“Those are dangerous waters,” he said, smiling at an underwater nymph ogling him and waving. Then he looked at me. “In politics, Nate, we make, uh, all sorts of promises. All sorts of strange bedfellows. We make deals with people who are, uh, also giving to the other side, covering their bases, because that’s, uh, how it works. They hope for a little consideration. Sometimes you give it to them. But it’s not a quid pro quo situation.”
“Just my two cents.”
“Well, uh, I appreciate that, I really do, Nate, and your willingness to help out.… I’ll be in touch. If and, uh, when the time comes.”
We shook hands again.
I’d been dismissed. Lawford, who was at the bar, saw me departing, nodded, smiled, and slid back in across from his brother-in-law.
Upstairs, I had a brief nonpolitical conversation with Sinatra, who I’d done a few jobs for. I didn’t know Martin or Davis very well, but we exchanged pleasantries.
Hef—holding court back at his couch, surrounded by guests and girls—gave me a happy-kid look. Kennedy’s presence meant a lot to him, though no reporter would cover tonight—a direct link between Hef and JFK might be embarrassing, and the press boys liked and protected this candidate. They also liked getting asked back to Hef’s parties.
The next hour I spent in the pool, in a bathing suit, chatting up Krista, that twisting bikini brunette I’d spotted earlier, a twenty-year-old who’d recently quit her bank secretary job to be a Bunny. She was from Los Angeles and originally from Sweden and had been in the magazine early last year.
Odd to see her in that skimpy bathing suit and already know that her breasts would be a pale pink against the dark tan and her nipples dark as that tan and rather large and puffy. We flirted, and I used the private eye angle to impress her—she had big brown eyes and a very white, very fetching smile, and a ridiculously sexy accent. We’d been tangling tongues at the edge of the pool for maybe ten minutes when I suddenly realized the tent I was making would be visible from the window in the bar, and suggested we make use of that grotto behind the waterfall.
But when we got in there, somebody was already standing in the waist-high pool with his back to its edge, his body reflecting the shimmering lighted-from-below waters in the cave-like surroundings.
Bad back be damned, there was Jack Kennedy, his chest tan, a goofy smile going, his hands underwater, somebody splashing as he held that somebody’s head under. As if trying to drown whoever it was.
Krista gave me a look and I gave her one back.
“Well, uh, hello again, Nate,” Jack said. “Who’s your lovely friend?”
Hands kept pushing down. More splashing.
“This is Krista. Jack, you better let that—”
“Be damned,” he chuckled. More splashing. “Wouldn’ta taken you for a spoilsport, Nate.”
And he let the person up—not surprisingly a girl, a lovely Liz Taylor–ish brunette with a mouthful of something, probably not water, which she swallowed, and then shoved her hands at him, half playful, half angry.
She scolded, “I told you not to do that anymore, Jack!”
“Don’t you trust me, Judy?… Nate, do you know Judy?”
“Yeah. Yeah. We’ve met.”
I’d met Judith Campbell before.
She was Sam Giancana’s current squeeze, and most anybody who was anybody in Chicago mob circles would know that.
Dangerous waters was right.
It was a little unsettling. What did the golden boy need with me as go-between, with Judy in the picture? Still, it didn’t stop me from sneaking upstairs like a thief with Krista and finding an empty room among the forty.
CHAPTER 5
The Lawfords lived in what Hollywood types would call a beach house but anybody else would call a mansion. The rambling marble-and-stucco neo-Spanish dwelling on Palisades Beach Road had been Louis B. Mayer’s, once upon a time, visited by—and making an impression upon—young Peter Lawford, back when he was a contract player at MGM.
It could still make an impression, though from without it was just another (if large) Santa Monica beachfront property like those of the neighbors, doctors or lawyers or agents; usually not movie stars, who preferred Malibu or Beverly Hills. Like Marilyn, who lived barely ten minutes away, the Lawfords cared more about comfort than status. When you’re the president’s sister and brother-in-law, status isn’t an issue.
