half Irish and half Jewish, corned beef and cabbage makes the perfect compromise.
She nibbled at a shrimp, then said, “You know what I think, Nate? I think Captain James Hamilton is the ideal candidate to cover up the circumstances of Marilyn’s death.”
“I don’t disagree. But who’s he covering it up for?”
I thought I knew, but I wanted to hear her say it.
“For Chief William Parker, who wants to be J. Edgar Hoover when he grows up-he’s been training for the job long and hard enough, using Hamilton to build a file cabinet full of secrets, for blackmail and general influence. So that means Hamilton’s working indirectly for Bobby Kennedy.”
“Maybe directly,” I heard myself saying. “Hamilton and Bobby and Jack are tight. Bastard runs security on all their LA trips.”
She nodded as she chewed, then swallowed shrimp. “And, too, he and Bobby go way, way back, to Teamster-busting days.”
I said nothing. Had a bite of corned beef and cabbage and potato all at once; very nice.
But she was looking at me, the fire in the blue eyes replaced with ice. “And you go way, way back, don’t you, Nate? You worked for Bobby and his Rackets Committee. So maybe I’m taking a chance, talking to you.”
“Why?”
“Maybe I’m talking to a Kennedy clan insider, and not a friend of Marilyn’s.”
“Can’t I be both?”
She said nothing. Dipped a shrimp in bright red cocktail sauce, and held it up to study its scarlet glimmer. Then she said, “Maybe once upon a time, you could. But I think that time is about over… I have more for you, but I think we should finish eating first.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You see, I have a contact in the coroner’s office, too. And I don’t think we will want to explore this subject till after lunch.”
We returned to polite conversation and good food. Her son and daughter were both in their teens, so talk of them and Sam took us through the meal.
But for dessert we talked autopsy.
“Marilyn died of a massive overdose, according to the toxicology report.” Flo had a little notebook out and was referring to it. “Four point five milligrams percent of pentobarbital and eight point oh milligrams percent of chloral hydrate in her bloodstream. Her liver contained thirteen milligrams percent pentobarbital-”
I cut in: “Nembutal. That’s the brand name of pentobarbital.”
“Right-and we’re talking about an abnormally large concentration of the stuff.” She referred to her notes again. “There were eight prescription bottles found at her bedside, including an empty container for twenty-five Nembutal. Also, a chloral hydrate container with ten pills remaining.”
Jesse had brought coffee and I sipped some. “I assume Curphey performed this autopsy himself…?”
“No. A young fellow, Noguchi, fairly new. There’s only three full-time pathologists on staff.”
“Did this Jap call it a suicide?”
“At first. Then, when things didn’t add up- literally add up-he sent tissue samples for further analysis. Kidney, stomach, urine, intestines. Those aren’t back yet, my contact tells me.”
“What do you mean, literally didn’t add up?”
The columnist folded her hands. “For Marilyn to have overdosed-whether accidentally or on purpose-she would have to have taken fifty to seventy chloral hydrate pills, and seventy-five to ninety Nembutals.”
I couldn’t find anything to say.
“My contact quotes Noguchi as saying there were enough drugs in Marilyn Monroe to kill any three persons.” She again leaned forward. “Nate, do you think she could have taken-physically taken-a minimum of one hundred twenty-five pills?”
“No,” I said flatly. “She’d have had to take them very, very quickly-mouthfuls, swallowing, gulping them and still manage not to… puke.”
That last word was spoken softly, as this was a restaurant, after all.
I went on: “And if she’d taken them a few at a time, she’d be unconscious, or maybe dead, before swallowing enough to reach the extreme level of barbs you’re talking about.”
Flo gave me a crisp nod, then said, “Thing is, she only had twenty-four Nembutal in the house, at most-that was her prescription, which she’d filled on Friday.”
“And there were ten chloral hydrates left in that pill container,” I said hollowly. “Could she have injected herself?”
She shrugged. “Well, Marilyn died in a locked room, supposedly, and no hypodermic was found.”
“I don’t think it was locked. Somebody else could have injected her.”
“Maybe.” Her eyes narrowed, blue glittering from the slits. “Here’s a small mystery. I call it ‘small’ because I do think it can be cleared up. Noguchi claims to have gone over every inch of her with a magnifying glass, and saw no injection marks. But there are several problems with that.”
I nodded. “There are plenty of places hard to detect an injection-on an existing bruise, for example, and she was splotched as hell, with lividity. She may have had existing bruises. Also under the arm, bunch of places.”
“And Noguchi just didn’t see it, magnifying glass or not.”
I leaned toward her. “ Something’s not right, because I know Marilyn was getting regular injections from this character Engelberg, for her sinus and cold problems. Liver extract and vitamins. She almost certainly had an injection within a day or two of dying.”
“Are you sure that’s what the injections were?”
“No,” I admitted. “Far as I know, Engelberg could be one of these Dr. Feelgoods. Enough stars and politicians take magic shots from quacks to make that a possibility.”
“But Engelberg didn’t get there till after Marilyn was gone.”
I shrugged. “How do we know? Who the hell can say how many people were running in and out of there, all night? What little I heard Sunday morning was riddled with lies and half-truths.”
Like Pat Newcomb saying she left Marilyn’s place late in the afternoon, and that Marilyn was in great spirits. But I knew Marilyn was unhappy as hell then, because of her fight with Bobby. Unhappy enough to have her shrink make an emergency house call.
And Mrs. Murray had been playing tricks with time that H. G. Wells might have envied.
“There’s one more really interesting item,” Flo said. She was having another martini, and sipped it. “Noguchi found almost nothing in her stomach. A small quantity of liquid, he said. No sign of heavy drugs or sedatives.”
“No pill residue? Don’t they call those Nembutals ‘yellow jackets’-for the yellow in the gelatin? Shouldn’t there be yellow dye?”
“Yes. But there was no residue. No evidence of pills in the stomach or small intestine. No…” She checked her notes. “… No ‘refractile crystals.’ Whatever that means.”
“I think it just means any sign of reaction.” I shifted in the booth. “Okay. Yeah, well, this smells.”
“Funny you should say that, because it doesn’t smell. Not of what it should smell-victims who ingest chloral hydrate give off a powerful pearl-like odor. Noguchi notes its absence. What he doesn’t note is what that absence of odor strongly implies.”
“Death by injection,” I said.
She sipped her cocktail.
I sipped my coffee.
Then she smiled at me; not a broad smile, just a small, friendly one.
“So, Nate-whose friend are you? Mine? Bobby’s? Marilyn’s?”
“… You’ve told me a lot, Flo. But you haven’t told me why you’re telling me…”
No smile at all now. “I want to hire you. I can only do so much myself, and I don’t want to use any other reporter on this. Anybody seasoned could steal it out from under me. Anybody who’s green isn’t good enough. I’m going to run after this on my own pretty legs, but I need help. And you know why I need help-we’re already behind the clock.”
With every day that passes, an unsolved murder is more likely to stay that way. The first twenty-fours are critical, and we’d lost those. After the first week, your odds drop precipitously.
“You know it’s risky, using me,” I said. “Maybe Bobby’s already hired me to help cover this up.”
