So I decided to stay on a while in Hollywood. My partner Fred was thrilled at the prospect, and my son Sam seemed pleased, too, though neither of them factored into my decision.
Keeping Jimmy Hoffa happy did. With surveillance in play, I’d need to see Marilyn a few times to justify the thousand I’d taken from the labor leader.
Not that I’d wanted to take it, nor did I have any intention of betraying Marilyn to Hoffa or anybody else. I’d been provided the number of an LA attorney to whom I was to file my reports-these would be bogus, of course, but I’d have to make a few. The point was to stay alive, and seem to be cooperating.
Beyond that, I wanted to get Marilyn alone, or anyway in some area of her home where a conversation would not make it onto tape-by the pool or in her garden, maybe.
The morning after the Ambassador confab, Roger Pryor put in my phone tap, Marilyn having arranged for both Mrs. Murray and handyman Norman to be away. So early that afternoon, I called her private line-if a line tapped by its owner and Christ knew how many others might still be called private-and said I’d like to stop by and check up on the work my subcontractor had done.
“Oh, please come, Nate!” a very upbeat Marilyn said. “I have so much to tell you.”
“Things are going well, then?”
“Wait till you hear.”
This time when I tooled the Jag down the dead end of Fifth Helena and pulled up to the double wooden gates, they stood open, and I was able to roll into the small courtyard and park next to a two-tone green Dodge and a BMW. The latter wasn’t Marilyn’s-she drove a Caddy, which was probably in the free-standing garage-so she had a visitor. Last time I’d come casually dressed, but the lady of the house was a client now, so today I was in a light-olive Cricketeer suit with a darker green tie and yellow button-down shirt, though I dispensed with a hat.
The ocean breeze was ruffling the stand of eucalyptus trees that made the second line of defense after the two-foot-thick, seven-foot-high walls. I went up the flagstone walk toward the whitewashed, scarlet bougainvillea-splashed exterior of Marilyn’s Spanish-style hideaway.
When I knocked at the front door, the dowdy little bespectacled housekeeper-in another shapeless housedress, this one with amoeba-like blobs of yellow and green on white-looked up at me with no recognition. She said nothing, as if her bug-eyed stare behind the cat’s-eye glasses could catch enough sun to reduce me to ash.
“Nate Heller?” I said. “Miss Monroe is expecting me.”
“I’ll ask,” she said, and shut the door on me.
I sighed. If they ever remade Rebecca, this broad was a shoo-in for Mrs. Danvers.
At least a minute passed before the housekeeper returned, her expression consisting of equal parts contempt and lack of interest.
“She’s just finishing up with Dr. Greenson,” she said. “Would you like to wait inside?”
No, I figured I’d climb a tree and watch for ships.
“That would be nice,” I said.
She deposited me on a white-upholstered affair better suited for a formal living room than the rest of the living room’s studiously casual if arty Mexican theme. I had a nice view of the fireplace and an expressionist painting of a seated guy playing the guitar.
I only waited fifteen minutes or so-where Marilyn was concerned that hardly counted-before she entered from the direction of the dining room. In a white short-sleeve blouse, blue jeans, and bare feet, she looked about sixteen-platinum hair lightly brushed, just a touch of lipstick, freckles on display.
She was leading an average-sized, slender guy, maybe fifty, who wore a dark sport coat, narrow gray-and-black striped tie, and gray knit slacks. His hair was white and thinning but his mustache was black and full; his oval face was home to the kind of sleepy eyes that don’t miss a thing.
“Romy,” a beaming Marilyn said to him, “this is a dear friend of mine-Nate Heller! He’s been in Life magazine. That ‘Private Eye to the Stars’ you’ve heard about.”
She made making Life sound like a big deal-she’d been on the cover, what, a dozen times? I got two pages.
Dr. Ralph Greenson’s smile was as deceptively lazy as his eyes. I’d gotten up off the sofa and met them halfway and he was leaning forward to shake my hand.
“Pleasure meeting you, Mr. Heller,” he said, with a faint Viennese accent; it was like Central Casting sent him to audition for psychiatrist. “I have indeed heard of you.”
“And I’ll do you the favor of not calling you the ‘Shrink to the Stars,’” I said.
