The restaurant had once been among the “in” nightspots on the Sunset Strip, especially after hours. But Ciro’s had closed in ’57, the Mocambo in ’59, making a dinosaur out of Sherry’s, its brightly lighted interior, glass-and-chrome decor, and Cole Porter-playing pianist suggesting a yesterday that seemed forever ago.
Nonetheless, my teenaged son loved to come here. It wasn’t the celebrities, a good number of whom had stayed loyal, though you were more likely to see Susan Hayward than Sandra Dee, Robert Taylor than Troy Donahue. For Sam the appeal of Sherry’s was simple-I always let him order the lobster tail. Apparently his big-shot producer stepfather was too cheap to spring for the four bucks.
You see, I had a piece of Sherry’s. Fred Rubinski was the restaurant’s principal owner, and had let me in on what had at the time been a good investment. It might still be a good investment, if Fred ever realized he needed to throw in the towel and sell this valuable hunk of real estate.
We’d had the soup and salad and were waiting for my son’s lobster and his father’s filet. Sam was in the required suit and tie, looking very Sunday school though this was a Thursday evening. I wore a blue plaid Palm Beach sport jacket with a pale blue shirt, navy tie, and navy slacks, cool in more than one sense of the word and suddenly out of place in my own restaurant.
“Tell me how Marilyn’s doing,” my son said.
Sam knew nothing of anything I’d done for her (much less with her), but like everybody in the world, he was aware of her woes from the papers and TV.
“She’s doing fine,” I said. “She’s renegotiated with Fox, and has been doing all sorts of photo shoots and interviews.”
Sam nodded, sipped his glass of iced Coke, and said, “That’s called a media blitz, Dad.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
Actually I hadn’t seen Marilyn since that night at my Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. We’d spoken on the phone a number of times, usually but not always initiated by me. Funny thing was, she didn’t make any reference, not even veiled, to that evening. This was a little troubling, since she’d indicated she would take my advice and close the chapter on the Kennedy brothers, and the last thing I wanted out of her right now was selective amnesia.
But, from our phone chats, I could tell her focus was her career, just as I’d suggested. So I felt all right about it. Not great, but all right. And, anyway, her phones were tapped, weren’t they? Naturally she would watch what she said.
Most of my time these past couple weeks had been taken up by agency work, Fred talking me into booking a number of client meetings, on matters ranging from divorce to home security. I even went out to several celebrity homes to check out possible security problems-these were people you’ve heard of, but as they have nothing to do with this narrative, we’ll respect their privacy.
The thousand-dollar retainer from a certain labor leader had been dealt with as well. I had twice called the attorney whose name Hoffa had provided, and informed him that Marilyn had privately confirmed that she’d indeed had affairs with both Kennedy brothers. I also shared that she indicated both men were history, as she was going full-speed ahead with projects ranging from two films, a television special (a new version of the old whore-versus-man-of-God play, Rain ), and possibly a Broadway show, the latter obviously Lee Strasberg getting into the act.
Passing along this stuff, garnered from that night at my bungalow and our handful of phone calls, was no betrayal of Marilyn. Hoffa had already known about Jack’s and Bobby’s respective dalliances, and almost certainly had the tapes to prove it. And the showbiz stuff was in the press or soon would be.
So everything was fine, considering-I’d even had a medical checkup that came out A-OK. At Nate ’n Al’s for breakfast after my night with Marilyn (whom I’d driven home around 2:00 A.M.), I had considered ruefully the distinction of my morning worries-that I was fearful of having caught VD from Marilyn Monroe because she’d been sleeping with the president of the United States.
But I had a clean bill of health, and Marilyn seemed to be buzzing happily along, causing no international incidents that I was aware of. I was in the company of my son, who loved me-I was buying him lobster, remember-and tomorrow I would be back in that more familiar lunatic asylum known as Chicago, Illinois.
So I was in a good mood, until I noticed the two men dining in a booth across the way.
One was Frank Sinatra, who was nice enough to frequent the restaurant (probably the biggest star who still did) and his presence was not what put me off my filet. It was his companion, a gent named Johnny Rosselli, who should have known better than to grace our premises. Had he not been with Frank, someone would have said something-if Fred Rubinski had been here, he might have even with Sinatra present.
