"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (10 page)

*

As to the former Miss Nancy Barbato, Frankie had married the lady at age nineteen for one reason: his mother
Dolly told him to. Nancy, a nice Italian girl, hailed from a decent family in Jersey City. Solid middle-class at best, a wedding to someone so respectable qualified as a giant step up for the Sinatras.

“Ma, I don't wanna get married,” Frankie whined.

“What?” Dolly demanded. “What are you hopin' for?”

“I've got a good voice, Momma. I wanna be a singer.”

She slapped him hard across the cheek. “That's crazy.”

“Why? Momma, this is America. Anyone—”

“Nothing but a dream.”

“Dreams sometimes come true."

”Look around.” Dolly pointed to one after another of their humble pieces of furniture in the crowded home. “Did my dreams come true? Did your father's?”

“Mine will. I know it.”

Dolly shifted tactics. “Alright, then. Go out and be a singer. Give it a try. A nice wife can support you.”

“No wife of mine will ever work.”

Another slap, harder still. “Shut up. Listen.”

“I'm listening, Momma.”

“She's the kind of girl won't mind taking a job until you get success or come to your senses. Either way, you need a good, solid wife. Nancy's the one.”

Frank hesitated. He didn't want to be hit again, but he had to say it. “Momma, she's not pretty.”

“Pretty! Who cares about ‘pretty'? Look at me! I was pretty once. How long did that last?”

“But I
love p
retty girls. Especially blondes—”

A third slap, this one absolutely nasty. “Stay away from them tramps. Italian girls—”

“There are Italian blondes.”

“Not many. Look, you gonna marry Nancy. That's that. Search her face and you'll find something pretty there.”

“I'd have to look hard.”

"Her smile. She got a nice smile.”

“People do call her Nancy with the laughing face.”

So Sinatra married Nancy Barbato on February 4 1939. They moved into a small Jersey City apartment. He found work as a singing-waiter. She supported him throughout the lean years, shopping frugally for food, creating most of her own clothes from patches of leftover material, laboring at secretarial jobs. Frankie hit the big time thanks to a much-deserved First Place win on the Major Bowes' Radio Show, this followed by a lucrative tour with the Harry James band, playing venues like the Rustic Cabin in Englewood.

There, the top bandleader in the business, Tommy Dorsey, caught his act. The bespectacled gent, knowing talent (perhaps genius) when he heard it, hired Frank away from his longtime competitor. That led to Hollywood, Frank's obvious charisma quickly catching on with American moviegoers.

But if Nancy figured now maybe they had it made, she had to reconsider when word of her husband's dalliances first leaked in from girlfriends who had seen and heard stuff. This in time poured over her like a massive flood. Because the most plentiful human species in Los Angeles, entertainment capital of the world, were Frank's favorites: Blondes. Big blondes. Little blondes. Natural blondes. Fake blondes. Blondes with big boobs and asses shaped like the caboose on the Orange Blossom special.

The wide, wonderful world of blondes. Not that brunettes were to be scoffed at. Take Ava Gardner, for instance ...

*

When the cigars had burned low, the final cups of choice espresso sipped, Sinatra humbly handed Charley a silver lighter. The words “To my dear pal Lucky from his ‘kid brother', Frank” were emblazoned on its surface in an overly refined lettering style suggesting a touch of class to people who have no real knowledge of that elusive commodity. Charley nodded warmly as he accepted this peace-offering. He well knew how pussy-whipped Frank was, not only by Nancy but any other woman he became involved with. Realizing that Sinatra, as always insecure under his surface-show of cockiness, needed to hear the words spoken loud and clear, Charlie assured Frankie that there were no hard feelings as to the latter's failure to appear at Christmas.

“Next time? Bring Nancy along.”

“Maybe I'll do just that.”

“And the kids. They'd love the beaches.”

Already, though, the singer's mind whirled off in a very different direction. Liking what he'd seen so far, Sinatra hoped a return engagement in the near-future would allow him to impress the starlet to end all starlets, more or less the sex symbol equivalent to
capo di tutti capi
: the blonde to beat all blondes. Frank had become enamored with one Norma Jean Baker.