“I hope you’re not investigating me, Mr. Heller,” he said, and the smile broadened.
“Well, Romy,” Marilyn said, “it’s only fair-you’ve been playing detective inside my mind, for how long?”
She seemed to be enjoying the sight of two of her men meeting for the first time, her hands behind her as she rocked on her heels, a happy kid.
“I’m just doing a little job for Marilyn,” I explained. “This Fox nonsense.”
He nodded, frowning. “Ah, I’m afraid I know more of that deplorable matter than you might think.”
Marilyn was nodding, too. “Romy’s been my chief go-between with the studio. Practically acting as my agent. Tell him what they did, Romy.”
Greenson sighed. “I was negotiating with the studio heads in good faith when, behind our backs, they were already drawing up the dismissal papers, and filing the lawsuit against Marilyn-”
“Half a million,” she cut in. “Did I mention that? That they’re suing me?”
“It was in the papers,” I said.
A phone began ringing elsewhere in the house, but our hostess didn’t acknowledge it. My God, she looked pretty; so bright-eyed and girlish.
The psychiatrist continued: “Here I was, arranging terms for Marilyn to return to the set, with assurances that I could help her get there every day and on time, and they were acting in the worst faith imaginable.” He shook his head. “That foul media campaign of theirs-they were preparing to launch that, even as we were negotiating. Reprehensible.”
It didn’t seem my place, or maybe just not the right moment, to ask what the hell a shrink was doing acting as an agent, or how the hell he could assure Fox his patient could be on set.
The stout housekeeper materialized at my side. How did she do that?
“Telephone, dear,” she told her charge. “It’s Mr. Rudin.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Murray,” Marilyn said with a smile. Was there something strained in it?
Then the housekeeper was gone, and Marilyn was making an apologetic gesture, moving off herself, heading toward the bedrooms, saying, “I have to take that. Romi, thank you for coming over!”
“Always my pleasure,” he said.
When we were alone, I asked the doctor, “Do you have another appointment to get to, or could we talk?”
“We can talk. I usually spend several hours with Marilyn, but today only took half an hour. Come with me.”
Greenson seemed very much at home in Marilyn’s place, and he showed me to the sunroom, where he fixed himself a Scotch and soda from the liquor cart (I passed) and settled onto a cushioned wicker chair while I took the wicker love seat opposite.
The space was bright, thanks to the uncovered windows, with a view of the kidney-shaped pool, where the blue surface twinkled like a Hollywood special effect. Two walnut bookcases were home to an eclectic collection of books, everything from Hemingway and Camus to Thurber and The Little Engine That Could. Mexican touches prevailed here, as well-an Aztec tapestry on one wall, and wirework musicians in sombreros on another.
“What kind of job are you doing for Marilyn, Mr. Heller?”
“She’s my client. That’s confidential. Sort of like doctor and patient?”
He upturned a palm. “You were the one who suggested we talk, Mr. Heller. Anyway, I’m merely interested in knowing if you feel she is displaying any… how shall I put it?”
“Mental illness? Symptoms of paranoia?”
“Call it signs of stress.”
“Working for Twentieth Century-Fox, who wouldn’t? This is only the second time I’ve seen her lately, but she seems fine, particularly considering what the papers are saying about her.”
“She presented you as a friend.”
“I met her in 1954. Another Chicagoan, Ben Hecht, introduced us-he was ghosting her autobiography, which was never published.” I shrugged. “I’ve done the odd job for her, time to time.”
“Finding her father, for example?”
I grinned at him. “If you’re going to use information you garnered from sessions with your patient, Doc, I’ll have to cry foul.”
He patted the air with his free hand; his drink was in the other. “Perhaps I overstepped, Mr. Heller. It’s just… I feel confident, based upon what I do know about you, never mind the source, that you have Marilyn’s welfare at heart.”
“Swell. She obviously thinks the world of you. What’s this ‘Romy’ stuff?”
His smile made the mustache twitch. “My real name is Romeo Greenschpoon. Anglicizing one’s name is very common out here, of course. But I changed mine, legally, long before I came west.”
“Where, at Ellis Island?”
