The Flying Dutchman
1987
True Story
There is a tower in San Francisco, Sutro Tower, which rises in the hills to the west of the city like a giant arachnid. Out of place to some, many say it’s ugly. But, most days, fog rolls in and covers it up late in the afternoon. At least the spindly legs are covered. The fog reaches to the highest crosshatch and boils there like waves. And the crosshatch looks like a ship with masts. It has a bow and a stern and two masts. I used to stare at it all the time. It looked like it was sailing in the clouds.
I named it The Flying Dutchman but it wasn’t till later I found out what the legend is about. If you look into the eye of a storm, sayeth the legend, you will be able to see the ship and its captain - The Flying Dutchman. He is doomed to go from sinking ship to sinking ship. Don't look too carefully, for the legend claims that whoever sights the ship will die a terrible death. Oh shit.
I cursed my dead Dutch grandfather.
The late eighties in San Francisco was, for me and many others, a time of sad and intense turmoil. So many friends were sick. The deaths never seemed to stop coming. After I realized I couldn't rescue my friends, that there was actually no hope for them, I became very depressed.
I felt like the Flying Dutchman now, going from one shipwreck to the next. Anonymous parents would swoop in, having ignored their son the whole time, maybe not even knowing the kid was gay, and they would strip the apartment. Everything would be taken. They'd pull up outside with U-Hauls!
So, when a now-defunct magazine asked me to interview the attorney Melvin Belli at his home in Pacific Heights, I accepted immediately. Belli was a hoot, a San Francisco legend, the kind of trial attorney who has a press agent. He was, supposedly, the inspiration for the character “Perry Mason,” and the master of demonstrative evidence in the courtroom. He was also an excellent orator who loved the sound of his own voice.
It sounded like a fun assignment.
The second week of December 1987 Belli, 80, was being taped for the hyper-cheesy television show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” hosted by the unforgettable Robin Leach and I would be there. Taping began at the Belli’s Pacific Heights home, next door to the Gettys and other old moneyed neighborhood residents who never quite knew what to make of them.
They would soon find out. And there would be shots fired.
But that was all months into the future.
Currently, the notorious lawyer and his socialite-wannabe wife were attempting to act out a demonstration of a devoted and loving marriage for the cameras. Although when the Belli piece aired, friction wasn't apparent on tape, to anyone who was there that day and observed them, this marriage was a goner.
"How do you like my outfit honey?" Lia asked, twirling in a taupe jersey cape trimmed with what looked remarkably like the tails of housecats.
"You look like Davey Crockett," Belli replied.
One week after the Lifestyles shoot, it's a beautiful, clear evening in San Francisco. Belli has invited his daughter, a 15-year-old Goth princess, and a few of his trusted, longtime office employees on a New Year's Eve cruise.
The past year has been, to say the least, heartbreaking. The grand finale of the year, this boat ride, convinced me all my Flying Dutchman fears were about to be realized.
On water, just like in the legend.
We sat down to dinner in the walnut-paneled dining salon, which turned out to be a full-on seven course affair. The only light came from a silver candelabra in the center of the mahogany table and from the skyscrapers glittering along the shoreline. From over my shoulder, Prince Philip observed my slovenly table manners from a photograph taken on board the yacht.
Belli never appeared. As it turned out, a hotel in Puerto Rico was in the process of burning to the ground on the evening news and Belli sat glued to the set, ignoring me and the other guests. This is a Saturday night. On Monday morning, I will pick up the paper on my way to work and read that the Law Offices of Melvin M. Belli has filed suit on behalf of some of the survivors of this fire.
Meanwhile, in the dining salon, I suddenly became aware of what sounded like screams coming from somewhere below us. I tried to ignore them, focusing instead on the waiter who was dribbling hot fudge sauce onto my vanilla ice cream and ignoring them himself.
"Little bitches," the woman to my right muttered.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Little bitches. The man is 80 years old. He doesn't need this." She shook her head. "Little bitches."
The lady across from us asked if Caesar Belli, Mel's allegedly coke-addled son, was at the helm. When someone answered back that yes, indeed he was, she crossed herself.
This wasn't good, I thought to myself.
That's when I noticed that my ice cream was sliding toward the edge of the table.
At the helm, Caesar Belli had somehow managed to get the 110-foot “Adequate Award” sandwiched in between two gigantic supertankers, one inbound, the other outbound, in the pitch-black waters of San Francisco Bay. They looked like two massive, black walls sliding by the comparatively baroque interior of the candlelit dining salon. Without stabilizers, the antique boat was an E ticket ride at Disneyland.
At this precise moment down below, Belli's daughter seized the opportunity to sweep a fire extinguisher across her father's stateroom, which, much to her amusement, caused the smoke alarm system to go off, the sensor being unable to distinguish between actual smoke and flame and the chemicals used to extinguish actual smoke and flame.
