“You’re not always around, Nate. And I may need protection.”
A limo was waiting for her. There’d been rain earlier, and she was in her bare feet, tiptoeing toward the vehicle, lugging a red leather cosmetic case and matching bag. She was in her head scarf but no sunglasses, still in the trusty lime-green top and white capris. The driver opened the door for her, and she got in.
Then she was just a pretty face smiling at me from the window, tiny hand waving, disappearing.
TWO
CHAPTER 13
The banging at the bungalow door alternated with the doorbell’s ding until the racket had given up on trying to work itself into my dream and instead roused me from a deep, pleasant sleep.
Saturday had been a great day for me-I’d taken Sam to Grauman’s Chinese, where we got to watch Sophia Loren bend over and put her hands in cement (no bad angle on that) and took in the matinee of her latest movie, Boccaccio ’70, one of those arty foreign jobs that made little sense, but also had Anita Ekberg and Romy Schneider in it. The European landscape, with its rolling hills and inviting valleys, was lush enough to hold the interest of a teenager and his old man.
That evening I’d taken a starlet out, to take in Bobby Darin at the Cloister supper club on the Strip-I’d done a Chicago job for Darin, and was able to get my date backstage for an autograph and some harmless flirtation. She was an attractive redhead of twenty-three who made a point of not putting out on the first date. Fortunately this had been our third.
Anyway, she was long since back in her Studio City apartment-I loved it when they had their own car-and I was enjoying the big roomy double bed when that racket ensued.
Despite my good mood, I took time to get my nine-millimeter out of the suitcase. There was no real reason to suspect anything was amiss, and this wasn’t twenty or thirty years ago when unfriendly people with weapons occasionally dropped in on me in the middle of the night, or rather pre-dawn morning.
But I took it along just the same, padding out into the living room in my shorts, T-shirt, and bare feet. I cracked the door, looked past the night latch, catching my visitor poised with raised fist, about to deliver yet another knock.
“What the hell?” I said.
It was Roger Pryor, who I’d last seen in a “TV repair” van in Brentwood.
“Let me in, Nate,” he said, breathing hard. His breath was lousy; of course, so was mine. “For Chrissake, lemme in…”
I let him in, and closed the door behind him, reapplying the night latch.
He looked like hell-his thinning blonde hair uncombed, his eyes bloodshot, his bland, deeply creased boyish face reddish, his phony 24-HOUR ELECTRIC jumpsuit rumpled.
“What’s that for?” he blurted, pointing at the gun in my left hand.
“People don’t usually drop by at five in the morning,” I said. “You know what they call guys from Chicago who aren’t paranoid?”
“What?”
“Dead.” I motioned to the couch. “Can what it is wait till I pee and get my trousers on?”
He swallowed and nodded, then stumbled over to the couch and flopped, while I headed to the john, then back into the bedroom. I returned the gun to my suitcase, swapping it for a fresh polo and some slacks. I stayed barefoot.
When I joined him, pulling a chair around so I could sit facing him, Pryor had a sick look, the red replaced by fish-belly white. I thought he might paint the carpet.
“You okay?”
He swallowed. “It’s just the fuckin’ diabetes. Why don’t you age, Heller, like the rest of us?”
“Clean living. To what do I owe this honor?”
Another swallow, then an earnestness came into his face, and a little color. “This is a job I was working for you, remember-you aren’t my only client, but you’re in this. You are in this.”
“Roger, what the hell are you-”
“You invited yourself in!” His defensiveness crackled like electricity; maybe it was the jumpsuit. “ You tell me -when I told you who I was working for, the multiple clients? Did you keep that to yourself? Or did you run over to Lawford’s goddamn castle, and spill?”
Was that a guess?
With neither sarcasm nor rancor, I asked, “Are you sick? Do you need a doctor? Food? Drink? There’s twenty-four-hour room service here, and it’s not just a scam written on the side of van.” Well, some sarcasm in that last part.
He was tasting his mouth; he didn’t seem to like the flavor, yet he kept tasting. Still, he did not request a room-service alternative, merely stating flatly, “She’s dead.”
“Who is dead?” I asked.
Knowing.
He glanced all around, including up and down. “Is this place… safe?”
“You mean is some asshole bugging it? You tell me.”
“… It’s Marilyn.”
The sigh I let out took a while.
His eyes were as moist as they were red. “Looks like a drug overdose. There’s people all over that place. Cars. Ambulance. Christ knows.”
“But do the cops know?”
His eyes popped. “ Some know, all right. Jesus shit, man, I was asleep in the van. Shorthanded working a double shift.” The shaggy eyebrows went up. “Heard some very interesting stuff in the late afternoon. Very interesting. You want to hear?”
“Eventually. For now, skip ahead.”
“Okay. Early evening, I was monitoring, you know, in the headset, and it was just… normal shit. Dull. Nothing going on. Far as the phone went, couple of calls to Lawford, about some party over there she decided not to go to.”
“Go on.”
He shrugged, his eyes staring past me as he collected and ordered thoughts. “She talked to DiMaggio’s son for a while-kid had broke up with a girlfriend or something, and Marilyn said she was glad, didn’t think the girl was right for the boy. Just a friendly, social call. Anyway, dull shit. I took off the headphones and went over and crawled on my little sofa. She was in bed, getting ready to go to sleep-why shouldn’t I? Nobody was over there or anything.”
“Not Mrs. Murray?”
“That witch? Yeah, well, she was there. She was sleeping over. She didn’t always, but she did tonight… I mean, last night? Christ, is that the sun?”
“Seems to be.”
He leaned forward, frowning, the shaggy eyebrows trying to meet. “Look, Nate, my boys and me, we seldom monitor the tapes after a subject’s bedtime. We check them later, of course, but…”
“Then how did you know she was dead? You must have heard something.”
“I’ll tell you what I heard-somebody banging on my door and waking me the hell up!”
I could relate.
“I mean, inside that van?” He shook his head. “It sounded like cannons going off, scared the fuck out of me,
