Bye Bye, Baby

by Max Allan Collins

  My stomach was hurting. Not with hunger.

  I asked, “All this went down after your fun and games with the intel boys?”

  More emphatic nodding. “Yes. Yes, that’s how I knew she was gone, ’cause they told me. Like I said, I was sleeping, not monitoring. Don’t look at me like that. If I’d been monitoring, would it have turned out any different?”

  “Probably not,” I admitted.

  He smoothed his electrician’s uniform shirt with a palm. “I think you owe me an apology.”

  “No. Time to tell me what you heard.”

  “I fuckin’ told you! I wasn’t—”

  “Earlier that day. You said some ‘very interesting stuff’ took place.”

  “Yeah. It did.” One shaggy eyebrow rose, and he lowered his voice, as if maybe somebody was listening, besides me. “Your friend Bobby Kennedy and Lawford dropped by.…”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Marilyn was fussing with Mrs. Murray over some spread of food. Guacamole she’d made, some other Mexican-type stuff she’d bought for the occasion. She was all excited about ‘the General’ coming by to see her—‘personally.’ Then Kennedy and Lawford showed up, around three fifteen. But I didn’t hear much of Lawford. I think they sent him outside or something.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “They were in the living room. It started out normal conversation level, and I couldn’t make it out. That’s not unusual. I mean, I had the master bedroom wired, and like I said before, it was right there off the living room, but the entryway is tiled, you know, and everything was kind of echoey and … at a distance.”

  “Understood.”

  He leaned forward. “But then their voices got louder—they were obviously arguing about something. Something about ‘broken promises.’ And their voices grew shrill. Especially that Kennedy, man, when he gets pissed off, hell, he sounds like an old lady, all high-pitched and screechy.”

  “Were you getting words?”

  “More … just the gist. She said, at one point, ‘I feel used, I feel passed around.’ Toward the end, Kennedy was wanting her to give him something—he kept saying, ‘Where is it?’ Or maybe it was, ‘Where are they?’ This he said over and over—they’d talk and argue, then more of this ‘Where are they’ shit.”

  “But what that pertained to…?”

  “No idea. Tapes? Anyway, Lawford must’ve heard them—I would guess he went out by the pool, to give them some privacy, but the pool is just off those glass doors in the living room, so he must have heard the yelling and got concerned. Because suddenly I could hear him talking.”

  “Peter got in the middle?”

  “Exactly. That actor voice of his was easy to tag. He says, ‘Calm down! Calm down!’ to both of them. Then he was saying something about ‘important to the family’ and I definitely heard him say, ‘We can make any arrangements you want!’ Then Kennedy said something, too muffled to make out, and Marilyn got very pissed—I think maybe things became physical, because there was this banging, flopping sound. Finally she was screaming at them, ordering them out of the house.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “And they left.”

  “What happened after?”

  “Next call of Marilyn’s was pretty soon, maybe ten minutes later. She called that Greenson character and he came right over. He was there several hours.”

  “You hear any of their conversation?”

  “No. I’m guessing they were talking in that sunroom. That’s where they usually consulted. He’s hardly been on any of these tapes over all these weeks. And that sunroom, it wasn’t bugged. No other rooms were—just the phones themselves and the master bedroom.”

  I drew in some air and sat and thought. He let me do that.

  After a while, he said, “Will you cover for me, Nate?”

  “If you mean, am I willing to forget about the wiretap job Marilyn had us do … what wiretap job?”

  He grinned. Nodded.

  Now I leaned forward. Friendly. “But, Roger—you need to lay low. This thing, death of a superstar like Marilyn? It’s going to be big, and over the next few days, even weeks, nothing will be bigger.”

  His eyes were tight. “I know, but if we—”

  I had silenced him with a raised hand. “Think about it. You’ve talked to me—one of your clients. And you talked to the intel boys, who were also your clients, right? But I bet you haven’t talked to Sam Giancana or Jimmy Hoffa or any CIA spook, or any of their minions. Like Johnny Rosselli, for example, who could represent any one or all three.”