Despite the size of the place—taking up two lots—you could park right in front of it, pulling in like you were at a roadside restaurant. I stepped out into the cool ocean breeze of late afternoon, shadows just starting to go to work, the pound of surf making foamy music.
I’d come right over from my encounter with Roger Pryor and his TV repair van, and had spotted two similar vans (though not ones I recognized as Roger’s) parked within a quarter mile of the fenced-in Lawford estate.
Slipping my Ray-Bans in my sport-shirt pocket, I was about to knock at the front door when two guys in black suits and black ties and black sunglasses materialized and made bookends of themselves. The one on my right was a little older—thirty-five?—and took the lead: “May we help you, sir?”
This was with the warmth of a UNIVAC spitting out a punch card.
“My name’s Nathan Heller,” I said, and got my wallet out and let the windows flip down, displaying my array of investigator’s licenses: Illinois, Los Angeles, New York State. “I’m a friend of Mr. Lawford’s, and of the president and the attorney general.”
That got something that might have been a smile out of the older one. I wondered what branch they were. Was there a permanent fed detail attached to keep an eye on the presidential relatives who lived here?
The younger one, who hadn’t said anything, departed, heading to a black Ford Galaxie parked two down from my Jag.
“Black suit,” I said to the guy on my right, “black tie, black sedan? You guys really know how to blend in here in sunny Cal.”
“Who says we’re trying to blend in?”
“Well, the sunglasses are a start. What if I asked to see your credentials?”
“You could ask.”
I didn’t.
But it only took five minutes for me to be cleared, and I didn’t even have to knock again, as a smiling and slightly chagrined Patricia Kennedy Lawford opened the door on us.
“Mr. Heller,” she said pleasantly, offering a hand for me to take and shake. “Nate. Nice to see you again.”
Pat Lawford wasn’t beautiful—too much Kennedy in her face—but she was certainly striking, tall, slender, not yet forty, fetchingly casual in a blue-and-white striped top and matching blue capris with white Keds.
“Sorry to stop by without calling, Mrs. Lawford. It’s important I see Peter.”
“Certainly, and it’s Pat, of course.”
She opened the door for me, and nodded and smiled tightly at the men in black.
“See you at the company picnic,” I told them, and then the door was closed on them. “Are they always here?”
“Sometimes they’re here,” she said, with a smile that had just enough crinkles in it to say that was none of my business.
I had been inside this house before. I knew it had a dozen rooms and yet managed to have a nice lived-in, comfortable feel while reeking of money.
The Lawfords had intimate parties two or three times a week, dinner and games and cards, with poker usually reserved strictly for “boys’ nights in.” I was not a regular, by any means, nor was I stranger. I’d been here often enough to know Pat made a great beef stew, and Peter’s specialty was liver and bacon with Brussels sprouts. The latter dish was enough to make some invitees inquire on the phone who tonight’s chef would be—Pat, Peter, or their cook.
Also, I was aware Pat could be moody. I’d seen her warm, I’d seen her hostile, I’d seen her indifferent. And I’d seen all that just being here maybe half a dozen times in three years. Today—despite being unsure whether to call me “Mr. Heller” or “Nate”—she was gracious, moving thro
ugh the spacious, curving living room with windows on the ocean and French doors to wrought-iron balconies.
“Is Peter expecting you?” she asked, glancing back at me.
“No. This is something that just came up. I wouldn’t be so rude as to drop by this late in the day if it wasn’t important.”
“Don’t be silly. We haven’t even made dinner plans yet.”
I noticed she stopped short of inviting me to be part of them.
She guided me outside, down some steps onto the generous skirt of an enormous marble swimming pool separated by a fence from the Pacific, whose tide was rushing in just yards away. Down the beach, the voices of young people, teenagers probably, laughed and shouted, distant, like memories.
In a yellow polo shirt, white slacks and sandals, wearing sunglasses, Peter Lawford was semi-reclined in a lounge-style deck chair next to a small white metal table. He was reading Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. That was my first clue to something being amiss—like me, he was more the Harold Robbins type; that had to be Pat’s book.
