Bye Bye, Baby

by Max Allan Collins

  I sat. “I see in the papers you’re not going to be chief for a while yet.”

  Years ago, Thad Brown had gone up against Parker for the big job—they’d both been qualified, but Parker had political pull. Everybody figured, though, that when Parker eventually left, the top chair would finally go to Brown.

  Who said, “How do you figure that?”

  “Front page Monday said Bobby Kennedy has endorsed J. Edgar Hoover. Says as long as his brother is president, Hoover will head up the FBI, meaning Parker has to wait a while, and so will you.”

  “Interesting,” Brown said, with a sideways smile. “Day after Marilyn Monroe dies, Bobby Kennedy suddenly loves J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “Almost like Hoover has something on him, isn’t it?”

  Brown adjusted his glasses, sat back in the hard chair. “Everybody knows you and Bobby are pals, Nate. Going back to the attorney general’s first stab at racket busting.”

  “Yeah. But that doesn’t put me on his payroll.”

  “Didn’t figure it would. But you were on Marilyn Monroe’s payroll, weren’t you? Some kind of security work?”

  “You keep your ear to the ground, don’t you, Thad?”

  “Sure do. Was thinking maybe I wanna be a cop when I grow up. Another thing I hear is you’re looking into Marilyn’s death. Obligation to a dead client. Which I would imagine is why you were honored with that nice chat in Hamilton’s office.”

  “Yeah, he treats me right. Doesn’t shove me in some interrogation booth like a miscreant.”

  “Don’t misunderstand, Nate,” Brown said, smiling genially, folding his arms. “I’m not against you looking into what happened to that poor woman.”

  I admit it—I blinked. “You aren’t?”

  “No. Because somebody should. You see, I was taking an interest in the case myself … but I had a talk with Chief Parker this morning, and he has another idea.”

  I let out a laugh. “Such as, Hamilton can handle it himself, thank you, and doesn’t need your help?”

  “Something like that. You don’t mind if I think out loud, do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  He smiled and nodded his thanks. “See, there’s this guy named Bates who’s telling the press that Bobby Kennedy visited his ranch near San Francisco. That Bobby never set foot off that ranch except to go to mass Sunday morning.”

  “Mass,” I said. “That’s a nice touch.”

  “Problem is—as I told Chief Parker this morning—I have contacts who saw the attorney general and his brother-in-law Lawford at the Beverly Hilton Hotel Saturday afternoon.”

  “What kind of contacts?”

  “Solid ones. This came straight from my brother. I know you two are like oil and water, but Finis always knows what’s going in this town.”

  Thad Brown was one of the most respected cops on the LAPD, whereas his brother Finis had been for years the department’s in-house bookie. Not quite as respected, then, as his celebrated brother, who was nonetheless right about the ability of Detective Fat Ass Brown to be in the know.

  “And,” the chief of detectives was saying, “I have a report from a Beverly Hills officer who stopped actor Peter Lawford for speeding Saturday evening. The attorney general was in the car. Lawford apologized, but said Mr. Kennedy was on his way to the Beverly Hills Hotel on an urgent matter. The officer let Lawford go with a warning.”

  “And how did Chief Parker react to this information?”

  “He said I was off the case and that it was being handled exclusively by Captain Hamilton. By the way, I happened to see the impounded Monroe phone records on Parker’s desk.”

  I sat forward. “I don’t suppose you got a look at them.…”

  The big bear might have been licking honey out of a comb, he was smiling so big. Bears can get stung that way.

  “I was ushered into the chief’s office,” he said, “when Parker was talking to his secretary about something. I’m afraid, like most cops, I’m a natural snoop. I had a look. All the Monroe July and August phone tabs. Including a number of calls to Bobby Kennedy at the Justice Department.”

  “Did you ask Parker about them?”

  “I did. I pointed and said, ‘How did we get these?’ He said, ‘We didn’t get them—Captain Hamilton did. And you never saw them.’ They’re under lock and key by now.”

  “Why tell me this, Thad?”

  “I just want you to know, that as a taxpayer in good standing, you have a friend in local law enforcement.”

