To the left of the living room was a small dining room that led to a bright, cheery, wicker-filled sunroom at right and a modern kitchen at left, the latter a real point of pride to her.
“Have I ever cooked for you? You would love my pasta. And my guacamole? To die for. Remember when I was Jewish for a while?”
“Sure,” I said. When she was married to Miller.
“Well, I can still whip up a mean borscht, and my matzoh ball soup is incredible. You just won’t believe it. You are Jewish, aren’t you?”
We’d never talked about it.
“Yes and no,” I said. “My mom was Irish Catholic and died when I was a brat.”
“How sad.…”
“My pop was a nonpracticing Jew, and the only part of it I have any interest in is that food you were talking about.”
“Well, it doesn’t hurt to be Jewish out here.”
“Done wonders for Sammy Davis, Jr.”
She laughed a little too hard at that. She seemed a tad high, but I’d been around enough pill-poppers to recognize the signs, and these weren’t those. This was a combo of champagne and renewed self-confidence, and nice to see. Fun to see.
Back through the living room, she led me to the master bedroom, which had a witch’s hat fireplace (maybe this was where Mrs. Murray disappeared to) and blackout curtains, with a portable phonograph on the floor, Sinatra albums scattered nearby. The double bed with its white satin comforter took up much of the space in the modest-sized room.
“Everything looks a little naked,” she said. “There’s a lot of stuff I bought in Mexico that hasn’t come yet.”
Then she caught me looking at the pills on her small round-topped nightstand—dozens of little bottles crowding a tiny lamp with a couple of red-covered spiral pads stuffed between.
“Those are all empty, Nate, except for one bottle of sleeping pills—go ahead, look.”
“No, I believe you. It’s your business, anyway.”
She put her arms around my waist from behind, pulling me near her with a nice familiarity. “I’m clean. I’m not taking anything except a little chloral hydrate, if I’m having sleep trouble.”
“Well, that’s great.”
“I have a fantastic shrink right now, and he’s done wonders. And, anyway, I never have any trouble kicking.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m a freak of nature. All I have to do is decide I don’t need to take anything anymore. Cold turkey is just a deli sandwich, far as I know.”
I didn’t know whether to buy this or not, but didn’t say anything. I turned to face her, still close enough to whiff the Chanel.
She said, “My biggest problem right now is sinusitis, and all I’m taking, cross my heart, is liver extract. You know, every day I called in sick, Fox’s own doctor came and looked at me, and said I wasn’t fit for duty. I’ve been fighting cold and fever and ten kinds of God knows what since last spring.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t stand so close to me, then. Why don’t you stop in an hour or so.”
She laughed at that, gave me another quick kiss, and took my hand again, back in tour-guide mode.
“None of the rooms are big,” she was saying, “but they’re nice. Wait till you see it fully decorated.”
Another bathroom joined the other two bedrooms, across the hall. One she described as the guest bedroom, outfitted with walnut cabinets and a twin bed, but the other was designated her “fitting room,” with a large wardrobe cabinet (“Not much closet space—Depression-era home, y’know”) and three floor-length mirrors hinged together into one big viewing space.
The fitting room had another function—two telephones, one pink, one white, perched on a walnut table near the door. They had endless spiral cords, which enabled her to walk around the house talking and even take a phone to bed.
“The pink phone’s a number for … usual callers. The white phone has a number only for special, select people … like you, Nate.”
She gave me that number and, feeling special and select, I jotted it in my little notepad.
“Actually,” she said, and bit her lip, shyly, “those phones are kind of why I wanted you to come see me.”
“Really.”
She nodded, frowned, glanced toward the hall. “Why don’t we go out and sit by the pool.”
“Sure.”
We did that, settling into black wrought-iron chairs. This was a more modest pool than the Fox soundstage one, and she quickly said she rarely used it, but encouraged guests to do so. We had a view of the narrow sloping backyard with eucalyptus and other trees.
