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

understood why he’d been invited to Rancho Mirage. “You know, Juliet and I recently got engaged; this will look like a Norman Rockwell painting by the time they get here.”

Sinatra had earlier that month surprised the world by announcing he would wed South African dancer Juliet Prowse, whom he’d met on the set of Can-Can, though no date had been set and no one in Sinatra’s circle, including the man himself, talked about it much.

“When Ike was president I had to deal with this bullshit. I wanted to go to Korea with the USO, but the army denied me clearance,” Sinatra said. “I had to meet with generals, then the State Department. I told these fuck-sticks what was what. Witch-hunting! I said, ‘Have any of you run a check on me?’ They said there were items in the press that raised questions about my sympathies. I said, ‘Gentlemen, if you feel I’m a risk, you can stick the Korean War in your ass.’ Fuck them, they think I’m a risk.”

Charlie was kept from inquiring further about this by the appearance of Sinatra’s valet, neatly dressed in a bright white polo shirt under a dark blue cardigan and holding a bourbon (also neat) in each hand. “You have a phone call, Mr. S.,” Jacobs said, placing a tumbler in his boss’s outstretched hand. Sinatra nodded and turned toward the house. Jacobs gave the other bourbon to Charlie, who looked at his watch. Ten a.m.

“George, do you happen to have a smoke?” Charlie asked.

“Of course, Congressman,” Jacobs said, reaching into the pocket of his cardigan. He took out a pack of Marlboros and a shiny metal lighter etched with the image of a battleship.

“Navy?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, indeed,” Jacobs said. “Aide to Admiral Beatty in the Mediterranean. Then on an aircraft carrier in Korea. But nothing like you in the thick of it.”

“Service is service,” said Charlie.

And he knew that service of a different sort was still part of Jacobs’s life.

Earlier that morning, the pneumatic drill had started rat-a-tat-tatting. Charlie had assumed that fellow hangover victim Sinatra would soon put a stop to it. But he didn’t, such was the urgency to upgrade the estate for the president’s arrival. So Charlie had dragged himself out of bed and headed to the empty kitchen, where coffee was already brewing. He poured himself a cup, walked outside to enjoy the fresh air, sat down on a chair next to the pool, and lit a cigarette. He took in the cloudless blue sky as a hawk passed overhead, his gaze following the creature over Mount San Jacinto. When the bird of prey was no more than a black speck in the distance, he stared blankly off into the sky. He thought about his father waking up in the prison infirmary at the Tombs, alone and afraid. Lost in those thoughts, Charlie sat in a daze, then slowly began to take notice of the shapes in front of him, the figures visible through the sliding glass door that led to Sinatra’s bedroom inside the house. Sinatra was sitting on a chair wearing only a towel wrapped loosely around his potbelly. Jacobs stood behind him carefully spraying what seemed to be paint on the bald spot at the back of his boss’s scalp. Jacobs then retrieved two different hairpieces from the closet, showed them to Sinatra, and placed one on his head. Seeing the great man half naked and half bald was unsettling; Charlie realized he’d been more dazzled by Sinatra than he’d wanted to admit. And in the casual intimacy of the scene, presumably one repeated every morning, he began to understand the deep bond between the two men.

They walked away from the helipad site past several one-story bungalows curving around the main house to the pool area. Judy had her arm hooked through Sinatra’s in the front of the group; Lola lagged at the end, behind Charlie. She seemed bored.

“Should we go back inside?” Lola asked.

“No, the sun is so nice,” said Judy. “Let’s get towels and sit by the pool.” Even though there was snow a hundred twenty miles away in Los Angeles, the temperature in Rancho Mirage was in the sixties. Clear skies and a cozy desert heat.

Jacobs supplied plush towels from the briefing-room closet and brought Charlie a book he’d left in the kitchen—an early review copy of Cuba Betrayed by Fulgencio Batista, the deposed former dictator. Batista hadn’t seen Castro coming, and Charlie was unconvinced by his attempts to explain himself, though he found insightful the descriptions of fumbling and duplicitous U.S. policy. The two women positioned themselves to face the sun; Charlie took a seat at a glass table a short distance away and motioned for Jacobs to join him.

“Say, George,” Charlie said quietly, putting his book to the side. “I hear Mr. S. is unhappy about a favor Mr. Giancana had asked of him. Do you know what it is? Anything I can help with?”

Jacobs looked earnestly at Charlie, seemingly taking him at his word. “I don’t know, Congressman,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you. Discreetly.” Perhaps Jacobs could actually help him. Charlie felt a moment of relief.

Lola propped herself up on an elbow and tilted her chin in Charlie’s and Jacobs’s direction. “What was eating Frank this morning?”

“Oh, the papers,” said Jacobs. “Some garbage in there about the Mob.”

“What specifically?” asked Judy.

“A wedding performance Sinatra supposedly gave for Angelo Bruno of the Philly Mob. Carousing with the Giacalones of Detroit,” Jacobs said. “But it’s nonsense,” he added staunchly. “Mr. S. doesn’t know them.”

Lola rolled her eyes. “Why do they constantly go after him?” She affected a mock pout.

“Go after who, chickadee?” asked Dean Martin, emerging from the kitchen looking sleepy, satin dressing gown loosely tied over pajama pants and a deeply tanned torso, Bloody Mary in hand.

“Frank, Dino,” said Lola. “Why does the press attack him so much?”

“Some of it’s those crazy John Birchers,” Martin said, collapsing dramatically onto a chaise