(LOS ANGELES, 9/5–9/8/62)
I got five minutes with the Kahuna. Big fucking deal. Ratfuck Bobby read Bill Parker’s note. Big fucking deal. He said, “Keep up the good work on all fronts.” He said, “Yes, Freddy’s grand-jury play still looks good.” He said, “No—I’m still considering the possibility of prosecuting Freddy and his thugs.”
Ratfuck cited my evidential paucity. The wife-swap party was an evidential bust. The paper chase turned up jackshit. Zero per the plate checks. Zero per the green sheets. Zero suspicious phone calls. Zero per employment checks. Nobody worked at Fox. Fox-allied swappers and pervs stayed away. I knew why. My Foxtone-cards-under-the-windshield fuckup warned them off.
The Hats worked the Sex Creep file. They’ve finished their restructure. Morty Bendish is three divorcées into his Sex Creep sextravaganza. He lays on pulsing prose, scare tactics, pop-off-the-page paranoia. He utilizes numerous euphemisms for semen. He hammers the divorcées’ “resemblance” to Marilyn Monroe. I edit Morty. I tell him what to write. Grind the suspense, Morty. It’s nothing but a dry hump until the Creep snuffs Marilyn.
The Mirror ran slam-bam photo spreads. Dumped furniture. Slashed heirlooms. Medicine-chest debris. Red devils and yellow jackets dumped on bathroom floors. I edited the pieces, I read through the pieces, I thought through them as I read. I told Morty to crank the divorcée angle. Divorcées connoted desperate sex and ennui. They were nymphos. They lived in upscale nympho nooks. Marilyn lived in a nympho nook. I thought through the nympho-divorcée bit. I conceded hyperbole. I pondered common denominators. Did the women know one another? How did the Sex Creep get hip to those specific women?
The Mirror reported a 16% circulation spurt. The Sex Creep show was hot ink. Creep calls swamped the West L.A. station switchboard. Westside stiffs were outraged and scared. They demanded enhanced police protection. Nat Denkins flogs the Sex Creep on his nightly radio show. Creep-O-Mania scorches L.A. TV/radio ham George Putnam stokes the fear. “Inexorably, the Sex Creep’s creepiness moves us ever closer to Marilyn Monroe.”
No shit, Sherlock.
The Sex Creep investigation proceeds. It’s the pulse of the Monroe/kidnap/BHPD burglary jobs. I work All Of It. It’s tail work and brainwork. I search for Paul Mitchell Grenier. He’s a night bird. That entails night work. I brainwork in my cubicle. I put in eight-hour days there. I stare at my bulletin boards and file sheets and think. I stare at file photos and think. I plumb theoretical lines, case flank to case flank. I repeatedly reread the BHPD file. I’ve memorized the Dewhurst/Dawes/Danforth notes slipped inside. BHPD staked out Caviar Catering. They ran R&I checks on dicey young men and women employed there. Ronnie Dewhurst came up clean. Some cop snapped mug shots, regardless.
“Sink him, Freddy.” The long drop and big smash. Ronnie Dewhurst as Richie Danforth.
BHPD’s burglary string. Five jobs, altogether. Two sets of rubber-glove prints at all locations. One large-finger man, one small-finger man. Near-identical glove seams on prints at the Sex Creep and BHPD jobs.
They’re perfect eyeball matches. They’re not quite courtroom-valid. Defense lawyers could twist the matches twelve different ways. So what? This job’s not going to court.
Link the throughlines. Link the case flanks.
Take the Sex Creep jobs. The spotlight’s on glove prints and jizz stains. We know his blood type. He’s a type AB-negative secretor. Harry Crowder stiffed a call to the state Adult Authority. He’s scrounging data on paroled 459 men, going back five years. Ditto data on freaks with masturbation MO’s. Max and I are going over every FI card for the full Creepoid time frame. We’ll pounce from there. We’ll stretch all late-night prowlers/loiterers/nocturnal riffraff who vibe wrong. We’ll read through the PD’s apprehended burglar file and see who vibes wrong. We’ll recanvass the six Creep locations, with this in mind:
Is the Creep a local Palisades or Brentwood guy? Does he live within his target area and covet women he sees routinely? Is he Palisades/Brentwood affluent? Does he have access to house-deed records/estate-probate records/divorce records? Has he dream-cultivated a sisterhood of solitary women who drive him ever closer to a Creepoid consummation with Marilyn Monroe?
All Of It. All case flanks lead back to Marilyn Monroe.