On the white table was a pitcher of what was probably martinis, but the only glass was in Lawford’s hand. Maybe he was thirsty. The guy did put away a lot of booze, I could testify.
“Well, Nathan Heller,” Lawford said, with a sudden dazzling smile, tossing the book without marking his place, scrambling up to greet me, “this is a pleasant surprise.”
Always Nathan with him, not Nate.
We shook hands, pump-handle style. The last time I’d seen him, I’d taken two hundred bucks off him in poker, so this welcome was warmer than need be. This felt mildly staged, and I had a hunch I knew why.
Lawford looked typically tanned and slender, befitting his recent run as TV’s Thin Man; gray was coming in at the temples, but that was a full head of hair. Not exactly the biggest star in Hollywood, he still had the looks, and a certain grace, though he looked older than his mid-thirties. A limber six feet, he walked me over to a larger white metal table and tossed his sunglasses there—his eyes were as dark as the shades—where two chairs awaited under a white umbrella. Giddy laughter echoed up the beach. Surf rumbled. Sea birds called.
Pat brought over the pitcher of martinis, identifying it as such and asking if I’d like her to bring me a glass, or she could make me something else?
“You’re a gimlet man, if I recall,” she said.
Vodka gimlet, but damned close. I was getting waited on by the president’s sister. Wasn’t I special?
“No, I’m fine, Pat. Thanks. Shouldn’t be here long.”
She smiled tightly; her eyes weren’t as friendly as the rest of her face. “Well, then. I’ll leave you boys to it.”
And she went briskly inside. There was something military about it.
Lawford looked after her fondly. “I’ll never know how I managed that,” he said.
“None of us will,” I admitted, knowing the word was they were desperately unhappy. “I’m going to tell you something off the record.”
“Of course,” he said. He got a gold cigarette case out from his breast pocket, found a lighter in his pants, and lighted up. He didn’t offer me one—he knew I didn’t smoke.
“I can’t give you details without violating the trust of my client,” I said. “There won’t be any details. So don’t ask. All you get is a general warning.”
Now he was frowning. “What is this about, Nathan?”
“If my client wasn’t already compromised, I don’t think I’d even be here. This is a tricky one.”
“All right. Come on, man. Out with it.”
I met his eyes and held them. “I’ve heard the rumors about your brother-in-law and Marilyn.”
“Jack, you mean?”
Well, I didn’t mean Bobby.
He was shrugging and saying lightly, “You know this town, Nathan. The rumor mill. Half of it is nonsense.”
“This is part of that other half. I have it on reliable authority that Jack and Marilyn have been intimate. In fact, that they’ve been intimate”—I jerked a thumb toward the nearby sprawl of Spanish beach mansion—“in one or more of those four bedroom suites of yours.”
His smile was a little too broad, and he seemed about to wave it off, but finally my unchanging deadpan got to him.
“People do things,” he said, with a different kind of shrug. What he said next came with a twinkle in the eye and the lilt of a British accent that made it no less crude: “If you were the president, wouldn’t you fuck Marilyn Monroe, if you had the chance?”
“Me being president,” I said, “doesn’t come up that often.”
“I suppose not,” he granted.
“Peter, I don’t know if you know it, but from time to time, I’ve done jobs for your wife’s family. For Jack, and his father. And Bobby and me, we go way back. To Rackets Committee days. All the way back to that asshole McCarthy. That fucking far.”
“I’m aware, Nathan. Why do you think you’re sitting here?”
“Why do you think I’m sitting here?”
That threw him off balance. His chuckle got mixed up with a cigarette cough. “Well … I, uh … assume it’s to be of help.”
“Marilyn is a friend of mine. I really like the girl.”
“So do I! She and Pat are tight—they’re like schoolgirls together.”
That sent a disturbing if not entirely unappealing image flashing through my mind, but never mind.
“So was it a fling?” I asked. “Was Jack just putting another notch in the Kennedy boys’ belt?”
Lawford’s smile crinkled, then curdled. He was looking for words and not finding them. Actors, especially mediocre ones like Peter, need somebody to provide lines.