So there we were, the yacht swinging wildly to and fro in the combined wakes of two colossal oil tankers, screams of unmitigated delight coming from below deck with more waving of the fire extinguisher, those of us having dinner were clutching our plates and chairs while the woman to my right continued to mutter "little bitches."
Capping it all off, of course, was the high-pitched piercing squeal of the yacht's smoke alarm system.
Perhaps the irony was apparent only to me. Through all of this, Melvin Belli sat peacefully alone in front of a television set watching flames engulf a hotel thousands of miles away in Puerto Rico, while ignoring the fire alarm wailing away on his own boat. He didn't move. This quality of his -- absolute singlemindedness -- is probably what enabled Belli, at 80 years of age, to support his family and staff on contingency cases where he got nothing if he lost.
Belli's 96-year-old mentor, Vincent Hallinan -- who was still practicing law downtown and had recently chased off a mugger with his cane -- told me: "A trial attorney needs to have self-confidence. He wants to shine a little."
He also commented that Belli should ditch the boat. "A showboat doesn't need another vessel."
As for shots fired and the inevitable divorce . . .
If Lia had pinned her hopes of saving her marriage by portraying the devoted wife on television, her husband had other ideas. He began dropping items into gossip columns that he'd asked Lia for a divorce but she wouldn't budge from the mansion in Pacific Heights. Then, one sunny San Francisco morning, shortly after these items began appearing, a man took a shot at her in the mansion, which shattered both Lia's hopes and the glass mirror to the left of where she was standing. She ran into her room and locked the door, only to realize that the panic button that would summon the police was in her husband’s room next door. She crossed the balcony to his room, smashed in the window, and pushed the button. But the gunman got away neat and clean. She said he had a key. He let himself in.
Melvin Belli was in China at the time and had a solid alibi.
Lia Belli was snapped for the front page of next morning's paper and was quoted saying that Melvin Belli could have his divorce.
Lia eventually dropped the name Belli and went on to marry Prince Paul of Romania, a wannabe titular head in exile. So, in a way, she got the social advancement she desired. Lia speaks on behalf of Romania, much to the consternation of King Michael who refuses to recognize her husband, the child of his elder half-brother.
Melvin M. Belli, ever the romantic, married again before passing away in July of 1996 at the age of 88.
True Story
There is a tower in San Francisco, Sutro Tower, which rises in the hills to the west of the city like a giant arachnid. Out of place to some, many say it’s ugly. But, most days, fog rolls in and covers it up late in the afternoon. At least the spindly legs are covered. The fog reaches to the highest crosshatch and boils there like waves. And the crosshatch looks like a ship with masts. It has a bow and a stern and two masts. I used to stare at it all the time. It looked like it was sailing in the clouds.
I named it The Flying Dutchman but it wasn’t till later I found out what the legend is about. If you look into the eye of a storm, sayeth the legend, you will be able to see the ship and its captain - The Flying Dutchman. He is doomed to go from sinking ship to sinking ship. Don't look too carefully, for the legend claims that whoever sights the ship will die a terrible death. Oh shit.
I cursed my dead Dutch grandfather.
The late eighties in San Francisco was, for me and many others, a time of sad and intense turmoil. So many friends were sick. The deaths never seemed to stop coming. After I realized I couldn't rescue my friends, that there was actually no hope for them, I became very depressed.
I felt like the Flying Dutchman now, going from one shipwreck to the next. Anonymous parents would swoop in, having ignored their son the whole time, maybe not even knowing the kid was gay, and they would strip the apartment. Everything would be taken. They'd pull up outside with U-Hauls!
So, when a now-defunct magazine asked me to interview the attorney Melvin Belli at his home in Pacific Heights, I accepted immediately. Belli was a hoot, a San Francisco legend, the kind of trial attorney who has a press agent. He was, supposedly, the inspiration for the character “Perry Mason,” and the master of demonstrative evidence in the courtroom. He was also an excellent orator who loved the sound of his own voice.
It sounded like a fun assignment.
The second week of December 1987 Belli, 80, was being taped for the hyper-cheesy television show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” hosted by the unforgettable Robin Leach and I would be there. Taping began at the Belli’s Pacific Heights home, next door to the Gettys and other old moneyed neighborhood residents who never quite knew what to make of them.
They would soon find out. And there would be shots fired.
But that was all months into the future.
Currently, the notorious lawyer and his socialite-wannabe wife were attempting to act out a demonstration of a devoted and loving marriage for the cameras. Although when the Belli piece aired, friction wasn't apparent on tape, to anyone who was there that day and observed them, this marriage was a goner.
