THE HAT
A Novel

ADAPTATION OF THE NOVEL
      THE HAT
     
     
      LOG LINE: Love, Murder, and the Mafia in the Jazz Age
     
     
      June 14, 1932
      The day of the murder
     
      Act 1
     
      Ben Gold, a Jewish Prohibition Kingpin, walks through an alley with the morning edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer under his arm.
           
      As he approaches the doorway of an indented and closed shoe repair shop, a small figure dressed in knickers, shirt and cap, steps out and points a Smith & Wesson 38 at him.
     
      Gold opens his mouth in puzzlement.
     
      The bullet shatters his face.
     
      CUT TO
      Flashback:
      Two years before the murder.
     
      Kate Brady and her mother arrive at Vivian Joseph’s party to celebrate the graduation of the class of 1930 from the elite Windsor Danbury School For Girls.
     
      The butler leads them through the elegant high-ceilinged rooms to the broad flower-bordered patio and they stand there, staring at the clusters of animated ladies and gentlemen in their perfect spring clothes, the terraced lawn and striped tent with the buffet table bearing trays of canapés, tiny sandwiches, pastel fruits, gleaming pastries.
           
      Kate’s mother, who struggles with a drinking problem, is dressed in a brown and lilac dress, and a brown hat that keeps slipping to the side.
     
      Vivian’s mother is wearing mauve chiffon with a matching brimmed hat. The difference in style and money and social position between their mothers is painfully obvious.
     
      CUT TO
      Kate and Vivian join their classmates at the punch bowl.
     
      Alice, Isobel and Jessica are all from wealthy families who exclude Vivian (because she is Jewish,) and Kate (because she is a poor scholarship student) from their homes and tennis courts and speedboats and picnics; from their lives.
      Kate has earned a scholarship to Ohio State University and can’t wait to leave their spoiled, mean world behind and start a new life.
     
      CUT TO
      Kate sees her mother come out of the house weaving unsteadily toward one of the waiters. She pours some gin from a flask into a glass of punch from the waiter’s tray and drains it. Then she takes a swig directly from the flask.
           
      Now her mother is pulling on the white-coated waiter’s lapels as he tries valiantly to disengage himself.
     
      Horror-stricken, Kate dashes over to her mother as the young ladies in their white graduation dresses and their parents stand staring. The entire party stops, everyone on the lawn and under the tent stands motionlessly as if frozen in a photograph.
           
      With a flaming face and wet eyes, Kate finally gets her mother on the streetcar and home.
      He mother walks to her bed skillfully skirting the couch and ironing board with her hand outstretched like a dignified blind person. Kate takes her usual position behind her until she passes out safely on her bed.
     
      CUT TO
      Kate cleans ovens, counters and waits on customers at Shapiro’s Bakery. She is saving money for college
           
      So many of the customers are unemployed, they buy only bought day-old bread, and two weeks after Vivian and her trunks leave for Pembrook College, Mrs. Shapiro puts her arm around Kate and says that Friday will have to be her last day.
     
      Just then Ben Gold walks in the bakery again-- smiling, he stretches his hand across the counter to Kate and introduces himself. She knows who he is—everyone in the neighborhood knows Ben Gold because of his power, his car, his wealth. He is wearing a tan double-breasted suit, pale mesh wing –tips, a yellow shirt and a tie of pastel paisley, topped off with a skimmer.
     
      “May I see you home?” he asks. After coming into the bakery for days and staring at her, this is the first time he speaks.
     
      Looking at his gallant and exotic appearance only moments after she loses everything--her job and hopes for college-- she flirts back. But ashamed of her alcoholic mother at home she suggests they go across the street to Hansons Coffee Shop.
           
      CUT TO
      Walking home from the coffee shop she sees just ahead a line of men standing as quietly as obedient children waiting their turn at the new soup kitchen that had been Blum’s Grocery Store. Some men wore hot black suits. Some wore hats.
      The fear in their sagging bodies and gray faces seems to emit a stench and she hurries past, averting her eyes as if they are naked.
     
      CUT TO
      In the coming days Ben takes Kate driving, to the movies, to lunch at Schrafts.
           
      After their fifth or sixth date, Ben insists that she come into his house. Worried that he would stop seeing her if she refuses, she follows him in.
     
      Then she is on the yellow velvet couch, Ben on top of her. His fluent, moist mouth, his tenaciously moving hands, his body weight, his smell of heat, are fused into expert instruments of arousal.
     