“No. I’m a Brooklyn-born Russian Jew, Mr. Heller. But I studied for many years in Vienna, and that explains the accent.”
Or the affectation.
“Greenschpoon is a mouthful,” I admitted, “and I guess if I had a wife and she was going to a shrink named Romeo, it might give me pause. Probably a good call, changing it.”
His smile froze. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“Tell me,” I said, “if I’m not overstepping-am I right in thinking that Marilyn’s doing pretty well right now? For the blow she got, from those pricks at the studio, she ought to be reeling. But she seems to be thriving.”
Nodding, he said, “She is. She’s in excellent shape. One of her problems, and this I think is fair for us to discuss, is that for a long time she was seeing many doctors-most of whom did not know of one another’s existence.”
“So she could get prescriptions from a raft of them. It’s an old dodge.”
He nodded grimly, then gave me a half smile that seemed almost a smirk. “Right now she has only two doctors, her internist, with whom I work closely, and myself. I completely weaned her off all of these drugs-my God, Mr. Heller, when we first met, she was on a laundry list of medications… Demerol, Sodium Pentothal, phenobarbital, Amytal, Nembutal… and currently she is clean. She uses a little chloral hydrate for her insomnia problem, but that’s all.”
“This internist-what’s he giving her? I assume you know.”
“Right now, Dr. Engelberg is giving her injections of vitamins and liver extract. This is strictly for her sinusitis.” He shook his head. “You know those bastards at the studio, they were giving her what they call ‘hot shots’-God knows what was in them, methamphetamines certainly.”
“During the shooting of Something’s Got to Give, you mean?”
“Yes.” His expression turned bitter. “I was out of the country during much of the filming, unfortunately, having booked speaking engagements far in advance. I delivered her into their arms clean, and they turned her dirty with drugs again.”
“But now?”
He sipped his Scotch, shrugged. “She’s fine. She has amazing recuperative powers, this child.”
“Marilyn told me she was blessed with a rare ability to go cold turkey without suffering the usual heebie-jeebies.”
The half smile again, and it was definitely a smirk. “I might put it somewhat differently, Mr. Heller, but yes. She’s a remarkable woman.”
“Yet she needs a shrink.”
“She needs psychotherapy, yes she does.”
“And you’re providing it. You make a habit of making house calls to your famous patients?”
“No, Marilyn is a special case.”
“How special?”
“You know I can’t get into that. I will tell you, Mr. Heller, that I have made myself available to her on a twenty-four-hour basis.”
“Really? How often do you see her?”
“As often as every other day.”
“My God, can even Marilyn Monroe afford that?”
“She cannot afford to do otherwise. Mr. Heller… she is not just a patient to me. She’s like… a member of the family.”
That was weird.
“So then what’s the family rate?”
He thought about whether he wanted to answer that. After several long seconds, he did: “I charge her half of what I regularly bill my patients.”
He was making me work for it.
“What’s your regular rate?”
“One hundred dollars an hour.”
“So what’s Marilyn’s normal monthly bill?”
“Really, Mr. Heller…”
“Okay. That was overstepping.”
But if he was seeing her every other day, for say two hours a session, that worked out to something like fifteen hundred bucks a month.
Suddenly Marilyn was leaning against the door frame. “So this is where you boys went to. Getting along?”
“Famously,” I said, and gave her a reassuring smile.
Greenson said, “Your friend Mr. Heller has been probing to see what makes me tick. He would make an excellent psychoanalyst himself.”
“We’re both snoops, Doc,” I said with a shrug.
Marilyn smiled at that, but I could see in her eyes that she was wondering if we’d been trading secrets. Her secrets.
The psychiatrist rose. “I should be getting back.”
As we moved through the kitchen, where Greenson placed his empty glass in the sink, Marilyn glanced my way.
“Dr. Greenson mostly works out of his home, you know. You should see it! It’s a dream. Like a hacienda out of some wonderful old movie.”
“Really?”
Did that explain the house she’d chosen for herself?
Marilyn stayed framed in the doorway while I spoke briefly with Greenson as I walked him to his BMW.
“Our approaches may differ,” I told him quietly, “but I’m going to take you at your word-that we both want what’s best for Marilyn.”
