The Devil May Dance by Tapper, Jake (the reading list .TXT) 📕

“I’m, um,” Charlie said, “just looking for someone.”

“Sir, we need you out of here, sir,” the cadet said. He put his right hand on his gun. Charlie studied him. He looked barely old enough to vote.

“Son, I’m a U.S. congressman,” Charlie said.

The cadet panicked, drew his gun, flipped off the safety, and yelled, scared, “Sir, I need you to put your hands in the air, sir!”

The cadet was too hyped up to reason with. Charlie complied; who knew what could happen in such a situation? The cadet marched him out of the stairwell, down the hallway, and out the doors of the auditorium. He continued trying to explain that the kid had it all wrong, but fear had taken over the cadet and Charlie knew the best he could hope for was that an older, wiser officer would realize the insanity of the situation and release him.

But bedlam—not a wise police supervisor—was all that awaited Charlie outside the auditorium. Three police cars, lights flashing, pulled up onto the red carpet. Their occupants got out and ran into the arena, keys, cuffs, and weaponry jingling. More police stood in front of the doors, and sirens in the distance suggested yet more were on the way. Charlie was relieved when the cadet, perhaps desiring to be in on the real action, pushed him forward and released him like a fish before heading back into the building. Charlie stood for a moment.

“I need to get back in there,” Charlie told the officers, holding up his ticket, but the men ignored him, stone-faced, forming a wall of blue. His heart sank as it dawned on him that he was now trapped outside with no idea what to do next.

“Where’s Sheryl Ann?” Margaret asked.

They were tucked in the far corner backstage, away from the stagehands and dancers preparing for the next number.

“Safe,” he said. She wondered if he was still attempting to convince her that he was a mere go-between in this evil trade.

“We’re not giving you anything until she’s back with us,” she said, staring into his beady brown eyes.

“I’m not running this,” Fontaine insisted. “I’m just trying to help.”

Margaret raised an eyebrow skeptically. She heard a familiar voice and turned to see Sinatra in the wings, receiving last-minute hair and makeup assistance. A flock of two dozen dancers appeared, all wearing black tights, long red devil tails, and headbands festooned with pointed red horns. The ladies flooded past Margaret and Fontaine, their high heels clacking, and made their way through the scaffolding and sets and ropes attached to sandbags to their places around Sinatra.

Margaret was about to call Sinatra’s name, but before she could, Fontaine grabbed her arm. At that moment, the curtains parted. “Ladies and gentlemen, here to sing Academy Award–nominated ‘The Devil May Dance’ from the motion picture El Cid, Mr. Frank Sinatra!”

As the audience erupted in applause, Margaret broke from Fontaine’s clutches and ran, instinctively grabbing a rope tied to a sandbag as the curtains opened. Holding tight, she was whisked up into the rafters as Sinatra and his dancers made their entrance and an elaborate backdrop was lowered to the stage. Fontaine, stunned, watched her fly up like a superhero and then coolly step onto a narrow wooden plank, part of an intricate network of scaffolding out of the audience’s view.

Okay, she thought, slightly amazed at what she had just pulled off, I’m safe for the moment. But where the hell is Charlie? And what do I do now?

Chapter Twenty-SevenSanta Monica, California

April 1962

“The first time the devil comes calling,” Sinatra sang, “he’s wearing the face of someone you love / He tells you your hopes are just silly / With no mettle, you settle, what dreams were made of.”

The audience fell under the spell of “the voice.” His ice-blue eyes at once romantic and predatory, Sinatra held the stand tenderly and embraced the microphone. The set behind him, depicting hell—molten lava erupting from small eddies, dark clouds, demons torturing damned souls—had landed onstage beneath Margaret as she’d flown upward. Now, two stories above and out of view of the audience, she stood on wobbly scaffolding, her familiar urge to swoon over the crooner now shoved to the margins of her mind. She watched Frank below as he closed his eyes and sang:

Next time the devil rings your doorbell

He’s your closest of friends and he says look away

The devil comes not bearing sharp horns

Or with hooves now

But with friendship, with memories

A fragrant bouquet

Wahhh-waaahhhh-wahh! From the orchestra pit, horns wailed and drums boomed, echoing throughout the building and causing the scaffolding to tremble slightly beneath Margaret’s feet.

She looked around to get a better sense of the space she was in. Above and behind her were steel-framed platforms, sets for musical numbers that had already happened or would follow Sinatra, that could be lowered onto the stage. Above that, lighting, props, whatever, hung from the rafters. The hellscape backdrop that had landed behind Frank would soon be hauled up behind a thick black curtain that kept everything out of view. On the brick wall behind Margaret was a steel door from an exterior hallway on what must’ve been the top floor of the auditorium; anyone who opened it and stepped through would plunge to the stage. And between her and the crowd, Sinatra sang with every fiber of his soul:

You will not know the circumstance

He hugs you, he loves you, and he enchants

And the devil may dance

The devil may dance

Margaret negotiated the scaffolding, quickly realizing that at this height and with the musical performance so loud, no one could hear her. With each step she took, the scaffolding wobbled; it was secured only from above. Her safest path seemed to be to follow the beam she was on to another piece of scaffold, jump onto it, then onto another, which led to a sturdy-looking ladder leaning against the wall.

Third time the devil’s at work now

Success is yours if a corner you