Chapter 7

PHIL ORNSTEIN’S corner office on the forty-first floor was lined with gold records and pictures of Philly’s frankly unattractive family but none of famous people, which was either an affectation or a reason to love the guy. He ushered Johnny Fontane behind his stainless steel desk. “Take as long as you’d like,” he said, though he couldn’t have meant that. Milner was getting the band squared away for the next number. Johnny dialed the number to his old house.

Halfway through, he stopped. Ginny and the girls had no idea he was in L.A. If he didn’t call, they’d be none the wiser. He was calling to apologize for not seeing them while he was in town, but the only thing that made the call necessary was the call itself.

He took out the pep pills, considered the label, then took one out and swallowed it dry.

Shit. What was he, some schoolboy segaiolo, afraid to ask out the prom queen? He’d known Ginny, his ex, ever since they were ten. The literal girl next door. He redialed.

“It’s me,” he said.

“Hello, my life,” Ginny said. She managed to say that in a way that was sweet and sarcastic at the same time. There’s nothing like a Brooklyn girl. “Where are you?”

“God, it’s great to hear your voice,” Johnny said. “What are you doing?”

They’d just gotten back from May Company, she told him. His oldest daughter had purchased her first brassiere.

“You can’t be serious,” Johnny said.

“When’s the last time you saw her?” Ginny said.

He’d had good-paying gigs in Atlantic City and at private clubs in the Jersey Palisades and the one Louie Russo had outside Chicago. He’d done a picture on location in New Orleans. The early scenes of it were shot here, on soundstages. Probably then. “Memorial Day?”

“Rhetorical question,” she said. “So where are you now?”

“Remember that one Labor Day, I don’t know what year,” he said. “We rented that place at Cape May, and we all went to that clambake?”

“No,” she said.

“You’re kidding,” he said. He could hear his girls in the background, arguing.

“Of course I’m kidding. Those were the times of my life. Back when I didn’t exist.”

Les Halley had insisted that Johnny pretend he was single so that the bobby-soxers would all keep screaming. “That was never my idea,” he said.

“And you had your floozy across town so that every time you went out for cigarettes-”

“Remember when I burnt my hands trying to cook that corn and-”

“And then burnt them again on those firecrackers.”

“True.” He had to laugh.

“There’s a block party tomorrow,” she said. “We have to make pie. You want to come?”

“To the party?”

“You’re in town, right? You sound so close.”

He cradled the phone against his shoulder and covered his eyes with both hands. “No,” he said. “I’m not. It’s just a good connection.”

“Oh,” she said. “Your loss. I’m making chicken scarpariello, too. Same recipe your ma showed me. Actually, the girls are. If they don’t kill each other first. They’re at that age.”

Johnny loved them, but as far as he could tell they’d always been at that age.

She asked if he wanted to talk to them. He said he did, but only his younger daughter would get on the phone. Philly came in, tapping his watch.

“Tell your mother,” Johnny said, “that I’ll do my best to make it to the party tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said. She’d convey the message-she was that kind of kid-but there was a note in her voice that made it clear she knew he’d never show.

The green pills had been prescribed by Jules Segal, the same doctor who’d diagnosed the warts on Johnny’s vocal cords and referred him to the specialist who shaved them off, an operation that made it possible for Johnny to get back into good voice and into the studio, a diagnosis two specialists had missed. Point being, there were a thousand Hollywood quacks whose interest in the human body had dwindled to the fleshy parts of their starlets du jour and the finer points of their own backswings, getting rich by handing out pills and taking care of girls in trouble, and then there was Segal, who had the same kind of rep but turned out to be a first-rate doctor, good enough to be chief of surgery at the new hospital the Corleones were building in Las Vegas. So why was it that every time Johnny popped another of those pills-still in line with the dosage recommended on the side of the bottle, never more-he went off by himself?

Johnny shook it off, like a dog with an itch in its ear. He’d be fine, really. Both under control and not. Which was okay, which suited the task at hand. He was getting by on four pills, twenty cups of tea, a pot of coffee, a ham sandwich, and no sleep. In the space between his scalp and skull, microscopic ants danced some hepcat thing like the hucklebuck. The aching in the big muscles on top of his thighs, whatever they were called, sharpened almost by the minute. But Johnny stayed on his feet, too spent even to fall to the floor for a nap. At the same time, he had too much energy. He couldn’t help but take each piece of barely perceptible direction he got from that brilliant lummox Milner and do his level best to put it in play.

He’d have given anything to stop.

He’d have given anything to make this feeling last forever.

He’d come here thinking he’d lay down half a long-playing record. A few minutes into the session, he realized he’d be doing well to finish one song to both his and Cy Milner’s satisfaction. Yet, minutes before he’d have to catch a plane back to Vegas, he found himself doing the third song of the day so well he got to the end without stopping or being stopped.

As he finished, he opened his eyes and saw Jackie Ping-Pong and Gussie Cicero standing inside the far door to the studio. How long they’d been there, Johnny had no idea.

Milner had already whipped out a pad of paper. As a conductor, he was laconic and fluid, but he wrote charts the way a stray dog eats a pork chop. He was oblivious to anything else in the studio, even the intern standing next to him with a bottle of soda and a fistful of pencils.

Johnny sat on his stool and lit a cigarette. “Mo-o-om! Da-a-ad!” Johnny called, looking first to Milner and then Ornstein, then pointing at Ping-Pong and Gussie. “My ride’s here. Don’t wait up!” His legs felt impossibly heavy. Finally he looked up and waved Gussie and Ping-Pong over.

“My friend!” Jackie said, waddling toward him. He was a hugely fat man, just an acquaintance, really. “You’re looking like a million bucks. You sound even better.”

Johnny knew he looked like death on toast. “What’s better than a million bucks?”

“A million bucks and a blow job,” said Gussie Cicero, a pally from way back.

“Wrong,” Johnny said. “If a chick knows you got a million, she’ll blow you for free.”

“Those free blow jobs are the most expensive kind.”

That cracked Johnny up. He slapped Cicero on the back. “Well, if I look like a million bucks,” Johnny said, “you two look like a shit I took this morning.”

Johnny stood and let Ping-Pong and Cicero embrace him. For years Johnny had assumed that Jackie’s nickname had come from his bulging eyes, but not long ago Frank Falcone told him Jackie’s eyes hadn’t done that until years after he got the nickname, which had actually come about because of his name, Ignazio Pignatelli. Gussie Cicero owned the swankiest supper club in L.A. Johnny hadn’t played there since the time his voice went out onstage and Variety wrote it up like it was an occasion for the whole staff to break out the Crown Royal and dance on Johnny’s fresh grave. Gussie and Johnny had remained friends, though.

“Frank Falcone sends his regards,” Gussie said. Gussie was said to be a made guy in the L.A. organization, which was connected somehow with Chicago.