by Todd Borg
Our airport waits ate up the clock, and we’d been traveling for 21 hours. But because we followed the sun and went back through 9 time zones, our 21 hours had only moved us 12 hours forward on the clock. When we got into the Jeep at the Reno/Tahoe airport parking lot, the clock said 10 p.m. But our bodies were on Italian time, so it felt like seven the next morning. Because of our jet lag, combined with snow and high wind in the Washoe Valley, I drove the Jeep slowly, feeling the wheels struggle to grip on the wet, icy, compacted snow. The headlights were impotent in the face of waves of snow blocking all vision. I’d hoped that the snow would ease as we continued south and dropped down 400 feet into Carson City, but it seemed to intensify. Farther south, Carson Valley was enduring a blizzard. When we got to Diamond’s house in Minden, Nevada, we pulled into his drive through eight inches of fresh powder.
Street had called Diamond en route, so he was waiting for us. He opened the front door as we got out of the Jeep. The light spilling out of his house lit up the giant flakes swirling down from the sky. Spot pushed out and raced around, possibly as eager to play in the fresh snow as he was eager to see us. We’d been gone only a few nights, so Spot was still on his Diamond-and-Danishes high. Having us come home might have been a disappointment. But he put on a good performance and wagged and bounced as we both hugged him.
“Snowing too hard to drive up to the lake, don’t you think?” Diamond said.
We agreed.
“You want beer and chips or something?”
“It feels like tomorrow morning to us, so it would be best if we crashed.”
Diamond understood. “You know where the guest room is. This way, Spot and I get one more party night together.” Diamond turned to Spot. “Hey, dude, you want beer and chips?”
Spot wagged so hard his entire 170 pounds rocked side-to-side.
Street and I climbed up the narrow stairs to the attic of Diamond’s bungalow. Spot followed and tried to play with me a bit, grabbing my hands as I play-boxed with him. I gave him a headlock, rubbed him, then sent him back down the stairs to Diamond.
Street and I climbed into the two narrow beds under Diamond’s sloping attic roof and were asleep in minutes.
In the morning, we joined Diamond for coffee. Spot lay on the floor nearby. The snow had stopped falling, and the little desert town of Minden looked like something out of a Christmas movie. A foot of spring snow draped the trees and hung down from the eaves and stood up high on the mailbox. It was a strange perception shift. I kept thinking it looked like a great deal of snow, even as I knew that, were I out of the desert and up in Tahoe, I’d regard it as a modest little dusting of white, a thin blanket of no account.
Diamond looked at the time. “Civic duty calls in less than an hour. Gotta go give the taxpayers good value.”
“Good to have a job,” I said.
“Learn anything interesting in yonder Italia?”
I hadn’t yet had enough coffee to cut my brain fog, so Street gave it to him in linear fashion, her recitation as precise as one would expect from a scientist. She turned to me. “Did I leave anything out?”
“Just the turquoise confetti,” I said.
Street made a sly smile. “I’m thinking that Diamond wouldn’t be interested in that.”
I saw Diamond’s eyebrows twitch. “Sounds like something that ain’t my business,” he said. After a long silence, he added, “So, where to now?”
“From what Bruno Valenti told us, I’m going to start with Sinatra. His whereabouts during the early sixties, for example.”
“Tahoe, the Cal Neva Hotel, Palm Springs, and Vegas, of course,” Diamond said.
“And his associates,” I said.
“The Kennedy brothers, the Rat Pack, the boys at his little business he called Reprise Records,” Diamond said.
“His association with the Mob,” I said.
“Sam Giancana, Carlo Gambino, Lucky Luciano,” Diamond said.
“His loves.”
Diamond thought about it. “In the early sixties, he was between marriages. He’d recently divorced Ava Gardner, and Mia Farrow didn’t appear for several years.”
“Not much there,” I said.
Diamond said, “Of course, he did have an affair with Marilyn Monroe.”
“You may have just struck gold,” I said.
“Or diamonds,” Diamond said.
