His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [75]
But Frankie spent those three days in Palm Springs, where he was seen dancing with Ava Gardner and dining with Lana Turner at the Chi Chi Club. The Hollywood press assumed that Lana, known as the Sweater Girl, was responsible for the break-up. “The items, even the innuendos, had some basis in fact,” wrote Louella Parsons. “Frank was on a tear and he was tearing about publicly.” Lana called Louella and tried to deny everything. “I am not in love with Frank and he is not in love with me. I have never broken up a home. I just can’t take these accusations.”
George dispatched Manie Sacks to California to see if he could bring about a reconciliation. Both men were concerned about the effect of the emotional tension on Frank. “It absolutely destroyed him,” Evans said later. “You could always tell when he was troubled. He came down with a bad throat. Germs were never the cause unless there are guilt germs.”
Two weeks later, Phil Silvers opened at Slapsie Maxie’s in Hollywood, and had Frank join him onstage. As Frank was singing “Going Home,” he saw Nancy sitting in the audience. Twice his voice quavered, and once he choked, but he made it to the end. Grim-faced and oblivious to the applause, he returned to his seat. Before he could sit down, Phil swooped over and steered him to Jule Styne’s table, where Nancy was waiting with her eyes full of tears. Frank asked how the children were and put his arms around her as the audience cheered. They danced once, and left to spend the night at Frank’s bachelor apartment before returning home the next day.
In expiation, Frank later bought Nancy a full-length ermine coat and an ermine muff. He promised her a house in Palm Springs that they would build together. He took her with him on his trip to New York in November, bought her a three-strand pearl necklace for Christmas, and held a press conference saying that they were definitely reconciled and looking forward to a long vacation together. That vacation was postponed for three months while Frank did retakes at MGM and badgered the studio for time off.
In January 1947, he received a call from Joe Fischetti, whom he had seen a few months earlier at the Chez Paree in Chicago. The two men, whose friendship dated back to 1938, reacted to each other like Sicilian brothers. Frank possessed glamour, and Joe, a cousin of Al “Scarface” Capone, came from the kind of family whose sense of honor Frank respected. The Fischettis were “made” men, amici nostri, who had taken the blood oath of Mafia brotherhood, and sworn to uphold omertà, the dark code of silence. They were soldati in the ancient and exclusive society of Cosa Nostra. Frank never used the word Mafia, a tenth-century Arabic term meaning “sanctuary.” Instead, he simply referred to “the Boys” or “the syndicate.”
Joe Fischetti had stayed with Frank at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City in June 1946, under the assumed name of Joseph Fisher. The alias was necessary because the Fischetti name was known to the press and police. Charles “Trigger Happy” Fischetti was the mob’s political fixer in Chicago, and his brother, Rocco, ran the syndicate’s gambling concessions there. Joe was the youngest and best-looking of the Fischettis but, according to FBI files, “the least intelligent and least aggressive.” He was not the underworld power that his brothers were, but he enjoyed the same associations.
The Fischetti brothers, along with Mafia bosses from across the country, were going to gather in Havana, Cuba, in February to pay respects to their exiled leader, Charlie “Lucky” Luciano. In his January phone call, Joe invited Frank to stay with them in Miami for a few days and then fly to Havana to meet “the man.”
Luciano, a ruthless killer and master racketeer, had unified the Italian Mafia factions after Prohibition in the 1930s and had joined with the most powerful elements in Jewish and