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Country Day School. Every morning he would be chauffeured to the private preparatory school in North Miami, and then driven back at night. He was a very bright boy and a good student, but he would make few friends during his seven years there.

 
    E IGHT
    THE PRINCE OF THE FONTAINEBLEAU
    On January 19, 1963, Ben and Bernice Novack threw a lavish seventh birthday party for their son. As Benji had no friends his own age, a few children staying at the Fontainebleau were rounded up to join in the festivities. During the party, the hotel’s publicity man organized a photograph of Benji on a horse, alongside his smiling parents. Ben Novack Sr. looked unusually casual and relaxed in a slightly unbuttoned shirt, his jacket bursting with his expanding waistline. Bernice looked radiant in a white scarf and a plain white dress, and the birthday boy wore a wide grin as he sat in the saddle, the center of attention.
    To celebrate her son’s birthday, Bernice Novack commissioned a portrait of him on the beach by the Fontainebleau. The oil painting would become one of her most treasured possessions, prominently displayed wherever she lived.
    That summer, a movie crew took over the Fontainebleau swimming pool to film the waterskiing scene for the new James Bond film, Goldfinger . The hotel’s distinctive exterior was also prominently featured in the tracking aerial shot over Miami Beach during the movie’s opening credits.
    Benji Novack eagerly watched the filming from the edge of the set, and was later introduced to Sean Connery.
    “He knew all these stars,” said his future wife Jill Campion, “from the time he was a little kid. He just ran around that hotel and was like the golden boy. Couldn’t do anything wrong.”
    Beneath all the glamour and luxury, however, Ben Novack Jr. was a very lonely little boy, extremely self-conscious about his debilitating stutter. It was especially hard for him at school, where he was mocked by the other children.
    “I know that the stuttering frustrated him,” said now-retired Miami Beach police officer Joe Matthews, who moonlighted as a Fontainebleau security guard and befriended young Benji. “He would body-talk.”
    Even at Halloween, Benji was on his own, being sent off trick-or-treating around Miami Beach in his father’s chauffeured limousine.
    “That was terrible,” said his aunt Maxine. “He was a little king, but this poor kid didn’t get any love.”
    *   *   *
    Although the Novacks may have presented the image of the perfect American family in publicity photographs, they were anything but. Ben Novack Sr. was always on the lookout for beautiful young girls, and there was no shortage of available ones at the Poodle Lounge for his pleasure.
    “Girls were there everywhere,” said Dixie Evans, a retired burlesque dancer who worked the hotel switchboard. “For men with the money, there were plenty of girls around.”
    During his marriage to Bernice, Novack had numerous brief affairs. Over the years, he and his wife grew apart, eventually leading separate lives.
    “Ben cheated on Bernice,” said Estelle Fernandez. “I mean, she was aware of it, but she put up with it. He still showed her respect, let’s put it that way.”
    Eventually, Ben Novack moved into his own bedroom in the penthouse, and Bernice asserted her sexual independence by seducing a string of handsome Latin bandleaders who played the hotel. Miami Beach was in the middle of a Latin boom during the 1960s, and the mistress of the Fontainebleau became a fixture at the weekly “Mambo Nights” at the Fontainebleau’s popular Boom Boom Room.
    In 1960, Cuban bandleader Paquito Hechavarria had joined the Boom Boom Room’s seven-piece house band, and over the next few years he often accompanied Fontainebleau regulars Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.
    Hechavarria recalled in 2001, “Can you believe that you had to wait in line to get into the [Boom Boom] room on a Tuesday. The Beach was full of dance teachers,