11

HARLOT AND I WERE COMMUNICATING WITHIN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED States, and so I could send long cables into a special code box at GHOUL with as much confidence as if I were employing a secure phone. One’s working life, in consequence, was not overly beset with security procedures. My emotional life, however, took one fell whack. How could I wish to refer to Modene as BLUEBEARD? Harlot’s insistence on these ugly-headed cryptonyms struck me as punishment for the open telegram. Of course, Hugh’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side had been a mule skinner whose animals were legendary for being able to start up on a steep hill under a heavy load: Mean genes doubtless persevered best—employing Harlot’s cryptonyms made me feel like one of those mules. It was not all that easy to delve into Modene’s past relations with Sinatra, Kennedy, and Giancana, but I also had to suffer from the transmogrification of her name to BLUEBEARD. That was, yes, a whack on my emotional life. A woman out of my measure—how could I judge whether she was a palace cat or an over-passionate angel?—was now to be charted like a migratory bird with a research number banded to her leg. All good and great jobs sooner or later prove cruel, I kept telling myself.

SERIAL: J/38,741,651

ROUTING: LINE/GHOUL—SPECIAL SHUNT

TO: GHOUL-A

FROM: FIELD

10:00 A.M. JULY 10, 1960

SUBJECT: HEEDLESS

Since security in these communications is not at issue, and the real names are employed in the FBI transcripts, I wonder if we can dispense with the cryptonyms? BLUEBEARD et al., is seriously off-putting.

Await your immediate instructions.

FIELD

They came in an hour, and on low-privilege circuit, a way of reminding me that SPECIAL SHUNT was at Harlot’s terminal, and I did not have the means to decipher a special code. He also signed it GAINSBOROUGH, a substitute for GHOUL. Any word beginning with a G that also contained at least two of the four remaining letters, H, O, U, and L could suffice. (GUINEVERE, for instance, would not do—it had only a U to go with the G, but GASHOUSE, with H, O, and U, certainly would.)

SERIAL: J/38,742,308

ROUTING: LINE/ZENITH—OPEN

TO: ROBERT CHARLES

FROM: GAINSBOROUGH

SUBJECT: SECURE PHONE
Call me immediately.

11:03 A.M. JULY 10, 1960

GAINSBOROUGH

It took an hour to get through. “I’m inclined to indulge you,” Harlot began. “It does, however, set a dreadful precedent. Real names, you see, distort our judgment. Especially for big game. Sediment has already collected, you see, in our evaluation from old newspaper stories. Whereas an ill-fitting cryptonym can stimulate insights. Wrenches one’s mind-set out of context.”

“Yessir.” I felt as if I were back in a Low Thursday. Sitting in the airless plywood booth that housed our secure phone, a first drop of perspiration made its virgin run down my back.

“I can see your side of it, however,” he went on. “This is out of the ordinary course of things. The prime question is whether the material is ultrasensitive or farcical. So, write your report with cryptonyms, or without. Shift back and forth when the impulse takes you. We do want to find out who is doing what to whom, don’t we?”

“I appreciate your flexibility,” I said.

“Good. Now, you be equally open.”

“Yessir.”

He hesitated, as if looking for some way to offer a verb its cryptonym. “Would you say, Harry, that the girl might prove out choice in the hay?”

I took my time to answer. “Hugh,” I said at last, “on the basis of the evidence so far, I would expect the hay to be a most positive factor in her relations.”

“Good fellow. Go to work,” he said, and hung up.

SERIAL: J/38,749,448

ROUTING: LINE/GHOUL—SPECIAL SHUNT

TO: GHOUL-A

FROM: FIELD

SUBJECT: HEEDLESS

8:47 P.M. JULY 10, 1960

The key question is BLUEBEARD’s veracity. She seems artless. She speaks easily of matters others might keep secret. Yet one soon discovers that she is not without gifts for mendacity. For example, my first understanding of her personal situation was that her personal life had been maintained in two halves, each complete, one with a man in Palm Beach she would not name (IOTA) and the other with an airline executive called Walter.

