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

shall we?” Lawford said. Charlie marveled that this sort of line worked. His blinding smile and impressive pedigree probably helped.

Lawford and his companions headed indoors while Charlie remained in the hot tub with Lola, both sunk nearly to their chins in an effort to stay warm. He looked over at Sinatra and Judy seated at the poolside bar, wrapped in terry-cloth robes. They whispered with purpose, then they also rose to go inside. He looked back at Lola, who smiled invitingly. Nervously, Charlie looked away. Then he looked back. She was still smiling at him—brazenly, cheerfully, clear about what she was conveying.

And then she took off her bikini top.

Charlie tried to catch his breath; she was like a Botticelli. The booze was disintegrating the wall he’d constructed between righteousness and desire. No one there would care. Who would know?

He looked away, toward the large windows of the living room, through which he saw Judy take a seat on Sinatra’s lap. A newly hung portrait of President Kennedy stared past Sinatra and directly at Charlie.

Kennedy. Charlie thought of the president and his brother and what they were doing to Charlie’s father; he thought of the disdain he’d long had for President Kennedy’s legendary extramarital duplicity. These were angry thoughts, punctuated by girlish laughter from wherever Lawford and his party had retreated.

Charlie had been with other women between Pearl Harbor and his and Margaret’s post-VJ-Day nuptials. He hadn’t told Margaret, and she had never asked. In France he had focused on leading his platoon and pushing aside the nihilism that threatened to overwhelm them. But there were moments of which he was not proud—a night in the Alsace when a terrified woman threw herself into his arms, in gratitude born from desperation and survival. And there were other times, too, when Charlie felt himself on the precipice of such despair that nothing else would arrest it. No one even bothered to romanticize it. This was not joie de vivre. They were rats in a ship’s hull. He wasn’t proud of his behavior in France, but he tried to leave it behind. It was overseas, it was during war, it was before he was married.

Here in a Jacuzzi at Sinatra’s compound—well, this was not war.

And with that, he permitted himself to look again at Lola, who was arching her back as she stretched—

Charlie stood up abruptly in the hot tub. “Excuse me,” he said to Lola. “I just remembered I have a phone call to make.”

“Doesn’t look like you’re thinking about a phone call,” Lola observed.

He took one last look at her, swallowed, and walked inside.

Good Lord, he thought as he walked by Sinatra and Judy. She was straddling him on the sofa, though they were both still fully dressed.

“Not so easy being righteous when other dames actually want to screw you, is it?” Sinatra said loudly. Charlie suddenly wondered about the crooner’s plans to marry Juliet Prowse. Maybe Frank had forgotten.

In the kitchen, Charlie found Jacobs collecting his wallet and keys and preparing for a quick shopping trip. He asked if he could join him.

“I can pick up anything you want, Congressman,” Jacobs said. “No need for you to come.”

“I need…I need to go with you,” Charlie said. “If you don’t mind.”

Soon they were winding their way out of the Tamarisk Country Club.

“Not everyone can keep up the pace after hours,” Jacobs said when the silence in the car became awkward.

“Lawford arriving with the party girls changed the tenor,” Charlie said.

After a brief pause, Jacobs said: “Maybe it brought it all out into the open a bit more.”

Charlie considered that.

“Anyway, I could all but see the angel and devil on your shoulders in that hot tub,” Jacobs said. “Looked like a draw.”

“That’s probably being generous to the angel,” Charlie said.

They drove in silence a bit longer, passing a blur of green—immense trees that served as fences, broken up only by driveways that led to mansions. The quiet seemed awkward to Charlie, although he wasn’t sure why.

“I know what the favor is,” Jacobs finally said, as if he’d been holding it in. “The one Mr. Giancana asked of Mr. S.”

“You do?”

“Yes, sir,” Jacobs said. Charlie could tell he didn’t feel completely comfortable sharing it. “Or I should say, I know of a favor Mr. Giancana asked of him. I don’t know if it’s the only one or the one you were asking about.”

“Okay. Sure. What is it?”

“Pretty much what you might expect,” Jacobs said. “He asked Mr. S. to ask Bobby to cancel his pursuit of organized crime.”

“Anything in particular?” Charlie asked.

“Momo went into quite a bit of detail,” Jacobs recalled, indicating that he paid attention to matters with the diligence one would expect from an admiral’s aide. “Bobby Kennedy wants the FBI to eliminate organized crime. Not just Giancana’s guys, but all of ’em. Sending the IRS in for tax evasion, appointing a Justice Department task force to prosecute top targets—Giancana, Rosselli, Hoffa, Cohn. And on and on.”

“Boy, Momo has good sources,” Charlie said.

“Money gets you a lot of cooperation, especially from civil service employees,” Jacobs said.

They arrived at the market. Jacobs told Charlie he’d be right back, he just needed some sweet vermouth and olives. Charlie felt better for having removed himself from the immediate temptation of Lola, although all too soon they were headed back to the Compound.

“So what did Frank do?” Charlie asked. “Did he talk to Bobby? Or the Ambassador? Or the president himself? I’m not sure what I could do, but is there any way I can help out?”

“I don’t know,” Jacobs admitted. “In September, Mr. S. and Mr. Lawford went to Hyannis Port, but I don’t know if they talked about any of this. I stayed here. I haven’t heard anyone mention it since.”

They were under the carport now, the engine still running. Jacobs remained seated behind the wheel. Charlie waited to hear if he had anything else to tell him.

“I worry about Mr. S.,” Jacobs finally said. “I worry about the Mob pushing him to