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

hit the papers and Betty called Frank—I think he was in Miami or something—to explain how it had happened and apologize, and Frank lost his mind. I mean, deranged. Yelling. Punching the walls. The whole nine.”

She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. Margaret sat patiently, waiting for the rest of the story.

“And then he did something that rivaled the cruelty Ava had subjected him to—he never spoke to Betty again. He didn’t answer the phone. He didn’t return her calls. This is a relatively recent widow, remember, so she was already something of a mess. But he just—pffffttt—snuffed out their relationship as if Betty Bacall had never existed. Imagine the kind of screwy wiring you have to have to do that to your fiancée merely because she told someone that the two of you were getting married. I mean, I love Frank and all, he’s a close personal friend and a marvelous performer, but let’s be honest—that’s psychotic.”

Across the room, Peter Lawford noticed Margaret’s empty seat and sidled up to Charlie.

“Congressman,” he said. “May I sit?”

Charlie extended his hand, offering the chair. The music continued to blare; the lights dimmed and under the cover of the artificial dusk, several guests stood and began to dance.

Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? boomed Barry Mann. Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?

“I’ve been trying to reach you since Rancho Mirage, but you’re impossible to track down,” Charlie said.

“I’ve seen you since then, have I not?” Lawford asked, pouring on the British charm as he poured more martini down his gullet.

“Not anywhere we could talk,” Charlie said. “I’ve been hoping you could tell me more about Margaret’s niece Violet. You said you saw her at a party.”

“Indeed I did, old chap. It was late, quite late, and I was party-hopping with a group of rich expats I’d met at the Daisy.” He leaned forward. “I will be honest. I’m not unfamiliar with the experience of intoxication—none of us are, and you’re a dog that runs right with the rest of us hounds, Charlie—but on this particular night, I was quite smashed, and all of a sudden I was in this party in, oh, I don’t know…Malibu, maybe? Santa Monica? Venice? We were driving—”

Charlie raised his tumbler and downed more bourbon to hide his irritation. Lawford fancied himself quite the raconteur, but like most of the actors Charlie had encountered in Hollywood, he mistook the clever lines written for him by others as his own cleverness. That Americans were so easily seduced by an English accent only compounded the delusion.

“—then we were in this party, I have no idea who was throwing it, and it was full of old men and young girls. And somewhere in that blur—I kind of came to in the midst of this bacchanal, and there she was, this girl, I recognized her but didn’t quite know how, and you know, to be perfectly honest, it was her chest that I recognized. I mean, certain works of art one just remembers forever.” He smiled lasciviously, then seemed to recall that Violet was missing; he winced in regret and gulped a new martini that had been placed in front of him by an attentive waitress.

“You’re sure it was her, though?” Charlie asked.

“As sure as I can ever be of anything after a night like that, I suppose,” Lawford said. “But listen, old sport, I have a favor I’d like to ask of you.”

“Ask away,” Charlie said.

Lawford checked over his shoulder to make sure no one could hear him. The music was blasting and no one was within earshot.

“I got a call from Bob earlier today,” he continued. “Jack is not going to stay with Frank next month. Bob won’t let him.”

Charlie nodded as if this were news to him.

“Needless to say, Frank is going to flip his lid. And I have to deliver the news.”

“I’m picturing one of those Tasmanian Devil cartoons,” said Charlie.

“I know,” Lawford said, sighing deeply, “but as the Kennedy ambassador to Hollywood, I’ve been told this is my job. So you, my friend, have got to be there with me. Might help keep him under control. Please.”

Charlie wasn’t sure when he and Lawford had become friends. “There?” asked Charlie. “Where? And when? Not tonight. I’m not going anywhere near a blotto Frank bearing bad news.”

“No, no, no,” Lawford said, leaning back in his chair and lighting a cigarette. “Not tonight. When we’re all back in Los Angeles. I’ll pick you up and we can drive there together—strength in numbers. Frank respects you, and it will be over quick, then we can go have a good time.”

Charlie thought about it. He didn’t really have to do this. Since December, he’d been on a mission he had no desire to carry out, one a different Kennedy was forcing him to undertake. And now this? There was nothing appealing about the proposition.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” he said, “I’m afraid I have some business I need to attend to that day.”

“What day?” Lawford asked, shocked.

“Any,” Charlie said. “Any day.”

Clearly not unfamiliar with hitting the limits of his charm, Lawford looked sideways at Charlie. “Okay, friend, tell me what you’d like in exchange.”

Charlie scratched his head. “There is literally nothing you have that I want,” he said. He looked around the room for his wife, finally spotted her absorbed in conversation with Janet Leigh. And then he had an idea.

“Well, actually, there is something I’d like from you,” Charlie said. “But you cannot tell anyone—not even Frank.”

Chapter EighteenLos Angeles, California

March 1962

“We have three young daughters ourselves, so I feel strongly about protecting children from material intended only for mature audiences,” Stanley Kubrick told Charlotte Goode, who raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That said, when Nabokov’s novel came out, I knew I had to bring it to the screen.”

After days of having her calls go unreturned, Margaret had found Goode at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre at a film premiere, on the wrong side of the rope