The Empty Glass (19 page)

54.

R
ewind, Doc, to the point in the tape where I first entered the Evidence Room, carrying the log that Carl had given me:

CASE NO.: 81128

DECEDENT NAME: Marilyn Monroe

CONTENTS:

1. A vial of 25 Nembutal capsules from San Vicente Pharmacy

2. A vial of ten chloral hydrate tablets filled on July 25

3. A small key with a red plastic cover labeled “15”

4. The water glass

LOCATION: Box 24, Row 13-B

•   •   •

I
wanted No. 3. I knew what it was
for
now. So I went back to LACCO, unlocked the Sheriff’s Evidence Room with that first purloined key, and opened the box. I removed the small red key, left Pneumonia Hall, and drove back out to Brentwood, where I waited for the sun to fall. At 8:51, I parked in the cul-de-sac and walked under the dark jacarandas down Sixth to another cul-de-sac. There was a locked gate to the right. It fronted on a driveway. I vaulted over it, walked along the strip of land between the driveway and another house, and all the way back to Miss Monroe’s pool.

I walked left along the narrow lawn to the window of the room where she had died. I pulled myself up and dropped down.

At the end of the hall, I stepped into the living room. The furniture had been removed. Nothing was left, not even the feeling you sometimes get from empty houses—a lingering sense of the energy that had once existed. It was a battery without juice, the husk of an orange in a garbage can.

But the mail was there. The post office had kept delivering it. They always do. It was under the door:

A bill from I. Magnin’s, a bill from BankAmericard, a letter from someone named “Peters,” and (last) an envelope from the Greyhound Bus Station in North Hollywood.

I opened the Greyhound envelope, a federal offense. But everything I had done recently was some kind of offense. And they were going to kill me anyway.

Inside I found a bill for bus locker #15.

•   •   •

T
he light was low, the place gray and airless. Sad army posters peeled from the walls, and vending machines with chocolate bars that had seen better days were tethered to the wall sockets by mouse-eaten cords. The few conscious souls who prowled the station at this hour (Mexican convicts and tea freaks, wasted girls with sullen come-ons who trailed strands of bleached hair like an army of balding Rapunzels) moved like some sentient species of sea plankton.

I walked to the long wall of lockers, put the key in #15, and found what I was looking for.

55.

A
mahl and the Night Visitors
is a one-act opera by Gian Carlo Menotti. It’s a Christmas classic, the first opera composed specifically for TV, broadcast live on NBC’s
Hallmark Hall of Fame
on Christmas Eve, 1951. It was inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s painting
The Adoration of the Magi
, which Menotti saw on a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in—

“What does that have to do with anything?” you ask.

I point to the evidence:

5.
Amahl and the Night Visitors

“So?”

“It’s what I found at Colony Records.”

“Why did you go to Colony Records?”

“It was the only place that I could think of that would have a reel-to-reel.”

•   •   •

T
he store was on La Cienega near Sunset, a labyrinth of walls stocked with dusty used records (
The Music Man
); plastic-wrapped new ones (101 Strings, Bill Cosby); and rows of reel-to-reel tapes.
Amahl and the Night Visitors
was playing when I walked in, the man with the clipped Vandyke behind the front counter closing his eyes as he conducted the unseen orchestra with a pencil.

“Excuse me,” I said.

He looked up.

I showed him the Sony tape I had found in the bus locker. “I really want to hear this,” I said, “and wondered if—”

“We’re already listening.”

“But it’s Henry Mancini.”

That seemed to comfort him.

At first my tape was filled with odd sounds—clicking and indistinct. Hangers jangling in a closet. Laughter and someone talking in a vague way on the phone. But it wasn’t long before I heard the unmistakable sound of sex.

“That isn’t ‘Moon River,’” the manager said.

“No.”

“It’s not ‘Baby Elephant Walk,’ either.” He turned the tape off. “I think you had better leave.”

From the envelope you now remove a series of photos, each showing a close-up of a man’s terrified face, each more savage and brutal than the last.

“Why did you beat up the photographer?” you ask.

“I didn’t.”

