“You should. Do you want to know what I observed at the scene? What I heard various parties say to the police?”
“… No. Do you have a feeling about this?”
“I may be kidding myself, but I don’t think Marilyn intentionally took her life. She was clean of drugs, relatively clean anyway, and it would have been easy for her to misjudge.”
“She, uh, did need pills to go to sleep.”
“That’s right. Easy to see where she could take some pills, wake up, take some more, maybe repeat that. Possible she didn’t know how to self-medicate when she was cleaned up.”
“… Very sad. A tragedy.”
“Right. Anything I can do to help?”
“The biggest favor you can do me, Nate, is to just stay out of this.”
“Really.”
“Let this matter run its natural course. How is, uh, Peter doing?”
“How do you think? He’s a goddamn mess.”
“Too bad. Too bad. It might be better if Pat were there, but she’s … she’s taking it rather hard, I’m told. She and Miss Monroe were close.”
Miss Monroe, huh? Had he forgotten he’d been screwing her? I let it go.
“All right, Bob,” I said. “I hear you.”
“Thank you, Nate. We’ll get you out to Hyannis one of these days, and show you a good time. Get you out on a sailboat. Small payment for your loyalty.”
“Sounds great,” I said, but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm.
We said good-bye, I hung up, and Peter was right there, like a big eager hound.
“Well?” he said. “Everything straightened out?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “It’s fucking perfect. Can I give you a piece of advice? It’s free.”
“Certainly.”
“Getting plastered won’t bring her back or undo anything. Go to bed and sleep it off.”
“I’m sure that’s excellent advice.”
I left him there, pouring himself another Bloody Mary.
Outside, as I slipped the Ray-Bans back on, the urge hit me to walk back down on that beach and strip off my clothes and show these kids how a real man took a swim, and wait for the police to come take me away. Somehow I resisted. Maybe I was afraid it would be Hamilton.
Driving back to Beverly Hills, I couldn’t stop thinking about two things.
What Bobby had asked: The biggest favor you can do me, Nate, is to just stay out of this.
And that I wished he hadn’t.
CHAPTER 16
Lawford was among Marilyn’s celebrity friends whose reaction made the papers.
“Pat and I loved her dearly,” he said. “She was probably one of the most marvelous human beings I have ever met. Anything else I could say would be superfluous.”
Maybe not. Fred Rubinski had already heard Lawford was ducking the police, and hadn’t given them even the briefest statement.
As for the ex-husbands, DiMaggio refused to talk to the press, and went into seclusion. Arthur Miller said the tragedy was “inevitable,” and volunteered that he would not be traveling west for the funeral—“She’s not really there anymore.” Her first husband, police officer Jim Dougherty, wasn’t quoted anywhere I saw.
Among the movie stars who shared their thoughts, two were particularly interesting. When a paper called him with the news, Donald O’Connor blurted, “Not Marilyn! No, she’s too alive—she’s not the kind of person just all of a sudden to be gone.” And Gentlemen Prefer Blondes costar Jane Russell succinctly said, “Sounds like dirty pool.”
Of the insiders, Sinatra said he was “deeply saddened,” and would miss her very much. Lee Strasberg went on the record, and somewhat controversially.
“She did not commit suicide,” he told the New York Herald Tribune. “If it had been suicide, it would have happened in quite a different way. For one thing, she wouldn’t have done it without leaving a note. Other reasons, which cannot be discussed, make us certain Marilyn did not intend to take her life.”
By “us” he meant himself and wife Paula, the star’s final acting coach, the dreaded “Black Bart.”
The statements in the press from key witnesses—Dr. Hyman Engelberg, Dr. Ralph Greenson, housekeeper Eunice Murray, publicist Pat Newcomb, attorney Mickey Rudin—were sketchy and contradictory, painting no real picture at all.
Dr. Theodore Curphey became the pudgy, bespectacled, mustached bearer of official tidings. The coroner—whose horror-show, vermin-infested morgue was the most underfunded and understaffed of any major city—sat before a bank of microphones and a rapt sea of reporters, local, national, international.
