Flo shook her head, the ponytail coming to rest over her right shoulder. “The blue cast of her skin, my coroner’s office contact says, is something called ‘cyanosis’—a prime indication of rapid death.”
“Rapid death—such as death by injection.”
“Exactly.” She changed her position, sitting straighter, hugging her knees to her. “But I’ve saved the best for last. You’ll recall I was to get in touch with Sydney Guilaroff, because he’s an old friend.”
That had been on her “to do” list.
“Seems Sydney was supposed to fix Marilyn’s hair for the funeral, but he passed out at the mortuary. They wound up using a wig from The Misfits.”
“That’s a fascinating footnote, but—”
“Just be quiet for a second, and listen to what a skilled interviewer can get out of a subject. Sydney at first didn’t want to say anything. He didn’t want to ‘sully’ Marilyn’s memory. Preferred to let her rest in peace. They went far, far back, you know—he did her hair at her first screen test.”
“What did your pal Sydney say?”
“Marilyn called him Saturday afternoon or early evening—in ‘an absolute state,’ he said. In tears, upset to where he could hardly understand her. Finally she calmed down and told him that Bobby Kennedy had just been there, with Peter Lawford tagging along. And Bobby threatened her, and screamed at her, and pushed her around.”
“There were some bruises on her body,” I said, “that might not have been lividity.”
“Sydney knew nothing about Marilyn and Bobby—he’d known about her and Jack for years, he said, but Bobby was a new one on him … and he asked her why on earth Bobby Kennedy would be coming around. She said she’d had an affair with Bobby and everything had gone wrong. Now she was afraid, and felt in terrible danger.”
This of course jibed with what Roger Pryor told me he’d heard sitting surveillance Saturday afternoon. Which was information I had not shared with my client Flo Kilgore, hoping to keep it to myself as long as possible.
“Marilyn called him again,” Flo was saying, “around eight or eight thirty. She seemed calmed down. More composed, he said, though there was still some fear in her voice. She said one very disturbing thing, however—‘You know, Sydney, I know a lot of secrets about the Kennedys.’ He asked her what kind of secrets, and she said, ‘Dangerous ones.’”
“What then?”
“Then Sydney told her he’d speak to her in the morning, and she should just try to get a good night’s rest. Never imagining he’d never speak with her again.… You don’t seem very surprised, Nate. This is one hell of a revelation.”
“Well, we knew Bobby was probably there, from the digging you did.”
“We didn’t know about an argument.…” A thin eyebrow rose in accusation. “… Or did we?”
I came clean. Somewhat clean.
“Flo, I had that same story from another source, but I wanted confirmation before sharing it.”
She frowned. “What source?”
“Can’t tell you. Don’t you believe in that rule about journalists protecting their sources?”
“You’re not a journalist! You’re a private eye working for a journalist.”
I raised two palms in surrender. “Cut me some slack on this. For now, be satisfied knowing that Sydney’s story is backed up by a second source. Okay for now?”
She drew in a deep breath. Her frown turned into a reluctant smile. “Okay. I won’t deny I knew what I was getting, hiring Nate Heller.”
“Atta girl.”
We’d exhausted business talk but hadn’t yet tired of each other’s company, so I ordered us room-service dessert and coffee. The Polo Lounge had soufflés so good they were damn near worth the price—chocolate for her, vanilla for me. Took a while to arrive, and we just sat on the couch and visited. The subject was mostly why we seemed to have a good time together, between her marriages, without it ever amounting to anything more than a friendship. No conclusion was reached.
During the soufflés, which we ate at a table like an old married couple, we returned to business.
“These threats Marilyn was making,” she said, licking chocolate off her spoon. “Would she have done it? Would she really have given a press conference?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Really? Why?”
“Just not in her nature. For my money, both DiMaggio and Miller were rats to her, but she never bad-mouthed them in public.”
“Then why the fuss with Bobby?”