“When you left Colony Records, you saw Duane Mikkelson sitting in a car, and you beat him to a pulp.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, s
omeone
did,” you say. “If it wasn’t you—”

It’s true that, when I left the store, I saw the car across the street. I walked to it and stared through the window at Mikkelson’s grinning mouth. It’s true that I pulled him out onto the street. It’s true that I threw him onto the ground, put my shoe under his chin, and told him to drop the camera.

“You sonnavabitch,” he said. “Cheating on your wife.”

“I never cheated—”

“The camera doesn’t lie.”

“But cameramen do.”

From the cars around us, four men emerged in dungarees and plaid shirts. The first was the same psychopathically grinning Jimmy Cagney with the porkpie hat I had seen at Triple XXX. He stood with the three others, Irish thugs who looked ready to plant me in the pavement—but they picked up Mikkelson instead, and hung him in the air from the back of his suit like a scarecrow. His feet kicked, swimming in nothing, as Cagney slammed his fist into the shutterbug’s nose—and another man grabbed hold of the camera.

Blood.

“Hey!” Mikkelson said. “I
work
for you guys.”

Flash!

This went on until he could hardly speak, his face the pulpy tomato you see here in the pictures.

Now you ask: “What did he mean by ‘I work for you guys’?”

“He meant LAPD.”

“How do
you
know?”

Captain Hamilton stepped out from one of the cars. He took the tape and the diary and then arrested me: “For assault and battery,” he said.

“Don’t get fresh,” I said as Cagney patted down my pants.

“He’s a comedian, see,” the captain said. “Hey, comedian. Ever hear the joke about the man who beat up a photographer?”

“No.”

“He went to jail,” he said, opening my wallet. “Where’s your license?”

“In my wallet.”

“All I see is this.” He handed me the Get Out of Jail Free card. “It won’t work. You go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go—”

56.

I
did not collect two hundred dollars.

I was cuffed and searched in the hall on the concrete against the red wall; they patted me down and removed my property, putting my belt and shoes in plastic bags. They even took my socks off. They took the handcuffs off and patted me down again, face hard against the wall.

“You liked frisking me so much, you had to do it a second time?” I asked.

“Yeah,” one cop said. “And your sister was there, too.”

I waited to be booked in the holding tank. I waited for I wasn’t sure how long, until—

In the Booking Area, the jailer stood behind a desk against cheap wood paneling. On the desk was a typewriter.

They took my fingerprints on an ink pad on a small shitty table near the desk. They took my photo from two angles, front and side. My booking number was displayed on a metal rectangular box that extended, like a sideways T, from a galvanized pole. The jailer loosened it with a screw, moving it up to just under my chin.

“Name?” the jailer asked.

“Ben Fitzgerald.”

“DOB.”

“Seven/eleven/twenty-nine.”

“Occupation.”

“Deputy coroner, Suicide Notes and Weapons. Or, well, it used to be.”

“Used to?”

“I’m not sure it’s my job anymore.”

“Unemployed,” he said. “Sex?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah, and your sister was there, too.
Sex?
”

“Male.”

“Height.”

“Five foot eleven inches.”

“Any medical conditions?”

“No.”

The jailer typed all this on the form. I signed it. The bail was preset. They let me make one phone call. I called Verona Gardens:

“Rose,” I said. “It’s Ben. I’m calling from—”

“That hotel?”

“Worse. I only have five minutes. Max okay?”

“What is this about?”

“I need help.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m in jail. I can explain.”

“Ben.”

“I need bail.”

“You think I have the money?”

“You’re dating Johnny. He’s a mobster. Maybe he could peel off some of that Monopoly money and head on over to the—”

“He’s not
that
kind of mobster.”

“What other kind
is
there?”

“I really have to go.”

“Time’s up,” the man said.

•   •   •

T
here were five male Felony cells with heavy old bars in the jail. Mine was 10 × 10 and had a toilet, a sink, a mirror, and a bed. They gave me a bag of hygiene supplies (toothbrush, soap, and a towel) and locked me in.

So I waited and I smoked. I don’t know how much time passed. All I knew was that the pile of butts kept growing. It was like
this
place, Doc. There were no windows; the only light came from the bare bulb on the ceiling.

