It Was a Very Bad Year

EPILOGUE

December 12, 2006

It was Frank’s birthday.

The Chairman of the Board passed in 1998, but every year on his birthday I still missed him.

At my age I don’t drive so good anymore, so when I want to go out at night I get myself a driver. That’s why I was in the back seat of the car, on my way to celebrate Frank’s birthday.

After all the kidnappers were caught they began to turn on one another. Convicting them was no problem. Oddly, the Irwins disappeared. I never did hear what had happened to them. Keenan and Amsler — friends since childhood — served just under five years each. When they got out they walked the straight and narrow. I’d seen Amsler’s obit earlier in the year, in May. He died at 65 of liver failure.

All but about six thousand dollars of the money was recovered. One of the kidnappers — Amsler or Keenan, I don’t remember — had bought his mother a bunch of new furniture. When Frank heard that the law was getting ready to repossess it, he told them to let the woman keep her furniture.

Reading Amsler’s obit had made me remember when Frank saw Amsler at the Liston-Patterson fight earlier in sixty-three. I wondered if that’s when the kidnappers had started to hatch their plot, and were in Vegas to see Irwin??

Frank was so pleased with what all the cops and FBI agents did that he gave them each a two-thousand-dollar gold watch made from twenty-dollar gold pieces, with velvet hands. There were twenty-seven of them.

The FBI returned the watches to Frank with a letter from Dean Elson, Special Agent in charge of the Las Vegas office. He told Frank that FBI agents were not permitted to accept gifts. A few weeks later Frank bought another one and sent it to J. Edgar Hoover, himself. He also sent the other watches along with it for each of the agents, with thanks for all the FBI had done to recover his son. This time, they were not returned. Frank had always felt he’d made a mistake the first time by not including a watch for J. Edgar.

He tried to give me a watch, as well, but I didn’t take it. I had done it all out of friendship. And I was a little miffed that he sent me the same thing he sent all those others. After all, I thought we were friends. But I called Frank to thank him, asked him not to take offense. He said there had to be something he could do for me. I explained about Jerry and his cousin Billy, and Frank stopped me before I was done. A couple of days later Jerry called me after he heard from the Sands that the debt was forgiven.

‘How did you do that, Mr G.?’ he asked.

‘How do you know I did it?’ I asked. ‘Maybe Frank did it.’

‘I’ll bet the call came from Mr S., but I’ll bet even more that it was your idea.’

‘Don’t be like the FBI and look a gift horse in the mouth, Jerry. What’s done is done.’

‘Well, thanks, Mr G.’

‘You gonna tell Billy he’s off the hook?’

‘Naw,’ Jerry said, ‘he’s makin’ payments to me, figurin’ I’ll send it to the casino. I’ll let him keep doin’ that, and eventually I’ll give him the money back. You know, like one of them Christmas Clubs in the bank.’

‘You’re a hard man, Jerry.’

‘Not you, Mr G.,’ Jerry said. ‘You’re just a softy. .’

The kidnappers tried a pretty wild defense. They claimed the whole kidnapping was bogus, planned by Frank Jr. himself for publicity. The Independent News Service in London latched on to the story and ran with it. Frank sued them and won a boatload of money, which he then donated to charity. He just wanted to keep the record clean.

The limo pulled up in front of the restaurant where I was to have dinner. It was off the strip, a local place my dinner partner and I picked out because celebrities didn’t go there.

As the driver got out to open my door I thought back to the premiere of Robin and The 7 Hoods. After the trial Frank went back to work and the guys finished the film. It was released the following year. It wasn’t a great movie, but it had been fun, a good distraction for Frank from the whole JFK fiasco. After Frankie was snatched it was kind of a chore to go back to. I always enjoyed watching the film, though, just not as much as I enjoyed Ocean’s 11.

The cast members were pretty much all gone. Tony Randall died a couple of years ago. Peter Falk was still around, but I never did meet him. I know Barbara Rush — who played Marian in the film — and she had once told me what a difficult shoot that was for Frank.

The driver opened my door and said, ‘We’re here, Mr G.’

‘Thanks, Carl.’

He gave me a hand getting out of the back seat, and then walked inside with me. He’d sit in a corner and have a meal on me, so that I wouldn’t have to wait for him to pick me up after.

I walked into the dining room of the restaurant, crossed the floor to the table where my dinner partner was seated. As I approached he stood up, smiled broadly, and stuck out his hand. Damned if he didn’t remind me of his dad.

‘Hiya, Frankie.’