A friend sent me the photo. Dig: It’s me, age 10, on June 22, 1958. An L.A. Times photographer snapped the pic five minutes after a police detective told me my mother had been murdered. I’m in minor-league shock: My eyes are wide, but my gaze is blank. My fly is at half-mast; my hands look shaky. The day was hot: The melting Brylcreem in my hair picks up flashbulb light.
The photo held me transfixed; its force transcended my many attempts to exploit my past for book sales. An underlying truth zapped me: My bereavement, even in that moment, was ambiguous. I’m already calculating potential advantages, regrouping as the officious men surrounding me defer to the perceived grief of a little boy.
I had the photograph framed and spent a good deal of time staring at it. Spark-point: late-’50s memories reignited. I saw Daddy-O listed in a video catalogue and ordered it. It arrived a week later; I popped it in the VCR.
Fuel-injected zooom. . .
The story revolves around truckdriver/drag racer/singer Phil “Daddy-O” Sandifer’s attempts to solve the murder of his best friend while laboring under the weight of a suspended driver’s license. Phil’s pals Peg and Duke want to help, but they’re ineffectual–addled by too many late nights at the Rainbow Gardens, a post-teenage doo-wop spot where Phil croons gratis on request. No matter: Daddy-O meets slinky Jana Ryan, a rich girl with a valid driver’s license and a ’57 T-Bird ragtop. Mutual resentment segues into a sex vibe; Phil and Jana team up and infiltrate a nightclub owned by sinister fat man Sidney Chillas. Singer Daddy-O, cigarette girl Jana; a comely and unstoppable duo. They quickly surmise that Chillas is pushing Big H, entrap him, and nail the endomorph for the murder of Phil’s best friend. A hot-rod finale; a burning question left unanswered: Will Daddy-O’s derring-do get him back his driver’s license?
Who knows?
Who cares?
It took me three viewings to get the plot down, anyway. Because Dick Contino held me spellbound. Because I knew– instinctively–that he held important answers. Because I knew that he hovered elliptically in my L.A.-in-the-‘5os novels, a phantom waiting to speak.
Contino onscreen: a handsome Italian guy, late twenties, big biceps from weights or making love to his accordion. Dreamboat attributes: shiny teeth; dark, curly hair; engaging smile. He looks good, and he can sing; he’s straining on “Rock Candy Baby”–the lyrics suck, and you can tell this up-tempo rebop isn’t his style– but he croons the wah-wah ballad “Angel Act” achingly, full of baritone tremolos, quintessentially the pussy-whipped loser in lust with the “noir” goddess who’s out to trash his life.
The man oozes charisma.
He’s the flip side, subtext and missing link between my conscious and unconscious fixations.
I decided to find Dick Contino.
I located a half-dozen of his albums and listened to them, reveling in pure Entertainment.
“Live at the Fabulous Flamingo,” “Squeeze Me,” “Something for the Girls”–standards arranged to spotlight accordion virtuosity. Main-theme bombardments; sentiment so pure and timeless that it could sound-track every moment of transcendent schmaltz that Hollywood has ever produced. Dick Contino, showstopper on wax: tapping two keyboards, improvising cadenzas, shaking thunderstorms from bellows compression. Going from whisper to sigh to roar and back again in the length of time it takes to think: Tell me what this man’s life means and how it connects to my life. I called my researcher friend Alan Marks. He caught my pitch on the first bounce. “The accordion guy? I think he used to play Vegas.”
“Find out everything you can about him. Find out if he’s still alive, and if he is, locate him.”
“What’s this about?”
“Narrative detail.”
I should have said containable narrative detail–because I wanted Dick Contino to be a pad-prowling/car-crashing/moonhowling/womanizing quasi-psychopath akin to the heroes of my books. I should have said, “Bring me information that I can control and exploit.” I should have said, “Bring me a life that can be compartmentalized into the pitch-dark vision of my first ten novels.”
“What is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate.”
I should have seen the real Dick Contino coming.
Richard Joseph Contino was born in Fresno, California, on January 17, 1930. His father was a Sicilian immigrant who owned a successful butcher shop; his mother was first-generation Italian American. Dick had two younger brothers and a sister; a maternal uncle, Ralph Giordano, a.k.a. Young Corbett, was a former professional welterweight fighter.