“And?”
He shrugged. “And they left.”
“What happened after?”
“Next call of Marilyn’s was pretty soon, maybe ten minutes later. She called that Greenson character and he came right over. He was there several hours.”
“You hear any of their conversation?”
“No. I’m guessing they were talking in that sunroom. That’s where they usually consulted. He’s hardly been on any of these tapes over all these weeks. And that sunroom, it wasn’t bugged. No other rooms were-just the phones themselves and the master bedroom.”
I drew in some air and sat and thought. He let me do that.
After a while, he said, “Will you cover for me, Nate?”
“If you mean, am I willing to forget about the wiretap job Marilyn had us do… what wiretap job?”
He grinned. Nodded.
Now I leaned forward. Friendly. “But, Roger-you need to lay low. This thing, death of a superstar like Marilyn? It’s going to be big, and over the next few days, even weeks, nothing will be bigger.”
His eyes were tight. “I know, but if we-”
I had silenced him with a raised hand. “Think about it. You’ve talked to me-one of your clients. And you talked to the intel boys, who were also your clients, right? But I bet you haven’t talked to Sam Giancana or Jimmy Hoffa or any CIA spook, or any of their minions. Like Johnny Rosselli, for example, who could represent any one or all three.”
His eyes were wide and his jaw slack as the pieces came together. “And… and I gave their tapes up.”
“And you gave their tapes up. Here’s the best part-you gave them up to the cops. The intel boys, granted… but that still counts as cops.” I sat back. Shrugged. “I may do some minor poking around this thing-as I say, Marilyn was my friend-and until this nasty affair has shaken down, I would suggest you, as I said… lie low.”
“Where?”
“You’re not married, right? Not anymore?”
“Not anymore, right.”
“Still got that little house in the hills?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t go there. The tapes from before last night-where are they?”
“In my bank deposit box. I keep several boxes for sensitive material like this. Until delivery to the client, that’s how I routinely handle it.”
“No dupes or anything at your office?”
He shook his head. “No. Nothing. Not even any paperwork. Not on a deal like this.”
“Good.”
I got up and went into the bedroom, then came back with three C notes. “Go buy yourself a few clothes and supplies-groceries and sundries.”
“What? Why?”
“So you don’t get yourself killed. I’m calling Fred Rubinski. He’ll come over with a key to our safe house, and directions. You stay put a while. I’ll let you know when I think it’s okay for you to reapply to the human race.”
He didn’t argue. He just sat there and took the bills, rather absently, and then nodded and said, “I appreciate this. For a guy who’s kind of free with the physical stuff, you’re okay, Nate. But why help me out?”
“Because, like you said, we’re in this together. The same people looking for you might come looking for me, particularly if they found you first, and you made me popular with them.”
“You think I’d rat you out.”
“I know you’d rat me out.”
Roger didn’t argue the point.
So I called Fred, who bitched about being woken up blah blah blah, but when I said Marilyn was dead, and we needed to hide Pryor away for a while, my partner quickly got on board.
I didn’t wait for him, though. I got dressed, leaving the gun behind, and halfway out the door said to Pryor, “Fred’ll be here shortly. In the meantime, watch the place. Like, make sure nobody bugs it.”
“Where are you going?”
“Brentwood. Fifth Helena Drive.”
He was chewing on that when I shut the door and went out into windy warmth and a dawn throwing long shadows. My stomach hurt. I didn’t feel anything like grief yet, not even simple sadness.
But I did feel sick.
CHAPTER 14
The morning was bright and remarkably clear for smoggy Los Angeles, pleasantly warm thanks to desert winds, though experience said by midday we’d have a scorcher.
It was pushing 6:00 A.M. when I followed a cream-colored, somewhat battered Ford van down the dead-end that was Fifth Helena Drive. The vehicle’s side panels said WESTWOOD VILLAGE MORTUARY -no Roger Pryor fake-out, this was the genuine article, and a potentially nice piece of luck for me.
The van nosed through a gathering crowd of press and gawkers at the scallop-topped wooden gates. Two uniformed cops were on sentry duty and immediately opened up for the mortuary wagon, my Jag practically kissing its rear bumper. My window was down and the young cop I passed gave me a look as I glided by.
I nodded, said, “Coroner’s office,” and he nodded back and returned his attention to the swarm of neighbors and reporters.
I’d spotted a few familiar faces in that crowd-Tommy Thompson, Life ’s Beverly Hills man; showbiz columnist Jim Bacon of the Associated Press; Flo Kilgore, the New York Herald Tribune Hollywood correspondent. Flo was a brunette in her forties with pretty eyes, a weak chin, and a nice shape-I’d been out with her a few times, between husbands (she had just ditched her fourth). Wasn’t sure if she’d made me, as I passed through the Fifth Helena portals.
But her presence, and that of those other famous ink slingers, was no surprise to me. On the radio on the way over I’d already heard the following: “Marilyn Monroe is dead of suicide at age thirty-six. We grasp at straws as if knowing how she died will bring her back. Not since Jean Harlow have the standards of feminine beauty been so embodied in one woman. Marilyn Monroe-dead at thirty-six.”
For a news bulletin, that had been pretty studied; but with Marilyn’s history of overdoses and other melodrama (as Sinatra put it), all the news services would have obits on file and even squibs like that, ready to go.
What really disturbed me was that flat pronouncement of suicide. If I was following a mortuary wagon in, then the body was still in the house. A little early in the game for a verdict, even from the newshounds.
I backed the Jag around so I’d be facing out if I had to beat a hasty retreat. For a moment my path was blocked by a pudgy guy in a suit walking Marilyn’s little white mutt off somewhere. But I still managed to follow the two mortuary reps across the brick courtyard and into the house. Both wore the expected black suits and ties, slim, nondescript messengers of death-one shorter, fiftyish, Brylcreemed and bespectacled, the other a beanpole no more than twenty, with a flattop and his mouth hanging open.
Except for a quartet of milling uniformed cops, who just nodded at us as we came in, the living room was empty, Marilyn’s Mexican-flavored decorations doing nothing to make the occasion less somber. Muffled conversation came from the direction of the dining room-I thought I picked out Pat Newcomb’s voice, and maybe the indistinct murmur that characterized housekeeper Murray.
The two mortuary reps paused, probably to ask where the bedroom was, and I pitched in: “Just to your right.” Making the turn into the nearby hallway, we saw two uniformed cops posted in the hall, one at her door. Nobody questioned it when I followed the black-clad duo inside the master bedroom, stepping over the long phone cord that led back to the fitting room.
A sheet had been pulled over Marilyn’s body, with just tufts of her hair visible against a like-colored pillow. The older mortician carefully drew back the sheet and gathered it at the feet of the naked woman who was lying facedown, diagonally, toes bottom right, head top left and turned left, right arm bent, legs straight. Against her pale flesh, the bruising of lividity was stark.
“She’s been moved,” I said to the mortician.
He expressed no opinion.
Not that it was a matter of opinion: blood pools in the body when the heart stops pumping. If you die facedown, blood will settle along your chest. And she showed that distinctive bruised look on her face and neck, so had probably died facedown. Okay. Then why was there also lividity along her back? And the back of her legs and arms?