(LOS ANGELES, 9:04 A.M., SUNDAY, 8/19/62)
Ratfuck Bob sweat-boxed me.
Eddie Chacõn picked me up and drove me downtown. We smoked Darryl Zanuck’s Cuban cigars en route. Eddie kvetched. Aaaay, caramba—your Magnum loads tore up the vests of three Federal agents and severely bruised our chests. I yuk-yukked it off.
Traffic snarled, the heat index spiked, the smog layer rose. Eddie double-parked his Fed sled and ushered me inside. I expected an office confab. Eddie dumped me in a twelve-by-twelve box.
One table, two chairs, three blank walls, one mirror wall. Hot-wired for sure.
Bobby was late. I’d brought my briefcase. I duplicated the Girl Book pix at Intel and tagged them “Exhibit A.” Bobby despised Peter Lawford. The pix should fan that flame.
The door popped wide. I stood up. Bobby lugged a leather evidence case. I said, “Sir.” He said, “Lieutenant.” Our ensembles matched. We wore white shirts, blue ties, gray Dacron suits. It was off-the-rack cop couture.
Bobby unlatched the case and flashed the contents. My Hoffa gig evidence was crammed in. He pulled out a manila envelope and slid the case under the table. I sat down. He sat down across from me. Okay—it’s on.
I suppressed a grin. Bobby emptied the envelope on the table. Three photo stacks tumbled. He snapped off the rubber bands and formed photo sprays.
Man Camera redux. We’re back at my 8/4/62 break-in.
“Snapshots number five to twenty-seven. All living room. The left-behind electric wall mounts and telephone-mike spacers. Who do you think installed them?”
“Initially, I thought the prior owners of the house were being surveilled. I checked them out through the Realtors who sold the house to Monroe. They were complete squares, who in no way played as surveillance targets. The mounts look like FBI or L.A. Sheriff’s issue, and SHIT does a lot of wire work for the Bureau’s L.A. office. My best guess is that it was an amateur operation, which employed professional equipment. I’m thinking it’s either hoods or rogue cops working independent.”
Bobby said, “Okay. Marilyn’s underwear drawer. Snapshots number four to eleven, the pornographic ones. Tell me the status of the crusted-on semen. Do you have a possible make on the man in the pictures?”
I said, “The semen is being comparison-tested at the LAPD lab. That entails going through hundreds of already logged samples. Phil Irwin and Nat Denkins have gone through a total of forty-three LAPD and Sheriff’s mug books for leads on potential westside perverts. We came up 100% empty.”
“Okay. Marilyn’s undie drawer, again. The Carole Landis morgue photograph and the crazy note composed in magazine letters. What is this?”
I said, “It’s most likely nutty fan bullshit. Those Landis morgue shots have been all over town since the late ’40s. A morgue jockey duplicated them and made a million copies, and I used to peddle them myself. Some nut sent one to Monroe, and she ended up going out behind yellow jackets, just like Landis. So what? Likewise the letter—which brings up a request I want to make. It pertains to the issue of hidden fan mail.”
The AG drummed the table. “I’m listening.”
I drummed the table. The AG, RFK, Lord Fauntleroy incarnate. I mimicked his impatience.
“This occurred on May 19. I was surveilling the house and saw Monroe and Lowell Farr walk out the front door, very dirty. At first, I thought they were gardening in the backyard, but then I came to believe they were doing some digging under the house. I want a search-and-seizure warrant.”
Bobby sighed. “I’ll get you one. While you’re begging favors, is there anything else?”
Scrawny lace-curtain Irish cocksuck—
“I misplaced a sheet of paper with one hundred and forty-three license-plate numbers on it. I’d tailed Monroe out to the Valley, but I lost her. I ran a radius check to run through the DMV. The locale played weird for Monroe. Also, I’ve got a memory of that location that I can’t quite pull up. It’s messing with me, and it seems to be a memory from after I tailed Monroe that day.”
“You’re thinking that the sheet of paper might be in with the ones that Eddie and his boys removed from your apartment? All right, I’ll look for it.”
I rocked my chair back and stretched. Baby Bobby tapped his coat pockets. He smoked cigars, like Big Baby Jack. I tossed him a hijacked Cuban. It bounced off his necktie and hit the table.
