by John Ridley
Frank put out his hand and I shook it, and shook the hand of the girl next to him and the other guy at the table and his girl and Paulie's girl next to me …
I felt paper crumple between our palms. I looked at the woman and she looked back with a blank meaninglessness that advertised to all who watched that the only thing going on between us was a handshake.
I did a quick hand-to-pocket magician-style before shaking with Paulie.
I crossed back to the kitchen. Along the way, from a table: “You believe that? The kid knows Frank Costello.”
Costello?
I stopped. My hands went slick with sweaty jitters, slipped over the back of a chair I used as a crutch.
Costello.
Frank Costello was a name everyone in the city knew. Most times, in the papers, it was tagged with the words alleged and reputed. Frank Costello. Why Jules was extra eager to make sure I was taken care of, why the room laughed when he laughed; the reason for all that was I was having a sit-down with the Prime Minister, one of the biggest Mafia bosses in New York.
I made it back up to my dressing room, fell onto the bed. Exhausted. The scene was turning into one long crazy carnival ride, and there was still the second show.
Sid caught up with me. I gave him the short version of me and Mr. Costello, his offer to help me out with Tahoe.
“Jesus,” Sid said to that.
Yeah. I knew. Frank Costello was the Mafia fixer. It was widely, quietly believed he'd bought and paid for New York City starting at the beat cops and ending with the mayor. Even FBI hotshot Hoover—public gambler, private degenerate—was in Costello's hip pocket, carried around same as a good-luck charm. If the mob wanted to do business in the city, if the mob wanted protection from the law, the mob went through Costello. He did things the clean way: spread money around to avoid trouble. Still, if it came his way, he had no problem giving trouble a couple of bullets to the head to keep it down for good.
Sid gave a smile, weary and wary. “You've got a friend,” he said, saying it all.
Sid headed down, got a table for the late show. In the few minutes I had before I went on, I unpocketed the piece of paper Paulie's lady friend had slipped me: Gina and a phone number.
I recollected on the girl. Not bad-looking. Very not bad-looking.
I projected a short bit into the future, thought about how I would feel after the second show—how I felt after a lot of the shows I'd done: worn out and hungry with an appetite food and drink did nothing for.
Lonely.
Lonely is how I would feel.
Gina and a phone number.
I thought about it. I thought about how good it would be to get sweaty with the woman. I thought about how good it would be, in an exotic way, to get sweaty with a white woman. With a white woman who was also making time with some guy who was the pal of some other guy who oozed respect. There was that; there was all that on one side of the scale.
On the other side was Tommy. Nothing more than the thought of Tommy, out there somewhere, thinking of me while I was thinking of her. Nothing more was needed.
I tossed out the paper.
I went down for the second show.
Even without Frank Costello leading the yucks, I killed.
MY NEW HOBBY was trying to get together with Tommy. You'd think in the age of air travel two young people making decent cash would have no trouble maintaining a fairly regular schedule of physical acquaintanceship.
You'd think.
In some five months time, Tommy made one trip back to N.Y.C. It was while I was doing two weeks in Cleveland. I made a swing through Chicago, talked about going up to see her in Detroit, but she was leaving on what Lamont had tagged the Motown Review, a traveling road show of fresh and as of yet unknown acts doing warm-up for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the newborn record company's first bona fide stars. The review was a solid idea as far as getting people familiar with new artists and make some cash at the same time. I may not have liked the guy, I may still have figured him for having eyes for my girl, but I had to admit Lamont knew his business.
The review was playing mostly down through the South and the Delta, bringing entertainment to blacks who otherwise didn't have much access to it. After my adventures in Bigotville I was nothing but worried for Tommy. But unlike my road dates, the revue played the chitlin circuit—black-owned clubs and venues—where performers got treated better than as if they were just field labor.
Tommy suggested to me I should try getting on the circuit. There was plenty of stage time to be had, the pay was good and the people appreciative.
Sure.
But black comics on the chitlin circuit didn't make it to the Sullivan show.
I told Tommy I was fine with my clubs.
