Palisades Park

  Toni nodded, bravely coming to terms with the loss; then in early November came an envelope in the mailbox return-addressed Central States Shows c/o General Delivery, Tampa, Florida. She tore it open and read:

  Hey, Toni—

  I miss the hell out of you too, the circuit’s been no fun without you. Sorry to hear about Ella’s equipment—that sounds like some storm!

  I’ll try to get up your way after the show returns to winter quarters in a month. But if I can’t, we won’t be apart long, I promise!

  Listen, not to step on Ella’s toes, but I took the liberty of talking with Scobey Moser about you. He saw you perform and thinks you’re pretty damn swell. If Ella can’t return to the circuit by next spring, Scobey’s of a mind to have you replace her. He knows you don’t do the fancy fire dive, but he thinks you’re pretty, a helluva gymnast, and the crowds love you. He’ll pay twenty bucks a dive, three dives daily—not bad, and we’ll be together again!

  Talk to Ella, see what’s what. If she’s coming back, great, you can come back as her assistant; if not, you can headline your own act! What do you think about “Terrific Toni Stopka” for a handle? ’Cause I happen to think you’re pretty terrific.

  Love and kisses,

  Cliff

  Her heart beating like one of those Polynesian drums at the Hawaiian Cottage, Toni immediately ran to her father and asked, “Dad, is it all right if I make a long-distance call to Florida? I need to talk with Ella Carver.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Toni called Ella, whose motor home was still firmly rooted in St. Petersburg, and asked how she was coming along replacing her equipment.

  “Ah, not so great,” Ella said. “The Lions Club held a benefit to raise money for me, bless ’em, but it wasn’t enough to replace all I lost. Looks like I’ve got to take a nine-to-five job to raise more funds.”

  “I have a thousand dollars saved up, would that help?”

  “That’s sweet of you, honey, but I can’t take your money. You worked your fanny off to earn it, you should get to keep it.”

  “So you won’t be going on the road with Central States next year?”

  Ella laughed ruefully. “Maybe not even the year after that.”

  Trying not to sound too delighted at her friend’s misfortune, Toni told her about Cliff’s conversation with Scobey Moser and his offer to let Toni headline next season. To her relief, Ella wasn’t annoyed at all:

  “That’s great, honey, I’m proud of you. Scobey wouldn’t make that offer if he didn’t think you were ready, and I think he’s right.”

  “And I’m going to send you part of my salary,” Toni offered, “to help with buying your new equipment.”

  “Before you do that, hon, you given any thought to where you’re getting your equipment?”

  Toni’s spirits plunged as quickly as if she’d taken a ninety-foot dive. “No,” she admitted. “It never crossed my mind.”

  “I can put you in touch with the right suppliers,” Ella offered, “but the equipment’s not cheap—it’ll set you back about three grand. Plus you’ll need a truck to haul it, money to pay a rigger…”

  “Damn it, I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Can your father help out?”

  “He wouldn’t last time, I can’t ask him again. Besides, he’s in the middle of his own project, and it isn’t cheap.”

  “Then do what I did,” Ella said. “You’re starting a business—go get a bank loan. I’d do it again if I weren’t still paying off my last loan.”

  * * *

  Toni didn’t want to go to her father’s bank in Edgewater, so she picked one out of a phone book—the Hudson Trust Company on Palisade Avenue in Cliffside Park—walked right in, and asked to see a loan officer. She expected a fat, balding, prosperous-looking man like the bankers you saw in movies, but was instead led to the desk of a young, broad-shouldered man in his mid-twenties with a full head of hair—fiery red hair, at that. He stood, smiled, extended a hand: “Hi, Jimmy Russo. Nice to meet you.”

  “Toni Stopka. Pleased to meet you too.”

  “Please, have a seat.”

  As he pulled out a chair for her, she couldn’t help but stare curiously at his hair. Finally she asked, “Russo—isn’t that Italian?”

  He grinned, quite unlike the sober banker she had pictured in her mind. “Italian father, Irish mother. I got her hair and his shoulders, which is probably better than the other way around.”

  She laughed. “I was wondering.”