“At that time, she was the most famous and desirable woman in the world, right?” Street said. “Didn’t Sinatra have a cabin at the Cal Neva that was set aside for her?”
Diamond drank coffee and nodded. “Yeah. And the secret tunnels made it so that he and she and all the others could come and go out of sight of the paparazzi.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” I asked.
Diamond frowned. “If you moved south of the border and adopted it as your new country, I’d expect you to brush up on all things Mexican, which would include pop culture history.”
Street looked at Diamond. “Let’s say you had enough millions to buy the Blue Fire of Florence and you were in Sinatra’s shoes. Would you make it a present to Marilyn Monroe?”
“Sure. Why not? She’d be a pretty good catch, huh? But I’d change the name. The Blue Fire of Florence would become… Let me think. The Tahoe Blue Fire.” He glanced again at the time. “Gotta go. Lock up when you leave?”
“Thanks.” I lifted my coffee cup toward him as a salute. “I appreciate you taking care of my hound even though I’ll probably never be able to get him to eat dog food again.”
Diamond nodded, gave Street a kiss, Spot a bear hug, and left out the kitchen door.
Spot stood at the closed door, his ears twitching as he listened to the inaudible sounds of Diamond as he shuffled down the snowy sidewalk, brushed the snow off his old, rust-experiment pickup, started up the noisy engine with bronchitis in the carburetor, and drove away.
“What about you?” Street asked me. “Would you have paid two million back then to buy a giant Medici diamond for Marilyn Monroe?”
I walked over behind Street and wrapped my arms around her, my hands exploring. “I don’t know about Monroe,” I whispered in her ear, “but I’d certainly buy it for you.”
“Because I’m a classy broad?”
“Hmm,” I said.
“Or because of my turquoise confetti?”
“Well, there is that,” I said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The hot spring sun popped out and quickly began melting what snow was left on the highways after the plows had done their nighttime work. By the time we climbed up from Carson Valley and crested Daggett Pass at the top of Kingsbury Grade, the roads were free of snow and ice, and, as the sun cooked their surfaces, they steamed billowing clouds in the air. But under the trees, away from the sun, the snowpack was even deeper than before.
Because we were still very tired, we skipped stopping at my office or Street’s bug lab and drove up the East Shore toward home. The high sun was blinding on the snowfields of the West Shore mountains across the lake. I dropped Street off at her condo, and Spot and I drove up the mountain to my cabin.
There was another piece of paper stuck in my cabin door.
Like the first, it had the upside down pentagram symbol of evil Black Magic.
The message was once again written with a template, the block letters revealing nothing of the writer.
LAST CHANCE TO QUIT, MCKENNA. HOW MANY DEATHS CAN YOU TAKE?
I ushered Spot inside, away from any sightline from up on the mountain behind my cabin. The note may have been there for a few days, so it was unlikely a shooter was currently up on the mountain training his rifle’s sights on me.
After considering the risk and danger, I had a little internal debate about the merits and demerits of a late-morning barbecued hotdog on the deck. I won the debate, so I lit the charcoal and shoveled two and a half feet of snow off the deck as the coals warmed up. I mostly stayed back near the cabin wall so a shooter couldn’t hit me without running up on the deck,
something I didn’t think fit his style.
Because hotdogs burn easily, I put four of them on the side with the fewest coals and arranged half a bag of French fries crosswise to the grill wires on the side with the most coals. I set buns and ketchup out on the little deck table and sat down to wait and turn the hotdogs and fries. Spot came over, his nose held high. He inched closer and closer to the barbecue, wet nostrils flexing.
“Carbon monoxide, dude,” I said, pushing him back. He swung his head and looked at me for a fraction of a second, his ear stud flashing, then turned back and stared at the hotdogs.
When the hotdogs and fries were done, I put half in Spot’s bowl to cool, broke them into pieces, doused them with Ketchup, and let him dive in.
