Odd Hours

TWENTY-SEVEN

BECAUSE MY FETTERED ANKLE WOULD NOT allow me to go easily to Mr. Sinatra, he came to me. He sat in the chair that Chief Hoss Shackett had occupied, across the table from me.

In the ceiling, the light fixture was recessed behind a flush-mounted sheet of plastic. That panel was frosted, a blind eye.

The only place in the room where a camera could have been concealed was in the duct that provided fresh air. Through the slots in the vent grille, I could not see any telltale gleam of a lens.

Considering the brutal interrogations that the chief had surely conducted in this room and that he would soon conduct again, I did not believe he would have installed a camera. He would be concerned that it would accidentally-or by the intention of a whistle-blower-record crimes that might lead to his imprisonment.

For the same reason, I doubted that the room was fitted with listening devices. Besides, as far as the chief knew, I had no one to whom I could talk.

Mr. Sinatra had lost his cocky air. He appeared distraught.

Throughout his life, he had been a patriot, in love with America both for what she was and for her potential. The plot that he had heard described in this room had clearly devastated him.

In December 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “the Voice” had been drafted. But at his physical, he was rejected and classified 4-F because of a punctured eardrum that he had suffered during birth. Subsequently, he tried four times to enlist. He used every person of influence he knew-they were numerous-to get the army to reclassify him and to accept him for service, but he never succeeded.

Although he weighed 135 pounds in those days, he had been a scrapper from childhood, quick to defend himself or a friend, making up in heart and temper for what he lacked in size. He never walked away from a fight and would have made a good soldier, though he might have been a discipline problem from time to time.

I said, “When you were born in your parents’ Hoboken tenement, you weighed thirteen and a half pounds. Your grandma Rose was an experienced midwife, but she’d never seen a baby as big as you.”

He looked puzzled, as though he wondered if I was in denial of what I had heard from Hoss Shackett.

“The physician in attendance had never seen a baby so big, either. Your mother, Dolly, was under five feet tall, petite, and because of your size, the doctor had trouble delivering you.”

Frowning with impatience, Mr. Sinatra waved a hand dismissively, as though brushing aside the subject of his entry into the world, and he pointed to the steel door to focus my attention on what mattered.

“Sir, I’m going somewhere with this,” I promised him.

He looked dubious but remained attentive.

Because the circumstances of his birth were family legend, he knew what I told him: “The doctor used forceps, and didn’t use them well. He ripped your ear, cheek, and neck, puncturing your eardrum. When he finally got you out of your mother, you weren’t breathing.”

His grandmother took him from the doctor, rushed him to a sink, and held him under cold running water until he gasped for air.

“The doctor would likely have certified you as born dead. You entered the world fighting, sir, and you never really stopped.”

I glanced at my watch. I had a lot to achieve in five minutes, but Mr. Sinatra’s fate and my life depended on getting it done.

Because his parents had worked and because his mother had been a committeewoman for the Democratic party, with many outside interests, young Frank was a latchkey kid before the term was coined. From the age of six, he often made his own dinner-and sometimes had to scavenge for it when his mom had been too busy to go food shopping.

Lonely, almost desperately so at times, he drifted to the homes of other family members and friends. People said he was the quietest kid they knew, content to sit in a corner and listen to the adults.

“In your teens, your mother was in your life more. Always she was demanding. She set high standards, had a dominant personality.”

She belittled his hope of a singing career, and was not entirely convinced even after he became the most famous singer in the world.

“But, sir, you’re not like Elvis. You aren’t lingering here because you’re reluctant to face your mother in the next world.”

A combative expression hardened his features, as if, ghost or not, he would punch me for ever thinking that his beloved mother might have been the reason he lingered in this world.

“Your mom could be exasperating, contentious, opinionated-but loving. Eventually you realized that your ability to stand up for yourself arose from the need to hold your own in arguments with her.”

Mr. Sinatra glanced at the door and made a hurry-up gesture.

“Sir, if I’m going to die here tonight, at least I’m going to help you move on from this world before I leave it myself.”

