out. That, she learned, would be impossible until the next day. All night long she sat outside the Tombs in her pink Cadillac waiting to do penance. In the morning when she finally got in to visit Norman, he told her he never wanted to see her again.

In the days to follow, Norman and the state struck a bargain. He pleaded guilty to charges of grand larceny second degree and was sentenced to a brief term at the state maximum security prison in Ossining.

In every practical sense, Arlyne’s marriage was over. She moved from the Upper East Side back to her parents’ apartment in Forest Hills. The retreat was humiliating, particularly since it came only two weeks or so before Barbara’s wedding, a fairy-tale extravaganza in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. At that point, news of Norman’s conviction was not common knowledge and the Weiss family hoped the news would not leak out to spoil Barbara’s big day. It would be best, they decided, if Arlyne and Norman would show up together, smiles on their faces, putting rumors of their domestic problems to rest. This was difficult to arrange since Norman, out on bail, was living with Chickie.

Getting him to that wedding was a feat that required the skills of a trained diplomat. Arlyne rose to the occasion. She called him in Brooklyn and explained that in his precarious legal position he had as much to gain as anyone by appearing to be embraced by his influential in-laws. Their continued goodwill, in fact, might prove useful to him come time for parole. Enticed by this appeal to his self-interest, Norman attended the wedding, where he was a shadow, if a necessary shadow. He appeared in only one photo, an obscure figure seated in the background.