The Empty Glass (3 page)

6.

T
he flashlight was cheap, but that was okay. I didn’t need a good one. I paid for it at True Value and put it on the shotgun seat, took Temple to Wilshire and San Vicente back down to the numbered Helenas and the Brentwood hacienda.

“Relative humidity is sixty-two percent,” said the man on the Rambler radio. “The temperature humidity index stands at seventy-three, and the wind is calm. Marilyn Monroe is dead, apparently from an overdose of sleeping pills. An investigation is ongoing, but here is the statement from Deputy Coroner Cronkite . . .”

The day was ending, the lights in the basin below the spray of palms spreading out like fire in a grid under the sky. There was a moon. You could see the smaller lights from cars along the highway winding like a silver river through the trees.

I parked past the scalloped gate in the wall on Fifth.

•   •   •

N
ow you ask why I returned, because I care about my job, but there are opportunities in life for gaining knowledge and experience, Doc, and I couldn’t stop thinking of that little red memory book. It seemed to contain the solution to a mystery. All right,
and
I was covering my ass. Curphey knew something. He knew that people who overdose on chloral smell of pear; he knew that anyone with all those Nembutals in her stomach would have been yellow inside. He knew what it meant that we’d found no refractile crystals. But he didn’t like that
I
knew—or had noticed—all this. He was playing some kind of a game, and I didn’t want to get screwed the way that I’d been screwed before.

So go back through the microfilm, Doc, and in January you will see images of me testifying at the hearings, along with the headline:

ACCUSED OF WILLFUL MISUSE OF OFFICE!

Curphey was charged with nine counts involving the removal of organ tissue from bodies during postmortem examinations in cases that involved accidents or “mystery deaths.” That’s what the paper called them. He had asked for the tissue to be removed even when the organs were not involved with the cause of death; the relatives of the deceased were never told how their dear ones were mutilated.

County Board of Supervisors chairman Frank G. Bonelli testified that his office received more complaints about the coroner’s department than any other agency, and Supervisor Hahn called for an explanation of “pig pen” conditions in the LACCO storage room at 754 Kohler.

I knew that storage room; I had taken the tissue samples there, but that’s not what I told the jury.

After we won, we all went out to celebrate on the county’s dime, which led to the images that you have surely seen, Doctor. You’ve heard of the
L.A. Mirror
?

“Of course.”

“My wife, of all people, believed what they wrote. Which is why she kicked me out—”

“Stick to the point,” you say.

Okay: The cul-de-sac was dark.

A cop stood outside the gate, a kid puffing out his chest like a bird.

“Evening,” I said.

“Evening, sir.”

“Need to get inside.”

“There’s a sign on the door. Says ‘Any person breaking into or entering these premises will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.’”

I showed him my badge. “LACCO.”

“I can read. I am under orders not to let in anyone else from the coroner’s office.”

“I work for Curphey.”

“Orders from Curphey: no one inside.”

“Look, I’m in a bit of trouble—”

“Buddy. Read my lips, okay. Get the fuck out of here.”

“I just hoped that—”

“What part of ‘get the fuck out of here’ don’t you understand?”

“The ‘fuck’ part,” I said. “I flunked biology.”

He reached for his gun.

“All right.” I raised my hands and backed up. “Don’t get all Gary Cooper on me.”

I put the car in reverse, right arm around the passenger seat as if it were a girl, and looked back through the window. I was careful not to clip the cars parked on both sides of the street as I pulled into a dark driveway, then took a right out of Fifth.

On Carmelina, I parked and sat and thought and needed to stop thinking. I got in trouble when I thought, but then so did Galileo. Not to mention Jack Paar.

I got out of the car.

There were no streetlights, so I 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 through the backyard all the way to Miss Monroe’s pool.

I took a left and walked along the narrow lawn to the window of the room where she had died. The glass had already been broken the night before, so I pulled myself up and dropped down inside.

•   •   •

A
nd here the tape breaks. It’s at 12583. “Fuck,” you say, and stub your Chesterfield, trying to splice it together. Then you feed it back through the reels and hit
RECORD
.

“So you climbed inside.”

“I found the diary where I’d left it, Doctor, under the pillow in the Telephone Room, and when I picked it up I remembered what Jo had said about the bathroom and the carpet.”

“What about it?” you ask.

“Well, she’d said there was a bathroom in the housekeeper’s room and mentioned the height of the carpet pile. And suddenly I knew what all this meant.”