That was indeed my motive for this short session of straight talk. But I also had another.

Although Dolly’s steel will led to contention between them, Mr. Sinatra honored her without fail and took good care of her. Unlike Elvis’s mother, Dolly lived a long life. The Chairman was sixty-one when she died, and he had no reason to regret anything between them.

He had adored his gentle father, Marty, who died eight years before Dolly passed. If anything, his deep love for his dad should have made him rush away into the next life.

“No disrespect, sir, but you could sometimes be a bastard, hot-headed and even mean. But I’ve read enough about you to know those faults were more than balanced by loyalty and generosity.”

In sickness and in hard times, friends received his devotion, not just significant money sent unsolicited but also daily calls for weeks, to give emotional support. He was capable of reaching out to a deserving stranger and changing a life with a generous gift.

He never mentioned these kindnesses and was embarrassed when his friends spoke of what he had done. Many of these stories surfaced after his death; the number of them is both inspiring and humbling.

“Whatever waits beyond this world, sir, is nothing you need to fear. But you fear it, and I think I know why.”

The suggestion that he feared anything whatsoever annoyed him.

Acutely aware of how little time remained before Shackett would return, I said, “Almost died at birth. Lived in a bad neighborhood, they called you a wop. Walking home from grade school, you had to fight. Always had to struggle for what you got. But, sir, you got it all-fortune, fame, acclaim, more than any entertainer in history before you. And now what keeps you in this world is pride.”

My statement compounded Mr. Sinatra’s annoyance. With one cocked eyebrow and a gesture, he seemed to say So what’s wrong with pride?

“Nothing is wrong with pride based on accomplishment, and your life was packed full of accomplishments. But justifiable pride can sometimes mutate into arrogance.”

Mouth tight, he stared at me. But then he nodded. He knew that in life he had sometimes been guilty of arrogance.

“I’m not talking about then. I mean now. You don’t want to move on to the next world because you’re afraid you won’t be special over there, that you’ll just be equal to everyone else.”

Although he resisted moving on, he wanted to make the journey, as do all of the lingering dead. He seriously considered my words.

I needed to channel him from polite consideration to a strong emotional response. I regretted what I was about to do, but his soul and my neck were on the line. Extreme measures were required.

“But it’s worse than that. You’re afraid to move on because you think maybe you’ll be starting over from nothing, with nothing, just a nobody, and all the struggle will begin again. You’re as scared as a little boy.”

His face knotted with offense.

“Your first breath was a struggle. Will it be again? To win any respect, you had to fight. You can’t stand the idea of being a nobody again, but you don’t want to fight your way to the top like you had to do the last time.”

He put up his fists.

“Sure, threaten to fight me. You know I can’t hurt a ghost, what courage does it take to threaten me?”

He rose from the chair and glared down at me.

“You want all the respect you won in this world, but you don’t have the guts to earn it again, if that’s the way it is over there.”

Never would I have believed that those warm blue eyes could have produced such an icy stare as the one with which he skewered me.

“You know what you’ve become in death? You’re a scared little punk like you never were in life.”

In anger, hands fisted at his sides, he turned away from me.

“Can’t handle the truth, huh?”

Treating him with such disrespect, when in fact I respected him, was difficult, and I was particularly afraid of revealing the falsity of my contempt by using the word sir.

I believed that I had in fact arrived at the reason that he lingered in this world, but I did not despise him for it. In other circumstances, I would have led him gently to accept the truth and to see that his fears were ungrounded.

Certain that Hoss Shackett would come through the door at any moment, I said witheringly, “Chairman of the Board, Old Blue Eyes, the Voice, famous big-shot singer, big cheese of the Rat Pack-and now all you are is another gutless punk from Hoboken.”

He turned toward me once more.

His mottled face, his dead-cold stare, his lips skinned back from clenched teeth, his head lowered like that of a bull that sees not one red cape but a hundred: As lingering spirits go, this one was as pissed off as any I had ever seen.

The steel door opened.

Chief Hoss Shackett entered. Utgard Rolf followed him, rolling a cart on which was mounted the polygraph.