“For attention. For respect. To be taken seriously. But I think after all the raving and ranting, she would have immersed herself in her career. I mean—when did she ever attack anybody in public?”
“She defended herself a few times—like when Joan Crawford accused her of looking slutty at an awards event.”
“I remember that. But she expressed her disappointment and hurt over the affront, saying how much she’d always admired Crawford. I don’t believe there ever was much of a chance she’d go public about the Kennedys. The real danger was if she ever did overdose and left embarrassing things behind.”
Flo squinted at me. “What kind of things?”
I savored a bite of vanilla, then said, “Marilyn kept notebooks—I saw a red spiral one in her bedroom, on her nightstand, that day she showed me around the place. And later she told me how she wrote down questions she wanted to ask Bobby, then would come home and record the answers, those and other things they’d talked about.”
“Surely not political things.”
“Yes, political things. International things. Mafia things. Cuban things. Things you don’t want to know about, Flo, not even for a scoop.”
She pushed the soufflé aside, about two-thirds eaten—either self-control or the discussion had gotten to her. “Then … if she was murdered, it wasn’t the threat of what she’d say, but—”
“But what she’d leave behind. And it looks to me like that house on Fifth Helena was gone through top to bottom, between midnight and around five, and who knows by what people representing how many interests? We know of Fox for sure, having studio reps there to clean up. But who else? Mob? Kennedy cronies? FBI? CIA? Secret Service? Or, to use your phrase—all of the above?”
She swallowed. No soufflé involved. “You’re scaring me.”
“Good. I’m scared. You should be, too.”
“Maybe I should stay here tonight.”
“You’re obviously welcome to.”
I’d thought that was a throwaway, but after I set the room-service tray outside the bungalow door, I returned to find her emerging from the bathroom in a sheer yellow baby-doll nightie she’d conjured somehow, dark sand-dollar nipples and triangular thatch showing through in splendid contrast. For most middle-aged women, that skimpy lingerie would have been a risk. On her it was a sure thing.
I switched off the living room lamp and took her hand and walked her into the next room. She was still in the ponytail, still looking closer to her teenage years than to the half-century mark that was closing in on her.
“You planned this,” I said, as I got out of my clothes.
“I tucked a little something in my purse,” she admitted, facing me, lifting the hem of the nightie girlishly. “Just in case. I was a Girl Scout. Be prepared.”
“That’s Boy Scouts.”
“Is it?”
She kissed me. The lights were out but the moon was filtering in the sheer curtains on the nearby French doors, touching her with ivory.
We got onto the bed, and she crawled on top of me and she kissed my mouth and my neck, and then moved on down, kissing along the way until she reached a point where her lips circled and enclosed and engulfed me, and the ponytail swung left and the ponytail swung right and left and right, until she sensed she should stop. Then she slipped out of the nightie top, leaving on the sheer panties, her breasts starkly white against tan lines, the nipples as starkly dark against the white flesh, as she positioned herself over me so I
could stroke and cup and kiss and suckle those breasts. When she finally mounted me, just moving the panties aside to make room, she began slowly and sweetly and built to a nasty grinding finish that left me drained and woozy and raw.
Soon we were under a cool sheet, and she was nestled against me, lips against my chest, a hand playing in my chest hair. “Nate?”
“Yes?”
“Did you make love to her in this bed?”
“Yes.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“Yes. And no.”
“Yes and no?”
“I never loved her when I wasn’t with her. When we were apart, she was like … a city you moved away from. Fond memories but no ownership.”
The faint murmur of Sunset Boulevard reminded us a world was out there.
She said, “It’s … a little intimidating.”
“What is?”
“Making love to a man who’s been with Marilyn Monroe.”
“She’s no competition for any woman now.”
“Oh yes she is. And she always will be.”
Flo fell asleep before long, and so did I.
But mine wasn’t a deep sleep—I rarely sleep deep with a woman in my bed. Few ever stay the night, and when they do, it throws me a little. Which is why the faint creak of those French doors popped my eyes open.
