11 - 23 June 1965

	Run For Your Life Starring Ben Gazzara Homepage Paul Bryan's Journal 11 - 23 June 1965
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11 - 23 June 1965 (Savage Season, part 2: beaten in Trieste / a plan put into action)

Paul becomes a target of the mafia when a stewardess transporting cash for Las Vegas gambling interests asks for his help when her cargo disappears. Mob boss Angie Zeno and his henchman Frank Torre believe Paul has stolen the money, and have him beaten up. But Paul fights back with threatening phone calls that have Zeno spooked

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Return to "The Savage Season" page or read from Paul's journal about the events of the episode below

Journal Entry		Chronology of Events
San Francisco - Paris Friday - Saturday, June 11 - 12 Though the hours Kate and I spent together this week were dominated by what we didn't say, this artificial environment somehow brought us to a place we could have found no other way - even if I'd acted differently in the beginning. I thought that I would curse myself to the end, that I put her through this hell, but she made me realize that it was fate that had dealt the bad hand to both of us with a note she gave me when we parted this afternoon. It said, “when you left, that seemed the worst possible thing I could ever face, but now I know it wasn't.” “God speed, Paul,” she whispered. “I could never bear you having to live through any more of the pain we've shared this week. You need to be somewhere else.” “I'll see you again very soon,” I answered, knowing that she was still the most important person in my life. While my flight from San Francisco two months ago was done in a state of jumbled madness, fear and blind determination, I realized, as soon as I breathed in the foggy air on my return, that all the instincts of self-preservation which initiated it had been valid. The moment I came back, I started to break down. It wasn't just Kate. It was the sense of loss that everything there represented. But what I've experienced in the last two months has reformed my thinking, and I believe that the flood of feelings on coming home and seeing Kate again was really just a delayed reaction of emotions never allowed to be expressed, not really a permanent state. From now on, I think I'll be able to go home again, be with her, and take sustenance from being reunited with an important part of myself. As much a part as all the new vistas that await me.
Trieste Saturday, June 12 Pete met me at the airport, and took me out for a spin along the rally track where we'd be testing the new machine tomorrow. Before he disappeared under the hood with the mechanics, we exchanged folders, mine containing some notes and suggestions about the partnership, his full of maps and charts for the race tomorrow. After I took a nap at the hotel, we had dinner with some of the other drivers, and I put in an early night.		The Savage Season Paul flies to Trieste to test a car with Pete Gaffney.
Llubljana, Sunday - Wednesday June 13 - 16 I remember little of the race day or its aftermath, only that Pete was very friendly with an Italian woman, so I decided to walk back to the hotel from the nightclub we were in. Two men jumped me, worked me over, and questioned me incessantly for hours about where Judy had gone and where the $200,000 was. Knowing nothing, all I got was more blows. Eventually, they must have dumped me over the border where some samaritan found me and got me to the hospital. Then I was moved here to Llubljana to be questioned even more by multiple layers of police and government people, rather as an intruder than a victim. Or so it certainly felt. Finally, after intervention by the US Consul, they seemed to decide I wasn't an international criminal, and have left me alone. At least the questioning passed the time and kept my mind off the pain a little.		Tracked to Italy by Angie Zeno's organization, Paul is beaten and interrogated in order to locate Judy Collins and the missing $200,000.
Llubljana, Thursday - Saturday June 17 - 19 I have felt so isolated, as if cut off in some kind of Kafkaesque nightmare, the time moving at the pace of a swimming pool being filled with a teaspoon. The heavy-handed pain killers and tranquillisers have left my mind in a perpetual fog, my dreams lurid and frightening. If the Consul hadn't assured me that everything was fine, I'd be certain that this was some kind of imprisonment - because I've felt well enough to leave for days. But the doctors keep insisting “a little while longer.” My only salvation - what a friend! - was Sydney Crookshank, a British journalist who was writing an article about the Univerzitetni Klinièni Center Ljubljana, and came to see me every day. After what seemed like months, I was released, uniformed men escorting me on a train back to Trieste. An official from the US Consulate was there with some books of mug shots from Jim along with my things from the hotel. He put me on a flight to Paris, saying how intensely he'd been bombarded by Pete Gaffney to have me found, then produced the optimistic note Pete had penned days earlier, “welcome back, old buddy.” Never could I have realized how welcome June's apartment could ever be when I opened the door of my wonderful suite, and felt I was in a place of my own. Rang Pete in London to thank him for everything he did, but like everything else, good or bad, he made it seem like a casual thing. What a different man appears on the race track! Told him that I was going back to San Francisco tomorrow, and he said he might see me there on a flying visit to his Dad.
