Frankenheimer paused, apparently not sure how to take Sinatra’s remark. Then he must have decided, for any number of reasons, to act as if it were a sincere compliment because he smiled and spread his arms, welcoming the praise. “Well, like everyone else in this town, I’m always happy to hear about my underappreciated genius,” he said. “This scene reminding you at all of your time in the service?”

“Not really,” Charlie said, looking at Sinatra’s fellow actors. “These guys look fresh from the beauty salon.”

“We could have ’em roll around in the dirt, but it’s a night scene,” Frankenheimer said. “It wouldn’t show up.”

Sinatra took a drag and watched the smoke float to the sky as he exhaled. “You’re going to be in New York with us, right?” he asked. The climax of the film would take place in Madison Square Garden during a political convention; Sinatra’s character would attempt to stop a brainwashed soldier from assassinating a presidential nominee.

“You bet,” said Charlie. “Can’t wait to see my kids and sleep in my own bed.”

“Charlie!” yelled Margaret from the bottom of the hill. “Come down here!”

“What is it?” he yelled back.

“People in New York are desperately trying to reach us!” she shouted. “The studio just sent a messenger.”

“What is it?”

“Your dad!” she yelled. “He’s taken a turn for the worse, and the warden says we need to get on the next plane to New York!”

Chapter Sixteen

New York City

February 1962

“You shoulda been here yesterday, Charlie,” Sinatra said. “I fished Laurence Harvey outta the lake in Central Park.”

Charlie grimaced as a gust of cold wind prompted him to tighten his coat against the morning chill.

“It was like twenty-five degrees out,” Sinatra said, packing tobacco into a pipe. “Colder than today. They had to clear three inches of ice off the lake before he jumped in!”

“No business like show business,” Charlie said, coughing softly as morning rush-hour traffic spewed exhaust fumes on Eighth Avenue.

They were leaning against the stone wall near the entrance to Madison Square Garden, patriotic semicircled political bunting hanging from the marquee above their heads. Hundreds of extras dressed in summer clothes streamed past them into the arena, carrying signs and umbrellas for candidates “Big” John Iselin and Benjamin K. Arthur. Sinatra, taking a smoke break, was in full army uniform as Bennett Marco, complete with his service cap, a poor substitute for the crooner’s signature fedora. Standing on the dirty street, braving the cold, he looked every bit a man of the people—but the police, private bodyguards, and yellow wooden barriers keeping gawking crowds at a safe distance told the real story.

Sinatra’s entourage continued its excessive doting; Brownie approached him to take his tobacco pouch so as to avoid a bulge in his pressed military jacket.