Finding Zsa Zsa by Sam Staggs

Author:Sam Staggs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2019-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

O Rose thou are sick.

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

Change the word “life” in that final line to “career” and it describes the gaping professional wound that Zsa Zsa never recovered from. That damage wasn’t caused by sex, or infatuation, or high living—all of these a top-energy woman like Zsa Zsa could have incorporated into her schedule. Rubirosa, however, insisted, for the two years they spent together, on her full attention, which she found herself unable to withhold. Even so, had he been a reputable lover, they might have compromised. But beneath his seductive charm—the low-hung baritone and the perfect grooming, the roomful of roses he delivered to her suite at the Plaza after their first night together, his warm maleness in bed even when not aroused, the Continental manners of an aristocrat, except when angered—Rubirosa might have sprung from the pen of Edgar Allan Poe, if Blake had not already imagined his dangerous type. Zsa Zsa didn’t guess, until much too late, that the real Rubirosa flew by night in a howling storm.

Who hasn’t encountered the type? If survived, they leave a festering bite mark. Aristotle Onassis was also such a one; he maimed Maria Callas. Benumbed by the sexual power of that rustic billionaire, she neglected her career, lost her magnificent voice and ultimately her will to live because of unrequited love when he ditched her for Jacqueline Kennedy.

* * *

If Rubirosa had not existed, a novelist would have invented him, or a script writer, as the charismatic demon lover in a film noir. Although never convicted of a crime, Rubi was a frequent suspect. As far back as the 1930s, he aroused the suspicion of New York police who believed him complicit in the murder of a Dominican dissident working to overthrow Trujillo. On other occasions Rubirosa happened to appear, with payoff money, in the city where one of the dictator’s enemies was to be rubbed out. And stayed just long enough . . .

In later years, his associates included the notorious mobster Sam Giancana. Around the same time, Rubi’s friendship with Frank Sinatra included flights on Sinatra’s private jet with questionable fellow passengers and introductions to useful third parties. Rubirosa became an intimate of John F. Kennedy, who shared his interest in women and whose incautious pursuits while president endangered the United States more than once. The dots have never been entirely connected; they may never be. The point here, however, is the nexus between Washington, the Dominican Republic, organized crime in the U.S. and throughout the Caribbean, the Cuban Revolution, the Mafia and its fellow travelers such as Sinatra and the Kennedys, Trujillo’s assassination of political enemies with the aid of his government’s employee, viz., Rubirosa—shadowy figures and their dark connections cast Rubirosa as the real-life player in a drama that is at best unsavory, at worst soaked in blood.

Shawn Levy, in his biography The Last Playboy: The

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