And it hadn’t.
“It’s a smear campaign by the studio.”
“You’re not asking me to believe Hedda Hopper is untrustworthy, are you? She has such a nice smile.”
“She’s a bitch,” Pat snapped, maybe not reading my sarcasm. “As for Marilyn, she’s had a rough couple days and nights, but… Well, come see for yourself.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. She wants to see you. She likes you.”
“Don’t sound surprised. Haven’t you noticed how lovable I am?”
She wasn’t in the mood for banter, and just gave me the address and the directions.
On the way over, I wondered if I would at last encounter the Marilyn of Hollywood rumor-the notorious drug- addicted dumb-blonde diva. Would I finally see that dark, self-pitying side of her that had caused, supposedly, half a dozen or more suicide attempts? Would she be a slurry wreck, or perhaps a paranoid harridan blaming the Fox executives for all her woes?
The closest I’d come to knowing the troubled Marilyn was the occasional very-late-night phone call from her-I was one of her long-distance buddies who she might reach out to when she was having trouble sleeping. Insomnia was her real archenemy, worse than Fox or Hedda Hopper.
That phone-friend list must have been fairly long, because I’d had only five or six of these calls over the years, coming at two or three in morning, and always starting the same way: “This is Marilyn Monroe. You know, the actress?”
That was silly, of course, but usually enough time had passed since I’d heard from her to make it credible, coming from that oddly shy, modest part of this girl who must have been in some manner an egotist to have made it so far.
But I’d never got a drugged-up or drunk Marilyn on the line-just that familiar, breathy female voice. The kind no healthy heterosexual male would respond to with, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
What you say is, “Yeah, I remember you. I think maybe I saw one of your pictures,” or maybe, “I know you. I’m a detective, remember?”
And she would laugh and you’d talk till finally she started getting sleepy enough to sign off.
Brentwood had recovered from its disastrous fire of the previous November, once again a sleepy upper- middle-class community whose main drag was San Vicente Boulevard, its wide median home to sculpted coral trees. I wheeled the Jag onto Carmelina Avenue, a winding affair off of which were various greenery-swarmed cul- de-sacs. I was looking for Fifth Helena Drive, only Pat Newcomb warned me that it wasn’t marked-I had to count the cul-de-sacs, plus she described the houses on either corner.
Somehow I got it on the first try, though calling this short narrow strip a cul-de-sac was rather grand-I knew an alley when I saw one. At the mouth, on either side, were the homes the publicist had described for me, and at the end of the alley were two more homes, a two-story to the right, and Marilyn’s to the left.
You couldn’t see much of Marilyn’s place, though-a whitewashed seven-foot brick wall smothered in blooming bougainvillea vines blocked everything but a glimpse of red barrel-tiled roof of what would prove to be the garage.
The Jag I left half on the grass in case some other vehicle needed the space, and stepped from air- conditioning into a pleasantly warm sunny Cal afternoon, kissed with a nice coastal ocean breeze from the west.
Hollywood royalty lived here, but I was informal-black-collared gray Ban-Lon sport shirt; beltless, cuffless H.I.S. gray slacks; black suede loafers-and I’d taken to going hatless. Our young president’s fault.
I knocked at the double scalloped-topped wooden gate, and then knocked some more, and at last a middle- range female voice (definitely not Marilyn’s) responded drowsily from a distance, making three sluggish syllables out of “Yes.”
“Nathan Heller,” I said to the gate, loud but not yelling. “Miss Monroe is expecting me.”
The breeze ruffled pond fronds as footsteps minced on hard surface.
The gate wasn’t locked, although swinging it open seemed to take a lot out of the small dowdy middle-aged woman. She had short-cut wispy dark hair and unflattering dark-rimmed cat’s-eye glasses, and her shapeless floral housedress covered a stumpy asexual figure.
She gazed at me as if we were both underwater and I was a rare fish she’d come across, only she wasn’t interested in rare fish.
“You are…?”
“Nathan Heller? Miss Monroe’s expecting me?”
Was there a fucking echo in here?
“Oh. Yes. Well, all right.”
She turned her back to me and trundled across the tile courtyard toward the house, a quietly handsome L- shaped Spanish colonial with stuccoed adobe walls. But this absentminded troll belonged guarding a ramshackle middle-of-nowhere mansion, the kind where you ask to use the phone because your car broke down, and wind up a mad doctor’s next experiment.
She was reaching for the front door, but I said, “Let me get that,” ever the gentleman. Glancing down at the four tiles on the doorstep, depicting a coat of arms, I noted an inscription in blue on gray: Cursum Perficio.
“What’s that mean?” I said, more to myself than my hostess.
“Latin,” she whispered, as if this were a secret. “For ‘I have completed my journey.’ Marilyn finds comfort in that.”
She gave me a sick smile and went in. I closed the door after us, moving through the entryway into a wide living room dominated by a fireplace and glass doors onto the swimming pool. Thick white carpeting and textured white walls made a sharp contrast with bright colors courtesy of Mexican art and dark, rustic furnishings that matched the open beams.
In a white cotton short-sleeve blouse and dark capri pants, Marilyn-sitting Indian-style on the carpet near the unlighted fireplace-wore only a touch of lipstick, her platinum hair tousled, though her toes did reveal red nails. She had a fresh, freckled, youthful look, more Norma Jeane than MM.
She just smiled and waved, like a beauty queen on a float who’d spotted a homely gal friend in the crowd, and returned to her dictation.
Because that’s what she was doing, giving dictation to Pat Newcomb, who was seated on a Mexican-style wooden chair with insufficient cushions, taking down Marilyn’s crisp words on a steno pad. Some kind of list was in her lap. The publicist was looking haggard, though still attractive in her eternal sorority-girl way; she was in a blue blouse and darker blue slacks.
“‘Shutting the film down was none of my doing,’” Marilyn was saying. “‘I hope you know that. I am working to get us all back working again. Say hi to your lovely girls. Love, Marilyn.’… How many does that make?”
Newcomb’s smile was strained. “That’s one hundred and four.”
I had taken a seat at a low-slung black-leather-covered coffee table nearby. Newcomb glanced at me, and I must have raised an eyebrow or something, because she explained: “Marilyn has dictated telegrams to every crew member on Something’s Got to Give. Each one personalized.”
Marilyn was nodding. “I always know everyone on the crew… Hi, Nate. Thanks for coming.”
“Hi, Marilyn. Pleasure’s mine.”
She little-girl frowned at me. “You saw that ad, didn’t you? The one signed by all the crew members?”
I nodded. In Variety, an ad supposedly signed by all the propmen, carpenters, electricians, and so on had said: “Thank you, Marilyn Monroe, for the loss of our livelihoods.”
Newcomb said, “It was a fraud. We called around. Nobody on the crew knew anything about that ad. Everybody knows Marilyn is a friend to the workingman.”
Marilyn giggled. “That sounds dirty.” She had a glass of champagne going, resting where the carpet gave way and the fireplace began; no bottle was in sight, though.
The publicist shut the steno pad. “That’s it, then?”
“No! Send this to Arlington, Virginia. You know where.”
“Marilyn… honey… what-”
Comically commanding, Marilyn pointed at the publicist. “Write! I have to decline a formal invitation, don’t I? It wouldn’t be polite otherwise, would it?… ‘Dear Attorney General and Mrs. Robert Kennedy. I would have been
