The Empty Glass (12 page)

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8

30.

I
saw the funeral on TV. I was lying in the hospital room on the fifth floor staring up into the set that was bolted to the wall and tilting toward me. My head was propped on two pillows; tubes were in my nose, a hep-lock IV drip taped to my arm.

“The curtain falls,” the TV anchor said into the camera. He stood before the wall that separated the mortuary grounds from the street and all the staring people. “Brief and simple are the rites that mark the funeral of Marilyn Monroe. We grasp at straws, as if knowing how she died—or why—might enable us to bring her back . . .”

They showed Westwood Village, where the funeral would be held. The sign looked cheap, like a roadside attraction, a small “Swiss” hotel along some unused highway:

WESTWOOD VILLAGE

MEMORIAL PARK AND MORTUARY

Forty men with walkie-talkies stood outside.

People shouted and took pictures.

According to the
Times
, “special police from movie studios” and “agents of the Pinkerton Detective Agency” would be inside. Monroe would be wearing her wig from
The Misfits
and a chartreuse dress she’d purchased in Florence. No jewelry. A solid bronze casket would be lined with champagne-colored velvet.

The Suicide Squad was “still active,” the
Times
said, quoting Tabachnick saying they had talked to doctors in the case and friends of the dead actress. It quoted Farberow saying that it may be “another two weeks” before Curphey’s office reached a “final decision.”

Arthur Miller said he did not think she had taken her own life. Publicist Pat Newcomb said the same, adding that she had made plans: On Monday, Marilyn had an appointment with her lawyer. On Tuesday she was scheduled to meet with J. Lee Thompson, producer of
The Guns of Navarone
. On September 12, she was scheduled to be in New York for an
Esquire
cover shoot.

Suicide, the paper said, ranks as the ninth cause of death in California.

•   •   •

E
very morning, the week that followed, they woke me at four-thirty so that one of the residents could take my temperature and blood pressure. Why these tests seemed more important than sleep, I have no idea—especially since they kept telling me to “get some rest.”

I got so little. Partly because of the noises in the place, but mostly because I didn’t stop thinking about what Jo had said about the sand in the pool near the Lawford house. On the day I was released, I asked for a Yellow Pages and paged through the H’s to “Helicopter.”

There were four helicopter companies in Los Angeles but only one in Santa Monica. That was Conners on Clover Field. It was a fifteen-acre landing site named for World War I pilot Lieutenant Greayer “Grubby” Clover. It was the home of Douglas Aircraft, which had moved to an abandoned movie studio in 1922 and started making military planes. They tested them on Clover Field.

During World War II, Douglas realized that their plant was vulnerable to air attack, so they worked with a team of Warner Brothers set designers to camouflage it. They stretched five million square feet of chicken wire over four hundred poles, covering the terminal, hangars, and parking lots. On top of this, they built fake wood-frame houses complete with garages, fences, clotheslines—and even “trees” made of the same chicken wire. They spray-painted chicken feathers to look like leaves, then covered the runway with green paint and turned the largest hangar into a hill.

The place was so well disguised that even the pilots who knew about it had trouble finding it, and when the camouflage was eliminated, in 1945, the neighbors mourned as if a monument had been torn down.

I picked up the telephone and called Conners.

A man answered. “Hello?”

Did I really want to do this? Was it worth it? Jack Clemmons was in Italy. The doctors were in the Côte d’Azur. Eunice Murray was God only knew where, along with Pat Newcomb. They had all disappeared, leaving me the last man standing, but what price would I pay for the truth?

I hung up.

At 2:15, I put on the clothes that Jo had brought.

A monogram had been stitched in red above the left pocket of the new shirt:

JEH
, it read.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15

31.

I
wasn’t thinking about Marilyn and wouldn’t think of Marilyn and the only reason I went back to Joe’s on Melrose was to get my ruined car. I didn’t intend to walk inside the place, and I wouldn’t have walked inside the place—except for the fact that I couldn’t find a pay phone on the sidewalk.

Joe was mopping up the bar as I walked to the bank of lit phones to the right of the door. I sat on the stool under a phone and put a dime in and called a tow truck.

“Be right there.”

I hung up.

I would not think of the diary. I wasn’t thinking of the diary as I played “Young World” on the Wurlitzer and sat at the bar. I smelled the familiar and comforting smell of damp hops. I saw the wood scored with pierced hearts and long-ago loves, the black lines from burned cigarettes. But I’ve said this already, haven’t I?

