I swirled my drink, idly. “I’ve gotten friendly with Joey Fischetti, too. Maybe I can find out something about Halley and his Hollywood connivings for you.”
His eyes and brow tightened. “You’d do that?”
“Sure. We can talk about it later. Only, right now you have to do
“What’s that?”
“Leave.”
“What?”
“Lee, you and I both know you’re here just to rankle Sinatra, to get under that thin Italian skin of his.”
Mortimer’s sneer turned into a sort of smile as he puffed on the cigarette-in-holder. “I paid the cover charge. My pretty friend and I have a right to be entertained.”
“You leave, and maybe we’ll do business. Otherwise forget it.”
Mortimer thought about it. “All right. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Fine. Call me at my office... Pleasure, Miss Robbins.”
The brunette smiled and said, “Pleasure, Mr. Heller.”
I slipped out of the booth as Mortimer was paging a waiter to get his check. Then, nodding to Joey (sitting in the booth quietly with Jackie, who appeared calm), I headed backstage, where a couple of thugs who were Sinatra’s current retinue recognized me and showed me into the great man’s spacious dressing room. In addition to the usual makeup mirror, there was a couch and several comfy-looking chairs, as well as a liquor cart and a console radio.
Frank — still wearing that silly Gable mustache — was seated at the makeup mirror in his tux pants and a T-shirt; he looked lean and fairly muscular, not quite as skinny as many thought him to be. He sat hunched over the counter, smoking a cigarette, with a glass of whiskey nearby. His face had a ravaged look — hard to believe that, not long ago, he’d been the idol of countless girls and women.
“I’m not going out there, Nate — I’m not doing it. Not as long as that fucking fag cocksucker is in the house. No way, man. No fucking way.”
Lee Mortimer had blasted Sinatra countless times in his columns. Frank claimed it was because the reporter had once tried, unsuccessfully, to sell the singer a song (“a piece of shit!”). Mortimer had had a heyday running the story about Sinatra accompanying Rocco and Joey Fischetti to Havana for the big confab with Lucky Luciano in ’47, attended by a rogues’ gallery of mobsters. As a celebrity who could travel unhindered, Frank had reportedly carried a bag filled with tribute, the greenback variety. Though Frank attended none of the business meetings, he hobnobbed with Luciano in the casino of the Hotel Nacional, and even had his picture taken with the deported ganglord.
A while back Sinatra had spotted Mortimer in Ciro’s, and attacked the reporter, who won an out-of-court settlement from Frank, when Louis B. Mayer forced him.
I pulled up a chair. “I got rid of Mortimer, Frank. He’s gone.”
Sinatra looked up, the famous blue eyes taking on a startled-deer aspect. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“How did you manage it?”
“I had to promise you’d blow him. I hope you don’t mind.”
He looked at me blankly, and then he burst out laughing. He laughed until he cried, and I laughed some, too.
Smiling, standing, he said, “You’re not kidding — he is gone?”
“I’m not kidding...”
Sinatra looked relieved.
“...you do have to blow him.”
Sinatra grinned, shook his head. “You fucker... He’s gone?”
“Out at home plate. A ghost. A distant bad memory.”
As he got into his shirt and tie, Sinatra said, “You’re just the guy I wanna see, anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“What I said out in Hollywood, at Sherry’s — it still goes. I want to hire you. I can have a thousand-buck retainer for you at your office in the morning.”
“For what?”
“I want you to fly out to D.C. and talk to this son of a bitch.”
“Kefauver?”
“No! Fuck Kefauver. It’s McCarthy I’m sweating, man. If they label me a pinko, I really am washed up. You said you know the guy — through Pearson, right?”
“I know McCarthy. He’s a good joe to drink with.”
“Well, find out what it’ll take to get him off my ass. See if he wants money, or if he wants me to sing at a fundraiser or what the hell. But I got to put a stop to this shit. Mortimer’s starting to spread that pinko crap around, already. People thinking I maybe have some gangsters as friends is one thing — they think I’m a Commie, man, I’m dead. Capeesh?”
“Capeesh,” I said.
“How’s the tie look?”
“It looked better when Nancy was making ’em.”
“Don’t start with me. What are you my Jewish mother?”
“No, I’m your Irish rose. Get out there and try not to cough up blood.”
He smirked at me. “Sweet, Melvin — you’re a real sweetheart.”
Sinatra was great. The crowd loved him. His voice did seem to have a rasp tonight, a kind of burr in it, but it was attractive, somehow, more mature. His ballads were heartbreaking — during “I’m a Fool to Want You” Jackie began to cry — and he seemed to have a new energy in the up-tempo stuff, like a peppy version of “All of Me” and the swinging “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week).” Maybe he did have some career left out in front of him.
