Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [202]
“Did Hank tell you he paid Tarantino?”
“Well,” Frank said, “I understand Tarantino was indicted and I don’t know the rest of the story, but the Hollywood [Nite Life] quit publishing this crap afterwards.”
Nellis produced the photographs of Sinatra with Luciano in Havana, and proceeded to ask a series of questions about Frank’s February 1947 trip to Cuba. First, though, he wanted to know how Frank had met the Fischetti brothers. Frank said he had first met Joe while performing in Chicago in 1946. “He had a little speedboat on the lake, and one afternoon he took me for a ride,” Sinatra recalled nostalgically. “Having dinner with him, going to the theater.” Joe introduced him to Charlie and Rocco in Chicago, Frank said, and now and then over the following year he encountered the three casually.
“Did you ever have any business with any of the Fischettis?” Nellis asked.
“Not an ounce,” Sinatra replied.
“Where were you staying at Miami when you met them?”
“I had a little cottage.”
“How did you happen to bump into the Fischettis?”
“I went to either the Beachcomber or one of the clubs downtown in the entertainment center, and I saw Joe, and then later that evening I met Rocco,” Frank said. “He came in with some friends, and I said hello and met his friends, and that was it.”
But that was not it: a series of what seemed to be escalating coincidences kept bringing Sinatra and the brothers together. The same night he encountered Rocco, as Frank recalled, “I said to Joe, it is too cold, I think I am going to get out of here and go where it is warm. I said I think I will go down to Havana, said if I went down I would stay a couple of days because I promised my wife I would meet my wife in Mexico around February 14. It was St. Valentine’s Day; that comes back to my mind.”
As well it should.
Frank continued: “Then that is when [Joe] told me they had also contemplated going to Cuba. I think the next day he called me on the phone and wanted to know when I was going down to Cuba. Apparently, at that time I probably did say what morning I was going, either the following morning or the morning after he called me, and when I got out to the airport, they were checking the baggage through; that is when I saw them on the plane.”
Nellis gave Sinatra a hard stare. “And you had given him your phone number where you were staying?”
“Yes, he asked me for the phone number, and I gave it to him.”
“Now, you rode over together on the same plane?”
“Yes.”
“When you got off the plane, you got off with them together?”
“No, actually I didn’t know. As a matter of fact, I suspect, now that we discuss it, that when the plane landed, they may have seen the guys with the cameras. They may have seen somebody with a camera because why should they fall behind. I found myself alone …”
“Were you carrying any baggage off the plane?” Nellis asked.
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“A tan piece of hand luggage, a briefcase like,” Frank said.
“Could you have had a paper-wrapped bundle?” Nellis asked.
“No, I don’t remember actually, but I don’t think so. I think I had a topcoat and a bag.”
“What was in the bag?”
“Sketching materials, crayons, shaving equipment, general toiletry.”
“Did you habitually carry that bag?”
“All the time, constantly,” Sinatra said. “I am now. I also use it for papers.”
“How large a bag is it?”
“It is about the size of a briefcase with a handle on it. Instead of carrying under your arms, like a little overnight bag.”
“Did either of the Fischettis give you anything to carry into Cuba?”
“No, sir.”
“Did anybody else give you anything else to carry into Cuba?”
“No, sir.”
The lawyer made a sour face. “Will you go ahead with the rest of your story,” he said.
In his lengthy account Frank described leaving his room at the Hotel Nacional (in the company of a Chicago columnist he had encountered, Nate Gross of the Herald American) and proceeding to have a series of accidental meetings with