PROLOGUE

Las Vegas, December 2004

My long-time buddy, Danny Bardini, had shown up at my door with the DVD in his hot little hand.

‘Merry Christmas,’ he said.

‘Christmas is next week.’

‘I know, but Penny has us committed to some family gathering, so this was my only chance to give this to you and have a Christmas drink with my old pal.’

‘Old’ being the operative word. We were both in our early eighties at this point in our lives. Danny hadn’t handled a case in ten years; not since his wife Penny – for many years his secretary – had forced him into retirement.

I popped the cork on some champagne and he regaled me with the problems he had being married to a younger woman. After all, Penny was only sixty-eight.

‘I swear, Eddie,’ he said, ‘she wants it twice a month. I tell ya, she’s tryin’ to kill me.’ He put his feet up on my coffee table. ‘Put the DVD in.’

‘What? Open my Christmas present now?’

‘What part of I’m not gonna be here for Christmas did you miss?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Early Christmas present for me.’ I tore it open, and found myself holding a DVD of The Frank Sinatra Show. ‘Hey, all right. The perfect gift.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

I went to my fifty-inch flatscreen and went down to one knee to access the DVD underneath. Both had been gifts from Vegas high rollers.

‘How do you do that?’ Danny asked.

‘What?’

‘Go down on one knee like that. Can you get up again?’

With the disc in the machine I stood up easily.

‘Show off,’ he said. ‘My knees are killing me.’

‘I walk,’ I said, ‘a lot.’

‘I walk,’ he insisted.

I sat next to him and said, ‘I mean further than from the sofa to the refrigerator and back again. Oh wait, you don’t do that, either. Penny gets your beer for you.’

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I earned that kind of service with a lot of years of hard work and devotion.’

‘What did Penny ever see in you?’ I asked.

‘I was Mike Hammer, and she was Velda,’ he said. ‘Who else would she go for? You?’

‘Not me. She was too young for me.’

‘You’re only two years younger than me.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

Danny was my older brother’s best friend when we were kids in Brooklyn. When my brother died he kind of took me under his wing. He moved to Vegas after I did, telling me I was his only friend. I was never sure, but I found out over the years he was right. He didn’t trust people easily, and when you can’t trust, you can’t befriend.

‘Hey, turn this thing on,’ he said. ‘Mitzi Gaynor’s on the show with them.’

‘Ah, Mitzi . . .’ I said.

‘You knew her?’

‘No.’

‘But she played Vegas a lot.’

‘What can I tell you? You can’t meet them all.’

‘But you met these guys,’ he said, gesturing at the TV.

Frank, Dino and Bing were sitting on something that looked like a jungle gym for adults, singing together. It was The Frank Sinatra Show, circa 1958, and they were performing Together.

At one point Bing referred to them as ‘three vagrant minstrels’. He also referred to Frank as ‘Bones’.

‘Sure, but that was easy. They were all part of the Rat Pack.’

‘Bing Crosby?’

‘Well, sort of,’ I said. ‘He did do Robin and The Seven Hoods with them. And before that he and Frank did High Society. And this’ – my turn to gesture – ‘came in between those two things. High Society was fifty-six, this was fifty-eight and Robin was . . . sixty-four.’

‘Jesus, even your memory is better than mine,’ he complained.

‘Yeah, but you still got your looks.’ And most of his hair, I noticed.

‘Yeah, I do, don’t I?’ He raised his chin. ‘But what about the whole JFK thing?’

‘I’ve always wondered about that, too,’ I said. ‘Frank never got mad at Bing when JFK stayed at his house, instead. Never even got mad at Kennedy. He took it all out on Peter.’

‘Sounds kinda unfair.’

‘Maybe . . .’

‘You want help turnin’ the DVD player on, old timer?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got it,’ I said, pointing the remote.

When the screen came to life so did my friends . . .