“Those two together just once,” I said, “is plenty to make a lot of this administration’s enemies happy. I know for a fact, from my own very special point of view, that certain friends of your friend Frank are not thrilled with Bobby making a hobby out of them at the Justice Department.”
Frank was, of course, Sinatra, and those “friends” included Sam Giancana and James Riddle Hoffa.
His smile almost disappeared. “Frank and I aren’t as close as we once were.”
“Yeah. I heard about Palm Springs.”
That seemed to goose him, mildly. His eyes tightened. “What have you heard?”
“Just that Frank remodeled his place there, hung up a ‘President Kennedy Slept Here’ plaque in advance and everything, spending a small fortune turning it into a kind of Camp David, Hollywood-style.”
Lawford’s expression turned melancholy. “That is true.”
“And Bobby put the brakes on with Jack, told him no matter how hard Sinatra’d worked for him, the president of the United States could not be seen hanging out with a known associate of gangsters.”
“… Also true.”
I sat forward. “But, Christ, Peter—did Jack have to stay with Bing Crosby instead? The only competition in Frank’s class?”
Lawford reached for the martini glass, saying, “And a Republican, old boy.”
A Republican old boy was right.
“Sometimes,” I said, “I think Bobby gets carried away with this do-gooder nonsense. Where does he think Old Joe’s money came from?”
Lawford grunted something that was not quite a laugh. “That is the point, Nathan. One must purge one’s self of the sins of the father.”
“Tell that to Jack before he picks out his next movie actress to bang. Or at least tell him to pick one less famous, and less temperamental, than Marilyn.”
Lawford sighed. “Bobby was right, and you’re right, too, Nathan. It wasn’t so much Sinatra himself, you see, or even his associates. Hell, in our nightclub act—you’ve seen it?”
I nodded.
He was smiling, remembering. “Joey would say, ‘Tell them about the good things the Mafia’s been doing, Frank.’ And the audience would roar, and Frank would, too. I mean, it’s a joke. It’s kind of … sexy. Naughty fun.”
I’d been around gangst
ers in Chicago since I was a kid. And I admit I never thought of them as “naughty fun.”
“Something made Bobby put the kibosh on it,” I said.
“Giancana had stayed there—there in Palm Springs at Frank’s place. Old J. Edgar has the photos in a file. And one could not have the president bedding down where the boss of the Chicago Outfit once slumbered. Could one?”
“Frank could always get a bigger plaque and put both names on.”
He gave that the raspy laugh it deserved, and pressed on: “Jack is a great man. He has a huge heart, and a mind that to me is unfathomable in its brilliance. And the pain he’s in—do you know, Nathan, that he almost always wears a back brace?”
“Yeah. Except when he’s fucking, which is a good deal of the time. I also know he’s got Addison’s disease, and was given the last rites four times before he ran for Congress. Public has no idea of the state of his health. The VD, for example.”
Lawford looked pale despite the tan. “How do you know these things, Nathan?”
“Hell, who do you think covered them up? Answer me, Peter—is it a fling, or is this affair ongoing, Marilyn and Jack?”
“It, uh … was ongoing. It’s either over, or tapering off. Fling doesn’t quite cover it. It goes back farther than you might imagine, Nathan—unless you already know that.”
“No. Nobody hired me to cover this up. Yet.”
Lawford was staring, but not at me. “Started back in the fifties. I was at the party where she flirted with Jack and Jack flirted with her and DiMaggio just fumed.” He sipped the martini and smiled. “I’ll tell you something funny, Nathan … about Palm Springs?”
“Sure. I can always use a laugh.”
“At Bing Crosby’s? Marilyn was there. Openly with Jack. Playing goddamn hostess. My God, how the word hasn’t gotten out, I’ll never know.”
I didn’t shock easily, but I admit this news threw me. “Bobby forbids him to sleep at Sinatra’s, but it’s okay to screw Marilyn at Der Bingle’s? You have any aspirin, Pete?”
Bye Bye, Baby Page 6