anymore.”
Did he mean the Fox firing? Or did he know about Jack Kennedy?
I took it nice and easy. “Look, she’s very intent on getting her career back on track right now. I saw her a couple weeks ago, and she was lining up what my son says is called a ‘media blitz.’”
He grinned. “I’ve seen some of that. She’s been fighting that garbage those studio clowns have been putting out. Good for her.”
“My understanding is Fox has offered her a new contract. To finish that picture she was making with your buddy Dino, and then another one after that. Understand, I’m not saying she doesn’t have any love-life problems.”
“What kind of love-life problems, Charlie?”
“If you want to know, you should call your Rat Pack pal Lawford and ask him.”
He stabbed the cigarette out on the tablecloth. I’d forgotten he hated that Rat Pack term…
… but that wasn’t it.
“That limey bastard,” he said. “I’ve about had it with his no-talent ass. We got two pictures lined up, me and Dean and Sammy and Joey, and Lawford’s supposed to be in them, too. I am this fucking close to pulling the chain and flushing that four-flusher. You know what the Seal and his brother-in-law did to me?”
The Seal was Lawford (aka “Charlie the Seal” for his cigarette cough) and I was tempted to hear the whole Palm Springs story from Frank’s side, but decided he might set fire to the tablecloth this time.
“I know about the president canceling on you and going to Crosby’s instead,” I said gently. “I’d call that somewhat ungrateful.”
“You’re goddamn right, after all I did for them! But I don’t blame Jack, really-I mean, I talk to him on the phone all the time, he’s had me to the White House for lunch… never when Jackie’s around, ’cause that bitch hates my Italian ass, but that fuckin’ Bobby. It’s his doing.”
I shrugged. “You think he’s screwing you over-look at Mooney.”
“Tell me about it! Do you have any pull with that bucktoothed bastard?”
“Not really. I saw Bob a few weeks ago, at Lawford’s, and had a conversation along similar lines. Tried to make the point that you don’t make deals and then welsh. Not with anybody, but certainly not with guys like you.”
“Or Mooney, ” Sinatra said, eyebrows high, the baby blues wide. It was like he’d heard a smart guy say the world was flat.
“I’m sure Marilyn would appreciate a call,” I said off-handedly. “She still goes to sleep to the sound of your voice. Hell, during the day she plays your albums, too. You’re her sound track, when Lionel Newman isn’t around.”
“She’s a sweet kid, in her fucked-up way,” he said wistfully. He finished his martini. “You want me to say hello to your son? I ain’t Elvis, but I sold a few records.”
“That would be cool,” I said.
And we went over and Frank was great to Sam, signed a Sherry’s napkin for him; then he split, moving through the restaurant at a brisk pace to avoid any more autographs.
“He seemed nice,” Sam said.
“Yeah. He can be.”
“That other guy looked nice, too.”
“Yeah. He looked nice.”
CHAPTER 11
I had returned to Chicago confident that Marilyn’s problems were safely half a continent behind me. But a month later, I found myself again advising her, as we sat watching the shimmer of Lake Tahoe from a balcony at Cal-Neva Lodge.
Or, as it was now called (on napkins, ashtrays, and menus, anyway), Frank Sinatra’s Cal-Neva. The same Sinatra who was opening tonight in his own Celebrity Showroom, and the last person I’d have expected to hear from regarding Marilyn. As you may recall, he’d told me at Sherry’s he was through with her “melodrama.”
Yet he was our host. And at his request, and Marilyn’s, I was here in the role of her companion or bodyguard or something-the-hell. How did this transpire, you ask?
First, the travel-brochure stuff: with its only access a long winding narrow mountain road, the rustic Cal-Neva sat high above Tahoe’s northern tip, its sun-sparkling lake a blue jewel in a lush green setting. The lodge was a rough-hewn castle dominated by an oversize wigwam of an entrance; guests not in the main building could chose between cabins, bungalows, and (high-rollers and celebrities only) chalets, the latter scattered about the slope below the lodge, among granite outcroppings, sporting magnificent views.
Long before it became the Tahoe home-away-from-home for the Rat Rack and various Vegas and Hollywood stars in Sinatra’s orbit, the resort had been a favorite hideaway of bootleggers like Joe Kennedy, who’d loved the place. So had Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and other outlaws who dug the fishing and gaming retreat’s unique location.
The state line bisected Lake Tahoe, south to north, up the hilly, rocky shoreline through the hotel’s central building, fireplace, and outdoor swimming pool. Before Nevada legalized gambling in ’31, the gaming tables were on rollers, pushed, on the occasion of a raid, across the wooden floor to whichever state the law didn’t represent. Same was true for a wanted criminal: the Nevada coppers couldn’t touch you on the California side, and vice versa. These days, food, drink, and guests lived in California, with the casino way over in Nevada-across that fabled dark line on the wooden floor.
For several years now, Sinatra had been the principal owner of the Cal-Neva, on paper anyway. That the singer’s hefty percentage included Sam Giancana’s silent-partner investment was an open secret, Mooney being on the Gaming Commission’s list of “excluded persons” who must never set foot on the floor of a Nevada casino, much less own one.
Anyway, just the day before, Sinatra had called. I’d been sitting behind my desk in the venerable Monadnock Building in the Loop. The A-1 had a large corner suite with a bullpen for our ten agents and private offices for me and my semiretired second-in-command, Lou Sapperstein, now in his spry early seventies.
I was going over a contract to take on all of a major downtown bank’s credit checks when the call came in through our switchboard.
The girl said, “He says he’s Frank Sinatra.”
“Who does he sound like?”
“Frank Sinatra.”
“Then let’s chance it.”
And it was indeed Sinatra, as brash and breezy as one of his album covers (not the one where he was a sad clown).
“Okay, Charlie,” he said. “Drop your bird. I’m opening at Cal-Neva tomorrow night, and you’re invited.”
“If I hop on my bicycle now, do you think I’ll make it?”
“It’s a no-shit paying gig, Charlie.”
“I didn’t figure you sang for free.”
“Maybe I didn’t explain so good-I’m hiring you. I’ll have a first-class ticket messengered over. You’ll fly into LA, we’ll take my private jet to Tahoe. Gonna be a gasser.”
“As it happens, I’m free this weekend. Let’s go back to the you hiring me part.”
“All expenses paid, nice room, crazy meals, all the booze you can guzzle, and two grand for your trouble. You should be back in Chi-Town by Monday, latest.”
Incidentally, nobody from Chicago calls it Chi. Just so you know.
“This sounds agreeable,” I admitted, “and I might come hear you sing for half that. Am I wrong in thinking there’s an actual job buried somewhere in all that Italian ham you’re serving up?”
“There is, in fact. It’s, uh… Look, I love you and everything, but it’s Marilyn’s idea.”
“Marilyn’s idea what?”
