The Devil May Dance

by Tapper, Jake

  “Warmer still,” said Sinatra.

  “Why not stop it?” Margaret asked.

  Sinatra cocked his head like a cat contemplating whether to pounce. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “CIA works for Jack, Momo’s a friend, Castro’s a tyrant. You want me to stop the president from protecting us from a Commie? That’s not my table, Charlie.”

  “So why do you have a recording of Rosselli, Giancana, and Maheu talking about this all?” Margaret asked.

  “Frank wired this whole place, ostensibly in preparation for the president’s visit,” Charlie recalled. “And got the private recordings pressed into an LP.”

  “Yep,” said Sinatra.

  “You know about the files Charlotte Goode gave us, right?” Margaret asked.

  “Is that the stuff Manny and Les chased you down for?” Sinatra asked. “About those twisted parties?”

  “So you knew about that too?” Margaret asked.

  “I know about Charlie taking the boys to that freak show at Disneyland,” Sinatra said. “As for Les Wolff, it’s been said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. But I didn’t know any more than that.”

  “Younger side?” asked Margaret.

  “Yeah, some guys like ’em young, what can I tell you,” Sinatra said. “I mean, Natalie Wood was a teenager when Bob Wagner married her. Chaplin’s wives were kids. Elvis has that young girl squirreled away for him once she’s ripe. It’s not my thing, as you know, but good Christ, look at Lolita!”

  “It’s reprehensible,” said Margaret. “I just don’t even remotely understand this. Fifteen-, sixteen-year-olds are children.”

  “Don’t tell me, Mags, I’m with you,” Sinatra said. “Tell society.”

  “What did Peter and Sammy tell you about Disneyland?” Charlie asked.

  “Private party on Tom Sawyer’s Island,” Sinatra said, “young girls. Rich guys. You got in a fight. Saved your niece. That’s about it.”

  “But you say you’ve heard about Les Wolff and girls on the younger side,” Margaret noted. “What had you heard?”

  “Just…y’know…that he liked some of these younger girls,” Sinatra said a bit defensively. “You see them at parties and restaurants, they could be anywhere from fourteen to twenty-four.”

  “But you never did anything about it,” Margaret said. “A major player in your world serving up children to gluttonous robber barons and you just shake his hand when you see him?”

  “Look—I didn’t know any of that for a fact—” Sinatra didn’t know how to handle what she was throwing at him. Since Ava Gardner, no woman had challenged him. “It was whispers. When Errol Flynn got pinched and tried for statutory rape, even goddamn William F. Buckley joined the—what was it called? The initials were ABCDEF—”

  “American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn,” said Charlie.

  “Right. Margaret, you’re being ridiculous,” Sinatra said, clearly growing irritated. “I didn’t do any of this crap.”

  “But that’s the whole point, isn’t it, Frank?” Margaret said, her voice rising as well. “You’re sulking like a teenybopper because JFK wouldn’t stay here, and meanwhile you’re surrounded by sin and corruption and you expect the world to think you’re oblivious to it all! Giancana, Rosselli, Maheu—”

  “Margaret,” Charlie cautioned.

  “—and now you are simultaneously asking me to believe that, one, you didn’t know what Les Wolff was up to,” she continued, “and, two, that everyone knew what Les Wolff was up to and all sorts of men like girls—”

  “Okay,” Sinatra said, “watch your mouth!”

  “You deserve your due,” Margaret said. “You’ve done a whole lot for civil rights, Francis, forcing the integration of the Strip in Vegas, the anti-discrimination movie. You’ve pushed for Black musicians to be treated equally and with respect. But you couldn’t stop the Kennedys from blackballing Sammy from the inaugural gala, so I guess how effective you are is an open question—”

  “You can fuck right off,” Sinatra said, “you have no idea what I’ve done, the risks I’ve taken!”

  “But,” Margaret continued, “given that half the goddamn country is female, including Nancy and Tina, what have you done for women—not only women, damn it; girls—who are human chattel in the suite next door?”

  “I told you, goddamn it, it’s all been rumors! What, do you want me to chase down every bit of gossip I hear? I’m not Jack Anderson! What do you expect me to do? This is Hollywood!”

