by Tapper, Jake
“We suspect we weren’t supposed to have found her body right then,” Margaret said. “We just happened to need something from the trunk.”
“I was sorry to hear about your father,” Charlie said to the attorney general, an awkward bit of courtesy given his own father’s status. Kennedy nodded.
“Makes more sense that whoever did this would have called in a tip and had the cops find the body,” White said. “Maybe at the hotel.”
“But who would do it?” Kennedy asked. “Who have you crossed out here? Giancana? Rosselli?”
“We haven’t crossed any of them,” Margaret said. “We’ve been as agreeable as a sloe gin fizz on a porch swing on a Sunday afternoon.”
“Giancana has a temper,” Kennedy noted. “He’s into revenge.”
“We were having dinner with Frank and Giancana and all the rest just hours ago,” Margaret told him.
“It’s possible I may have aroused their suspicions when I asked Sinatra’s valet to find out what favor Giancana needed from Frank,” Charlie said suddenly. “But I doubt the valet, George Jacobs, told anyone.”
“And did he tell you?” Kennedy asked.
“He did: Giancana asked Frank to get you to back off,” Charlie said. “Through the president, presumably. He was supposed to do it at Hyannis Port last fall, but George didn’t know if he went through with it. That’s it. That’s the whole scoop.”
Kennedy stared at him.
“Did he pass on the message?” Margaret wondered aloud.
Kennedy eyed her carefully, as if he were trying to figure out her motivation for asking. “Not to me. And the president would have told me.” He paused. “That’s interesting.”
Margaret found it odd that Kennedy called his brother “the president.”
“If I may, sir,” Charlie said, “Sinatra may not be educated, and too often he’s fueled entirely by impulse, but as a general rule, he’s very savvy. I’m sure he knew that asking either you or your brother would be a bridge too far.”
“I hate to even bring it up,” Margaret said. “But what about your father? Would Frank have asked him?”
Kennedy stared at her. It wasn’t clear if he was angry.
“I’m sorry for even—”
“No, no, I’m thinking,” Kennedy said. “It’s fine. If he did talk to Father, I never heard anything about it.”
Kennedy looked down at the floor in sorrow; there hadn’t been much coverage in the news about how severe the stroke was, though initial reports suggested the patriarch was partially paralyzed and could not speak.
White jumped in to change the subject. “What did you find out about the other issue, about how mobbed up Sinatra is?” he asked.
Margaret eagerly followed his lead. “He’s got a lot of pals in organized crime,” she said, “and while we don’t know that any of their criminal acts have been done on his behalf, they’re around him quite a bit. In LA, in Vegas, in New Jersey…” She turned to Charlie. “Were they with you in Rancho Mirage?”
“Rat Packers and groupies, but no mafiosi,” Charlie said.
“But that said,” Margaret continued, “as long as you’re serious about prosecuting organized crime, Charlie and I feel strongly that the president should not stay with Sinatra at Rancho Mirage. The association is unseemly.”
“We didn’t see any evidence that Sinatra is part of or knows of any criminal wrongdoing,” Charlie added. “But having the president stay anywhere mobsters have likely also slept…I mean, for your political rivals, it would be like manna from heaven.”
Kennedy looked at White, who nodded.
“So you don’t think Sinatra would have had anyone take care of Chris Powell?” White asked.
“No,” Charlie said. “And not just because Powell wasn’t worth it. Sinatra cares about music, movies, gossip, politics, and women. I can’t imagine him ever actually asking for a hit.”
“Absolutely not,” Margaret agreed. “He’s not a murderer. Not even close.”
“Will you two step out for just a second?” Kennedy asked.
Margaret stood, but Charlie stayed in his chair. “We’re allowed to leave this room?” he asked.
“Congressman, I’m the chief law enforcement officer in the country,” the attorney general reminded him.
“You’re not going to be charged with anything,” White added.
Charlie stood and followed his wife out of the interrogation room and into the police office, which was abuzz with bookings from late-night Los Angeles life—prostitutes, thieves, fleeced tourists, all sitting at desks as weary officers tried to suss out copious claims. To Charlie’s keen nose, the room smelled of coffee, cheap perfume, and sex.