San Francisco, Sunday, June 20 Flew back to San Francisco, and was met at the airport by Jim Seabourne who said that he'd take me to the Justice Department to look at more mug shots in the morning. He even got his own doctor to come to my house, and check me over to make sure I was OK. I felt like a child who'd woken from a bad dream, grateful for a parent's reassurance. Jim had a man put outside the house for protection, and even offered to stay himself. I accepted gratefully. While he left briefly to get an overnight bag, I tried Kate at home, and got a real lift to find her there. Promised to visit tomorrow and tell her my adventures. Do I start lying to her? Supply a sanitized version? It's amazing how quickly one can acquire a mentality of being institutionalized. I've got to snap out of this in the morning.		Paul returns to San Francisco.
San Francisco, Monday, June 21 Looked at mug books, and struck gold fairly quickly, finding the man who'd come to Judy's apartment. Jim said he was Carl Torre, a partner in a big Las Vegas casino. Head man of the operation is mafia boss Angie Zeno, and Jim felt certain that he's the one who had me followed and interrogated. With $200,000 at stake, he's a man with a mission, and I know he will be after me wherever I go. Jim agreed, and said that there was little he could do. I asked him if he might find a chink in Zeno's armor or something else I could use as a prop to get the man off my back, and then went over to Kate's. Seeing how dreadful I looked, she embraced me warmly, but wincing noticeably from the hug, I knew that it was going to be impossible to hide the truth. Explaining that it was a case of mistaken identity, I told her that I ran afoul of some underworld types in Trieste - all true - and was really OK now. She gave a wry smile and asked if she was allowed to be sympathetic on this one, and I gave away how sore I still was when I laughed, and told her that I welcomed her sympathy and lots of loving. It felt good and right to be in her arms, and at the end of the afternoon I asked her if she'd like to come along on a boat trip to Mexico that Dick Phillips and his wife were planning. Went back to the Justice Department to learn that Jim had come up with a juicy tip. Zeno's girlfriend was cheating on him. Avoided my house, and booked into a hotel.		With the assistance of Jim Seabourne at the Justice Department, Paul devises who has been tormenting him, and comes up with a plan to foil Angie Zeno.
Las Vegas and San Francisco, Monday - Tuesday, June 21 - 22 After making notes for my journal, I caught a 9 pm flight to Las Vegas. Found Zeno's girl, and got her to let me in by threatening to expose her extra-curricular romance to him. Then I made her ring him to come over. When he stepped into her place I confronted Zeno and told him to leave me alone. With a mixture of painkillers and footwork, I was able to knock him to the ground, and told him not to dare making another move against me ever again, or I would be coming after him, and his life would be worth nothing. Maybe it was all those Humphrey Bogart movies I watched, but I was so high on the pills that I must have thought I was the man himself. Zeno got me picked up by the police, but didn't identify me in the line up. Whatever mischief he had planned, my Justice Department guard foiled it by spiriting me away to an office in the airport departure area where we waited until he saw Carl Torre board an early morning flight to San Francisco. I swallowed another painkiller, and got in a seat across the aisle. During the flight I went over to him and said that Zeno should have believed me - and Torre should pass that message on to his boss. Jim sent a car to meet the plane on the tarmac, and we drove across to another machine which was about to take off for Las Vegas. Staying in an office of the arrivals hall until my guard observed Torre returning, I then put on a bit of a disguise, and rang Zeno. To make sure that he knew I was in the city, I asked him to ring me back, and when he did, told him that I would get him - in my own time. We then took off back to San Francisco in a private plane, and I spent the night in a comfortable room at the Justice Department. Worried that I might be involving Kate in something dangerous, or at the least, possibly upsetting, I was glad when she told me that her doctor thought that the boat trip was a good idea, but a week too early in her convalescence.		Paul devises a plan, and confronts his tormenter, Angie Zeno, threatening to kill him if he ever comes near Paul again. With a lot of careful moving back and forth, he convinces Zeno that he is lurking in the shadows of Las Vegas, about to spring on the mafia boss.
Puerto Vallarta Wednesday, June 23 Advised Jim of my plans, and wearing a disguise, took a private flight to Los Angeles to hook up with Dick at his hotel suite in Hollywood. However, he told me that they were having big problems with the boat, and wouldn't be able to take off for a couple days. It all seemed too dodgy to hang around. So I made another threatening call to Zeno - making it clear that I was hovering in the Las Vegas shadows, and might strike at any moment. Then I chartered a flight from Burbank, donned my next disguise, and landed myself on the balmy Sea of Cortez.		After making one more phone threat, Paul leaves for Mexico.

24 June - 1 July 1965 (Someone Who Makes Me Feel Beautiful / Savage Season part 3: undoing of Angie Zeno)