He closed his eyes. Shuddered. “I’m glad Pat’s not here. She would be… I know she is taking this hard… but at least her family’s there… around her.”
“I sat in on some of the police interviews, before the Intelligence Division came in and took over.”
“Did they really? Hamilton and that bunch?”
“Yeah. How drunk are you?”
“I’m… all right. We can talk. I can tell you want to talk.”
“Good.” I crossed my legs, got comfortable. “I heard Mickey Rudin say you were the one who initiated the phone calls that led to Marilyn being found. You’d invited her to a party, and you checked on her, and were… concerned?”
He drew in a breath. Nodded. Then he straightened up, sat more erect, clearing his mind, apparently. Of course, part of that process included finishing his current Bloody Mary and pouring himself another.
“I… I may have been the last person to talk to her alive,” he said.
I managed not to point out the unlikelihood of anyone talking to her dead.
“What the hell happened last night, Peter?”
He shrugged his eyebrows. “Saturday afternoon, I mentioned to Marilyn that I was planning an informal barbecue for about eight o’clock that evening, out on the lanai. You know, people are in and out of here all day, in swimsuits, going to the pool, and generally enjoying themselves. So I was having a few friends over. Eventually we just had Chinese delivered. As it turned out, I was, uh… a little too high to manage an actual barbecue.”
“Where does Marilyn come in, Peter?”
“I called her about seven, seven thirty… to see if she was coming. She said no… she was already in bed. She sounded terrible, very slurry. She almost seemed to be… slipping away.”
“If she’d taken some chloral hydrate,” I said, “she would be.”
“Yes, I know, but I sensed she was… I could feel her… the depression rolling in on her. Moving in. Like… like bad weather. Sometimes she couldn’t understand what I was saying, and I started really talking to her, almost shouting… sort of a verbal slap, to wake her up.”
“Peter, if she’d had sleeping pills-”
“You don’t understand. Some of what she was saying… I didn’t think she was saying good night, Nathan-I thought she was saying good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
He nodded, took a swig of Bloody Mary, and said, “‘Say good-bye to Pat,’ she told me. ‘Say good-bye to Jack, and say good-bye to yourself… because you’re a nice guy.’”
That last seemed like wishful thinking to me. She hadn’t thought Lawford was a very nice guy at Cal-Neva, after he and his wife sat her down for a good talking-to. I’d say she hated him then. And that was just days ago…
“I had a party under way,” he was saying. “I do try to be a good host, and I didn’t want to bother any of them with it.”
“Who was there?”
“The Naars… a couple we’ve known for years; Joe’s a TV producer. Bullets Durgom, the agent. My agent, Milt Ebbins, was supposed to come but begged off. Small group. Anyway, fifteen minutes, half an hour later, I was just not able to shake the feeling something was wrong… so I called Marilyn again, or tried to. I got a busy signal.”
“How many numbers did you have of hers?”
“Just the one.”
He may not have had the personal line. He may have been calling the phone in the fitting room, not the one with her in the bedroom.
Lawford was saying, “I called the operator, said I was concerned about a sick person at this number, and could she see if anyone was speaking on the line. No one was. The phone was either off the hook or out of order.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Well, I tended to my party, of course… but I was still bothered. Still worried.”
But apparently not enough to drive over there. Marilyn lived mere minutes away.
He dealt with that next: “I called Milt, my agent, and told him about the phone call, and not being able to reach her after that, and said I just had to go over there, and check on her. Milt told me absolutely not. He forbade me go. He said, ‘For Christ’s sake, man, you’re the president’s brother-in-law. If something has happened, how would it look?’ Obviously, he had a point.”
“… And that was it?”
“That was it, Nathan. My understanding is that Milt called Mickey Rudin, who checked up on Marilyn. I believe it took a while, because Mickey was out, and the call came into his answering service… but eventually he got ahold of that housekeeper, who said she checked on Marilyn and that Marilyn was fine.”
“Do you know the time frame of any of those calls?”
“No. Only of the calls I made, and I am somewhat vague there, as well. I mean, after all-I had no idea that there would be importance to any of this.”
“Come on, Peter. You say you thought Marilyn was killing herself.”
“ Threatening to kill herself. That was commonplace with her, you know that. Rudin himself called me, Nathan, and said, ‘Marilyn does this all the time.’ He said if there was any reason to be alarmed, he would know about it-because Mrs. Murray would have called his brother-in-law, Greenson.”
Lawford, apparently finished with his story-and it sounded like a story to me, an alibi-sat back and let out a chestful of air. He suddenly looked smaller. And older.
“You’ve been talking pretty freely,” I said.
“Well, yes. Why would I hide anything from you, Nathan? We’re friends, aren’t we?”
That was overstating it, but this was no time to go into that.
“Peter, what I’m asking is- How freely can we talk in this room?”
His eyes widened-my God they were red, like Christopher Lee in Horror of Dracula. Then he smiled for the second time since my arrival.
“Oh, the entire house is quite secure, old boy. Thanks to your tip, we had the place, uh, I believe the term is ‘swept’-and we do so once a week now.”
“Well, that’s swell. Now let’s talk about Bobby.”
Despite the tan, he went ashen. “What does Bobby have to-”
I raised a hand. “You need to not to lie to me. I have no desire to embarrass my friend Bobby or his brother. I am willing to be discreet. But I won’t be lied to, and I won’t be used. Any questions?”
He shook his head.
“You’d better refill your glass. You’re going to need it.”
He did, immediately bringing the bright red liquid back up to his lips.
I said, “I know Bobby was at Marilyn’s yesterday afternoon.”
“Bobby was in San Francisco!” he blurted.
“No fucking lies, Peter.”
“It’s not a lie, it’s-”
“It’s a lie of omission. He’s been in San Francisco since Friday afternoon. I read the papers. I have access to television. He’s there now. But he flew down here on Saturday. Secretly, but he flew. I am guessing that Marilyn, knowing Bob was going to be in California, pressed for that face-to-face meeting she’d been wanting.”
Lawford raised an eyebrow. “She was calling around for him. She… she called Hyannis Port. Talked to Pat, who did not give Marilyn the number of the Bates ranch, where he and the family were staying, but did tell her that Bobby would be at the St. Francis Hotel, off and on, through Tuesday. He has a speech to give there tomorrow night.”
“So Marilyn was still making waves.”
He nodded glumly. “I took Bob over to Fifth Helena in the afternoon, three or so. I didn’t hear much of what was said. She handed me a glass of champagne and I just went out to the pool and waited. I did go in when things got heated, and tried my best to settle them down. I think we’d all, Marilyn included, thought this meeting could once and for all settle things. Cool it all down. But it went badly. They yelled at each other. A terrible mistake. Bob flew right back to San Francisco.”
“How did he manage that, without attracting attention?”
“Helicopter. Flew into Fox and out again.”
Fox again. He was developing his Enemy Within picture there, and had plenty of support, even after the Zanuck coup.