They paused in front of a bulletin board covered with public service ads and departmental posters. ARE YOU INVITING BURGLARS INTO YOUR HOME? blared one flyer above a cartoon image of a house with its windows open. Another advertised the annual policeman’s ball. A third listed the “Qualities of a Good Policeman,” which included “the wisdom of Solomon,” “the strength of Samson,” and “the tolerance of the Carpenter of Nazareth.” A frayed pamphlet from the previous summer reminded officers to donate to the fund for slain officer Sidney Riegel, c/o the Los Angeles Hillel Council.
Margaret sank wearily into a chair across from an empty desk. Charlie stayed on his feet.
“Think we can finally go home?” Margaret asked.
“Hope so,” Charlie said, looking around. No one was close enough to hear them. “But once the Feds have their claws in you…”
“What does that mean?” Margaret asked.
“We’re informants now, essentially,” Charlie said. “A higher class than the average Chicago stool pigeon, but the same basic job description. We work for them. For free.”
“Forever?” Margaret asked.
Charlie shrugged and turned his gaze toward the bulletin board.
Meehan abruptly appeared, grunted in their direction, and walked past Charlie to the door of the interrogation room. He knocked lightly; White opened the door and let him in.
Charlie raised an eyebrow at Margaret, then turned to look again at the bulletin board. The previous day’s “Daily Police Bulletin” was tacked in the middle of the board, with mug shots and fingerprints of three arrestees: a white man picked up on four counts of forgery, a white woman in jail for four counts of petty theft, and a Black woman sporting a black eye who’d been picked up for issuing a check without sufficient funds. The charges all seemed remarkably small-bore to Charlie, especially given the dead woman in the trunk of his rental car.
He looked at Margaret; her arms were folded, and her eyes closed as her chin dipped toward her chest. He looked at his watch. Almost four a.m. Their night had started so long ago—dinner with Goode, drinks with the Rat Pack, then their ill-fated sojourn to Forest Lawn. He thought of poor Lola Bridgewater, a captured pawn in someone’s twisted game.
“Come back in, Congressman,” White said, snapping Charlie back to the present. Meehan brusquely passed him again, headed in the opposite direction. Charlie leaned over and lightly touched Margaret on the knee, startling her awake. She stood and he followed her back into the room; they both sat down at the table again.
“We want to know what you learned about Hubbard,” White said.
Margaret told them the story.
“Do you have the papers you grabbed from them?” White asked.
Margaret handed White the documents from her purse.
“What does it say, Addy?” Kennedy asked. He was facing the one-way glass, sleep deprivation noticeable in his voice.
“It’s titled ‘Project Celebrity,’” he said. “A list of celebrities they want to recruit. Winchell, Murrow, Dietrich.”
“A bunch of gossip columnists on there too,” Margaret added. “Parsons and Kilgallen. Hedda Hopper. Walter Lippmann.”
Kennedy turned around and cocked his head toward White. “I suppose nowadays gossip passes for news,” he said, holding out his hand for the docume
nt. Kennedy glanced at it for a few seconds, then folded it and put it in his inside jacket pocket. “What happened to the car you drove to the church?”
“We went back and got it the next night,” Charlie said, impressed with the attorney general’s attention to detail. “Took a cab to a spot five blocks away. No one saw us.”
“The same car you drove tonight?” Kennedy asked.
“Yes,” said Charlie. “It’s our rental car.”
Margaret didn’t think anyone from the church had seen them arrive, but who knew; they were a suspicious lot and the odds of surveillance weren’t negligible.
“You two can go back to the hotel and clean up,” Kennedy said. “Then around lunch I need you to sit down with Addington and give a full accounting of everything you’ve seen.”
“We’ve told you everything,” Margaret said.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” White said. “We want every last detail. Projects Sinatra is working on, the behavior of various Rats in the Pack.”
“Projects he’s working on?” Charlie said wearily. “There’s a screenplay about the U.S. accidentally dropping an A-bomb on North Carolina and covering it up.”