When I eat hotdogs and fries, I savor the taste as the upside of eating unhealthy food. When Spot eats hotdogs, he savors the speed at which he can ingest them. We think of dogs as salivating over taste and smell. But Spot proves over and over that the big concern dogs have about meals isn’t how great they taste but how they can be a huge waste of time. Spot’s speed suggested that his time was extremely valuable and he didn’t have a second to spare. I’d almost finished chewing my first bite when he was done with his lunch. He licked the last drop of Ketchup out of his bowl, then lay down on the deck boards to enjoy the sunshine. The sun’s heat was so intense that the boards that I’d shoveled just minutes before were now snowless and steaming. Spot flopped over onto his side on the warming boards, gave a big sigh, and began snoozing.
After I ate, I pulled my reclining deck chair back up against the cabin so that I was out of sight. It was only one in the afternoon, but that was ten in the evening in Italy. I tipped my broad-brimmed hat over my face and snoozed along with Spot.
When I woke, my transition to the non-dream world was predictably slow. I brewed some coffee and drank it as I thought about how, despite what I’d learned about the Blue Fire Diamond, I was still no closer to finding the killer.
I turned on the laptop and started composing an email to send to [email protected]. I didn’t know for certain that the account holder was connected to the murders, so I wanted wording that would be suggestive but not accusatory.
I settled on, ‘I know your identity, and I know you want the Blue Fire. Contact me, and we’ll discuss terms. Owen McKenna.’ I hit send.
Next, I did some research on Sinatra, his associates, his songs, and his Cal Neva Hotel.
I learned that while Sinatra had been wildly successful at singing for his supper, he also made real money as a businessman who started Reprise Records in 1960, and then sold it for big bucks a few years later to Warner Brothers Music. It was his ownership of Reprise Records that gave him the nickname Chairman of the Board.
Sinatra also bought the Cal Neva Hotel and Casino in 1960. It was a period of intense activity at the Cal Neva involving many famous people. They were able to escape the paparazzi and move about the Cal Neva grounds incognito by utilizing secret tunnels that connected the various buildings.
Rat Pack members Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. performed there along with Sinatra. Will Rogers, Peter Lawford, Joe DiMaggio, and Marilyn Monroe vacationed there. Monroe came frequently enough that she had her own cabin near the lake.
In 1960, Monroe was filming in the nearby Nevada desert with Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in what became the John Huston masterpiece, The Misfits. Sinatra invited the cast of The Misfits up to the Cal Neva, and he sang for them.
Monroe’s marriage to playwright Arthur Miller was collapsing during the filming of The Misfits, a movie for which Miller had written the screenplay.
Sinatra had reportedly been seduced by Monroe back when he was married to Ava Gardner. So when Monroe divorced Arthur Miller, Sinatra began focusing on Monroe, possibly hoping for a more permanent relationship with her.
Unfortunately, Sinatra’s misfortunes grew. He played too fast and loose with some Mob boys, especially Sam Giancana. And while the Nevada gaming bureaucrats had tried to give their most famous licensee a lot of wiggle room, Sinatra hadn’t been appropriately respectful of them. So they yanked his permits, which forced him out of the casino business.
It was a tough period for Sinatra, and he had emotional altercations with a range of people. Maybe his celebrity was a magnet for people problems. But it could also be that he was predisposed to such issues, because he referred to himself as an 18-karat manic depressive.
I’d met several manic depressives over the years - a great colorful term now lost to the temperate, boring, and politically correct term bi-polar disorder, and I always thought that they were less crazy than our culture commonly presents them. Nevertheless, it seemed perfect that an 18-karat mania might help someone low on their meds justify purchasing a mega diamond to give to a girl.
Especially if that girl was Marilyn Monroe.
I called my friend Glennie Gorman, ace reporter for the Tahoe Herald.
“Owen, you bad boy,” she exclaimed when I identified myself.
“Bad for what?”
“For not having called me in forever. What are you doing, where are you, and how is Street? Wait, never mind all that. Just tell me, how is His Largeness?”
