at Ernie’s Stardust Lounge. That’s where it all started.”
“I’m not following you, Ray.”
“‘Dream Lover,’ Gene.”
“I know the tune. Bobby Darin. B side—”
“P-Five. Palm Springs. The desert. Darin. A lavender sky. Laurel. The chick in the trophy case. It’s all right there.”
“Where?”
“Behind my eyes, Gene. The movie. I just have to splice it together, and you’ll see how all this is connected. All of it. The whine in my power steering, Dr. Cyclops, James Earl Ray, Rheingold, Ricky Furlong—”
“Ricky Furlong?”
“And Clay Tomlinson too. I can’t leave them out, Gene. Clay and Ricky changed our lives. I’ll put them right next to those guys muff-diving at the Bat Cave. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“You don’t know, Gene? You’re my brother. How the fuck could you not know ?”
Three
Gene and Clay: Throwing Down
From shortly before Christmas in 1941 until he suffered a mild heart attack in the spring of 1972, Burk’s father Nate owned and operated Hollywood’s busiest newsstand. Located eight blocks west of Vine, on the corner of Las Palmas and Hollywood Boulevard, the racks at Nate’s News stretched south for nearly an entire city block.
Nathan Burk sold all the major dailies and newspapers of record, both foreign and domestic, but it was really his wide selection of oddball magazines (some stashed under the counter) that kept the sidewalk on Las Palmas crowded with customers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Along with the familiar newsweeklies like Time and Life , Nate’s was the only newsstand in the city to stock such maverick journals as , Naked Church Choirs , Amputee Love , and Coffin & Tombstone , the monthly trade magazine for the mortuary industry.
But unlike other news dealers, Burk’s father rarely returned his unsold magazines. Instead, every Saturday morning Burk andhis older brother, Gene, would box the leftovers and hand-dolly them over to Yesterday’s Pages, the used book and magazine store that their father owned on the corner of Cherokee and Selma. Yesterday’s Pages was managed by Nathan Burk’s cousin Aaron Levine, an ex-prizefighter and occasional movie extra who grew up next door to gangster Buggsy Siegel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Aaron was also an alcoholic, the kind of blackout drinker who would disappear for days or sometimes even weeks at a time, ending up hospitalized or incarcerated in cities as far away as Galveston, Texas, or Tacoma, Washington, with absolutely no memory of how he got there. After these binges, Nathan Burk would always pay for Aaron’s transportation back to Los Angeles, sometimes even hopping on a plane himself to serve as his personal escort. But whenever he demanded that his cousin stop drinking, threatening to fire him if he didn’t comply, Aaron would just shake his head and stubbornly say the same thing: “I’m just a punch-drunk drunk and that’s all I plan to be, so if you don’t like me the way I am, Nate, you can just tell me to get lost.”
But that was something Nathan Burk could never do.
“Because he’s your cousin, Dad. Right?”
“No, Ray. Not because he’s my cousin,” Nathan Burk told his younger son on a muggy Saturday afternoon during the summer of 1949.
They were sitting at a window table in Mike Lyman’s Vine Street Delicatessen, eating corned beef and chopped liver sandwiches. A block away was the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, where Burk had spent the morning watching cartoons and a Western serial starring Hopalong Cassidy and Buster Crabbe.
“Because he saved my life.”
“He saved your life?” Burk’s eyes opened wide and his lips were poised over the straw inside his bottle of Brown’s Cream Soda. “Really?” Burk’s father nodded. “How?”
Nathan Burk took a bite out of his sandwich and followed that with a fork piled high with cole slaw. “There was this big dumb Irishkid in our neighborhood,” he said, speaking
“I’m not following you, Ray.”
“‘Dream Lover,’ Gene.”
“I know the tune. Bobby Darin. B side—”
“P-Five. Palm Springs. The desert. Darin. A lavender sky. Laurel. The chick in the trophy case. It’s all right there.”
“Where?”
“Behind my eyes, Gene. The movie. I just have to splice it together, and you’ll see how all this is connected. All of it. The whine in my power steering, Dr. Cyclops, James Earl Ray, Rheingold, Ricky Furlong—”
“Ricky Furlong?”
“And Clay Tomlinson too. I can’t leave them out, Gene. Clay and Ricky changed our lives. I’ll put them right next to those guys muff-diving at the Bat Cave. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“You don’t know, Gene? You’re my brother. How the fuck could you not know ?”
Three
Gene and Clay: Throwing Down
From shortly before Christmas in 1941 until he suffered a mild heart attack in the spring of 1972, Burk’s father Nate owned and operated Hollywood’s busiest newsstand. Located eight blocks west of Vine, on the corner of Las Palmas and Hollywood Boulevard, the racks at Nate’s News stretched south for nearly an entire city block.
Nathan Burk sold all the major dailies and newspapers of record, both foreign and domestic, but it was really his wide selection of oddball magazines (some stashed under the counter) that kept the sidewalk on Las Palmas crowded with customers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Along with the familiar newsweeklies like Time and Life , Nate’s was the only newsstand in the city to stock such maverick journals as , Naked Church Choirs , Amputee Love , and Coffin & Tombstone , the monthly trade magazine for the mortuary industry.
But unlike other news dealers, Burk’s father rarely returned his unsold magazines. Instead, every Saturday morning Burk andhis older brother, Gene, would box the leftovers and hand-dolly them over to Yesterday’s Pages, the used book and magazine store that their father owned on the corner of Cherokee and Selma. Yesterday’s Pages was managed by Nathan Burk’s cousin Aaron Levine, an ex-prizefighter and occasional movie extra who grew up next door to gangster Buggsy Siegel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Aaron was also an alcoholic, the kind of blackout drinker who would disappear for days or sometimes even weeks at a time, ending up hospitalized or incarcerated in cities as far away as Galveston, Texas, or Tacoma, Washington, with absolutely no memory of how he got there. After these binges, Nathan Burk would always pay for Aaron’s transportation back to Los Angeles, sometimes even hopping on a plane himself to serve as his personal escort. But whenever he demanded that his cousin stop drinking, threatening to fire him if he didn’t comply, Aaron would just shake his head and stubbornly say the same thing: “I’m just a punch-drunk drunk and that’s all I plan to be, so if you don’t like me the way I am, Nate, you can just tell me to get lost.”
But that was something Nathan Burk could never do.
“Because he’s your cousin, Dad. Right?”
“No, Ray. Not because he’s my cousin,” Nathan Burk told his younger son on a muggy Saturday afternoon during the summer of 1949.
They were sitting at a window table in Mike Lyman’s Vine Street Delicatessen, eating corned beef and chopped liver sandwiches. A block away was the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, where Burk had spent the morning watching cartoons and a Western serial starring Hopalong Cassidy and Buster Crabbe.
“Because he saved my life.”
“He saved your life?” Burk’s eyes opened wide and his lips were poised over the straw inside his bottle of Brown’s Cream Soda. “Really?” Burk’s father nodded. “How?”
Nathan Burk took a bite out of his sandwich and followed that with a fork piled high with cole slaw. “There was this big dumb Irishkid in our neighborhood,” he said, speaking
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