by John Ridley
I pulled up into the drive and went for the door, but before I could ring or knock, it opened. It was Sammy, processed hair messed, a growth of beard, and looking as though he hadn't known sleep for a week.
Sammy said nothing. He just opened the door, then shuffled back into the house zombie-style. I followed him into a living room, big as my whole place back in New York, where he fell into a couch.
I didn't know what to say, where to start. “Are you … Is everythin—”
“He's trying to kill me.”
I did some quick looking around with a little ducking added in. I didn't need to haul myself from bed and drive all the way up into the Hills just to get my life ended.
Sammy said again: “He's trying to kill me,” then added, “Frank's trying to kill me.”
“Frank Costello?”
“Sinatra. Francis wants my hide.”
“Why? What did you—”
“I didn't do anything. I didn't… A few months ago I was on the radio in Chicago—”
“The Jack Eigen show. Yeah, I heard. What were you thinking?”
Sammy took my words as well as a bullet. Going fetal on me: “You, too? Oh, baby, I'm dead.”
“No, no, it wasn't that bad,” I lied. “I didn't think it was that bad.”
“Frank did. He heard about it and the man blew his stack. He put the word out: Nobody hire Smoky. I'm getting deals canceled, bookings canceled. He had me thrown out of a movie. I had a contract, Jackie, and he had me thrown out!”
“Do you want a drink?” I asked, not knowing what other remedy to offer and remembering how good some booze made me feel in my time of trouble. “How about a drink?”
“Oh, God. What am I going to do?” Sammy keeled over a little more, buried his face in a pillow.
I had to sit down. The situation was going to require some serious attention, and nothing in my life I'd ever seen, heard, or done had ever prepped me for dealing with star-level meltdowns.
“Look, Sammy, you're one of the biggest acts there is. Frank, yeah, he can cause you some trouble, but he can't take away everything.”
Lifting his head up from the pillow: “Baby, if you think that, then you don't know the man. It's Frank's world. We just live in it.” Back to the pillow his head went.
I offered the obvious: “Why don't you talk to him?”
“I've tried. He won't return my calls; he won't see me. He was playing the Fontainebleau when I was at the Eden Roc. I went over, and he wouldn't even take the stage until I was out of the hotel.” Again, for emphasis:“He—wouldn't—even—take—the—stage.”
“I don't… Sure, he's a little upset now, but he's not going to—”
“He's doing a picture.”
“He'—”
“He's doing a picture and everybody's in it.”
“What do you mean, everybody?”
“Dino, Joey, Angie, Peter—”
“Lawford? But he—”
“He hates Lawford, but he's in. Everybody's in, and I'm going to be out if things don't get patched up.”
“Well, can't you have someone to talk to Frank for you? Maybe Dean—”
“Dean doesn't stick out his neck to shave it. Angie's got more spine than Lawford, but Frank doesn't care what a dame's got to say. Joey's lucky to be around …”
Real suddenly it was dawning on me what I was doing in the Hollywood Hills first thing in the morning.
“Sammy—”
“Please, Jackie …” Lifting himself up now but still too destitute to stand, Sammy did his pleading from where he sat. “There's no one else.”
“Me? I'm supposed to go to Frank Sinatra and … I'm not—”
“He's soft for you. He likes you.”
“Yeah, but I'm … I'm …” As much as I hated to say it, the reality was “I'm nobody.”
“Jackie … ” A lot was welling up inside Sammy. A lot of imploring and beseeching concerning the desperation of the situation. There was a lot of hurt and a lot of need, and there was a whole lot of fear of a man who was looking at everything he'd ever built up, everything he ever held dear … There was the fear of a man looking at his whole life about to come crumbling down around him, smashed to bits because of one moment's indiscretion. And all of that came crying from him in one single word: “Please.”
I thought of that day in Chicago. I thought of me in the airport listening to Sammy on the radio and thinking: Oh, well. It's his business, not mine. If I'd known then what I know now …
I said: “All right.”