“What did it mean?”

I went into Eunice Murray’s room and flipped the switch, but the power had already been shut off. I shone the flashlight around. The room was neat, orderly, the same layout as Marilyn’s, the bed against the left wall. On the opposite side of the bed, near the window overlooking the pool, a door on the left led into a bathroom that connected to the Telephone Room.

So let’s get this straight, Doctor: Mrs. Murray said she’d woken up because she needed to use the bathroom. That (she claimed) was how and why she’d seen the light under Marilyn’s door. But why would she have gone into the hall when her bathroom was accessible through her own room?

Then I went inside Marilyn’s room. I put the flashlight on the floor facing the hall and closed the door. The carpet pile was so high that it scraped against the underside of the door when I closed it.

The carpet hid the light.

“I don’t think this adds up to much,” you say.

“I think it adds up to a lot.”

There are logical problems with Mrs. Murray’s testimony, Doctor; there was a four-hour gap between the time the docs arrived and the call to the police. We found no yellow color in the digestive tract, and no refractile crystals: no evidence that Marilyn had
ingested
pills. The body showed dual lividity, which indicates that it was moved.

“So?” you say.

“
Why
was the body moved?”

“Let’s stick to the subject at hand,” you say. “You found the diary in the Telephone Room. Did you read it?”

“Yes.”

I sat on the deathbed. The flashlight illuminated
MEMORIES
on the cover. I felt the red leather, saw gold on the edge.

And opened it.

THE BOOK OF SECRETS

7.

F
ebruary 2, 2:01 a.m.
I hear clicking on the line. That’s what it sounds like—Morse code. Faint voices all around. Bars are on the windows but the night is dark and the pool should be lit but it’s not on account of the remodel. A few times I heard noises like people at the window but I looked around. No one there and so now, see? Who’s crazy now?!!!

Mrs. Murray is padding around in her slippers I can hear her padding through the door and once I thought about getting up and going to talk but don’t feel like it. I called a few people. NO ONE was home, or they were all ignoring me. They
always
ignore me so all I have left is YOU, Diary!!

They are following me I know it there are wires in the walls I have called Fred and there are bugs. I don’t mean insects.

Tonight I went to dinner at the beach house and Danny helped me with the notes. I still have them in my purse:

1. What is it like to do your job?

2. Are you going to keep J. E. H.?

3. What is next for Cuba?

I was late I am always late so they expected it. We drove to where the highway is Beach Road under the bluffs and went down the hill through the gate into the room and they were eating dinner at the table when I walked in. Some of them, like the surfers Pat hates, were barefoot.

Peter said, “Drink?”

I was already drunk but “yes” I took the glass and everyone said hi and Peter introduced me to the General.

The chair to the left of the General was empty and that was my plate. I mean the one that was untouched and napkins and silverware beside it and the glass near the candelabras where a Polaroid camera sat and it was new. They were taking pictures.

“Nice to meet you.” I hardly looked at the General. I sat and pretended that I didn’t care and wasn’t impressed. He pretended the same, dear Diary.

Diary, I had another glass and the room got warm and I giggled at a joke someone had made. I wasn’t looking at the General and wondered if he was laughing.

Then I turned to him.

The General was looking across the table at Peter, his mouth smiling but his eyes were not and saw me staring at him and I think his smile died. He looked serious. Well, Diary, lust is more serious than anything.

He kept staring. I kept the glass against my lips. It became a Point that I was making with that lipstick, a Thing I did like ice on nipples. It drove men MAD!!!! Well, just press a glass to lips and let the color bleed on crystal and keep it there and see what happens.

It happened to him. Well, that Adam’s apple bobbed and he reached under the table and touched my thigh it sparked with the static from the helicopter that landed behind the house and you
know
the neighbors just hated the sand in their pool!!!!

I jumped and champagne spilled and he took his hand away and “Oh gosh sorry let me” and wiped my dress with his napkin and realized what he was doing and looked up with Peter pouring more champagne, his sister laughing though angry at the surfers and all that damn sand from bare feet and dropped the napkin he was shrugging like the awkward altar boy you
know
he was, Diary!!!!

I turned to the General.

“What,” I said, “is next for Cuba?”

•   •   •

D
own the long line of the beach I could see the lights of the Pier and the farther pier in the fog off the ocean, the Ferris and merry-go-round where I’d once stood watching couples on the tilting chairs. Well, I’d eaten cotton candy and worn the wig and wandered the city to buy a wedding ring. Well, the salespeople were rude. They didn’t know who I was. I had a black wig on and they didn’t care.

