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