  “When I was a kid they called me ‘the red guinea.’ I turned it into a noble title, like the Scarlet Pimpernel: ‘Don’t trifle with the Red Guinea.’” She laughed again. “There’s my childhood in so many words. So what can I do for you, Miss Stopka?”

  “I need a loan. I’m starting up a business.”

  He took a loan application form, began to fill it in. “S-T-O-P-K-A?”

  “That’s right. And Toni with an i. Legally, it’s Antoinette.”

  “Age? Sorry, this is required information…”

  “I’ll be twenty next March.”

  He looked surprised but said nothing, just lowered his head and made another notation. “And what kind of business is it you want to start?”

  “High diving.”

  His head popped up, and his eyes—they were hazel, a genetic compromise—stared at her in complete bafflement. “Come again?”

  “I’m a high diver. I jump from the top of a ninety-foot ladder into a tank of water six feet deep.”

  A smile tugged at his mouth. “And you do this without dying?”

  “Haven’t yet,” she said. Toni opened her purse and pulled out a handful of her press clippings and handed them to him. “Here. I apprenticed with Ella Carver, the best female high diver in the world.”

  He studied the clippings and his smile of skepticism became one of bemusement. “Wow. You’re not kidding. You really jump off ninety-foot ladders.” He looked up. “I didn’t think girls did things like this.”

  Ignoring her irritation at that, she said, “Some of us do.”

  “And you make a living at this?”

  “I’ve got an offer from a carnival to pay me twenty dollars a dive, three dives a day. You spend about ten days out of each month traveling, so it averages out to about three hundred dollars a week, April through October.”

  Doing the math, Jimmy Russo paused, then noted, a bit nonplussed, “Over eight thousand dollars for seven months’ work—that’s twice my annual salary. I knew I should’ve run off to the circus when I was a kid.” They both laughed at that. “So you have a contract with this carnival?”

  “Uh, no. But they’re an established company—Central States Shows.”

  “Try to get at least a letter of intent. Have you held any other jobs?”

  She told him about working her father’s concession at Palisades Park and her salary there, and at the mention of Palisades, a broad smile crinkled the freckles on Russo’s nose. “I used to love the annual Cliffside Park school picnic to Palisades,” he said fondly. “I attended School No. 5 and we’d march down Palisade Avenue with the school band in front, picking up kids from other schools along the way. Did you go on those?”

  “Only once, in kindergarten. Then I transferred to Edgewater.”

  “Two thousand kids, overrunning the park like Munchkins in Oz. Man, that was fun. I loved riding the old steel Cyclone.” Then, forcing himself to return to business: “All right—so what exactly do you need in the way of a loan? What are the start-up costs for a high diver?”

  “Three thousand dollars to purchase my equipment—the tank, tower, rigging—and maybe another fifteen hundred for a truck to carry it.”

  “Forty-five hundred total, okay. What kind of collateral do you have?”

  She blinked. “Uh … what’s that?”

  “Real estate, savings, stocks and bonds—to secure the loan.”

  Embarrassed, she admitted, “Well, I’ve got about a thousand dollars save
d from my work with Ella, but … that’s about it.”

  He wrote that down, tapped the pencil on the paper for a moment as he studied the figures, then looked up and said, “Well, first of all, let me say that I’ve never had a more unusual loan application than this, from a more remarkable young woman. But I’ve got to tell you, I see a few pitfalls: your age, the fact you’ve just started in this line of work, lack of collateral…”

  “But I only need less than five thousand dollars, and I’ll make eight thousand by the end of next year!”

  “That’s true, the income to debt ratio works to your advantage. But you have yet to earn that much—usually we require an applicant to show two years’ worth of tax returns corroborating their income.” He looked thoughtfully at her. “Does your father own property?”

  “Well, not a house. But he owns his French fry stand at Palisades, and he just bought a tavern, and … what does this have to do with me?”

  “If your father agreed to cosign the loan,” Russo said, “it would stand a better chance of being approved.”

  “No,” Toni said emphatically. “He won’t do that, trust me.”

  Russo sighed. “Well, I can give it a try. We’re no strangers here to showpeople, we do business with several concessionaires from the park. But I can’t guarantee anything.” He handed her the application.

  “I understand.” She signed the application, handed it back to him.