"How do you like my outfit honey?" Lia asked, twirling in a taupe jersey cape trimmed with what looked remarkably like the tails of housecats.
"You look like Davey Crockett," Belli replied.
One week after the Lifestyles shoot, it's a beautiful, clear evening in San Francisco. Belli has invited his daughter, a 15-year-old Goth princess, and a few of his trusted, longtime office employees on a New Year's Eve cruise.
The past year has been, to say the least, heartbreaking. The grand finale of the year, this boat ride, convinced me all my Flying Dutchman fears were about to be realized.
On water, just like in the legend.
We sat down to dinner in the walnut-paneled dining salon, which turned out to be a full-on seven course affair. The only light came from a silver candelabra in the center of the mahogany table and from the skyscrapers glittering along the shoreline. From over my shoulder, Prince Philip observed my slovenly table manners from a photograph taken on board the yacht.
Belli never appeared. As it turned out, a hotel in Puerto Rico was in the process of burning to the ground on the evening news and Belli sat glued to the set, ignoring me and the other guests. This is a Saturday night. On Monday morning, I will pick up the paper on my way to work and read that the Law Offices of Melvin M. Belli has filed suit on behalf of some of the survivors of this fire.
Meanwhile, in the dining salon, I suddenly became aware of what sounded like screams coming from somewhere below us. I tried to ignore them, focusing instead on the waiter who was dribbling hot fudge sauce onto my vanilla ice cream and ignoring them himself.
"Little bitches," the woman to my right muttered.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Little bitches. The man is 80 years old. He doesn't need this." She shook her head. "Little bitches."
The lady across from us asked if Caesar Belli, Mel's allegedly coke-addled son, was at the helm. When someone answered back that yes, indeed he was, she crossed herself.
This wasn't good, I thought to myself.
That's when I noticed that my ice cream was sliding toward the edge of the table.
At the helm, Caesar Belli had somehow managed to get the 110-foot “Adequate Award” sandwiched in between two gigantic supertankers, one inbound, the other outbound, in the pitch-black waters of San Francisco Bay. They looked like two massive, black walls sliding by the comparatively baroque interior of the candlelit dining salon. Without stabilizers, the antique boat was an E ticket ride at Disneyland.
At this precise moment down below, Belli's daughter seized the opportunity to sweep a fire extinguisher across her father's stateroom, which, much to her amusement, caused the smoke alarm system to go off, the sensor being unable to distinguish between actual smoke and flame and the chemicals used to extinguish actual smoke and flame.
So there we were, the yacht swinging wildly to and fro in the combined wakes of two colossal oil tankers, screams of unmitigated delight coming from below deck with more waving of the fire extinguisher, those of us having dinner were clutching our plates and chairs while the woman to my right continued to mutter "little bitches."
Capping it all off, of course, was the high-pitched piercing squeal of the yacht's smoke alarm system.
Perhaps the irony was apparent only to me. Through all of this, Melvin Belli sat peacefully alone in front of a television set watching flames engulf a hotel thousands of miles away in Puerto Rico, while ignoring the fire alarm wailing away on his own boat. He didn't move. This quality of his -- absolute singlemindedness -- is probably what enabled Belli, at 80 years of age, to support his family and staff on contingency cases where he got nothing if he lost.
Belli's 96-year-old mentor, Vincent Hallinan -- who was still practicing law downtown and had recently chased off a mugger with his cane -- told me: "A trial attorney needs to have self-confidence. He wants to shine a little."
He also commented that Belli should ditch the boat. "A showboat doesn't need another vessel."
As for shots fired and the inevitable divorce . . .
If Lia had pinned her hopes of saving her marriage by portraying the devoted wife on television, her husband had other ideas. He began dropping items into gossip columns that he'd asked Lia for a divorce but she wouldn't budge from the mansion in Pacific Heights. Then, one sunny San Francisco morning, shortly after these items began appearing, a man took a shot at her in the mansion, which shattered both Lia's hopes and the glass mirror to the left of where she was standing. She ran into her room and locked the door, only to realize that the panic button that would summon the police was in her husband’s room next door. She crossed the balcony to his room, smashed in the window, and pushed the button. But the gunman got away neat and clean. She said he had a key. He let himself in.
Melvin Belli was in China at the time and had a solid alibi.
Lia Belli was snapped for the front page of next morning's paper and was quoted saying that Melvin Belli could have his divorce.
Lia eventually dropped the name Belli and went on to marry Prince Paul of Romania, a wannabe titular head in exile. So, in a way, she got the social advancement she desired. Lia speaks on behalf of Romania, much to the consternation of King Michael who refuses to recognize her husband, the child of his elder half-brother.
Melvin M. Belli, ever the romantic, married again before passing away in July of 1996 at the age of 88.
posted by Jon at 5:40 PM
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