Sometimes I don’t think straight.

“I didn’t want to say it back in the house,” the General said. I could hardly hear over the waves. You could hear sounds on the highway and music drifted over the waves. You can hear things that way. I know that!!! (Even voices.) “You just have to stop calling,” he said.

“He calls
me
when he needs to.”

“That’s different. He has different needs.”

“How different than
mine
?”

“He’s a busy man.”

“
I’m
busy, too, for fuck’s sake. You think I’m not? But I know what matters in life. I make time for other people.”

“Tell that to your mother.”

“Oh, now that was a low. That was really a low—”

“I’m sorry. Look—”

“He
gave
me his number. He said I could call. And suddenly it doesn’t work. So I have to call the fucking switchboard?”

“You have so many people,” he said. “There must be thousands.”

It wasn’t true. Everybody thinks the phone rings all the time but men don’t have the nerve to call, not the right ones. And once in a while I meet a nice guy and I know it’s going to work. He doesn’t have to be from Hollywood he doesn’t have to be an actor. And we have a few drinks and go to bed. Then I see his eyes glaze over and I can see it going through his mind: “Oh my God I’m going to fuck Marilyn Monroe” and he can’t get it up.

“I understand,” the General said. “But you have to stop calling him. From now on, why don’t you try calling
me
?”

He took my hand and I felt sparks more than static and looked at him and was it a truly kind face in the light from the houses? The houses were along the bluffs and the children that I always watched played around the nets but it was dark where we stood so I couldn’t
really
see him. So was it kindness or just the reflection of something?

“I hear you have a new house,” he said. “Will you let me see your house?”

I don’t remember how I answered I don’t remember now and the clock by my bed reads 3:15. The minute hand keeps moving. I wish it would stop, Diary!

I have taken another couple from the vial by the bed and there are six. I wrote the number that I started with down and it was eight. You see it written here I always write it I started with eight so I want to be sure. They say that I am special and I’m wondering if the moment is coming when I will close my eyes and the things that seem real bleed into what can’t be. That’s the second you know you are slipping which is what I feel now a slow slipping. I can’t finish the conversation I want to write it out, what I remember, but am falling asleep leap a leap and so I won’t forget:

8.

T
he flashlight bobbed on those last scrawled lines, but I turned its dying circle to the door when I heard the noise. There were sirens in the distance and rain in the jacarandas, but what I
really
heard was inside. A tumbler click? A key turning in a lock? I stood, the beam fading. The flashlight was cheap. I’ve said that already. I switched it off and walked to the door that led into the hall.

I looked out.

A noise: something in the living room, the low sweep of light.

A silhouette stepped into the hall, raising his own flashlight toward me as I jumped back inside Marilyn’s room and pressed myself against the wall behind the door, eyeing the broken window and listening as the men—there were two now—entered the Telephone Room:

“—red,” the voice said.

“So much shit.” Another voice. “Who knew she had it?”

“Nothing here.”

“You
what
?”

“I said there’s nothing. I said there’s . . . I don’t see it.”

“Let’s look in the other room. Maybe they got it wrong.”

“The captain said—”

“Come on.”

“He would have to—”

“It’s not in here. Nothing’s in here.”

“Except a bunch of shit. Let’s try the other room.”

I pressed myself against the wall behind the door, hands flat on both sides, my face all eyes.

The beam swept the room.

I held my breath.

The beam steadied on the bed, landing on the diary.

“There it is!”

I ran and grabbed the diary from the bed and darted to the broken window, cutting myself on the glass left in the frame, and dropped to the lawn.

“Grab his jacket!”

I heard crickets and barking dogs in the air out on Sixth. I thought of Mrs. Murray’s testimony, Miss Monroe in the soldier’s position, no refractile crystals, the missing yellow, the entry in the diary—

I jumped over the fence and ran to the cul-de-sac.

A van marked
B. F. FOX ELECTRIC
was parked down the street from my car. It hadn’t been there before.

I got inside the Rambler. The engine wouldn’t turn. I sat turning the key, lights and radio flashing, then dying as the cheap bastard sparked out.

I pushed the diary onto the floor, kicked it under the seats as the engine clicked and I drove straight into the man. I couldn’t see his face. He fell to the street, picking himself up just as I turned and sped down Sixth.

In the rearview mirror, I saw them coming.

It was 8:01. And I was late.