  “It’s been great meeting you, Miss Stopka,” he said, extending a hand. “I’ll do my best. I’d like to have you as a customer.”

  She took his hand and said, “Call me Toni.”

  “I’m Jimmy. I’ll be in touch.” He held on to her hand a bit longer than felt businesslike. Flustered, she slipped out of his grip, mumbled a thank you, and hurried out of the bank, feeling Cliff’s eyes on her from a thousand miles away.

  * * *

  Predictably, the Hudson Trust Company turned down her loan request despite Jimmy Russo’s best efforts, though Toni was told they would reconsider if her father were to cosign. She put aside the letter from the bank and tried without success to think of other ways to earn the money.

  When Jack came home for Thanksgiving, he finished the mural behind the bar. It was beautiful. He used watercolors on plasterboard—there was a pastel lightness to the colors, as if illuminated by a bright tropic sun. The palm trees appeared bent by a nearly palpable trade wind, their fronds billowing in the unfelt breeze. The sky was robin’s-egg blue, the ocean an exquisite turquoise, white breakers rolling into shore—as waves that had already reached the shore spread fingers of foam up the sandy beach.

  “Aw, Jack, this is fantastic!” Eddie said. “It’s like you said, a window into the tropics. I couldn’t be happier!”

  Jack seemed pleased but distracted. Even over Thanksgiving dinner he insisted on listening to the radio for the latest war news—things were going badly for U.N. forces since the entry of Communist Chinese troops into the war on the side of North Korea. Over the long weekend, things got even worse with the defeat of the U.S. Second and Twenty-Fifth Divisions and a general retreat by the Eighth Army. Finally, Eddie asked why the war news was so upsetting to him—he had a deferment, after all, from the draft.

  “My friend Johnny Lamarr, from grade school, was drafted earlier this year,” Jack admitted, “and last month so was a high school buddy of mine, Rick DeJulio. Every time I hear about the Reds decimating a division, I wonder if Rick or Johnny were in that unit—and whether they’re still alive.”

  “I’d be worried too,” Eddie said. “But there’s nothing you can do about it, Jack, except keep a prayer in your thoughts for them.”

  Jack nodded, but hardly seemed consoled.

  Also that weekend, Toni was surprised when her father came up to her holding the letter from Hudson Trust Company and said, “Honey, I found this on the dining room hutch. Why didn’t you tell me about this? I can loan you forty-five hundred bucks if you need it.”

  Toni was floored by that. “But you—you told me you couldn’t. That if you gave me money and something went wrong, you’d never—”

  “That was before you proved yourself,” Eddie said. “Okay, sure, I’m still nervous about what you do, but … I can’t argue that you don’t know your stuff. Ella sure thinks so. You’re a responsible adult, even if your dad will always think of you as a little girl climbing the Palisades—and part of me will always worry. I’d be happy to give you the cash.”

  She surprised him by saying, “No. This bar is costing you a fortune, I’ve seen the bills. All I want is to take on a loan like an adult and pay it off myself. If you cosign it with me, I promise, that’s what I’ll do.”

  When Eddie readily agreed, Toni hugged him, and felt quietly proud that she had earned his trust—even if she hadn’t told him about the broken ribs. Or even the torn ligament, for that matter …

  Several days later, the loan was approved. Jimmy Russo was pleased to deposit the money in Toni’s new checking account, and said casually, “I’ve never seen a girl dive off a ninety-foot tower before—any chance I might be able to catch one of your performances in person?”

  “That depends. You plan on being in Kansas in April?”

  He laughed. “’Fraid not. Maybe you’ll play Palisades Park someday?”

  “I doubt that,” Toni said, so dismissively it startled Jimmy.

  When Toni told her father of the exchange he said, “Actually, I hear Irving finally came to some kind of agreement with those people from CORE, and has agreed to let Negroes and Puerto Ricans into the pool.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said. As far as she was concerned, Palisades was the past; for now, for the future, she had equipment to buy, a career to build—and a boyfriend waiting for her in Kansas.

  * * *

  Toward the end of 1950, as one establishment on Palisade Avenue prepared to open, an old one closed its doors forever—not for want of patronage or word of mouth, but for too much publicity.