I looked at him, sprawled on the rug in front of the wood stove. “He’s sleeping off a barbecued hotdog/French fry lunch as we speak.”
“This is how you augment the sawdust chunks? Where’s the broccoli for vitamins? And what’s this I hear about a quick trip to Italy?”
“The reason for my call. The Cal Neva Hotel on the North Shore,” I said. “What do you know about it?”
“What’s there to know? Nice place on the North Shore. Sits on the state line with half the lobby in California and half in Nevada. The swimming pool is split down the middle, too. Used to be owned by Frank Sinatra. Currently closed for renovation.”
“Zero in on the Sinatra part.”
“Oooh, now my antenna is vibrating. What are you working on?”
“The truth is that I don’t know,” I said.
“But it has something to do with Frank,” Glennie said. “Thus the Italian connection.”
“Maybe.”
“Okay. So this reporter could quote the book on his gaming license debacle and his fist fight with the Mob boss and his trysts with Monroe and his Rat Pack friends. But the most interesting thing about Sinatra wasn’t about him.”
“You lost me,” I said.
“Sinatra is the guy who introduced Marilyn Monroe to his friends the Kennedy Brothers, who also frequented his Cal Neva. The evidence suggests that both John and Bobby had flings with her. Which was probably hard for Sinatra. He wanted to impress her with the mighty and powerful men he knew. But he didn’t anticipate that she’d wander off into the presidential forest.”
“But isn’t that what sex goddesses do?”
“Like many women who hate to credit her with serious acting chops, I want to think that. But way, way back I remember doing a story on the famous acting coach Lee Strasberg. He said that of the hundreds of actors he worked with, it was Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe who stood above all the rest. And when I saw her last movie, The Misfits, I had to acknowledge that she was an amazing actor. Anyway, JFK was running for president at the time, and JFK’s charisma trumped even Sinatra’s. JFK and Marilyn Monroe embarked on a long affair that continued even after he moved into the White House.”
Glennie’s comment presented me with more reason for Sinatra to acquire the Blue Fire of Florence. With Marilyn Monroe succumbing to future President John Kennedy’s allure, Sinatra might think that acquiring one of the most famous gems in the world would woo her back.
“You went silent on me,” Glennie said.
“Sorry, you just got me thinking. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Blue Fire of Florence?”
“No. What’s that?”
I gave her the basics of the BFF and how Sinatra acquired it.
For a cynical reporter who can’t be surprised by anything, Glennie oohed and aahed a
t a pretty high amplitude. “What do you want from me?” she asked.
“I’m wondering if you can find out what the Blue Fire of Florence might be worth.”
It was a moment before Glennie spoke. “This is a diamond that might not exist, and even if it does, we don’t really have any information about it.”
“Correct.”
“Yet you want a value,” she said.
I thought about it. “Tell you what. Let’s just get a current value on the Hope Diamond, about which we know everything.”
“Because you think the Blue Fire of Florence would have the same value?”
“No. Substantially less, because it has no provenance. But the Hope value would give us a ballpark indication.”
“And how would I learn this?”
“You’re the investigative reporter.”
“Okay. I’ll call you when I know something.” She hung up.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The next morning, I decided to visit the safe house to check in on Adam Simms. On the way up Kingsbury Grade, I saw two rotary plows and a grader parked on a vacant lot. Maybe that’s where the Douglas County snow removal contractor stored them. But they were probably too far from the South Lake Tahoe snow dump to be considered in connection to the murders.
When I got to the safe house, I left Spot in the Jeep. Adam remembered me, but he was slow and had about him a general air of confusion. Blondie seemed ecstatic to have me reappear into her life. She jumped on me, raced around, jumped again, her tail a blur.
Adam and I talked for some time. I told him about our trip to Italy. When I explained what the Blue Fire of Florence was, he didn’t seem to have much interest.
After we talked, I asked, “May I look at the photos on your phone?”
Adam’s face changed from resignation to worry. “Why?”
“Maybe I’ll see something or someone that would give me useful information.”
“So you suspect me of murder?”