  “You sure do a lot when you see discrimination against Sammy and Nat King Cole!” Margaret said. “And that’s great! That’s laudable! But what about fifty percent of the population?”

  “What the fuck are you on my dick about?” Sinatra yelled, boiling like a teakettle.

  “My goddamned niece was missing,” Margaret exploded, “she’s a child and she had fallen into the underbelly of this city of wanton sleaze and you never did a thing to help me, you never lifted a finger or even expressed one single sentiment of concern! You just sat there—”

  “Who the holy fuck do you think told Charlotte to get you those files, you dumb cooze?” Sinatra erupted. “It was me. I did it!”

  Charlie and Margaret sat stunned, mouths agape, shocked not just that Sinatra had confessed to what they’d theorized might have been the case but that their plan to enrage him into an admission worked. They could barely contain their smiles.

  Sinatra, still worked up and in a lather, was almost panting.

  He looked at Charlie and Margaret, exhaled, thought about what had just transpired—it was rather out of character for Margaret to yell at anyone—then smiled.

  He took a moment to collect himself. He exhaled dramatically.

  “You are the smartest fucking broad I have ever met,” Sinatra finally said.

  Margaret grinned. “To be fair, this was a team effort,” she said.

  “Look, Frank,” said Charlie, “we’re just trying to figure out how all the pieces fit in the puzzle here.”

  “So you told Charlotte to give us this information,” Margaret said.

  Sinatra took another moment.

  “I own a piece of Hollywood Nightlife. Dino and me.”

  “Nothing bad appears about you or the Rat Pack in their pages,” Margaret observed. “Which tends to set the tone for all the others.”

  “Bogie told me once,” Sinatra said, “he said, ‘You have to remember one thing, Frank, there’s only one way that anyone can fight a newspaper, and that’s with a newspaper.’ I got sick of the garbage smearing me. They called me a Red. They called me a Commie. Punching Lee Mortimer didn’t do anything. So I bought a paper. Secretly. We hired away the sleaziest but best slime merchant in town, Tarantula, who hired Charlotte Goode—who lived up to her name—and a staff of thirty or so other talented freelance hacks, and lo and behold, we became the circulation leader. Crazy, I know.”

  “So you kept a lot of scandal out of the news,” Charlie said.

  “Kept a lot of lies out of the news,” Sinatra corrected him.

  “And you also learned a whole bunch of other stuff,” Margaret said.

  George Jacobs appeared with a new glass of Jack Daniel’s on the rocks for his boss. “Do you want me to bring it to you?” he asked. “I don’t mind—it’s hot.”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind, George, that’d be swell,” Sinatra said.

  Jacobs—in shorts and a white polo—walked past Charlie, down the stairs, and into the pool to deliver the drink. “You two want anything?” he asked. Margaret looked at her watch; it was just after two p.m.

  “What do you have?” Charlie asked.

  “Anything you want, Congressman,” Jacobs said. “Bourbon, scotch, rye, vodka, gin, tequila, rum, cognac, brandy, liqueurs, beer, white wine, red wine, rosé, and every mixer known to man—orange juice, pineapple juice, cranberry, lemonade, sour, margarita mix, Bloody Mary—”

  Charlie peeked at Margaret, who was
watching him with interest.

  “Just a plain lemonade would be fine,” he said. “Margaret?”

  “Water would be grand, George,” she said.

  “And George,” Sinatra added. “Bring that present I have for him.” He pointed at Charlie.

  Sinatra took a sip from his glass, then waited until Jacobs had gone back inside. Margaret looked up to the spectacularly blue sky, completely cloudless, with a lone hawk soaring in the distance.

  “I learned some things, yes, although I don’t run Nightlife anymore,” Sinatra said. “Rosselli rewrote the original contract and took it over. There wasn’t much I could do about it. Soon the fellas realized that the hacks collected a lot of information that powerful people would pay to keep out of print. The business became much more about what wasn’t published. Catch and kill, they call it.”

  “Do you know about everything they catch?” Charlie asked.

  Sinatra took another swig. “No, not at all. Johnny promised to keep me out of it. But I knew enough to try to help you with your niece. I asked Charlotte to look into Itchy Meyer, to look into whatever rumors there were about Les Wolff, to get you whatever they’d compiled on these young girls through the years.”

