Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [245]
Every morning, the company’s DC-3 would bump down in the clearing the crew had bulldozed, bringing supplies and mail from Nairobi. And one morning, a long week after Frank and Ava had arrived, there was a cable for him in the morning mail.
Some say it was from Buddy Adler; some say it came from Bert Allenberg, one of Sinatra’s new agents at William Morris. In any case, the cable was short and to the point: Frank was to report to Culver City to be screen-tested for the role of Maggio.
He read it over and over again. There was no mention of exactly how he was supposed to get to Culver City from the middle of the goddamn jungle, and he didn’t have the price of a ticket.
Frank hated asking Ava for money, but she didn’t hesitate for a second. She had an MGM account: all she had to do to charge airfare was say the word. It was the best she had liked her husband in weeks—because it was the best he had liked himself in weeks. Go knock ’em dead, she told him.
With the New York gig coming up, he might as well stay through, he said. It meant he wouldn’t be back for almost a month.
She agreed with him, the faintest hint of coolness in her voice. He picked it up, but there was no time to investigate.
He threw his things together in record time, kissed her, and clambered aboard the DC-3, strapping himself into a jump seat behind the pilot and waving out the window as the plane started to bump down the runway. Then he was gone.
He left the location on Friday, November 14, took a long overnight flight from Nairobi to London, and arrived the next day. He stayed at the Savoy, and when he departed on Sunday for New York, he left a brown-paper-wrapped package he’d brought with him in the hotel’s safe-deposit box. Ava had asked him to take the package, containing her diamond earrings and a diamond bracelet, so the Mau Maus wouldn’t get them.
Frank landed at Idlewild on Monday morning. He had handed his declaration sheet to the customs agent and walked blearily through the checkpoint when another agent waved him aside. Suddenly two cops appeared and escorted him to an office. Frank asked what was going on, but nobody said anything. Soon the office was filled with cops and U.S. customs agents. The agents asked if they could open his suitcases, then told him they had the authority to do so whether he agreed or not.
Frank asked once more what the hell was happening. No one answered.
He stomped around a side office for almost two hours, fuming, while the agents inspected his bags minutely. He was going to miss his goddamn flight to Los Angeles. He was going to call a lawyer. He phoned Sol Gelb, who said he would look into it, but that in the meantime Frank should try to be cooperative. Frank phoned Sanicola, who drove out to Idlewild and butted heads with the customs people, who were very polite but very firm. No one would say what was going on. Finally, when it was clear that Frank had indeed missed his flight, customs let him go. Cursing, he got into Hank’s car, rode into the city, checked in at the Regency, and phoned Buddy Adler—who told him that tomorrow would be fine for his screen test.
The next morning he went to Idlewild to catch another flight, and the plane was delayed for three hours by mechanical problems. Frank turned around, went back to the Regency, and opened a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. Buddy Adler was understanding. Sanicola said that Sol Gelb had spoken to customs—which informed the lawyer that someone had sent in a crank letter saying that Sinatra was going to smuggle diamonds into the country.
On Wednesday the nineteenth Frank finally made it to Los Angeles. It was after five when he landed, and Adler’s office said Frank could come in the next day. He spent the evening drinking, rereading the Maggio passages for the thousandth time, and wondering if he had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the role.
Ava had suspected it for a while, and by Tuesday of that week she knew she was pregnant. It was definitely Frank’s (she’d been