He scowled. I flicked my lighter and leaned close. He took the light.
“Let’s move on to ‘Eleanora’s’ call to Peter Lawford. What are you doing about following up on the ‘Rick Dawes’ burglary lead?”
I ticked points. “I’ve got Phil and Nat cold-calling every cater-waiter service and telephone-answering outfit in L.A. They’ve been stonewalled so far. Miller Leavy refuses to dun the Beverly Hills PD for their burglary files.”
Bobby smoked his cigar. “As well he should. I wouldn’t mess with municipal police departments, either.”
I popped my briefcase. I’d prepped my own photo sprays. Two cardboard sheets and Scotch tape. Twenty-four TV actress and stewardess pix. Girl Book de-luxe. All nude/full beaver.
I laid them on the table. Up close and offensive. Bobby examined them.
“I took these off Peter Lawford yesterday. They were displayed in a binder embossed with the presidential seal. Lawford told me that a ‘queen-bee type’ cater waitress passed the pictures to him. Lawford intended to give the so-called Girl Book to the president the next time he passed through L.A., but he does not recall his telephone chat with ‘Eleanora.’ ”
Bobby stubbed his cigar on the floor. His killer gaze decohered. He full-on blushed.
“I owe you a thank-you for taking the book away from Peter. I owe Mr. Denkins a thank-you for his reinterpreting quite a few of Marilyn’s calls to the White House and Justice. I owe you a warning as to your blunt and overly familiar references to members of my family, and I would caution you never to mention my sister Pat.”
I leaned in. “Fuck your thank-yous, warnings, and cautions, Mr. Kennedy. In lieu of them, you might assure me that you will not take the evidence that I accrued while in Jimmy Hoffa’s employ and call me up before a Federal grand jury to testify against him, which may well get me two slugs in the head in the long run.”
Bobby leaned in. His killer gaze re-cohered.
“Under no circumstances. Because I know that Bill Parker has charged you to build a subsidiary dirt file on my brother and me, to supplant the derogatory profile on Marilyn that the Chief and I have agreed on. It’s his hole card to assure that my brother and I won’t renege on our promise to can Hoover and give Parker the big spot. Can you candidly tell me that that is not Parker’s design?”
I said, “No. I can’t tell you that.”
“All right. What have you dug up on us so far?”
I cracked my knuckles. “A right-wing-nut cop wrote a crazy tract about the two of you and Monroe. I put the skids to it. I confirmed that there’s no mention of you and Jack—I mean, the president—in the twelve million press clips I’ve read. The president’s inclinations are well known in film-biz circles—but not outside of them—and my canvasses have confirmed that a dozen times over. So far, nobody’s inclined to talk. Jack—I mean the president—is safe there.”
Bobby said, “Call him Jack. Do you think I’m so pious and chickenshit that I’d object to that?”
I cracked my thumbs. “Hoffa concerns me. It’s not so much you slamming him in court, and me getting subpoenaed. It’s his attitude in regards to you busting up his Monroe gig. He’s nonchalant. He’s paying me and my boys our bonus bread, unsolicited. He’s got to be playing a money angle somewhere, or this whole blackmail-the-prez-and-the-AG-over-movie-star-pussy deal makes no damn sense.”
Bobby dug through his evidence case. He snagged a sheaf of tap-call transcripts and quick-skimmed them.
“This is Marilyn and my sister. Marilyn tells Pat that her house has been burgled, things have been moved around, she’s received nasty letters and breather calls. How do you interpret it? Is this the jerk who sent the Carole Landis picture and the magazine-letter note, or is it just more of the humdrum crazy-fan ilk?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but my guess is that she’s performing for Pat. Boo-hoo, ‘I’m scared, look at me.’ Pat’s all empathy. She’s Monroe’s perfect audience.”
“Yes, she is. And she’s your perfect audience, as well. Don’t go all red-faced, Lieutenant. I’m the brother Pat confides in, and her confidences err on the candid side.”
I grabbed my briefcase and stood up. My legs fluttered. Bobby skunk-eyed me.
“Take care, son. You toss a kidnap suspect off a cliff, and it can come back and haunt you.”