The figure was in black, his back to the light from half a moon and whatever illumination was coming from the hotel grounds, making him a silhouette.
But even in daylight, he would have been a silhouette, because he was head-to-toe black: black long-sleeve shirt, black slacks, shoes, and even—and you didn’t see this on many August days in Southern California—a black ski mask.
He came in slowly, opening the doors carefully, and I’d heard no click from a key either, the blot of a man just slipping in. He was left-handed, or anyway the gun was in his left hand, an automatic with a noise suppressor. My nine-millimeter was on the nightstand, under a fanned-open Newsweek. Sleeping on my back, I could ease my hand over there, and make a reasonably certain grab; but with Flo next to me like this, she could easily be caught in a crossfire.
That was when I saw the glint of the needle.
The guy was not left-handed—the gun was backup—the primary weapon here was the hypo in his black-gloved right hand.
Nasty as this news was, it was good news, too—it meant he was not here to shoot me, rather to shoot me up, which was another, more delicate procedure altogether. He’d given himself a hard job.
The hard job I had was waiting.
Waiting while my visitor did a tiny test squirt, and then began to move closer, arching his back, raising the syringe in hand, thumb on the plunger.
Closer.
Closer.
He was less than a foot away when I threw the tackle into him and knocked him back through a half-open French door onto the stone patio.
I was naked, so this was not ideal, but this time I was on top, and when I noticed his right hand was empty now, that he’d lost the needle on the trip, I latched onto his left wrist with one hand and onto his forearm with the other, and smashed the back of his gloved hand onto the stone, till the fingers popped open and the weapon jumped and clunked and slid.
That focused attention served me well in disarming him, but not in maintaining dominance, and a hard gloved fist swung into the left side of my face, dazing me, giving him the moment he needed to fling me off him onto the stone floor and into the path of a wrought-iron chair that clipped my forehead.
The blow didn’t knock me out, but it jarred me further, and when I rolled over, ready to get back into the fray, buck naked or not, I could see the silhouette running through the palms, and then disappearing between a bungalow and a hedge.
Breathing hard, skinned here and there, I collected my visitor’s weapon—a silenced nine-millimeter Beretta—and padded barefoot through the French doors into the nearby bedroom. I shut the doors, locked them, finally getting around to wondering why Flo hadn’t reacted in any way. Most women would at least scream, and the kind I ran with would likely have waded in.
Of course, those women would have been awake. She was deep asleep, snoring gently, and smiling, her only concession to the scuffle having been to roll over and face the other direction.
I turned on the nightstand light, slipped into my boxer shorts, put the confiscated nine-millimeter in the nightstand drawer, and got my own nine-mil out from under the Newsweek.
Still, Flo gently snored. I am almost tempted to say, at this point, When Nate Heller fucks them, they stay fucked. But that wouldn’t be gentlemanly.
Neither was trying to kill a guy in his sleep with a hypo full of who-the-hell knew. But soon I would know, because I’d have a lab the A-1 used check it for me … if I could find the goddamn thing.…
And I could, and did—on the carpet near the foot of the bed, where my guest had unintentionally pitched it.
“Nate!” Flo said.
I looked up.
An alarmed Flo was sitting there, ponytail draped over a shoulder, her breasts exposed and perky, not that that was a priority right now. “What are you doing? What is that?”
She meant the needle.
Flo Kilgore was my client. That didn’t preclude me from lying to her, but what the hell.
I told her the truth.
And she understood exactly why I didn’t want to call the cops, and why starting tomorrow, over on Roxbury Drive, she would have two A-1 agents as sleepover guests.
Just not with my privileges.
CHAPTER 20
The next day, Thursday, a remarkable exodus began.
Pat and Peter Lawford headed to Hyannis Port for an extended stay at the family compound with the Bobby Kennedys. Under the circumstances, the trip was fairly predictable, but the Lawfords had invited along a surprising guest—Pat Newcomb.
