The Devil May Dance

by Tapper, Jake

  “I cannot fucking believe the nerve of this guy, his brother, his whole fucking family,” Sinatra said. “Your fucking family, Lawford!”

  Jacobs came into the room. “Mr. S., I’m sorry, but President Kennedy can’t come to the phone.”

  “Call fucking Bobby, call that goddamn rat-fink choirboy motherfucker and get that fucking piece of shit on the phone right now!” Sinatra yelled. Jacobs nodded and retreated to the kitchen. His boss stared out the window toward the pool. No one said a word.

  “So where is he fucking staying?” Sinatra finally asked. “He’s coming to California, right? That’s been announced. Where is he fucking staying?”

  Lawford swallowed. Charlie took it all in, half horrified and half thrilled to witness it.

  “He’s…he’s staying with the Crosbys,” Lawford said softly.

  Sinatra’s blue eyes seemed to turn ice white. “Bing?” he yelled. “He’s staying with fucking Bing Crosby? Fucking Republican Bing Crosby? Right here in goddamn fucking Rancho Mirage?”

  Shaking, he picked up a vase containing daisies and tulips and threw it at Lawford, who ducked. The vase smashed against the door to the kitchen.

  “Fucking Bobby, if the old man hadn’t stroked out, he would have taken care of this!” Sinatra spat. “Fucking Bobby is a 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 Nineteen

  Anaheim, 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 he was the aggrieved party here, that he was unappreciated, that she was being too tough on him. But now, with this new lead on where he might find Violet, he felt something he hadn’t experienced in some time: hope.

  Charlie updated his friends in the car: An FBI tipster had heard about a party being thrown at Disneyland, the theme park that had opened seven years earlier and was now a full-on international tourist attraction. White had said there were a number of underage girls being brought in for the party. The tipster had previously been shown a photo of Violet at the FBI Los Angeles field office and believed she was one of the girls who would be there.

  “You ever make a Disney picture, Peter?” Davis asked, clearly trying to lighten the load of the conversation.

  “Nope. You?”

  “Nope,” Davis said.

  “I assume Walt wouldn’t, like, officially permit this kind of pa
rty at his Magic Kingdom,” Charlie said. “How would these creeps get the keys to the castle?”

  “I’m sure Uncle Walt doesn’t know,” Lawford said. “Do you have any idea how many layers of bureaucracy exist between him and the guys who watch the park at night?”

  Lawford made a right on Harbor Boulevard, and soon enough he was pulling his sports car into a parking lot with plenty of other shiny, exotic vehicles: Jags, Aston Martins, Caddys, and a Rolls or two.

  “Someone’s going to make some bank off this shindig,” Charlie said.

  “This is Hollywood, mate,” Lawford said. “Everything is for sale.” Davis mimicked the sound of a cash register as Lawford put the car in park.

  The three men got out and began walking toward the empty ticket booths; the American flag fluttered in a light wind, and music emanated from somewhere in the darkened theme park.

  Charlie’s drunken clattering around in the bathroom on his way out the door had, in fact, woken up Margaret. After he left, she checked the time, then rolled over in a huff. She was surprised when, not thirty seconds later, the phone rang again.

  “It’s Charlotte,” said the shaky voice on the other end of the line.

  “Are you okay?” asked Margaret, sitting up.

  “Listen,” she said. “I pinched the keys and opened the files.”

  “Holy crap,” Margaret said as her pulse quickened. As a favor to Margaret, Goode had been trying to track down anyone who might have any details of Lola’s life. They needed to find out what enemies she had, who might have preyed on her.

  “I found some stuff on your girl,” Goode reported. “Most of it in Tarantula’s chicken-scratch handwriting, which is almost as repulsive as he is.”

  “Are you at the paper right now?”

  “No,” Goode said. “I’m home. I can’t risk being caught with these documents. I snuck them out and hid them someplace nobody will ever find them.”

  “I don’t understand,” Margaret said. “You’re a journalist. You have files of information, of research. Of dirt. What’s all that research good for if you and your paper don’t use it?”

  There was silence on the line. Finally, Goode said: “Leverage.”

  “For what?”

  “For anything they want,” Goode said. “Money. Sex. Real estate. Power. Favors. Whatever they want.”

  “Who’s they?” Margaret asked.

  “We can talk about that later,” Goode said. “Let me tell you what I have about your girl.”

  “Tell me,” Margaret said. She’d agreed to come back to Los Angeles to help Charlie, to figure out who this Lola was and maybe save her husband’s hide. She’d reached out to Manny Fontaine, to John Frankenheimer, to George Jacobs, but everyone pleaded ignorance about where Lola had come from or who her friends were. Fontaine said he’d seen her at the Daisy and at Puccini, but the maître d’ only faintly recalled her. Her demise seemed to have caused everyone in LA to forget she had existed.

  “These girls, they come to town like moths to a flame,” Goode said, “all of them told since they could walk that they oughta be in pictures, they’re as pretty as any movie star.” Margaret heard Goode light a cigarette and take a drag. “They spot ’em at the Greyhound station or at a casting call or walking down Santa Monica Boulevard. Some end up at those parties and become known for providing a good time. Your girl might have a dope habit too, sad to say.”

  “She might have—” Margaret was confused. What was with the present tense?

  “Yeah, I think I may have an idea of where she’s currently crashing,” Goode said. “You can’t go alone, though, if you try to go. Bring a friend.”

  “Wait,” Margaret said. “I thought you were telling me about Lola Bridgewater.”

  “No, this is your niece I’m talking about,” Goode said. “Violet.”

