to tap her phone.
Of course another question also came immediately to mind: Did Roger’s job in Brentwood have anything to do with Marilyn?
She was not the only actor or actress living around here; probably not even the only famous one. And you didn’t have to be in show business to get spied on-one of the doctors or lawyers living in these nice, mostly mission-style homes might be checking up on their better halves. Not all tennis coaches coached on the court, you know.
Still, that surveillance van was parked within spitting distance of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe. Who had just hired me, for stated reasons that I didn’t feel covered all her actual concerns, to tap her phone.
I pulled over and parked in front of an English Tudor mini-mansion where palms had been banished from the lush landscaping. This neighborhood was money-modest money compared to Beverly Hills or Bel Air, but enough so that a truck like that couldn’t park forever without annoying somebody.
And when people in a neighborhood like this got annoyed, they let somebody know about it.
Sitting in the parked Jag, watching the white van in my rearview mirror, I wondered if there was any chance Pryor himself was on this job. He had only a handful of employees, and was fussy about his equipment, which he created himself; he was an inventor and tinkerer whose skill in the bugging department dated back to his decade- long stint with the FBI after the war.
Pryor, or one of his boys, might be sitting in that van listening to a tapped phone or bugged room, but I doubted it. First, though this was a pleasant enough June afternoon with ocean breeze making the trip inland, the inside of that van would be an oven.
Second, Roger was more advanced than that. His favorite toy, whether he was bugging a phone or a room or a whole damn house, was a line transmitter, to send eavesdropped conversions by radio waves via FM bands to voice-activated tape recorders as far away as a quarter of a mile.
If he was tapping a phone, Roger would simply gain access to the house, posing as a telephone company repairman, and replace Ma Bell’s phone transmitter with his own gimmick, a bug that looked exactly like what he’d removed. Or he would switch phones entirely, with an identical pre-bugged model.
If he was bugging rooms, Roger would use carbon button mikes, tiny things that could be hidden most anywhere, hooked up to a radio frequency transmitter tied in to (again) a voice-activated tape recorder.
That, beyond the ability to recognize some of the hardware, was about all I knew on the subject. And I wouldn’t have known that much, caring only that jobs got done (not how they got done), but I’d spent enough time with Roger to have some of it creep in by osmosis. He was proud of his work and liked to brag and chatter about his latest gizmos.
That truck was probably empty right now. The voice-activated four-track tape recorders didn’t have to be checked or reloaded for hours. More important to the program was moving the truck now and then, so as not to attract undue notice in these well-off surroundings.
Toward that end, sometimes Roger would bring in one of at least two other vehicles and alternate-Ace Roofing Company, Acme Carpet Cleaners, Southland 24-Hour Plumbing amp; Heating.
All it required was occasional new paint jobs, a few magnetic business-logo signs, and, presto, the surveillance fleet was ready to snoop (no truck bore Pryor’s own logo, though).
I got out and stretched. In my sport shirt and slacks, I looked not at all suspicious, and of course the Jag was right at home. I crossed the street, which had very light traffic, and walked up to the van and circled it.
Nobody in front, of course.
I knocked at the back door. If someone was in there, my knocking might be ignored, so I had to keep it up a while-long enough for any occupant to get worried that my metallic banging would attract more attention than just dealing with whoever was out there.
No response.
Nothing to do but head back to the Jag, where I sat on the passenger side so that it looked like I was waiting for the driver. I angled the rearview mirror to keep the white van in sight, and about fifteen minutes in, I laughed, thinking that this was the first time I’d felt like a private eye in years.
Not that it felt good or bad-butt-in-the-seat surveillance is always boring as hell-but it did seem right. I took my paperback of The Carpetbaggers from the backseat. I picked up where I’d left off, flicking my eyes to the rearview about three times a page. It was a stupid goddamn book but I couldn’t stop reading it, except when a red Mustang convertible with some giddy girls in their late teens pulled into the mouth of the Tudor’s drive and two got out and two others stayed in the car and all four were in bikinis, their hair wet, towels over arms. They were probably legal age but I wasn’t proud of the thoughts I was having. Wasn’t ashamed, either.
That teenage tail almost made me miss the guy in the gray repairman’s coveralls who was approaching the rear of the van. He parked another vehicle somewhere down the street, no doubt.
As I was climbing out of the Jag, the girls giggled and pointed at me-at my age, I never knew whether it was a compliment or not-and the guy (who might have been Roger, but his back was to me and it was half a block down) was working a key in a rear lock.
He climbed in, shut the double door.
I crossed the street and jogged over.
I could hear him moving around in there as I raised my knuckles to the metal and knocked. After only two raps, the doors parted and presented a sliver of a pleasant-faced Roger-in the mode of dealing with a curious neighbor. He seemed about to say “Yes” when he frowned, then a half smile formed though his shaggy eyebrows kept frowning.
“Nate?” he asked.
“It’s not my stunt double.”
He froze while trying to process my presence. His hair a golden, thinning blond, his face a broad, bland oval with a well-creased boyishness, he was about forty and five ten or so, with a modest paunch. He looked convincing in the repairman uniform, which even had a sewn-on Hollywood TV Repair insignia. Actually he had a long-ago legal degree he never used, which had gotten him into the FBI.
“What the hell are you…? Get up in here.”
He shut me in.
It was predictably warm, though a good-size floor fan was going, up near the divider closing off the front from the back, the path of the blades cooling both us and a three-tiered metal rack with eight reel-to-reel upright recorders churning, amidst various electronic gadgets and gauges, a few lineman headsets tossed casually here and there. This was at my left as I crouched inside the windowless rear doors. At my right was a small, well-worn yellow-and-gold nubby upholstered couch, which my host plopped down on, leaving plenty of room for me.
“Want a cold one?” he asked, digging in a cooler just beyond the couch. He demonstrated what he was offering by holding up a sweating can of Schlitz.
“Why not?”
He church-keyed it open and I took that one while he fished for another.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked. Very good-naturedly, and if I hadn’t been in the business myself, and hadn’t known Roger, I’d have missed the suspicion. “You never bother dropping by my little penthouse on wheels when I’m doing a job for you. And I’m not doing a job for you.”
I sipped the Schlitz. With the beer, and the floor fan, it was like sitting on a back porch somewhere in the dead of summer.
“That’s the funny thing,” I said. “I just told a client, oh… not an hour ago… that I’d be getting back to her with details on how my man would be around tomorrow to put a bug on her phone.”
He laughed. “Do tell. And I’m that man? And you spotted the truck, and decided to save yourself a phone call?” He sipped the beer.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, and wiped foam off my upper lip. “My client? It’s Marilyn Monroe.”
I’ll give him this much-he didn’t cough beer out of his nose or anything, and the eyes flickered only a little, not even enough to make the shaggy eyebrows wiggle.
“I thought she lived over on North Doheny,” he said casually.
“No you didn’t.” I gestured with a hitchhiker’s thumb. “You know she lives down this highfalutin alley. Are you bugging her phone, or her bedroom, or her whole damn house?”
He gave me another half a smile, then shook his head and gave me a hooded-eyed look. He brushed a little