      Suspended on the threshold of discovery, of fusing, shuddering pleasure, she stops. Something stops her. She does not know if it is from her father’s Catholic belief of sin, or a revelation of her own dangerous passion.
     
      Or if she knows in some ancient, mysterious instinct of feminine survival that if she doesn’t stop him she won’t get him to marry her. She pushes and pushes, until panting, he rolls off.
     
      Act 2
     
      CUT TO
      Ben is pinning orchids to Kate’s shoulder and smiling. It is their wedding day.
     
      He introduces her to Sam Ginzberg and Bobby Keane as his assistants in his insurance business.
           
      In the city hall the four of them find their way into a large office with rows of filing cabinets. The room smells of food. Someone’s lunch. No one seems very interested in their wedding, not even the Justice of the Peace who seems rather irritated by his job of marriage.
           
      CUT TO
      After the ceremony, which takes about ten minutes, the wedding party walks the short distance from the city hall to the Hollendon, the best hotel in town.
     
      In the lobby, four or five empty-eyed men sit around on the cracked leather chairs with their fedoras on, reading newspapers or smoking with vacant faces. One man is snoring softly with his mouth open.
           
      CUT TO
      Upstairs in the “Embassy Suite” there is a round table with flowers, candles and trays of fancy little canapés. Sam produces a bottle of bootleg champagne, toasts are made and Sam and Bobby shake Ben’s hand, kiss Kate on the cheek, and leave.
      CUT TO
      They go New York on their honeymoon.
     
      Montage of their nights at speakeasies: Sherman Billingsly”s Stork Club; Owney Madden’s Club Napoleon with its revolving bar and three floors of velvet and mirrors; Lucky Luciano’s The House Of Morgan where Helen Morgan sings “My Man;” Legs’ Diamonds’ Hotsy Totsy and the Embasy Club owned by Dutch Schultz.
     
      CUT TO
      Back home, Ben goes to work joining Sam and Bobby in the basement offices. After Kate glimpses its wood paneling, the office doors stays firmly shut and she gets the unmistakable message that she is not welcome there.
     
      CUT TO
      As the months pass, the luxuries in Kate’s life lose their fascination.
     
      When she questions Ben about his strange hours and mysterious comings and goings he angrily accuses her of not trusting him and tells her firmly that the subject is closed. “No more questions!”
     
      CUT TO
      Upset, Kate packs a valise to leave Ben. In the closet she sees a shotgun standing in the corner.
           
      When she comes downstairs with her suitcase, Ben apologizes profusely and convincingly, explaining that he didn’t want to burden her with his business problems and that the shotgun was for protection from a crazy insurance client who was threatening him. Kate wants to believe him.
     
      He takes her upstairs, empties the suitcase, and they make love.
     
      CUT TO
      Kate becomes pregnant. After Ben lavishes her with attention, by the time she is in her ninth month he has reverted to his old ways.
     
      With courage from the protection she knows she has from his unborn child, whom he already loves, she makes scenes--hollering about his secretiveness and life apart, wailing about his mysterious disappearances, sobbing about her loneliness.
     
      CUT TO
      Bobby joins her in the living room. His presence in the middle of the afternoon is so totally out of character that Kate questions him until he finally admits that Ben sent him to keep her company until the baby is born.
     
      Since being secretly attracted to Bobby she is almost overcome with excitement and gratitude at this windfall of his daily presence.
     
      They take long walks, go on drives, attend movie matinees and Sunday Mass. He takes her to the doctor for her check-ups.
     
      She trembles at the sound of his footstep on the stair. Goes from heart-pounding exhilaration to serene bliss in his presence; watches him return to his basement office with an immense sadness.
           
      Playing Honeymoon Bridge one afternoon, Bobby reveals his photographic memory.
      Just then, Kate goes into labor. Ben and Sam are gone with the Packard. Bobby calls Dr. Lear, gets her bag that had been packed and rushes her to the hospital.
     
      Act 3
     
      CUT TO
      Ben visits Kate and their baby daughter in their hospital room three or four times a day. He fills the room with so many flowers, the nurse complains.
     
      The baby lives for three hours. Ben blames the doctor and knocks him down with his fist as Kate stands on her knees in bed screaming. Two big orderlies rush in, grab Ben, and escort him out of the building. The nurse helps the doctor limp from the room.
     
      CUT TO
      At home, mourning her lost baby, Kate takes to her bed. Weeping, restless, she is in a well of grief as Francine, the housekeeper, takes care of her.
     