Back in ’49, Sherry’s had been the scene of a failed but bloody attempt on gangster Mickey Cohen’s life. A cop had almost died, and one of Mick’s bodyguards did die. The botched hit got lots of press, and the wrong kind of publicity, except where morbid tourist trade was concerned. So Fred had sent out word that we were no longer friendly to that breed of customer.
Not that Rosselli looked like a hood. You might take him for a successful agent or producer, with that perfectly coiffed silver-gray hair, deep tan, cool blue-gray eyes, and flashing smile. His chocolate-brown jacket hadn’t cost more than your average used Buick, his crisp yellow button-down shirt with green striped tie looked plenty smart, and that watch catching the light and winking at me would almost certainly be a Rolex.
I knew Johnny fairly well. He was a guy who’d been around in mob circles, aligned with this group and that one, and had even been described as a gangland ambassador, who could mediate problems and pave the way for alliances.
Mostly, though, he was Chicago, with strong Outfit allegiances, and his history with Hollywood went back to the days of Frank Nitti’s attempted takeover of the movie unions. This had led to Nitti’s suicide (or maybe murder) and jail sentences for such top Outfit guys as Paul Ricca, Louis Campagna, Phil D’Andrea and… Johnny Rosselli.
Before the indictments, Rosselli had been a big shot around Tinseltown, wining and dining studio bosses, hitting the nightspots, dating actresses, winding up married to one for a while. They called him “The Hollywood Kid” in those days. Now, as an elder mob statesman, he was “The Silver Fox.”
And he didn’t live in Los Angeles anymore, at least not full-time. Since ’57, he’d been Giancana’s man in Vegas, and was the entrepreneur behind the Tropicana, whose owners were a who’s who of mob bosses from New York’s Frank Costello to Florida’s Meyer Lansky, from Louisiana’s Carlos Marcello to, yes, Chicago’s Giancana.
Sliding out of the booth, I said to my son, “I need to talk to a couple of people.”
“That’s Frank Sinatra sitting over there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I need to pay my respects.”
“Don’t tell him I’m an Elvis fan.”
“I’ll try not… Listen, when you’re finished with that lobster, order yourself the biggest, nastiest dessert on the menu. I may be a while.”
“Deal,” he said, dunking lobster meat into melted butter.
I went over and both men smiled at me. Sinatra had a great smile, of course, a kind of beacon in that ravaged face; but Rosselli could beat him at that game-the Silver Fox had a dazzler, wide and seemingly sincere. He waved the hand with a few thousand in diamond rings and bid me join them in their half-circle booth between two empty ones. Not an accident. I got in next to Rosselli.
They had eaten and were working on after-dinner drinks-Sinatra his usual martini, Rosselli his trademark Smirnoff on the rocks. I flagged a waitress down and ordered a gimlet.
Sinatra was in a blue sport jacket and lighter blue shirt with a yellow-and-blue tie. He looked sharp, but next to the immaculate Rosselli, he seemed an overage college kid.
“Charlie,” Frank said (that was the name he used for all of his friends), “is that big galoot your son?” He was nodding toward Sam.
> “Yeah. Good kid. His mother hasn’t ruined him, which speaks well for his character.”
Frank twitched a half smile. “Yeah, I know the creep your ex married. I did a picture for him once. He should only drop dead, twice.”
Rosselli said to me, “You spend a lot of time with the boy?”
“Whenever I can. I don’t live out here, you know. He usually has holidays with me, back in Chicago.”
With a thoughtful frown, the smile gone, Rosselli said, “Very important, family.”
I wasn’t sure what “family” he meant.
“Listen,” the silver-haired gangster said, that endless smile back again, his manner good-natured, “it’s a nice coincidence, running into you. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
I gave him a smile-maybe not a dazzler, but it would have to suffice. “Lucky, too,” I said, “because I’m heading back tomorrow. I can take about a month out here and then I get the urge to date a female who doesn’t want to be in the movies.”