“I hope so, Mr. Heller,” he said. He offered his hand, and I shook it. “I hope so.”
Inside, Marilyn hooked her arm in mine and whispered, “Do you want to inspect your accomplice’s gadget?”
“Sure,” I said.
She took me to the fitting room, shut us inside, and pointed to the phones. “They don’t look any different, do they?”
“No, they wouldn’t. The gizmo’s inside.”
“But look at this.”
She walked me to a small closet. Several hatboxes were stacked on a high shelf. On tiptoes, she handed them to me, one by one, and I stacked them on the floor. When she was done, she had exposed a tape recorder.
“The reels aren’t spinning now,” she said, pointing up at the machine. “Because it’s voice-activated, your man said. He was very nice.”
“Yeah, Roger’s okay.” I thought he’d be operating from his van, but didn’t say anything. What she said next explained it, though.
“He said he could make the recordings,” she said, “from a distance? But I wanted to be able to listen to them myself. And collect them myself.”
I had no comment. I helped her put the hatboxes back in place and she gave me a wicked little smile.
“This spy stuff is fun, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” I said.
I crooked my finger and she frowned, but followed me as I led her through her house and back into the living room, where I slid open a glass door onto the pool area. She stayed right with me as I slid the door shut.
I pointed to the black wrought-iron chairs on the opposite side of the pool, she nodded, and we went over there.
She perched on the edge of one chair, her arms draped between her open legs, hands folded. “You’re acting funny.”
“Marilyn, something’s occurred to me.”
“What has?”
“If you’ve thought about tapping your phone, somebody else could have done the same.”
Her eyes widened as her forehead tightened. “Did your associate say they were already tapped?”
“No. I’m just saying… if things are serious enough in your life, for you to take this step… somebody else could have taken that step, too… only not with your best interests in mind.”
“You think my phones may already be tapped?”
“It’s possible. And you can just about bug an entire house through nothing but the phones. I mean, you can hear not just phone conversations but things being said in the room, even other rooms.”
Alarmed, she whispered, “Are you saying my house is bugged?”
“I’m just saying it’s possible.”
“God.” Her hands were fists now, tiny and white. “What should I do?”
“Just take care about what you say, and where you say it. If you’re going to have a conversation that nobody else should hear-such as this one-then find a safe place to talk.”
She pointed to the cement at her feet. “Like here.”
“Like out by the pool. In your yard. Away from this house.”
She thought about that. The furrow between her brow only made her look prettier.
“All right,” she said. “That’s good advice.”
“Yes it is. Now. Is there anything else you want to share with me?”
“Huh?”
“Anything else going on in your life that worries you.”
“Besides the studio.”
“Besides the studio.” If I’d sat forward any farther, I’d have fallen off the chair. “Marilyn, I’m somebody you can tell things to. I’m not Greenson, that’s not what I’m talking about-I don’t need to hear chapter and verse about your childhood. But stuff going on today? I can protect you in ways your good doctor can’t.”
She smiled. “You mean, because you’re a big bad private eye.”
“Yeah. I’m not as young as I used to be. But I am still big and bad. If you need protection-and I don’t mean to scare you, honey, but if you need a guy with a gun? I’m that guy.”
She frowned again, more confused than worried or scared. “You have a… gun?”
I smiled, shook my head. “Not on me. But yes. Back in my bungalow at the Beverly Hills.”
Her chin was crinkling with amusement. “So I’m safe, if somebody attacks me… in your bungalow at the Beverly Hills.”
“Yeah. Unless, of course, it’s me who’s attacking you. But I promise only to do that in the most friendly way.”
She laughed softly. Touched my face with her hand. “You don’t have to attack me. Just ask, Nate. Just ask.”
I kissed the hand and gave it back to her.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“You’re sweet.” She shook her head and the tousled white-blondeness bounced and her smile was bigger and better than in CinemaScope. “But Nate-don’t you know that everything’s turning around for me? Have you seen the interviews?”
“Yeah. That was a great one you gave Flo Kilgore. I loved where you said when a studio executive gets a cold, he can call in sick, but not a star. That you’d like to see a top executive act in a comedy with a temperature and a sinus infection.”
