“Don’t be too sure.”
“If you were going to kill me, you would not do it where my wife would be an innocent victim in whatever confused scenario you have contrived.”
I sat up on the edge of the couch. “Wow. That’s very analytical of you, Doc. Have a seat.” I indicated his desk with a friendly wave of the nine-millimeter.
“You don’t need that gun.”
“I was thinking of asking you about that, Doc. See, this is the gun my father used to kill himself. He was disappointed in me for joining the Chicago PD. He was a leftist, a real true Marxist, so you can identify. And ever since, this is the only gun I’ve carried. I like to call it the only conscience I have. What do you make of that, Doc?”
He had seated himself in his comfortable leather chair, which swiveled and rocked. But he wasn’t rocking. The dark eyes in his somber face-made more mournful by the bandito curve of black mustache that provided such stark contrast to his white hair-were trained on me. His hands were folded. He appeared relaxed. He wasn’t.
“I don’t think you’re a good candidate for therapy, Mr. Heller,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because you seem rather too attached to your neurosis. I would say, on some level, in certain instances at least, it provides a sort of engine for your activities.”
“Bingo. Do you mind if I get comfortable?”
“Certainly not,” he said, dryly sarcastic. “You are, after all, a guest in my home.”
I got up, moved the couch around so I could face him more easily, and stretched out again. The weapon in hand I kept against my side, away from the door. He frowned, noting this.
“In case your wife comes checking,” I explained. “Just say I’m a patient. Emergency situation.”
“I wouldn’t be entirely lying, would I?”
“Not really.”
He shifted, settled in the chair, somehow found a sardonic smile for me. “Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Heller?”
“You can answer some questions, in a while… but first, just do what makes you the big bucks-listen. No note-taking necessary.”
He nodded in acceptance.
“Now, you can interrupt or interpose a thought or question at any time. You and I, Doc, we don’t stand on ceremony. We share a common goal, or at least we once did.”
His eyebrows went up questioningly.
“Marilyn’s well-being,” I said. “She was your patient, and she was my client. And I believe you did care about her. That you did try to help her. I mean, you are in a sense the hero of this story-you saved her from a number of overdoses, I understand. You weaned her off drugs. You helped build up her confidence and self-worth.”
“I’m not a hero, Mr. Heller, but I did do those things.”
“Trouble is, you’re also an egomaniac, at least as big a one as me-that’s a layman’s usage, Doc, not a diagnosis-plus you are one controlling son of a bitch. That’s my diagnosis, by the way. You tried to better yourself through your famous patient. You wheedled and wormed your way into aspects of her life that should have been off-limits-interfering with her movie studio, putting a personal spy in her home, even controlling her interaction with people like Ralph Roberts and Whitey Snyder, who were always supportive influences.”
Greenson sighed. “I did those things as well.”
Was he playing me?
“And, Mr. Heller, I crossed other boundaries of the patient/doctor compact. I often brought Marilyn into my own home, made my family her surrogate one. This I think may have been ill-advised, but it was, as you say, Marilyn’s well-being I sought to nurture.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with that,” I admitted. “She was an orphan kid who always wanted a family. She wanted a daddy. You were it for a while… till she fired your ass.”
That got a rise out of him. Or a frown, anyway.
“She did not fire me as her psychiatrist.”
“What then?”
“The last time I saw Marilyn, she informed me she’d fired Pat Newcomb, which I thought was an excellent decision, incidentally, as well as Eunice Murray, which I considered unfortunate, because Eunice was, to use your word, supportive of her. I suppose I was ‘fired,’ too, in a sense… but only as what she called her ‘de facto agent.’ She was very smart, Mr. Heller. She knew what I didn’t, or hadn’t admitted-that I was out of my depth, trying to help her in the career department.”
“Sounds like maybe she’d finally shaken her worst dependency. And I don’t mean drugs.”
“You mean,” he said quietly, “me.”
“I mean you, Doc. She comes to you to cure her insomnia, and you prescribe total dependence on you. You give her twenty-four-hour service. You make house calls. You were the drug she was in danger of overdosing on.”
The sardonic smile returned. “And… as you say-she finally shook that dependance. I believe that last day of her life, though unpleasant, should have been a turning point.”
“Well, it was a turning point, wasn’t it? A turn into Westwood cemetery.” I waved off his good intentions. “You called it suicide, Doc. Every interview you’ve given, whether to the cops or the press, has it suicide.”
“And yet it wasn’t suicide.” His eyebrows were up, but nothing quizzical about it. “You needn’t bother making the case for me, Mr. Heller. I know it wasn’t suicide. I’ve read the autopsy results.”
“So are you prepared to say it’s murder?”
He sighed heavily. “I’m prepared to say-I have said in my interview with Deputy D.A. Miner and another with the so-called Suicide Squad-that Marilyn was in no way despondent, and that she was a poor candidate for suicide.”
“Those statements haven’t been made public.”
“That’s not up to me, is it? Mr. Heller, in the four days preceding her death, Marilyn took three business meetings, bought a ten-thousand-dollar Jean Louis gown, twice ordered deli food, and purchased one hundred dollars’ worth of perfume.”
Chanel, no doubt.
He was saying, “Over those few days, Marilyn met with me for eleven and a half hours, and they were good sessions, healthy sessions, with the expected ups and downs, but…” He shook his head, chuckled glumly. “The bittersweet truth, Mr. Heller, is that Marilyn was finally making spectacular headway in therapy. She was on her way to achieving a degree of security for the first time in her life. And she was ecstatic about the possibilities of the future.”
“Was she ecstatic at your last session? After her fight with Bobby Kennedy?”
“That was rough. That was difficult. But we are not talking here about unrequited love-no. She had already decided that she was moving on from the Kennedys.” He frowned. “Understand, she found it gratifying to be associated with such powerful and important people. But she felt used and betrayed, and she insisted on being treated respectfully. Bobby Kennedy barged in that afternoon, making accusations, demanding she hand over tape recordings and notebooks, and generally treating her like… chattel.”
“So who wouldn’t flip out?”
“Indeed. But any notion that she would have gone public with what she knew about the brothers, well, it’s nonsense. So is the notion that this confrontation would send her deep into a well of despondency.” He sighed. “Mr. Heller-would you put away the weapon? And would you allow me to play you a tape recording?”
I got up, took a magazine from a stack off a lower bookcase shelf, and folded it open over the nine-millimeter. I also moved the couch into its former position, and sat on the edge, facing him.
He nodded, twitched half a smile, and lifted an upright reel-to-reel tape recorder off the floor behind his desk somewhere, and rested it on the blotter. Then he removed a white cardboard tape box from a desk drawer, which required unlocking (the doctor’s security measures weren’t much), and fixed the spool in its niche and wound the tape into place.
“In the last few months,” he said, “Marilyn made a number of recordings herself. At home.”