The Devil May Dance

construction workers and shopkeepers in Manhattan and Washington. She was not one to be easily charmed by power and charisma. When she’d encountered Sinatra on set, he was just a grump, but here he was in his glory, as confident as a matador, and she felt it. In a flash of his eyes, she fancied that she could see his temper and passion and the heart Ava Gardner had broken into a thousand pieces. Margaret found her own heart quickening its pace, and she glanced around the table to make sure no one could tell.
“Tell me, Congressman,” Martin said, looking at his cards, “don’t you have, like, laws and stuff to write? Something to do besides sit around drinking with a couple of crooners and their pals?” He smiled at Charlie, though there was definitely nothing friendly about the question.
“I felt it was my sworn duty to answer the call of your movie studio,” Charlie said. “And anyway, we’re on recess for another month.”
“Politics is just a lot of acting,” Margaret said. “I told Charlie he could learn a thing or two from the best. I’m a big fan of Mr. Sinatra—of all of you, actually—and we needed a little sun.”
“Honestly, Dino, what’s got your shorts in a bunch?” MacLaine asked. “It’s not as if we couldn’t stand to have someone hoist up our average IQ.”
Martin elbowed Sinatra and whispered in his ear. Sinatra turned. In the next room, a tall, handsome man with a jutting jaw and red hair was pressing the flesh like a city council candidate. He was dressed fashionably but obviously without the benefit of a movie star’s salary—thin maroon tie, shiny dark blue suit that didn’t quite fit, shoes that tried too hard. A bargain-basement Rat Packer.
“Detective Ellroy Meehan,” Lawford said to Charlie and Margaret. “He’s like the Showbiz Cop.”
“Here because of Chris Powell?” Margaret asked.
“Presumably,” said Lawford. “Want to meet him?”
“If I could,” said Charlie.
Lawford nodded.
“We’ll keep an eye on your wife, Congressman,” Martin said. “Frank will, at any rate.” Everyone laughed.
Lawford sauntered over to the policeman; Charlie followed. Rock Hudson thumbed the lapel of the young man beside him. No one was being even the slightest bit discreet; all inhibitions were gone. Gregory Peck was downing bourbons; buxom aspiring starlets were hanging on Robert Mitchum’s every word as he told them about being on a Savannah, Georgia, chain gang as a teenager. The punch line was that was why they were now shooting Cape Fear in California instead of on location in Savannah, a town Mitchum had hated ever since then. In the middle of this explosion of stars, Detective Meehan was making short work of a vodka tonic as he chatted up Tuesday Weld, who was wearing a tight blue dress and appeared eager to exit the conversation.
Meehan must have sensed someone more famous in his vicinity because, like a remora sensing a shark, he turned to find its source: Lawford.
“Peter!” he said. The two alpha-dogged each other, grasping each other’s hands with vise-grip aggression, pushing each other back and forth as if working a two-man crosscut saw.
“Detective, this is Congressman Charlie Marder from New York,” Lawford said. “He’s here working on Frank’s Manchurian film, advising. He’s both a vet and an old Washington hand.”
Meehan smiled and patted Charlie on the shoulder. “Welcome to Tinseltown,” he said. He took a gulp from his drink. “Oh, Peter,” he said, “you know I’ve landed the Powell case.”
“No, I didn’t. Awful. We haven’t heard much about the circumstances. Suicide?”
“Unless he shot himself in the eyes, both of them, then no, I don’t think it was a suicide,” Meehan said. “Classic Cosa Nostra. Make the corpse unpresentable for viewing. Old-world greaseball stuff. Frank might know something about it from his days in Hoboken.” Meehan laughed and squeezed Lawford’s shoulder; he shook it off slowly but with unmistakable distaste. “Speaking of Frank, didn’t he and Powell have a beef about some skirt? Lola something?” Meehan asked.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Lawford said unconvincingly. “You’d have to ask the man himself.”
“Oh, I will,” Meehan said, staring toward the back room where Sinatra sat.
At that very moment, Sinatra was ranting about gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who had devoted an entire chapter to him in her new memoir, Tell It to Louella.
“She calls me ‘mixed up,’” he told his fellow Rat Packers and Margaret, rage simmering. “She said I go by the ‘law of the jungle.’ I mean, what in the hell is she talking about? That stupid fucking quin doesn’t know me.” He drained his glass of bourbon, and a waitress materialized instantly with another.
“Francis, she wrote nice things too,” said MacLaine. “Compliments about your charm and your talent and how you’re willing to do anything for friends. Yes, there was some nasty stuff, but what do you want? She and Nancy are like sisters.” Sinatra and his first wife, Nancy, had divorced in 1951 after twelve years of marriage. They had three kids: Nancy, twenty-one, Frank Jr., seventeen, and Tina, thirteen.
“There’s also, if you’ll permit me, my captain, quite a lot of praise for you as a father,” Davis offered. “As I understand it, that is. I would never peruse such garbage.”
“Honestly, who even reads a book by a gossip columnist?” asked Martin. “She’s been on our drop-dead list forever.” Martin then began to belt out as if he were onstage:
She’s the worst
She’s a Vegas has-been
She’s accursed
She’s Joey Bishop’s foreskin
But Sinatra was immune to Martin’s charms at the moment. “She’s a cunt,” he spat.
Margaret flinched, then glanced at Britt and MacLaine, who subtly rolled their eyes at each other. Martin lightly patted Sinatra on the shoulder as if consoling him. Margaret looked around the table, but everyone avoided eye contact with her, even—maybe especially—the women.
Charlie was making his way back to his wife when he felt a tug on his arm. He turned around to see Manny Fontaine. “Hey, pal!” the United Artists PR flack said, wobbling. He was solidly in the bag. Charlie looked at his