Chapter 11
As Bobby pursued both business and pleasure at the Brill Building, Walter Winchell was waiting for his lunch at the Stork Club at 3 East 53rd Street. While the Copa was probably the most famous nightclub in the world thanks to the headliners who performed there, the patrons of the Stork Club themselves were the entertainment of that establishment. It was a place to see and to be seen. What started as a speakeasy in the times of Prohibition had seamlessly transitioned to a legal purveyor of spirits, gossip, glad-handing, dealmaking, and a measure of voyeurism thrown in for an extra added spice. New Yorkers came in, hoping for a glimpse of Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, Jack and Jackie Kennedy, or whoever was famous at the moment for merely being famous. The Stork formed the nexus of gangsters, politicians and show people in the city. A gold chain blocked the entrance to the main dining area until the proprietor, Sherman Billingsley, approved patrons to pass into his place. In this room, one could expect fine dining, dance music, and perhaps the appearance of a starlet whom one recognized but whose name one did not know, in the company of the star of the latest cowboy western shoot-‘em-up television show. It was a velvet rope draped across the doorway of the Cub Room that marked the inner sanctum where Walter Winchell reigned and the serious business of the gossip column was conducted. Here, author Ernest Hemingway had once tried to pay his tab with a $100,000 royalty check. Billingsley had informed him that it would be impossible, at least until after the Stork had closed for the evening.
Sherman Billingsley had the broad, impassive features of an Oklahoma bootlegger. After serving a short term in Leavenworth for satisfying the thirst of his neighbors, Billingsley had moved to New York, where he hoped his peculiar services would be better appreciated. Over the years, his backwoods ways had been covered by a veneer of Big City sophistication. He had learned how to match his dress, his speech and his manners to the hard-drinking New York City clientele. He had also managed to deal successfully with his gangster partners, three knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing thugs who had shown up at the Stork one day and announced a merger with Billingsley that would be backed up not by contracts and lawyers, but by menace, protection, and rock-bottom prices on the good stuff for his customers. Billingsley had survived shakedowns of every variety, kidnappings and murder attempts, and had managed to outlive his tormenters, chiefly by having nothing to do with the money end of the business while the Stork was mob occupied. He was the genteel host of the Stork, a soothing, calming presence to smooth over the inevitable rough patches that must come with running a popular nightspot. If a bullet-riddled corpse turned up on the premises, at least Billingsley could make sure it was delivered to the back door of the Stork, not the front. His patrons enjoyed a mild frisson of danger that lingered from the speakeasy days, but they did not want to see mob vengeance served up right under their noses.
That was then. Now, in the present day, Billingsley looked back on those rough and tumble years with a certain fondness. The gangsters had either moved on to Las Vegas or been eliminated by rival thugs. In their place had come—unions, of all things! In the good old days, Billingsley had been free to hire and fire at will. A slow or sloppy waiter simply could not be tolerated at the Stork. Even with the mob at his heels, Billingsley had reigned unquestioned within the walls of his nightclub. Now, every picky little detail (trifles such as breaks and sick leave) had to be worked out to a T beforehand. Mobsters could be reasoned with, to a degree, but not unions! The thought of the Stork being picketed by dissatisfied rabble rousers was more terrifying to Billingsley than a corpse in the trunk of a car parked on his street. Rumors of a corpse, at least, were possibly good for business, but unions would be the death of the place, and of him, Billingsley was convinced.
But that day of reckoning was still in the unknown future, and today, Sherman Billingsley patrolled his beloved Stork, a loving but strict parent. After putting a stop to some unseemly tablehopping in the main dining room, Billingsley made his way back to the Cub Room to check on the gods of his personal Mount Olympus. Chief among these was Walter Winchell, who had christened the Cub Room and helped to make it famous so long ago, no one could seem to remember exactly when. There, at table 50, his permanently reserved corner, Winchell turned over in his mind the story of Sam Cassotto.
It was a bit sad to think that Sam had not survived to learn of the present fame of his son Walden Robert, aka Bobby Darin. He had not lived to see the child. Even sadder to consider that the boy was not his! Had the widow, Polly Walden Cassotto, taken a lover after her husband’s death? Someone not available or willing to wed, perhaps? Perhaps it was a younger man who had sired Walden Robert, who, aside from his heart condition, was charging through life like a young stallion. Winchell tried to picture a middle-aged Polly Cassotto, left to fend for herself and her teenaged daughter, Nina, after the death of Sam. Taking a lover in such circumstances, Winchell simply could not picture. Could Bobby be the product of a rape, or some coercion that would be rape in all but name? Winchell shifted uncomfortably in his seat as he considered this scenario. No shame ought to attach to a woman in such circumstances, but Winchell knew that at the time of Bobby’s birth, such shame would attach, and the mother might be forced to take desperate measures. Abortion was illegal, but even without reference to a police blotter, Walter Winchell knew that it was a service available for a price, and that price was not beyond the means of even a poor woman. However, Bobby was not aborted or adopted out, even though these were possible ways of dealing with a surprise pregnancy. He thought of Polly, cutting herself off from the care of Frank Costello (such care as it was that allowed Sam to die in Sing Sing), and perhaps some man had taken advantage. Winchell bowed his head over his table, barely aware of the people moving to and fro in the Cub Room. No, he decided at last, this was not likely. His press releases on Bobby had included accounts of Polly’s funeral, and it was obvious to anyone within a mile of that mournful exercise that Bobby Darin was a boy loved and cherished by Polly. Winchell, who had never been especially close to his own mother, felt a slight pang of jealousy as he considered that burial scene. At last he decided this was a fruitless avenue of pursuit, since Polly was dead, and Nina was unlikely to talk to Winchell about such a possibility at this point. It was clear from his dealings with her to date that she was fiercely protective of Bobby, and she would do nothing to expose a possible illegitimate birth for her brother. Would she perhaps be willing to talk to an intermediary who would then communicate with Winchell? This was the way of the gossip columnist, but he would not think in such terms just yet. The coffee in the cup before him turned cold as he pondered the Cassotto and the Maffia families.
