“If they wanted intel,” Charlie said, “they’d send a pro, or at least someone who could hold his liquor. Margaret needed a break from the New York winter and two little kids, so when the studio asked me to come out here, we jumped at the chance. Sunshine, movie stars…”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Martin skeptically.

“Scotch,” bellowed a voice. It was Rosselli, approaching the bar from the hotel lobby with another man. In his brightly colored Hawaiian shirt and bathing trunks, Rosselli looked like a handsome aging celebrity, and Charlie had a hard time reconciling what he knew about the mobster’s brutal reputation with the gregarious charmer before him.

“Frank’s in a state,” Rosselli informed them. “Calling the White House, trying to get through to Kennedy.” Rosselli massaged his forehead with a beefy thumb and forefinger. He pointed to his friend. “This is Bob,” he said.

“Bob Maheu,” said the man. He was bald and in his forties with a sad expression and a lumpy body, a bag of potatoes compared with the glamorous gangsters and stars at the pool. Charlie knew the name but he couldn’t remember how.

“So what’s your connection to these fine gentlemen?” Margaret asked Judy.

“Oh, Frank and I have known each other for a long time. And he introduced me to Sam.” She spoke with the casual assurance of someone who assumed her life’s details were well known.

“Sam?”

“Sam Hill, the distinguished older gentleman who hangs around here?”

Margaret didn’t see anyone by that description, only a pool full of young women splashing rather showily, careful to keep their hair dry and their assets on full display. They had an appreciative audience among the men who lounged nearby, most of whom barely bothered to conceal their interest.

“Who are all these other girls?” Margaret said, waving toward the pool.

“Oh, I don’t know them,” Judy said. “I guess they’re just here for the show and the sun and the company.”

Margaret pulled down her sunglasses to get a better look at the young women, all of them with dimpled cheeks, flawless skin. “What do they do?” she asked. The women in Las Vegas, the nontourists, seemed to do whatever they needed to do to survive—from Copa Girl to cocktail waitress to burlesque dancer to bed-hopper, with various levels of clientele. She didn’t know why she was judging the women this way. It was unlike her. Judy was silent, which made Margaret nervous.

Judy looked at Margaret as if noticing her for the first time. “You’re the congressman’s wife?”

“I’m a zoologist, but yes, I’m also his wife.”

“So you’re a zoologist but you married a congressman and now you’re hanging with the Rat Pack in Vegas?”

“Charlie and I met at Columbia University,” Margaret said. “He fought in Europe and then came back and we got married. Congress didn’t happen until almost a decade later.”