Kennedy and White looked at each other.
“Yes, all of that,” White said. “We’ll go over every detail.”
“And then we can go home?” Charlie said. “Back to New York.”
“You can go back east when production moves back east in a few weeks,” Kennedy said. “But until then, you need to figure out this Lola business.”
Charlie realized what Kennedy was saying. “Wait, you want us to figure out who’s framing us?”
“You’re in the best position to do it,” Kennedy said. “If it’s the Mob that did it—and that would be my theory—stick around to see what they do next.”
“Continue as a consultant to Manchurian Candidate,” White said. “There’s about five or six weeks of shooting left, Krim tells me. Soon some of it will be in New York, as you know. But you need to stay on this case until you figure out who killed the girl.”
Charlie sighed wearily. Defeated, deflated. Then he sat up in his seat. “We have an ask of you too, then.”
“Really?” Kennedy said, stunned. He wasn’t used to folks behind the eight ball trying to rack the table.
White jumped in. “Congressman, you’re really in no position—”
“No, no, Addy,” Kennedy interrupted. “That’s fine, I want to hear what he has to say.”
“Margaret’s niece is in Los Angeles,” Charlie explained. “Violet. She’s underage. A runaway. And we saw her briefly with a much older studio executive. We’ve been asking around about her, to no avail.”
“And you’d like the FBI’s help,” Kennedy surmised.
“Actually, I have some information for you about your niece,” White said, reaching into his briefcase. He opened a folder that held a typed report. “I did follow up on that note from last time we met. We found her last known address,” White said, reviewing the case memo. “Violet isn’t there anymore. Nor is she in the company of Itchy Meyer, or at least, she hasn’t been seen with him in the past few weeks, according to our eyes and ears. Meyer says he met her for the first time that night and hasn’t seen her since. The landlady where Violet briefly had a room says she fell in with a fast crowd of party girls. That’s all we got.” He closed the file.
“It’s not much,” said Margaret. She rubbed her left arm and her body tensed. She was worried about her niece and also irritated that no one other than Charlie seemed to take Violet’s disappearance seriously, as if she were just a feral kitten. Did young women die in Hollywood on a regular basis the way Chicagoans died in the freezing winds off Lake Michigan? She’d begun to think it was a specifically geographical phenomenon, but here was the FBI echoing the indifference. She was grateful for Charlie pushing the attorney general on Violet’s behalf. Her husband might be turning into a drunk, but he was still kind and decent.
“It’s not much, but it’s more than you had,” Kennedy pointed out.
“We need more,” Charlie said. “You need to keep looking. If we’re going to stay in LA, you have to help us find her.”
“She’s a child,” Margaret said.
“Addington will see what he can do,” Kennedy said.
“Just a few other things before you go back to your hotel,” White added. “Your dad has been transferred from the Tombs.”
“Why?” Charlie asked. He looked at his wife, who was frowning.
“To where?” she asked.
“Sing Sing,” White said. “We had to get him out of the city while this is all going on. There were threats on his life. But don’t worry, he’s safe.”
Charlie found himself gasping, he was so stunned. “Why don’t I believe you?”
White looked at Kennedy. Neither one cared. Kennedy put his suit jacket back on. “Find out who the girl was with before she showed up in the trunk of your car,” Kennedy said. “Figure out who killed her.”
“I don’t even know who this Lola Bridgewater is,” Charlie said, about ready to fall apart.
“Well, apparently she was Mary Bechmann, from Minot, North Dakota,” said White.
“And Mary Bechmann from Minot, North Dakota,” Kennedy added, “had only just turned sixteen.”
Chapter Fifteen
Franklin Canyon, California
February 1962
Sinatra, in army fatigues, stood in scrubby weeds alongside a well-worn trail, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other while he waited for Frankenheimer’s cue. He and a platoon of actors were gathered in Franklin Canyon, a stand-in for Korea, nestled between Beverly Hills and the San Fernando Valley. It was nearly noon, and the day was warm for February, all memories of the freak snowstorm long gone. The makeup artists scurrying among the cast dabbed away evidence of perspiration; camera crews and the production team were working to perfect every last detail. Charlie and Margaret observed it all on their Hollywood safari, accompanied by Manny Fontaine, who seemed determined to stay close to them.
