Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,40
standing at the end of the bar. She didn’t know how long he had been there, but she was glad to see him.
“I looked everywhere and couldn’t find Javier,” Emiliano told Jackie when she rushed over to him, “but I see you like celebrities, so I’ve asked my friend Diego to introduce you to one.”
Hoping that she wouldn’t get another brush-off, Jackie followed Diego, a tray of drinks held high in his hand, weaving through the dance floor, which was crowded with couples vigorously shaking their hips in time to the mambo’s catchy beat. Finally, they came to a roped-off area that Jackie assumed was reserved for big shots. Diego undid the rope and motioned Jackie inside.
Jackie gasped when she saw who was sitting in the first booth, along with three sinister-looking men.
“Mr. Sinatra, I’d like you to meet Jacqueline Bouvier. She’s a columnist for the Washington Times-Herald,” Diego said as he set down the drinks on their table.
Face-to-face with the idol of every teenaged girl in America, “The Voice” himself, Jackie thought that she would swoon like one of his legion of adoring bobby-soxers, but she held her ground with a frozen smile on her face.
Sinatra gave her a long look. “A columnist, eh?” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Well, you’re a helluva lot better-looking than Walter Winchell, I can tell you that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sinatra,” Jackie murmured, batting her eyelashes out of sheer nervousness.
Sinatra patted the empty space beside him on the banquet. “Have a seat,” he said to Jackie. “We’ll buy you a drink. I could use some good press.”
His thuggish-looking companions guffawed at that, while Diego took his cue and left, reaffixing the rope behind him.
Too excited to speak, her heart thumping a mambo of its own, Jackie sat down next to Sinatra. Up close, she was surprised to see that he looked gaunt and tired. There were lines around the famous mouth, hollows under the high cheekbones, and a worried look in the riveting blue eyes. He seemed edgy, a coiled spring of tense energy.
“Let me introduce you to everyone,” he said to Jackie. “The guy with all the bottle caps on his chest is Colonel Guillermo Sanchez,” Sinatra said, pointing to a hatchet-faced man in a khaki military uniform with a jacket full of medals. “He’s a hotshot in the secret police, and President Batista just gave him a promotion.”
Jackie didn’t want to think about what Sanchez did to merit that reward. And she didn’t like the way he leered at her either.
“That’s my pal Sam Giancana,” Sinatra said, nodding at the thin-lipped, shady character sitting next to Sanchez. Sam Giancana, Jackie knew, was a name synonymous with “Mafia hitman.” “He’s very popular in Chicago—paints the town red,” Sinatra added with a crooked smile.
Giancana caught the joke and laughed. He had a cackle like an ice cream headache—the maniacal ha-ha-ha-ha of a bloodless psychopath, Jackie thought, looking away from Giancana’s cold, dead eyes peering at her from behind horn-rimmed glasses. Frank Sinatra did indeed have ties to the Mob, as Emiliano had said. The CIA’s secret report of Giancana’s string of murders, love affairs, and financial interests read like a sensational crime novel.
Jackie was surprised when Sinatra introduced the henchman sitting next to Giancana as the “Mambo King.”
For some reason, that brought another burst of maniacal laughter from Giancana. Jackie’s skin was beginning to crawl. As thrilled as she was to be rubbing elbows with Frank Sinatra, this was not the kind of company she wanted to keep.
“What are you drinking?” Sinatra asked her.
“A mojito,” Jackie tossed off, hoping to sound sophisticated.
“Here, take this one,” Sinatra said, passing her one of the drinks Diego had brought. “That’s Ava’s favorite drink in Havana too. She just left for Africa to make a movie there with Clark Gable called Mogambo. Some new young actress from Philadelphia is in it too. I think her name is Grace Kelly.”
Grace Kelly, the girl from Schrafft’s. I hope this is her big break, Jackie thought, smiling inwardly as she remembered their coffee-spilling gambit in the restaurant. To Sinatra, she said, “Africa—that sounds exciting.” She tried to sound impressed, but it was disconcerting to know that when the cat was away, the mice would play, even when the cat was the gorgeous Ava Gardner. “Will you be joining her there?”
Sinatra frowned. “My show is opening at the Club Parisién next week, so I’ll be stuck in Havana for a while. Africa would be great, but I gotta keep up with Nat