SINATRA WAS IN PALM SPRINGS. He had a place out there. Sammy gave me the number and, later, after working up some courage, I called. Jilly answered, and I was glad for it. I told him I wanted to speak to Frank, hoping he wouldn't be around. I could tell Sammy I called, I tried, but Frank wasn't—
Jilly told me to hold on, went away from the phone, came back, said: “Frank says sure, c'mon out.”
“But I—”
Jilly started feeding me directions.
A face-to-face wasn't what I had bargained for. But I knew well enough that once you got an invite from the Chairman there was no declining it. I wrote down Jilly's directions, got in my car, and headed for the desert.
Close to three hours of driving got me to Frank's place, which wasn't a place. It was a compound—a ranch house in the middle of a few acres on Wonder Palms Road just off the Tamarisk Country Club. Tennis court, pool, a couple of guest cabins ringed with cactus and ocotillo and prickly pear; it was the desert outpost of some swinging missionary.
I parked, went for what I thought was the front door. The welcome mat read: GO AWAY.
Nice.
I rang the bell.
The desert was hot, the air was baked sandpaper rubbing at you, rubbing at you.
A second ring of the doorbell made Jilly eventually appear.
“Hey, Jackie,” he said but said flat, not happy to see me, but was, like a couple of months of winter, resigned to my being around. Jilly's sole occupation in life was being Frank's friend. I got the feeling he didn't much care for other people intruding on his work. “C'mon back and say hey to Frank.”
Jilly led and I followed. The house was mostly decorated with memorabilia—posters of Frank's movies. Frank's gold records, pictures of Frank with this or that famous person. In fact, the overriding motif was Frank. If most men's homes were their castles, Frank's was a temple to himself. It was that, and it was orange. Frank loved his orange.
“Orange is the happiest color,” he said as he welcomed me into his living room. “I never get tired of it.”
I could tell. He was wearing an orange sport shirt with brown pants. I guess they went together. Sort of.
“What are you drinking?” Frank asked.
I said: “It's a little early for me.”
Dismissing that: “It's never too early to be somebody. Jilly, put some Jack over ice for Charlie.”
Jilly did as told.
I stepped to some glass panes that ran from ceiling to floor and looked out over the pool and off into the desert. “It's a beautiful place you've got.”
“I dig the desert. Hot, dry, sun cooks it all day … Makes the land tough. Makes everything that lives out there tough. You know what lives in the desert?”
“What lives in the desert?”
“Stuff that won't die.”
The three of us gave the thought a moment to marinate.
Jilly handed me my drink.
Frank wanted to know: “How the shows going?”
“Good. Good so far. In fact, I really shouldn't stay long. I've got to make the show tonight.”
“Well, I'm glad you could come out and visit. This place is for my friends. You're a friend now. Friends are always welcome. Ain't that right, Jilly?”
Jilly made some kind of noise.
“I appreciate that. I appreciate your time, and you looking out for me… .” How did I go into what I had to get into? There was no smooth way. I just started talking and hoped I'd st
umble to a point same as I stumbled into this situation. “Friendship is really, really important. I know you know that. A friend of yours is a friend forever. And the reason I bring that up is I saw … I was talking to Sammy—”
One word. One word out of my mouth and Frank went as red as the walls were orange. “That lousy son of a bitch! That crumb. Who the hell does he think he is, bad-mouthin' me?”
I sputtered but said nothing, just wanted to stay out .of the way of the lava flow. Remembering the party, I moved away from the plate windows.
“Bad enough he's got to talk me down on the radio, but he does it in Chicago. Chicago!”
“You got friends in Chicago,” Jilly piped in, tossing gas on the fire.
“I got a lot of friends in Chicago, and he gets on the air and humiliates me? And after what I done for him. That backstabbin' dirty nigger,” he spat without regard to me.
I didn't think, I didn't believe, that Frank had suddenly gone Klan. In that moment that word was for Sammy alone. Frank just wanted to hurt and was willing to use all the weapons at hand.