“Marilyn Monroe,” he said, “definitely did not die from natural causes. She may have taken an overdose of pills. Her death will be probed not just by my office but by the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team, the independent investigating unit of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center at UCLA.”
The papers quickly dubbed this group the “Suicide Squad,” and to the public their appointment seemed to indicate local government’s intention to treat the Monroe tragedy with the special care and attention it deserved.
But something was missing.
And on Tuesday, I said as much to Flo Kilgore, who asked me to meet her for an early lunch at the Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard.
When she’d caught me on the phone at my desk at the A-1 Monday afternoon, she hadn’t said what the eleven o’clock meeting was for; but I knew. I mean, it had been months since we’d seen each other, so her spotting me at Fifth Helena Sunday morning meant this was Marilyn.
For a Hollywood landmark, Musso and Frank was fairly unassuming in appearance if pretentious in execution, a typical dark-paneled, men’s club kind of restaurant-with-bar, similar to Binyon’s back in Chicago. Though the steaks were among the best in town, Musso’s real claim to fame was its longevity—Hollywood’s oldest such establishment, dating to 1919, though in fairness the facility had moved in 1934 all the way from 6669 Hollywood Boulevard to 6667.
The mostly Mexican waiters and their bright red jackets, echoed by the red of the leather inside the mahogany booths, had been here almost as long as the restaurant—Jesse Chavez maybe before there was a Hollywood—and to my knowledge Jean Rue had always been the chef. I figured when he died, they wouldn’t bury him, they’d serve him.
Flo was already there, working on a martini, which was her idea of breakfast, seated in number one, the front corner booth and the only one with a window, though the blinds were drawn.
This was at once the most prominent spot in the place and the most private—all the booths were high-sided, but this had only one neighbor, currently vacant. This had been Charlie Chaplin’s booth, before people decided he was a Communist cradle robber, and prior to that Rudolph Valentino’s, who I guess left it to Chaplin in his will. Right now it was ours.
The columnist wore a simple black dress and pearls and looked attractive enough, but I found the bouffant hairdo unflattering, exposing more forehead than her weak chin could handle. That was her only really bad feature—the big blue eyes and flawless porcelain skin worthy of many an actress’ envy, as was her curvaceously slender, leggy figure.
I slipped into the other side of the booth, dressed for business in a lightweight black-olive Fenton Hall suit with a green-and-black Wembley tie. But was this business?
We made a little small talk, and Jesse took our order, fairly obsequiously (it was the tourists who got the snooty contempt). Flo ordered a shrimp cocktail and I went for the Tuesday special, corned beef and cabbage. It was too early but the cocktails were goddamn good here, so I asked for a gimlet.
“Marilyn came here fairly often,” Flo said, finally invoking the reason for our meeting.
Her voice was soft and rather high-pitched, girlish for so powerful a journalist.
Flo was saying, “She liked to tell the story about being at the bar with Joe and seeing some fans come rushing up, and dreading having to deal with them … but nobody even looked at her. They all wa
nted Joltin’ Joe’s autograph.”
“Must have been very young boys,” I said.
She smiled; it was a nice, thin-lipped, pixieish smile. “Would you care to tell me what you were doing there?”
She meant at Marilyn’s house Sunday morning.
“Would I? Hasn’t every reporter in town written ‘thirty’ on this one? I mean, it’s all human interest now. Now that there’s a verdict.”
Her smile was impish and the big blue eyes flashed. “You’re being clever again, aren’t you?”
“It’s a bad habit. Do you think anybody but the two of us noticed what really was put over?”
She sipped her martini.
Then she said, “You mean, that there isn’t going to be an inquest? That the coroner said Marilyn ‘may’ have taken an accidental overdose, then turned the inquiry over to a civilian group? No more police, no one interviewed under oath, nothing that can become part of the public record?”
Flo was right.
Right that I already had noticed all this, and right that the coroner—faced with doubt about cause of death—was abandoning his public duty to impose an inquest with subpoenaed witnesses, and launch a full-scale investigation.
