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.
By the time Frank got on stage, however, Rocco had noticed us — and he would, from time to time, shoot daggers toward Jackie and me. Charley seemed to be trying to settle him down, touching his brother’s hand, even sliding an arm around Rocco’s shoulder, whispering.
In the middle of “The Hucklebuck” — a terrible song, typical of what Columbia was sticking Sinatra with these days — I told Jackie I needed to step out to take a leak. She was aware, of course, that Rocco had been shooting us death rays, and claimed to have to go herself.
While she was in the ladies’ room, I was — and I’m sure this will come as no surprise — in the men’s room. This wouldn’t be worth noting, if — just after I zipped up — Rocco hadn’t come striding in.
The men’s room at the Chez Paree — this one, anyway (there were several) — was good-size; we had it to ourselves, Rocco and I, the show being in progress and all.
“Hi, Rocky,” I said, voice echoing in this cathedral of porcelain altars and Crane confessionals, and went over to the sink and began washing up.
His voice, like his footsteps, echoed, too: “What’s the idea, Nate?”
I let the water run, soaping my hands. “Oh, I always wash my hands after I piss or shit — you ought to try it, Rocky. Latest thing.”
Rocco — who looked spiffy in his tux, very handsome except for that horror-show pockmarked puss surrounded by skunk-streaked hair — didn’t smile. That business about me kidding him, that treating-him-like-a-regular-guy routine, wasn’t going to play.
His voice boomed hollowly: “You know what I’m talkin’ about, Heller — I’m talkin’ about you picking up my castoffs... You gonna go through my garbage, too? See if there’s any sandwiches I didn’t fucking finish?”
Still washing up, I turned my head and said, “She’s not garbage, Rocky. She’s a nice kid. She’s still a nice kid, even after your beatings.”
More echoing footsteps — he was within arm’s reach of me, now. The close-set eyes under the black slashes of eyebrow were fixed on me like twin revolver barrels.
He grinned — a grin as terrible as he was. “Maybe you don’t know it yet, Heller — but that ‘nice kid’ is a goddamn ad — a fuckin’ jabber!”
He meant an addict who used a hypo.
I soaped my hands, a regular Lady Macbeth. “Rocky, you’re the one who turned her into a junkie. I’m the one who’s gonna help her.” I shot him another sideways glance. “I’m asking you as a friend, Rock — back off. She’s not your property, anymore.”
The black-slash eyebrows leapt up his forehead; his lip peeled back over white store-bought teeth. “Her ass will always be mine, you dumb fuck! All I gotta do is snap my fingers...” He snapped them. “...and she’ll come crawlin’ on her hands and knees, beggin’ for—”
I didn’t know whether he was going to say dope, or make some filthy sexual reference, but I didn’t care to hear it, in either case.
Which is why I threw a handful of soapy water in his wide-open eyes.
His hands came up to his face, like I’d splashed him with acid, not harmless sudsy water, and I swung a hard right (wet) hand into his balls.
His yowl of pain echoed as he folded up and went down, and now he was the one on the floor, crawling. While he was still helpless, I frisked him, found no firearms, and then I leaned over and hit him in the face — in the right eye, in his burning eye.
And then I slugged him in his other eye, his burning left. Two shiners for one seemed a fair exchange to me. Finally rage fueled him — and perhaps the stinging in his eyes abated — enough for him to rise up off the floor and come at me.
But I’d had plenty of time to get my nine millimeter out. He hadn’t seen me pull it, but he saw the gun now, and he froze — hands clawed before him, a werewolf in a tuxedo.
That was the tableau Charley Fischetti witnessed when he came in the John, looking for his brother, no doubt.
“No, Heller,” Charley said, approaching tentatively, hands up and out, sending a nonthreatening message. He too was in a tux, his dyed-blond hair combed perfectly back. His elevator shoes clip-clopped, echoing. “Don’t do it — let him go.”
I cocked the automatic; the click echoed, too, like another footstep.
“Doesn’t he know who he’s dealing with?” Rocky asked his brother, flabbergasted, astounded, frustrated by my actions. Then to me: “Don’t you fucking know who you’re dealing with?”