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

rat-fink motherfucker and you, Lawford, are a worthless piece of shit. You will never be in another picture with us, you will never be in another show with us, you are dead to me. Dead. Do you hear me? Fucking dead!”

Charlie kept waiting for Jacobs to pop in again to calm his boss; when he didn’t, Charlie realized the valet was likely hiding.

“I did everything I could, Frank!” Lawford protested. “I told the president all the work you’d done to the place, that you’d had a switchboard put in for his calls, that you’d built him a heliport. I said that you’d even erected a flagpole just for the presidential flag after you saw the one flying in Hyannis Port!”

Sinatra started rubbing his cheeks with his right hand, up and down, as if feeling his beard, up and down, as if he were trying to wring an answer from his own head. He stopped, raised a finger, and shook it as if he’d come up with the one solution to all of this. He strode to the door to the pool, swung it open, and marched off. Charlie and Lawford looked at each other, then began scrambling after their friend. In his present state, who knew what he was capable of?

It was late afternoon and the sun was beginning to disappear behind Mount San Jacinto. Charlie followed Lawford around a corner of the mansion. Sinatra had grabbed a sledgehammer from the construction equipment scattered around and was walking toward the helipad.

“What are you doing, Frank?” Charlie asked.

“Don’t, don’t do that, Frank!” Lawford pleaded.

The singer was not exactly in top physical shape, his diet and exercise regimen consisting of bourbon, cigarettes, and poker. He focused the giant hammer on the paved circle of the helipad, hoisted the sledgehammer above his head, then brought it down with every ounce of strength he had. It made a thick sound, an ugly clunk!

He was already sweating as he brought the hammer down again. And again. A hole appeared in the asphalt; cracks spidered out from there, destroying the pristine construction. He looked up at Lawford and Charlie, wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his bathrobe, and lifted the tool high above his head once more.

“You having fun watching this, you pieces of fucking shit?” Sinatra snarled at them. “You fucking traitors? Get the fuck out of here!”

The two men backed away from the helipad and returned to the house. After bidding Jacobs a quick adieu, they rushed into Lawford’s sports car, and he stepped on the gas.

A few blocks away they both exhaled.

“Jesus Christ,” said Charlie.

“That went about as well as we expected,” said Lawford.

“And now it’s your turn to do me a favor,” Charlie said.

“Oh, goody,” said Lawford.

Chapter NineteenAnaheim, California

April 1962

The phone rang. Charlie looked at the hotel clock: just after midnight. He was reminded of when the phone had rung early that December morning and he found out his dad was at the Tombs, changing his life forever. He looked at Margaret, beside him in bed. She had been sound asleep when he got back to the room from the hotel bar. The cold front between them that had rolled in on the way home from Sing Sing when Charlie told her about the photo with Lola felt like the beginning of the end. He’d stopped any pretense of hiding his drinking, and Margaret had ceased concealing her disdain.

“Another one?” she would ask when he poured a drink for himself in the kitchen or entered the living room holding a half-empty glass. This soon became an assertion rather than a question: “Another one,” as if she were stating it for the record. And that became part of their new routine, her disapproving glance implying some new level of disgust. Somehow the subterfuge, pouring the drink out of Margaret’s line of sight, had provided a degree of respect that openly pouring bourbon into his morning coffee did not.

“Hello?” he mumbled into the phone. It was Addington White. With a lead on his niece’s location.

“Wait, she’s where?” Charlie asked, taking a second to absorb it all.

“Tip came in,” White said. “I told you we’d help!”

Charlie hung up the phone, made a note on a scrap of paper, and called Lawford. Thirty minutes later, they were speeding east on the Santa Ana Freeway to Anaheim. Lawford was behind the wheel of the Italian coupe, Sammy Davis Jr.—who’d been drinking with Lawford—was in the passenger seat, and Charlie was crammed in the back.

“I can’t believe we’re going to fucking Disneyland,” Lawford said. He wasn’t the only one.

Sinatra had attempted to ignore President Kennedy’s visit to California, but photographers and local TV news had followed the president to every stop on the way, from Naval Air Station Alameda, where he landed, to the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, where he was given an honorary degree. Then it was back to Alameda to fly to Vandenberg Air Force Base for an inspection and the launch of the Atlas 134D intercontinental ballistic missile, which theoretically could deliver a nuclear weapon. It was intended as a clear signal to Khrushchev and any of his friends in the neighborhood—primarily Castro. Next a hop to Palm Springs Airport to the home of Bing Crosby and a quick visit with Palm Springs’ newest resident, President Eisenhower. Charlie and Margaret had watched much of this unfold live on their suite’s television at the Miramar.

“Charlotte says the president met Marilyn Monroe at Bing’s,” Margaret said in an attempt to fill the void between them and fight off her loneliness. “Says the whole scene was wild—amyl nitrite, interns. Bing wasn’t there.”

Charlie leaped at the chance to have a conversation with her, but it took just seconds for the topic to remind Margaret of Lola, and her terse responses resumed.

That evening, Charlie had just grunted on his way out the door. He had begun taking his dinner in the lobby. His meals were mostly liquid at this point, anyway. He had convinced himself