They slipped the
Mirror
under the cell door. In it, I found an item about a man named Ben Fitzgerald, a former member of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office who, drunk and disorderly, had beaten a photographer and was now being held on bail in the Men’s Central Jail on Bauchet:

Fitzgerald’s wife recently filed for divorce on account of “physical and mental cruelty” and is living in seclusion with their son because, sources say, she is “afraid for her life.”

•   •   •

A
t some point the guard slipped a tray of food under the cell door. I stared at the congealed Salisbury steak and the cup of soup, a small carton of milk smelling like the refrigerator. I wasn’t hungry. I let the tray sit and stretched out on the bed.

In the middle of the night—or what
seemed
like night—I woke to the sound of scraping. Two rats were eating the food that I had left behind.

In the morning, they were dead.

The guard was unlocking the door. “Rise and shine,” he said. “Someone paid your bail, mister.”

“Rose?”

“No,” he said. “Your brother.”

THURSDAY, AUGUST 23

57.

I
don’t have a brother, but this is what I knew about my “brother,” Doc: He drank a quart of Scotch and smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. He spent Hollywood nights in a Caddy filled with girls he called his “Little Sweeties.” He’d been an LAPD dick for ten years but ran afoul of Chief William Parker so went out on his own as a private eye. But when he was convicted of doping a horse at Santa Anita, his license was suspended. That didn’t stop him, though.

He just went underground.

His face was half jowls and half eyes. I’m repeating myself, but listen: His eyes were black and they followed you even when his head did not, like Jesus in paintings. He wore paisley shirts open at his wide collar, his chest hair matching his white sideburns. My brother looked a lot like Fred Otash.

That’s because he
was
Fred Otash.

Now you tell me that I’m crazy: “This is beginning to sound like paranoid schizophrenia.”

“Come on.”

“A common delusion among schizos is that they’re being singled out for harm—the government is taping their phone calls or a coworker is poisoning their coffee or they are being stalked by a master wiretapper who shows up at the jail and pretends to be their brother.”

“But he
did
.”

“Sure,” you say. “See what I mean?”

“Heya, brother,” Fred said.

“I don’t
have
a brother.”

“He gets like this,” Fred said to the guard. “Goes through phases and all. It’s getting worse. I don’t know what to do.”

“Take care of him, huh?”

“Sure,” Fred said. “It’s what I’m here for.”

“He’s gonna kill me,” I said.

Fred shot the guard another sad look.

“Best of luck, buddy,” the guard said.

He left us alone.

Fred took the Smith & Wesson from under his jacket and held it to my gut. “Are you ready to behave?”

I didn’t respond.

“Say ‘yes,’ baby brother.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He kissed me on the forehead. “I’m sure you know why I’m here.”

“I have an idea.”

“A tape. A Sony reel-to-reel.”

“Captain Hamilton took it.”

“But the tape he took was not the tape you found. I’m sure you can imagine the surprise when we played it for some powerful people, brother, who were wakened in the night to hear an
opera
.”

“An opera.”

•   •   •

N
ow you turn your tape off and remove another from Evidence: Item No. 5. You thread its brown strands into the take-up reel,
REWIND
,
FAST FORWARD
, and
PLAY
:

“Oh Mother!” a boy soprano sings. “. . . There’s never been such a sky—”

You hit
STOP
.
“Amahl and the Night Visitors,”
you say. You light another cigarette, drag, and blow smoke in a stream to the ceiling.

“You never know what you might find in a bus station locker after midnight,” I say.

“I know what you found in the bus station locker after midnight, Ben, and it was not Gian Carlo Menotti’s one-act opera. Now for the last time—”

W
here’s the tape?” Fred asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Oh, really?” He reached inside his pocket, withdrawing a small purple dinosaur:

The Toy Surprise.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Hey, it’s swell to see you, kid,” he said. “It’s been a while. Now, let’s talk about old times.”

He led me from the jail. Out the front door, we stepped straight into a camera crew, the TV lights flooding my eyes.

“Good evening, dear ones,” Jo said. “This is Annie Laurie.”