That was a good guess. Just after the war, in addition to running ambulances all over Los Angeles, Walt had established a pioneering air ambulance service. Flying under the banner of medical emergencies, such a service could fly its planes into just about any airport in the world.
Obviously such flights were usually legit. But we had on occasion used his service to spirit clients out of town, and it was an open secret that Schaefer flew clandestine flights for Uncle Sam.
“This time I’m here about an indiscreet exit,” I said.
“Really? Do tell.”
“Just wanted to ask you, Walt, if you’re aware Marilyn Monroe’s neighbors spotted one of your wagons at her house the night she died.”
This near lie (neighbors had spotted an ambulance but had not singled out Schaefer) might have elicited any number of indignant responses. Walt might have asked me what the hell I was talking about, or pressed me for the name of the supposed witness, or maybe said get the fuck out.
But his response was low-key and calm yet dismissive. “We didn’t take a call from that residence,” he said.
“You handle damn near all the calls in Brentwood.”
“‘Damn near’ is not all the calls. And maybe there wasn’t a call. Sorry you made the trip for nothing, Nate. Say hi to Fred.”
Then he gave me a thin, cold-eyed smile that meant the conversation was over and the pleasant relationship between Schaefer Ambulance and the A-1 was on shaky ground.
He was doing paperwork or pretending to before I could make it out of his small office.
So I made two stops on my way to the Jag. First, I told the bullpen, in a loud firm voice, who I was, where I could be found, and that I was looking for off-the-record information about the call to Marilyn Monroe’s house late Saturday or early Sunday night… and that I was renowned for my generosity. I did this going around scattering business cards like confetti.
Then I repeated the operation in the big garage, where half a dozen ambulances were being washed or serviced, my voice echoing with a nice importance. I didn’t scatter the cards this time, handing them individually to drivers.
Somebody in the bullpen must have filled Walt in, because he came rushing at me, tie flapping, as I headed through an open garage door to the street.
He blocked my path. “What the hell’s the idea, Nate?”
“I’m looking into Marilyn’s death.”
“Why in hell?”
“Because nobody else is.”
“Bullshit! The papers say that Suicide Squad is out questioning people right now.”
“Funny, ’cause so am I, and I haven’t run into any of them.”
Walt let out a frustrated sigh, shook his head, then took me by the arm. Walked me back into the garage, our footsteps resonating like small-arms fire. Put me in the rider’s seat of one of the wagons and came around the other side and got behind the wheel. I had a feeling he hadn’t driven an ambulance himself in a long, long time.
“I will give this to you off the record,” he said softly, tightly. “If you’re working for a client trying to find out if the woman met foul play, I will deny the story to anybody but the cops. If you’re working for a reporter, you can’t use it, because once you say ‘ambulance,’ they’ll know it’s us. Understood?”
“Understood.”
He sighed, looked out the windshield at the wooden slats of a closed garage door. “Two of my boys happened to be close, right around the corner practically, when they caught the emergency call. They got there in under two minutes, no siren.”
The ambulance driver and his partner were met by a tall man who let them in the gates of the hacienda-style home (obviously Jefferies), and a “frumpy” middle-aged woman (guess who) with a poodle on a leash. She and the poodle led them to a small guest cottage, but stayed outside.
Within, Schaefer’s guys got a shock-Marilyn Monroe lay nude, faceup on a folded-out daybed, arm draped toward a phone on the floor.
“She was obviously dead,” Walt said, with a fatalistic shrug. “Her body had a blueish tinge, possibly indicating a swift death. So there was nothing my boys could do-we’re not a hearse service. As they were getting ready to head out, one of her doctors showed up, this fellow Greenson, I believe.”
“Her psychiatrist.”
“Yeah, but psychiatrists are MDs. They can pronounce death. So he asked my boys to wait and he went into that cottage and came back a minute or so later. Asked the boys to go in and load her on a gurney and take her to the nearest hospital. Santa Monica hospital.”
“But she was dead…”
“Which is why my boys, who generally follow doctor’s orders in this business, didn’t-they just politely turned him down and left. Apparently Greenson, if that’s who it was, said he hadn’t pronounced her dead and that they should take her, with the suggestion that they would say she expired on the way. That would make it a hospital matter… and also a Schaefer Ambulance matter, incidentally, as my boys well knew… but from the doctor’s vantage, it’d take some of the heat off them there at the house. Is my opinion.”
“What time was this?”
“Between ten and eleven.”
“Can you check your log?”
“What log?” He shifted in the seat, one hand on the wheel, like an impatient driver in traffic. “By the time my boys left, the other doctor, Engelberg, was there and several cops, too.”
“Before midnight, cops were there?”
“Yeah. And one of them was the kind of cop you don’t fuck with.”
“… Intel, Walt?”
“I didn’t say that.” He turned a dour gaze on me. “Now listen carefully, Nate. Eighty percent of my business comes from the city and county, with another ten percent that is very lucrative from the U.S. government. With the Kennedys involved, if I were to speak up about what I know, this business I have worked to build up since nineteen fucking thirty-two would go down the drain. And what do I know, really? That my guys went there, she was dead, and they turned around and came back. Because in case I failed to mention it, we’re not a goddamn hearse service.”
“What you know, Walt, and what at least two of your people know, is that the official story on Marilyn’s death is bullshit.”
“And if I come forward, what? Justice will be served? Do I have to tell you what brand of justice gets served up in LA? Chief Parker justice. And by the way, who’s the top guy at the Justice Department right now? Let it go, Nate. Let it the hell go.”
A siren screamed and made me jump as an ambulance pulled out.
“Look,” Walt said, “she overdosed, we were too late to save her, her own doctor was too late to save her… so nobody saved her. The cops have made it clear to me- clear -that they aren’t interested in pursuing this case. My government clients have indicated, through intermediaries, mind you, that my discretion would be appreciated. Do I really have to tell Nate Heller which way the wind blows?”
“A woman died, Walt.”
“And how many women died today in Los Angeles that my buggies picked up? If I don’t know, you sure don’t. Look. Nate. We never spoke.” He shook his head, sighed heavily. “What good hearing this shit does you, I have no idea.”
He climbed down out of the ambulance, shut the door, and for a while I just sat there in the vehicle, going nowhere.
CHAPTER 21
Friday morning, I was in a swimsuit and Flo was in a baby blue bikini and we were both in sunglasses, sitting poolside in deck chairs in back of her big white birthday cake of a mansion on Roxbury Drive.
We were working.
I, in fact, had been working since the night before, staying in her house as the inside man with another A-1 agent outside on the street. After the attempt Wednesday night on me (and possibly her) at the hotel bungalow, I felt some precautions were in order. And as for my duties as inside man, I will leave that to your fertile imagination.
In the youthful ponytail again, she was going over notes on a steno pad, her slender tan body pearled with perspiration. As Joe Friday used to say, it was hot in Los Angeles.