The Empty Glass (7 page)

17.

H
ello, Tommy,” she said as the waiter arrived at our booth. He wore a black tux and tie, but his front teeth protruded and his Ken-doll hair was combed over a bald spot. He didn’t look like he worked at a joint where they treated food like paper dolls, dressing rib bones up in ribbons, torturing carrots and radishes into tiny swans, Eiffel Towers, and the constellation of Orion.

“Afternoon, Miss Carnahan,” he said. He deposited a basket of warm cheese toast on the white tablecloth. “And how are we today?”

“It’s too soon to tell. Two Flames, please,” Jo said, waving across the tables to the bartender, who was laboring over some bright concoction under rows of winking wineglasses.

“Cigarette?” She took a pack of Kools from her gold bag, removed one with the red nails that exactly matched her lips, and held it out to me.

“No thanks. Trying to quit.”

“Suit yourself.” She slipped it into her mouth. She had a way of making ordinary gestures seem obscene. It had something to do with her amused deliberation and something else to do with her eyes.

I took her lighter and lit the cigarette, and when she lifted her white neck to blow smoke toward the ceiling, I knew who she reminded me of:

“Vivien Leigh,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind.”

Chasen’s was the large green awning on Beverly Boulevard. You always saw the limos parked outside, swells parading past flanks of reporters elbowing one another for the best shots, the diamonds and white furs of Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood, the white tuxedo shirts of Jimmy Stewart and Rock Hudson. They were all blurs against the doors that opened for them, as they’d opened for us, that day, Dave Chasen himself saying, “Afternoon, Miss Carnahan,” and whisking us past the picture of W. C. Fields to the booth where we now sat.

“Miss Carnahan?” I said.

“Jo.”

“With all due respect, Jo: Why do you care what happened to Marilyn Monroe? I mean, I know your show and column. It’s fluff. Women’s magazine stuff. Good guys and bad guys. Stars we love on the way up and then shoot down.”

“So?”

“Why are you so interested in the water glass?”

Jo blew smoke from her mouth toward the ceiling.

“I went to convent school in New York. I was a good Irish Catholic girl. A daddy’s girl. Maybe all Catholic girls are. I wanted to cover news, but that’s hard for a girl, so I wrote about a convention of beauty parlor owners for the
Evening Journal
, the opening of a model home in Flatbush. I interviewed the highest tenants in the Empire State Building and Leontyne Price. It wasn’t what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“Crime. Politics. Business. Big stories. The Boy stories. But water seeks its own level, and a woman isn’t water, but she’s treated like it.”

“So?”

“The Annie Laurie job opened. I wanted to leave New York. I wasn’t getting anywhere. It was more money. And I like to think I’ve added some dimension to the character. I came up with the phrase ‘dear ones.’ And ‘the Long, Deep Sigh Department.’ That was my idea. It’s one of the most popular segments.”

“But you still—”

“You know how they say ‘once a Catholic, always a Catholic’?”

“Sure.”

“Once a journalist, always a journalist. I happen to be both.”

She took from her manila envelope an 8 × 10 glossy she’d developed at the
Mirror
:

Monroe’s bedside table, covered with vials. Underneath was a Mexican pottery jug, cap askew, piles of books and papers and a jar of face cream, but—

“No water glass,” I said.

“Bingo.”

It was not what I had seen at the house, Doc: On the table by the bed I’d seen the same vial of pills, the same books and papers, the same jar of night cream—and an empty glass.

“Somehow between the time I took this picture and the time that you arrived, Ben, a glass showed up on the table. Someone put it there. I didn’t think there was anything suspicious about the death until that happened. I’m looking around, and the first thing I think is: If this is an overdose, where’s the water?”

“They turned it off the night before. The renovations.”

“So how’d she swallow the pills?”

“I don’t think she
swallowed
anything.”

“Come again?”

“She had four-point-five percent milligrams of barbiturates and eight percent chloral hydrate in her bloodstream.”

“I heard.”

“That means she needed to swallow around thirty to forty Nembutals. And
that
doesn’t even account for the thirteen percent pentobarbital Dr. Abernethy also found in the liver. When you consider the liver—”

“I was considering the chili.”

“When you consider the liver, it means that an additional twenty or so capsules and tablets had to have been ingested. That means, Miss Carnahan—”

“Jo.”

“That means, Jo, that case number 81128 had to have consumed at least fifty, if not eighty, pills to die.”

“But she
did
die.”

“The point is we’re assuming she consumed them
by mouth
.”

“So?”

“So even if she’d had a water glass, even if she’d drunk a gallon of water, she couldn’t have swallowed those pills.”

“I could swallow that basket of toast.”

“It’s not the same thing. The pills are poison. The body rejects them. You vomit them up.”

She glanced back at the menu. “Maybe I won’t have the chili after all.”

“We found nothing in her digestive tract,” I said. “Not even a yellow stain.”

