A Conversation with the Mann (41 page)

The shows were outrageous, Louis shouting his way through a number as much as singing, Keely just about the only woman around
with lungs enough to keep up with him and the band—big, brassy, and jive. Opening night was more like going to a party than
to work, and there I was with a ringside seat for it all. As I sat and watched and listened, I believed I'd made the right
decision post-Cincinnati, to just do what I did best: go up onstage and be likable, then sit back and drink down the nectar
of the gods. Why blow it? I had worked hard. I had earned myself an unbelievably good life.

In short order it was going to be unbelievably better.

“L
ILIAH
D
AVI WANTS TO MEET YOU.”

My jaw just about hit the floor. I don't mean that as an expression. I mean my hole flapped open so wide, the only thing that
kept my mouth bone from smacking tile was the flesh of my face.

Second night at Ciro's. After the show. Me in my dressing room and Herman Hover had just stepped through the door to deliver
a haymaker.

I asked the only thing I could think to ask. “Liliah Davi? Are you sure?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Well …” Well what? As unlikely as it seemed, Liliah Davi wanted to do a drop-by. What was there to even consider? “Well,
send her back.”

Herman started out, stopped, turned, and shared with me a smile that only men could understand.

Liliah Davi the European actress.
The
European actress, though her acting skills weren't the reason people—men in particular— flooded to her movies. Her breakthrough
picture had been some kind of an art-house thing that nobody got. Liliah made it an international sensation just by standing
onscreen and breathing. She did as much by doing as little for the celluloid junk that Hollywood put her in once they brought
her stateside. But, good films, bad films; it didn't matter. Put a diamond in the dirt and even a blind man could see it.

As I was flipping through my mental dossier on her, Liliah walked through the door. It was like sex was walking into the room.
She was five foot seven inches of curves and kisses with a smile for a kicker that was pure sin. Dark hair, dark eyes, Perm-A-Tan
skin. She wore a beautiful black evening gown. Taffeta, maybe. Dior. Givenchy, probably. Strapless. It was seemingly held
to her body by the same sexual attraction that gravitated everything else in the known universe her way. For a capper, a slit
ran the garment from floor to thigh that gave reality a running start on imagination.

“Mr. Mann?” Her voice rode her accent the way a flute rides a tune. She held out a hand—gloved to above the elbow—the way
you see royalty do it, wrist bent, back side up and finger diving for the floor.

All I knew about greeting chicks on her level was what I'd seen in the movies. “Miss Davi.” I took her hand, kissed it doing
my best Cary Grant bits. “It's a pleasure.”

“The pleasure is mine.”

I waited for her to take her hand back.

She didn't.

I said to her: “I saw your last picture. You were fabulous.”

“Some people say that I cannot act.”

There was bait on that line. If she'd been just another movieland bimbo, I'd have distracted her with shiny words. But I was
pretty sure this one was fishing around trying to find out if I'd blow her smoke or tell her true.

“I'm not sure it's strictly acting, but what you do you do better than anyone alive.”

Her lips made a gesture—they parted slightly. They bent upward—but what you'd call it, I don't know.

She said: “I enjoyed your performance this evening. You were quite
sharming
.”

“Really?”

“What I could understand I thought amusing.” A slight pause. “But truly I enjoyed watching you.”

I could feel beads of perspiration ripening on my forehead, and I willed them to stop. I didn't know for sure, but I was pretty
certain that gorgeous stars weren't impressed by sweaty comics.

“Will you be long in Los Angeles?” she wanted to know.

“Just pretty much this week, with the show.”

“Oh.”

A beat.

Liliah said: “I won't keep you. I'm sure you are quite busy. I only wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed you.”

I don't recall Liliah taking her hand from mine as much as I remember my grasp never having felt quite as empty as when I
no longer held it.

“I will see you,” she said as she floated for the door, the comment as inscrutable as the bat of her eyes that went with it.

And then she was gone.

I poured myself a glass of water and drank it down. I drank another.

I
MADE A DISTRACTED WALK
from Ciro's back to the Sunset Colonial. I was tired and I was preoccupied, my head rerunning the scene of me meeting Liliah
over and over again. I sort of recall talking with Doary, who was cleaning, for a moment—her asking about the show and me
telling her something or other but not really paying her much attention. Then I was upstairs, in my bed, wanting desperately
to sleep but unable to do so. Liliah kept me awake.

It wasn't that I was obsessing on her. I never thought for a moment I could mean anything to her other than a good night's
laugh. It was more that I was thinking about how utterly incredible it was to even meet such a woman. It wasn't that long
ago I was sitting and watching her movies or slowing down at the newsstand when I saw a fluff rag with her picture on the
cover, same as every other man in America. Now, unlike most men in America, I'd actually looked her in the eye, held her hand,
and traded quips. I pinned a medal on my chest, thinking: I bet Lenny Bruce has never done that.

The phone rang. I'm not sure if it rang me awake from sleep or a daydream. I jumped, anxious, not startled. For one quick
moment, for whatever insane reason, I thought it might be Liliah calling me.

“Jackie … oh, my God, where have you …”

It was the most moan-ful sounding voice I'd ever heard, filled with so much despair, I almost didn't recognize it.

“Sammy?”

“Why didn't you call me?”

“Call you? I didn't know—”

“I left messages. You didn't get—”

“I was doing my show. I came back here, came right up to my—”

“You've got to come over. Will you come over? Please?”

