12.

“That’s one of the problems with marrying a ten, or even a nine.”

After two or three years, Lefty’s marriage looked like a bad bet. Geri had given birth to a son, Steven, whom she adored; but she found the domestic life Lefty wanted her to live far too restrictive, especially since he refused to play by the rules he expected her to follow. Lefty was working day and night at the casino, and Geri began to suspect he was seeing other women. She told her sister she had found receipts for jewelry and presents in his pockets when she took his suits to the dry cleaners. When she accused him of fooling around, he told her she was crazy. He accused her of being drunk and taking too many pills.

So Geri started going out. Sometimes she’d stay out all night. Sometimes she’d disappear for a weekend. On more than one occasion Lefty hired private detectives to track her down. He would turn up at her favorite bars and demand that she come home immediately. Finally he threatened to divorce her. He met with her in Oscar Goodman’s office and produced affidavits attesting to her addictions to alcohol and pills. He made it clear that her days of power and wealth were over and that she would lose custody of her son as well.

“Geri didn’t want to lose everything,” her sister, Barbara Stokich, said, “but Lefty would only take her back if she agreed to have another child and make a greater effort at staying away from the pills and liquor. I know Geri didn’t want to have another child, but that was the only way she had to keep from getting thrown out on the street. She used to tell me he was a very powerful man. That he owned the judges and courts. That she wouldn’t stand a chance against him.

“So she gave in and they had Stephanie in 1973, but that didn’t solve their problems. In fact, in many ways it made things worse, because Geri always resented being forced to have Stephanie. Steven was wonderful. He was a boy. Geri loved having a boy. But being forced to have a child and for that child to be a girl—a girl in competition with her daughter Robin—made Geri very upset. She could never warm to Stephanie. And I don’t think she ever forgave Frank for making her go through the second pregnancy.”

“I knew things weren’t going all that well at home,” says Lefty, “but I didn’t know how bad they were for quite a while. Geri was still hard to figure. Some days she’d wake up happy, and other times you couldn’t be around her. Everything you said was a fight.

“She didn’t like it when I got on her about her drinking, and she didn’t like it when I got on her about letting Steven, who was seven, beat up on Stephanie, who was only three.

“Geri just adored Steven. She spoiled him rotten. He was her prize. A beautiful Gerber baby. She favored him over her daughter.

“Also, Geri was very strong minded. She didn’t give a damn what people said or saw. And the people who knew us both tried to keep what they knew to themselves.

“For instance, I didn’t know the hypnotic powers Lenny Marmor still had over Geri long after I married her. I knew they had to remain in touch because of Robin, but I didn’t know that when Geri would go to Beverly Hills for a shopping trip with Allen Glick’s wife, Kathy, she’d meet Marmor there.

“Geri and Kathy would take off in the Argent Lear once or twice a month. A limo would pick them up at the airport in Burbank, and they’d go to some store and start browsing. After a few minutes, Geri would just walk out. She wouldn’t even tell Kathy where she was going. She would just disappear and then, three or four hours later, she’d find Kathy somewhere, either at the airport or somewhere, and they’d fly back together. No explanation. No nothing.

“Kathy Glick would tell her husband, but Allen, out of fear of getting involved or whatever, wouldn’t tell me. So I really didn’t know what was going on. Geri knew that no one was going to give her up, and she was right.

“Two of my closest friends, Harry and Bibi Solomon, two of the straightest people I’ve ever met in my life, finally tipped me off. Occasionally they would go out with Geri if I was working. One night, I made a reservation for them at the Dunes Hotel. It was the top restaurant. Music. Dancing. Gourmet food.

“Later, Harry came to me and said he had a confession to make. He was that kind of guy. He said, ‘I know you’re not going to forgive me, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I should have told you sooner. I’ve been busting ever since.’ I said, ‘Come on, Harry, get to the point.’

“He said: ‘Let me tell you what happened. We were having dinner, and the music was playing. And a fellow came over to the table and asked Geri to dance, and I told the guy to hit the road. I said to her, ‘What are you, crazy?’ She said, ‘Mind your own business,’ and she gets up from her chair and walks over to the table where this guy was sitting and she says, ‘I’ll accept that dance.’

“Harry went bananas. He didn’t know what to do. He asked for the check. When Geri finished the dance, Harry said, ‘Geri, I’m not going to tell Frank about this. I will never be at your table again without Frank being present.’ Geri didn’t care. She thought they were nuts.