I went up to the bar.

“Jesus,” Joe said. “What happened to you?”

“Cut myself shaving.”

“You and Albert Anastasia.”

“Very funny.”

“What can I get you?”

“Budweiser.”

“Kinda early, isn’t it?”

“I had a rough day.”

“You look it.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Anytime.”

I waited for the tow truck. I wasn’t thinking about Marilyn. I was on vacation, after all, but after another Budweiser (okay, three), the truck still hadn’t arrived and I really had to pee.

Sorry for the vulgarity.

“No problem,” you say.

I stood from the bar with the foam still in the glass and walked past the table to the bathroom. I wasn’t going to look for what was left of the diary, but the truth is that I didn’t use the urinal. I used a stall—the same stall, in fact, where I had hidden the torn pages.

I was whistling and pissing when I couldn’t help myself: I looked up to see the tile over the toilet slipped just slightly to the right. Past it was darkness, and . . . what?

Pages?

I flushed, closed the cover, stood and pushed the tile over, my head rising from the light into the darkness, eyes above the ceiling line, staring across the tile tops, past rattraps and rusted pipes, searching for the diary.

“It’s gone,” I said back in the phone booth. “Someone took it, Jo. I came back to get the car, and—”

“Mr. Fitzgerald?” A woman’s voice.

“Jo?”

“This ain’t Jo.” It was Mabel, the colored maid. “Jo ain’t here.”

“Where is she?”

“That club on Sunset.”

•   •   •

T
he club was Ciro’s, the place on the Strip that, like so much else, had devolved from its status as a glamour spot for movie stars to a mostly empty place that was, that evening, as quiet as a chapel mid-week. It
was
mid-week, after all, which meant the only people in the place were serious drinkers, as the blonde who sat like a living doll with Jo at the table in the corner was a serious drinker.

Listen: By living doll, I don’t mean that she was beautiful. I mean that she was scary, as a life-sized doll propped in a chair with a highball and fried blond hair would, in fact, be scary. She waved her burning cigarette over the cloudy empty glass, pulpy limes lolling in the melting ice.

Her name was Jeanne Carmen. Now you ask who that is, Doctor; no one knows anymore. I sure as hell didn’t. The truth is that you might see her on the
Late Show
. She was the daughter of the lighthouse keeper in
The Monster of Piedras Blancas
and Lillibet in
Untamed Youth
. She is now a trick-shot golfer and a friend of the famous—mostly Marilyn’s. They had been, she said, “pill buddies,” sharing downers and stories of the men that Jeanne called her “extracurriculars.”

As for Jo: She was wearing sporty Capri pants colored with Picasso blurs of greens, reds, oranges, odd browns; that and sugary pink lipstick. She looked like an unfinished art project, but it was Fashion. “What are you doing here?” she asked me.

“I’m looking for you.”

“I’m doing an interview.”

“I need to talk.”

“You look like Don Taylor,” Jeanne Carmen said. “Anyone tell you that?”

“No. I’m Ben.”

“Jeanne Carmen.”

She transferred her cigarette to her left hand and extended her right wrist. It was bent like a fairy’s. She wanted me to kiss, not shake, it. So I did. Her whole face puckered in a smile. She smelled of an Eau de Something that only partly masked a deeper smell, that of nicotine and, more, decay.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said. “I don’t even know who Don Taylor is.”

“He was in
Naked City
. But he wasn’t naked. More’s the pity. Isn’t that what Shakespeare said?”

“He said a lot of things.”

“More’s the pity. You look like a young Don Taylor. Were you ever a soldier?”

“No.”

“Don was, in and out of bed. Lovely boy. Would you like a drink?”

“Wild Turkey, neat.”

“Yoo-hoo!” She tried to flag one of the waiters who prowled the damp place like superannuated penguins. They all seemed to have bald heads shiny under strands of unwashed hair and mottled with sunspots so large they looked like continents. “Damn them.” She stood and walked across the room to the bar.

I turned to Jo. She was all angles and attitude now, her voice cold and clipped.

“You get out of here, Ben.”

“Listen,” I said. “I went back to the bar. It’s where I hid the extra pages. No one would know they were there, unless—”

“Ben, you’re like Bluebird’s wife.”

“Blue
beard
.”

“Whatever. Stop opening that door. You said the heart of all morality is staying out of certain rooms. So clever of you! You’re a clever boy. But the heart of all
safety
is staying out of certain rooms, too. Now, stop being Pandora. Stop opening the box.”

