Was it possible that Mr. Sinatra might speak of this with Mr. Giancana? The Syndicate had always operated out of Chicago; West Virginia served as yet another Mob headquarters. The situation certainly seemed serendipitous.
“Wow, that’s a biggie. But, yeah, I can try.”
Still a naïve kid at heart despite that cruel façade, Sinatra all but danced with delight. To be the go-between, the key link connecting the next president and The Mob.
Ring-a-ding-ding! The thrill of it all ...
*
Tenuously, Old Sam listened. “But can we trust them?”
“I’d stake my life on it.”
“That may be the case!” Giancana’s dark eyes darted about mirthlessly as he spoke in cautious terms.
“This guy’s become like a brother to me.”
“I don‘t know, Frankie. I mean, he’s Irish. Not that I give a fuck about race. Like, what would we do without the Jews? Charlie always had Meyer. Today, Willie Moretti’s in bed with Longy Zwillman. But The Micks? Jesus! I just don’t know.”
“Maybe that was then; this, now. Things change.”
“Do they? Maybe. But you know what some people say? The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“So you won’t—”
Behind a sprawling mahogany desk, Sam shifted in his seat. “Yeah, I will. We’ll bring in both districts in Chicago. Down south, too. Put your guy in the White House. When Frankie asks for a favor, he gets it. With me, as with Charley.”
Sinatra moved forward, warmly grasped Sam Giancana’s hand, and kissed his ring finger in deference. “Thank you.”
“I want you to listen, now. If this works out like you say, we’ll be thanking you. Because once he’s in the cat seat, he’ll have to remember every single day who put him in that position.”
“Capiche!” Sinatra firmly shook Giancana’s aging hand. He perceived no problem. JFK was hardly a fool.
Surely, he’d get the big picture ...
One week later, Sam Giancana met with Joseph Kennedy, Sr. Apart from their ethnicities the two had a great deal in common. Both were known to be shrewd, unsparing, and hard as nails when it came to business. Just as the Mob had always relied on movies and alcohol as fundamentals in building wealth, so had Kennedy. In a shadowy room, during one of the most secretive meetings ever held in the history of America, the two came together.
“So: You really think your kid’s tough enough for this?”
“Sure. He hates the same as I do.”
“Well,” Giancana sighed, grinning. “This whole thing can be arranged. But it’s gonna cost.”
Relaxing somewhat, the elder Kennedy smiled back. “Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I mean, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay for a landslide.”
*
Shortly thereafter, JFK won the election by one of the tightest margins in presidential politics. No sooner had the Kennedy era begun than Frankie was wined and dined in the White House. JFK’s wife didn’t care much for him so Sinatra came to think of Jacqueline as a snob, turned off by him being Italian.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy cared not a whit as for anyone’s ethnicity. Her problem was not prejudice but personality; from day one, Jackie pegged Sinatra as a pimp at heart.
The snapping point came when he let slip a statement that revealed he was the one who orchestrated her husband’s wild carousing with Hollywood’s glamour girls.
“Well, as Jack told Marilyn ... Ooops! I mean, Jack said about Marilyn, to me ... in confidence, of course ...”
What kind of a man is this? And, according to the birds of a feather adage, what kind of a man does that make my husband?
Once the election was a done deal, Giancana planned to make use of Frank’s position in JFK’s unofficial cabinet.
Frank’s happy. Jack’s happy. Joe’s happy. But most of all, I’m happy. And it better damn well friggin’ stay that way ...
First, they’d hooked JFK up with Marilyn. She, like Sinatra, dreamed of class and thought that banging a president, instead of movie executives, would provide her with that. As to JFK, he wanted to fuck a fantasy. Neither was fully satisfied, but then again, who is when a dream becomes reality? The actuality, however good, can’t possibly live up to the perfection that exists only in one's imagination.
At any rate, Marilyn got JFK talking before and after and sometimes even during. She dutifully passed all he said along to Frankie, who in turn delivered the messages to Sam. A romantic at heart, Marilyn made the mistake of falling in love with JFK.
“Jack. Do you, in your fantasies, ever wonder what it might be like if the two of us were ... married?”
