His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [192]
“The girls were screaming and running around like a bunch of chickens in every direction because nobody knew what was going to happen.… George just stood there with the whites of his eyes rolling around and around in his black face, because he knew who Sam was, and nobody ever fought with Sam, least of all me, a short little guy.… Sinatra and George pulled me off Sam, who ran out the door. Then Sinatra called me a troublemaker, and said the gangsters were going to put a hit out on me because of this fight. I told him the only way they’d get me is from a long distance with a high-powered rifle because none of them had the guts to hit me face to face. I’m not afraid of nothing, Wop,’ I said, and he started yelling that I was going to lose the place for him because of this fight. Because of the notoriety he was going to lose all his money. I said, ‘What do you mean, your money? You don’t have a dime in the place. It’s all Mafia money and you know it.’ He and George ran out then, and I left the next day for Nebraska.… Later I wrote in my diary for July 27: ‘One son of a bitch of a day and night.’ ”
The FBI agents reported Giancana’s presence to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which began an investigation. On August 8, 1963, Ed Olsen, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, called Frank at the Sands in Las Vegas, saying he wanted to meet with him at five o’clock.
“We interviewed him at length, and he acknowledged that he had indeed seen Giancana,” said Olsen. “He said he’d seen him rather briefly coming out of Phyllis’s cabin and that they just exchanged greetings, and that was all … he had no further knowledge of it or anything else.”
Having been informed of the fight by the FBI agents, Olsen’s investigators flew to Nebraska to interview Victor LaCroix Collins, who confirmed the FBI’s report, but Frank denied knowing anything about the fight. “If there was a rumble there while I was there, they must be keeping it awfully quiet,” he told Olsen. Chairman Olsen asked him to repeat that assertion under oath, but Frank refused, saying that he never talked under oath without consulting with his attorney.
“[Sinatra] explained his philosophy to us in a very reasonable manner,” Olsen said later. “He wasn’t cantankerous or anything of that nature. … He said that he was acquainted with people in all walks of life and that Giancana was one of those that fit into that category. I asked him if he didn’t feel that his association with Giancana and people of that notoriety, whether it be in Palm Springs or Chicago or New York … didn’t reflect to his own discredit and also to the discredit of gambling in Nevada. Sinatra nodded at that, and volunteered only a commitment that he would not see Giancana or people of that type in Nevada and he would continue to associate as he wished when he wasn’t in Nevada. As he said, ‘This is a way of life, and a man has to lead his own life.’ ”
By Labor Day weekend, the press was looking into the story that the Nevada Gaming Control Board was investigating the presence of Sam Giancana at the Cal-Neva Lodge. Frank’s attorney denied any wrongdoing to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
“There’s no truth to the fact any underworld figure was at the lodge or got in a fight there,” the attorney said. “Your information was wrong.”
Olsen told the paper that the investigation could not be concluded until “certain discrepancies in the information provided by various people at Cal-Neva could be resolved.”
When Frank read the story, he was incensed. He told his accountant, Newell Hancock, to phone Olsen to come to the lodge for dinner “to talk about this thing.”
Olsen did not think such a visit appropriate because the board was investigating Cal-Neva. “But [Frank] kept