The phone rang. Charlie looked at the hotel clock: just after midnight. He was reminded of when the phone had rung early that December morning and he found out his dad was at the Tombs, changing his life forever. He looked at Margaret, beside him in bed. She had been sound asleep when he got back to the room from the hotel bar. The cold front between them that had rolled in on the way home from Sing Sing when Charlie told her about the photo with Lola felt like the beginning of the end. He’d stopped any pretense of hiding his drinking, and Margaret had ceased concealing her disdain.

“Another one?” she would ask when he poured a drink for himself in the kitchen or entered the living room holding a half-empty glass. This soon became an assertion rather than a question: “Another one,” as if she were stating it for the record. And that became part of their new routine, her disapproving glance implying some new level of disgust. Somehow the subterfuge, pouring the drink out of Margaret’s line of sight, had provided a degree of respect that openly pouring bourbon into his morning coffee did not.

“Hello?” he mumbled into the phone. It was Addington White. With a lead on his niece’s location.

“Wait, she’s where?” Charlie asked, taking a second to absorb it all.

“Tip came in,” White said. “I told you we’d help!”

Charlie hung up the phone, made a note on a scrap of paper, and called Lawford. Thirty minutes later, they were speeding east on the Santa Ana Freeway to Anaheim. Lawford was behind the wheel of the Italian coupe, Sammy Davis Jr.—who’d been drinking with Lawford—was in the passenger seat, and Charlie was crammed in the back.

“I can’t believe we’re going to fucking Disneyland,” Lawford said. He wasn’t the only one.

Sinatra had attempted to ignore President Kennedy’s visit to California, but photographers and local TV news had followed the president to every stop on the way, from Naval Air Station Alameda, where he landed, to the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, where he was given an honorary degree. Then it was back to Alameda to fly to Vandenberg Air Force Base for an inspection and the launch of the Atlas 134D intercontinental ballistic missile, which theoretically could deliver a nuclear weapon. It was intended as a clear signal to Khrushchev and any of his friends in the neighborhood—primarily Castro. Next a hop to Palm Springs Airport to the home of Bing Crosby and a quick visit with Palm Springs’ newest resident, President Eisenhower. Charlie and Margaret had watched much of this unfold live on their suite’s television at the Miramar.