Funnymen (57 page)

One night Lou the Ape was up there. Lou Manganese. It was maybe five in the morning. The week before, his father-in-law, Al Pompiere, was shot in the foot getting his shoes shined on Sullivan Street. Anyway, we're all hanging around and we're just rattling off stories, stories about broads and booze and stuff. And Vic had some great ones. He told us about this one actress—I ain't gonna tell you who it was—who wanted to do it with a dog in front of Vic. He'd tell us that this one liked to get tied up, that one liked to tie other people up, these two liked to tie each other up. Ices Andy was there and he couldn't believe some of the stories. Vic and Ziggy had recently put their prints outside Grauman's Chinese Theater—it was Vic's shoes and Ziggy's hair in the cement there—and a few nights after that, Vic brings a broad to the spot at four in the morning and stands where his footprints are and gives her the sausage parmigiana standing up.

So we're all shootin' the shit and we're laughing and acting like jerks and someone—I think it was Nick Vitale, who worked the door at the Copa—says to Vic, “Hey, wasn't you once a soda jerk?” and Vic says, “Best job I ever had.” And Vic laughs and slaps his knee and starts telling about how he used to do it to girls in Codport at the soda parlor. Then Nick says, “Hey, what about the guy—you laid his wife? He sold ices on the boardwalk? And paid you?” And Vic just froze up. And so did I 'cause I knew the fella who sold the ices was Joe Ravelli, Ices Andy's grandfather. Vic said, “Nah, that wasn't me. That wasn't me.” And Hunny said, “Yeah, it was, Vic. You once told me you banged Ices Andy's grandma and not to ever mention it to no one.” “What the hell are you talking about, you big fuckin' idiot?!” Vic snapped. “Well, that's what you told me, Vic,” Hunny said.

I looked at Andy and his face was a blank. No eyes, no mouth or color. Nothin'. You couldn't tell what was going on in there.

“This party's over, guys,” Vic said. “I'm gonna turn in.”

But nobody stood up.

“Izzat true, Vic?” Andy said.

“Nah. It ain't.”

“Come on. Izzat true?”

“Hey, Andy boy, you know Hunny. He's all stupid in the head. Ain't that right, Hunny? Too many left hooks, right?”

Hunny nodded.

Vic said, “Hunny don't know what's what, Andy. “

Andy said, “Hunny's too stupid to make things up.”

Hunny nodded again.

“Stand up, Vic,” Andy said.

Vic grabbed his crotch and said, “Right here, Ices . . . take a fuckin' walk.”

Andy walked to the couch Vic was lyin' on and grabbed him by the collar. He lifted Vic up off the couch and stood him up.

“Hunny, come on!” Vic said. He was trying to get Hunny to protect him. But Hunny had been drinkin' six hours straight. He wasn't gonna help.

“Hey! Gaetano, come on!” Vic said to me.

“I'm tired. Hunny, let's go.”

Me, Hunny, and Lou and a few others left the suite.

“Ain't that big kid Vic's bodyguard?” Lou said to me in the hallway.

I nodded.

“And his own bodyguard's beatin' him up?”

I said, “Yeah, I guess he is.”

“Some hirin' practices he's got,” Lou said. “Dumb fuckin' Vic.”

But Ices Andy never hurt Vic. Never even hit him. Vic denied it, he lied his way out. And he doubled Andy's salary, which didn't hurt either.

REYNOLDS CATLEDGE IV:
Soon after Vic Fountain's fourth album—
The Other Side of Vic
—was released, I was summoned to Ziggy Bliss's rooms at the Biltmore Hotel. I would characterize his behavior that day as extremely agitated, although I would always characterize his behavior as that. The album was doing well and it was common knowledge that Ziggy was envious of his success. I recall now that Arnie and Sally were saying things like “Batten down the hatches” when the album hit the stores; they were accustomed to Ziggy's mood swings and tantrums and knew that they often corresponded with Vic's concomitant successes and failures.

“Cat, you and me go back a long ways,” Ziggy said to me at the Biltmore. It was a suite but was spartan at best, the walls were bare. One would never have surmised that the person who rented space here was a millionaire. “First time we met, remember that?”

“How could I forget?” I responded, probing my memory for the particulars of that occasion.

“You doin' okay, Cat? You like Hollywood? This kinda fast-paced life? Nuttin' bothering you?”

I informed him that these were the most content times of my life. He
then asked me if I was “gettin' any” and I responded that, as I was now a member of the Fountain and Bliss entourage, I occasionally was.

“Look, you're in charge of security for this outfit,” Ziggy said. “And you do a great job. And part of that work is not only keepin' Fountain and Bliss safe and alive, but keepin' Fountain and Bliss
together.
Right?”

“Yes,” I responded, “that would seem of paramount importance to me.”

He made an obvious, unfunny movie-related pun on the word “paramount” and then continued: “I think Vic is thinkin' of goin' solo. I'm almost sure of it. And I want you to nose around. I want you to find out everything you can. Everything. I don't care what you have to do. You see a stone left unturned, you unturn it.”

“I understand.”

“See, if he leaves Fountain and Bliss, there ain't no more act. And if there ain't no more act, there ain't no more me. Or you. I'm tryin' to avoid full-scale obliteration.”

He told me that I should “bug” Vic's various domiciles, his house in Beverly Hills, his suites at the Beverly Wilshire and the Ambassador, and so on, his table at Guy's Seafood Joint, his room at the Oceanfront in Las Vegas, even his mother's fortune-telling business in Santa Monica. He wanted all the dope, he said.