“Geri had always lived her own life. She didn’t want to change. Looking back, I think the only real reason she stayed with Lenny Marmor all those years—and remember, this is a guy who never even sent her a birthday card—was that Lenny never tried to stop her from doing anything she wanted to do.

“That was his power over her. He didn’t care what she did—as long as she made money. And I think Geri preferred that to somebody like myself who was always after her about this and that and the other thing.

“When Geri was hustling out here, Lenny didn’t say, ‘Stop! I love you. I don’t want you doing that anymore.’ No sir. Lenny let her do whatever she wanted. He didn’t care. Drink? Sure. Take pills? Okay. Lenny never told her not to do anything, because she was making money.

“Then I come along, and probably for the first time in her life, there’s a guy laying down rules. Well, Geri never took to anybody’s rules but her own.”

“Geri was a stoned gypsy rat,” Tommy Scalfaro, who worked as Lefty’s driver, said. “Her attitude depended upon her drug supply. When she took Percodan, she was friendly and warm. She’d want to give you money. She couldn’t do too much. She had the kids all dressed and looking good.

“When she ran out of Percodan, she was mean. It was ‘motherfucker’ this and ‘motherfucker’ that. She’d start arguments with Lefty. It could really get ugly.

“She’d scream that Lefty was fucking this one or that one, and she was going to go out and do it too. ‘I saw you with Donna,’ she’d yell. ‘I saw you rubbing asses with Mary,’ she’d say. ‘You keep that up and I’m going to go out and do some of that too.’

“Who the hell knew what she was doing? Lefty wasn’t home all that much anyway. He was running the casinos and trying to stay ahead of the control board over his licensing. He was very fastidious. Everything had to be perfect. He was obsessed with getting his jackets and suits to fit perfectly. Once a week he would go back to his tailor and the guy would cringe. Lefty was always bothering him about a quarter of an inch or an eighth of an inch on his left side. Lefty adjusted his collar, sleeves, cuffs all day long.

“He had more suits than you can imagine. He had a closet thirty feet long and it was lined with suits. Then he had slacks and shirts and sweaters, and every one of them had to be perfect.

“And here he was married to a pill freak. He had a Percodan prescription for his ulcer, and she would send me to the pharmacy to get it refilled every two weeks. But he hardly ever touched them.

“When I first met Geri I could see she was going to be trouble. She kept referring to Lefty as ‘Mr. R.’ and started asking me questions. I could sense that she was getting me prepped to run her errands. In fact, right off the bat, she started suggesting that I go to Burger King and get her kids hamburgers. Pick up her dry cleaning. She’d not only send you on errands, but she’d try to belittle you in the way she’d give you your orders.

“If I hadn’t put my foot down, she would’ve had me running all over town. I beefed to Lefty and she hated me from then on, but I didn’t give a fuck.

“Geri would go to the malls. She’d go to California and shop. The maid and the maid’s daughter raised the kids.

“Lefty spent all his time at the casino or meeting with people from the casino. A couple of times I had to pick him up at three in the morning and drive him to a 7-Eleven, where he’d meet with people from Chicago.

“He’d still be in his pajamas, and he’d jump out of our car and jump into the other guy’s car. I didn’t want to look too close, but sometimes it looked like Lefty was giving the orders, and sometimes it looked like he was taking them.”

“About a year after Allen Glick took over the corporation he had a party at his place in La Jolla,” Lefty said, “and Geri and I went. There were about three hundred or four hundred people there.

“He had six Learjets taking people from Vegas to San Diego. This from a guy who had to borrow seven thousand dollars in pocket money from me when he first took over the company and the checks hadn’t come through. He paid me right back, by the way.

“For the party, he gave me the use of two jets just for my friends.

“When we got there, it turned out Glick had me sitting next to him, and Geri was on my other side.

“On our way up there I had told Geri: ‘No fucking drinking.’ We had been jamming about her drinking problem for a while, but I didn’t know what I was up against.

“At that point in my life I didn’t drink, really. I didn’t know that it was something some people couldn’t control. I didn’t know about uppers and downers. I was really very naive. I was a square. But I insisted we go to the party and she not have one drink. No booze. ‘This is business,’ I said. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

“So the party starts, and here comes a waiter with a tray and Dom Pérignon champagne, and she takes a glass. I say to myself, ‘You bitch.’ There are three hundred people there. I don’t want her to get loaded and make a scene.