  “Was Rosselli sitting on the skinny on Les Wolff? For money?” Margaret asked.

  “For money, for power, for real estate, for influence, for favors, for trade, for barter,” Sinatra said. “I don’t know what Rosselli has on this girl sex ring in terms of proof. I didn’t know Wolff killed Powell and Lola to shut them up until Charlotte told me she suspected as much.”

  “So you knew her,” said Charlie.

  “We talked on the phone sometimes,” he said.

  “Who killed her?” Margaret asked.

  Sinatra shrugged. “I dunno. Who killed her, who killed Powell, who killed Lola and stuffed her in your trunk? I gotta believe Wolff ordered it all but I don’t know if Rosselli did the deed or if those Scientology creeps did it.”

  He clammed up and nodded as Jacobs reappeared with his refill, a water for Margaret, and a lemonade and a manila folder for Charlie. Jacobs handed over the drinks to the couple, but before he could give Charlie the folder, Sinatra stopped him.

  “No, bring it to me, along with a smoke, if you got one,” he said.

  Jacobs waded into the pool again carrying a small round tray that held the new drink and the folder and, from his pocket, a pack of Marlboro Reds. Sinatra lit the cigarette with the gold lighter Jacobs handed him at the precise moment he needed it. He inhaled deeply, then took a gulp of whiskey. Then he lit the folder on fire.

  “Mr. S.—” protested Jacobs.

  “I got it, George,” Sinatra said, holding up the cardboard so as to catch as much of the flame as possible.

  “What is that?” asked Charlie.

  “The only two remaining photographs and the negative of your very brief moment in the hot tub with Lola,” Sinatra said, dropping the destroyed remnants back onto the tray.

  “Thank you, Francis,” Margaret said.

  “Not a thing, Margaret,” Sinatra said. “This is a good boy you have here. And now this photo is gone forever.”

  “That’s an incredible gift, Frank,” Charlie said. “Thank you.”

  “No worries, pally,” Sinatra said, raising his glass.

  “Makes me feel sheepish asking one last favor of you, though.”

  “Don’t,” Sinatra said. “Shoot.”

  “I had a tough reelect in 1960, as you might imagine, with your boy at the top of the ticket,” Charlie said. “I was worried, so I did something I normally wouldn’t do: I took my dad’s advice. I hired a consultant he recommended.”

  He looked at Margaret, to whom he had finally told the story during their drive. She nodded supportively.

  “He was a slippery fella,” Charlie said. “I didn’t know how slippery until after the election when I had to cash the metaphorical checks he wrote. One of the unions in my district had come through in a big way. They now wanted some favors.”

  “Right,” Sinatra said. “Momo said something about this that night in Vegas.”

  “It started small—stuff to help workers,” Charlie said. “Better workman’s comp, oversight on safety regs. Then one night came the ask I dreaded: to pressure the U.S. attorney, who I had helped get the job, to back off on an extortion case.”

  Sinatra smirked. He could relate. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing yet,” Charlie said. “I put it off for as long as I could, hoping it would resolve itself.”

  “That’s what I did too,” Sinatra said.

  “He also drank a lot more,” Margaret added. “Which was similarly effective.”

  Sinatra laughed. “That was also part of my brilliant plan.”

  Charlie smiled. “And then this all happened and I’ve been busy. But now that it’s over…”

  “Right,” said Sinatra. “The bill collector still gonna come calling.”

  “I need you to tell Momo something,” Charlie said. “Among the documents in the safe at Tarantula’s was a file about him.” Sinatra raised his eyebrows. “All sorts of details about all sorts of stuff.”

  Sinatra waited.

  “I left it on the ottoman in your living room,” Charlie said. “It’s his. Tell him if these terms are acceptable, I would like it if we could be square. I don’t want to hear from his friends in New York anymore. If the union goes another direction next election, that’s fine.”

  “Got it,” Sinatra said. “I shall pass it along.”

  They sat there for a few minutes as the sun started to duck behind Mount San Jacinto to the west.