This considerable misperception, provided by her, lasted until I learned through her telephone conversations early this year on Jan. 3 and Jan. 5, 1960, with AURAL that Walter had been asked to walk the plank shortly after STONEHENGE entered BLUEBEARD’s life. While BLUEBEARD certainly enjoyed the perks Walter’s executive position brought to her flight job, STONEHENGE must have made it clear that with his wide range of contacts, a felicitous work schedule could be continued mit or mitout her married boyfriend. Exit Walter. If this sounds cold-blooded, I expect it is.

BLUEBEARD’s continuing relationship with Walter was, however, maintained with me as a fiction. Perhaps it has workaday use for such everyday suitors as FIELD. The only firm conclusion, however, is that she can lie with authority.

Now, to our chronology. I am going to speak of the period from December 10, 1959, to January 10, 1960, as High Stonehenge. Modene met Sinatra while working the flight from Washington to Miami on December 10 and, given her ability to attract attention, we can take it as in the course of things that Sinatra would invite her to be his guest for the following weekend in Las Vegas.

In her numerous phone calls to AURAL during this period, she provides a portrait of the STONEHENGE milieu. Sinatra had reserved a suite for her at the Sands Hotel, and when she demurred at the cost, making the point that she could not afford it herself, nor equally could she permit his generosity, he laughed and said, “Honey, you’re with me. The hotel will eat the tab.”

Las Vegas, December 17–19, 1959. Sinatra keeps a large bungalow at the Sands in an enclave of other similar bungalows reserved for the Clan, and has been known to spend day and night drinking on the patio adjoining the pool that is used exclusively by himself and the Clan. (Present membership is Joey Bishop, Sammy Cahn, Sammy Davis, Jr., Eddie Fisher, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin.) As Modene describes it to Willie Raye (AURAL), the Clan impresses her as well named.

During the transcript of a telephone conversation with Willie, Modene says, “That first day around the pool was as awful as the first day in a new school. They talk in a special code. Somebody says ‘Ring-a-ding,’ and everybody starts to laugh. That is, everybody knew when to laugh but me.”

From: Transcript Dec. 21, 1959:

WILLIE: I’d have packed my bags and left.

MODENE: I nearly did. If not for Frank, I would have.

WILLIE: Did he save the day?

MODENE: Well, not at first. I have to tell you. It was a shock seeing him in Vegas. He was all gotten out in his favorite colors. Orange and black. He has no taste whatsoever. He keeps bird-of-paradise flowers in his suite. In case you don’t know, they’re orange and black.

WILLIE: It couldn’t have been that bad.

MODENE: Well, it wasn’t. But only because they kept playing his songs around the pool.

WILLIE: Did it work?

MODENE: Well, we did get together.

At this point of working on my report to Harlot, somewhere after ten o’clock of an air-conditioned evening in the recirculated nicotine air of empty Zenith offices, I confess that I stopped typing for a moment and ground my teeth just once. If these details were likely to prove as fascinating to Hugh Montague as the first accounts of life on Uranus, I was denigrating some elusive filament of feeling in myself. This girl-woman, vain as a male lion and able to travel in the company of royal gorillas and a bona fide presidential candidate, had nonetheless responded in some degree to me. I was ready to believe that if we ever went to bed, we might each find a way out of the labyrinths of the past. Wasn’t every improbable love affair a jailbreak? I sat with my fingers poised over my typewriter and wondered if this factual rundown of the behavior of Modene would injure something in the nature of the escape.

From: Transcript Dec. 21, 1959 (cont’d.):

WILLIE: Is Frank as good as they say?

MODENE: He might be.

WILLIE: He doesn’t look that well built.

MODENE: Frank doesn’t have to be.

WILLIE: I guess he knows how to get a mood going?

MODENE: He’s considerate. He knows the importance of details. Under his shell is a gentle and sensual man. He doesn’t even ask for something back. He’s the active one.

WILLIE: Who would ever believe it?

MODENE: Unselfish.

WILLIE: You’re describing a paragon.

