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At the same time, Frank was being subpoenaed for a deposition by the Miami Herald in a ten-million-dollar libel suit brought by the Fontainebleau Hotel for a two-part series in which the hotel was reported to be deeply involved with Mafia figures. The newspaper asked Frank about his underworld friendships with Sam Giancana (“I’ve met him”) and Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo (“I just ran into him”) and Meyer Lansky (“I met him many years ago”). Frank claimed he saw Joe Fischetti only “occasionally” and knew of no connection between Fischetti and the Fontainebleau, although Justice Department files show that Fischetti was paid $1,080 a month for helping arrange Sinatra’s appearances at the hotel. “Through Sinatra [he] brought other big name entertainers to the hotel. As a result, Fischetti achieved a position of prominence at the Fontainebleau and gained considerably along financial lines,” stated one FBI document.

Under oath, Frank denied knowing Charles and Rocco Fischetti. He also said he had never stayed at the Fontainebleau when Giancana was there, although many people, including former D.C. police inspector Joseph Shimon, knew differently.

Although Frank was forced to give one deposition, he refused to cooperate when the newspaper’s attorneys called him back for further questioning. Circuit Court Judge Grady Crawford ordered him to appear for a second deposition, but Sinatra left town. He also refused to testify at the trial and threatened to boycott his own performance at the Fontainebleau to avoid being subpoenaed. Under no circumstances was he going to talk about the incidents of violence that had taken place at the hotel during 1967 when his beefy bodyguards had left bruised and bloodied bodies in his wake.

“I remember the first time I saw that side of him I was shocked,” said Mrs. Tony Bennett. “We had come to Miami to have dinner with him. Afterwards, a group of us went into the Fontainebleau coffee shop, where this little old guy grabbed Frank’s hand and started shaking it. ‘Oh, Frank Sinatra,’ he said. ‘You are my idol. You are the greatest.’ He was a janitor or somebody who worked there and he was in awe to see Frank Sinatra walk in, but Frank must have been in pain from arthritis or something because he grabbed his hand back and said, ‘Get away from me, you creep. Get away.’ The poor man was so bewildered, he didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, two of Frank’s goons went over to the guy; one held up his jacket as a shield so the rest of us couldn’t see the other one bashing in the guy’s face. When the jacket came down, the little man was on the floor and his face was bleeding and torn. I heard a woman crying, ‘He loves you. Why did you do that? He loves you.’

“I was so insulted that this kind of barbarity would happen while we’re sitting there, and no one would say a thing. Here we are, respectable people, and this is happening right in front of us, and we don’t do anything about it. ‘I want to get of here,’ I said, and we left, but none of us said anything to Frank. That’s what upset me so. I thought Tony was a coward for not saying something, and I was furious at him, but he’s always been indebted to Sinatra for turning his career around, so he wasn’t going to say a word against him. Frank had told Life magazine in 1965 that Tony was the best singer in the business, which renewed national interest in him, so he just looked the other way when Frank’s goons started beating up on that guy. He [Tony] was such a coward. Then I read in the paper the next day that some sailor had been robbed and beaten up in New Orleans and that when Frank had read about the incident, he’d arranged to pay the sailor’s hospital bill and given him a few hundred dollars to make up for what he’d had stolen. That doesn’t square with what his goons had done the night before, but then Frank is a very complex guy.”

The bodyguards protecting Frank were huge, hulking men like Ed Pucci, Andy Celentano, and July Rizzo. They bulled passage through crowds and intimidated with their