• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1823 0

to greet anyone. He joined his daughter, Nancy, and her husband, Tommy Sands, at the head table, where he greeted his parents and then sat down next to a few priests and his quiet aunt, Mary. He fidgeted and squirmed as the master of ceremonies read a personal message of congratulations from President and Mrs. Kennedy. He did not sing or make a speech of any kind. Nor would he talk to any of the old Hoboken friends he hadn’t seen for twenty years. He watched his parents dance to “The Anniversary Waltz” and smiled as Nancy danced with her grandfather, but he declined to lead his mother around the floor or to dance with his daughter. Two or three persons snapped pictures of him at the family table, which irritated him no end. “Mom, what did I tell you about pictures?” he said. Dolly shrugged. “What can I do, son? They’re guests.”

There was no way in the world that Dolly was going to allow this event to go unrecorded. Despite Frank’s orders to the contrary, she was determined to get pictures taken that evening. So she bought film and flashbulbs for three of her friends, paid them each five dollars, and instructed them to photograph the family table throughout the evening. To see to it that Frankie wouldn’t object too strenuously, she made sure that one of the friends was a Catholic Sister in a black habit draped with rosary beads.

23

WELCOME TO FRANK SINATRA’S CAL-NEVA LODGE, said the road signs leading to the casino hotel overlooking Lake Tahoe’s Crystal Bay. The border dividing California and Nevada ran right through the middle of the property, intersecting the swimming pool and pushing drinkers to the California side while gamblers stayed on the Nevada side.

“This is the only place in America where you can walk across the lobby and get locked up for violating the Mann Act,” Frank said, greeting nightclub guests in his Celebrity Room.

Surrounded by small bungalows or chalets on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe in the High Sierra, the Cal-Neva Lodge had undergone renovation since Frank bought into it.

“We have obtained a loan of … $1,500,000 … for expansion of the lodge,” said Paul “Skinny” D’Amato, explaining the enlarged casino, additional hotel accommodations, and the acoustically perfect showroom that Frank had insisted be built for performers. Skinny had discussed the Cal-Neva with another mobster over a telephone that was tapped by federal agents. The FBI knew that Skinny was Sam Giancana’s man at Cal-Neva, the person placed there to keep track of the count from the drop boxes at the gambling tables, and to look out for hidden interests. And they knew also from wiretapped conversations between Sam and Johnny Roselli that Giancana was a hidden owner of the Cal-Neva.

ROSELLI: Aren’t you going to be tied up with the Cal-Neva?

GIANCANA: I am going to get my money out of there and I’m going to wind up with half of the joint with no money. Not going to make any difference.… That joint ain’t going to be no good because it’s a very short season.

The Cal-Neva was open only from June through the Labor Day weekend in September, but the owners wanted to make it a year-round operation. FBI reports suggested that Giancana had tried to borrow three million dollars from the Teamsters Central States pension fund for the purpose, but Jimmy Hoffa had turned him down.

This enraged the Mafia don, who complained bitterly to a friend. “Once I got $1,750,000 from him in two days. Now all this heat comes on and I can’t even get a favor out of him now. I can’t do nothing for myself; Ten years ago I can get all the fucking money I want from the guy, and now they won’t settle for anything.”

Frank packed the Celebrity Room with performers like Eddie Fisher, Vic Damone, Red Skelton, Victor Borge, Lena Home, Dean Martin, Joe E. Lewis, and Juliet Prowse to draw high-rolling summer crowds, while Trini Lopez and Buddy Greco played the Cabaret Lounge.

Nevada records show that as of August 15, 1961, Frank owned thirty-six and six tenths percent of the Cal-Neva; as of May 15, 1962, his interest rose to fifty percent. The other two owners