  Charlie jumped when he noticed that in the shadow of the ticket booth was a tall, broad man in a dark suit. The man waved Charlie and Lawford through the turnstile. Charlie didn’t know what he was walking into, nor did he know how much he could rely on his Rat Pack pals. The constant boozing and the estrangement from Margaret had destabilized him; it was like removing ballast from a ship.

  Charlie, Lawford, and Davis proceeded under the Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad locomotive, which circled the perimeter of the park, and onto Main Street. Even in the dim streetlamps around the town square, the shiny red of the horse-drawn Disneyland Fire Department wagon popped out from the grays and blacks of the night. Down the faux avenue they strolled, passing the Wurlitzer Music Shop and the Main Street Cinema.

  “Why here?” Charlie asked. “Why not at some Xanadu at the Hearst Castle? Behind locked and guarded gates, far from the street, away from any chance of discovery.”

  “Getting away with it is part of the rush,” Lawford said.

  Davis pointed to a giant cartoon image of Mickey Mouse hanging in a storefront, illuminated by an old-time streetlamp. “Always amazes me how minstrel Mickey is,” Davis said.

  “What?” asked Charlie.

  “Look at that mouse, man!” Davis said. “The elastic black arms and legs, the white mouth, the gloves—the whole thing is a classic coon character. Oh, man, this gets me crazy.”

  “Don’t get him started on that fucking mouse, Charlie,” Lawford said, chuckling. “He’ll take it back to Steamboat Willie and ‘Turkey in the Straw.’”

  They crossed the street, went past the Crystal Arcade and the Carnation Ice Cream Parlor.

  “Who are the girls at these parties?” Davis said. “I assume if this is verboten, the fräuleins are of ill repute.”

  “The question is whether they’re of ill repute willingly,” Charlie said.

  They came to a large wooden map and Lawford took out his lighter and flicked its spark wheel to see better.

  “Tomorrowland, man,” Davis said, pointing to the top right corner of the map. “That’s where Frank and I rode on that little motorway in 1955 in that TV special when they opened the park.”

  “Neat,” Lawford said.

  “Disaster,” Davis corrected him. “Traffic jam on the Santa Ana—I mean a horror show, even for SoCal. Hundred-degree heat meant gummy tar on Main Street, snagging the moms’ high heels. Counterfeit tickets, so sardine-can crowds, which meant the vendors ran out of food and drink. Plumbers’ strike, so no water fountains. The company rushed the open, so the best rides weren’t even running yet. Only thing really open was Autopia, which was just regular cars. Tomorrowland was pretty much Todayland.”

  “We’re going here, to Frontierland,” Charlie said, pointing to the top left corner of the map.

  “Lead on, Macduff,” said Lawford.

  “I came in early this morning and Tarantula was dead drunk at his desk,” Charlotte continued on the phone. “He’d dropped the keys in the bathroom. I unlocked the file cabinet. After about twenty minutes I figured out the filing codes and found a bunch of stuff about young girls. And boys. And that’s where Violet was. She’s one of a number of young women who live with this investment manager, John Boyle. It’s sick, Margaret, sick. They pass these girls around like canapés.”

  “Where can I find Violet?” Margaret asked.

  “I’ve seen a lot of horrors in my day and on this beat,” Goode said. “I covered Black Dahlia and Lupe Velez. I covered Jeanne French, her face beaten into pulp, ‘Fuck You, BD,’ written on her torso in her own lipstick.”

  Margaret could hear Goode puffing on her cigarette at a rapid clip. Something was off. Her friend’s mind seemed to be unspooling.

  “There’s no way I would ever be able to get any of this into print. You have no idea the stories they’ve killed. Amazing stories, multiple sources! Studio bosses forcing Bette Davis to have an abortion! Joan Crawford’s skin flick! Why Hearst killed Thomas Ince! A three-part series on Uncle Walt rolling out the red carpet for Leni Riefenstahl! Clark Gable’s secret love child with Loretta Young! On and on. All of them buried.”

  “Charlotte, what did y
ou find out about Violet?” Margaret said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I have never seen anything like this, and I covered Chaplin marrying two sixteen-year-olds! Not at the same time, of course. And Errol Flynn’s statutory-rape trial. Benny Benson! Ed Tierney! Natalie Wood! Vicious! Everyone knows that these men like girls—literal girls! But this takes it to a new level of sickening! The question is what can I do about it. Nightlife will never print it—”

  Her rant continued unabated. This wasn’t Charlotte’s normal almost-manic state; this was something more extreme, her words almost indecipherable, her breathing frenzied.

  “Charlotte, honey, calm down,” Margaret said. She might need to go to her friend, see for herself what had triggered Charlotte. “I have your home address. I’m coming. Stay put, okay?”

  The line went dead.

  Charlie led the way across the park, Lawford and Davis following him, past the Frontierland Shootin’ Gallery, where two armed guards stood, guns in their chest holsters, jackets off. They looked somewhere between Mafia thugs and FBI agents, Charlie thought, in that twilight space where private security guards dwell, tough and not to be trifled with, but badgeless.

  They entered the Mexican town square, El Zocolo, where a mariachi band performed “La Bamba” on the Mexican bandstand, and a crowd of men salivated while watching two dark-haired teenage girls dancing some kind of courtship dance. One of the girls was dressed in a formfitting blouse and high-waisted skirt approximating the traditional china poblano; the other was clad as a charro, with an enormous black sombrero. Charlie paused and looked at their cherubic faces, which made him think of a child, of his own daughter, Lucy, though these girls’ outfits were made to convey a sexuality they wouldn’t grow into for years.

  “Come on, amigo,” Lawford said, pulling him along, “vámanos.”