“
You’re
opening it, too.”

“I’m a journalist.”

“You’re Annie Laurie.”

“Not if I can help it. Will you listen to me?”

“I’m listening.”

“They’ve threatened you.”

“They did more than that.”

“They did you a favor: They let you live. But guess what happens next time?”

“It will be a watermelon?”

“There!” Jeanne said, pulling her chair out again and settling back at the table. “That’s settled! One Wild Turkey, coming up. Now.” Her hand was on my left thigh. “Where were we?”

“I think we’re finished,” Jo said.

“I was telling you about the tape,” she said.

“What tape?” I asked.

Jo said:
“Enough.”

Jeanne winced against the stream of smoke that rose from her cigarette, frowned with that stained mouth, and stood, gripping the back of her chair. She stared down at me. “You’re lovely, Don. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Only Shakespeare.”

“Shut! Up!” she said, and left.

I turned to Jo. “What was
that
all about?”

“I was finished with the interview.”

“You were hiding something.”

“Or protecting you. Let’s get a drink.”

“I already did.”

“Well, I’m thirsty,” she said, trying to flag down the waiter.

“Good luck,” I said. “And now about these clothes.”

32.

T
he clothes: I still have the shirt, Doc. It is hanging on the back of the chair that I am sitting in. When you look over my shoulder, I know what you are thinking. I suppose that I can read your mind.

You want to see the shirt.

I stand, take it off the chair, and hand it to you. You feel the fabric in your fingers, then touch the monogram.

“JEH,” you say. “Who’s that?”

“I didn’t know.”

“But you know now.”

I nod.

“Tell me, Ben: Why did you trust Jo Carnahan?”

•   •   •

T
he clothes that you brought me are pretty fancy,” I said.

“And you look pretty in them.”

“Except they’re not mine.”

She kept waving for the waiter.

“Jo, someone else’s monogram is on this shirt. Whose monogram is it?”

“What,” she said, “do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhinoceros?”

“You know the answer to that one.”

“I’m sorry. It’s embarrassing. I didn’t buy them new.”

“You didn’t.”

“I got them secondhand. Over on Melrose. But they’re beautiful. That’s all that matters. Okay, so I’m not as swell as I’d like you to think.”

“Your hands are shaking.”

“I never know what to do with my hands,” she said. “I need something.”

“Light a cigarette.”

She did and took a drag, squinted against the smoke, and stared at something over my shoulder. “Wait a second,” she said.

“What?”

“Don’t turn around until I tell you.”

“Why?”

“I said, don’t turn around.”

I kept staring. She dragged on that cigarette, blowing the smoke out.

“Your hands,” I said. “They’re—”

“Now.”

He was a tall stout man with gray hair that was Brylcreemed and combed in a way that made it look almost plastic. He wore round dark sunglasses and a serge double-breasted bespoke jacket. It was unbuttoned over his gut. His nose was thin and long. He had rings on both hands. He was smoking a cigarette, extending his right pinkie in a way that would have seemed effete if he hadn’t seemed so menacing.

That’s the word:
menacing
. He had what I later learned was called the Mafia stare: You don’t look someone in the eyes. You look at their forehead and don’t blink.

“I saw him in the grocery store this morning,” Jo said.

“
You
go grocery shopping?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t strike me as a coupon clipper.”

“Who said anything about coupons?”

“Jo, you hardly eat.”

“Cigarettes. Will you listen?”

“I’m listening.”

“You know how supermarkets have those kind of geometric stacks of canned peas and things? Marvels of engineering the Egyptians might envy?”

“I don’t know if the Egyptians—”

“Humor me.”

“Okay.”

“I passed a stack of canned peas and there he was, holding one of the cans up at me.”

“So.”

“He asked if I wanted the peas, and I said no. He said the peas were good for you and also delicious. I said I wasn’t interested and please leave me alone. I was only looking for cigarettes and maybe some Ovaltine. He said the Ovaltine was in aisle seven. Said I was in the wrong aisle. Well, I wanted to get out, so I went to the checkout and looked behind me. I didn’t see him—until I went out to my car.”

“Your car.”

“He was staring through the window.”

Now the man dropped a dime into the jukebox, hit some letter-number combination, and turned toward us as the vinyl spun.

“Young World” began playing.

“Come on,” Jo said. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“The Dairy Queen,” she said. “Where else?”