  Beginning in March, when Senator Estes Kefauver began his hearings on Crime in Interstate Commerce, the nation was riveted to its radio and television sets, listening to testimony from both law enforcement officials and alleged mobsters about the extent of underworld operations across the country. Most of the mobsters said little—with the exception of the over-talkative Willie Moretti—but for the first time the public saw the faces of men like Joe Adonis and Frank Costello. The hearings were conducted in fourteen American cities, documenting the deep penetration into all aspects of commerce by the organization known variously as the Syndicate, the Combination, and the Mafia.

  In October, in executive session in New York City, Chief Frank Borrell was called to testify and among other things explain how he came by his rich bank account balance—about eighty thousand; he couldn’t recall exactly—on a police chief’s salary. Borrell claimed it was income from his concessions at Palisades Amusement Park. And even after the committee had heard vast amounts of testimony about Frank Erickson’s illegal bookmaking network in Cliffside Park, Borrell insisted, “I can’t say there is any gambling in Cliffside,” and that he had never had to make a gambling arrest in his town.

  Testimony also revealed that the New York authorities had had Joe Adonis’s headquarters, Duke’s Bar and Grill, under periodic surveillance—including telephone wiretaps—since 1941. Once Adonis and his associates learned they were vulnerable even at Duke’s, it was of no further use to them. The restaurant quickly went into bankruptcy, closing late in 1950.

  It couldn’t save Adonis, who was convicted on gambling charges and sentenced to two to three years in prison in May of the following year. And he would not be the last to find his life upended—or ended.

  * * *

  Ever since 1946, when the real “Trader Vic,” Victor Bergeron, published his Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink—followed two years later by Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide—Eddie had begun teaching himself the fundamentals of being a bartender. Each b
ook offered hundreds of recipes for such appetizers as crab rangoon and Chinese potstickers, as well as drinks like the Mai Tai, the Zombie, the Fog Cutter, the Scorpion, even Eddie’s beloved Singapore Slings. Most required copious amounts of rum, light and dark, but Eddie also stocked up on vodka, sloe gin, brandy, grenadine syrup, curaçao, pineapple juice, and passion fruit nectar.

  By now he felt qualified to tend bar, but had neither the skill nor the time to staff his kitchen as well. So at the recommendation of Yuan Chen, who once ran the chop suey restaurant at Palisades, he hired a young Chinese-American cook, Tom Li, to be his chef. They decided on an appetizer menu of traditional Chinese and Cantonese fare like egg rolls and won tons, as well as Hawaiian pūpūs like kālua pork spareribs and shrimp grilled in coconut oil, da kine Eddie had eaten on Hotel Street in Honolulu.

  But for Eddie the moment his dream finally became real came in January with the delivery of the new sign, designed by Eddie and made to his specifications: the base, rather than a simple wooden post, resembled the swaybacked trunk of a palm tree; sprouting from the top of the marquee was a spiky silhouette of palm fronds. Enhancing this image was green neon tubing that outlined the trunk and crown of the tree, while the name of the bar itself glowed in sunset-rose neon cursive:

  Eddie’s

  Polynesia on the Palisades

  The first time he lit the sign, Eddie stared up at it with a mix of pride and wonder that it was real. Up there, emblazoned in light, was his name—along with the two places, wedded here in unlikely combination, that had touched him most deeply in his life. It felt as though the two halves of his heart, once separate, were united at last.

  * * *

  Eddie insisted on opening in February, in the dead of winter—“the perfect time for people looking for a place to warm themselves.” And so, on February 7, 1951, Eddie’s Polynesia on the Palisades opened with a party of invited guests: Bunty Hill, Minette Dobson, Roscoe and Dorothy Schwarz, and other close friends from Palisades, as well as Eddie’s sister Viola and her husband, Hal, and their two kids. They all shook the snow off their boots under the thatch-grass arbor and found themselves being given the once-over by a goggle-eyed Kāne, god of creation, and a scowling Kū, god of war. As the guests crossed the threshold into the bar, the temperature rose to a sultry seventy-two degrees. Then they stopped short at the hostess station—the hostess being Toni, a bit self-conscious in her two-piece floral sarong—and gaped at what they saw around them.