I told him I would get right on it. He told me that this was authorized—he pronounced it “arthurized”—by Arnold and Sally, but that I should under no circumstances
ever
mention this to them, which I construed to mean that it was in fact not authorized by them.

I contacted various individuals in the small private detective community in Los Angeles. I did not reveal the name of the “client.” After several days of research I settled on a man named Casper Nuñez, whose offices were in Culver City. Using an assortment of guises, a variety of clever tactics, and a plethora of cash that Ziggy had entrusted me with, we were able to gain access to the various locations. However, we were told now
not
to place a bug in Vic's house, Ziggy instructed me, because “he ain't never there for the most part ever,” as Ziggy put it.

The results were as disappointing as they were entertaining. Casper Nuñez and I spent hours listening to the tapes. Some of the material was indecipherable: The technology was crude then and Vic often was inebriated and enjoying the company of several giggling women. In addition, he would have drinking parties with friends and acquaintances of his; at these gatherings, the men present would often explode in uncontrollable laughter—Vic would merely have to crack some sort of jest and the individuals present would burst into paroxysmal hysterics. As so often happens with a group of men acting childishly, the first hour of these sessions usually entailed Vic and his cohorts recapping the ribald events of their previous
gathering, and this proved a labor for me to listen to as I'd already listened to the actual events themselves.

I remember that Vic watched a lot of television—he was a baseball fan—and was quite partial to Lenny Pearl's show. When I informed Ziggy of this fact, it was as if I'd told him I'd discovered an act of the highest treason. “Aha!” he shouted. “That traitor! Vic Quisling he is!” Unlike myself and Casper Nuñez, Ziggy had no interest in the various dalliances of his partner; he was much more concerned with Vic's business dealings. But, as Mr. Shepherd Lane and Arnold Latchkey were in charge of Vic's business affairs—as well as Ziggy's own—there really was nothing to listen to other than Mr. Lane telling Vic how much money was coming in. Vic owed an enormous amount of money to casinos and bookmakers in Las Vegas and California, I learned.

It was while listening to these tapes that Ziggy found out that Vic had to occasionally dye his hair a dark shade of blue, due to the recent onset of a slight salt-and-pepper effect in his hair. Too vain ever to be caught buying this dye, Vic would send someone else to effect the purchase. That someone was occasionally myself. Several times Ziggy and I listened to Vic instructing me to buy this dye.

“Why didn't you tell me about this, Cat?” Ziggy asked me.

“You never asked me,” I responded.

It was also through the tapes that Ziggy found out that Vic would be recording a fifth album and also that Vic's father had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

After a year of this surveillance, Ziggy abruptly put an end to it. He handed me a startlingly generous check to give to Casper Nuñez to ensure discretion.

I must confess that I had then what you might call a “crush” on Miss Ginger Bacon, who was Vic's primary mistress. Ginger and he would often chat about some of his other “conquests,” and then, after this discussion was done, immediately engage in intercourse, as if fueled by the conversation. While engaged in coitus, Vic would tell her that he loved her, and she often told him likewise. On one such occasion they said it to each other at the exact same instant.

“You're the only one, puddin',” he would tell her. “No one else comes close.”

As for the Oceanfront sessions, Vic would bring three, four, sometimes five women into bed with him. There would be soft music playing in the background. You would hear breathing, an occasional giggle, more breathing. On one tape a woman whispered, “Come on, Vic, come on.” And another woman murmured, “Oh Vic, please. Come on, baby, do it to me.” To which a third woman said, “Honey, Vic's not even here.”

SALLY KLEIN:
We were at the office on Wilshire, and Danny and Sid Stone were trying out some new material for the act. (Norman White had recently passed away.) It was fun when we got everyone together and started joking around . . . we needed to do that more. But sometimes it wasn't easy to get everybody in the same room at the same time.

In the middle of going through a new routine, Vic looked at his watch and said, “Aw, Jesus, I gotta go.”

Arnie said, “But we're just getting started.”

“I gotta go. I lost track of the time.”

Vic went to the door. For a time he did what Jackie Gleason used to do: have two or three limos wait for him, so no matter what exit he used when leaving a building, there'd be a car there.

“This is ridiculous, Vic,” Danny said. “You can't leave now.”

“I gotta go, all right?! I got things, okay? Hey, who knows? I might be back in an hour.”

“Aw, come on,” Ziggy said, “You're gonna record a whole song in an hour?”

Vic said to him, “How did you know that's where I was goin'? I didn't tell nobody in this room I was recording a new record.”

“I just guessed, Vic, that's all.”

Vic looked at Ziggy up and down and shook his head. Then he left.

DANNY McGLUE:
I remember one time, I was with Ziggy, Betsy, and [my son] Steve at Guy's restaurant. Betsy was doing okay then. She'd recently gotten out of the Payne Whitney [psychiatric] Clinic and things seemed to be all right for a time. Stevie's illness would often have a jarring effect on her, sometimes for the better. Sometimes not.

Vic, Ginger, and Hunny happened to be at the next table, and after they were done, they came to our table and we spoke for a while. Hunny had just been named a panelist on
What Is It?,
the old CBS game show hosted by Bob Kincaid. So we all chatted briefly and then Vic said, “I've gotta be off now.” And Ziggy said, “Tell Bruno I said get well quick, Vic. I'm sure that tumor's gonna turn out to be nuttin' but a harmless golf ball.”