  “That’s good information to have.”

  “One more item—in that limbo between the regular police and intel taking over the Monroe case, one of my men processed her bedsheets. There was a crumpled piece of notepaper among them, which is gone now.”

  I edged forward again. “Not a suicide note?”

  “No. It had a phone number on it.”

  “You gonna make me ask, Thad?”

  “… Robert Kennedy’s private line at the Justice Department. Same number as on the phone tabs.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Finally I managed, “Are you looking for quid pro quo? Am I supposed to empty the bag for you?”

  He shook his head. “But if the times come, when you feel the need to unburden yourself, Nate—I’m the priest you should come to.”

  “Amen, brother,” I said.

  He gave me a friendly nod, rose and opened the door for me.

  As I hailed a cab down on the corner, I was still wondering if there’d ever before been an interrogation like this one …

  … where the guy in the suspect chair just sat there and the interrogator spilled his guts.

  CHAPTER 19

  At the funeral, Wednesday at 1:00 P.M. at Westwood Memorial Park Chapel, Hollywood luminaries were conspicuously absent. This reflected the guest list as assembled by Joe DiMaggio, who had sat vigil at his ex-wife’s casket the night before. (You may have figured out I wasn’t invited.)

  Among those turned away were Patricia Kennedy Lawford—who’d flown from Hyannis Port especially to attend—and of course her husband, Peter, as well as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and various other luminaries.

  While the Hollywood elite were not welcome, a number of Marilyn’s associates and coworkers were among the thirty or so in attendance. These included her shrink Dr. Greenson, publicist Pat Newcomb (no Arthur Jacobs, though), lawyer Mickey Rudin, housekeeper Eunice Murray, half sister Berniece Miracle, acting coaches Lee and Paula Strasberg, executrix Inez Melson (her former business manager), makeup man Whitey Snyder, and hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff.

  The handful inside the chapel were surrounded outside by several thousand mourners—men, women, and children of every social class. Fifty LAPD uniformed officers worked crowd control with Twentieth Century–Fox providing forty security guards, but there was no real trouble.

  According to the papers, Marilyn’s casket was bronze and lined with champagne-colored satin. The open casket revealed her looking lovely in a green Pucci dress and green chiffon scarf, her platinum hair in a pageboy. Makeup man Whitey Snyder had done well by his star, having promised Marilyn years before that if anything happened to her, nobody would touch her face but him.

  Lee Strasberg gave an eloquent eulogy, and the organ music added one Hollywood touch, albeit bittersweet: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

  Only after the procession to the cemetery’s Corridor of Memories and final rites did the fans give in to frenzy and go trampling graves and stomping on flowers as they sought souvenirs.

  * * *

  The day of Marilyn’s funeral I spent mostly at the A-1 on the phone trying to set up interviews when I wasn’t taking calls from field agents running things down for me. Flo Kilgore was chasing her list of leads, as we’d divvied up the work. At 7:00 P.M., she and I met at my bungalow to compare notes and share information.

  Though she lived nearby on Roxbury Drive, Flo had come to me at the Beverly Hills Hotel, parking in the big front lot and walking through
the hotel out onto the grounds where the bungalows nestled amid flowering shrubs, colorful gardens, and palm trees. The polite thing would have been to meet her in the lobby, but I let her make the trek alone, out of concern for discretion and security.

  I’m not sure, though, that anyone would have recognized her. When I ushered her into the living room, she looked about half her forty-some years, and while subdued lighting was part of it, she was most of it. The brunette bouffant had been replaced by a long swinging ponytail, her makeup low-key with just a touch of very red lipstick, eyes shielded by oversize sunglasses, and her slender, shapely figure decked out in a short-sleeve yellow-and-white top and white capris and yellow low-heeled sandals. Over her shoulder was slung a big purse, also yellow and white.

  I welcomed her in, and she tucked the sunglasses into the purse, which she set on a chair, then curled up on the couch, while I called room service for our supper. She wanted the tortilla soup to start, and wondered if I’d share a Caesar salad with her. The last meal I’d shared with a woman in this room had been with Marilyn, and the menu had been similar enough to provide me a pang.