Ten days later, Modene spends the New Year’s weekend at Sinatra’s house in Palm Springs. Similar conversations ensue with Willie—“I love him when he makes love. He is so full of finesse.” During the day, while Modene sits in the living room, Frank rehearses new songs with a pianist. Sinatra will walk around the room, repeat a few bars, and squeeze her arm or shoulder whenever he passes. Hours go by. “Frank,” Modene explains to Willie, “is on stage so much, that he loves to stay home when he’s not. It’s restful.”

WILLIE: It sounds like bliss.

MODENE: I love Palm Springs.

WILLIE: How is his house furnished?

MODENE: Oriental in motif.

WILLIE: That little Italian guy must think he’s the Devil.

MODENE: He knows how to get power. ( Jan. 4, 1960)

When they meet again, however, in Palm Springs on January 17, an episode occurs. Excerpt from transcript of January 20:

MODENE: It’s over.

WILLIE: You aren’t serious?

MODENE: I will never allow myself to be that positive about a man again.

WILLIE: What happened?

MODENE: He destroyed it.

WILLIE: How?

MODENE: I won’t talk about it.

WILLIE: That’s awfully cruel of you. To excite my curiosity and then frustrate it.

MODENE: He wanted me to enter a situation that I could not enter. Not with him. Not under any circumstances.

WILLIE: I see you’re going to stick little pins in me and poke them around.

MODENE: He tried to introduce another girl into our bed.

WILLIE: What?

MODENE: I’d had a little too much champagne, and I went to sleep early. When I woke up, there was a tall black girl in the same king-sized bed with us. She was practicing you-know-what on him. He waved for me to join them.

WILLIE: What did you do?

MODENE: It’s so picayune. I began to cry.

WILLIE: Well, of course.

MODENE: I don’t like to cry. When I do, I can’t stop. I just went into the bathroom and cried for half an hour, and when I came out, the girl was gone, and Frank was wholly apologetic. I told him it was a little late in the day for regrets. I was overplaying my hand, but I didn’t care. My vanity has never been so injured. He finally shrugged and said, “You’re great, you’re even kind of scintillating, but, honey, let’s face it, you could be too square for me.” “Frank,” I told him right back, “I am not going to be the one to apologize.”

WILLIE: You did have a particularly strong reaction.

MODENE: Well, it wasn’t prudish. Believe me, I’ve never done anything like that, although I suppose I could.

WILLIE: Modene!

MODENE: If I didn’t love a man but did enjoy him on the earthy side, and didn’t think anyone was going to get hurt, well, I might join a threesome, or I might not.

WILLIE: Couldn’t you say that to Frank?

MODENE: I did. I slept in the guest bedroom that night and I locked the door. But in the morning, I did explain my point of view. He said, “Well, where’s the fire, then? You’re not solid square.” “You missed the entire point,” I told him. “Which is?” he asked. “Frank,” I said, “I adored the tenderness you offered. But I made the mistake of thinking that such intimacy was for me. Last night I realized that you feel kindred emotions for all women. They are part of your music. It just broke my heart when I realized it wouldn’t be me alone.”

WILLIE: Modene, I’ve always said you have no fear of the bottom line, good or bad.

MODENE: Well, he did react. He held me at a little distance and put his hands on my forearms and said, “In two weeks, I am going to kill myself when I realize that you were the one for me.” I started laughing. I had to. He was such a funny little guy at the moment. Almost a jerk. But he was acting that way on purpose, trying to sidle his way back into my affections. I said, “Oh, Frank, let’s remain friends.” Do you know what happened then?

WILLIE: Of course not.

MODENE: An expression came into his face of a sort I had not seen before. I have seen him get angry and ugly toward a couple of his hangers-on, and he can be death to strangers who butt into his mood in public, but I never saw him look calculating before. He said, “All right, we’ll be friends. You will have a valuable friend in me,” and I felt as if I’d been shifted as neatly as you please from one part of his brain to the other.

WILLIE: Sounds sinister.

MODENE: Well, I’m exaggerating. But it certainly was one of those click-click moments. ( Jan. 20, 1960)

It may be significant that she is soon introduced to IOTA. It is now 1:00 A.M., so I will send out what I have here, and resume tomorrow afternoon, which I have succeeded in reserving for this work.

FIELD