“That sounds like the truth,” I said, knowing it matched up with what Pryor had reported hearing.
“You can see how important it is,” Lawford said, “keeping Bobby out of this. If it were known he saw Marilyn, the afternoon of her death…” He shivered. “… The ramifications are unimaginable.”
“Not if you can imagine the end of the Kennedys in politics. What do you know about Hamilton’s role in this?”
“James Hamilton? The policeman?”
Calling James Hamilton “the policeman” was like saying Marilyn Monroe “the actress.” No one short of Chief Parker himself wielded Hamilton’s kind of power and influence. The intel commander knew where the bodies were buried-sometimes, because he’d buried them.
“I told you Hamilton took over the investigation at Marilyn’s,” I said. “And he goes way back with Bobby, to racket-busting days. Is intel looking after Bobby’s interests in this?”
I didn’t feel Lawford needed to know about Roger Pryor and the tapes that had been seized by Hamilton’s boys.
“Nathan, I’m afraid you have me out of my depth…”
“Chief Parker is looking for J. Edgar’s job, and Hamilton is his Siamese twin. He’s also the guy in charge of security for Jack or Bobby, when either brother comes to town. What do you know, Peter?”
“Well, I don’t know the answer to that question. I truly don’t.” He swallowed, looked around nervously as if not sure his pronouncement of no bugs had been correct. Eyes narrow, he pushed up from the couch and somehow managed to get on his feet. “You wait here, Nathan-you wait here.”
I had no clue what this was about. I got up and went over to a window and pulled back the curtain enough to watch little Marilyns and little Lizs run and laugh and bobble prettily along the white beach.
Finally Peter came in with a white phone in his hands. He plugged it in somewhere and dragged it over to me and set the base on the coffee table and handed me the receiver. He gave me a raised-eyebrow look that said, Take it.
“This is Nate Heller.”
The voice accompanied by long-distance crackle was distinctive: “Nathan-Bob. Peter told me about your concerns. I, uh… we are getting some support from the LAPD Intelligence Division, yes. Nothing extralegal, mind you. Just… support.”
“Bob, the detective that Hamilton replaced was a good man. I’d already talked to him about Marilyn.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. I had him pretty well convinced that the oddness of the scene-and it was odd, Bob-had to do with Twentieth Century-Fox performing cleanup work. That kind of thing has gone on since the beginning of Hollywood.”
“So I understand. I feel terrible about this.”
“You should. Do you want to know what I observed at the scene? What I heard various parties say to the police?”
“… No. Do you have a feeling about this?”
“I may be kidding myself, but I don’t think Marilyn intentionally took her life. She was clean of drugs, relatively clean anyway, and it would have been easy for her to misjudge.”
“She, uh, did need pills to go to sleep.”
“That’s right. Easy to see where she could take some pills, wake up, take some more, maybe repeat that. Possible she didn’t know how to self-medicate when she was cleaned up.”
“… Very sad. A tragedy.”
“Right. Anything I can do to help?”
“The biggest favor you can do me, Nate, is to just stay out of this.”
“Really.”
“Let this matter run its natural course. How is, uh, Peter doing?”
“How do you think? He’s a goddamn mess.”
“Too bad. Too bad. It might be better if Pat were there, but she’s… she’s taking it rather hard, I’m told. She and Miss Monroe were close.”
Miss Monroe, huh? Had he forgotten he’d been screwing her? I let it go.
“All right, Bob,” I said. “I hear you.”
“Thank you, Nate. We’ll get you out to Hyannis one of these days, and show you a good time. Get you out on a sailboat. Small payment for your loyalty.”
“Sounds great,” I said, but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm.
We said good-bye, I hung up, and Peter was right there, like a big eager hound.
“Well?” he said. “Everything straightened out?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “It’s fucking perfect. Can I give you a piece of advice? It’s free.”
“Certainly.”
“Getting plastered won’t bring her back or undo anything. Go to bed and sleep it off.”
“I’m sure that’s excellent advice.”
I left him there, pouring himself another Bloody Mary.
Outside, as I slipped the Ray-Bans back on, the urge hit me to walk back down on that beach and strip off my clothes and show these kids how a real man took a swim, and wait for the police to come take me away. Somehow I resisted. Maybe I was afraid it would be Hamilton.
Driving back to Beverly Hills, I couldn’t stop thinking about two things.
What Bobby had asked: The biggest favor you can do me, Nate, is to just stay out of this.
And that I wished he hadn’t.
CHAPTER 16
Lawford was among Marilyn’s celebrity friends whose reaction made the papers.
“Pat and I loved her dearly,” he said. “She was probably one of the most marvelous human beings I have ever met. Anything else I could say would be superfluous.”
Maybe not. Fred Rubinski had already heard Lawford was ducking the police, and hadn’t given them even the briefest statement.
As for the ex-husbands, DiMaggio refused to talk to the press, and went into seclusion. Arthur Miller said the tragedy was “inevitable,” and volunteered that he would not be traveling west for the funeral-“She’s not really there anymore.” Her first husband, police officer Jim Dougherty, wasn’t quoted anywhere I saw.
Among the movie stars who shared their thoughts, two were particularly interesting. When a paper called him with the news, Donald O’Connor blurted, “Not Marilyn! No, she’s too alive-she’s not the kind of person just all of a sudden to be gone.” And Gentlemen Prefer Blondes costar Jane Russell succinctly said, “Sounds like dirty pool.”
Of the insiders, Sinatra said he was “deeply saddened,” and would miss her very much. Lee Strasberg went on the record, and somewhat controversially.
“She did not commit suicide,” he told the New York Herald Tribune . “If it had been suicide, it would have happened in quite a different way. For one thing, she wouldn’t have done it without leaving a note. Other reasons, which cannot be discussed, make us certain Marilyn did not intend to take her life.”
By “us” he meant himself and wife Paula, the star’s final acting coach, the dreaded “Black Bart.”
The statements in the press from key witnesses-Dr. Hyman Engelberg, Dr. Ralph Greenson, housekeeper Eunice Murray, publicist Pat Newcomb, attorney Mickey Rudin-were sketchy and contradictory, painting no real picture at all.
Dr. Theodore Curphey became the pudgy, bespectacled, mustached bearer of official tidings. The coroner-whose horror-show, vermin-infested morgue was the most underfunded and understaffed of any major city-sat before a bank of microphones and a rapt sea of reporters, local, national, international.
“Marilyn Monroe,” he said, “definitely did not die from natural causes. She may have taken an overdose of pills. Her death will be probed not just by my office but by the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team, the independent investigating unit of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center at UCLA.”
The papers quickly dubbed this group the “Suicide Squad,” and to the public their appointment seemed to indicate local government’s intention to treat the Monroe tragedy with the special care and attention it deserved.
But something was missing.
And on Tuesday, I said as much to Flo Kilgore, who asked me to meet her for an early lunch at the Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard.
When she’d caught me on the phone at my desk at the A-1 Monday afternoon, she hadn’t said what the eleven o’clock meeting was for; but I knew. I mean, it had been months since we’d seen each other, so her spotting me at Fifth Helena Sunday morning meant this was Marilyn.