“Thinks he's big? Thinks he's bigger than me? I'll crush him.” He looked dead at me. “I'll smash any crumb that crosses me.”
Jilly smiled.
The eruption was subsiding. If I was going to say anything, there was no better opportunity.
“Well, he asked for it.”
That was a little left turn Frank wasn't expecting from me. “You think so?”
“Even if he did believe that nonsense” —I hit nonsense hard— “about him being a bigger act than you—and I know in his heart he doesn't believe it—no, he's got no business going on the radio and spilling his guts.”
“No. No, he don't. See, you get it, Jackie.” To Jilly: “See how Jackie gets it?”
Jilly made some kind of noise.
“That crumby kike screwed up, and now I got to teach him somethin'.”
I said slowly, loading in a lot of doubt: “… I guess.”
What I said, how I said it, it got Frank's attention. “What do you mean ‘you guess’?”
“Oh, I'm agreeing with you. You could crush Sammy. I know you could, he knows it. Everybody knows it. It's just too bad you'll give them ammunition.”
Frank looked from me to Jilly and back to me. “Ammunition? What are you talkin' about? Who the hell is them?”
The way I figured it, there was no way to talk, argue, logic, or reason Frank into forgiveness. The only tool big enough to move a star Sinatra's size was ego.
“Them. The press, the gossip rags. Louella and Dorothy.”
That struck bone. “Kilgallen? That goddamn chinless wonder.”
“Well, that's what I'm saying. Day and night they're sharpening pencils for you. They're not going to write it up as Sammy getting what Sammy's asking for. The headline's going to read: Sinatra crushes guy for sport. Like I said, you're giving them ammunition.”
“What's he supposed to do?” Jilly wanted to know.
“Well … ” I took a pause, played as if the idea I was working toward was just then popping into my head. “You could do what nobody would expect you to do. You could forgive Sammy. I mean, after what he did, you forgive him, what are people going to say but ‘Now, that Frank, there's a decent guy. There's a guy who's got some heart.’ You do the right thing, and you look good doing it. Just let the chinless wonder try to write something bad about you then.”
Frank wasted not a tick in saying: “You're shining me, kid.”
He'd seen right through me. Maybe he had an ego that went with his stature, but it wasn't so big that it blinded him. Either that, or I was just too damn obvious.
I felt like the ax was starting to fall and it wasn't just Sammy's head that was going to roll.
I wound up my last pitch. “Then you want to know why you should forgive him? Because he's your friend. Because no matter what he said, he's the same guy you dropped everything for and drove out to sit with after his smash-up and he got his eye taken out. You should forgive him because he loves and worships you. Yeah, worships you. He knows he owes you everything. He knows if it weren't for you, he'd be nothing, just another Negro kid out dancing for his lunch money. He's one of the most talented guys on the planet, and he's always—always—going to be living in your shadow. If things were flipped, if you had all that weight crushing down on you, don't you think just once you might go a little crazy, say something just a little stupid?”
Jesus.
Jesus Christ. If Sammy knew the things I was saying he'd probably take Frank's death sentence over the picture I was painting of him: a luckless no-talent who was only earning a living because someone else once took pity on him. But this wasn't just about saving Sammy anymore. He had put us in the same boat and I wasn't about to go down with him.
Following my little speech, nothing happened. Frank didn't react one way or another. He just stood where he was, looking out into the desert, every now and again taking in more of his drink.
Finally: “Have a good show tonight, Jackie.”
And he was done with me. I set down my otherwise untouched glass of Jack Daniel's and headed for the door. Jilly made no move to show me out.
I got in my car and shy of three hours later arrived back in Los Angeles. With just enough time to shower and shave, I made it to Ciro's. Louis and Keely put on a hell of a show, but unlike the previous nights, it didn't feel like a party.