“She drinks the glass down. I’m looking at her, but she doesn’t say shit to me. She doesn’t acknowledge I’m even looking at her.

“Someone asks her to dance. She got up and danced. Then I saw the drink hit her. No one else could see it, but I knew her so well I could see the drink bang in.

“After the dance, she comes and sits down, and the waiter comes around again with the tray and she nods. The waiter puts a glass of champagne in front of her.

“I whisper to her: ‘Listen, bitch, you put your lips to that glass, I’ll knock you off that chair.’

“She looks at me and says, ‘You don’t have the guts.’

“‘Yes I do,’ I say.

“Now, I notice that Glick is looking at me, but he can’t hear what we’re talking about. I said to her, ‘I don’t care how much of an embarrassment it causes, and I don’t care if it costs me my job, but if you put that glass to your lips, you’re going off that chair.’

“She grabs ahold of the glass with her hand. She holds it in her hand. I saw what was coming, so I leaned over and told Glick that I didn’t want to upset him, but could he try and convince Geri to put down the drink, because if she didn’t, I was probably going to have to do something that I would regret for the rest of my life.

“I told Glick, ‘Allen, if she touches that drink, I’ll have to knock her on her ass.’

“Glick got white. ‘If she stonewalls me,’ I told him, ‘she’s going down.’

“Glick says, ‘Geri, will you do me a favor and listen to your husband?’

“She released the drink and turned to me under her breath and said, ‘You sonofabitch, I’ll get even with you for this.’ You can imagine what a great party that turned out to be, but I don’t think anyone knew. Geri was a great actress and a drunk. She held it. She didn’t stumble around.

“When I married Geri I heard all the stories. But I didn’t give a fuck what she did. ‘I’m Frank Rosenthal,’ I said, ‘and I can change her.’”

“They had lots of terrible fights,” Barbara Stokich says. “They were both very strong willed and refused to back down. He used to threaten to take Steven away because of her drinking, but then they’d make up and he’d buy her a nice piece of jewelry.

“I remember she told me after one of their fights that she would rather die than give up booze. She loved it whenever Frank had a glass of wine. He’d relax. She’d relax. I know, Frank started drinking just to please her, but he had ulcers and he couldn’t really drink.”

“One day Tony had been to my house for a meeting,” Lefty said. “He was about to leave, and he was dialing the phone to have one of his guys pick him up. Geri was about to take Steven and Stephanie somewhere, and she volunteered to give him a lift.

“Tony asked me if it was okay, and I said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ I didn’t think another thing about it.

“Then a week or so later, Tony called me up. He said he wanted to meet me. He was very serious. We made a date for about midnight or one in the morning. I picked him up at a certain corner and we began to drive around. We used to do this a lot before the heat got too tough.

“He said he had a story to tell me. Something he was really disturbed about. Something he’d seen when he’d been in the car with Geri and the kids. I didn’t know what he was going to say. He was so solemn. Here’s a guy who has done all kinds of things, and he’s upset. I’m driving with my heart in my mouth. I’m swallowing muscle.

“He said that he’d gotten into the car with Geri and the kids, and Steven started picking on Stephanie. Kid stuff. Nothing serious. Then all of a sudden, Stephanie cried out, ‘Mommy, help! Mommy, help!’ Tony glanced into the back seat and saw that Steven was punching Stephanie really hard.

“‘Geri,’ Tony said, ‘can’t you stop that?’

‘“It’s not serious,’ Geri said.

“Stephanie is screaming in the back seat. Tony turns around, and Steven has Stephanie on the floor in the back of the car and he’s hitting her with his fists. Finally, Tony said, he had to force Geri to pull over and stop the fighting.

“Tony made me swear not to give him up to Geri, but he said he had to tell me what he saw. He said it was sick. It was like Geri was getting pleasure out of seeing her own kid get hurt.”

One night, Rosenthal took Geri to a dance at the country club. She looked beautiful. She was charming. “I was so proud of her,” Lefty said. “She attracted attention wherever she went. She was that much of a knockout. It’s one of the problems with marrying a ten, or even a nine. They’re dangerous.

“Anyway, we’re at the club, and a young executive I had hired, a smart, good-looking kid, walked up and complimented me on something. I don’t even remember what. Then he turned to Geri and he said, ‘Mrs. Rosenthal, you are the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen.’

“She thanked the kid. I smiled. I thanked him too. Sometimes Geri did that to people. She came on just a little bit. She encouraged him. Still, that kid had some balls. I fired him the next day.”