Immediately, he recoiled, as if in abject horror, made some silly excuse to get out of bed as swiftly as he could, then refused to take her ever more frenzied calls to the White House.
When Bobby mentioned he’d always been jealous of his big brother’s conquest, JFK gave him the go-ahead to make a move. Shortly, he and Marilyn were involved. Marilyn, being Marilyn, quickly decided Bobby was the great love of her life.
Bobby? He’d fucked her. Now he would like to forget her.
The shit finally hit the fan on the night of May 19, 1962. A gala had been planned at Madison Square Garden in New York to honor JFK’s 45th birthday, officially still ten days off. Marilyn talked her way into a seemingly innocuous star-turn, singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” before the audience of 15,000 high level celebrities, from politicians to the literati.
“Happy birthday to you; happy ...”
Even as she stepped up to the microphone, JFK sensed an absolute disaster in the making. Still, though, he managed to smile from ear to ear throughout the proceedings, Marilyn for that brief, intense moment completely in charge of everything; she, shimmering in the lights, queen of the whole wide world.
The proverbial woman scorned, Marilyn now appeared like a light bulb someone has snapped on. She was out for blood-vengeance as only a beautiful woman can administer such punishment.
Marilyn had been sewn—literally!—into a form-fitting Jean Louis gown. Fashioned from flesh-colored marquisette material, her costume studded with 2,5000 sparkling rhinestones.
“... happy birthday to you!”
As the lights dimmed low and she delivered her sultry, vulgar, finally lewd variation, the crowd sighed, gasped, then groaned. An illusion was created in which M.M. appeared nude other than the faux diamond sparkles adorning her lush figure.
Leering at JFK, she concluded the number and marched off.
“The bitch has gone too far,” JFK told Frankie. He nodded glumly. Marilyn Monroe rated as a clear and present danger. No big problem when you had friends to take care of such things.
On August 5, the body of 36-year-old Marilyn Monroe was discovered on the floor of her Brentwood apartment. The first L.A. police officer on the scene, Sgt. Jack Clemmons, claimed the arrangement of her arms and legs, as well as the suspicious manner in which bottles of pills were aligned near the corpse, caused him to consider this “the most obviously staged death-scene” he’d ever encountered.
His insistence that Marilyn was murdered fell on deaf ears. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, of the L.A. County Coroner’s Office, ruled that “acute Barbiturate poisoning” led to the star’s passing, a “probable suicide” though possibly an accident.
According to gangland legend, a coalition of mobsters and CIA agents took care of that nasty business, believing that in so doing they cemented relations with the White House. Not taken into account was JFK’s Machiavellian inclinations. The idea that such help would earn future loyalty never occurs to someone who believes primarily in his own self, everyone else a potential sacrificial lamb, no matter how loyal in any previous crisis.
Giancana was a Machiavellian, too. With his plant in the president’s bed gone, he required another. One choice seemed made to order, a dazzling brunette named Judith Inmoor. Movie-star gorgeous, she had never stepped in front of a Hollywood camera though her sister, ‘Susan
Morrow,’ performed in several films, most memorably Cat Women of the Moon, 1953.
Judith had married a supposed rising star, William Campbell, in 1952. His alcoholism and arrogance caused him to be dumped by the major studios. By 1958 Campbell could win roles only in B junk movies. Judith divorced him. Soon she was hanging-loose with Sinatra in Vegas. Frankie introduced the beauty to his pal JFK, soon to be president. They slept together that night.
“Thanks, Jack. When you’re president, I’ll remember.”
“This is our first night together, Judith. Not the last.”
Sinatra had also introduced Judy to Johnny Roselli, who brought the girl around to Giancana. On the outs at that moment with Phyllis McGuire, Old Sam took up with Judy. When Phyllis returned, Gold needed to farm Judy out. With Monroe eliminated, Judy Inmoor filled the bill. Shortly, she was a regular guest in JFK’s bed, as he had promised some time ago.
“Me, the president’s mistress! Amazing. Just amazing.”
Judy thrilled at the danger. She carried missives back and forth between JFK and Giancana, detailing the plots to kill Castro. Judy would hand them to Frank, who would pass them over to Johnny Handsome, he in turn delivering them to Sam Gold.
