“That’s Rosselli over there,” said Margaret, pointing out the handsome mobster. He chose that very moment to casually pinch the rear of a passing Copa Girl. Her face initially expressed shock, then Pavlovian deference.

“Who’s he with?” Street asked, craning his neck as Rosselli pulled out a chair at a table near the stage. “Is that Momo?”

“Sure looks like him from here,” Charlie said. He pushed his chair back from their tiny square table (dinner and two-drink minimum, $5.95 per person, not a room for people without some means). “I’m going to go over there and check it out.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Margaret asked.

“No, but I suspect a middle-aged white guy will blend better at this stag party than either of you.”

“Point, Charlie,” said Street.

“What is this thing called love?” Sinatra sang. Onstage, he and Martin slouched on stools, drinks in hand.

“Frank, if you don’t know, then we’re all in trouble,” Martin quipped. Then, in a singsongy voice: “Did you ever see a Jew-jitsu?”

“I did,” Sinatra responded, raising his hand.

Davis, who had considered himself a Jew since the 1950s and had formally converted earlier this year, ran onto the stage in mock offense.

“Be fair!” Davis barked at Martin as Sinatra pretended to hold him back. “Would you like it if I came onstage and asked, ‘Did you ever see a Wop-cicle?’” The audience ate it all up like the free breakfast buffet.

Charlie tried to saunter through the dimly lit room, filled to its maximum four-hundred-person capacity, but there was not a lot of room for sauntering. The crowd was clustered in groups of four, the tables inches from one another and set out in ten long rows. The Copa Girls followed the rules of the highway, moving on the right, passing on the left, yielding when necessary.

He approached Rosselli’s table. The mobster was leaning back in his seat expansively, a cigar in one hand and a highball in the other. Onstage Dean Martin protested Davis’s arm on his shoulder, saying, “I’ll go out and I’ll drink with ya, I’ll pick cotton with ya, I’ll go to shul with ya, but don’t touch me,” again to uproarious laughter from the room. Charlie got a good look at the people at the table: handsome Rosselli, ferrety Giancana, and an attractive dark-haired woman who was maybe twenty-five. He returned to Isaiah and Margaret, the only two people in the room who didn’t look delighted by what was happening onstage.

“Rosselli, Giancana, and a lady I haven’t seen before,” Charlie reported.

“I called a friend at LAPD about Powell’s murder,” Street said. “An eyewitness saw a car with Illinois plates speed away from the hotel, guys with fedoras inside. But the cops are wary. They’ve seen the LA Mob pull this move before, replacing plates and wearing costumes to implicate Momo and the Chicago syndicate.”