somebody slamming their fist against the metal. I bet they goddamn dented it.”
“So who was it?”
“Intel.” He gave the word the ominous tone it deserved. “I don’t know their names. Hamilton wasn’t with them. But they were intel, all right.”
Los Angeles Police Intelligence Division. Captain James Hamilton was Chief Parker’s man in charge. And if I can think of something good to say about Hamilton, you’ll be the first to know.
“What did they do, Roger?”
“Right off, they cuffed me. But they didn’t drag me out and stuff me in a car, they just pushed me onto that little sofa I got in there. The cuffs were behind my back and it was goddamn uncomfortable, I can tell you. Anyway, it was two white guys and a spic. They got a couple spics on the PD now and even a few colored.”
“Skip the sociology.”
“Sure. They showed me their badges and told me wiretapping was illegal in Los Angeles County, and they took every tape. Every fucking one of ’em.”
“Every tape, meaning…?”
“All of the August fourth tapes were there in the van. You know, the ones that I knew the contents of, the morning and afternoon stuff. But also the tapes that started about the time I fell asleep.”
“Meaning, her death might be recorded on those tapes.”
“I guess. But what was there to hear? She probably took pills, right? She wouldn’t fuckin’ narrate it. She’d just swallow them.” He shrugged a single shoulder. “If she puked, you’d hear that, probably.”
“If she puked,” I said, “she might not be dead. You haven’t said how you know.”
“Know…?”
“That Marilyn is dead.”
“Oh.” Another shrug, a full, sour-faced one. “Those pricks told me. ‘Marilyn Monroe killed herself tonight,’ one of ’em says. ‘Overdose,’ he says. ‘Had to happen sooner or later.’ White guy with bad pockmarks and capped teeth, like an actor. ‘And you were eavesdropping. How’s that gonna be for business?’ Something like that, anyway, is what he said.”
“And they just left you there?”
He nodded once. “When they had what they wanted, they uncuffed my ass. Hell, I was glad just not to be dragged to some basement and beat on like a redheaded stepchild.”
“And that was it?”
“Before they left, the other white guy, skinny character with orange hair and blue eyes, he says, ‘Your best bet to stay in business is forget you had this particular job. You were never here. Get it?’ I got it.”
I frowned. “How do you read this?”
He rolled his eyes. “Shit, man, I don’t know. Chief Parker and Hamilton are pretty chummy with the Kennedys. They say Parker is up for Hoover’s job, someday. Maybe the intel boys were cleaning up for the K’s. But I don’t put it past the intel boys to be working for the Outfit, or hell, even the Company. All the interested parties, which is to say my various clients, have plenty of money to spread.”
“Maybe even enough,” I said dryly, “to corrupt such fine public servants.”
That made him laugh. Nervously, but he laughed.
“Christ, Nate, where does that leave us?”
“Us?”
“You’re one of my clients! I was tapping Marilyn’s line for you, remember.”
“Yeah you were. Among how many others?”
He spread his hands, and the shaggy eyebrows climbed his forehead. “You got to ask yourself-you want this in the papers? When the cops come around, not the intel boys, but whatever real cops catch this case, do you want to tell them you were bugging Marilyn’s bedroom?”
“At her behest, ” I reminded him.
“At whoever the fuck’s behest! You want to be in the middle of this?”
I was afraid maybe I already was.
But I asked, “Why are you here, Roger?”
“Because…” He swallowed and made his tone less defensive. “… First of all, we need to cover for each other.”
“Cover how?”
“By neither of us telling more cops or FBI or for shit sake the papers or anybody else about the wiretap job we did for Marilyn.”
“The cops’ll know she’s been tapped.”
“I don’t think so.”
I studied him. “ Why don’t you think so?”
He was trembling. Not a lot, but noticeably. His eyes were no longer meeting mine, instead moving with the search for something to say to me that wouldn’t get him slapped.
Finally he said, “Maybe I did go in there.”
I slapped him.
“Fuck! What was that for?”
I grabbed the front of his electrician’s uniform, just as I had the TV repair one in the van at the beginning of this goddamn fucking mess.
“I’m gonna more than slap you, Roger, if you lie to me again. Every word from your mouth, from here on out, is going to be a shining beacon of truth.”
He wrested himself away, only because I let him. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Heller? We’re in this together.”
Calm now, or anyway pretending to be, I said, “I liked that woman, Roger. If this isn’t suicide, I’ll probably kill someone. And it won’t be myself.”
“It was suicide, all right,” he said, waving that off.
“How did you get in?”
“… I have a key.”
“You said the place was crawling.”
“That was later.”
“What about Mrs. Murray?”
“She was talking to somebody in the kitchen-that doctor of Monroe’s, Greenson, the shrink? Saw them through the sunroom window. I went around and slipped in the front door-it’s right by where the hall goes to the bedrooms, you know. Her bedroom was just… right off there.”
“I know. And you, what? Took your device off that phone?”
He was nodding. “Yeah. I can do that in, like, under thirty seconds, with my trusty screwdriver. Trickier getting rid of the wires to that tape recorder in her closet, though. Let the tape recorder be, because why shouldn’t she own one? So a recorder was on a shelf in her closet, so what? And I had a transmitter in the overhead light to remove, too. Snagged that, and left.”
“But you got them all?”
“Yeah.”
“Wasn’t there a tape in that machine?”
“No. And no stack of tapes, either. The intel boys must’ve beat me to it.”
I looked at my watch: five twenty. “What time was this?”
“Maybe… two hours ago. She looked beautiful.”
“What?”
“She was on her tummy. Face against her pillow. Hand on the receiver. Very sad. There was some, uh, lividity, of course. I mean, she was dead. But beautiful.”
My stomach was hurting. Not with hunger.
I asked, “All this went down after your fun and games with the intel boys?”
More emphatic nodding. “Yes. Yes, that’s how I knew she was gone, ’cause they told me. Like I said, I was sleeping, not monitoring. Don’t look at me like that. If I’d been monitoring, would it have turned out any different?”