Some hammering and other construction sounds came from her guesthouse, and I had the feeling that was partly why we were seated here, where our conversation would be concealed.
“I have to be careful,” she said softly. Then she smiled past me at Mrs. Murray, framed in the glass doors. She gave her housekeeper/companion/social secretary a little wave and the woman smiled and nodded and faded back into the living room, like a ghost.
“She’s a ray of sunshine,” I said.
“I don’t really like her,” Marilyn said, matter of fact. “But she’s a friend of Dr. Greenson’s and needs the job.”
“Dr. Greenson is … the shrink you mentioned?”
She nodded. “The remodeling I’m doing?” She flicked a red-nailed finger toward the guesthouse and the hammering. “Mrs. Murray’s son-in-law Norman is doing that. He’s harmless. Maf likes him.”
“Maf?”
“My little poodle. Short for Mafia. Guess who gave him to me?”
“Sinatra.”
“Ha! You’re good. Anyway, Maf tags around after Norman, and that’s fine. When I have company, Maf can be a pesky little bother, the sweetie.”
I shifted, and the wrought-iron squeaked. “So what do you need, Marilyn?”
She gave me an impish look, reached over and squeezed my hand. “What if I said I needed a man?”
“I’d say you came to the right place.”
“Could I trust you not to fall in love with me?”
“No. But you can trust me not to marry you. I’ve married one actress and that’s my limit.”
She laughed soundlessly, flicked her head, and the platinum stuff bounced. “Maybe one of these days or nights, we can have a little fun. Would you like that, Nate?”
“I don’t hate the thought.”
Her eyes widened and her smile broadened. “Did your son have fun? At the set?”
“You bet.”
“I’m sorry they shooed you off with the photographers.” She shivered. “I was in that water for four hours!”
“Sam would’ve liked to meet you.”
“We’ll correct that one of these days.” She shifted; more squeaking. “Now … about my phones.”
“What about your phones?”
“I want you to tap them for me. You know—record my calls?”
“I know what phone-tapping is, Marilyn. Why?”
Her eyes went to the pool, where sunlight glittered like her best friends. “It’s this studio fight. I’m trying to get reinstated, and I’m having to talk to some … unlikely bedfellows.”
“What kind?”
“For instance—if you can believe it—Darryl Zanuck. He never liked me, you know. Thought I was just another bimbo—didn’t ‘get’ it. But he gets it now. He and Spyros Skouras are trying to get reinstated, too—trying to sell the Fox board that these Wall Street lawyers who took over don’t know rule one about movies. Rule one being, don’t fuck with Marilyn unless she’s in the mood.”
“And for this you need your phone tapped?”
“Yes. I want to keep track. What do they call it, a paper trail? I want a tape trail. Do you know how to do that?”
“Not personally, no, but there’s a guy we use.”
Roger Pryor, an ex–FBI man, did all the A-1’s work out here. He was a whiz at this spy stuff.
“When can you … Sorry.” She had raised a finger to her lips, and was l
ooking past me.
A guy who might have been Tony Perkins’ homelier, taller brother ambled over, a tool kit clanking in his grasp. He was wearing coveralls and a blank expression. “Excuse me, Miz Monroe. I need to get some things from the house.”
“That’s fine, Norman. You really don’t have to ask.”
“Well, I saw you got company and figured maybe I should.”
“That’s thoughtful, Norman. Thanks.”
He ambled off.
“That was Norman,” she said.
No kidding.
“If this is about something else,” I said, “something more than just this movie studio nonsense, you should tell me. Like you’d tell your shrink.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The way you couldn’t meet my eyes when you were going on about it. If you’re in trouble, if somebody’s bothering you, I am that man you said you needed.”
“No, really, Nate—just do this job.”
“Okay. I’ll find out when my guy is available, and call you on your private line. You’ll need to make sure both Mrs. Murray and Norman are out of the house.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. There’s always shopping to be done. Will a thousand-dollar retainer do?”