The revue would be a month solid on the road, and by the time Tommy was done and free I'd be back out doing dates.
I missed Tommy. More than that, us being apart was a kind of torture. At first. But gradually over the months, on the occasions I talked to her, she sounded more and more content as the pain of separation was dulled. She was getting used to Detroit and being on the road. My fear was she was getting used to life without me.
I distracted my worries with constant work.
I needed the work.
Not so much for the money, although the money was sweet. Most times now more than four hundred dollars a week. What I needed the work for was the work itself. I was getting to be a solid performer, and every time I went up I was honing a style and presence, putting together an act that couldn't help but get laughs. And when I was really on, when I was clicking, I could barely do much less than kill.
But there was still something missing from my sets. I knew it. Sid knew it and would tell me so. What I didn't have was a distinctiveness that separated me from every other Charlie cracking wise. Jack Carter, Shelley Berman, Norm Crosby; except for my skin, I was no different. No better, no worse. No different. You could be as good as you wanted, you could kill as often as you wanted, you could get paid as much as the law would allow, but until you were selling something others weren't, you were just another guy trying to make funny. What I didn't have was a voice. The nutty part was: The one time in my life I needed to be different, and I was painfully the same.
I WAS MAKING A STAND at a club in St. Louis. I got a call from Sid, who'd gotten a call from the Cal-Neva in Tahoe. They were offering me a week starting in a month's time.
I asked who I'd be opening for.
“No one.”
“No one? What do you me—”
“You're headlining, that's what I mean. They want to put you in the Cabaret Lounge. Not as big as the Celebrity Room, seats less than a hundred, but the—”
Hearing, but not believing: “Headlining? You sure it's me they want?”
“By name they asked for you, and on top they're bumping you up to five-fifty a week.”
Small room or not, five hundred fifty cash-dollars a week to headline a show?
Frank Costello. It must have been Frank Costello coming through for me.
“Only …” Sid cut in with the spoiler. “The week they're offering is same as Frannie's debut on Sullivan. So I asked the booker to move you to—”
“No.”
“Jackie, they said it was no problem to mo—”
“I don't want to chance it.”
“Chance it?” Sid couldn't even begin to dig my lingo. “Chance what? You know same as me why they're making the offer. With a guy the size of Frank Costello in your pocket, you never had a better bet. Look, I'll get a message to him personally that—”
“My first gig headlining, a favor from some cat I barely know; I'm not going to let that pass. Not for nothing.”
“Not for Frannie? Frances isn't nothing, Jackie. She's your friend.”
Static. Between me and Sid, across a transcontinental landline, there was nothing but static that filled a pause that was less than a quarter of one minute but felt much longer.
Sid cut through
it with “I'll book the date” and hung up.
Later, I would call, tell Frances that I couldn't make the Sullivan show. She did her “don't worry about it” bits, but the whole scene was a definite letdown for her. I told Fran how sorry I was I wouldn't be there. I told her I'd be watching and how happy I'd be for her, how proud I was of her.
What I didn't tell Fran: I didn't mention how that little piece of me that was jealous when she first landed her record deal, her CBS deal, in the dark and cold inside me, had grown like a fungus into something larger.
TAHOE WAS THAT OTHER SPOT in Nevada. Different from Reno, Las Vegas, it was more a place for the outdoorsy crowd—people who dug shushing the High Sierra slopes in winter, camping and boating in the warm months. Tahoe had few crowds, was light on traffic. It was the summer stock version of Vegas. There was gaming, sure, but it was gaming as an afterthought: Okay, we climbed, we skied, we did the water jazz. Guess we might as well drop five hundred at the tables. There was high living to be done, but it was high living done on the low profile.
The Cal-Neva sat on the north shore of the lake. Smallish, ringed with bungalows, the joint itself was more lodge than hotel, parlor room than casino. Its novelty was—like the claim of its name—the border ran right down the middle of the swimming pool. You could sip highballs in California, then stroll on over to the Silver State to get a little roulette in.
I made the trip alone. Sid'd stayed in New York with Fran, had made a point of staying in New York with Fran. He was signifying to me.
