I was walked along into what my keen sense of hearing told me was an elevator. We went up quite a few floors, and I was guided down what I’m going to guess was a hallway. Here’s where this kidnapping differed from days of yore-I was taken into a small infirmary room, where a doctor removed my blindfold and gave me the fastest medical treatment I’d ever received.
He was a middle-aged man with gray hair and gray eyes and the requisite white coat. He checked where I’d been clobbered, did the routine physical things, blood pressure, heart, ears, eyes, and so on, and said, “No sign of concussion.” He gave me two aspirin, for the headache that I for some strange reason had, but did not advise me to call him in the morning.
Then I was allowed blindfold-free out into an anonymous hallway in an equally anonymous modern building where the first two of my new friends were waiting, looking more human out of their sunglasses, the brawnier one having gone off to pursue other interests.
“Good news, fellas,” I said. “No concussion.”
“That’s excellent news, Mr. Heller.” No irony. No humor. He was maybe twenty-five and had black hair that went well with the suit, and his otherwise bland face bore light blue eyes that were so pretty they were oddly intimidating.
The other one, his twin in blandness, had brown eyes and brown hair that didn’t match the suit. He gestured and said, “Come this way.”
It was a short trip. I was ushered into a darkened room and placed in a chair at a table-this was a conference room, as I’d been able to perceive, before the door shut behind me and cut off all light. The escorts stayed in the room with me, though I wasn’t sure where.
Now the voice of an older man, resonant, God-like, and even more intimidating than my young escort’s blue eyes, said, “Welcome, Mr. Heller. Our apologies for the methods.”
“It’s a new one, anyway. Guys assault you, then take you to the doctor.”
“We had no intention of assaulting you. You produced a weapon.”
“I didn’t produce it, I pulled it. Would I be out of line asking who you people are? Or anyway, who you work for?”
“Mr. Heller, you are here for us to share information with you. But that information would not be helpful to either party.”
“One party being me, the other party being you?”
“That’s correct.” He cleared his throat. “It has come to our attention that you’ve been conducting a private inquiry into the death of Marilyn Monroe.”
“Yeah. It’s personal. She was my client, and I feel a responsibility.”
“I’m sure you do. But the two thousand dollars you deposited in the A-1 Detective Agency’s business account, provided you by journalist Florence Kilgore, no doubt gives you an additional sense of responsibility. To Miss Kilgore, that is.”
Jesus-how many people had been keeping me under surveillance? How good were they all? How lousy had I gotten?
A loud click announced the throwing of a switch, and at the end of the table, not far from where I sat, one of those carousel gizmos that allowed slides to be shown lighted up, and threw a shaft of white at a screen that revealed itself in the process. Also revealed, in spillover light, was my blue-eyed friend, running the projector nearby.
The radio-announcer voice of my hidden host said, “You are a resourceful investigator, Mr. Heller. You have been involved in an improbable number of important, even famous investigations-the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Huey Long assassination, the Black Dahlia murder. The files on you in Washington are thick and impressive.”
That admission was no slip-he wanted me to know this was an official government agency, or people pretending to be part of one. My gut, though, was these were the real spooky deal. Most likely the Company.
“And we have been keeping track of your progress in the Monroe case. Chief Parker hasn’t bothered to assign a homicide team to it, instead giving a civilian board a rather nebulous assignment, designed to pacify the public. You alone seem to be seeking the truth-you and Miss Kilgore, that is.”
“You’re from Washington, so I guess I don’t have to explain this whole freedom-of-the-press inconvenience.”
“Mr. Heller, we’re not adversaries. We encourage you in your efforts.”
“… You do?”
“We just think you could use a little assistance. A nudge in a direction that may prove worthwhile to you.”
An image jumped onto the screen-a black-and-white photo, a surveillance photo dating back many years. From the clothing of the man in the photo, I pinned it as the late ’30s. And it took me a while to recognize him.
“Dr. Romeo Greenschpoon, now known as Dr. Ralph R. Greenson. Nineteen thirty-seven. An active member of the Los Angeles Communist Party.”
Another image leapt on screen: a photograph from the same era that I immediately recognized as of a much younger version of the rather horse-faced Dr. Engelberg.
“One of Dr. Greenson’s closest friends, since those early, early days-Dr. Hyman Engelberg. On occasion they have even shared medical offices. Dr. Engelberg has been a particularly zealous Communist, and in his spare time has been an instructor for the Communist People’s Educational Center in Los Angeles.”
“Excuse me-you have me at a disadvantage,” I told the darkness. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“Mr. Smith.”
“Yeah, well, that’s who Capra sent to Washington, right? Look, Hollywood in those days was full of young liberals who got caught up in this Commie stuff. Budding intellectuals who took the Depression as a hint America wasn’t perfect. Plus, they dug the cult of secrecy-aliases, underground meetings, double identities. Youthful follies, says I.”
Mild defensiveness came into the voice: “Both Greenson and Engelberg were highly active in the Hollywood League for Democratic Action, a well-known Communist front.”
I went ahead and laughed at that. “Mr. Smith, that started out as the Anti-Nazi League, if memory serves. This brand of all-American Commie was up in arms about fascism long before Pearl Harbor. I mean, it’s your show- I’m your guest, right? But don’t hand me peanut shells and tell me somebody stole your peanuts.”
That actually got a dry chuckle out of the darkness.
A face flashed on the screen that I didn’t recognize, same era, a young guy in a flannel shirt and denim overalls with a hammer in his hand (no sickle, though).
“Meet John Murray. A carpenter by trade, originally. Before the war, he formed a leftist coalition designed to take over the Hollywood locals. During the war, as a colonel, he worked with a young army psychiatrist who was using Freudian-Marxist techniques and philosophies in dealing with mental casualties of war.”
A slightly older Greenson, in the uniform of an army captain, popped onto the screen.
“That psychiatrist, of course, was Dr. Ralph Greenson, stationed at Fort Logan, Colorado. To give the devil his due, Greenson had great success with many of his patients.”
I must have missed the part where Greenson was shown to be the devil. But I was starting to think I was not a guest of the CIA, rather the FBI. The paranoid, McCarthyesque slant reeked of J. Edgar Hoover.
A more recent photo of Greenson, outside his office, took the screen. Another surveillance photo.
“Greenson, of course, became a successful Beverly Hills psychiatrist. Murray worked and traveled for a company we believe to be a Communist front, most frequently going to Mexico. During the ’50s, despite the House Un-American Activities Committee making a target out of Hollywood, neither Greenson nor Engelberg was dissuaded from pursuing their radical beliefs. Communist cell meetings were frequently held at Greenson’s home, and also at Murray’s Santa Monica home, where he lived with his wife…”
A younger, more attractive photo of Eunice Murray with her husband, John, outside a modest clapboard home, shimmered on the screen.
“… Eunice.”
Another click announced a more recent picture of Engelberg, this a studio portrait.
“Though he had been particularly active and outspoken, Engelberg finally went deep underground during the
