story about Sinatra accompanying Rocco and Joey Fischetti to Havana for the big confab with Lucky Luciano in ’47, attended by a rogues’ gallery of mobsters. As a celebrity who could travel unhindered, Frank had reportedly carried a bag filled with tribute, the greenback variety. Though Frank attended none of the business meetings, he hobnobbed with Luciano in the casino of the Hotel Nacional, and even had his picture taken with the deported ganglord.
A while back Sinatra had spotted Mortimer in Ciro’s, and attacked the reporter, who won an out-of-court settlement from Frank, when Louis B. Mayer forced him.
I pulled up a chair. “I got rid of Mortimer, Frank. He’s gone.”
Sinatra looked up, the famous blue eyes taking on a startled-deer aspect. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“How did you manage it?”
“I had to promise you’d blow him. I hope you don’t mind.”
He looked at me blankly, and then he burst out laughing. He laughed until he cried, and I laughed some, too.
Smiling, standing, he said, “You’re not kidding—he is gone?”
“I’m not kidding…”
Sinatra looked relieved.
“…you do have to blow him.”
Sinatra grinned, shook his head. “You fucker…. He’s gone?”
“Out at home plate. A ghost. A distant bad memory.”
As he got into his shirt and tie, Sinatra said, “You’re just the guy I wanna see, anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“What I said out in Hollywood, at Sherry’s—it still goes. I want to hire you. I can have a thousand-buck retainer for you at your office in the morning.”
“For what?”
“I want you to fly out to D.C. and talk to this son of a bitch.”
“Kefauver?”
“No! Fuck Kefauver. It’s McCarthy I’m sweating, man. If they label me a pinko, I really am washed up. You said you know the guy—through Pearson, right?”
“I know McCarthy. He’s a good joe to drink with.”
“Well, find out what it’ll take to get him off my ass. See if he wants money, or if he wants me to sing at a fundraiser or what the hell. But I got to put a stop to this shit. Mortimer’s starting to spread that pinko crap around, already. People thinking I maybe have some gangsters as friends is one thing—they think I’m a Commie, man, I’m dead. Capeesh?”
“Capeesh,” I said.
“How’s the tie look?”
“It looked better when Nancy was making ’em.”
“Don’t start with me. What are you my Jewish mother?”
“No, I’m your Irish rose. Get out there and try not to cough up blood.”
He smirked at me. “Sweet, Melvin—you’re a real sweetheart.”
Sinatra was great. The crowd loved him. His voice did seem to have a rasp tonight, a kind of burr in it, but it was attractive, somehow, more mature. His ballads were heartbreaking—during “I’m a Fool to Want You” Jackie began to cry—and he seemed to have a new energy in the up-tempo stuff, like a peppy version of “All of Me” and the swinging “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week).” Maybe he did have some career left out in front of him.
By the time Frank got on stage, however, Rocco had noticed us—and he would, from time to time, shoot daggers toward Jackie and me. Charley seemed to be trying to settle him down, touching his brother’s hand, even sliding an arm around Rocco’s shoulder, whispering.
In the middle of “The Hucklebuck”—a terrible song, typical of what Columbia was sticking Sinatra with these days—I told Jackie I needed to step out to take a leak. She was aware, of course, that Rocco had been shooting us death rays, and claimed to have to go herself.
While she was in the ladies’ room, I was—and I’m sure this will come as no surprise—in the men’s room. This wouldn’t be worth noting, if—just after I zipped up—Rocco hadn’t come striding in.
The men’s room at the Chez Paree—this one, anyway (there were several)—was good-size; we had it to ourselves, Rocco and I, the show being in progress and all.
“Hi, Rocky,” I said, voice echoing in this cathedral of porcelain altars and Crane confessionals, and went over to the sink and began washing up.
His voice, like his footsteps, echoed, too: “What’s the idea, Nate?”
I let the water run, soaping my hands. “Oh, I always wash my hands after I piss or shit—you ought to try it, Rocky. Latest thing.”
Rocco—who looked spiffy in his tux, very handsome except for that horror-show pockmarked puss surrounded by skunk-streaked hair—didn’t smile. That business about me kidding him, that treating-him-like-a-regular-guy