“Why are they shooting this scene now?” Margaret asked Fontaine. “It’s supposed to take place at night, I thought.”
“It’s called ‘day-for-night,’” Fontaine explained unhelpfully. “He’s shooting it underexposed.”
“Why not just shoot at night?” Margaret asked.
“They want to do the titles over this scene,” Fontaine said.
Margaret raised her eyebrows; she still didn’t understand.
“It’s technical,” he said. Then, with a smile, he added, “I’d be lying if I claimed I really understood it myself.”
“We ’bout ready, Johnny?” Sinatra called out. Charlie noted that the actor seemed in good spirits, which was notable considering that one of his recent houseguests had been found dead.
Sinatra’s bad moods made him challenging to be around, but Charlie knew he was capable of great acts of decency and humanity. A key grip whose wife was suffering from cancer had suddenly learned she’d been transferred to the new Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, with a top oncologist caring for her; everyone knew how that had happened, but almost no one said anything in Sinatra’s presence. An associate producer tried praising Sinatra for his kind deed, but all he received in return was a grunt.
“One second, Frank, we’re almost there!” Frankenheimer shouted from the bottom of the hill where he was talking to Edmondson, his sound mixer, whose efforts to make a workable wireless microphone continued to fall short.
The scene was crucial to the plot of the film. In Korea, Captain Marco, Sergeant Shaw, and their platoon are treacherously advised by their interpreter Chunjin to walk in single file, after which they are ambushed, loaded into helicopters, and taken to the Chinese for a thorough brainwashing.
“Hey, Charlie,” Sinatra shouted down the hill. “Come on up for a sec. And bring a light. If you don’t have one, ask Beanie.”
Brownie and Beanie, makeup and wardrobe, were never far from Sinatra’s si
de. Charlie looked to confirm that Frankenheimer wasn’t anywhere near calling “Action,” then walked up the grassy slope to the actors. The sun was strong. He felt every drop of his steady diet of bourbon; his headache conjured a Buddy Rich bass drum solo. He had his own lighter and didn’t need Beanie’s, but he felt conflicted about now being yet another member of the retinue.
It had already been a rough morning. Outside the Miramar, as Charlie and Margaret waited for the valet to bring their rental car around, Detective Meehan had materialized like Harvey the rabbit, a cigarette in his mouth and a porkpie hat on his head. A coffee stain marred his loud red tie.
“Congressman and Mrs. Marder!” he barked in greeting.
“Je-sus, you scared me,” Margaret said, taking a step back and putting her hand on her heart.
Meehan ignored her. He pointed a stubby finger at Charlie. “That Kennedy boy might be protecting you right now, but once you’re of no more use to him, he won’t care if we arrest you for Miss Bridgewater’s murder.”
“So I killed her and then I called you to show you her corpse in the trunk of my car?” Charlie said dryly. “Makes perfect sense. You’re a regular Ellery Queen.”
“Well, then, who killed her?” Meehan asked.
“Good God, I don’t know,” Charlie said. “But what possible motive would I have?”
“I don’t know yet,” Meehan said. “But I’m going to find out.” And with that he threw his cigarette on the driveway, ground it into the pavement with a worn-down heel, and stormed off with his trademark panache.
“Quite the unlicked cub,” Margaret said, reaching a hand up to massage Charlie’s neck. “We’re going to find out who did it.” She tried to sound reassuring as the valet pulled up with their car. “We’re going to find out who killed that poor girl.”
After that uncomfortable morning confrontation, Margaret cabbed solo to a Universal Pictures soundstage where she watched a flock of ravens rip apart an ingenue.
Margaret’s motivation was no mystery—she missed zoology and, more to the point, she missed accomplishing something other than tending to the needs of Charlie, Dwight, and Lucy. So she’d taken Symone LeGrue up on her invitation to visit the set of The Birds.