“I thought the cutest part,” I said, “was handing this over to that ‘Suicide Squad.’ That tells the public it’s suicide, without having to go to the bother of actually finding out. The very name pre-supposes she killed herself—they don’t determine if there’s been a suicide, but try to determine why there’s been a suicide.”
Her smile had some sneer in it now. “I’ve done a little digging on the three members of the so-called squad—all of them are associates of Dr. Ralph Greenson.”
“I don’t know if that’s significant.” Jesse dropped off my gimlet, I thanked him, and he bestowed a nod. “Doctors out here are bound to know each other, have professional associations.”
Flo didn’t argue the point. “Do you think it was suicide?”
“No. That’s not impossible, but I was with her a little over a week ago, and she had some personal problems, sure, but also a lot going for her.”
Her smile turned up at one corner. “I know all about the ‘personal problems.’” Then her expression sobered. “But I’m afraid I may have provided the … the spark that ignited this tragedy.”
“How so?”
Her thin eyebrows arched quizzically. “You don’t know? You didn’t read my Friday column?”
“If I say I didn’t, does that mean I have to pick up the check?”
She laughed a little. I didn’t have much trouble making her laugh, even in serious circumstances.
“No, Nate, I’m on expense account.” Flo leaned forward, spoke softly, though still no one was in the adjacent booth and I was pretty sure none of the waiters here really understood English. “I’ve been chasing this story for weeks, talking to everybody from chauffeurs to society reporters, even Fox publicists.”
“What story?”
“Please. The two Kennedy brothers, sharing Marilyn’s charms? Jack passing her to Bobby like a basket of these French rolls?”
So she knew that much. Not surprising. She’d started out as a crime reporter in New York for Hearst in the late thirties, and was much more than just frothy columns and game show appearances.
She cocked her head. “What I said, more or less, was this: ‘The appeal of the sex goddess of the 1950s remains undiminished in the sixties. Marilyn Monroe has proven vastly alluring to a handsome gentleman with a bigger name than Joe DiMaggio in his heyday.’”
“And you think that sparked Marilyn’s … what? Suicide?”
“We won’t use the right word just yet. But understand that that little squib was only the tip, with an iceberg to come.” She leaned forward, eyes on fire. “I was working on the story of my career, trying to get some kind of response from the Kennedy camp. I decided to nudge them with that little blind item … which is, in my opinion, what caused Bobby to visit Marilyn on the day she died. To tell her it was over and to lay off and … you can guess how she must have taken it.”
Of course, I didn’t have to guess. How did she know this?
“Your little Flo,” she said, dealing with my unasked question, “was pretty fast out of the gate on this one. I even did my own legwork, too.”
“Well, they’re nice legs.”
“Don’t change the subject. What would you say if I told you Peter Lawford’s neighbors are upset about a helicopter touching down on the beach, in back of the villa, early Sunday morning? Made a heck of a racket and blew sand into all the neighbors’ little swimming pools. Making them walk clear across their backyards to the ocean for a swim. What would you say, Nathan?”
But I didn’t say anything.
“And how would you react if I told you Peter and Pat Lawford’s next-door neighbor says he saw a Mercedes pull up, late Saturday afternoon, and Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford step out, and go on into the house.”
“A Mercedes and a helicopter? These Kennedys do have dough.”
“The helicopter is Fox’s.” Her smile grew dimples; she was proud of herself. “I’ve confirmed that via Fox studio logs.”
“You need a job? We’re hiring at the A-1.”
With a shake of her head that damn near moved the bouffant, she said, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
“I hope you’re not going to sing ‘Mammy.’”
She giggled. “Stop.”
I have to say I liked that about her. We’re talking about life and death and still she has the time to laugh at my dumb jokes. Maybe I could be her fifth husband. Now that Marilyn was gone, I was available. And a guy can always use a rich wife.
“Let me back up,” she said. “I’ve jumped ahead a little. The first interviews I did were in Marilyn’s neighborhood, there in Brentwood. How about this? One neighbor says she saw Robert Kennedy walk up to Marilyn’s gates and go in. Some time mid-to-late afternoon—the neighbor lady was playing bridge, and glanced out the window, and just saw that famous face walking by.”