  His eyes were wide and his jaw slack as the pieces came together. “And … and I gave their tapes up.”

  “And you gave their tapes up. Here’s the best part—you gave them up to the cops. The intel boys, granted … but that still counts as cops.” I sat back. Shrugged. “I may do some minor poking around this thing—as I say, Marilyn was my friend—and until this nasty affair has shaken down, I would suggest you, as I said … lie low.”

  “Where?”

  “You’re not married, right? Not anymore?”

  “Not anymore, right.”

  “Still got that little house in the hills?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t go there. The tapes from before last night—where are they?”

  “In my bank deposit box. I keep several boxes for sensitive material like this. Until delivery to the client, that’s how I routinely handle it.”

  “No dupes or anything at your office?”

  He shook his head. “No. Nothing. Not even any paperwork. Not on a deal like this.”

  “Good.”

  I got up and went into the bedroom, then came back with three C notes. “Go buy yourself a few clothes and supplies—groceries and sundries.”

  “What? Why?”

  “So you don’t get yourself killed. I’m calling Fred Rubinski. He’ll come over with a key to our safe house, and directions. You stay put a while. I’ll let you know when I think it’s okay for you to reapply to the human race.”

  He didn’t argue. He just sat there and took the bills, rather absently, and then nodded and said, “I appreciate this. For a guy who’s kind of free with the physical stuff, you’re okay, Nate. But why help me out?”

  “Because, like you said, we’re in this together. The same people looking for you might come looking for me, particularly if they found you first, and you made me popular with them.”

  “You think I’d rat you out.”

  “I know you’d rat me out.”

  Roger didn’t argue the point.

  So I called Fred, who bitched about being woken up blah blah blah, but when I said Marilyn was dead, and we needed to hide Pryor away for a while, my partner quickly got on board.

  I didn’t wait for him, though. I got dressed, leaving the gun behind, and halfway out the door said to Pryor, “Fred’ll be here shortly. In the meantime, watch the place. Like, make sure nobody bugs it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Brentwood. Fifth Helena Drive.”

  He was chewing on that when I shut the door and went out into windy warmth and a dawn throwing long shadows. My stomach hurt. I didn’t feel anything like grief yet, not even simple sadness.

  But I did feel sick.

  CHAPTER 14

  The morning was bright and remarkably clear for smoggy Los Angeles, pleasantly warm thanks to desert winds, though experience said by midday we’d have a scorcher.

  It was pushing 6:00 A.M. when I followed a cream-colored, somewhat battered Ford van down the dead-end that was Fifth Helena Drive. The vehicle’s side panels said WESTWOOD VILLAGE MORTUARY—no Roger Pryor fake-out, this was the genuine article, and a potentially nice piece of luck for me.

  The van nosed through a gathering crowd of press and gawkers at the scallop-topped wooden gates. Two uniformed cops were on sentry duty and immediately opened up for the mortuary wagon, my Jag practically kissing its rear bumper. My window was down and the yo
ung cop I passed gave me a look as I glided by.

  I nodded, said, “Coroner’s office,” and he nodded back and returned his attention to the swarm of neighbors and reporters.

  I’d spotted a few familiar faces in that crowd—Tommy Thompson, Life’s Beverly Hills man; showbiz columnist Jim Bacon of the Associated Press; Flo Kilgore, the New York Herald Tribune Hollywood correspondent. Flo was a brunette in her forties with pretty eyes, a weak chin, and a nice shape—I’d been out with her a few times, between husbands (she had just ditched her fourth). Wasn’t sure if she’d made me, as I passed through the Fifth Helena portals.

  But her presence, and that of those other famous ink slingers, was no surprise to me. On the radio on the way over I’d already heard the following: “Marilyn Monroe is dead of suicide at age thirty-six. We grasp at straws as if knowing how she died will bring her back. Not since Jean Harlow have the standards of feminine beauty been so embodied in one woman. Marilyn Monroe—dead at thirty-six.”

