“Sinatra thinks the president is going to stay with him when we go out to California in March,” Kennedy said quietly. “He’s been on the president’s case about it ever since the inauguration. Apparently, he’s had all this work done at his Rancho Mirage estate prepping for a visit. Whole place wired for sound. A press filing room. He’s even building a helipad.”

Charlie had to smile at the excess. “You don’t want the president to stay there?” Throughout the 1960 election, Sinatra and the Rat Pack had gone all in for Kennedy, and the campaign had been only too happy to capitalize on the fame, the glamour, the money. Sinatra had even rerecorded his Oscar-winning song “High Hopes,” written by Sinatra songmeister Jimmy Van Heusen, with new lyrics:

Everyone is voting for Jack

’Cause he’s got what all the rest lack

Everyone wants to back—Jack

Jack is on the right track!

As if reading Charlie’s mind, Kennedy shrugged. “When I started at Justice, an agent asked me how he could be expected to go after Mob bosses when my brother’s most famous supporter is paisans with a bunch of them. I took his point. Unfortunately, the FBI doesn’t have any evidence supporting the rumors that Frank is mobbed up, but now he shows up in this wiretap.”

Charlie, encouraged by Kennedy’s willingness to confide in him, ventured a question. “What does Hoover say?” he asked. “Why don’t you ask the FBI to investigate Sinatra?”

Kennedy considered his answer. Finally, he said, “The FBI has been looking into it, but in all honesty, it’s not a priority for them. It’s not as if Sinatra and the Rat Pack are actually robbing five casinos in one night, right?”

“I would imagine not,” said Charlie.

Kennedy sighed; he clearly wasn’t telling Charlie everything he had on the subject of Hoover, who’d been running a rogue fiefdom for years. “I really would prefer to have my own intelligence sources, the way Eisenhower once did,” he said. “You ever hear anything about that, Congressman?”

Charlie froze. He had never spoken of his secret work for Eisenhower, which started back in ’54. “Ike’s Platoon,” as its members referred to themselves. Or as they once had; with Ike’s retirement, the group largely disbanded.

“Don’t think so,” Charlie lied.

Suddenly, breaking the choir’s silence, a lone treble voice rose above the murmuring.

Once in royal David’s city

Stood a lowly cattle shed,

Where a mother laid her baby

In a manger for his bed

“We know a lot of folks in Hollywood,” Kennedy said. “Sinatra’s working on a picture now for United Artists. It’s about a soldier who goes into politics, like my brother. Like you.”