He chuckled at that. Then he turned to Sinatra and said, “Didn’t you have a phone call you had to make?”
“Yeah. That’s right, John. Thanks for reminding me.” The singer stubbed out his cigarette in a glass Sherry’s ashtray, and disappeared faster than Claude Rains. Nobody pushed Sinatra around, but if a mob guy said go fuck yourself, he would ask which hole.
That’s when I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.
I said, “So, you called the restaurant to see if I had a reservation?”
The gray-blue eyes twinkled. “Actually, I called your partner. I said I wanted to see you, and he said I better hurry because you were about to go home. And he was good enough to say I might catch up with you here.”
Great knowing my partner would pass along my whereabouts to any gangster who asked. Particularly when I was with my son.
“Johnny,” I said, “do we have any business? I don’t recall us having any business, not for a while.”
He lighted up a cigarette. Yeah, a Rolex.
“Nate, I need you to take a message to your friend Bobby.”
I didn’t suppose he meant Darin.
“You have an inflated idea of my importance,” I said. “I’ve seen him once in the past six months.”
“But you can reach him. And you need to take some responsibility here. This is about the Caribbean matter, Nate.”
He meant Cuba, of course.
“Johnny, I am no part of that. I set up a meeting. That makes me the guy that introduced the happy couple-but I had nothing to do with the baby.”
He leaned nearer; he smelled good, redolent of some cologne I didn’t recognize because I couldn’t afford it on sixty grand a year.
“You put this in motion, Nate, and I appreciate that, because it’s something I want to do. I hate the fucking Commies and I’m a good American. I’m a proud immigrant to this great country, which is partly why I am pissed off.”
There was nothing pissed off in his tone, however; he was genial, and smiling lightly. Those at the table nearest us couldn’t have guessed that the dapper gangster was enraged.
He continued: “Your friend, I won’t say his name again, is working on getting me deported. Could you let him know that it’s difficult for me to deliver on what I promised, where Mr. Castro is concerned, if I have been fucking deported? And the IRS harassment, that’s got to stop. And the phone taps, and the shadowing.”
I pushed the air with my hands. “This is nothing to do with me. I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want to know anything about it.”
He ignored that. “Do you have any idea, Nate, what your friend is putting Mooney through?” Mooney was Giancana. “They’re pulling that lockstep routine on him.”
Round-the-clock surveillance.
“They follow him into restaurants,” he was saying, “they follow him into church, they follow his ass onto the goddamn golf course. Mooney’s had to shut down protection and gambling, back on your turf, Nate. He’s thinking of suing the FBI for harassment.”
“If you or Mooney have FBI troubles,” I said, shifting in the booth, “that isn’t necessarily coming from Bob. That prick Hoover has a mind of his own. Anyway, talking to me about this is useless.”
The smile broadened and the gray-blue eyes turned cold-not twinkling now. “You tell your friend that his brother is still fucking Judy Campbell. Tell him that.”
I almost asked if she was also still fucking Giancana, but let it pass.
Rosselli, still good-natured, smiling, soft-spoken, touched his chest. “I own Judy Campbell. I introduced her to Mooney. And I have her in my pocket. She will spill if I tell her to spill.”
“Johnny…”
“You inform your friend that I am a good American, a patriot, and I am happy to perform this Cuban service for my country. I have asked for no money. Did you know that, Nate?”
I raised surrender hands. “I didn’t, and I don’t want to. Listen, you must have a spook contact.”
After all, this was a CIA setup all the way-they were the point men on this Operation Mongoose. I was fine with somebody killing Castro; I just didn’t want in on it. Christ, how had I allowed myself to get on even the fringes of such dangerous shit?
“I have a contact,” he said, after a healthy sip of Smirnoff, “but that agency has more layers than a devil’s food cake. And he tells them what to do-he’s the president’s brother, and the president put him in charge of it.”
“If you say so.”
“Heller, Bobby’s your friend. You used to work for him.”
Funny thing was, Rosselli was tight with Hoffa, too. And Hoffa thought I’d only pretended to be Bobby’s pal, to spy on him and spread disinformation for my real buddy, Jimmy; but Hoffa had been good about keeping that to himself. Layers was right. Devil’s food was right.