  “Frank?” Margaret said meekly. “I want to ask you—and I don’t want to seem at all unappreciative, but I want to ask…”

  “Go ahead, baby doll,” said the singer.

  “What I don’t get is, if you know about all of these crimes, blackmail or murders or the girls or what have you, why didn’t—why don’t you go to the police?” she asked.

  Sinatra looked at her incredulously. “You think the police don’t know?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think that, say, Detective Meehan isn’t part of this?” Sinatra asked. “Why do you think he had such a hard-on for you and Lola? If Bobby hadn’t vouched for you, you’d be in Alcatraz by now.”

  “Jesus, really?” Margaret asked. “Meehan?”

  Sinatra laughed. “This whole system stinks, girlie. You think the police have no idea about Les Wolff’s bobby-soxer parties?”

  “They do? But—”

  “Come on,” Sinatra said. “You think all these powerful men do whatever the fuck they want with whatever girl they want and law enforcement doesn’t know? C’mon!”

  Sinatra looked at Charlie and Margaret as if he were the serpent in the Garden of Eden. They were worse than naive; they were stupid.

  “That’s the grand hypocrisy of me being tagged by Bobby as some bad boy because I’ve stayed friends with some guys from the old neighborhood,” Sinatra said. “The fact that gossip kept TP away from here, so instead he went to Bing’s, where he shlonged Marilyn. And don’t get me started on Cuba!”

  Charlie looked at the aging crooner. At first, Sinatra had reminded him of his father at his apex, savvy and charismatic, a man of action and energy who made things happen, someone whom he wanted to impress. But five months into this adventure, Sinatra looked defeated and deflated as he floated in the pool. He still reminded Charlie of his father, but in his later, sadder years, when the weight of all that he had done and accepted was taking its toll whether or not he understood why.

  “So the cops are in on it?” Charlie asked. “All of it?”

  “Depends what you mean by ‘in on it,’” Sinatra said. “Some of them know. Hubbard’s group and the Mob helped Les Wolff. But beyond that, I have no details. I don’t know who did what and what was illegal and what was just sleazy.”

  “No details,” Margaret said, “just that bad men exist and wo
rse men carry out their orders.”

  Sinatra raised a glass to her. “Bad men exist and worse men carry out their orders—and the rest of us avert our eyes,” he said. “Everyone comes out here to dance with the devil, and the devil may dance. That’s what they should have up there on that hill, instead of fucking Hollywood.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  New York City

  May 1962

  Sitting among the other fifteen thousand Democratic fat cats, a freshly coiffed President Kennedy beamed as he was feted on the occasion of his forty-fifth birthday.

  Maria Callas sang from Carmen. Members of Jerome Robbins’s Ballets USA dance company performed. Shirley MacLaine and Jimmy Durante, Harry Belafonte, Bobby Darin. Mike Nichols and Elaine May made the thousand-dollar-a-seat crowd roar by reading fake telegrams, one of which was addressed to a “Mr. Francis X. Kennedy” on the occasion of his forty-fifth wedding anniversary. The punch line—it had been sent by the CIA.

  What a thing, to have an intelligence agency mocked for unintelligence, Charlie thought as he and Margaret watched the festivities from backstage. Sinatra’s absence from the event was stunning, though no one talked about it.

  They had been given this special access by Lawford, who said that his brother-in-law the attorney general wanted to talk while in town.

  And now here was Lawford, onstage, presenting the president with his present.

  “Mr. President, on this occasion of your birthday, this lovely lady is not only pulchritudinous but punctual,” Lawford boomed. “Mr. President…Marilyn Monroe!”

  A rowdy applause filled the Garden; a spotlight hit the stage. But Marilyn did not appear.

  She was backstage, looking nowhere near able to perform.

  Charlie and Margaret were yards away, feeling a mix of sorrow and revulsion. Whether because of pills or booze or both, Marilyn could barely stand. She had literally been sewn into her Jean Louis gown—flesh-colored, festooned with rhinestones—and she was obviously wearing nothing underneath. Her beauty was ethereal but she reeked of desperation.

  Lawford returned to the microphone and coughed, embracing the awkwardness. “A woman about whom,” he said to laughter, “it truly may be said she needs no introduction. Let me just say—here she is!”