Both Charlie and Margaret felt some relief. They’d been sent by Attorney General Kennedy to find out what Giancana had asked of Sinatra, and now they knew. Hopefully this would be the end of their Tinseltown mission. Charlie had enjoyed his work as a consultant to The Manchurian Candidate—his input had inspired some last-minute rewrites of the scene in which the American GIs were captured by the Chinese, and he liked Frankenheimer. But it was time to go back east, get his dad out of prison, and return to the life they’d built. Thinking of Lucy and Dwight and the phone conversation they’d had earlier that evening, Charlie felt an ache; he missed them so much.

“Honey, look,” said Margaret, motioning with her chin toward the unmistakable profile of Alfred Hitchcock on his way to a prime table, diners and waitstaff forced to move aside to accommodate his considerable girth. Manny Fontaine and a top studio executive, Les Wolff, sailed in his spacious wake. Fontaine had told them Wolff’s story: Tan and broad, the studio big shot was a former actor who had rocketed to the upper echelons fueled only by oily charm and the look of a CEO. Most of the other Hollywood machers were overweight or pale or chinless or all of the above.

At their table, Charlie faced the expansive mirror hanging from the wall while Margaret and Goode viewed the room. Fontaine spotted Charlie in the reflection and they waved to each other; no time to talk.

“Horrible Hitch,” Goode said. “A grotesque masher. That poor girl he just plucked from obscurity to star in his latest.” She tilted her head back and gulped down a shrimp from her shrimp cocktail like a ravenous seal. Charlie politely mimed to her that she had cocktail sauce on her cheek, and Goode wiped it away.

“I didn’t know that about Hitchcock,” Margaret said. “Charlie, that bird woman we met on set is working on that picture, his latest.”

“On The Birds?” Goode said.

“That’s the one.”

“Well, she should watch out too,” Goode said. “These mashers and flashers with their casting couches. MGM’s Arthur Freed whipped it out to Shirley Temple when she was just twelve! There’s a whole network of people making sure nobody ever hears about it and keeping hacks like me from reporting on it, but it happens every damn day.” Goode pointed to an older man dining with two pretty young men. “There’s Henry Wilson. An agent. He’s notorious for forcing his clients into bed. Male clients. Roddy McDowall calls him the slime that oozes out from under a rock.”

Margaret noticed a familiar face: Symone LeGrue. “Speak of the devil bird,” said Margaret, smiling and waving as LeGrue approached their table.

“Is that a real bird?” asked Charlie.

“In Ceylonese lore,” LeGrue said as she reached them. “Probably a species of nightjar or maybe a spot-bellied eagle-owl.”