“Sure.”
She’d anticipated this and drew a checkbook out of her capris. She was handing me the check with her famous signature still glistening when Mrs. Murray stuck her head out of the house, like a cuckoo from a clock, and informed Marilyn that Mr. Zanuck was on the line.
I wasn’t an actor, but I knew my cue. We both stood, then I got one more quick kiss from Marilyn, and took my leave.
Pulling the Jag away from the peaceful little hacienda, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to this than Marilyn was sharing. But for right now I’d have to settle for the thousand she’d given me.
CHAPTER 3
When I exited the unmarked cul-de-sac onto quietly residential Carmelina Avenue, I noticed a nondescript vehicle parked just around the corner. On my right as the Jag turned left, the white panel truck may or may not have been there before. On my way here, I hadn’t been in any kind of investigative mode, and was trying to find the unmarked street half of a strange address.
Maybe it was this phone-bugging job of Marilyn’s that made me notice now.
But I would like to think I hadn’t been so distracted that seeing the enclosed Hollywood TV Repair van, parked near the mouth of Fifth Helena, wouldn’t have jumped out at me, anyway.
And now we had the disturbing coincidence of this vehicle belonging to Roger Pryor, the guy who did A-1’s electronic surveillance work. The same Roger Pryor whose name had popped into my head when Marilyn asked me to tap her phone.
Of course another question also came immediately to mind: Did Roger’s job in Brentwood have anything to do with Marilyn?
She was not the only actor or actress living around here; probably not even the only famous one. And you didn’t have to be in show business to get spied on—one of the doctors or lawyers living in these nice, mostly mission-style homes might be checking up on their better halves. Not all tennis coaches coached on the court, you know.
Still, that surveillance van was parked within spitting distance of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe. Who had just hired me, for stated reasons that I didn’t feel covered all her actual concerns, to tap her phone.
I pulled over and parked in front of an English Tudor mini-mansion where palms had been banished from the lush landscaping. This neighborhood was money—modest money compared to Beverly Hills or Bel Air, but enough so that a truck like that couldn’t park forever without annoying somebody.
And when people in a neighborhood like this got annoyed, they let somebody know about it.
Sitting in the parked Jag, watching the white van in my rearview mirror, I wondered if there was any chance Pryor himself was on this job. He had only a handful of employees, and was fussy about his equipment, which he created himself; he was an inventor and tinkerer whose skill in the bugging department dated back to his decade-long stint with the FBI after the war.
Pryor, or one of his boys, might be sitting in that van listening to a tapped phone or bugged room, but I doubted it. First, though this was a pleasant enough June afternoon with ocean breeze making the trip inland, the inside of that van would be an oven.
Second, Roger was more advanced than that. His favorite toy, whether he was bugging a phone or a room or a whole damn house, was a line transmitter, to send eavesdropped conversions by radio waves via FM bands to voice-activated tape recorders as far away as a quarter of a mile.
If he was tapping a phone, Roger would simply gain access to the house, posing as a telephone company repairman, and replace Ma Bell’s phone transmitter with his own gimmick, a bug that looked exactly like what he’d removed. Or he would switch phones entirely, with an identical pre-bugged model.
If he was bugging rooms, Roger would use carbon button mikes, tiny things that could be hidden most anywhere, hooked up to a radio frequency transmitter tied in to (again) a voice-activated tape recorder.
That, beyond the ability to recognize some of the hardware, was about all I knew on the subject. And I wouldn’t have known that much, caring only that jobs got done (not how they got done), but I’d spent enough time with Roger to have some of it creep in by osmosis. He was proud of his work and liked to brag and chatter about his latest gizmos.
That truck was probably empty right now. The voice-activated four-track tape recorders didn’t have to be checked or reloaded for hours. More important to the program was moving the truck now and then, so as not to attract undue notice in these well-off surroundings.
