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

the office,” she said, clearly distracted. “I’ll be done in a sec.”

“Please,” Margaret said. “I’ll just freshen up.”

“Oh, sure, right over there,” Goode replied, pointing toward a door in a corner.

Margaret walked into the cramped bathroom, painted yellow and barely more spacious than a restroom on an airplane. The most recent edition of the tabloid sat on the floor under the toilet paper roll. “Sinatra and Prowse Splitsville” blared the headline next to an illustration of a torn photo of the couple. “Dancer’s Refusal to Embrace Motherhood Leaves Blue-Eyed Crooner Blue.”

Was that what had happened? Margaret wondered. Sinatra was mercurial and the sudden engagement had seemed to surprise even his friends. After what she’d seen and heard, Margaret doubted Hollywood Nightlife’s version of events, though she knew, given the power of the tabloid, that it would be accepted as gospel. She supposed it wasn’t surprising that the breakup would be blamed on the less famous partner.

Smaller type highlighted the travails of lesser stars: “Did Bobby Darin Only Marry Sandra Dee to Get More Famous?” “Is Natalie Wood Ignoring the Woman Who Did Her Singing in West Side Story?” “Brigitte Bardot’s Latest to Be Directed by Her Ex!”

Where am I? Margaret wondered. Not long ago she was raising her kids, reading zoological journals, and helping Charlie steer his political career. She’d had a weird hankering to learn how certain cloven-hoofed animals of the Paleozoic were related to the modern equine and a few thoughts on how to restart her research, but she’d wait until her kids were in grade school to find out. But now, she was trying to figure out who might blackmail her husband with the body of a dead teenage girl, how she could get her father-in-law out of prison before he died there, and where she might track down her runaway niece. And she was contemplating it all from the shoddy restroom in the offices of a tawdry Hollywood scandal sheet.

And then she heard someone talking.

“What the hell, Charlotte!” blared a man’s voice.

Margaret carefully turned the handle to crack open the door and better observe. Tarantula had shown up in all his slime and hideousness, a camera hanging from a weathered strap around his doughy neck.

“We don’t pay you to lecture directors on red carpets,” he hissed. “I’m fucking serious here. If this happens again, there will be consequences!” Margaret couldn’t see his face, but Goode appeared chastened and perhaps even frightened. He began turning his ample frame toward the bathroom. Margaret ducked behind the door. Her heart skipped a beat. Was she even allowed to be in these offices?

“The toilet’s broken,” Goode said, answering the question. “I called the plumber.”

“Good fucking Christ,” Tarantula said, cursing at the floor. “I’ll be at McGill’s.” A few seconds later Margaret heard the metal door slam.

Margaret peeked her head out again. “Yikes,” she said.

“I’m so glad he bought the toilet excuse,” Goode said, exhaling. “Not sure what he’d have done if he found you in there.” She lit a cigarette, her hands shaking. “Jesus, I’m fifty today.”

“Happy birthday,” said Margaret. “Let’s celebrate. Unless you have plans?”

“I had plans,” Goode said, and she took another swig from her flask. “I was going to write the next His Girl Friday or Bringing Up Baby. I thought by age fifty I’d have won a screenwriting Oscar or two. Not…this. Maybe Peg Entwistle had the right idea.”

Margaret racked her brain and then recalled the story of the ruined actress who’d dived off the H of the Hollywood sign. Silence filled the room.

“Charlotte, I need your help,” Margaret finally said.

And Lawford needed Charlie’s help. Earlier that day, he’d picked up Charlie in his Ghia, and now they were heading to Rancho Mirage.

“He’s going to blow his stack,” Charlie said. “I’ll be there for moral support, but you have to light the fuse.”

“Thanks,” Lawford said. “That won’t be hard to do.”

Charlie had little confidence in Lawford’s pledge, and the distrust hung in the air awkwardly until Lawford turned on the radio.

…the youngest brother of the president, who is seeking his older brother’s former Senate seat, admitted today that in his freshman year at Harvard he was asked to leave the college after he was caught cheating on an exam—

“Oh, Teddy.” Lawford sighed.

“Lot to live up to in that family,” Charlie said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Lawford said, a rueful smile on his face. He changed the station.

…twelve hundred defendants, sitting in a basketball court in the Principe Prison, facing Castro government charges that remain secret but clearly relating to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Cuban defense lawyers say they believe prosecutors will seek various punishments including the death penalty—

Lawford sighed again and punched in another station, this time one that played music, producing a familiar crooning from the man they were about to confront.

…like the love of Ant’ny for Cleo,

When I left my heart down in Rio

What is more sad than a good love gone bad

I was an Aries devoured by a Leo!

Sinatra’s light baritone prompted Lawford to grimace. He changed the station.

In ’43 they put to sea thirteen men and Kennedy

Aboard the PT-109 to fight the brazen enemy…

“PT-109” by Jimmy Dean was climbing to the top of the country chart, but Lawford was clearly not in the mood for the hagiography, and he shut the radio off completely.

The report from Cuba, meanwhile, had prompted Charlie to ruminate about the classified Oversight Committee hearing a week before where a terrified lieutenant had told him and two other House Republicans about Operation Northwoods.

Charlie couldn’t believe his ears as the officer explained the false-flag scheme he claimed the Joint Chiefs chairman, General L. L. Lemnitzer, had presented to Defense Secretary Bob McNamara days before: the U.S. would stage a “series of well-coordinated incidents” at or near the U.S. base at Guantanamo “to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.” Fake saboteurs, fake riots, burning our own aircraft, even staging funerals for mock victims. The document the lieutenant presented was hideous: “We could