      CUT TO
      Kate finally emerges from her bedroom and life returns to normal. Overcoated men in fedoras come and go in singles and pairs; the Packard with Sam at the wheel and Ben in the back seat disappears regularly; there are nights at Allie’s, the best speakeasy in town, where Ben does his usual tablehopping, faces lifting to him with that respectful earnestness people give to men of power.
     
      But Kate is not the same. Since her baby’s birth and death she has grown up, as if her baby had wrapped her small fist around her finger and dragged her into adulthood. Now she is ready to confront her husband and his anger for the truth.
     
      CUT TO
      After dinner that night, Kate demands that Ben tell her the truth about his secret life. At first he is amused, indulgent, but as Kate persists he eyes turn into yellow stones and his smile changes, stretching, pulling his lips back, exposing his teeth.
     
      Just then Sam rushes into the room in a state of agitation. He tells Ben that the Sarsenis, a rival bootlegging gang, has highjacked their truck full of whisky and sold the loot to Midnight Johnny’s, Ben’s speakeasy.
     
      Ben and Sam decide to “get” the Sarseni brothers.
     
      Bobby tries to talk them out of the murders. He comes up with an idea to buy Depression low-cost buildings and go legit.
      Ben dismisses the plan. Sam and Ben leave the room.
     
      CUT TO
      Kate has been sitting quietly during the meeting moving her head from one to the other like a spectator at a bizarre tennis match.
     
      Now horrified that her husband is going to kill two people, she goes upstairs, moving like a sleepwalker.
     
      CUT TO
      Kate slips downstairs in the middle of the night to the telephone in the kitchen. She calls Bobby.
           
      He agrees to pick her up at a street corner after Ben and Sam leave the house.
     
      CUT TO
      Bobby drives Kate to the “Manhattan Ballroom” for an inconspicuous place to park because of a Depression-era marathon going on.
     
      Music drifts out of the marathon as Kate questions him.
     
      He tells her that he was caught taking a car on a joy ride when he was 19, got sent up for seven months in the Ohio Pen, where he met Ben, who was jailed for armed robbery.
      Ben hired him for his photographic memory and talent for numbers to go into the bootlegging business when they get out of jail. Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky are making a fortune trucking whisky down from Canada, and Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano are cleaning up running booze out of the Bahamas through Charleston.
           
      Bobby tells Kate in confidence that he is planning to leave Ben and get into real estate legitimately.
           
      He drives her back to the street corner and as Kate watches his car disappear she feels a rush of something like loss. She hates that he is leaving, envies him, and dreads his absence.
           
      CUT TO
      That night, in their bedroom, Kate begs Ben not to carry out the murders. When he gets angry she says that if he goes through with the murders she will never sleep with him again.
           
      He grabs her, rips off her robe, throws her on the bed and brutally rapes her.
     
      CUT TO
      Beaten, black and blue, Kate climbs the steps to the attic on rubbery legs and beats on Francine’s door.
     
      The housekeeper puts her to bed, covers her shivering body, gives her some brandy and stays with her until Kate falls asleep.
     
      CUT TO
      The next morning, as Kate goes downstairs, Ben is standing there waiting for her.
           
      He apologizes profusely for the rape and asks her to come to his office so he can talk to her. She finally agrees, finding his invitation to his sanctum sanctorum irresistible.
           
      In his office he apologizes again and tells Kate that he loves her. He defends his crimes, saying that her society with its wars and capital punishment is no different than his, except that hers is a hypocrite. “All dead bodies have the same stink. Murder’s murder even if it’s called something else,” he tells her.
           
      She repeats her demand that he not go through with the murders.
           
      He promises to think it over.
     
      CUT TO
      When Kate awakens the next morning, Ben is not in the house.
     
      Downstairs, she opens the Cleveland Plain Dealer and sees that the front page is missing. Alarmed, chased by dread, she runs as fast as she can to Pearsons Drug Store two blocks away.
           
      She grabs a copy of the newspaper and reads the headline:
      Sarseni Brothers found murdered in stalled car.
           
      Mr. Pearson hands Kate a Kleenex and she realizes that tears are running down her cheeks. “I’ll give you something for that black eye,” he says.
           
      Just then the door to the drugstore bursts open; seconds later, Sam says in Kate’s ear, “Ben wants you home.” He grabs her arm and runs with her to the Packard at the curb.
     
      Act 4
     
      CUT TO
      Inside the house, although a glaring sun shines outside, the living room is heavily draped and dark as a moonless midnight. Kate accuses Ben of lying; Ben says he tried to stop Sam but it was too late. He promises to quit bootlegging. Kate does not believe him.
           