Toward that end, sometimes Roger would bring in one of at least two other vehicles and alternate—Ace Roofing Company, Acme Carpet Cleaners, Southland 24-Hour Plumbing & Heating.
All it required was occasional new paint jobs, a few magnetic business-logo signs, and, presto, the surveillance fleet was ready to snoop (no truck bore Pryor’s own logo, though).
I got out and stretched. In my sport shirt and slacks, I looked not at all suspicious, and of course the Jag was right at home. I crossed the street, which had very light traffic, and walked up to the van and circled it.
Nobody in front, of course.
I knocked at the back door. If someone was in there, my knocking might be ignored, so I had to keep it up a while—long enough for any occupant to get worried that my metallic banging would attract more attention than just dealing with whoever was out there.
No response.
Nothing to do but head back to the Jag, where I sat on the passenger side so that it looked like I was waiting for the driver. I angled the rearview mirror to keep the white van in sight, and about fifteen minutes in, I laughed, thinking that this was the first time I’d felt like a private eye in years.
Not that it felt good or bad—butt-in-the-seat surveillance is always boring as hell—but it did seem right. I took my paperback of The Carpetbaggers from the backseat. I picked up where I’d left off, flicking my eyes to the rearview about three times a page. It was a stupid goddamn book but I couldn’t stop reading it, except when a red Mustang convertible with some giddy girls in their late teens pulled into the mouth of the Tudor’s drive and two got out and two others stayed in the car and all four were in bikinis, their hair wet, towels over arms. They were probably legal age but I wasn’t proud of the thoughts I was having. Wasn’t ashamed, either.
That teenage tail almost made me miss the guy in the gray repairman’s coveralls who was approaching the rear of the van. He parked another vehicle somewhere down the street, no doubt.
As I was climbing out of the Jag, the girls giggled and pointed at me—at my age, I never knew whether it was a compliment or not—and the guy (who might have been Roger, but his back was to me and it was half a block down) was working a key in a rear lock.
He climbed in, shut the double door.
I crossed the street and jogged over.<
br />
I could hear him moving around in there as I raised my knuckles to the metal and knocked. After only two raps, the doors parted and presented a sliver of a pleasant-faced Roger—in the mode of dealing with a curious neighbor. He seemed about to say “Yes” when he frowned, then a half smile formed though his shaggy eyebrows kept frowning.
“Nate?” he asked.
“It’s not my stunt double.”
He froze while trying to process my presence. His hair a golden, thinning blond, his face a broad, bland oval with a well-creased boyishness, he was about forty and five ten or so, with a modest paunch. He looked convincing in the repairman uniform, which even had a sewn-on Hollywood TV Repair insignia. Actually he had a long-ago legal degree he never used, which had gotten him into the FBI.
“What the hell are you…? Get up in here.”
He shut me in.
It was predictably warm, though a good-size floor fan was going, up near the divider closing off the front from the back, the path of the blades cooling both us and a three-tiered metal rack with eight reel-to-reel upright recorders churning, amidst various electronic gadgets and gauges, a few lineman headsets tossed casually here and there. This was at my left as I crouched inside the windowless rear doors. At my right was a small, well-worn yellow-and-gold nubby upholstered couch, which my host plopped down on, leaving plenty of room for me.
“Want a cold one?” he asked, digging in a cooler just beyond the couch. He demonstrated what he was offering by holding up a sweating can of Schlitz.
“Why not?”
He church-keyed it open and I took that one while he fished for another.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked. Very good-naturedly, and if I hadn’t been in the business myself, and hadn’t known Roger, I’d have missed the suspicion. “You never bother dropping by my little penthouse on wheels when I’m doing a job for you. And I’m not doing a job for you.”
I sipped the Schlitz. With the beer, and the floor fan, it was like sitting on a back porch somewhere in the dead of summer.
Bye Bye, Baby Page 3