“Interesting, I guess. Is that it for neighbor witnesses?”
“No! Several complained of hearing a woman screaming and, later, a hysterical woman—maybe the same one, maybe not—yelling, ‘Murderers! You’re murderers! Are you satisfied? Now that she’s dead?’”
I wasn’t sure that rang true. Sounded a little melodramatic. But I asked, “Have they told the police?”
“Have they? You know who took over the investigation, don’t you?”
James Hamilton.
“But now,” she said, “even he’s off the case. The ‘Suicide Squad’ is in charge! But he did his share, on the few days he worked—did he ever. Did you know that Richard Boone played him in the Dragnet movie?”
“What, Paladin?”
“Yes. Mr. Have Gun—Will Travel. But in my opinion the real Hamilton is even uglier, and lacks Boone’s charisma.”
Flo just couldn’t stop writing her column, could she?
“Anyway,” she was saying, “he’s certainly no modern-day knight. After canvassing the neighborhood, the next thing I did was go to the phone company. I have a … contact there. I asked him to make me a copy of all the numbers on Marilyn’s billing tape.”
She finished her martini and waved at Jesse and he scurried over to get her a refill. I’d barely touched my gimlet.
“You know what my phone company contact said? He said, ‘All hell’s broken loose down here. Apparently, you’re not the only one interested in Marilyn’s calls.’”
“That is something.”
“Isn’t it? He said, ‘The tapes and toll tabs have all disappeared. Men in dark suits and shiny shoes impounded them.’ Word was, he said, somebody ‘high up’ ordered it.”
“With all the formalities these days,” I said quietly, “should take something like two weeks for an ordinary cop to get that stuff.”
“An ordinary cop. Is James Hamilton an ordinary cop, Nate?”
Our food arrived. Despite
the early hour and the grim subject matter, I was hungry and dug in. When you’re half Irish and half Jewish, corned beef and cabbage makes the perfect compromise.
She nibbled at a shrimp, then said, “You know what I think, Nate? I think Captain James Hamilton is the ideal candidate to cover up the circumstances of Marilyn’s death.”
“I don’t disagree. But who’s he covering it up for?”
I thought I knew, but I wanted to hear her say it.
“For Chief William Parker, who wants to be J. Edgar Hoover when he grows up—he’s been training for the job long and hard enough, using Hamilton to build a file cabinet full of secrets, for blackmail and general influence. So that means Hamilton’s working indirectly for Bobby Kennedy.”
“Maybe directly,” I heard myself saying. “Hamilton and Bobby and Jack are tight. Bastard runs security on all their LA trips.”
She nodded as she chewed, then swallowed shrimp. “And, too, he and Bobby go way, way back, to Teamster-busting days.”
I said nothing. Had a bite of corned beef and cabbage and potato all at once; very nice.
But she was looking at me, the fire in the blue eyes replaced with ice. “And you go way, way back, don’t you, Nate? You worked for Bobby and his Rackets Committee. So maybe I’m taking a chance, talking to you.”
“Why?”
“Maybe I’m talking to a Kennedy clan insider, and not a friend of Marilyn’s.”
“Can’t I be both?”
She said nothing. Dipped a shrimp in bright red cocktail sauce, and held it up to study its scarlet glimmer. Then she said, “Maybe once upon a time, you could. But I think that time is about over.… I have more for you, but I think we should finish eating first.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You see, I have a contact in the coroner’s office, too. And I don’t think we will want to explore this subject till after lunch.”
We returned to polite conversation and good food. Her son and daughter were both in their teens, so talk of them and Sam took us through the meal.
But for dessert we talked autopsy.
“Marilyn died of a massive overdose, according to the toxicology report.” Flo had a little notebook out and was referring to it. “Four point five milligrams percent of pentobarbital and eight point oh milligrams percent of chloral hydrate in her bloodstream. Her liver contained thirteen milligrams percent pentobarbital—”
Bye Bye, Baby Page 20