I think James Caan will show up on next weeks episode. I think thats who Ben was talking to on the phone at the end of this weeks show.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/james-caan-sy-berman-magic-city-article-1.1370769James Caan joins Starz mob series 'Magic City' as Sy Berman, mentor of Ben Diamond
Danny Huston, who plays Diamond, says Ben and Sy have a father-son relationship
By David Hinckley / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
June 13, 2013
THIS TIME, says James Caan with a laugh, “I pretty much am the godfather.”
Caan, whose long and versatile movie career still comes back for many fans to his brutal execution at the Long Beach Causeway toll booth in the original 1972 “Godfather,” returns to the mob world this season in the Starz series “Magic City,” whose second season premieres Friday night at 9.
Caan plays Sy Berman, a Chicago guy who turns out to have been the mob mentor of Ben Diamond (Danny Huston).
Diamond, who is called “The Butcher”and does his best to live up to the name, has seemed to be the big mob shark in 1959 Miami, where “Magic City” is set.
Now, behind him in the water, up swims a bigger shark.
“I had a good time on it,” says Caan. “It’s always good to be the guy in charge, and I don’t think there’s anyone bigger here than me — though Sy’s from Chicago, so you never know.”
Caan says he gets a lot of scripts he can’t use these days. “This is the one that made me say, ‘Wow!’”
And then he did a little tweaking. “Magic City” creator Mitch Glazer “ had written the role a little differently,” Caan says, “as a business guy with a stogie. He let me do some improvising.”
Huston says Ben and Sy have a “father and son relationship,” and Sy visits less to take things over than to offer some career advice.
“Sy comes to see him to tell him to control himself,” says Huston.
So the arrival of Sy doesn’t lessen the menace of Diamond, who is locked in a potentially lethal struggle with Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) for control of Ike’s Miramar Playa hotel.
Ben employs both blunt and subtle power, matter of factly ordering murders at the same time he’s charming Ike’s son Steve (Steven Strait).
“One of the things that makes playing Ben so interesting,” says Huston, “is that he’s not conflicted at all. He is what he is and he knows it. To him, this is just the way things work and he’s fine with it. There’s no apologizing.”
In fact, suggests Huston, Ben is so comfortable with his life that “there’s almost a Runyonesque quality to him sometimes,” like a character from “Guys and Dolls.”
For all his confidence and power, however, Ben has problems.
Fidel Castro has just taken over Cuba and one of his first acts was to close the casinos and nightclubs, which had been the mob’s cash engine for years.
That’s one reason Ben tries to move in on Ike, as part of his effort to find alternate revenue streams.
“He’s like a fallen Caesar,” says Huston. “After what’s happened in Cuba, he has to reorganize.”
Huston will even acknowledge Ben Diamond shares a bit of DNA with Noah Cross, the manipulative father Danny’s father John Huston played in “Chinatown.”
Danny stresses that he demurs on any comparisons, “because Noah Cross is one of the great villains in all of movie history.”
But yes, “There’s a little Noah Cross in Ben. Whatever anyone else thinks of his world, he understands and accepts it.”
Ben is one demented kinky psychopath and he gets more psychotic every episode it seems. Should be interesting to see what happens when that gambling bill fails. Ben could be in trouble with Sy.