“Why would you find that?”

“Nembutals are known as ‘yellow jackets,’ ’cause of their deep color. If Miss Monroe had somehow swallowed, say, thirty-six of them, her digestive tract would have been stained yellow—but there was no color,” I said. “And no refractile crystals.”

“Refractive what?”

“
Refractile.
If you ingest more than twelve capsules of barbiturates, refractile crystals show up in the digestive tract or in the stomach.”

“Please use English, please.”

“That’s refractile crystals. Meaning . . . I don’t know . . . they refract.”

“And that means?”

“Subject to refraction.”

“Oh. Jesus.”

“It means they have the power to change the direction of the ray of light.”

“You mean they reflect.”

“You could say that.”

“Well, why didn’t you?”

“Two Flames of Love,” Tommy said, carefully depositing two martini glasses filled with Pepe’s house special: vodka, “La Ina” Fino Sherry, and burned orange peel.

Jo’s eyes sparkled as she extended her glass to mine.

The glasses touched. We drank.

“So you’re telling me that you don’t think she killed herself?”

It’s not my business to speculate (I told her, as I’m telling you, Doc), but in the entire history of forensics, no one has ever died with such high blood concentrations of phenobarb and chloral hydrate as a result of
oral
ingestion.

“Then why did she leave a suicide note?” she asked.

“She didn’t.”

“Oh, really?” She took a piece of paper from that same manila envelope.

It was a page torn from the diary.

“You took this from the death scene?” I asked.

She nodded.

“You know that’s illegal.”

“You gonna arrest me?”

“Maybe.”

The paper was covered with illegible writing and crossed-off numbers. The only words I could read were “The enemy within.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

“I wish I knew,” Jo said. “It was lying on her pillow, as if she’d tried to call someone.”

“She was calling the Justice Department.”

“How do you know?”

“She left the number in her diary. I read it.”

“How?”

“I took it.”

“Now who’s going to get arrested?” she said. “You
took
the diary?”

I nodded. “I have it right here.”

18.

M
ay 16, 1962.
Forgive me but it was all I ever wanted. I tried so many times but never with results and always with pain, well, once I almost died but this will be different and will change everything, the one who will have the things I never had and see the things I never saw and be loved and safe and sane and mine.

[redacted], forgive me: [redacted]

But it started and I was excited and then it ended again like before. The General just stopped calling. It was just like his brother all over again. He gave me a number and told me to use the name of Mrs. Green but first the woman on the other end said she didn’t know a Mrs. Green and then it just stopped working.

Mrs. Green is what he told me to tell them like a secret that we shared, like with so many others, in bed. But now he’s not here. He never is. Like the Commander. Marilyn Monroe is a soldier but what good is a soldier without a commander?

I started calling the
other
number the public one saying I was Mrs. Green. I looked it up in the book:

RE7-8200

RE7-8200

RE7-8200

It was like before. “I need to speak to him!” I said and all that. “He owes me! You understand?”

I believe he loved me or was falling in love with me I don’t believe it was just what they call “pillow talk” when he said that he would leave his wife and kids. He meant it or his
dick
did, Diary!!!!

But someone got to him. His brother or wife? The woman who is calling me at night? Diary, I DON’T sleep but now there is the ringing of the pink phone at 1 and 3 a.m. someone on the other end saying, “Stay away from [redacted].”

You see how they removed that and how they crossed it out? I didn’t do that. I wrote the name but when I woke in the morning it was gone.

Maybe it is the man at the window.

He should face me and tell me why. Or tell me on the phone. I don’t care. I just want to know
why
.

An hour ago I called the number asked for him again and they said he wasn’t there again and asked to take a message. “Boy, I’ll give you a message tell him [redacted] and [redacted] clicks on my phone and [redacted] is bugging my house on account of they want information. Did you get that? Can you spell that, Angie?”

“I can spell that.”

“Tell him if he doesn’t call me back I will call a press conference. Have you got that?”

“I got that.”

“I could blow this whole thing sky-high.”

Yes there are the clicks the sound of clicking on the phone and voices like people whispering in the background like they’re listening and something rustling in my closet the clack-clack of empty hangers there. The water is wrong but the man who came to fix it didn’t. Eunice said that he was there and something tells me he is STILL!!!

I’m TIRED of being used TIRED of being treated like an animal. WORSE than an animal!!!!

God it’s too hot to sleep and I know something’s going to happen and then there’s the bottle of pills.

Three more would help or thirty.

And now the phone is ringing

•   •   •

T
he phone,” Jo said.

I looked up from the diary. “What about it?”

“She lived and died on the phone. She was clutching it in her hand.”

“So?”

“Did anyone go to GTE?”

“What’s that?”

“General Telephone. Did anyone check the phone records?”

“Aren’t
you
the journalist?”

“Don’t answer a question with a question,” she said as she stood from the table.

19.