“Did you ever notice, Jack, that your wife ... Jacqueline ... and I ... look a lot like each other?”
“The resemblance is striking. You could be twins.”
“How do you tell us apart?”
“Simple. You’re great in bed.”
*
Things became hairy when Jacqueline found a pair of pink panties in her pillow case. That night, as she and JFK slipped under the sheets, Jackie smiled sweetly, then slapped him across the face with the lingerie, hissing: “Would you please find out who these belong to, darling? Because they aren’t my size.”
JFK raged at Judy when next together, claiming that she’d left the panties around on purpose, to break up JFK’s marriage. She was out: just like that. Bye, bye, bitch!
Hell hath no fury like ... Judy Inmoor Campbell snapped. “Yeah? Well, maybe Sam will have something to say about that!”
JFK was not known for going pale in the face but at that moment he did. A light went off in his head: Judy was a plant. Anything and everything he said during pillow talk made its way to Giancana, through Sinatra.
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you were here for?”
“At first, perhaps. But Jack, I really did fall in love—”
When Sinatra paid a surprise visit one week later, JFK accepted him into his private lounge but remained cool, remote, distanced throughout the visit. Frank left after an hour feeling dejected. It didn’t take him long to put two and two together. When he confronted Judy she admitted JFK now knew that their arrangement had been uncovered.
Sinatra grasped that his own golden age in Camelot was over. Sir Lancelot was banished from the castle, doomed to wander the wastelands so long as JFK remained king.
That bastard. After all I did for him ...
That was his problem. If JFK merely forced Frank out of his D.C. inner circle, nothing would have been hurt other than Sinatra’s feelings. Only that was not JFK’s way.
That little shit. After all I did for him ...
JFK was mad, damn mad, and he wanted revenge. On Frank Sinatra, but also Giancana. On the whole rotten bunch of them.
Shortly, he came up with a strategy.
As Attorney General, Robert Kennedy had launched a full throttle attack on the Ku Klux Klan. JFK suggested that Bobby now employ the Justice Department to launch war on organized crime.
Meanwhile, JFK announced he would shortly take a vacation (sans wife and family) in California. Guessing his former buddy meant this as a sign that he was about to be let back ’in,’ Sinatra assumed JFK would be staying with him and spent a fortune on having his home refurnished for this great occasion. Then word reached him that JFK had accepted an invite from Bing Crosby.
Here was a double-edged sword of an insult if ever one did exist. First, Crosby had been Sinatra’s only competition as the greatest pop-jazz singer of the century.
Second, he was ... a Republican! And, by the way, Irish.
Old Sam was right, after all, about them.
In a snit, Sinatra tossed Lawford out of the rat pack. Bobby meanwhile approached J. Edgar Hoover, requesting that the FBI join his new crusade. The old bulldog would have none of it, knowing that ancient, embarrassing photograph still sat in a Chicago Mob office file. Furious, Bobby considered the Bureau’s head hancho, and his entire organization, to be irrelevant.
We’ll do it without you, J. Edgar. The less involved in bringing the Mob down, the greater glory for those who served.
Terrified of the Kennedys, Hoover had agents tail both brothers. Once aware of JFK’s affair with Judith, the FBI head put pressure on the president, applying political blackmail. The Bureau demanded JFK’s assurance that the FBI would not be phased out, and that Hoover would remain its head.
Shortly, JFK backed away from the FBI’s competition, the CIA, to the chagrin of The Company’s men. Not that this in any way satisfied Hoover. If JFK could so quickly turn on his pals, what would he do about an old enemy like himself?
All this while, Bobby had been working on his own plan to ‘get’ the mobsters. He increased the number of legal indictments against crime figures by 800 %. To the Kennedys, this seemed a fitting retribution for Giancana’s putting plants in JFK’s bed.
That, however, was not how Giancana saw it. He was the one who had been betrayed. And now? Look at this mess!
“You swore he could be trusted.”
“I’m so ashamed!” Frankie wept like a child. Sam calmed him down, patting Sinatra on the hand, like a father with his son.