  I pulled a chair over so we could talk eye to eye. “Did you cover it?”

  “The funeral? No. Too much of a zoo. Did you know that SOB Winchell made the guest list? Only reporter on the inside. Fucking friend of DiMaggio’s!”

  “I hear Pat Lawford was turned away.”

  “And Sinatra and Dino. Can you believe it? DiMaggio has been saying openly that he holds Hollywood and the Kennedys responsible.” She shrugged. “Can you blame him?”

  “I don’t blame him and I don’t disagree with him.”

  She arranged her legs under her and sat Indian-style. “Are we sure this bungalow is safe for us to talk?”

  “We’re fine. Fred Rubinski brought somebody in to sweep it just this morning. But you’re right to be paranoid. Hamilton has me under surveillance.”

  I filled her in on my activities yesterday—police officer Clemmons, publicist Jacobs, and the two high-ranking cops. She said little, only asking the occasional clarifying question. I was wrapping up when the food came, and we elected not to talk business while we ate.

  After, when she returned to the couch, she sat with her back to an armrest, her bare feet on the center cushion. I sat at the other end, angled to see her better.

  “You should know,” I said, “I‘ve been using some A-1 agents for legwork. They’re trustworthy and don’t know enough context to cause any trouble, in any event.”

  She nodded. “That’s fine. Different than me needing to avoid using other reporters. Your worker bees have any luck?”

  I told her we’d confirmed Bobby Kennedy’s weekend use of a suite at the St. Francis hotel as an office and retreat, in support of his speech at the American Bar Association convention Monday night. A switchboard operator revealed that Marilyn Monroe had called for Kennedy multiple times, and that messages had been recorded on paper, the slips picked up by aides.

  “We asked what those messages were,” I said. “The gist was ‘You better call me and tell me why I shouldn’t blow the lid off. Every reporter in town has been calling me!’ Speaking of Winchell, his name and yours were among those mentioned.”

  Flo hugged her arms as if chilled, though the temperature was mildly warm. Air conditioner was off and windows open. “No wonder Bobby made the trip to LA.”

  “One of my guys came up with some interesting background research on Eunice Murray,” I said. “Turns out she’s a trained psychiatric nurse.”

  She leaned forward. “What? Really? That kook?”

  “Kooks often have an interest in psychiatry—haven’t you noticed? Key thing is, Marilyn apparently didn’t know about Murray’s nursing background—she thought Dr. Greenson had recommended the woman to be a housekeeper, interior decorator, and companion.”

  Her big blue eyes got bigger. “So the witch was, what? Greenson’s spy?”

  “That might be a little harsh. Spy, I mean—witch seems about right.” I shrugged. “There’s not exactly a Hippocratic oath for private detectives, but even I have to question the ethics of secretly placing a nurse at home to monitor a patient’s behavior.”

  Now the pretty eyes narrowed. “Do we know the connection between Murray and Greenson? I mean, how did he come to suggest the woman’s services to Marilyn?”

  “They’re old, old friends. Murray’s the widow of one of Greenson’s best pals, a military man turned labor organizer. Hell, Greenson lives in a house the Murrays built and formerly lived in. Mrs. Murray sold it to him.”

  She shook her head, and laughed without humor. “Don’t you think this is all sounding just a little bit goddamn incestuous? Murray a longtime associate of Dr. Greenson? Who happens to be Mickey Rudin’s brother-in-law, who is coincidentally also Sinatra’s lawyer? This kind of stretches the ‘small world’ concept to the limit, huh?”

  “Come on, Flo. Do I have to remind you that Hollywood is a one-industry town? It is small, in its way.”

  “Allowing that,” she said, raising a traffic-cop palm, “keep in mind Greenson came on board as Marilyn’s shrink in the last year or two. Before that, she was with a woman named Kris in New York. Okay. Stay with me now. Is it reasonable to assume Frank Sinatra knew about Marilyn and Jack Kennedy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it reasonable to assume Mickey Rudin, her attorney and Sinatra’s attorney, also knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “So there’s a good possibility Marilyn took Greenson on at Rudin’s and/or Sinatra’s suggestion.”

