The Devil May Dance by Jake Tapper (books to read fiction txt) 📗

talkie, Frank reduced to Ol’ Gray Eyes. “Pucci, give me your piece.”

“Fat” Tony Pucci, Chicago mobster Sam Giancana’s gigantic bodyguard, had a face that looked like it’d been whacked with an oar. Pucci glanced at Giancana, a buddy of Sinatra’s whose presence none dared question. The mobster nodded his assent, the light reflecting off his thick glasses, and Pucci reached underneath his jacket and pulled out what looked to Charlie to be a Colt Python .357 Magnum with a four-inch barrel and a nickel finish.

Sinatra, cigarette dangling from his lips, grabbed the piece, aimed it at the streetlamp, squinted, and fired. He missed, and the bullet pinged off the metal of the pole. He fired again. Another miss.

Giancana snorted. He would not have missed.

Charlie scanned the area to see if anyone had heard the shots, but no one was around for miles, it seemed.

Margaret remembered reading about Sinatra getting arrested after he and Ava Gardner took his Smith and Wesson .38s and shot out streetlamps and storefront windows in the small town of Indio, California.

“Apparently he was a better shot in Indio that night,” Charlie whispered to her, sharing the same thought.

No one cracked wise about Sinatra’s poor aim. This was the Pope, as he was known; they kept quiet. After missing a third shot, Sinatra calmly handed the gun back to Fat Tony.

“You do it,” Sinatra said to the bodyguard. “Jack Daniel’s keeps moving the target.”

“Wobble-wobble,” said Martin.

Fat Tony aimed and fired, and the bulb exploded, dropping a cloak of gray upon them all.

“How’s your bird, Pope?” Martin asked, a Rat Pack inquiry about the status of a fellow traveler’s penis or, more broadly, his happiness in that arena. The others held their breath. Above them hung a half-moon, about which Sinatra started to sing:

Something, something, man in the moon

something, something, baboon,

something, something swoon…

Everyone exhaled; the wind had blown his dark mood away with the clouds. Lawford led the pack in a charge up the hill as Martin sang a song mocking the very young girlfriend of Sinatra’s rival Elvis Presley. “Are you lonesome tonight?” he crooned. “Are you horny tonight? Have you reached puberty yet, my dear girl?”

Sinatra cackled. He’d hosted the television special Welcome Home, Elvis after Presley’s discharge from the army, but Sinatra made no secret of the fact that he found most rock and roll deplorable; he thought the music was written and performed by cretinous goons, and Presley was the gooniest of them all.

Charlie and Margaret walked slowly, bringing up the rear. Margaret sighed, seeming annoyed.

“Stop pretending that this isn’t a little cool,” Charlie said, indicating the scene—they were hanging with icons of the zeitgeist, boozing in a celebrity graveyard in the middle of the night.

“Ring-a-ding-ding,” said Margaret dryly.

The crack of a gunshot echoed across the grass. It took Charlie and Margaret a moment to make out what was going on: Davis was firing Fat Tony’s gun at a grave. Or, more precisely, at the sculpted angel on top of a crypt.

“What th—” said Margaret, poking Charlie in the ribs.

“I think ‘Who the’ is more like it,” Lawford said to Margaret. “Doyle, the guy buried there, was a producer who screwed Sammy back when he was touring the country on the Chitlin’ Circuit with his dad and uncle.”

Charlie looked at the crypt. He didn’t recognize the name.

Davis yelled, “Son of a bitch!” as he fired off another round. The angel’s head exploded.

“There ya go, Smoky!” Martin cheered. He ashed his cigarette on a freshly dug grave, then took a swig from a paper cup.

“I’m not done yet,” Davis said, pulling the trigger once more. The blast hit the cherub in the crotch, shattering the statue. One of the pieces of concrete clipped Charlie.

“Oof,” he said, grabbing his shoulder.

“Honey!” Margaret cried.

“I’m fine,” he said, rubbing the bruise.

“Oh, man,” Davis said. “I am so, so sorry.”

Davis was soused but clearly concerned. He made his way precariously toward Charlie, wobbly and contrite. The singer was a wee man, not even five foot five, all bone and sinew, maybe ninety pounds dressed for winter.

“It’s nothing,” Charlie said.

“Yumpin’ Yiminy, now it’s a clambake!” yelled Sinatra. “More booze!” Another bottle materialized as the pack continued its run through the cemetery, minus Giancana and Fat Tony, who’d turned to walk back to their car. Charlie and Margaret stayed in place, leaning on a thick, slightly cracked tombstone.

“Irish exit,” Charlie said, motioning toward the departing mobsters.

“Not sure they’re Irish, honey. Did it tear your shirt?”

Charlie lifted his hand, revealing a small hole in his suit jacket. “That might have been there before,” he lied.

She poked her finger into the hole. “You’re bleeding,” she said. She held her finger up to capture whatever light she could steal from the moon. “We should go back to the car, see if we need to take you to a hospital.”

“Oh, c’mon,” said Charlie, who still had shrapnel in his chest from World War II. “I’m fine.”

His shoulder might be fine, but Margaret knew that Charlie was not. He slept poorly and drank too much and worked too many hours. He often lost his temper over trivial things, and she worried about how to deal with it. Eighteen years earlier, Charlie had experienced the horrors of war, fighting the Krauts in France after D-Day, and in the past few years Margaret was often reminded of the army’s slogan that “every man has his breaking point.” She was constantly looking for ways to prevent Charlie from reaching his. Whatever the doctors were labeling it, combat exhaustion or combat neurosis or battle fatigue, Margaret knew it would be with him forever. Beyond that, his life in Congress, where he’d been for almost a decade now, was infinitely frustrating—accomplishing anything good required Sisyphean efforts, while ethical compromises were everywhere. And at some point along the way, Charlie found that the constant fundraising and glad-handing to stay in office for his New York constituents had begun to eclipse the work itself.

Ahead, the members of the Rat Pack and their hangers-on were