Her eyes sparkled and her smile made dimples. “From sources inside the studio, I know for a fact that thousands of letters and telegrams of support have come in from my fans all around the world.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“And Fox thinks they know how to work the publicity mill?” She started ticking off on her fingers: “How does this grab you? Vogue, Life, Redbook, Cosmo -articles or interviews, all with full photo spreads. Top photographers. I’m shooting one tomorrow with Bert Stern, and I’m busy all next week.”
I had to grin at her. “They didn’t know who they were messing with.”
“And Peter Levathes-you know who he is? He’s the head of the studio-he wants to come over next week to talk to me, here at the house.”
“What for?”
“For the terms of my reinstatement, Nate! They’ve already offered me a two-picture deal-we’ll finish up Something’s Got to Give, then we do a musical, What a Way to Go!”
“That’s great.”
“Guess how much per picture? Just guess. Half a million each! My first million-dollar contract. Let Liz Taylor stick that up her fat ass!”
There was just enough of the comedienne in that delivery to make me laugh.
I reached out and took both her hands in mine. “I am so pleased for you. And I think you’re doing the right thing, putting the focus on your professional life.”
Her head tilted; she was smiling but not quite following me. “What do you mean, Nate?”
I gave her back her hands. “Well, uh, all I mean is, sometimes we focus on our personal lives, other times on our professional, and I think for you, now’s a good time for… not personal.”
“What are you talking about?”
I was talking about Jack Kennedy, and her dreams of being a First Lady, and threats of woman-scorned press conferences; but I couldn’t bring myself to spell it out. Not even safely away from any likely bugging devices.
The troll who tended Marilyn’s toll bridge stepped out from the living room onto the skirt of the pool opposite where we sat. Her sleepy voice echoed across the pool: “Someone here to see you, dear.”
“Who?”
The guest answered that question himself.
Joe DiMaggio, wearing a cream-colored sport shirt and tan slacks, looking as tanned as any movie star, not counting his creamy pale ex-wife, waved shyly.
Marilyn leapt to her feet and clapped her hands in delight. “Joe! You came!”
She instantly forgot all about me, and ran like a schoolgirl around the pool and into the arms of the big, rather goofy-looking lug who had been called our greatest living baseball player, as well as the Yankee Clipper, Joltin’ Joe, and, for a time, Mr. Marilyn Monroe.
They were talking, and I overheard him saying, “I woulda got here sooner, babe, but I was in London.”
“Doing PR for those PX people,” she said, nodding.
I learned later that DiMaggio had been working for a corporation back east that supplied American military post exchanges. But at the moment what she said sounded like gibberish to me.
“That’s right, babe, but when I heard about your troubles, I quit ’em on the spot, and now here I am.”
“Oh, Joe… you’re the best…”
She was hugging him. In her bare feet, she looked very small, compared to her ex-husband’s six foot two. His dark brown hair had gone largely white, but otherwise he was still the rugged, boyish-looking slugger.
I came around and joined them, giving them plenty of space.
“Joe,” I said with a nod. “Good to see you. Nate Heller.”
Marilyn moved to one side, but remained under a protective DiMaggio arm, and he grinned awkwardly and held out his hand. It was the firm grip you’d expect, but he didn’t overdo.
“I remember you, Nate. Nice seeing you.”
I’d helped him out of a jam once, though it had almost got me in dutch with Marilyn.
Of course, by now I was that celebrated third party in a three’s-a-crowd scenario. Even Mrs. Murray had had the sense to do her disappearing act.
So I said brief good-byes and headed through the house and out to my Jag.
I got in and just sat there a while, trying to digest my conversations with first Greenson and then his patient. I caught a glimpse of Marilyn, arm in arm with DiMaggio, showing him around the grounds, pointing out flowers she’d planted, telling him what she’d done, and what she planned to do.
It was as if they were the happy, domestic couple Marilyn’s ex had always hoped they’d be. Except instead of a picket fence, they had a stone wall.
How happy would Joe be, I wondered, if he knew his competition for the once and maybe future Mrs. DiMaggio was the president of the United States?
Plus, I was pretty sure DiMaggio was a Republican.