The Definition of Suicide.

Monday, September 19, 1927: New York

Myles Thomas

Published in

The Diary of Myles Thomas

13 min readNov 16, 2016

“How often do you think about suicide?”

It’s sometime around three in the morning. Bix and I are on the balcony of the 14th floor of the Plaza hotel, overlooking Central Park. Bix is playing his horn, smoking his Mary Janes and drinking at a rate that most people would consider alarming if they didn’t know him — or even if they did.

“Suicide? Not often,” says Bix. “Every couple of days.”

“That’s often.”

“Well, give or take a couple of days.”

And with that, Bix goes back to playing his horn, his notes floating out over the Duck Pond at the bottom of the Park, and far beyond.

Bix has been staying with me the past few days while he’s in town with the Goldkette band, which is playing the Roseland Ballroom through the end of this week. I’ve been staying at Bill Powers’s since my blowup with Steven. And Billy P. has been staying at the Plaza since the night of the Fire Party, back on opening day, in April.

That night seems like a lifetime ago.

**Sherry-Netherland Hotel. April 12, 1927.**

The morning after the inferno at the Sherry-Netherland, Billy P. moved into the suite he’d rented for the party for everyone to watch the Sherry burn.

“When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I did of course was walk out on the balcony. On one side of the suite I could see the Sherry-Netherland still smoldering — it went on smoking for days — and out the other side of the suite I saw this magnificent view of Central Park. My God, it looked like a giant meadow of serenity, smack in the middle of the greatest city in the world. And all I could think of was, ‘Goddamn, I want to buy Central Park.’”

Billy P.’s budget is close to unlimited. Steven says Powers has made twice as much on Wall Street as any of the other swells, and that they all look up to him and treat Billy P. like he’s their big brother. He’s a little loud and crazy sometimes, but mostly he’s just crazy smart.

“After looking at the Park for a few minutes, I put on my clothes. Then I woke up the dozen or so people sprawled all over the suite, and asked them to go find their clothes. While everyone was sorting out whose pants and panties belonged to whom, I ordered room service — mostly cakes and pastries, a lot of chocolate, sugary shit to get everyone goin’, especially the girls. Then, while they were all eating morning dessert in their underwear — no one ever puts all their clothes on to eat room service — I headed down to the front desk to work out a deal with the manager.”

Billy P. first tried to buy the room.

“I offered ’em $100,000 for the two suites. But the manager told me the Plaza doesn’t sell any of their rooms. So, I offered him $150,000 — that’s more than twice what they’re selling the same size duplexes for across the street — they’re about 5,000 square feet — but they still wouldn’t sell. So, I told ’em, okay, I’ll just rent them long-term.

“I’m paying $1,000 a week, and I’ve been booking the suites for three months at a time.”

Billy P. gave me these financial details on Monday, the night after my blowup with Steven, while he was showing me around the suites, and explaining why he was now moving out — and how I could have them all to myself till his rental runs out on October 15th.

“I’m getting out of Wall Street, Myles. I’ve had a great run since the end of the War, and I’ve made more money than any one man can count.” He takes a second and laughs at himself. “Of course, I count it a couple of times a day. But I’m leaving Manhattan.”

He’s pulling up stakes and moving out to Los Angeles.

“What are you going to do out there?”

“Play a lot of tennis, and enjoy the carnal aspects of the town. If you’re even around the movie business and have a bankroll — with the girls out there — it’s like going hunting in the zoo.”

Billy P. is an expert at unabashedly combining money and romance. Last year Stanwyck told him that she had a dancer friend who wanted to meet him, but first she warned Billy P. “Be careful. The girl’s a real gold digger.”

“No worries,” said Billy P. “As far as I care, she can bring a shovel.”

Of course, he’s not going to LA just for its carnal aspects. He’s bought a 15% stake in the film studio that Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith set up a few years ago.

“Griffith is gone, thank God — he hasn’t made anything worth watching since ‘Orphans’ — but Fairbanks, Pickford and Chaplin know what they’re doing. They’re making great films. But they’re expensive. They need an infusion of cash, so my timing’s good.”

Billy P’s timing usually is.

**Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin.**

“I’m investing in the studio, but mostly I’m betting on Chaplin. He’s a genius, an honest-to-God genius. There’s nobody like him — not Lloyd, not Keaton — but his dick’s been getting in his way. He’s in another rough divorce from screwing around, and he’s got tax troubles. The Little Tramp is in no position to put more money into his studio right now.