A
guy at GTE named George agreed to meet us in the Service Room to tell us what he didn’t want to tell us (he said) on the phone. But the fact is that he
didn’t
meet us in the Service Room. When we showed up, the woman behind the long counter said that George was still at lunch. It was strange for him, she said, as he was a man of routine.

“Where does he usually lunch?” Jo asked.

“The Tip Top on Melrose. Always at the same time. And he always has the same thing: the corned beef sandwich on rye. I should know. I’ve worked here twenty years.”

“Thanks.” Jo turned to go.

“You want to talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“Try the Benson Bar on Fifth.”

“You said he takes his lunch at Tip Top.”

“You asked where he
usually
takes his lunch, but today he’s at the Benson.” She checked her watch. “He’s usually back by one-thirty.”

“Time is it now?”

“Almost three.”

Just then I remembered something: “Jesus.”

“What?”

“I need to pick up Max.”

“Max?”

“My son. He’s at school.”

“You’re married?”

“Almost.”

“What does that mean,
almost
?”

“Call me,” I said. “I’m at the Savoy.”

•   •   •

I
parked across the street in the rain. The buses were gone. The classes were over, the flag off the pole. Two stragglers left with their parents in yellow raincoats, holding umbrellas over their heads. I remembered a drawing Max had once done showing clouds and the moon and the rain. “Ligting comes with rain,” he’d written. “Ligting is dangerous.”

Max didn’t have a raincoat. Or an umbrella. He didn’t have boots, either.

I pushed through the double doors into the lobby, blinking against the water that dripped from my hair. The school smelled like all schools smell in the rain, wet cotton mixed with chlorine from an unseen pool. The trophy cases were filled with dusty mementos of teachers who had died and of spelling bees won. The floor was covered with boot prints.

The sign on the first door to the left, the one before the hall of lockers, read
PRINCIPAL
in gold letters.

“I’m looking for my son,” I said to the woman behind the desk. Cat’s-eye glasses hung on a chain around her neck. A series of cubicles flanked a narrow hall that led to the only room with a view. On the door, a sign showed two kids with googly eyes: “
THE PRINCIPAL IS YOUR
PAL
!” it read.

“And his name would be?”

“Max Fitzgerald.”

“And he’s in? Whose class?”

“Third grade. He’s a third-grader.”

“His teacher’s name?”

“Starts with a
W
.”

“That won’t help much. We have several
W
’s.”

“Wallace? Wilson?”

“We have a Weston. Williams. And a Wettergren.” She frowned, put those glasses on the bridge of her nose, and looked up at me over the frames.

“I think it’s Wettergren. I’m pretty sure it’s—”

“Mrs. Wettergren’s class has all gone, I’m afraid. They’ve
all
gone home.”

“I was supposed to pick him up.”

“Your son: Max Fitzgerald. Is he the handsome little boy—”

“Of course.”

“The one who didn’t have a raincoat?”

“I didn’t know it would be raining.”

“The weather report is quite simple, sir. He didn’t have an umbrella, either. Or boots.”

“I didn’t know he needed—”

“He waited in the rain for thirty minutes, Mr. . . . Fitzgerald.”

“Ben.”

“Mrs. Wettergren stayed with the umbrella. Your wife—”

“I didn’t know.”

“She came to pick him up.”

“I’m sorry. May I use your phone?”

“There’s a pay phone in the lobby.”

I dropped the dime. Pressed the phone to my ear. And dialed into silence.

I hit the coin return. I didn’t care about the rain now. I walked down the sidewalk to the car across the street.

A parking ticket sat under the wind wings.

•   •   •

I
waited in the car outside the house. No one was home. I waited with the diary and the ticket and the Kents in the glove compartment and the radio on that station. I kept staring through the path the wipers cut in the rain. I stared, too, through the window up the driveway to the garage, wondering when Rose would return.

I’d fucked up and knew it. I just wanted to apologize.

The house was not, unlike most in El Segundo, Spanish Colonial. It was something more “modern,” a polite term for prefab: a barn-red ranch with aluminum siding, a porch in the back with garden hoses underneath and fences on both sides of the lawn.

I waited.

5:15
P.M
.: “Real friends were almost unanimous in saying they believed that her death was accidental,” the radio voice said through static. “Two motion pictures executives were bidding for her services at the time of her death. Miss Monroe had received an offer of fifty-five thousand dollars a week to star in a nightclub appearance in Las Vegas.”

I kept switching stations, trying to get away from the story that had already killed everything, but no one could talk about anything else. Even in Titusville, they were talking:

“I am sure it was an accident,” Dean Martin said at 8:26
P.M.
“She was at my home just a few days ago. She was happy, in excellent spirits, and we were making plans to resume the picture early next year. She was a warm, wonderful person. The only one she ever hurt was herself.”

1:01
A.M
.: I drove back to the Savoy and lit a cigarette.

Tomorrow would be Day One.