“What time is it?”

“Jackie, please.” Some sobbing, then: “I've got to talk to you. I need your help.”

My help? He needed my help? The idea of it was crazy, but how could I say no? I got the address, hung up. I looked at the
clock. Five forty-three.

Twenty minutes later and I was navigating my rental toward Sammy Davis, Jr.'s home.

S
AMMY LIVED IN THE
H
ILLS
. The Hollywood Hills. The formerly all-white Hollywood Hills. Liberal Tinseltown talked a good game, was all for putting
a better world up onscreen, but same as most uni-colored enclaves, they weren't about to do any handstands and tuba playing
over a black guy moving in next door. Then Mr. Entertainment showed up. When Sammy Davis, Jr. decides to set up shop on your
block, there isn't much stopping him. That was the kind of juice he had.

I pulled up into the drive and went for the door, but before I could ring or knock, it opened. It was Sammy, processed hair
messed, a growth of beard, and looking as though he hadn't known sleep for a week.

Sammy said nothing. He just opened the door, then shuffled back into the house zombie-style. I followed him into a living
room, big as my whole place back in New York, where he fell into a couch.

I didn't know what to say, where to start. “Are you … Is everythin—”

“He's trying to kill me.”

I did some quick looking around with a little ducking added in. I didn't need to haul myself from bed and drive all the way
up into the Hills just to get my life ended.

Sammy said again: “He's trying to kill me,” then added, “Frank's trying to kill me.”

“Frank Costello?”

“Sinatra. Francis wants my hide.”

“Why? What did you—”

“I didn't do anything. I didn't… A few months ago I was on the radio in Chicago—”

“The Jack Eigen show. Yeah, I heard. What were you thinking?”

Sammy took my words as well as a bullet. Going fetal on me: “You, too? Oh, baby, I'm dead.”

“No, no, it wasn't that bad,” I lied. “I didn't think it was that bad.”

“Frank did. He heard about it and the man blew his stack. He put the word out: Nobody hire Smoky. I'm getting deals canceled,
bookings canceled. He had me thrown out of a movie. I had a contract, Jackie, and he had me thrown out!”

“Do you want a drink?” I asked, not knowing what other remedy to offer and remembering how good some booze made me feel in
my time of trouble. “How about a drink?”

“Oh, God. What am I going to do?” Sammy keeled over a little more, buried his face in a pillow.

I had to sit down. The situation was going to require some serious attention, and nothing in my life I'd ever seen, heard,
or done had ever prepped me for dealing with star-level meltdowns.

“Look, Sammy, you're one of the biggest acts there is. Frank, yeah, he can cause you some trouble, but he can't take away
everything.”

Lifting his head up from the pillow: “Baby, if you think that, then you don't know the man. It's Frank's world. We just live
in it.” Back to the pillow his head went.

I offered the obvious: “Why don't you talk to him?”

“I've tried. He won't return my calls; he won't see me. He was playing the Fontainebleau when I was at the Eden Roc. I went
over, and he wouldn't even take the stage until I was out of the hotel.” Again, for emphasis:“He—wouldn't—even—take—the—stage.”

“I don't… Sure, he's a little upset now, but he's not going to—”

“He's doing a picture.”

“He'—”

“He's doing a picture and everybody's in it.”

“What do you mean, everybody?”

“Dino, Joey, Angie, Peter—”

“Lawford? But he—”

“He hates Lawford, but he's in. Everybody's in, and I'm going to be out if things don't get patched up.”

“Well, can't you have someone to talk to Frank for you? Maybe Dean—”

“Dean doesn't stick out his neck to shave it. Angie's got more spine than Lawford, but Frank doesn't care what a dame's got
to say. Joey's lucky to be around …”

Real suddenly it was dawning on me what I was doing in the Hollywood Hills first thing in the morning.

“Sammy—”

“Please, Jackie …” Lifting himself up now but still too destitute to stand, Sammy did his pleading from where he sat. “There's
no one else.”

“Me? I'm supposed to go to Frank Sinatra and … I'm not—”

“He's soft for you. He likes you.”

“Yeah, but I'm … I'm …” As much as I hated to say it, the reality was “I'm nobody.”

“Jackie … ” A lot was welling up inside Sammy. A lot of imploring and beseeching concerning the desperation of the situation.
There was a lot of hurt and a lot of need, and there was a whole lot of fear of a man who was looking at everything he'd ever
built up, everything he ever held dear … There was the fear of a man looking at his whole life about to come crumbling down
around him, smashed to bits because of one moment's indiscretion. And all of that came crying from him in one single word:
“Please.”

I thought of that day in Chicago. I thought of me in the airport listening to Sammy on the radio and thinking: Oh, well. It's
his business, not mine. If I'd known then what I know now …

I said: “All right.”

S
INATRA WAS IN
P
ALM
S
PRINGS
. He had a place out there. Sammy gave me the number and, later, after working up some courage, I called. Jilly answered,
and I was glad for it. I told him I wanted to speak to Frank, hoping he wouldn't be around. I could tell Sammy I called, I
tried, but Frank wasn't—

Jilly told me to hold on, went away from the phone, came back, said: “Frank says sure, c'mon out.”

“But I—”

Jilly started feeding me directions.

A face-to-face wasn't what I had bargained for. But I knew well enough that once you got an invite from the Chairman there
was no declining it. I wrote down Jilly's directions, got in my car, and headed for the desert.