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

grimaced slightly in Charlie’s direction and gaily called out: “Knock-knock!”

Fontaine was slick and handsome and young—late twenties, early thirties—and it would be easy to conclude he was just another mindlessly ambitious studio drone, preternaturally optimistic and cheery. But in the two days since Fontaine had picked them up at Los Angeles International Airport, Charlie and Margaret had come to appreciate the wit he deployed like a surgeon with a scalpel. He was deferential to stars and directors and executives, but it was always with a wink in his inside jacket pocket; he clearly knew how silly it all was. “Just a movie,” he would say under his breath, “just some popcorn.” Fontaine further tried to bond with Charlie as a fellow veteran; he claimed to have served in Korea with the Eighth Army Ranger Company. Charlie knew those Rangers. They were small Special Forces units expert in what was called “irregular warfare”—tough, nasty stuff.

Sinatra’s dressing-room door cracked open to reveal Brownie.

“Why, hello, Mr., um, Brownie,” Fontaine said. “I told Mr. Sinatra yesterday that we had hired Congressman Marder here to serve as a consultant on the film, purely as a resource if Mr. Sinatra wants to get more background for his role. Charlie’s a war hero. Fought in France. Just wanted to make a cursory introduction, won’t take more than thirty seconds.”

Brownie remained silent, turning his head toward the room behind him. Charlie remembered a similar maneuver by his father’s assistant, blocking and guarding his dad’s study door when Charlie was in high school and needed money, permission, a signature on a report card. Echoing that past, Brownie made a regretful expression, then he shook his head no.

“Completely understandable, sorry for bothering you!” Fontaine said brightly. “Tell Mr. Sinatra we are happy to set up another time for him to meet the congressman, at his pleasure and convenience!” Brownie closed the door firmly. Fontaine, unfazed, turned to Charlie and Margaret, arms outstretched, and shooed them back down the hall.

“That went about as well as I thought it would,” he said, walking quickly.

Margaret was never one to suffer fools or rude behavior, even if the offender was one of America’s biggest stars. “I thought you’d set up this time for Charlie to meet him?”

“I did,” Fontaine said with the rueful smile of someone who knew the routine. “Don’t worry about it; we’ll figure something out.” He was already heading toward an exit, waving over his shoulder. “Promise.”

Margaret took Charlie’s hand. He looked at her grimly; he’d never be able to help his father if he didn’t get close enough to Sinatra to learn something that Kennedy and White would find helpful.

“Well, there go our ‘High Hopes,’” Margaret said, trying to get a smile out of him.

“Well, let’s ‘Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,’” Charlie responded, smiling. “At least we’re here.”

Surrounded by the film crew busily preparing for the next day’s shoot, Charlie and Margaret weren’t quite sure where to stand or what to do. They spotted Frankenheimer deep in discussion with the set designer and several workers next to the faux train car, which looked as though it had been cut in half lengthwise. This was where Sinatra’s Marco would have trouble lighting his cigarette and meet his love interest, played by Janet Leigh. Images of a landscape were projected onto a giant screen outside the train window so it looked as if the train were moving.

“How much footage?” Frankenheimer asked the set designer.

“Twenty minutes,” he said, “about.”

Frankenheimer ran a hand through his mussed hair. “That’s it?” He sighed. “Just make sure we don’t have them speed by the same water tower five times. This isn’t Bugs Bunny.”

“Gotcha.”

Charlie and Margaret sat down on a nearby bench near the door to a hallway. “I guess we just sit?” he said.

“What did Cagney say?” Margaret replied. “‘They pay me for the waiting, I throw the acting in for free.’”

From somewhere down the hall came a horrifying high-pitched shriek.

“Sweet Jesus, what in the hell?” Charlie asked as Margaret rushed toward the scream. Before she could make it far, however, a wheeled Madagascar cage was pushed around the corner. Inside perched a plump white bird with a long fleshy wattle.

The bird regarded Margaret with cold black eyes, then opened its beak to form a giant black diamond and let out another piercing scream, the loudest that Margaret, in all her years in zoology, had ever heard. It sounded almost like an air-raid siren, a warning for the town populace to run and hide.

Cast and crew on the set behind her filled the air with curses and complaints, but Margaret relished the moment.

The slender woman pushing the cage smiled mischievously. Her dark brown hair was in a tight bun, and she wore large-framed glasses, but underneath the professional exterior she exuded charisma. “It’s a special delivery for Mr. Frankenheimer,” she said.

“Margaret, this is Symone LeGrue,” Frankenheimer said. “My bird girl.”

“Bird handler,” LeGrue corrected him.

Though her zoological expertise was restricted to animals with four legs, Margaret had become a gifted amateur ornithologist over the years. “Wait,” she said. “I know this breed of bird. It’s from somewhere in the Caribbean, right?”

“Yes!” said LeGrue excitedly.

“A white, a white—” It was right on the tip of Margaret’s tongue. “Darn it.”

“A white bellbird,” LeGrue said.

“Right!” said Margaret. “From the Guianas! I just read about them in Birds of the Caribbean!”

“Robert Porter Allen, my hero!” said LeGrue.

“Sainted savior of the spoonbill,” said Margaret.

Charlie joined the group and listened intently, impressed, although he had zero idea what the two were talking about.

“Symone brought me all the sparrows and canaries for Birdman of Alcatraz,” Frankenheimer said. “Comes out this summer.”

“Right, looking forward,” said Charlie. “Love Lancaster.”

“But there are no birds in Manchurian Candidate,” Margaret noted. “Not in the screenplay we got.”

Frankenheimer shrugged. “The garden-club scene, I told Symone we were playing around with different ways to make it extra-weird. She said she had a spectacularly strange bird to show me, one that American audiences had never seen before.”

“You look familiar,” LeGrue said to Margaret. “Are you