“My goddamned niece was missing,” Margaret exploded, “she’s a child and she had fallen into the underbelly of this city of wanton sleaze and you never did a thing to help me, you never lifted a finger or even expressed one single sentiment of concern! You just sat there—”

“Who the holy fuck do you think told Charlotte to get you those files, you dumb cooze?” Sinatra erupted. “It was me. I did it!”

Charlie and Margaret sat stunned, mouths agape, shocked not just that Sinatra had confessed to what they’d theorized might have been the case but that their plan to enrage him into an admission worked. They could barely contain their smiles.

Sinatra, still worked up and in a lather, was almost panting.

He looked at Charlie and Margaret, exhaled, thought about what had just transpired—it was rather out of character for Margaret to yell at anyone—then smiled.

He took a moment to collect himself. He exhaled dramatically.

“You are the smartest fucking broad I have ever met,” Sinatra finally said.

Margaret grinned. “To be fair, this was a team effort,” she said.

“Look, Frank,” said Charlie, “we’re just trying to figure out how all the pieces fit in the puzzle here.”

“So you told Charlotte to give us this information,” Margaret said.

Sinatra took another moment.

“I own a piece of Hollywood Nightlife. Dino and me.”

“Nothing bad appears about you or the Rat Pack in their pages,” Margaret observed. “Which tends to set the tone for all the others.”

“Bogie told me once,” Sinatra said, “he said, ‘You have to remember one thing, Frank, there’s only one way that anyone can fight a newspaper, and that’s with a newspaper.’ I got sick of the garbage smearing me. They called me a Red. They called me a Commie. Punching Lee Mortimer didn’t do anything. So I bought a paper. Secretly. We hired away the sleaziest but best slime merchant in town, Tarantula, who hired Charlotte Goode—who lived up to her name—and a staff of thirty or so other talented freelance hacks, and lo and behold, we became the circulation leader. Crazy, I know.”

“So you kept a lot of scandal out of the news,” Charlie said.

“Kept a lot of lies out of the news,” Sinatra corrected him.

“And you also learned a whole bunch of other stuff,” Margaret said.

George Jacobs appeared with a new glass of Jack Daniel’s on the rocks for his boss. “Do you want me to bring it to you?” he asked. “I don’t mind—it’s hot.”

“Sure, if you don’t mind, George, that’d be swell,” Sinatra said.

Jacobs—in shorts and a white polo—walked past Charlie, down the stairs, and into the pool to deliver the drink. “You two want anything?” he asked. Margaret looked at her watch; it was just after two p.m.

“What do you have?” Charlie asked.