“I need to get back in there,” Charlie told the officers, holding up his ticket, but the men ignored him, stone-faced, forming a wall of blue. His heart sank as it dawned on him that he was now trapped outside with no idea what to do next.

“Where’s Sheryl Ann?” Margaret asked.

They were tucked in the far corner backstage, away from the stagehands and dancers preparing for the next number.

“Safe,” he said. She wondered if he was still attempting to convince her that he was a mere go-between in this evil trade.

“We’re not giving you anything until she’s back with us,” she said, staring into his beady brown eyes.

“I’m not running this,” Fontaine insisted. “I’m just trying to help.”

Margaret raised an eyebrow skeptically. She heard a familiar voice and turned to see Sinatra in the wings, receiving last-minute hair and makeup assistance. A flock of two dozen dancers appeared, all wearing black tights, long red devil tails, and headbands festooned with pointed red horns. The ladies flooded past Margaret and Fontaine, their high heels clacking, and made their way through the scaffolding and sets and ropes attached to sandbags to their places around Sinatra.

Margaret was about to call Sinatra’s name, but before she could, Fontaine grabbed her arm. At that moment, the curtains parted. “Ladies and gentlemen, here to sing Academy Award–nominated ‘The Devil May Dance’ from the motion picture El Cid, Mr. Frank Sinatra!”

As the audience erupted in applause, Margaret broke from Fontaine’s clutches and ran, instinctively grabbing a rope tied to a sandbag as the curtains opened. Holding tight, she was whisked up into the rafters as Sinatra and his dancers made their entrance and an elaborate backdrop was lowered to the stage. Fontaine, stunned, watched her fly up like a superhero and then coolly step onto a narrow wooden plank, part of an intricate network of scaffolding out of the audience’s view.

Okay, she thought, slightly amazed at what she had just pulled off, I’m safe for the moment. But where the hell is Charlie? And what do I do now?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Santa Monica, California

April 1962

“The first time the devil comes calling,” Sinatra sang, “he’s wearing the face of someone you love / He tells you your hopes are just silly / With no mettle, you settle, what dreams were made of.”

The audience fell under the spell of “the voice.” His ice-blue eyes at once romantic and predatory, Sinatra held the stand tenderly and embraced the microphone. The set behind him, depicting hell—molten lava erupting from small eddies, dark clouds, demons torturing damned souls—had landed onstage beneath Margaret as she’d flown upward. Now, two stories above and out of view of the audience, she stood on wobbly scaffolding, her familiar urge to swoon over the crooner now shoved to the margins of her mind. She watched Frank below as he closed his eyes and sang: