I left my fourth message on Dr. Greenson’s home answering machine, then tried his office. His secretary informed me the doctor would not be in next week, and for several weeks thereafter.
He, too, was going on an “extended” trip away from Los Angeles.
This discouraged but did not defeat me. I began calling every travel agency in town, saying I was Dr. Greenson’s assistant and needed to confirm his reservations. On my fourth try, I learned that he and his wife would be leaving for London on Monday. That gave me the weekend to corner the bastard.
I was the first one to leave the office, well before five. Closer to four. I wanted to shower and make myself handsome before driving over to my ex-wife’s to remind her what a huge mistake she’d made, and to pick my son up for dinner and a movie. Everybody deserves an evening off, right?
Wrong.
I was approaching my car in the underground parking garage near the Bradbury Building, my footsteps echoing in the cavernous cement structure, thinking it was a little eerie to be alone in the underlit catacomb. But when I discovered I wasn’t really alone, it wasn’t reassuring at all.
Two men in sunglasses, well-tailored black suits with black ties, and mirror-polished black shoes, looking distressingly young and clean-cut, stepped out from between cars and quickly bookended me. I was still walking. They walked along.
“Mr. Heller, I wonder if you’d accompany us? There’s someone who would like to talk to you.”
Whatever happened to the good old days, when the guys attempting to kidnap you had cauliflower ears and bent noses and either just blackjacked you or stuck a gun in your ribs and said to get in the fucking trunk?
I of course was not about to go around unarmed, after the needle incident. My suit coat-a Maxwell Street number, tailored to accommodate my shoulder-holstered Browning-was unbuttoned and I had the gun out in a blink and whirled, taking two quick steps back and showing them the long barrel with the black round hole where death comes out.
I was feeling like a private eye again. Peter Gunn. Those 77 Sunset Strip clowns. Even James fucking Bond had nothing on me.
And then I really felt like a private eye, when a third guy I hadn’t seen hit me from behind with something very hard. It didn’t put my lights out, so I can’t provide anything poetic about black pools I dove into. Instead, I just hung puppet-like in midair, undignified as hell, trying not to piss myself, as the first two clean-cut lads held me by the arms, to prevent my hitting the pavement…
… before dragging me to a parked car as black as their suits and stuffing me in the trunk.
Maybe these were the good old days.
The ride was short enough to mean we were still in downtown Los Angeles. When the trunk lid opened, all three were standing there-the third was another clean-cut one, but brawnier, a former college athlete no doubt-and I did not leap out at them and clean their young clocks.
The first two politely helped me out, and apologized several times, one even asking how I felt, though I declined to answer on the grounds that I might humiliate myself. Then they decided to help me out on that score, and-after I’d seen only enough to know I was in another concrete parking garage-blindfolded me.
I was walked along into what my keen sense of hearing told me was an elevator. We went up quite a few floors, and I was guided down what I’m going to guess was a hallway. Here’s where this kidnapping differed from days of yore-I was taken into a small infirmary room, where a doctor removed my blindfold and gave me the fastest medical treatment I’d ever received.
He was a middle-aged man with gray hair and gray eyes and the requisite white coat. He checked where I’d been clobbered, did the routine physical things, blood pressure, heart, ears, eyes, and so on, and said, “No sign of concussion.” He gave me two aspirin, for the headache that I for some strange reason had, but did not advise me to call him in the morning.
Then I was allowed blindfold-free out into an anonymous hallway in an equally anonymous modern building where the first two of my new friends were waiting, looking more human out of their sunglasses, the brawnier one having gone off to pursue other interests.
“Good news, fellas,” I said. “No concussion.”
“That’s excellent news, Mr. Heller.” No irony. No humor. He was maybe twenty-five and had black hair that went well with the suit, and his otherwise bland face bore light blue eyes that were so pretty they were oddly intimidating.
The other one, his twin in blandness, had brown eyes and brown hair that didn’t match the suit. He gestured and said, “Come this way.”
It was a short trip. I was ushered into a darkened room and placed in a chair at a table-this was a conference room, as I’d been able to perceive, before the door shut behind me and cut off all light. The escorts stayed in the room with me, though I wasn’t sure where.
Now the voice of an older man, resonant, God-like, and even more intimidating than my young escort’s blue eyes, said, “Welcome, Mr. Heller. Our apologies for the methods.”
“It’s a new one, anyway. Guys assault you, then take you to the doctor.”
“We had no intention of assaulting you. You produced a weapon.”
“I didn’t produce it, I pulled it. Would I be out of line asking who you people are? Or anyway, who you work for?”
“Mr. Heller, you are here for us to share information with you. But that information would not be helpful to either party.”
“One party being me, the other party being you?”
“That’s correct.” He cleared his throat. “It has come to our attention that you’ve been conducting a private inquiry into the death of Marilyn Monroe.”
“Yeah. It’s personal. She was my client, and I feel a responsibility.”
“I’m sure you do. But the two thousand dollars you deposited in the A-1 Detective Agency’s business account, provided you by journalist Florence Kilgore, no doubt gives you an additional sense of responsibility. To Miss Kilgore, that is.”
Jesus-how many people had been keeping me under surveillance? How good were they all? How lousy had I gotten?
A loud click announced the throwing of a switch, and at the end of the table, not far from where I sat, one of those carousel gizmos that allowed slides to be shown lighted up, and threw a shaft of white at a screen that revealed itself in the process. Also revealed, in spillover light, was my blue-eyed friend, running the projector nearby.
The radio-announcer voice of my hidden host said, “You are a resourceful investigator, Mr. Heller. You have been involved in an improbable number of important, even famous investigations-the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Huey Long assassination, the Black Dahlia murder. The files on you in Washington are thick and impressive.”
That admission was no slip-he wanted me to know this was an official government agency, or people pretending to be part of one. My gut, though, was these were the real spooky deal. Most likely the Company.
“And we have been keeping track of your progress in the Monroe case. Chief Parker hasn’t bothered to assign a homicide team to it, instead giving a civilian board a rather nebulous assignment, designed to pacify the public. You alone seem to be seeking the truth-you and Miss Kilgore, that is.”
“You’re from Washington, so I guess I don’t have to explain this whole freedom-of-the-press inconvenience.”
“Mr. Heller, we’re not adversaries. We encourage you in your efforts.”
“… You do?”
“We just think you could use a little assistance. A nudge in a direction that may prove worthwhile to you.”
An image jumped onto the screen-a black-and-white photo, a surveillance photo dating back many years. From the clothing of the man in the photo, I pinned it as the late ’30s. And it took me a while to recognize him.