      Now Ben, Kate, Bobby, and Francine are hiding out from the Sarseni gang which has promised retribution.
           
      CUT TO
      Their closeted hothouse existence creates a lush environment that makes Kate’s yearning for Bobby grow denser. The days drag on, each one the same, everyone growing listless, speaking less, moving less.
           
      Finally one morning when Kate comes downstairs, the brown draperies are gone and Ben announces that he has hired Vinnie, Fats and Izzy of the Sarseni gang and that now, they are all safe.
     
      CUT TO
      Kate and Bobby go out into the daylight and sunshine. Ben declines to join them. As they walk, Bobby tells Kate that he is leaving as soon as Ben can replaces him.
           
      When they return to the house, Sam and Ben are gone with the Packard, and Francine is away, visiting her sister.
     
      CUT TO
      Now alone in the house, Bobby breaks down and confesses that he doesn’t really want to leave because he is in love with her. They profess their love for each other and embrace.
           
      CUT TO
      Kate and Bobby plan their escape from Ben.
      They will book passage on the Franconia to Brazil, traveling disguised as Geoffry Foster and his young brother, who is Kate dressed in Bobby’s dead young brother’s clothes.
     
      Aware of the danger Kate could be in if they are caught, he teaches her how to use a Smith & Wesson.
     
           
      CUT TO
      Kate leaves a note for Ben saying that she is leaving for a few days to take care of her sick mother. Then she goes to their street corner where Bobby will pick her up to begin their escape; night train to New York; taxi from Grand Central to Pier 2; board the Franconia.
           
      Bobby doesn’t show up. Waiting and worrying for over an hour, she finally goes back home and calls him. No answer.
     
      CUT TO
      In bed that night, Kate hears a car pull into the driveway and sees a man enter the basement office.      
           
      She goes downstairs, slips into the basement pantry, and hears the man demand money from Ben using the words “ Hit…..Pierce Arrow……bottom……..river.
           
      Kate flies out of the pantry screaming like a madwoman, a wildfire of rage and grief in hr chest, calling Bobby’s name.
           
      Trying to calm her, Ben pours Kate whisky, which she drinks and drinks until she passes out.
     
      CUT TO
      When Kate awakes the next morning Ben has gone to the newsstand for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Kate waits at the window, hoping for a miracle.
           
      When Ben comes back with the newspaper she grabs it and reads the headline:
     
      BODY IDENTIFIED AS ROBERT KEANE FOUND IN PIERCE ARROW BOTTOM OF CUYAHOGA RIVER.
     
      CUT TO
      Two years ago:
      June 14, 1932,
      The day of the murder.
     
      After Ben leaves for the newsstand, Kate jumps into the knickers, shirt and cap that belonged to Bobby’s kid brother, Danny-- the clothes she was going to wear on the Franconia.
           
      She takes the gun down from its hiding place in the crown of her hat, and pulls on gloves.      
      Slipping down the back stairway, she hurries to her hiding place in the alley, takes the gun out of her pocket, pushes off the safety and waits.
           
      As Ben approaches with the newspaper under his arm, she steps forward, points the gun at his face and pulls the trigger. Dropping the gun, she runs back to the house and goes silently up the back steps.
           
      CUT TO
      In the bedroom, she pulls off Danny’s clothes and sticks them under the bed. Putting her nightgown back on she climbs back into bed, and waits for the police.
     
     
      CUT TO
      In the living room, the police gently inform Kate of her husband’s murder. By thinking of her lost love, Bobby, She is able to break down in uncontrollable sobs.
     
      The police call Kate’s doctor for a sedative, and take Sam and Francine to headquarters for questioning.
           
      When Sam returns he tells Kate that the police have identified Frank Sarseni as Ben’s killer in retaliation for his brothers’ murders.
     
      CUT TO
      Wearing the hat that had hidden the gun in its crown, Kate attends Ben’s funeral with Sam, Francine and her mother.
           
      After the service, there is a slow procession of mobsters’ cars as far as the eye can see.
     
      At the Jewish cemetery a tent at the burial site covers rows of chairs. The flower-covered casket is held up by pulleys on top of the freshly dug grave.
     
      The funeral director escorts Kate to a chair in the front row.
           
      The rabbi says the Hebrew prayer for the dead in a quick mumble and then restlessly signals the crowd to return to their cars.
     
      It has started to rain. Kate stays until everyone leaves. Sitting alone, she watches the two gravediggers cover the casket with wet dirt.
           
      She tosses the hat into the grave. It lands upside down. Wet mud fills its crown and oozes out like slime.
           
      Kate walks away.