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

nodded and took a deep breath, inhaling the pipe smoke Sinatra blew his way. It reminded him of his father’s pipe tobacco, of scotch and his dad’s dimly lit study, and of how badly, despite the early hour, Charlie wanted a drink. His jitters were getting worse. He couldn’t quite see his way out. His dad was lying in a bare-bones hospital ward in federal prison, his niece was still missing, and yet with all this angst, he couldn’t allow himself an ounce of self-pity for being so reckless with Lola. Such a photograph could end his political career in a second.

“I mean, that girl got around,” Sinatra said. “Not saying she had it coming. Just that who knows who she upset.”

“Speaking of which, Frank, I caught Beans phoning a florist in North Dakota,” Fontaine said.

“Yeah?” Sinatra said, confused.

“Sending flowers to the Bechmanns?”

“Who?” Sinatra asked.

“Lola’s real name was Mary Bechmann,” Charlie said.

“Ah,” said Sinatra.

“Did you ask Beans to send her family flowers?” Fontaine asked.

“I may have,” Sinatra said, irritated, looking up from the Oscar nominees. “Is there a problem?”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Fontaine asked. “No one knows you knew her. Why let the parents know?”

Sinatra frowned. “Just tryin’ to be nice.”

“Of course, of course,” Fontaine said reassuringly. “But let the studio take care of that. Lola was working on Kid Galahad, she had a bit part, so UA is going to send flowers. Okay?”

“She was a fun time, Lola,” Sinatra said. “But young, you know?”

“Sixteen,” Charlie said.

“What?” Sinatra said, genuinely shocked.

“That’s what the cops said.”

“That can’t be true!”

“It is, Frank,” Fontaine said.

“That’s horrible,” Sinatra said. “Looked a lot older.”

“At least eighteen,” Fontaine said.

Charlie couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“I met her at a party at Lawford’s,” Sinatra recalled. “She walked in wearing one of those short skirts.” His facial expression made it clear his memory was taking him down a tawdry path. “Oh, Charlie, don’t get so high and mighty,” Sinatra said, noting his look of disgust. “I saw you talking to her. You weren’t discussing the Bay of Pigs.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Charlie protested.

“Your face is a Sunday sermon,” Sinatra spat.

“Who else was she with?” Charlie asked. “Who else did she date?”

“Everyone,” Sinatra said. “Powell, obviously. Last time I saw her was at a party at Van Heusen’s.”

“Whatever happened to that?” Charlie asked. “Powell.”

Fontaine shrugged. “Last I heard, it was Mob debts,” he said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sinatra said.

Though Charlie and Fontaine had been shielding Sinatra from the street and police barriers prevented fans from approaching them, Fontaine looked around nervously. “Let’s change the subject,” he said.

Sinatra put a concerned hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “How’s your pa?” he asked.

Not great but alive, was the answer. After landing at Idlewild Airport a few days before, Charlie and Margaret drove the fifty miles north to Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining. In its 137-year history, the prison had housed many celebrities, from Lucky Luciano to bank robber Willie Sutton to Tammany Hall political boss Jimmy Hines. And now Winston Marder.

They were met at the gates by Wilfred Denno, the warden. Bald and ingratiating, Denno was so eager to show off the prison to a New York congressman and his wife that he seemed to have briefly forgotten they were there to visit his ailing inmate father. It was a straight line from the entrance to the grounds to the prison infirmary, and Denno’s travelogue was unceasing: “The train tracks that bisect the property are underneath us in a tunnel” and “The stained-glass windows in the chapel were made by convicts out of old pharmacy bottles” and “The prison shops make more than a mil a year from dog licenses and shoes, brooms and paintbrushes”—until Margaret politely reminded the warden that although there were eighteen hundred prisoners in the five-tiered maximum-security cell blocks, they were there for exactly one, an ailing man in the prison hospital.

Hospital was being generous, Charlie thought. It was just a long room in an industrial building that also housed the prison gymnasium, which provided a constant background of banging and clanking, shoe-squeaking and occasional shouts. Patients were lined up in cots just feet from one another on both sides of the room, some of them shackled to the bed. Charlie was temporarily distracted from the dismal sight by its echoes of Lucy’s favorite bedtime book, Madeline; this was a darker version of that orphanage, with his own aged father occupying a cot at the far end. As they approached his bed, the old man seemed to sense their presence, and through the tangle of IV tubes suspended from the wall above him, Winston turned his head toward them. When his eyes met Charlie’s, he smiled weakly.

His father looked older and frailer, gray and shriveled. Charlie and Margaret could hear his heavy, labored breathing.

“Charlie,” he said, his voice reedy and raspy. He extended a trembling hand to his son and beckoned for him to come closer, so Charlie took a nearby wooden chair and pulled it up to the bed. Margaret stood at the foot, her face grave with concern. Denno nodded his approval to the guard.

“I…know,” Winston said, his voice strained. He tried to push out a third word but couldn’t.

Charlie looked at the warden, worried about his father’s health, secondarily worried about what his father might say.

“You…need—” Winston began to cough; what started as a throat-clearing quickly turned into a deep hacking. Charlie softly patted his father on his shoulder, looking sadly to his wife. What a thing to witness, the rapid erosion of a mountain.

“We think there’s a chance your father may be coming down with pneumonia,” Denno said. “Doctors are watching him around the clock, of course.”

“What doctors?” Margaret asked. “I don’t see any here.”

Denno scanned the room and shrugged. He wandered off, presumably to find one.

Something distant in Winston’s eyes lit up; he leaned into his son. “Trust,” Winston whispered in Charlie’s ear. “Don’t.” He collapsed heavily onto his pillow.

Charlie thought back to when he was a child lying beside his