Here, read an exclusive excerpt fromThe Devil May Dance(out now).

“These places give me the heebie-jeebies,” Sinatra said, looking around the graveyard.

“What about you, Charlie?”

“Sure,” Charlie said.

“I mean, who likes graveyards?”

“Graverobbers,” said Peter Lawford.

A young woman laughed.

Her friend, who was a model or actress of some kind, rolled her eyes.

They’d joined up somewhere along the way.

“How about maggots?”

added Dean Martin in his rich baritone, promptingEwws from the ladies.

Earlier, Charlie had asked his wife, Margaret, if she’d caught the girls' names.

“Betty and Veronica,” she’d replied.

“Or might as well be.”

It put them in a reflective mood.

It had been pouring the night of Kovacs’s crash, but the skies were clear now.

“Fill ‘er up, Smoky!”

said Sinatra to Sammy Davis Jr., using the nickname that was a nod to his four-pack-a-day habit.

As Davis poured the whiskey, ash from his cigarette drifted onto the rim of Sinatra’s glass.

Davis glanced over to see if Sinatra had noticed, then quickly dusted it off.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“He’s been dead for two years, ya quin,” snarled Sinatra.

“Now, Pope,” cautioned Martin.

“Interred,” said Charlie.

Sinatra rolled his eyes.

He’d turned forty-six last month and what once might have played as impish now registered as old-man cranky.

“Learn to read a room,” Margaret jokingly advised Charlie.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” he replied.

“Classy broad, that Kay Gable,” Davis said about Gable’s fifth and final wife.

“Look at the memory on Daig,” said Sinatra.

“Ring-a-ding-ding,” said Martin, grabbing the bottle of Jack and taking a swig.

“Who wants another?”

“I do.”

MacLaine, elfin-looking in her pixie cut and bright red lipstick, raised a hand.

“Why would she want her husband to be buried next to another woman?”

“Interred,“Lawford drawled.

“Carole Lombard was the love of his life,” explained Davis.

“Kay knew that.”

“Too bright,” Sinatra growled.

“Pucci, give me your piece.”

Pucci glanced at Giancana, a buddy of Sinatra’s whose presence none dared question.

He missed, and the bullet pinged off the metal of the pole.

He would not have missed.

No one cracked wise about Sinatra’s poor aim.

This was the Pope, as he was known; they kept quiet.

After missing a third shot, Sinatra calmly handed the gun back to Fat Tony.

“You do it,” Sinatra said to the bodyguard.

“Jack Daniel’s keeps moving the target.”

“Wobble-wobble,” said Martin.

Fat Tony aimed and fired, and the bulb exploded, dropping a cloak of gray upon them all.

“How’s your bird, Pope?”

The others held their breath.

Everyone exhaled; the wind had blown his dark mood away with the clouds.

“Are you lonesome tonight?

“Are you horny tonight?

Have you reached puberty yet, my dear girl?”

Charlie and Margaret walked slowly, bringing up the rear.

Margaret sighed, seeming annoyed.

“Ring-a-ding-ding,” said Margaret dryly.

The crack of a gunshot echoed across the grass.

Or, more precisely, at the sculpted angel on top of a crypt.

“What th” said Margaret, poking Charlie in the ribs.

“I think ‘Who the’ is more like it,” Lawford said to Margaret.

Charlie looked at the crypt.

He didn’t recognize the name.

Davis yelled, “Son of a bitch!”

as he fired off another round.

The angel’s head exploded.

“There ya go, Smoky!”

He ashed his cigarette on a freshly dug grave, then took a swig from a paper cup.

“I’m not done yet,” Davis said, pulling the trigger once more.

The blast hit the cherub in the crotch, shattering the statue.

One of the pieces of concrete clipped Charlie.

“Oof,” he said, grabbing his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” he said, rubbing the bruise.

“Oh, man,” Davis said.

“I am so, so sorry.”

Davis was soused but clearly concerned.

He made his way precariously toward Charlie, wobbly and contrite.

“It’s nothing,” Charlie said.

“Yumpin’ Yiminy, now it’s a clambake!”

“More booze!”

Charlie and Margaret stayed in place, leaning on a thick, slightly cracked tombstone.

“Irish exit,” Charlie said, motioning toward the departing mobsters.

“Not sure they’re Irish, honey.

Did it tear your shirt?”

Charlie lifted his hand, revealing a small hole in his suit jacket.

“That might have been there before,” he lied.

She poked her finger into the hole.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

She held her finger up to capture whatever light she could steal from the moon.

“I’m fine.”

His shoulder might be fine, but Margaret knew that Charlie was not.

He slept poorly and drank too much and worked too many hours.

He often lost his temper over trivial things, and she worried about how to deal with it.

She was constantly looking for ways to prevent Charlie from reaching his.

Charlie and Margaret could make out pieces of their conversations.

There goes Wallace Beery.

He won an Oscar too, Frank!

Remember he and a couple mobsters beat that guy to death at the Troc?

Aladdin and His Lamp.

Here’s the Garden of Memory.

Some reverence, folks, Bogie is over there.

Charlie and Margaret headed back, and the snatches of conversation soon grew too distant for them to hear.

They made their way over the hills on narrow paved roads to the parking lot.

“I’m really fine, honey.”

“Sure sounds like fun,” Margaret said as she held out her hand for the keys.

Charlie reluctantly produced them.

It was a body.

He recognized the face, as did Margaret, who turned away.

Her eyes were two bloody caverns; they must have been shot out.

Her mouth was agape, her jaw helplessly, horrifically slack.

Sinatra looked into the trunk.

“Charlie,” he said.

“Just what the hell have you done?”