  “I could buy that.”

  She pointed a gunlike finger. “Then is it too great a leap to suggest Greenson was handpicked by Kennedy insiders to handle Marilyn?”

  That hadn’t occurred to me.

  “I can maybe buy that, too,” I said, tentatively. Then it was my turn: “Shall I throw you a curve?”

  “Fling away.”

  “I don’t mean to sound like a right-wing loon, but an agent of mine has linked Greenson, Murray, Murray’s late husband, and even Dr. Engelberg to various left-wing groups. The same groups.”

  Flo cocked her head. “Marilyn leaned left herself. Why is that significant?”

  “Probably isn’t. But keep in mind Marilyn has been a bedmate to both the president and the attorney general of these United States. Both of whom appear to have been casual about their pillow talk.”

  Flo laughed a little. “And, what? Greenson’s a Soviet agent?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s nonsense. That’s the problem with a case like this—once you’re down the rabbit hole, every absurdity seems real, and every real thing seems absurd.”

  She shifted on the couch. “Food for thought, anyway … Did you or your little elves come up with anything else today?”

  After a sigh, I admitted, “Struck out a lot, frankly. I tried Rudin late afternoon at his office, figuring after the funeral he’d go back in … but the receptionist said he was out for the day. His home phone is unlisted, but of course I got it anyway, only he has one of those fancy tape-recorder answering machines. No way to know if he’s really out or just screening which calls he takes. Goddamn annoying gizmo. Have to get one of those.”

  “I have one,” she said, dimpling her cheeks.

  “Yeah, well, you’re rich. I’m just a blue-collar working stiff.…”

  “With a Jaguar.”

  “That’s the A-1’s. I’m so poor I don’t even own a car. As for my skills as an investigator, I can tell you I was also unable to get Pat Newcomb on the phone. Or Eunice Murray. The funeral put a crimp in that effort, meaning I had to call in the morning or later this afternoon. Somebody answered for Newcomb, and said she was out, but Murray’s phone just rang and rang. Any way you slice it, nobody wants to talk to me.”

  “Well, they certainly won’t talk to me.” Her head went back and her little chin stuck out. “Nonetheless … I do have several interesting things to report.”

  “Maybe I should give
you a retainer.”

  She raised a finger skyward, or anyway ceiling-ward. “Actually, it’s not a new source, just fresh information. Remember I mentioned the tissue samples that this young deputy coroner, Noguchi, sent out to try to help determine cause of death?”

  “Sure. Are they back from the lab?”

  “No. In fact, they’re lost.”

  “Lost? The hell— That can’t be common.”

  “It isn’t. Guess how many times it’s happened before in the history of the LA coroner’s office?”

  “Half a dozen?”

  “Never.”

  Looked like the long arm of the law could reach way down deep into the coroner’s department. That arm belonging to Chief Parker or at least Captain Hamilton.

  “There were lab reports on the blood and liver,” she was saying, “that indicated death by barbiturate poisoning. But the kidney, stomach, urine, and intestines samples were lost at the lab. That lab, incidentally, is attached to UCLA.”

  Where Dr. Greenson was an eminent faculty member, and out of which the Suicide Squad was doing their purported investigation into why Marilyn killed herself.

  “Those missing tissues, Nate, would have determined without doubt whether this was an oral overdose or an injection. By the way, the death certificate was signed by a coroner’s aide, not the coroner.”

  I frowned. “That can’t be standard.…”

  “Of course it isn’t. And my contact there says that the Marilyn Monroe death file is shockingly incomplete. Normally it would contain reports, charts, police paperwork, and it had none of the above.” Her eyes narrowed again; her head bobbed forward. “Nate, you saw Marilyn’s body—did it have a bluish cast?”

  “Yes. I noted it—and that was apart from the lividity, too. I remember having a fleeting absurd thought—that maybe she’d frozen to death.”

  “How about her fingernails?”

  “They looked dirty. I figured she’d been working in the garden. And we know the water was off in the bathroom, so maybe she didn’t have a shower before bedtime.”