“Last month when I was out there, he showed me scenes from his new film. He hadn’t produced the title cards yet, so he talked me through it. How great is that? Charlie Chaplin narrated his film for me! At least part of it. It’s called ‘The Circus,’ and I’m telling you, it’s even better than ‘The Gold Rush.’ The plot alone is goddamn genius. Most of it’s hilarious, but the scenes I saw of the ending made me sob like a girl.

“Watching Chaplin on the screen and at work is like watching Babe Ruth. No one else comes close to either of them.”

“I’m also pulling my money out of the market, Myles. And I’m putting most of it in gold. If you have anything in the market, you’d be smart to do the same.”

I don’t bother to tell him about the $57,400 that Steven saved for me, behind my back.

“I’m shorting Wall Street, Myles. It’s become like the Wild West down there. It used to be if you were smart you had an advantage. But now, now it’s not just about getting an advantage, it’s about how far you can rig the game. And you can be dumb and do that, at least till you’re caught.”

He sees me shaking my head.

“I’ve got no moral issue with any of it. It’s all about money, not morality. I’m just not sure how much longer this can all last.”

Suddenly I remember the old swell at the Fire Party. The one who walked up to me in the middle of the madness, lifted his martini glass and said, “Take a good look around you, kid. This isn’t going to last forever.” Now, standing in the same room as the old swell, Billy P. is telling me why it’s going to end.

“If everybody’s rigging the same game from their own angle, if everybody’s pulling their own strings, at some point it’s got to unravel.”

I tell Powers how every time I talk to Steven about it, he just says, “That’s America.” And how ever since Steven paired up with Arnold Rothstein and Charles Stoneham, all he does is wave the flag.

“He’s correct, Myles. It is America, right now. But the thread on our pal Steven’s flag is starting to fray a bit, I fear.”

One week later, Billy P. is in LA, and Bix and I are on his balcony. In between hits of booze and weed, Bix plays something new by his best pal, Hoagy. Right now it’s just a tune with no lyrics, but Bix calls it “Stardust.” Especially out here at night, it sounds like stardust.

When he’s done, I ask Bix, “Do you really think about suicide every couple of days?”

“It comes and goes. Why do you ask?” he says, rolling himself another muggle.

“We played the White Sox up at the Stadium today.”

“Oh. Right. Johnny Mostil,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Johnny Mostil.”

Mostil has just came back to the ChiSox this month. They’re still being careful with him. Today all he did was pinch run in the ninth. Frankly, everyone’s surprised Johnny’s made it back to the bigs this season at all.

Last season Mostil finished second in the Most Valuable Player voting for the American League. He hit .328, led the league in stolen bases, just like he did in ’25, and was his usual jackrabbit self in center field. And Johnny did it all while playing for the dreadful White Sox, who finished in the second division, as they have every year since the World Series fix exploded in 1920.

One of our catchers, Johnny Grabowski, who came over from Chicago this year, played with Mostil for three seasons, and Grabowski says Mostil’s the sweetest center fielder he’s ever seen. And the sweetest guy, too. He says a couple of years ago during a spring training game, Mostil caught a foul ball while playing center field — he ran all the way from center, across right field, and caught it beyond the foul line. Hell, not even Earle Combs or Sam Rice ever did that.

But when Mostil came back for spring training this year, something was clearly wrong with him. He said he’d had toothaches and nerve pain all winter. His first batting practice, he was hit in the chest by a ball and was out for the rest of the day.

The next day, a fan from Chicago who was rooming with Mostil came back to their room in the afternoon and found Johnny lying in a pool of blood. He’d cut himself with a razor blade over a dozen times on his neck, his wrists and his chest. The roommate started screaming and Ray Schalk, their player-manager who was next door, came running and saved Johnny’s life by ripping up some pillowcases to make tourniquets.

“Why’d he do it?” says Bix, who even though he’s from Iowa lived in Chicago and is a big White Sox fan.

“Grabowski says it was ’cause Johnny found out that Bill Barrett was sleeping with his girlfriend, just before he was going to propose to her.”

“But they’re both still with the White Sox? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s what I said to Grabowski. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Suicide seldom does,” says Bix, who then starts playing random notes, just like he was doing on top of the train. “Except of course to the folks who are attempting it.”