I flew into Reno where I would get picked up and driven the rest of the way to Lake Tahoe and the Cal-Neva. When I got off the plane I didn't know what to expect, so I expected what I'd gotten from most of the hotels I'd played across the country: cold stares and reluctant handshakes from the very same people who'd hired me. A room somewhere off the property. A “thanks for coming, here's your money, now beat it, boy” attitude all around.
What I got was none of that.
What I got was picked up from my flight by some fellow driving a just-about-right-off-the-lot Cadillac Series 62, sporting a uniform and the works.
He was strictly: “How was your flight, Mr. Mann? Is this your bag, sir? Let me get it for you. Right this way, if you please.” He opened the back door for me, stood holding it. Stunned, I fell into the car.
The driver drove. I rode. Anxious for a while. Expecting at any moment to get hit with the punch line to the joke.
None came.
Two hours to Tahoe. The smoothness of the Caddy, the rhythm of the ride; I couldn't help but ease up, settle back. I gave the inside of my eyelids a full examination.
When I came awake, we were cruising up the Cal-Neva's drive. Waiting for me was a clinging vine of uniformed laborers—luggage marines—to heft my bags, check me in, show me this or that. Make sure I was taken care of. Endless in number, hot to please, they reproduced faster than I could dole out tips.
One of the bellboys lackeyed me to my room. Nothing somewhere on the “dark” side of town. My digs were right there at the lodge. King bed. View of the lake. Same as any other patron. Better than most. The kicker: Unlike any other patron, the house was paying me to be there. The whole of it left me head-shaking stupefied.
But why? When I gave it thought, why should any of it—the car from the airport, the “yes, sir” service, the room—why should it rattle me? I was star quality. I was headline status. I was breaking through. I was seeing light at the end of the long tunnel I'd crawled from Harlem to stardom. I was right where I deserved to be.
I wished Tommy were there to share it with me. I wished Sid were there to enjoy it with me. I wished my pop were there so I could take it all and rub it in his face.
He wouldn't've cared. He would've just wanted to know where the bar was and if the juice was gratis.
And then, almost as an “oh, yeah” afterthought to everything else, there were the shows, my reason for being in Tahoe in the first place. The cabaret was small—if you did some pushing and shoving, you could get maybe fifty people in there, so by default there wasn't a night during the week the room wasn't packed. And there wasn't a night during the week I didn't kill. The management helped by building me up with some fresh-smelling propaganda: the new sensation straight from the Copacabana in New York. A favorite opener for Buddy Greco and Tony Bennett. But more than the hype, I was just having good shows. My timing was on, my presence was a definite. My self-confidence was treetop high. Maybe I hadn't found my voice yet, but from the way the crowd howled things up, the voice I owned spoke just fine.
Thursday night. After the show. I was on my way back to my room, when this fellow stops me with: “Jackie.”
“Yes?”
He was a short guy. Plump. Round. He looked as if, under his clothes, he were trying to smuggle gelatin across the border. “Jilly Rizzo.” He said his name like saying it should mean something to me.
It didn't.
I tried to put a little “yeah, and … ?” on my face. He didn't catch it.
Jilly said: “He wants to talk to you.”
“Who?”
I got tossed a look that was good and queer: How the hell could I not know who the hell he was talking about?
“Frank,” he said.
“Mr. Costello's here?”
He was trying to be patient, that was plain. But it was also plain this Jilly was a cat who didn't have much patience for the uninitiated.
“Sinatra wants to talk to you.”
FRANK SINATRA FILLED THE ROOM.
Not physically. Not hardly. Sporting an orange sweater over a white turdeneck with brown slacks, he was just a guy, somebody's fashion-senseless uncle. About as imposing as a plate of sauceless spaghetti. He was rounding into middle age, heavier than he'd been as the crooner from Hoboken. Balder. A combover took care of that. He was getting with lines on his face, the middle of his forehead resembling a tilled field. But all those defects were shingled around eyes that were sky blue. Blue and sprouting crow's-feet.
