right hand.
Nasty as this news was, it was good news, too-it meant he was not here to shoot me, rather to shoot me up, which was another, more delicate procedure altogether. He’d given himself a hard job.
The hard job I had was waiting.
Waiting while my visitor did a tiny test squirt, and then began to move closer, arching his back, raising the syringe in hand, thumb on the plunger.
Closer.
Closer.
He was less than a foot away when I threw the tackle into him and knocked him back through a half-open French door onto the stone patio.
I was naked, so this was not ideal, but this time I was on top, and when I noticed his right hand was empty now, that he’d lost the needle on the trip, I latched onto his left wrist with one hand and onto his forearm with the other, and smashed the back of his gloved hand onto the stone, till the fingers popped open and the weapon jumped and clunked and slid.
That focused attention served me well in disarming him, but not in maintaining dominance, and a hard gloved fist swung into the left side of my face, dazing me, giving him the moment he needed to fling me off him onto the stone floor and into the path of a wrought-iron chair that clipped my forehead.
The blow didn’t knock me out, but it jarred me further, and when I rolled over, ready to get back into the fray, buck naked or not, I could see the silhouette running through the palms, and then disappearing between a bungalow and a hedge.
Breathing hard, skinned here and there, I collected my visitor’s weapon-a silenced nine-millimeter Beretta- and padded barefoot through the French doors into the nearby bedroom. I shut the doors, locked them, finally getting around to wondering why Flo hadn’t reacted in any way. Most women would at least scream, and the kind I ran with would likely have waded in.
Of course, those women would have been awake. She was deep asleep, snoring gently, and smiling, her only concession to the scuffle having been to roll over and face the other direction.
I turned on the nightstand light, slipped into my boxer shorts, put the confiscated nine-millimeter in the nightstand drawer, and got my own nine-mil out from under the Newsweek.
Still, Flo gently snored. I am almost tempted to say, at this point, When Nate Heller fucks them, they stay fucked. But that wouldn’t be gentlemanly.
Neither was trying to kill a guy in his sleep with a hypo full of who-the-hell knew. But soon I would know, because I’d have a lab the A-1 used check it for me… if I could find the goddamn thing…
And I could, and did-on the carpet near the foot of the bed, where my guest had unintentionally pitched it.
“Nate!” Flo said.
I looked up.
An alarmed Flo was sitting there, ponytail draped over a shoulder, her breasts exposed and perky, not that that was a priority right now. “What are you doing? What is that?”
She meant the needle.
Flo Kilgore was my client. That didn’t preclude me from lying to her, but what the hell.
I told her the truth.
And she understood exactly why I didn’t want to call the cops, and why starting tomorrow, over on Roxbury Drive, she would have two A-1 agents as sleepover guests.
Just not with my privileges.
CHAPTER 20
The next day, Thursday, a remarkable exodus began.
Pat and Peter Lawford headed to Hyannis Port for an extended stay at the family compound with the Bobby Kennedys. Under the circumstances, the trip was fairly predictable, but the Lawfords had invited along a surprising guest-Pat Newcomb.
This I learned from Thad Brown, who I’d called to request a no-questions-asked favor involving a certain nine-mil Beretta and noise suppressor-a favor the chief of detectives granted, proving his offer of friendship was genuine.
Mid-morning, at the A-1, when I called the Arthur Jacobs agency to find out when they expected Miss Newcomb back, I discovered something arguably even more interesting than the Hyannis Port trip.
“Miss Newcomb no longer works here,” the switchboard girl informed me.
I played a long shot and asked to be put through to Mr. Jacobs, and-even though I’d given my name-he actually took the call.
“Pat is no longer with us, Mr. Heller,” he said coldly.
“Might I ask why?”
“Her principal duties were as Miss Monroe’s personal publicist. That position has obviously terminated.”
“But why terminate Miss Newcomb? Why didn’t you just transfer her over to another client?”
He might have said that the Arthur Jacobs agency did not feel obligated to check with local private detectives before making their business decisions. Instead he just hung up.
I got Flo Kilgore on the phone-she was in her office at home-and informed her of the development.
“That puts a new angle on everything we know about Pat Newcomb,” Flo said. “And everything she’s said.”
“I already knew she was lying-saying Marilyn was in high spirits Saturday afternoon. Now we know why she lied.”
“What you may not know is that Eunice Murray has left town, too,” Flo said. “Taking an ‘extended European vacation.’”
“On housekeeper’s pay?”
“Don’t you mean out-of-work housekeeper’s pay?” She gave me a combined sigh and laugh. “Well, they can’t all leave town. I have appointments this afternoon to talk to Washington and Melson.”
That wasn’t a law firm or a dance act-they were respectively Hazel and Inez, Marilyn’s maid at the studio and her former business manager/current executrix. I had told Flo yesterday that my man watching the Fifth Helena house had seen both women there yesterday afternoon.
“Glad to hear they’ll talk to you,” I said. “But it does seem like we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. I do have one major witness lined up-Norman Jefferies.”
“Remind me.”
“Murray’s son-in-law. The handyman who boarded up the window in that phony suicide rescue scenario. He’s been ducking the cops, the press, and my phone calls. But one of my agents caught up with him at a bar around the corner from his apartment in Santa Monica. He’s agreed to talk to me today.”
“Really? How did you swing it?”
“I offered him five hundred dollars of your money.”
I sat with Norm Jefferies on a wooden bench opposite the Playland Arcade on the Santa Monica pier. This was a weekday but also summer, pleasantly warm, so attendance was fairly heavy. The monumental many-spired Santa Monica ballroom, used for roller-skating now, was off to our right. And behind the row of food stands and gift shops loomed amusement park rides including a big enclosed carousel.
The smell of fried foods was mitigated by an ocean breeze. Teenage girls in belly-baring tops and short shorts, wandering eating cotton candy and nibbling on hot dogs on a stick, made pleasant viewing, and the dings and clangs and buzzers of pinball machines were softened by the rush of tide and wail of gulls.
The lanky, mournful-faced Jefferies wore a frayed dark button-down sport shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tan