This baby-doll had, like so many others who hung around the studios hoping for some hand-out role in exchange for anonymous blow-jobs with ranking executives, had like a loyal dog been thrown several bones: bit parts in big movies like
Scudda Hoo!
Scudda Hay
! Also, she'd been cast as the lead in an upcoming
shoestring-budget item called
Ladies of the Chorus
. With a little luck that one could make her a star. If not, she could keep trying, like an endless string of well-built glamour-girls before her.

Maybe Norma Jean would prove to be that rare case—like Jean Harlow, Betty Grable, Lana Turner—who hit the big-time. That was rare, but it did on occasion happen. With her child‘s eyes and womanly torso, no question Norma Jean could become a silver-screen goddess. That ass, those curves? With Frankie's help. Which meant a little help from Charley as well.

“You're thinking about someone. And it ain't Nancy.”

The signature sideways sneer, followed by: “Right!”

Then Sinatra and Luciano briefly parted, each heading back to his respective suite to shower, shave, dress. An hour later, Charley spirited his guest off to the Oriental Park in Marianao. They spent their first afternoon together there, accompanied by attractive local girls wearing garish outfits. They spoke only a smattering of English but well knew the score. Looking the racetrack over, Sinatra felt that the scene did appear listless. As they'd agreed, if anything could turn that around it was the mind of the man Charley referred to as The Accountant, Meyer.

After several hours, the sun became unbearably hot so they returned with the women for a light late-lunch of crab salad in Hotel Nacional's most exclusive dining room. Each man afterwards retired with his woman for a nap. Sinatra swept his lithe beauty up in his arms and under the sheets. Once there he promptly fell asleep, snoring loudly. Exhausted, as he would later convince himself, from the flight, the day's activities, the considerable amount of alcohol he'd consumed.

The lush woman lay beside his scrawny body, knowing Frankie was supposed to be the world's greatest lover. Considering the circumstances, this disappointed beauty could not grasp why.

Late in the evening the old buddies, having ditched their first set of women, caught a spectacular floor show at Sans Souci casino. Guzzling down one Cuba Libre after another, the drink Charley had personally concocted from rum, Coca-Cola and lime juice, they ogled the nearly-naked mulatto dancers. The girls' light-brown faces appeared radiant in the spot-lights; their bodies, strong and solid in a way most American women were not built. And how these beauties could move!

Smiling like happy idiots at the two Americans in expensive white suits seated in the front row, the girls' eyes mutely communicated they were more than willing to share their choice flesh after hours with such men of money and power. The barely-draped dyanmos performed frenetic dances that owed much to ancient voodoo rites. Their feather-adorned costumes, or what there were of them, had been cut from elegant silks and satins, sequined with tinsel. They sported brightly feathered masks, adding an aura of mystery. Here was the first thing Frankie had seen in Havana to convince him that once word spread, well-to-do Americans would fly down to the glitzy New Cuba that Meyer would design, Charley would build, and Frank headline.

*

Even as dawn approached, the two men, accompanied by the most attractive dancing girls, still in the ornate costumes and (at Frank and Charlie's request) wearing those feathered masks, crawled into the limo. The party roared off to visit the worst slum Frankie had ever observed, the bottom rung of Hoboken included. Frank's family home back on 415 Monroe Street had been the Waldorf Astoria compared to this! Narrow, winding, unlit and unpaved boulevards had been piled high with garbage,
as well as a sad array of human flotsam-and-jetsom. These sad-eyed creatures sat or sprawled on the steps, or stood stooped over, hunchback-like.

Surrounded by bodyguards, the small party marched on past the sad-faces, degenerate bodies, and wasted lives. The people peered up at Frank and Charlie in awe; at the female companions in anger.
Were we only as beautiful as you
, the eyes of these desperate females suggested,
then we would be the ones proudly trailing along behind such men of power
.

Without glancing sideways, the Americans and the expensive whores made their way into a club, past a long line of heavy smokers hanging out in the hallway. Charley's bodyguards shoved stragglers out of the way. Charley and Frank headed down dimly lit stairs. Once at the bottom, they arrived in a loud, lavish private cellar club, full of elegantly adorned patrons.