Rosselli chuckled, and from a distance he might have seemed to be relating a funny little story.
“Here I am,” the Silver Fox said, “helping the government, helping my country, and that cocky runt of a son of a bitch is breaking my balls… Will you excuse me, Nate? I need to visit the little boys’ room.”
He gave me the warmest smile anybody ever gave anyone, patted my shoulder in a convivial manner, and slid out of the booth on the absent Sinatra’s side.
When I was alone in the booth, my son glanced over at me, and I just shrugged. He gave a little “no problem” wave, and dug into his dessert. Would be a nice touch if it were devil’s food, but Sherry’s specialty was “imported” New York cheesecake. They made it for us over at Canter’s.
Sinatra returned alone and said, “Johnny asked if you would excuse him. He just remembered he had another engagement.”
Before he’d got back into the booth, I said, “You want to join my son and me?”
Sinatra shook his head and waved off that suggestion, then slid in, and edged over onto Rosselli’s spot. He lighted up a cigarette with a gold FAS lighter.
“I’ll say hello to the boy, on the way out, if you like,” he said. “But you and I should talk first.”
“He’s an Elvis fan, anyway.”
He gave me half a smile. Those blue eyes were at least as winning as Rosselli’s gray-blue ones.
“Listen, Charlie,” he said, and his mouth curved in that familiar way, “I wanted to ask you about Marilyn. About how she’s doing.”
“You’re one of her favorite people. Just call her and check for yourself.”
He waved that away, too. “Not that long ago, we got kind of serious, Zelda and me.”
Frank often called Marilyn “Zelda,” her own favorite pseudonym that she often traveled under: Zelda Zonk.
“But she’s got too many problems,” he said, “and too many needs… She’s a beauty, at least when she takes time to clean herself up, and she’s Hollywood royalty, no question. But the last thing an eighteen-karat manic-depressive like yours truly needs is being attached to somebody more screwed up than he is.”
“She doesn’t seem that
screwed up to me. I don’t know her as well as you, Frank. I’ve done a few jobs for her, and spent some time with her now and then, and never saw this drunk, drug-addict, messed-up girl everybody talks about.”
“Oh, that messed-up girl’s real, all right. But so is the one you’re describing. It’s just… I really care about that kid, only, shit, she attracts tragedy like blue serge does lint.” He shivered. “I don’t think I can handle her melodrama anymore.”
Did he mean the Fox firing? Or did he know about Jack Kennedy?
I took it nice and easy. “Look, she’s very intent on getting her career back on track right now. I saw her a couple weeks ago, and she was lining up what my son says is called a ‘media blitz.’”
He grinned. “I’ve seen some of that. She’s been fighting that garbage those studio clowns have been putting out. Good for her.”
“My understanding is Fox has offered her a new contract. To finish that picture she was making with your buddy Dino, and then another one after that. Understand, I’m not saying she doesn’t have any love-life problems.”
“What kind of love-life problems, Charlie?”
“If you want to know, you should call your Rat Pack pal Lawford and ask him.”
He stabbed the cigarette out on the tablecloth. I’d forgotten he hated that Rat Pack term…
… but that wasn’t it.
“That limey bastard,” he said. “I’ve about had it with his no-talent ass. We got two pictures lined up, me and Dean and Sammy and Joey, and Lawford’s supposed to be in them, too. I am this fucking close to pulling the chain and flushing that four-flusher. You know what the Seal and his brother-in-law did to me?”
The Seal was Lawford (aka “Charlie the Seal” for his cigarette cough) and I was tempted to hear the whole Palm Springs story from Frank’s side, but decided he might set fire to the tablecloth this time.
“I know about the president canceling on you and going to Crosby’s instead,” I said gently. “I’d call that somewhat ungrateful.”
“You’re goddamn right, after all I did for them! But I don’t blame Jack, really-I mean, I talk to him on the phone all the time, he’s had me to the White House for lunch… never when Jackie’s around, ’cause that bitch hates my Italian ass, but that fuckin’ Bobby. It’s his doing.”
Bye bye,baby nh-15 Page 12