I had Lowell Farr’s Monroe portrait matted and framed. It now hangs on my north cubicle wall. Lowell portrays her pal Marilyn as pure disorder and disjuncture. Marilyn’s eyes are her own eyes. They look back at Marilyn and judge her insane. The painting reflects the perv art of Weimar Berlin and Monroe’s penchant for urban-grotesque photography. Lowell’s perceptive. She sees through Monroe now. I peeped her as she slapped paint on Monroe’s living room wall. That portrait was the run-up to this portrait. This portrait drove me back to the Sex Creep’s six divorcées.
I’d already peeped divorcées 1, 2, and 3. I swung by the homes of 4, 5, and 6 on full-dark summer nights. The Creep’s moving east. He’s into Brentwood now. He’s planned hot dates with Arden Jane Brownleigh/Lorraine (NMI) Smith/Dorothy Dilys Trent. He’s escalating. He broke a glass-enclosed photograph of Brownleigh and her ex-husband. He stuck pins in their faces. He left Lorraine Smith a note: “You’re like Cape Canaveral. You’re my launching pad to greater things.” He left Dorothy Trent a morgue photo of Carole Landis.
I extrapolated. It was 3/12/62. Monroe had just moved into Fifth Helena. Trent was a morgue-photo dry run for Monroe.
I observed Brownleigh, Smith, and Trent. Brownleigh cultivated the vapid Monroe look. Smith and Trent did not. I caught all three women at home alone. They evinced loneliness and agitation. They smoked and drank to excess. They tried to watch TV and read racy books. They tossed the books and flipped from baseball games to sitcoms. The Leffler-Meadows paperwork did not reveal interconnected relationships among the six women. How did the Creep key in on these six women? They were film-star surrogates in his mind. Landis and Monroe bookended his madness. The divorcées were avatars of prosaic sexuality and dashed wedlock. They were more than random and less than essential to him. Their divorcée status struck a chord in him. He saw them and gassed on them. He peeped them over time and developed a lust jones. He didn’t ponder the chord they struck. Landis and Monroe were movie stars. They struck everybody. They were safer. The Sex Creep did not know why he did the crazy shit that he did. The divorcées took him deeper. He did not acknowledge this.
I stare at my bulletin boards. I stare at Lowell’s portrait of Marilyn. I think. I think about women. The divorcées. Lowell, Pat, and Lois. Gwen Perloff, most of all.
She hasn’t contacted me. I want her to read me wrong and sense that I’m all about the money. I want her to tour-guide me through Fox in duress and tell me how All Of It coheres.
I need to interview José Bolaños. He’s holed up in Mexico. It might be impossible for now. I need to interview Lowell Farr. I’ve got a strong hunch here. Where are Marilyn Monroe’s stash of everyday letters/love letters/fan letters/further communiqués from the Creep? She didn’t bank-vault them. They weren’t in her basement. Her lawyer had no idea. They weren’t listed in the Coroner’s Office inventory of her house. I think she gave them to Lowell Farr.
I need to reinterview Ingrid Irmgard. She lied to me. She sold Peter Lawford bearer bonds. Her boyfriend Juan Manuel Salas has a burglary sheet. He got popped in ’54. He was at Chino concurrent with Paul Mitchell Grenier. He had a dumped 459 beef in ’57. His PO thinks he’s clean. He’s an ace TV repairman these days.
I need to reinterview Natasha Lytess. I need to reinterview Del Kinney, Roddy McDowall, and Timmy Berlin. I need to hit them with this:
Tell me what I need to do to find Paul Mitchell Grenier. I want to put the screws to this psycho sack of shit. I want him to set some things straight.
Nat Denkins and Phil Irwin leapfrog-tail Deedee Grenier. She goes to Rancho Park Golf Course, Jeanne Carmen’s pill parties, and Linda’s Little Log Cabin. She avoids Norm’s Nest. She steers clear of Paul Mitchell.
I’ve haunted the Klondike, the Falcon’s Lair, the Jaguar, the Tradesman. Nobody’s seen Paul Mitchell. So, I think. So, I read. My new favorite author? It’s Paul de River.
I’ve read The Sexual Criminal eight times. The Doc inspired Monroe’s final idiot immersion. I know he’s giving a talk at the Wilshire Ebell, three days hence. I’ll be there. I’ll salt the audience with my boys and bring an Intel camera crew. We’ll induce fear and consternation. We’ll get the old quack all shook up.
Sid Leffler studied under de River. He’s written true-detective rag pieces. He notched walk-through tape recordings at the six divorcée sites. He described the physical details and laid down verbose critiques of the Sex Creep’s motivations. Leffler’s florid prose style mimes de River’s. Leffler: probable de River obsessive. Monroe: certain de River obsessive.
I run out of brain steam around 3:00 a.m. I brain-screen women’s faces then. Lois, Pat, Gwen. I imprint details until their features merge and my mind goes blank.