“Whenever I can. I don’t live out here, you know. He usually has holidays with me, back in Chicago.”
With a thoughtful frown, the smile gone, Rosselli said, “Very important, family.”
I wasn’t sure what “family” he meant.
“Listen,” the silver-haired gangster said, that endless smile back again, his manner good-natured, “it’s a nice coincidence, running into you. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
I gave him a smile-maybe not a dazzler, but it would have to suffice. “Lucky, too,” I said, “because I’m heading back tomorrow. I can take about a month out here and then I get the urge to date a female who doesn’t want to be in the movies.”
He chuckled at that. Then he turned to Sinatra and said, “Didn’t you have a phone call you had to make?”
“Yeah. That’s right, John. Thanks for reminding me.” The singer stubbed out his cigarette in a glass Sherry’s ashtray, and disappeared faster than Claude Rains. Nobody pushed Sinatra around, but if a mob guy said go fuck yourself, he would ask which hole.
That’s when I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.
I said, “So, you called the restaurant to see if I had a reservation?”
The gray-blue eyes twinkled. “Actually, I called your partner. I said I wanted to see you, and he said I better hurry because you were about to go home. And he was good enough to say I might catch up with you here.”
Great knowing my partner would pass along my whereabouts to any gangster who asked. Particularly when I was with my son.
“Johnny,” I said, “do we have any business? I don’t recall us having any business, not for a while.”
He lighted up a cigarette. Yeah, a Rolex.
“Nate, I need you to take a message to your friend Bobby.”
I didn’t suppose he meant Darin.
“You have an inflated idea of my importance,” I said. “I’ve seen him once in the past six months.”
“But you can reach him. And you need to take some responsibility here. This is about the Caribbean matter, Nate.”
He meant Cuba, of course.
“Johnny, I am no part of that. I set up a meeting. That makes me the guy that introduced the happy couple- but I had nothing to do with the baby.”
He leaned nearer; he smelled good, redolent of some cologne I didn’t recognize because I couldn’t afford it on sixty grand a year.
“You put this in motion, Nate, and I appreciate that, because it’s something I want to do. I hate the fucking Commies and I’m a good American. I’m a proud immigrant to this great country, which is partly why I am pissed off.”
There was nothing pissed off in his tone, however; he was genial, and smiling lightly. Those at the table nearest us couldn’t have guessed that the dapper gangster was enraged.
He continued: “Your friend, I won’t say his name again, is working on getting me deported. Could you let him know that it’s difficult for me to deliver on what I promised, where Mr. Castro is concerned, if I have been fucking deported? And the IRS harassment, that’s got to stop. And the phone taps, and the shadowing.”
I pushed the air with my hands. “This is nothing to do with me. I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want to know anything about it.”
He ignored that. “Do you have any idea, Nate, what your friend is putting Mooney through?” Mooney was Giancana. “They’re pulling that lockstep routine on him.”
Round-the-clock surveillance.
“They follow him into restaurants,” he was saying, “they follow him into church, they follow his ass onto the goddamn golf course. Mooney’s had to shut down protection and gambling, back on your turf, Nate. He’s thinking of suing the FBI for harassment.”
“If you or Mooney have FBI troubles,” I said, shifting in the booth, “that isn’t necessarily coming from Bob. That prick Hoover has a mind of his own. Anyway, talking to me about this is useless.”
The smile broadened and the gray-blue eyes turned cold-not twinkling now. “You tell your friend that his brother is still fucking Judy Campbell. Tell him that.”
I almost asked if she was also still fucking Giancana, but let it pass.
Rosselli, still good-natured, smiling, soft-spoken, touched his chest. “I own Judy Campbell. I introduced her to Mooney. And I have her in my pocket. She will spill if I tell her to spill.”
“Johnny…”
“You inform your friend that I am a good American, a patriot, and I am happy to perform this Cuban service for my country. I have asked for no money. Did you know that, Nate?”
I raised surrender hands. “I didn’t, and I don’t want to. Listen, you must have a spook contact.”
After all, this was a CIA setup all the way-they were the point men on this Operation Mongoose. I was fine with somebody killing Castro; I just didn’t want in on it. Christ, how had I allowed myself to get on even the fringes of such dangerous shit?
“I have a contact,” he said, after a healthy sip of Smirnoff, “but that agency has more layers than a devil’s food cake. And he tells them what to do-he’s the president’s brother, and the president put him in charge of it.”
“If you say so.”
“Heller, Bobby’s your friend. You used to work for him.”
Funny thing was, Rosselli was tight with Hoffa, too. And Hoffa thought I’d only pretended to be Bobby’s pal, to spy on him and spread disinformation for my real buddy, Jimmy; but Hoffa had been good about keeping that to himself. Layers was right. Devil’s food was right.
Rosselli chuckled, and from a distance he might have seemed to be relating a funny little story.
“Here I am,” the Silver Fox said, “helping the government, helping my country, and that cocky runt of a son of a bitch is breaking my balls… Will you excuse me, Nate? I need to visit the little boys’ room.”
He gave me the warmest smile anybody ever gave anyone, patted my shoulder in a convivial manner, and slid out of the booth on the absent Sinatra’s side.
When I was alone in the booth, my son glanced over at me, and I just shrugged. He gave a little “no problem” wave, and dug into his dessert. Would be a nice touch if it were devil’s food, but Sherry’s specialty was “imported” New York cheesecake. They made it for us over at Canter’s.
Sinatra returned alone and said, “Johnny asked if you would excuse him. He just remembered he had another engagement.”
Before he’d got back into the booth, I said, “You want to join my son and me?”
Sinatra shook his head and waved off that suggestion, then slid in, and edged over onto Rosselli’s spot. He lighted up a cigarette with a gold FAS lighter.
“I’ll say hello to the boy, on the way out, if you like,” he said. “But you and I should talk first.”
“He’s an Elvis fan, anyway.”
He gave me half a smile. Those blue eyes were at least as winning as Rosselli’s gray-blue ones.
“Listen, Charlie,” he said, and his mouth curved in that familiar way, “I wanted to ask you about Marilyn. About how she’s doing.”
“You’re one of her favorite people. Just call her and check for yourself.”
He waved that away, too. “Not that long ago, we got kind of serious, Zelda and me.”
Frank often called Marilyn “Zelda,” her own favorite pseudonym that she often traveled under: Zelda Zonk.
“But she’s got too many problems,” he said, “and too many needs… She’s a beauty, at least when she takes time to clean herself up, and she’s Hollywood royalty, no question. But the last thing an eighteen-karat manic- depressive like yours truly needs is being attached to somebody more screwed up than he is.”
“She doesn’t seem that screwed up to me. I don’t know her as well as you, Frank. I’ve done a few jobs for her, and spent some time with her now and then, and never saw this drunk, drug-addict, messed-up girl everybody talks about.”
“Oh, that messed-up girl’s real, all right. But so is the one you’re describing. It’s just… I really care about that kid, only, shit, she attracts tragedy like blue serge does lint.” He shivered. “I don’t think I can handle her melodrama
