much breeze, the pool’s aqua surface mirror-like, barely rippling.
He twitched the tiniest sad smile. “I don’t know what I can say, Nate. I liked Marilyn very much. I’m sorry she’s gone.”
“She thought the world of you and your brother. Figured you were going to change everything. That they’d have to carve one or maybe two more heads onto Mount Rushmore.”
He broadened his smile, in that endearing bucktoothed way, looking out at the glassy pool. His brown bangs were uncombed, his eyes somewhat bloodshot.
Finally he said, “If you think I’m responsible, you’re wrong.”
“You’re responsible for the cover-up.”
“I didn’t initiate it.” His blue eyes swung earnestly to mine. “Man to man? I accept responsibility for it. People looking after my interests took care of it.” He shrugged. “But I had no knowledge.”
“You don’t disagree with their actions? Your protectors?”
The eyes tensed. “We are talking about what happened after Marilyn’s death? The search of her house for damaging documents? Of course I don’t disagree. It’s a national security matter.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before bragging in the bedroom.”
He might have taken offense, but instead he just sighed. Stared out at the pool. “I’m not proud of it. Any of it.”
I sipped the Coke; warm already. “Maybe I should tell you why I’m here.”
Another look, this time sharp. “ This is why you’re here. Unloading recriminations on me.” And now a nasty smile. “But, Nate, you make an unlikely conscience.”
I almost laughed.
“You know, Eliot Ness was my friend,” I said.
“I know he was.”
“He wasn’t without flaws, none of us is, but he had a kind of ethical authority, a kind of moral vision, the likes of which I never saw in any other man. Half the time I thought he was a fool. The other half I admired him.”
Bobby shook his head, brushed bangs away from his eyes. “Pity he didn’t live to enjoy his fame.”
I nodded. “My point is, when I met you, not ten years ago? I thought I’d met another Eliot Ness.”
He grunted a laugh and waved that off.
“No, Bob-really. You took on these Outfit bastards, and were able to withstand whatever they threw at you. You were too rich to be bribed, too stubborn to be scared off, too Irish to give up. I admired that.”
He was smiling again, just a little, eyes back on the water. “You were a big help in those days, Nate. You’ve been a big help since.”
“Nice of you to say. Thing about Eliot is, I used to give him hell for appointing himself my personal Jiminy Cricket. It was a running gag with us-the idiot tried to be my conscience.”
That amused Bob. “Good luck to him.”
I grunted a laugh. “So it’s funny, ironic, and not a little screwed-up that I, of all fucking people, am sitting here playing your conscience.”
“I already have a conscience, thanks. Plenty of guilt to deal with. Haven’t you noticed I’m Catholic?”
“Without your mess of kids climbing the walls, it’s not as obvious. Anyway. The real reason I’m here.”
“Which is?”
I grinned at him, swigged some Coke. Then: “I’m turning myself in.”
“You’re what?”
“You’re the attorney general of these United States, right? Number one law enforcement official? Toppest top cop? Well, I’m turning myself in. I killed the son of a bitch who murdered Marilyn.”
He sighed, and looked away. “That black sense of humor of yours will get you in trouble someday.”
“No joke. He was a guy who worked for me, but he also worked for various other clients, doing surveillance, bugging Marilyn’s house. He was at his post when he got a call to go in and take care of the Marilyn Monroe problem.”
Now he looked at me. “And you killed him.”
“I shot him full of poison, just like he did Marilyn. I’m not going to tell you where the body is. Well, okay, it’s in an ocean. Here’s a hint. Not this one.” I jerked a thumb in the general direction of the Atlantic.
“I don’t believe you,” he said, but his expression said he was pretty sure he did.
“I wouldn’t burden you with this, Bob, but who else can I talk to about it, in a frank, open way? See, I pumped the guy for information before I…” I drew a finger across my throat. “… And to loosen him up, I said I wasn’t interested in small fry like him. That what I wanted were the big fish. But the truth is, I can’t go after the big fish. It’s vaguely possible I could get close enough to Giancana to put his lights out, but I figure he’s living on borrowed time, anyway. And your CIA pals, what’s my best course of action there? Go to D.C. and start popping guys in dark sunglasses and black suits?”
“This is lunacy.” He was frowning, and sitting on the edge of his chair, as if about to rise. “You should go, Nate. I’m disappointed in you.”
“Disappointed in me? Now there’s a laugh. Wouldn’t you like to know, just out of a sense of history, how this went down, Bob?”
“No.”
“Thought you would.” I shifted on the chair. “Peter Lawford calls Marilyn, knowing how she flipped out after you came over and started yelling at her-my God, did you slap her, and push her or…? She was bruised, Bob.”
He said nothing. His head swiveled toward the water.
“Calls her once late afternoon, then again around seven thirty, stepping away from his little Saturday night party to make sure she’s all right. But she isn’t all right-she’s saying things that sound like a verbal suicide note. As it happens, she wasn’t trying to commit suicide, and she hadn’t OD’d-just took a little too much of either chloral hydrate or Nembutal, enough to pass out, which she did on the phone. And scared the shit out of Peter.”
“This isn’t helpful.”
“Now, I’m not sure whether you headed right back to the Bates ranch, or whether you hid out at the Beverly Hilton. My guys couldn’t find evidence you’d stayed around town, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t. And Lawford called you either at the ranch or at that hotel, but in any event told you that Marilyn was in a very, very bad way. Maybe dying or dead, and there might even be a suicide note-and God knows what she may have written about you and Jack. And what did you tell your brother-in-law, Bob?”
He didn’t fill in that blank.
So I did: “You told him to take care of it. To get off his lazy ass and take fucking care of it.”
Not the faintest flicker of denial.
“And that’s all you gave him. That simple order. Vague but not to be ignored. You may have thought Peter would drive over there himself, and deal with it. Take care of it. Get her stomach pumped if she’d OD’d, destroy any suicide note if it was too late. And if the latter, put a general cleanup and cover-up in motion, much as what later did take place.”
“I didn’t initiate anything, Nate.”
“But you did, Bob-you said, ‘Take care of it.’ Only Peter couldn’t get off his lazy ass because he was drunk on his lazy ass. He could hardly navigate his way across the living room, if his guests that night are to be believed. So what did he do? Rosselli was out of town, in Vegas. Might have called him there, but you know who I think Peter called?”
He didn’t ask.
“I think he called Frank,” I said. “I think Peter called Frank, the superstar who helped elect your brother, remember? Who gave your brother-in-law a new lease on show business life. As he had so many times before, Peter asked Frank for help.”
Bobby offered up a skeptical smile. “This is silly guesswork, Nate. Please. Let’s not go any further with this kind of speculation.”
“Actually, it isn’t speculation. Sinatra came into Sherry’s last week. That’s the restaurant Fred Rubinski and I own, on Sunset. Frank’s a fairly regular customer. He was by himself. That’s unusual-he’s social, there’s usually at least one good-looking woman with him, often a whole group of people. He doesn’t like being alone. Nobody worships you, when you’re alone.”
Bobby was frowning. Openly unhappy. His tone grew clipped: “What does that have to do with