More random notes.

“At least, that’s what I’ve been told.”

Around four o’clock this morning, I get it in my head to head back uptown to go pick up some of my stuff from Steven’s. I’ve got most of my clothing, but there are a bunch of letters and postcards from Stanwyck, and a couple of letters from my folks that I left behind, and it’s been gnawing at me.

I leave Bix, now sleeping on a couch that the two of us dragged out onto the balcony, and head downstairs and out into Central Park.

I walk past the Duck Pond, and up through the menagerie. There’s no sign of Jewel the elephant, or anyone else at this hour. I walk along the boat pond, stopping for a few minutes to throw stones across the water.

There’s no moon out, and the stars have gone to sleep, so each stone quickly vanishes into the black. As soon as they leave my pitching hand, each loses it’s solid form, and then becomes a soft sound as it enters the water. I toss them different distances and different heights, and listen as they become Bix’s lost notes, falling back to earth.

I exit the park at 72nd Street, the Dakota looming above me. As I turn the corner on 73rd street, I notice that all the streetlights on the block are out.

I walk down to the townhouse. Before I put my key in the door — it’s been four days, but I doubt Steven’s changed the lock — I pause for a second to think about what I’ll say to him, if he’s home and awake. I think about how dumb it is to just be thinking about this now, at the last second. Miller Huggins would have had a plan before he’d even left the Plaza.

I unlock the door without making too much noise and head up to my room. I walk quietly, but not so quietly that it could look like I was trying to sneak in. I’m not a burglar. I’m here to get my own stuff.

I walk into my room and sit down on my bed. I pull out my night table drawer. The letters and postcards are gone.

I turn on the light. The room is empty.

Steven is a rat.

I click off the lights, and as I turn to leave the room I take one more look outside at Steven’s dream, his Alice In Wonderland garden. The smile of the Cheshire Cat is completely gone. There are no lights on at all. And then I see him.

He’s lying on the grass.

There’s a gun by his side.

Blood is still oozing from the back of his head, where the bullet left him. I feel his neck, there’s no pulse. His body is still warm. Is this what Johnny Mostil felt like to Ray Schalk? But Mostil was still alive. Steven’s dead.

I walk back into the kitchen — the kitchen where Stanwyck mixed her mystery drinks the night before we went up to Harlem to meet Eyre Saitch — to call the police. As I pick up the phone, someone says, “Don’t bother.”

I turn and see Rothstein sitting in the dark at the kitchen table. I must have gone right by him on my way out to Steven.

“Sit down.”

I do as I’m told.

“I’m sorry for how this ended.” He nods out toward the garden. “He was a troubled young man. And a little too greedy, even for his line of business.”

“Troubled? You mean, he was trouble.”

“I usually don’t have any difficulty saying what I mean.” Rothstein sits back in his chair.

“He called me a few minutes ago,” he says. Rothstein lives a block and a half away in the Ansonia, just a couple of floors below Ruth. “I came inside, just after you did.”

“What now?” I ask him.

“I’ll take care of it. You should head back to the Plaza and your pal, Bix.”

Jesus. How does he know about my being at the Plaza? And about Bix?

Of course he knows. He’s Rothstein.

“And here,” he says. He puts a briefcase on the table and slides it towards me. “This has what you were looking for. Don’t open it up until you get home. Walk back. Don’t take a cab. And don’t go through the park. Stay on the street.”

I take the briefcase from him, and without saying a word I leave the house.

The city is as quiet as it’s ever been.

I head down Central Park West and across 59th street. At least, I think that’s the path I took. When I get back to the Plaza it’s almost dawn.

Back on the 14th floor, I don’t even check to see where Bix is. I just walk into my bedroom — Bill Powers’s bedroom — and lock the door.

I open up the briefcase. Inside are Stanwyck’s letters and postcards.

And $57,400. In crisp $100 bills.

There’s a sealed letter envelope with “Myles” written on it in cursive. It’s Steven’s handwriting. Inside the envelope there’s no note. Just a bank statement.

I compare it to the statement Steven gave me Sunday night, when we had our blowup. It’s exactly the same — all the same transactions for the past four months — only this time, my name isn’t on it. The name on this statement says, “Steven Thornberry.”

And the balance says zero.

I’ve been scrubbed clean.

Rothstein.