Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [127]
But a lot of Italian immigrants were in the junk business in the 1920s, and certainly not all of them were criminals. Moreover, Fischetti was a reasonably common surname (as, for that matter, was Sinatra). Maybe the Hoboken Fischettis were related to the Chicago Fischettis; maybe not.
Here’s a wild hypothesis: What if Charlie Fischetti, having recently been introduced by his old pal Willie Moretti to Willie’s pal Sinatra, was simply bringing Frank Sinatra over that night to impress his mom?
On the other hand, there is reason to believe that Prince Charlie had a small request to make of Sinatra that evening. And in truth, from here on, the Fischettis would begin to stick to Sinatra in increasingly disconcerting ways. In August 1946, according to the FBI, which was keeping a close eye on the brothers,3 Charlie and Joe contacted Sinatra to ask him to get them hotel reservations in New York—probably at the Waldorf—so they could attend the Army–Notre Dame game at Yankee Stadium, a much-anticipated matchup between two football titans. (No doubt Charlie and Joe had a financial interest in the game; no doubt they were unpleasantly surprised by the final score: 0–0.) Sinatra got them deluxe suites. In gratitude, the boys sent him two dozen custom-made shirts.
The incident sounds innocuous, but it would have been remarkable if some of the table talk between Frank and Charlie that summer and fall hadn’t concerned Benny Siegel. If, as seems likely, Sinatra had confessed his admiration for the Bug, Fischetti probably would have demurred.
That was a horse Frank might not want to bet on. Benny had been a naughty boy.
The specific complaint concerned funds forwarded to Siegel by Meyer Lansky for the specific purpose of building the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The word filtering back to the Mob was that of every dollar Benny had received—and the sum now ran well into the millions—he was forwarding (via a courier, his girlfriend Virginia Hill) a significant portion to his private bank account in Switzerland. In casino terminology, this is known as the skim. In reality, Bugsy Siegel was nothing like the semi-saintly visionary Warren Beatty played in the movies: in reality, Siegel’s gruesome slaughter of his fellow gangster Louis Amberg was just another day’s work, and the dream of a great Hollywood-style hotel-casino in the desert was not even his. The true visionary was Billy Wilkerson, founder of the Hollywood Reporter, Ciro’s, and Trocadero—not to mention the discoverer of Lana Turner. Soon after Wilkerson began erecting the Flamingo, he had made the mistake of running low on funds. Back east, Lansky, who missed nothing, saw an opportunity to muscle in. He called his old Lower East Side landsman Benny Siegel and asked if Benny might be interested in a major stake in a casino. It took some convincing—Benny was happy living the high life in Hollywood. Now he was not only racking up enormous cost overruns with outlandish construction add-ons but also blatantly stealing from the heads of the Mob. He had come by his nickname rightly.
The Varsity—or a portion thereof. Frank rides on Toots Shor’s back while Rags Ragland looks on adoringly. Jule Styne is directly to Shor’s left. September 1944. (photo credit 18.2)
Hearing the inside story for the first time, Sinatra whistled softly and looked at the bankerly Fischetti with fresh admiration. Where the Boys were concerned, Frank was always admiring: he just couldn’t help himself.
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Serious trouble. Frank dances with Lana Turner, with his very visible wedding ring giving the world quite a mixed message. June 1946. (photo credit 19.1)
In the meantime, there was Lana. As much as Frank had loved Marilyn, it seemed to him in the