The voice on the phone was unmistakably Marilyn’s, but not the upbeat girl I’d left at Helena Drive, what, five hours ago?
“Nate,” she said pitifully, “can you help me? I need your help. Please help me.”
She was slurring, either drugged up or drunk, but the plea was genuine.
“You bet, baby,” I said, sitting up straighter.
I’d been in my bungalow slouching on the sofa with my feet up on an ottoman, watching Love That Bob (ironically, Joi Lansing was on, doing her Marilyn shtick), and had turned off the TV with one of those remote gizmos when the phone rang next to me on the end table.
I said, “Where are you, honey-home?”
“Yes. Home. No one else is here. Mrs. Murray isn’t here tonight. I couldn’t reach Dr. Greenson. I thought of you. You can help me, can’t you?”
She sounded like somebody either going into or coming out of a coma.
“I’ll be right there,” I said. “Just take it easy.”
“Thank you. Thank you. You are so sweet. Bye-bye…”
“Be right there.”
I hung up, grabbed my suit coat, and didn’t bother snugging the well-loosened tie. But I did make one small addition to my wardrobe: from my suitcase I got the nine-millimeter, and stuck it in the beltless waistband. I left the suit coat unbuttoned, because it hadn’t been tailored to accommodate a Browning.
Maybe I was being melodramatic. But with Giancana and Hoffa hovering in the wings, being armed seemed a sensible precaution. More likely this was something else, the kind of emergency where a firearm was useless.
I’d heard and read stories about Marilyn and drugs and overdoses and even suicide attempts, though I felt fairly confident that if Dr. Greenson ever broke doctor-patient confidentiality, he’d say the latter were of the cry- for-help variety. Anybody who self-medicated to the degree Marilyn had over the years knew just how many pills to take to cry wolf, or to play dead forever.
Mid-evening was busy along Sunset Boulevard, and under such conditions the trip between the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Fifth Helena hacienda should take maybe fifteen minutes. I was aggressive enough to make it in twelve, though I hadn’t broken any speed limits, since I really did not want to get sidelined when Marilyn was calling out to me. Especially not carrying a nine-millimeter, even if it was licensed.
The scalloped-topped wooden gates at the dead-end of Helena were ajar, with her leaning between them- she’d been waiting and watching for me. Still barefoot and in the same white shirt and jeans. She opened the gates wide, and the Jag slipped in, and she closed them behind me.
If she had any yard lights, she’d turned them off, and precious few windows glowed in the house. But there was a nice chunk of moon and the night was clear enough that I could see pretty well.
The moment I got out of the car, she was in my arms, and she was sobbing. I held her close, but didn’t hug her, because I had glimpsed something on the white blouse-dark spatters that might be dried blood.
“I don’t know if I can stand for you to see me,” she said into my chest. “I don’t want anybody to see me.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes. But… no… I’m all right. But, yeah, I’m hurt.”
Okay.
“Honey,” I said, “there’s nobody else here?”
“No. Is that… your gun?”
“Maybe I’m just glad to see you.”
That didn’t get even a nervous laugh out of her; she seemed too dazed for my charm and wit to do any good.
I held her gently away from me and she turned her head to one side, but I’d seen what she didn’t want anybody to see-beneath her eyes the skin was black and blue, and an oval bruise colored her left cheekbone like a terrible oversize beauty mark.
“Who did this to you?”
“Nobody. I fell in the shower.”
So DiMaggio had slugged her. I’d heard about his fucking abuse from Whitey Snyder. I had never liked the guy and, since I am not much of a baseball fan, his celebrity never moved me.
“Really, I slipped,” she said, her eyes hooded above the bruising. She was not bothering to avoid my gaze any longer. “It was a stupid accident. I fell in the shower. On the tiles.”
I’d been in that bathroom. Billy Barty couldn’t have fallen in that shower, much less hit his face on the tile flooring.
A guy in my line has heard dozens of wife-beaters’ wives lie for and stick up for the no-good bastards, and it never makes for easy listening. You want to shake the babes till they tell you the truth, but that would rather be missing the point.
“What kind of pills have you taken?”
“Little Demerol I had squirreled away. And I been drinking champagne. It helps some.”
If nothing else, makes for a festive mood.
“Let’s go inside,” I said, and we did, hand in hand, like teenagers.
Just inside the door, she got on her toes and whispered in my ear: “Do you think my sunroom is bugged?”
Then I whispered in her ear: “Probably not. It’s probably your bedroom.”
She drew away and said, out loud, “Are they snoops or dirty old men?”
“There’s some overlap.”
So we wound up in the sunroom, where I’d spoken to Dr. Greenson just hours ago. She was lugging a bottle of Dom Perignon, picked up along the way-I hadn’t noticed where she got it from, since after all I was only a detective.
We both sat on the little wicker couch for two and I slipped an arm around her. She offered me the bottle of champagne, like it was a Coke we were sharing, and I took a swig, just to be a good sport.
“I need your help,” she said. She seemed to be slurring a little less. A little. Would it disgust you if I said I found it sexy? If so, consider-Marilyn Monroe half in the bag and with a bunged-up face was still very much Marilyn Monroe.
“Which shower stall was it?” I asked.
“Well… mine of course. Why?”
“So I know which one to beat the shit out of.”
That made her smile. Her first smile since I got here.
“I have a number I want you to call,” she said.
“All right.”
“It’s a doctor. Plastic surgeon.” She touched her nose, and I was impressed she could do it. “He took the bump off my nose, a long time ago. And fixed my chin a little.”
“I should beat him up, too.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s the one who made you perfect. Before that, I might have had a chance.”
She looked up at me with exquisite sadness, her eyes lovely despite the black and blue beneath, shining with tears, and she kissed me, very sweetly, very tenderly.
“You came,” she said.
That was what she’d said when she spotted DiMaggio across the pool this afternoon. She really had to stop trusting men.
Marilyn had already written the number down on a piece of paper, which she got out of a jeans pocket, and then she told me what she wanted me to say. Why she couldn’t have made this call herself, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps because it was the doctor’s home number, and a doctor’s wife might answer, and raise suspicions real or imagined. Maybe she didn’t think she’d be taken seriously in her slightly inebriated state.
Anyway, I didn’t get a wife, I got the doctor, and I explained the situation and, while a long-suffering tone came into his voice, he agreed to accommodate his famous client. We would have to come to him, however-he might need to make an X-ray, so a house call was out of the question.