What could barely fit into the room wasn't the man himself but a combo of legend, myth, and good PR. There was the story of a man going from Swoonatra to Charlie Has-been to Chairman of the Board—star of movies AND records AND television AND any other form of entertainment shy of writing haikus. Pal, drinking buddy, and messiah to some of the biggest stars and hardest livers that Hollywood ever turned out. Not so secretly the same with a slew of Mafiosos. There were the bobby-soxers paid to take a dive, the “wrong door” raid he pulled with the Yankee Clipper, trying to dig a little girl/girl dirt on M.M. that nearly landed them both in jail. There was the Oscar, the brawls, the face-punched reporters … And there were the love affairs.
There was the love affair. The off-as-many-times-as-on-again one he had with Ava Gardner—hot, hard, and violent, trips to the hospital as often as trips to die flower shop. Made my beefs with Tommy look like a Mormon holding hands with a Quaker. Word on the street: After Ava kicked him to the curb for good, Frank tried to off himself.
More than once.
That a star his size should want to check out over a chick, over any one chick … that's love.
The other thing filling the room was Frank's voice. His legendary voice. Still rich. Still as deep and as expressive as the day he first cut a side.
At the moment it was expressing some of the foulest language I'd ever heard at some poor Harvey, withering, drenched with his own perspiration. A sweat balloon that'd sprung a leak. The guy was too scared to move, to blink, to look at Frank, or to look away from him. All he could do was stand there and take it. Lots and lots of it. From what I could pick out between variations on a theme of “fuck,” apparently someone had won and won good at the blackjack tables. Probably counting cards. Frank the casino owner didn't much care for the fact that none of his employees saw fit to cut the guy off before he walked out with a bundle.
“What the fuck do I pay you for, to hand some other fuckin' crumb money—my money—you stupid fuckin' guinea! ”
The cat on the receiving end sputtered. I couldn't tell if he was trying to talk or starting to cry.
“I ought to give you one.” Frank curled a fist to end any confusion as to what the one was he was thinking of giving away was. “I ought to just haul off and … Go on, you lousy fink. Get the fuck out of here!”
The cat wasted no time in obeying.
“And I don't mean out of my lodge, I mean out of this fuckin' state! Don't stop. You hit fuckin' Canada, you don't fuckin' stop!”
I doubted if he'd stop before he hit Iceland.
Done with the man, Frank crossed to a bar and did some mixing—went straight to it as though me and Jilly were vapor.
Jilly said: “Frankie …”
“What! ”
“You wanted to see Jackie.”
He looked up, looked at me.
Let me tell you: I picked up sweating right where that other guy had left off.
“Howzit, Charlie?” Frank's smile couldn't have been brighter, his voice any more even. It was as if what had just happened—the yelling and the screaming—had happened a couple of years prior if at all. Moving toward me, hand out: “How's your bird?”
“My …”
His handshake was firm but friendly. “Want some gas, Charlie?”
I didn't know what I was agreeing to, but, “… Sure.”
As he headed back for the bar: “What are ya drinkin'?”
“A Coca-Cola will be fine, Mr. Sinatra.”
Frank laughed.
Jilly laughed.
But different from most times when people busted up over me— at least when I wasn't onstage—they weren't laughing at me. They were just two guys having a good chuckle.
“It's all right, Charlie,” Frank assured. “We're all eighteen. Have yourself a little of Mr. Daniel's.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sinatra.”
“And what's with this Mr. Sinatra jazz? I'm strictly Charlie, same as you.”
He was so relaxed, unassuming. Talking with him, talking with Frank, was the same as talking with any other non-superstar guy. Just another Charlie in a sweater, a fellow who could've been getting ready to watch a ball game or rake leaves. The normalcy of the moment made it seem all the more unreal. Not that his being around should have been completely unexpected. That Frank owned the Cal-Neva was common knowledge. You got that plain enough from the sign on the road leading to the joint: WELCOME TO FRANK SINATRA'S CAL-NEVA LODGE. But who figured he would frequent a Tahoe lodge whether he owned the place or not? And who in the hell would ever have figured he would want to have a sit-down with me?
