His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [98]
“Frank was begging for spots to sing at at the time,” said Vincent “Vinnie” Teresa, a member of the Boston Mafia family. “The Palladinos [Joe Beans and Rocco] let him do his stuff at the Copa in Boston, and they paid him a good buck for it. He did all right, not sensational, but all right. Then he went to Joe Beans and asked if he could borrow some money. He told Joe that he could deduct what he borrowed the next time he came in to play the club. He said he’d be back to play the club. Joe was glad to help out. Sinatra paid Joe back what he owed him, but he never came back to play the club like he promised, because he and Joe had a falling out.”
Another gangster who helped Frank during this time was Mickey Cohen, the West Coast Mafia boss with whom Frank and Hank Sanicola were financial partners in Jimmy Tarantino’s gossip magazine, Hollywood Night Life. Tarantino, who later went to prison for extortion, used this entertainment weekly as a shakedown vehicle to terrorize Hollywood with its vicious “advertise or be exposed” techniques. Frank had invested fifteen thousand dollars in the magazine, which ensured him good publicity in it.
“I love Frank,” said Cohen, “and I have a very great respect for him, and even when he was at his worst, I was his best friend. When Frank was going pretty bad, when he was getting kind of discouraged, I had this testimonial dinner for him at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I brought in his father and mother, and they put their arms around me and kissed me the same as they did Frank.
“His voice was even faltering a bit at the time. In fact, he sang a song that night, goddamn, that was really heartbreaking for me, because he really didn’t sing like his old songs. It was a long song and he just wasn’t himself—he wasn’t the real Frank Sinatra.
“You know, I’ve been through much in my day. Many of my guys, people that I loved, were hit and buried and all that. It’s very hard for me to cry, but really I felt sad that night for Frank. I was close to tears myself because his voice was really bad. And I think everybody in the audience could sense it.
“My guys had a private table alone for our own people. In fact, there was about fourteen of my own guys that fitted in with that type of doing—that could dress well enough and could carry themselves well. You know, there were some people that I had to keep out of certain places. They just were too crude, you know what I mean?
“A lot of people that were invited to that Sinatra testimonial, that should have attended but didn’t, would bust their nuts in this day to attend a Sinatra testimonial. A lot of them would now kiss Frank’s ass after he made the comeback, but they didn’t show up when he really needed them. I don’t know the names of a lot of them bastards in that ilk of life, but I remember the people that I had running the affair at the time telling me, ‘Jesus, this and that dirty son of a bitch should have been here.’ But I don’t think anybody pulled any wool over Frank’s eyes.…
“The testimonial instilled a little encouragement in him. At least it showed him that everybody wasn’t down on him, I mean, everybody didn’t think that he was all finished, and I really felt that he just had to find himself again. But his voice came back better than ever.”
Americans focused on the Mafia and organized crime for the first time in December 1950 when Estes Kefauver, the Democratic senator from Tennessee, chaired hearings of the Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, popularly known as the Kefauver committee. For weeks, people sat riveted before television sets as the committee conducted its hearings on ninety-two days in various cities. Viewers saw gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Mickey Cohen, and Willie Moretti dressed in shiny double-breasted suits take the Fifth Amendment—“I decline to answer the question on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.”
To a man, they denied membership in