Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime Read Online Free Page A

said.
    “Quiet, Judy,” Frank told her. “Joey, why don’t you take Eddie to his meeting? Eddie, leave Beverly here with us. We’ll take good care of her.”
    “Shall we go?” Joey asked.
    “I’ll be back soon,” I said to Bev, but I didn’t think she heard me.

    As I followed Joey across the crowded room I heard Frank say, “Bev, meet my good friend Nick Conte …”
     
     
    “Might lose your girl to Frank or Nick tonight, Eddie,” Joey said, as we left the Copa Room and reentered the hotel.
    “She’s not my girl, Joey,” I said. “I just invited her along because you gave me two tickets.”
    “Hey, you could do worse,” he said, with a shrug, “She’s a beauty.”
    “Yes,” I said, “she is.”
    Actually, I couldn’t help but be a little miffed about losing Bev to the Ocean’s 11 crowd, but what could I do about it? I had also wanted to meet Sammy Davis Jr., who had been talking to some people in another part of the room with Peter Lawford, but that didn’t happen that night, either.
    As we rode the elevator up Joey said, “You’re gonna meet Mack Gray, first.”
    “Who’s he?”
    “His real name is Maxie Greenberg, but everybody calls him Mack Gray. He’s an old-time fight manager who ended up bein’ George Raft’s personal assistant for years. When Raft fell on hard times and couldn’t afford Mack anymore he passed him on to Dean. See, Dean sort of idolized George Raft when he was comin’ up in the business. Rather than letting Mack go altogether George convinced Dean to give him a job doin’ the same sort of things he did for Raft. So now Mack is Dean’s personal assistant. Mack and Jay Girard also act as a sort of buffer between Dino and the outside world.”
    I found out later that Jay Girard—real name “Girardi”—was, for a long time, Dean’s stand-in and went on to become a sort of Man Friday for him. It seemed to me Dean Martin was pretty loyal to his friends.
    “Is Raft in Ocean’s Eleven?’ I asked Joey.
    “Dean got him a small part,” Joey said. “Now there’s a cool cat.”
    Joey was right. Because of Dean’s facade of cool I was surprised to learn that he had ever idolized anyone—but not surprised that it
was George Raft. Raft, even to this day when he wasn’t working all that much, still epitomized cool.
    The elevator doors opened and Joey said, “Come on. Dean’s gonna want to turn in soon.”
    “No parties?” I asked, following him down the hall.
    “Dean’s not the partier everybody thinks he is. He actually likes to go to sleep fairly early.”
    “I didn’t know that about him.”
    When we reached the door Joey said, “You’re about to find out a lot of things about Dean Martin that nobody knows.”

Seven
    M ACK GRAY OPENED THE DOOR and let us in. He was wearing an expensive suit and a white shirt.
    “Mack, meet Eddie Gianelli,” Joey said. “Eddie, Mack Gray.”
    Gray closed the door then turned and looked at me.
    “This the clyde who’s supposed to help the boss?” he asked.
    “Clyde” was Rat Pack-ese for anyone who wasn’t part of their group.
    “This is him. Say hello, Mack.”
    Mack regarded me for a moment from on high—he was taller than me by several inches—and then stuck out his big hand. We shook briefly, and he stared at me like I was a puzzle he was trying to figure out. Actually, he was frowning as if something hurt him.
    “Mack?” Joey said.
    “Huh?” He had the fingertips of his right hand pressed to his forehead.
    “Dean?”
    “He’s gettin’ changed,” Mack said. “I’ll go and tell him yer here.”
    Mack disappeared down a hall, leaving us in a plushly furnished living room.
    “Either he doesn’t like me or he’s got a headache.”
    “Probably both,” Joey said. “Mack suffers from migraine headaches.
Nothin’ seems to help, but he pops Percodan like they were M&M’s.”
    There was a bar against one wall which looked fully stocked, with a refrigerator behind it. A beautiful three-cushion