long gone. That break-in was staged-how exactly did Dr. Greenson look into a bedroom with black-out curtains over the windows and see a goddamn thing? Plus, no glass on the floor. Was there glass on the ground outside?”
“Yeah.” He gave up a heavy sigh. “So we agree the scene was staged. What do you make of it?”
“Well, it’s probably not murder. Marilyn has a history of this kind of thing. Suicide attempts, girl who cried wolf stuff, but also going overboard with drugs.”
“You see her recently, Nate? Did she seem depressed?”
“I saw her a few days ago. Her career was going great guns.”
“I read she got fired…”
“She just got rehired, and at a big pay boost.” I shrugged. “She had a few personal problems. In the love-life department. And anybody with that kind of problem can have a bad night and decide to cash it in.”
“Is that what happened here?”
“I’ll be honest, Lieutenant, I hate to think of it ending like that. She was flawed, a cross between a genius and a little girl lost… but she was one of a kind, and I really thought she had a shot at making it over the long haul. It’s small solace, but I think the more likely answer is that she misjudged her self-medication.”
“My understanding is Miss Monroe was a heavy user who knew exactly what she could and could not get away with, in the pharmaceutical area.”
“Normally. But she was clean. She cleaned up for that movie, and-except for sinusitis she was fighting-was healthier than ever. Sure, she had a champagne binge now and then, but as of this last week, the only pills she was on were sleeping pills. Light dosage. Insomnia was the problem, you know.”
He leaned his chin into an elbow-supported hand. “So she had trouble getting to sleep, misjudged, and took too many pills.”
“That’s my guess, Lieutenant. But it’s not a wild one.”
“So not a murder.”
“Probably not a murder.”
He sighed, dropped his hand, shook his big head. “What’s going on, then? The housekeeper first saying ‘around midnight,’ then it’s three thirty…”
“What do you think, Lieutenant? The docs called the studio when they found her dead-’cause dead or alive, she’s a star and a property, Fox’s property, and the studio wants to stage-manage the scene. If there was a note, they destroyed it-recently they smeared her in the press, and now they’d prefer an accidental death to a suicide where they come up the villain. You’ve been there before-this joint was probably swarming with studio cleanup crew.”
Armstrong knew I was right. “Fucking one-industry town,” he groused. “Waltz into crime scenes and treat ’em like a goddamn movie set.”
“No,” I said. “They respect movie sets. Movie sets they leave alone. Screws with continuity.”
Next up was Mickey Rudin. Milton. I knew him to speak to, but he’d never done any business with me personally or the A-1, either.
The attorney wasn’t exactly fat but it was an effort to get himself squeezed into the nooklike area formed by the trestle table and its benches. His jowls had five o’clock shadow-well, 5:00 A.M. shadow, anyway.
He didn’t wait for a question, just started right in.
“Last evening, eight four sixty-two, my message service received a call at eight twenty-five P.M. that was relayed to me at eight thirty P.M. I was to call Milton Ebbins, an acquaintance of mine who is an agent. Around eight forty-five P.M., I called Mr. Ebbins, who told me he’d received a call from his client Peter Lawford, who stated he had called Miss Monroe about a party she was to have attended at his home on the beach. But Miss Monroe’s voice seemed to fade out, and the connection was broken. Mr. Lawford’s attempts to call her back were unsuccessful, the line busy, and Mr. Ebbins requested that I call Miss Monroe and determine that everything was all right. Short of that, I was to attempt to reach one of her two doctors. At about nine P.M., I tried to call Miss Monroe and the phone was answered by the housekeeper, Mrs. Murray, who assured me that Miss Monroe was all right. That, Lieutenant Armstrong, is all I know.”
After that performance, I damn near expected him to take a bow. But he just gave Armstrong a nod, ignoring me, and worked his way out of the nook, like a piece of shrapnel finding its way through flesh.
This gave the lieutenant time to ask, “Mr. Rudin-what are you doing here now?”
“Dr. Greenson called me. I thought I might be needed.”
Then he was gone.
“Fucking lawyers,” Armstrong said.
I couldn’t disagree.
The young cop ushered Pat Newcomb in next. She almost staggered in, still wearing the sunglasses. She took her position across from Armstrong in the nook, freezing when she saw me. I guess she hadn’t really noticed my presence before.
“Nate Heller?” she said, as if not sure I was me. “What are you doing here?”
There was nothing accusatory in it.
“Just trying to help out, Pat. You can talk freely to Lieutenant Armstrong. He’s one of the good guys.”
Armstrong gave her a serious, supportive smile. “How are you feeling, Miss Newcomb?”
“How the hell do you think I feel, losing my best friend?”
And she began to cry.
I told the young plainclothes kid to get her some Kleenex; he gave me a look that said he didn’t like being ordered around by a private detective, even if that private detective was older and wiser. But he did it.
When she’d gathered herself, Pat said, “I… I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for. What can I tell you?”
I didn’t know whether that last was in the vernacular-as in, what can I say? -or a genuine offer to the investigator.
“How did you happen to be here, Miss Newcomb, when we arrived?”
Her reply seemed, at first, a non sequitur: “I was home sick. I was here yesterday-slept over. Marilyn knew I wasn’t feeling well, fighting a bad case of bronchitis, and offered me a sort of sanctuary. Typical of her, that kind of concern for a friend. ‘You can sun in the back,’ she said, ‘and get all the rest you want, and forget about going to the hospital.’”
“What was her state of mind?”
“She was in wonderful spirits. Very good mood-very happy. Friday night we had a nice dinner at a quiet little restaurant near here. Saturday she was puttering around the house, just getting things done-this was the first home she ever owned herself, you know. It was all apartments and rentals before, and… she was excited, a little girl with a new toy.”
“Can you remember what time you left? And what was her mood then?”
“Probably… five forty-five? Six? Her mood hadn’t changed. She smiled at me from the door and said, ‘See you tomorrow. Toodle-oo!’”
“And you went home?”
“Yes. To bed. Took some medicine. Slept till a phone call woke me, from Mickey Rudin, uh, Milton Rudin. He’s Marilyn’s attorney, but then you must know that, and he’s also Dr. Greenson’s brother-in-law.”
That last I hadn’t known, nor had Armstrong, apparently, based on our exchange of glances. Immediately it explained where the chain of phone calls had begun.
“Mickey… Mr. Rudin… said Marilyn had… had accidentally overdosed.”
Again the lieutenant and I traded looks.
“I came over here and met with my boss, Arthur Jacobs. I’m Marilyn’s publicist. Did I say that? Her publicist. Mr. Jacobs is my boss. It’s his agency.”
“Mr. Jacobs was here?”
“Yes.”
Armstrong frowned. “He was gone by the time my sergeant and I arrived.”
“Well, I know Arthur will cooperate in every way…”
We heard a commotion in the dining room and then a big craggy guy came barging into the kitchen, a bull in search of a china shop. He wore a gray suit, somewhat rumpled, though not as rumpled as his face.
Pat Newcomb jumped a little, and I might have smiled if our uninvited guest hadn’t been Captain James Hamilton.
