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

not going to be charged with anything,” White added.

Charlie stood and followed his wife out of the interrogation room and into the police office, which was abuzz with bookings from late-night Los Angeles life—prostitutes, thieves, fleeced tourists, all sitting at desks as weary officers tried to suss out copious claims. To Charlie’s keen nose, the room smelled of coffee, cheap perfume, and sex.

They paused in front of a bulletin board covered with public service ads and departmental posters. ARE YOU INVITING BURGLARS INTO YOUR HOME? blared one flyer above a cartoon image of a house with its windows open. Another advertised the annual policeman’s ball. A third listed the “Qualities of a Good Policeman,” which included “the wisdom of Solomon,” “the strength of Samson,” and “the tolerance of the Carpenter of Nazareth.” A frayed pamphlet from the previous summer reminded officers to donate to the fund for slain officer Sidney Riegel, c/o the Los Angeles Hillel Council.

Margaret sank wearily into a chair across from an empty desk. Charlie stayed on his feet.

“Think we can finally go home?” Margaret asked.

“Hope so,” Charlie said, looking around. No one was close enough to hear them. “But once the Feds have their claws in you…”

“What does that mean?” Margaret asked.

“We’re informants now, essentially,” Charlie said. “A higher class than the average Chicago stool pigeon, but the same basic job description. We work for them. For free.”

“Forever?” Margaret asked.

Charlie shrugged and turned his gaze toward the bulletin board.

Meehan abruptly appeared, grunted in their direction, and walked past Charlie to the door of the interrogation room. He knocked lightly; White opened the door and let him in.

Charlie raised an eyebrow at Margaret, then turned to look again at the bulletin board. The previous day’s “Daily Police Bulletin” was tacked in the middle of the board, with mug shots and fingerprints of three arrestees: a white man picked up on four counts of forgery, a white woman in jail for four counts of petty theft, and a Black woman sporting a black eye who’d been picked up for issuing a check without sufficient funds. The charges all seemed remarkably small-bore to Charlie, especially given the dead woman in the trunk of his rental car.

He looked at Margaret; her arms were folded, and her eyes closed as her chin dipped toward her chest. He looked at his watch. Almost four a.m. Their night had started so long ago—dinner with Goode, drinks with the Rat Pack, then their ill-fated sojourn to Forest Lawn. He thought of poor Lola Bridgewater, a captured pawn in someone’s twisted game.

“Come back in, Congressman,” White said, snapping Charlie back to the present. Meehan brusquely passed him again, headed in the opposite direction. Charlie leaned over and lightly touched Margaret on the knee, startling her awake. She stood and he followed her back into the room; they both sat down at the table again.

“We want to know what you learned about Hubbard,” White said.

Margaret told them the story.

“Do you have the papers you grabbed from them?” White asked.

Margaret handed White the documents from her purse.

“What does it say, Addy?” Kennedy asked. He was facing the one-way glass, sleep deprivation noticeable in his voice.

“It’s titled ‘Project Celebrity,’” he said. “A list of celebrities they want to recruit. Winchell, Murrow, Dietrich.”

“A bunch of gossip columnists on there too,” Margaret added. “Parsons and Kilgallen. Hedda Hopper. Walter Lippmann.”

Kennedy turned around and cocked his head toward White. “I suppose nowadays gossip passes for news,” he said, holding out his hand for the document. Kennedy glanced at it for a few seconds, then folded it and put it in his inside jacket pocket. “What happened to the car you drove to the church?”

“We went back and got it the next night,” Charlie said, impressed with the attorney general’s attention to detail. “Took a cab to a spot five blocks away. No one saw us.”

“The same car you drove tonight?” Kennedy asked.

“Yes,” said Charlie. “It’s our rental car.”

Margaret didn’t think anyone from the church had seen them arrive, but who knew; they were a suspicious lot and the odds of surveillance weren’t negligible.

“You two can go back to the hotel and clean up,” Kennedy said. “Then around lunch I need you to sit down with Addington and give a full accounting of everything you’ve seen.”

“We’ve told you everything,” Margaret said.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” White said. “We want every last detail. Projects Sinatra is working on, the behavior of various Rats in the Pack.”

“Projects he’s working on?” Charlie said wearily. “There’s a screenplay about the U.S. accidentally dropping an A-bomb on North Carolina and covering it up.”

Kennedy and White looked at each other.

“Yes, all of that,” White said. “We’ll go over every detail.”

“And then we can go home?” Charlie said. “Back to New York.”

“You can go back east when production moves back east in a few weeks,” Kennedy said. “But until then, you need to figure out this Lola business.”

Charlie realized what Kennedy was saying. “Wait, you want us to figure out who’s framing us?”

“You’re in the best position to do it,” Kennedy said. “If it’s the Mob that did it—and that would be my theory—stick around to see what they do next.”

“Continue as a consultant to Manchurian Candidate,” White said. “There’s about five or six weeks of shooting left, Krim tells me. Soon some of it will be in New York, as you know. But you need to stay on this case until you figure out who killed the girl.”

Charlie sighed wearily. Defeated, deflated. Then he sat up in his seat. “We have an ask of you too, then.”

“Really?” Kennedy said, stunned. He wasn’t used to folks behind the eight ball trying to rack the table.

White jumped in. “Congressman, you’re really in no position—”

“No, no, Addy,” Kennedy interrupted. “That’s fine, I want to hear what he has to say.”

“Margaret’s niece is in Los Angeles,” Charlie explained. “Violet. She’s underage. A runaway. And we saw her briefly with a much older studio executive. We’ve been asking around about her, to