“Hello, and welcome!” The men of respect were greeted by the owner, a short, barrel-shaped native in a simple white suit, his jacket stained tan under the armpits from constantly flowing sweat. Obviously, Frank mused, this guy knows Charley. The man bowed low, as if acknowledging royalty, then trippingly escorted his visitors to a prime table beside a small stage, set down in a pit under a single low-hanging light. Other customers, barely recognizable as men and women much less Cubans or Americans in the semi-darkness, hurried aside or shuffled out of the way to make room for what were clearly privileged guests.

Seated beside Charley, the man whom Sinatra in his dreams most wished to be, Frank took in his first cockfight. He cheered along with the crowd as blood flew through the air, splattering onto their clothing. Their faces, too, as the struggle in the pit below grew even more fierce. The sensation felt good: hot, decadent, vaguely immoral. Later, two crazed-looking local women, wearing black leather boots, matching gloves and nothing else, wrestled.

Their bout concluded, the women engaged in sex with a black male giant, decked out in white fur, silver fox-tails hanging from his bejeweled belt. The Colossus wielded what might have been listed in the Guinness Book of World
Records as the largest cock on the American continent.
This finely muscled figure wore a matching white mask during the hour-long specialty act, which concluded with his sodomizing in turn each of what he loudly referred to as “bitches.” All the while the Americans drank down the best rum this infamous Havana house had to offer.

“Like I said: some fun, eh, kid?”

“Charley, I bow before you, as always.”

When, shortly before dawn, Sinatra crawled back to his suite, he found three expensive (though he was not expected to pay) courtesans from Casa Marina, the city's best brothel, patiently waiting. Frank greeted them with mild enthusiasm.

Shortly after the foursome slipped between the sheets, he again fell fast asleep. As had been the case with his previous companion, the three ready, willing, and able women remained silent, wondering if they ought to wake him or let the great man snore the night away. On consideration, they chose the latter.

*

During a late breakfast the following morning, respite from the way of all flesh came in serious discussions with Charley about mob business and its political backdrop. With an official okay from the man who gradually emerged as the reigning figure in the syndicate's stateside operations, Sam Giancana, Luciano and Lansky planned to fulfill Meyer's dream from nearly two decades earlier. They had even agreed on their choice for Cuba's next president: A military martinet, former president Fulgencia Batista (he the very same personage who had requested American participation back in the 1930s) held that post from 1940-44, after defeating Grau at the polls. Since then, Batista lived in the U.S. He'd dumped his aging first wife, married an exotic young beauty, and set up residence in Florida.

With the Mob's tacit backing, Batista would the following year run in absentia for the Cuban senate. Once he returned to Havana to fill that seat, plans would be carefully arranged for an upcoming presidential bid.

“Nothing against Grau, mind you. I like him.”

“Yet you prefer Batista.”

“He's tougher on the people. Hungrier for money and power. I admire that in a politician.”

A
golpe
, or military coup, would soon set Batista back in office, a fixed election to follow. “We'll share the casino ownerships with him. Everybody makes money. Everyone's happy.”

“It all seems too good to be true,” Sinatra sighed, sipping his rich Cappuccino.

Well, Luciano admitted, there was a serpent in the garden. A group of radicals, having headquartered at the university, infiltrated unions of cane cutters and banana harvesters. This revolutionary faction had recently tripled in number. These anarchists, or whatever they considered themselves, threatened to overthrow the apple-cart. Luciano laughed as he told Sinatra what such left-leaning subversives called their own movement:
gangsterismo
, a term borrowed from old black and white Hollywood crime films of the 1930s.

In the minds of such self-styled idealists, those onscreen mobsters had been modern Robin Hoods, reacting against a failed capitalist system. Now, these sons of well-to-do Cubans, their parents despising what their educated offspring were up to, planned a revolt, likely of hard-edged communist orientation. Luciano and Sinatra laughed out loud. What the Made Men in Chicago, New York, and other places depicted in those films had wanted was money. They were not opposed to capitalism, American style. The Mob embodied capitalism on its most elemental level. How fascinating these delusional fools could get everything wrong!