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.”
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 souffles 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 souffles, 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 souffle 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 souffle 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.