This I learned from Thad Brown, who I’d called to request a no-questions-asked favor involving a certain nine-mil Beretta and noise suppressor—a favor the chief of detectives granted, proving his offer of friendship was genuine.
Mid-morning, at the A-1, when I called the Arthur Jacobs agency to find out when they expected Miss Newcomb back, I discovered something arguably even more interesting than the Hyannis Port trip.
“Miss Newcomb no longer works here,” the switchboard girl informed me.
I played a long shot and asked to be put through to Mr. Jacobs, and—even though I’d given my name—he actually took the call.
“Pat is no longer with us, Mr. Heller,” he said coldly.
“Might I ask why?”
“Her principal duties were as Miss Monroe’s personal publicist. That position has obviously terminated.”
“But why terminate Miss Newcomb? Why didn’t you just transfer her over to another client?”
He might have said that the Arthur Jacobs agency did not feel obligated to check with local private detectives before making their business decisions. Instead he just hung up.
I got Flo Kilgore on the phone—she was in her office at home—and informed her of the development.
“That puts a new angle on everything we know about Pat Newcomb,” Flo said. “And everything she’s said.”
“I already knew she was lying—saying Marilyn was in high spirits Saturday afternoon. Now we know why she lied.”
“What you may not know is that Eunice Murray has left town, too,” Flo said. “Taking an ‘extended European vacation.’”
“On housekeeper’s pay?”
“Don’t you mean out-of-work housekeeper’s pay?” She gave me a combined sigh and laugh. “Well, they can’t all leave town. I have appointments this afternoon to talk to Washington and Melson.”
That wasn’t a law firm or a dance act—they were respectively Hazel and Inez, Marilyn’s maid at the studio and her former business manager/current executrix. I had told Flo yesterday that my man watching the Fifth Helena house had seen both women there yesterday afternoon.
“Glad to hear they’ll talk to you,” I said. “But it does seem like we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. I do have one major witness lined up—Norman Jefferies.”
“Remind me.”
“Murray’s son-in-law. The handyman who boarded up the window in that phony suicide rescue scenario. He’s been ducking the cops, the press, and my phone calls. But one of my agents caught up with him at a bar around the corner from his apartment in Santa Monica. He’s agreed to talk to me today.”
“Really? How did you swing it?”
“I offered him five hundred dollars of your money.”
* * *
I sat with Norm Jefferies on a wooden bench opposite the Playland Arcade on the Santa Monica pier. This was a weekday but also summer, pleasantly warm, so attendance was fairly heavy. The monumental many-spired Santa Monica ballroom, used for roller-skating now, was off to our right. And behind the row of food stands and gift shops loomed amusement park rides including a big enclosed carousel.
The smell of fried foods was mitigated by an ocean breeze. Teenage girls in belly-baring tops and short shorts, wandering eating cotton candy and nibbling on hot dogs on a stick, made pleasant viewing, and the dings and clangs and buzzers of pinball machines were softened by the rush of tide and wail of gulls.
The lanky, mournful-faced Jefferies wore a frayed dark button-down sport shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tan chinos with knee patches, and scuffed shoes. I’d come in a Ban-Lon polo and white jeans and was munching popcorn.
Jefferies slouched on the bench, legs akimbo, folded hands dangling between them; his voice was soft, medium-range, only occasionally expressive.
“Mr. Heller, couple things we need to get straight right away.”
“Okay.”
“This is strictly off-the-record. I don’t care what you do with this information, as long as you don’t attach it to my name.”
“All right.”
He shrugged. “That’s the terms. That, and cash.”
I stopped eating popcorn, reached into my right jeans pocket and brought the five folded C-notes out for some air.
When I’d returned them to my pocket, his eyes showed that the money had impressed him; then the mournful expression returned.
Bye Bye, Baby Page 25