He chuckled and finished his drink. “You really take this private eye shit seriously, don’t you, Heller?”
“I have my moments.”
“I need another drink.”
In my opinion he didn’t, but I followed him back to the coldly futuristic house anyway. Soon we were sitting by the pool where I’d seen Bob napping on a beach chair less than a year ago. And a lifetime.
The lovely wife, in a bright orange-and-black print top and pale yellow shorts, brought me a rum and Coke I appreciated but hadn’t asked for — in a glass, on ice, with a lime slice. She’d remembered how I’d liked it from my previous visit last June. To her husband she delivered a fresh couple of inches of Scotch and threw in a secret look to me that said she was worried about him. He’d married well.
I was pretty prosperous now, but still couldn’t picture needing a swimming pool with an ocean in my back yard. Of course I was more Chicago than Hollywood, so I cut my host some slack. Their ways were different out here.
“Something odd,” Frankenheimer said, “that sticks with me.”
“Oh?”
“The press reported that Sirhan Sirhan was inspired to kill Bob after seeing him in a documentary with a pro-Israel stance. I made that documentary.”
Jesus.
“But something doesn’t add up,” he said.
What did in this thing?
“That documentary aired two days after Sirhan’s journal entry where he writes ‘RFK Must Die’ over and over. How does a documentary that hasn’t been broadcast yet inspire an assassination?”
I had no answer for that. No one did.
“How well did you know Bob, Nate?”
“Pretty well. Better than some.”
He was looking past the pool at the ocean. “You know what I liked about him? That he was funny. That he was shy. That he was dedicated. How he would listen for a long time and then respond quick, right to the point. He loved that movie, you know.”
“Manchurian Candidate?”
Frankenheimer nodded. “So did Jack. His brother.”
Glad he cleared that up.
The director clicked in his cheek. “We wouldn’t have got it made without Jack.”
“Oh?”
“Nobody in town wanted to touch it. Too controversial. Too far out. I had Sinatra all lined up to star in it and he and Jack were still close at that time. Frank approached him and Jack said he loved the book. He had only one question — who’s gonna play the mother? Frank said we’re going after Angela Lansbury and Jack thought that was perfect. We had a deal with United Artists the next day.”
“I’m surprised you got Jack Kennedy’s okay.”
“Why’s that?”
“MK-ULTRA isn’t exactly the United States government’s shining hour.”
Frankenheimer frowned in surprise. “How much do you know about that, Nate?”
“I know it’s an expansion of Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke, which both studied using hypnosis in interrogation. Some say they were looking for a way to manipulate foreign nationals into carrying out political assassinations. How come you know about it, John?”
He saluted me with his glass. “You first.”
I had to gather my thoughts a little, but finally I said, guardedly, “Back in ’53, I had a client, a CIA scientist, who was a part of MK-ULTRA, and who wound up going out a high window and taking everything he knew about the program with him. That’s all I can say on the subject, but I know about MK-ULTRA, all right.”
“Another botched bodyguard assignment, Nate?”
I pretended that didn’t cut. “Why, didn’t you ever have a box-office flop, John?”
“Not one that went out a high window.” He raised the hand that didn’t have a drink in it, palm out. “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”
“No. That was an honest enough response. So it’s your turn — how is it you know about MK-ULTRA? I don’t figure it’s made Variety or the Hollywood Reporter yet.”
His gaze was hard. “I think you know.”
“Yeah. I think I do. I don’t figure that novel you based your movie on was the be-all and end-all. You’d have researched the hell out of it. That would be your way.”
Slowly he nodded. “We hired a consultant. On paper he was impressive — Dr. Joseph W. Bryant, head of the American Institute of Hypnosis, one of the acknowledged founders of modern hypnotherapy. He worked for the military during the Korean War, counteracting enemy brainwashing, and after that for the CIA in the area of psychological warfare — mind control, behavior modification. A number of prominent attorneys have used him as a consultant on major cases, including F. Lee Bailey on the Boston Strangler. And he’s consulted on several other motion pictures, though not as major as ours.”
“Impressive — on paper. How about off the page?”
His sigh turned into a rueful laugh. “A flake. His ‘institute’ is an office on the sleaziest stretch of the Sunset Strip. Already this year the California Board of Medical Examiners found him guilty of using hypnosis to examine more than just the minds of female patients, which got him a five-year probation.”
My eyebrows were up. “And this was your consultant?”
He shivered, sipped his Scotch. “I shouldn’t have used him for research — I should have researched him. Oh, he was knowledgeable, all right, and helpful as hell. I think there are few secrets in that world of hypnosis and mind fucking that he doesn’t know. But he’s an oddball to say the least. Amish beard. Weighs about four hundred pounds. Quotes the Bible here and Dr. Kinsey there.”
“‘In my Father’s house are many mansions.’”
Frankenheimer sent the rest of his Scotch down his throat. “I wouldn’t encourage you to look into him, Nate, if it wasn’t for a radio program I happened to hear in the early morning hours after the shooting.”
“I couldn’t sleep, either.”
He stared at the sun-glimmering surface of the pool. “I was up all night, twisting the radio dial in search of any news about Bob and his condition, the arrest of the assailant, any damn thing. I stumbled onto a phone-in show on KABC and who should be the guest, but my old associate... Dr. Joseph W. Bryant.”
I frowned. “This was about the assassination?”
“Not directly. But when the subject came up, briefly, Bryant made an offhand comment that gave me a chill.”
“Yeah?”
Dark mournful eyes fixed on me. “Bryant said it sounded to him like the assassin may have been acting under a post-hypnotic suggestion.”
Thirteen
On its bluff jutting into San Francisco Bay, San Quentin Prison would have offered inmates a spectacular vista if its high walls hadn’t denied them of it. What it provided instead over four-hundred-thirty-two acres were barbed wire, gun towers, and four massive cell blocks, its welcoming white-and-black castle-like facade a cruel joke. A fifth cell block, the maximum security one, was euphemistically called the Adjustment Center, as if perhaps chiropractors were on staff and not grizzled guards.
Accompanied by one of the latter under a clear blue mid-afternoon sky — I’d had a pleasant three-hour drive here — I passed by a guardhouse through an area of administrative buildings and staff housing. We strolled through the prison’s original gate, a portico erected to accommodate a horse and buggy — San Quentin was, after all, built in 1852 (by prisoners who would then inhabit it) — and entered a plaza with a chapel on the right and cell blocks to the left; up ahead was the hospital.
In the old tower that housed Death Row, I met with Inmate B-21014 in a small off-white visitation room while two guards waited just outside. The slightly built figure sat at a modern wooden table, his left wrist cuffed through a metal loop. The walls were a pale yellow and, behind the seated figure, two windows let daylight filter in through trees and barred windows. His gaze was serene but I had to squint a little through the sun to get a fix on him.