“Presumably,” said Lawford. “Want to meet him?”

“If I could,” said Charlie.

Lawford nodded.

“We’ll keep an eye on your wife, Congressman,” Martin said. “Frank will, at any rate.” Everyone laughed.

Lawford sauntered over to the policeman; Charlie followed. Rock Hudson thumbed the lapel of the young man beside him. No one was being even the slightest bit discreet; all inhibitions were gone. Gregory Peck was downing bourbons; buxom aspiring starlets were hanging on Robert Mitchum’s every word as he told them about being on a Savannah, Georgia, chain gang as a teenager. The punch line was that was why they were now shooting Cape Fear in California instead of on location in Savannah, a town Mitchum had hated ever since then. In the middle of this explosion of stars, Detective Meehan was making short work of a vodka tonic as he chatted up Tuesday Weld, who was wearing a tight blue dress and appeared eager to exit the conversation.

Meehan must have sensed someone more famous in his vicinity because, like a remora sensing a shark, he turned to find its source: Lawford.

“Peter!” he said. The two alpha-dogged each other, grasping each other’s hands with vise-grip aggression, pushing each other back and forth as if working a two-man crosscut saw.

“Detective, this is Congressman Charlie Marder from New York,” Lawford said. “He’s here working on Frank’s Manchurian film, advising. He’s both a vet and an old Washington hand.”

Meehan smiled and patted Charlie on the shoulder. “Welcome to Tinseltown,” he said. He took a gulp from his drink. “Oh, Peter,” he said, “you know I’ve landed the Powell case.”

“No, I didn’t. Awful. We haven’t heard much about the circumstances. Suicide?”

“Unless he shot himself in the eyes, both of them, then no, I don’t think it was a suicide,” Meehan said. “Classic Cosa Nostra. Make the corpse unpresentable for viewing. Old-world greaseball stuff. Frank might know something about it from his days in Hoboken.” Meehan laughed and squeezed Lawford’s shoulder; he shook it off slowly but with unmistakable distaste. “Speaking of Frank, didn’t he and Powell have a beef about some skirt? Lola something?” Meehan asked.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Lawford said unconvincingly. “You’d have to ask the man himself.”

“Oh, I will,” Meehan said, staring toward the back room where Sinatra sat.

At that very moment, Sinatra was ranting about gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who had devoted an entire chapter to him in her new memoir, Tell It to Louella.

“She calls me ‘mixed up,’” he told his fellow Rat Packers and Margaret, rage simmering. “She said I go by the ‘law of the jungle.’ I mean, what in the hell is she talking about? That stupid fucking quin doesn’t know me.” He drained his glass of whiskey, and a waitress materialized instantly with another.