  For a news bulletin, that had been pretty studied; but with Marilyn’s history of overdoses and other melodrama (as Sinatra put it), all the news services would have obits on file and even squibs like that, ready to go.

  What really disturbed me was that flat pronouncement of suicide. If I was following a mortuary wagon in, then the body was still in the house. A little early in the game for a verdict, even from the newshounds.

  I backed the Jag around so I’d be facing out if I had to beat a hasty retreat. For a moment my path was blocked by a pudgy guy in a suit walking Marilyn’s little white mutt off somewhere. But I still managed to follow the two mortuary reps across the brick courtyard and into the house. Both wore the expected black suits and ties, slim, nondescript messengers of death—one shorter, fiftyish, Brylcreemed and bespectacled, the other a beanpole no more than twenty, with a flattop and his mouth hanging open.

  Except for a quartet of milling uniformed cops, who just nodded at us as we came in, the living room was empty, Marilyn’s Mexican-flavored decorations doing nothing to make the occasion less somber. Muffled conversation came from the direction of the dining room—I thought I picked out Pat Newcomb’s voice, and maybe the indistinct murmur that characterized housekeeper Murray.

  The two mortuary reps paused, probably to ask where the bedroom was, and I pitched in: “Just to your right.” Making the turn into the nearby hallway, we saw two uniformed cops posted in the hall, one at her door. Nobody questioned it when I followed the black-clad duo inside the master bedroom, stepping over the long phone cord that led back to the fitting room.

  A sheet had been pulled over Marilyn’s body, with just tufts of her hair visible against a like-colored pillow. The older mortician carefully drew back the sheet and gathered it at the feet of the naked woman who was lying facedown, diagonally, toes bottom right, head top left and turned left, right arm bent, legs straight. Against her pale flesh, the bruising of lividity was stark.

  “She’s been moved,” I said to the mortician.

  He expressed no opinion.

  Not that it was a matter of opinion: blood pools in the body when the heart stops pumping. If you die facedown, blood will settle along your chest. And she showed that distinctive bruised look on her face and neck, so had probably died facedown. Okay. Then why was there also lividity along her back? And the back of her legs and arms?

  It takes four hours for lividity to reach a fixed state. Any movement of the body within that time frame would result in that bruised look. She seemed posed, as if to show she’d been talking or trying to get somebody on the phone, a hand hovering off the bed over a dropped receiver on the carpeted floor.

  But if she’d overdosed on barbiturates, she would have suffered convulsions, and died in a contorted position. Not this gracefully tragic one, which was as studied as that radio bulletin.

  Her entire body, save for the lividity-touched areas, had a bluish cast, as if she’d frozen to death, and her nails looked dark and dirty, probably from gardening.

  The rest of the underfurnished space was a mess, much messier than I’d seen it on prior visits. A drinking glass on the floor near the bed, the phone and receiver (near her left hand), clutter on the nightstand (though pill bottles stood like little soldiers), letters and books and magazines on the floor, purses against one wall, very junky. No sign of her spiral notebooks, though.

  Had the room been tossed?

  “Rigor’s set in,” I noted.

  This time the mortician replied: “Advanced.”

  “Time of death, educated guess?”

  He adjusted his glasses and checked his watch; his mouth moved silently with math.

  Then he said, “Between nine thirty and eleven thirty last night.” He shook his head, giving the naked, bruised body a sorrowful look. “It’ll take a while to straighten her out and get her on the gurney.”

  The young mortuary guy said, “Jeez, Pop, she just looks like some girl. Not Marilyn Monroe.”

  So it was a family business. That was heartwarming.

  Pop was getting a paper bag out of his pocket and brushing the pills into it; they were rattling, the bottles mostly full, apparently.

  “Hey!” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Collecting evidence for the coroner, Detective.”

  I guessed “detective” would do fine as a designation for me. Anyway, it was too late to stop him; maybe that sweeping motion had preserved some fingerprints.

  Father and son were starting the grisly task of bending the dead woman’s stiff limbs into the desired position, and I’d had about enough. Before I left, I noticed something odd—Marilyn’s black-out curtains were brushed aside, revealing that a window had been broken, and some boards haphazardly put up on the outside.