Even before getting this far in his reasoning, Winchell had decided, as he made his way from Costello’s apartment to the Stork, that he would concentrate on the identity of the father. From the tone of Bobby’s voice in the Copa Lounge as he referred to himself as the son of Big Curly, it was clear that Darin was unaware of his own parentage. It is a wise child who knows his own father, Winchell thought, summoning up the quote from where he did not know. Bobby Darin was a very smart young man, but he seemed to have bought the story of Sam dying shortly before his own birth without question. He was clearly loyal to the idea of Sam as his father. But it was not Sam, that much was certain now. Sam had died in prison in October 1934, and Darin was not born until May of 1936. Darin’s father was someone else, and that someone else could still be alive, perhaps still walking the streets of New York City. Certainly he would be easier to find if he was alive, Winchell thought. How often things were not as they appeared to be! Winchell recalled a rather tired, middle-aged comedian being interrupted in his act by a drunken young swain in a nightclub audience back in Los Angeles a few years earlier. The weary comedian had finally called out, “Please! For all you know, young man, you might be heckling your own father!” The audience had laughed, and the swain had finally decided to lay low. Either the young man was too far in his cups to respond, or a secret chord had been struck.
Winchell considered the sources of information at his disposal to track down a missing parent. No police officer had ever cultivated the number of citizen informants as were at Winchell’s command. Beyond those with whom he had physical contact on a daily basis, including cabbies, cops, shoeshine boys, doormen and pretty secretaries, there was his still large readership. Strangers wrote to Winchell daily to inform him of unreported news, matters that no respectable journalist would delve into. News of enemy submarines lurking off the Jersey Shore. Rumors of American communists gathering for educational seminars. Reports of bogus kidnaps, insurance scams and stock swindles. All these and more were related in handwritten letters to Winchell. The ones he deemed worthy of special notice were sent on in plain envelopes to the FBI to be typed up and filed away for possible future reference. Many were placed into Winchell’s own bulging, barely organized filing cabinets. A couple of generations of material were resting there, waiting for some future, unimagined day of leisure when Winchell would have time to go through them all and sift their import. If he could help it, he never meant to have that kind of free time on his hands, however, as long as he had a story to chase. And here a story in need of pursuit had fallen into his lap as a result of being forced by his employer to attend a nightclub opening in which he had no particular interest. Winchell smiled now to remember that day, before he had been mesmerized ringside at the Copa, before he had been Darinized, as he would say in his column.
Usually when he was in the Cub Room, Winchell closely surveyed the space and its occupants, eyeing it as though it were his own aquarium stocked with select, rare species of fish swimming by for his inspection and entertainment. Many items for the column would actually float right up to him as he sat at table 50. What a lot bother it saved him! The news items would kindly come to him, rather than him having to chase them down. It was a rare sight that Sherman Billingsley was treated to as he approached table 50 to find Walter Winchell lost in a mental fog. Billingsley stood silently before Winchell until he should notice him. He did not want to break his train of thought. Finally, Winchell, slightly startled, looked up from his cogitations.
Billingsley smiled at his old friend. “That must be some bone you’re gnawing on there, Walter,” he said.
“Bone?” Walter said, not recognizing the allusion at first. He realized he probably did look like an old hound, chewing on a bone. “Yes, “he said, “and I’m likely to bust my last remaining tooth on the thing!” Both men laughed, and Winchell waved a friendly hand in invitation for Billingsley to join him at the table. Billingsley did so, after taking a brief look around the Cub Room to assure that all was well with his patrons.
The two old friends then put their heads together for a talk and a laugh about old times, after which Winchell outlined the information he was looking for in regards to Bobby Darin, son of Polly Walden Cassotto. He did not mention Sam. At such times as these, Winchell was a master of indirection, able to indicate what information he was searching for without tipping his hand as to what he really was after. Since Billingsley’s chief interest was whatever would maintain the popularity of the Stork, Winchell could trust him to send out a few feelers about the problem without taking undue interest in the matter himself.
Billingsley did not tarry but got up from the table, saying as he did so, “Leave it to me, Walter, I’ll see what I can turn up for you.” Winchell nodded as Billingsley departed from table 50, becoming lost in thought again when he was on his own once more. At the door, unnoticed, stood the pretty starlet whom one recognized but whose name one did not know, looking wistfully at the velvet rope blocking entry to the Cub Room, wondering if and when she would be allowed to make her debut within.
Continued in the next chapter
© Copyright 2008 Gisele (UN: gisele at Writing.Com).
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