“What the hell is this cocksucker doing here?” he demanded in an unmusical baritone, giving me the Uncle Sam Wants You point.
Then his football-sized head-with its slicked-back black hair, small eyes, long knobby nose, jug ears, and Kirk Douglas dimpled chin-acknowledged Pat Newcomb with an apologetic nod.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “Well? What’s this cocksucker doing here, Lieutenant?”
“Mr. Heller was working security for Miss Monroe,” Armstrong said, looking back at the superior officer and holding in his anger. “I asked him to sit in on the interviews. He knows some of these folks, and is familiar with the circumstances.”
“Well, whoop-de-doodly-doo,” Hamilton said. “On your feet, Heller. Thanks for your help, get the fuck out. Lieutenant, Intelligence Division is taking over this investigation.”
“Sir?” Armstrong said, swinging out of the bench and onto his feet before I could get to mine.
“Have you got statements from all these people?”
“Yes. Preliminary ones. This is the second round. I’m trying to flesh-”
“I said on your feet, Heller!… Lieutenant, release these people, and you and Sergeant Byron turn your notes over to my men. We’ll take over from here.”
“Yes, sir.” Armstrong moved past me, and Pat slipped out of the nook, quickly, exiting like a thief after a smash and grab.
Hamilton turned his dark little eyes on me, and his Sen Sen breath, too. “Are you still here?”
Twenty years ago I’d have made a wisecrack. Thirty years ago I’d have tried to goad him into laying hands on me so I could collect a few teeth.
“Just going,” I said.
Much as I found Hamilton’s presence odious, that he was here spoke volumes-as the commander of intel, he rarely showed at any crime scene, much less a suicide and never a possible accidental death. Yes, it was Marilyn Monroe, but, still-what brought Chief Parker’s top dog to Fifth Helena?
I was afraid I knew, and it was not anything I’d brought up in my otherwise frank discussion with Lieutenant Armstrong, who’d had a short run indeed as the cop in charge of the Monroe investigation.
We were all escorted out the kitchen door by an intel sergeant whose pockmarks and capped teeth identified him as one of the dicks who’d rousted Roger Pryor in his van.
Then, as we came around the house, we got a last look at Marilyn…
It was 6:30 A.M. when she was wheeled over the Cursum Perficio tiles and onto the bumpy brick courtyard. She was shrouded in a blue woolen blanket I remembered from her bed, nothing of her showing, though you could make out the shape of her hands folded across her stomach. She appeared tiny. Leather straps held her down by the feet and waist.
The gates were opened by the cops on guard, just as the gurney was being loaded up and into the nondescript van by the father-and-son mortician team. Photographers and reporters rushed in, like a tide taking the shore, and questions were hurled at all of us, overlapping into chaotic unintelligibility, against the strobing of flashbulbs.
Pat Newcomb, reacting to the flashes about as well as King Kong, shouted, “Keep shooting, vultures! Keep shooting!”
Possibly the first time a publicist had ever told the press what she really thought.
As the barrage of shouted questions continued, Pat was getting in on the passenger side of the two-tone green Dodge that either belonged to Norman, who was helping her, or Mrs. Murray, who Norman next guided into the back. Finally the handyman came around and got behind the wheel.
I beat them out, again tailing the mortuary wagon, nagged by a stray thought: hadn’t Pat Newcomb said she’d driven over here? Then where was her car?
Right before I got through the gate and onto Fifth Helena, I caught Flo Kilgore’s knowing smile and a tiny finger-point shooting gesture, Gotcha, that told me I’d be hearing from her soon. There were worse fates to suffer.
Where the little alley of a street emptied onto Carmelina Avenue, Marilyn went one way, and I went the other.
But all the questions her death raised rode with me.
CHAPTER 15
By mid-morning, Sorrento Beach-the sun high and hot over white sands blemished only by that distinctive seaweed the tide insisted upon delivering-had been invaded by skimpy-suited girls and boys and brightly colored umbrellas and beach chairs and, of course, volleyball nets.
A Top 40 station was doing a live feed from a kiosk, loudspeakers bombarding the kids with rock ’n’ roll. Right now those who weren’t knocking a ball across a net were twisting right there on the beach to “Irresistible You.” Plenty of girls had the sort of platinum hair and stylized makeup Marilyn had made famous. Plenty of others were doing the Liz Taylor Cleopatra bit, before anybody knew if that movie would ever get finished, much less released.
A surprising number of kids were sitting on the sand reading a newspaper-not something you saw on this or any beach every day, but this wasn’t just any day, was it? Some were even handling the papers with care, when finished reading, folding and covering them with a towel or putting them inside a side pouch of a bag with other precious items like suntan lotion, insect repellent, or cigarettes.
Both the Herald and the Times had put out EXTRA! editions, first time since the Bel Air fire last year. The Times headline said it all, in eighty-six-point type: MARILYN, DEAD. I had to give them points for style-somehow that comma provided punch and poignance, separating MM from death, making her bigger than mere mortality.
Viewing all this from behind the comfort of my Ray-Bans, I’d been walking the beach, up and down, in a tan Ban-Lon sport shirt by Puritan, white Levi’s, white Keds, and no socks. For a guy almost three times as old as most of these infants, I looked young as hell; I’d been out here enough this summer to display a nice tan, if I kept my clothes on. The DJ was playing “The Wanderer” now, and that was about right. Since maybe nine thirty, I’d wandered this stretch of beach, and even found enough appetite for a hot dog and Coke at a stand, half an hour ago.
I’d returned to my bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel just long enough to decide against going back to sleep or having breakfast. I did call Fred Rubinski, who cursed me out for waking him up again but then stayed awake a while to say he’d helped Pryor out, and that the guy should be ensconced in our safe house by now. Fred also sat still for a rundown on what I’d seen and heard at 12305 Fifth Helena.
Typically gruff, he asked, “Then you figure it was an accidental overdose?”
“Yeah. But despite what I told ’em, I’m not with the coroner’s office. So we may want to wait for another opinion.”
“Here’s an opinion-definitely a cover-up. Studio… or…?”
“Don’t say it.”
He didn’t. “You finished with this? Satisfied?”
“Don’t know. We gotta get a handle on what’s going on, or we’ll be putting Roger Pryor up in that cottage till Christmas.”
“Suppose so. These are dangerous waters, Nate.”
I’d used those very words with Marilyn.
The waters looked not dangerous at all right now, the blue-green tide rolling in lazily. Not good surfing weather. But a fine day to walk along the beach or play volleyball or do the Twist on the sand near a radio station kiosk that was maybe five hundred yards from the sprawling Lawford beach house.
The curtains were drawn on the big old place. Even the picture windows onto the ocean were covered, shuttered, unusual for summer. No sign of life, no flurry of activity here. I knew the mistress of the house, our president’s sister, wasn’t home-she’d left Cal-Neva for Hyannis Port and was still out there, with various other family members, though Bobby wasn’t one of them. The paper said the attorney general was in San Francisco-had a