  In the hallway, I asked the uniformed guy what the deal was with the window.

  “Marilyn’s shrink had to break in.” He gestured with a thumb at the door he was leaning against. “This was locked.”

  “Really?” I took a look at the keyhole lock. “So who cleaned up the glass?”

  “Huh? Nobody cleaned up the glass.”

  “Well, if he broke in from outside, there’d be glass on the floor. There isn’t any.”

  He just shrugged. “That’s for you detectives to scope out.”

  Everybody thought I was a detective. I guessed I was a detective. Here I thought I was with the coroner’s office.…

  The dining room turned out to be the holding area for people waiting to be questioned. Under a swag-chained star of frosted glass and leaded copper, at a big rustic round wooden table with a handcrafted look, sat four people who might have been attending a séance.

  Shell-shocked Pat Newcomb, her dark blonde hair a mess, wore sunglasses and pajamas under a tan raincoat. Jowly, dark-haired, dark-eyed Mickey Rudin (Marilyn’s attorney as well as Sinatra’s) looked professional and put-upon in a brown suit and loosened tie. A somber horse-faced guy about fifty (Dr. Hyman Engelberg, I later learned) wore a sport coat and no tie. And Ichabod Crane–ish handyman Norman Jefferies, in a dark sweater over a dark button-down shirt, sat with hands folded, like he was saying grace.

  Two detectives had set up a temporary HQ in the nearby kitchen. A young plainclothes dick, taking notes, had borrowed one of the wooden chairs from the dining room table, and positioned it several feet away from the trestle table by the window that served as a breakfast nook. Another plainclothes cop, seated on a bench at that table, had his back to me as I entered, and across from him sat Mrs. Murray, looking like your least favorite grade-school teacher.

  It wasn’t at all secure—you could hear some of what was being said out in the dining room, I’d noticed, although with whispery Mrs. Murray you didn’t get much. You barely picked it up in the room with her. She was wearing a sort of Aztec-pattern poncho (almost certainly a gift from Marilyn) over a simple cream-colored dress.

  I moved to the Hotpoint fridge where I could get a side view of the detective doing the interview. I was pleased and
relieved to see that these officers were not intel—likely from the West Los Angeles Detective Division, since the guy asking the questions was Lt. Grover Armstrong, who ran it.

  Armstrong I knew, but the younger guy no, and he climbed out of his chair and demanded who I was, since after all I was just somebody who’d wandered unbidden out into the kitchen. He didn’t look bright, a crew-cut former jock, but I gave him credit for being the first person to really question my presence.

  I didn’t bother answering the kid. I just waited for heavyset, fortyish Armstrong to swivel his bucket head and recognize me. We weren’t friends, but we weren’t enemies, either.

  Mildly irritated by the interruption, he excused himself to Mrs. Murray and slid off the bench onto his feet and faced me, hands doing Superman on his hips. His suit was brown and baggy but his tie was fresh and crisply knotted.

  “What are you doing here, Nate?”

  “I was on a job for Marilyn. I heard about this and came over.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “I lied.”

  That seemed an acceptable answer to the seasoned copper. “What kind of a job?”

  Over in the breakfast nook, from behind her cat’s-eye glasses, Mrs. Murray was gazing at me with undisguised contempt, certain I was about to betray Marilyn.

  “Helping out on security,” I said.

  The younger officer already didn’t like me. He said, “Yeah? Helping how?”

  “That gate out front? My idea.”

  The kid was staring at me, searching for sarcasm. He wasn’t that good a detective.

  Armstrong was studying me. Then he said, “You know these people?”

  “Some of them.”

  “You want to sit in on the interviews? If something strikes you, you can even ask a question.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He gestured to his side of the bench. “Come on in, then.”

  I sat next to him, and Mrs. Murray made a point of not looking at me as she said, “He’s not a policeman.”

  “No,” Armstrong said, right across from her, “but he’s a professional detective and Miss Monroe hired him in that capacity.”