AT SOME POINT during the week I realized I was thinking about Liliah Davi. I was thinking about Liliah Davi more than most guys normally did. What started with me replaying our meeting evolved into me obsessing on it. I started breaking down our encounter, analyzing the event same as a pulp detective sifts through a crime scene: She came to meet me. She wanted to meet me. Wanted, Herman had said. She was alone when she came meet me, no guy escorting her. Her hand in my hand. She let her hand linger in my hand. Her dialogue: “I enjoyed watching you.” Not I enjoyed your show. “I enjoyed watching you.”
Enjoyed.
Enjoyed watching you.
She'd asked me how long I would be in L.A. Did she want to know because … Did she want to know … “I will see you,” she had left me with, not…
Two minutes. Me and her talking in my dressing room amounted to two minutes' time. If even. But there wasn't a moment of those two minutes I didn't process second by second by second, first convincing myself of one thing, then telling me I was crazy for getting ideas in the first place. I didn't know what to make of the thoughts jumping around in my brain box. And I didn't know what to do about them. But no matter how the mental coins I flipped came up, the truth was, some opportunities come once in a lifetime. You do something about them or you watch them fade into the past.
“HALLO?” Liliah's voice was Bacallesque, and I swear I could feel the warmth of her breath even over the phone.
“… Miss Davi, it's Jackie Mann.”
Again, “Hallo.” This time a statement, not a question.
“I'm sorry to … I hope you don't mind me calling you, but I wondered—and I got your number from Herman, by the way. Herman Hover.”
Nothing was said to that.
“He said he didn't think … He thought it would be all right. To call. I wanted to know, uh, I'm sure you're very busy, but if you, maybe, wanted to have dinner som—”
“What time?”
“Tonight?”
“What time?”
I'd wished for it. Sure I had. Spent time fantasizing on it. But I never once figured Liliah'd really say yes, so I hadn't planned things beyond her giving me a no and hanging up. I picked a time.
“Seven o'clock? I hope that's not too early, but I have to make the show la—”
“Where?”
The first classy joint that popped into my head was “Chasen's.”
“I will see you there, Jackie.”
She hung up. No small talk, no chitchat. Just a ready okay to my request for a date.
I hung on her good-bye, on her speaking my name. Lili
ah's accent made Jackie come off as Zhaqué.
A good twenty seconds later I laid the phone back on the cradle.
CHASEN'S. SEVEN FORTY-THREE. Liliah and I at a table. All eyes on us. Actually, all eyes on her, and by default on me as well. About half the crowd wondering: Who's this lucky stiff sitting with Liliah Davi? The other half wanting to know: Why's Liliah Davi eating with a Negro?
She wore a gown, another gown—white with sparkles and a falle—that was two-thirds silk and one-third cleavage. Upon arriving at the restaurant, she had flowed through the room as effortlessly as wine from a bottle, her every movement executed with a certain ease. There was an economy to everything she did—her gestures, her expressions. She gave you very little, leaving you wanting so much more. She was style and grace and sophistication. She was the embodiment of allure. She was sexuality personified. So close to perfect, at times the woman seemed almost fabricated. Not an act of birth, a work of art—a living, breathing Vargas girl. But for all that made her artificial, Liliah had a way of engaging that made her more than human. When I talked to her, she looked at me, not over, around, or past me, trying to see and be seen by the rest of the Hollywood horde downing their dinners. She had a way of listening that made me feel as though I were being listened to. When I was with her she had a way of making me feel as though I should be with her, not that I was just fortunate to be near her.
Over our meal we talked. She told me about the picture she was doing at Columbia, this story or that about her director, her costar, one about Harry Cohn throwing a tantrum over some little thing that had to do more with getting attention than getting what he wanted. Liliah sounded bored with it all, bored with show business like the whole of it was a crazy children's game she was playing only for lack of anything better to do.
“Oh, well,” she said, done talking about Hollywood, waving a hand once in the air, shooing away the subject. “So, tell me what it is you want, Zhaqué.”