“Relax, Frank. Everything will be alright.”
“Whatever you do to me, I accept, understand—”
“Not you, Frankie. You were taken in, even as I was.”
“You’re going to whack Bobby? The Attorney General?”
“Who said a frickin’ word about him?”
Sinatra gasped. “The President of the United States?”
“His little rat of a brother wouldn’t be doing this if he didn’t have the top man’s full backing.”
“But ... kill the President ... couldn’t we just—”
“Have you forgotten the old Sicilian saying? ‘When you set out to finish a snake, you cut off not the tail but its head.’”
Never had the Mob whacked an honest opponent. Like Sam Giancana, Sinatra well knew that the popular TV series The Untouchables was but a piece of violent fiction, despite real names employed for characters. On the show, mobsters constantly tried to rub out Eliot Ness, non-corruptible Fed.
In actuality, nothing like that ever occurred. However crude and brutal the game might be, there were rules. Numero uno: You didn’t shoot an honest cop. You battled in court. If you lost, you went to prison, as Chicago’s Al Capone had.
In the 1940s, that scenario had been replayed in New York. The Syndicate was scared shitless that Thomas Dewey might shut them down. But when Louis Lepke, one of their own, became frustrated with the pressure and confided to some colleagues that he was considering a hit on Dewey, word swiftly reached the top. The big bosses then, Luciano and Lansky, at once agreed that Lepke had to go. Not Dewey; Lepke. Not your enemy, not if honest.
But when one of their ilk came to you with a deal? Then, the ultimate rule applied: Nobody betrayed the Mob and lived. It didn’t matter how high up the guy may be. No exceptions.
“Still, Sam. He’s the number one man in the country.”
“The world, actually! Any objections, Frank?”
“It‘s not for me to say, Sam. Which of the boys will—”
“You gotta be kidding. The trail would lead back to my own doorstep. That ain‘t gonna happen.”
“Who, then?”
“We’ve got a new partner, the CIA. Plus the Cubans in Florida will help out. Kennedy betrayed both those organizations. And Castro ha
tes him for all the assassination attempts. Actually, a whole lot of people want JFK dead.”
“How could he possibly believe he’d get away with it?”
“Ah, what’s the Greek word, Frankie? Hubris! Yeah, that’s it. A guy gets powerful, real powerful, sooner or later he comes to think he’s all powerful. Forgets that there’s always someone, or something, way more powerful than him.”
“It’s like he loses sight of his place in the universe. And ... Bobby?”
“Once Jack is gone, he means nothing to us. Unless he ever decides to run for president. Then, of course, we’ll ...”
Frank laughed sardonically. Giancana wanted to know what he found so funny. “I’ll tell you, Sam. Kennedy’s bitch of a wife? She’ll make one gorgeous widow.”
“Yes. Jacqueline Kennedy will look beautiful in black.”
*
On November 22, 1963, at 4:20 in the afternoon (Central Time), a young female FBI agent placed a call to headquarters in D.C. When a secretary answered, she asked to speak with the director. Told that he could only be reached in an emergency, she then explained she held in her hand an information packet that had been dropped off several days earlier by Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who only a few hours before presumably shot the president. The envelope was marked “private and confidential” and “to be opened immediately in the event of my death.”
The secretary told the young woman to hold on momentarily. Less than a minute later the director’s immediately recognizable voice boomed on the other end. He wanted to know if agent James Hosty happened to be in the building and was informed that Hosty had hurried to police headquarters to oversee questioning of the key suspect. The director told the young woman to get Hosty back at once. When she asked if she ought to open the envelope the director gasped and told her no. Upon return, Hosty’s orders were to shred the unopened document and destroy the remains.
Hosty hurried back and was met by Shanklin, his superior, who relayed to Hosty what the secretary had told him. Shanklin wanted to know if there might be anything else that connected the FBI office to this doomed missive. In reply Hosty said that he had written a memorandum about the reception of Oswald’s manuscript. Shanklin ordered Hosty to destroy that, along with any other evidence linking Oswald with this office. Hosty did as told, flushing the remants down a toilet.
Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald Page 40
