An old instinct rose in her—to tell a half-truth, to make herself a sweet, clueless heroine lost in a bleak fairy tale—but as soon as she began talking, the need to unburden herself was too great, and the whole ludicrous story poured out, from that sunny day at Schwab’s, to the hoarse I love you on a bathroom sink in Manhattan, to the near strangulation last night. When she finished, her throat was wounded and dry. Dr. Greenson slouched in his chair, his hair more disordered than when they had begun, as though he, too, were exhausted by what had transpired and could muster none of the usual empathy.
After a time he straightened, and with his eyes focused on the thread-bare carpet underfoot, began to speak. “You can’t go home. It won’t be safe, even with your ex-husband’s employee there. You’ll stay here, for the time being. We’ll call the studio—they have much better security, I’ll tell them it’s important to your mental health, for the completion of the picture. And you have a way of contacting the president? A private line, you said?”
Even now, this fact gave her a twinge of pride. “Yes.”
“You’ve got to call him right away and tell him he’s in danger. Don’t tell him everything, but tell him about Alexei, what he asked you to do. That you suspect there may be other plots afoot. If he meant it when he said he loved you, then you might come out of this all right.”
Marilyn nodded mechanically. He was right, and anyway she had no energy to argue. The way she had dressed herself that morning felt silly, the open neck of the peasant-style blouse tucked into the fitted navy skirt, the high heels, and the big hair, as though her feminine beauty would ever do her any good again, if indeed it ever had.
“There’s a telephone in the living room,” he went on, not meeting her eye. “I’m going to think through what you’ve told me. Then you’ll have dinner with my family, and we’ll put your troubles aside until tomorrow.”
The living room was paneled in dark wood and built-in shelves stocked with books that looked much handled. It was like her house, or how she hoped her house would someday be—lived-in and warm. She could hear the sound of a radio somewhere, Dr. Greenson’s wife and daughter talking to each other in a nearby room. Marilyn set her jaw, picked up the phone. He answered right away so she didn’t have time to fortify her resolve. There was Jack’s voice, as forceful as ever, and before she could help it her right foot was girlishly twisted around the back of her left ankle.
“Goddamn, do I have a hankering for you,” he said, in the sure manner that could make her forget everything.
“You miss me?” she whispered.
“Hell yes. I’ve been in the office burying myself in paper just so I won’t go crazy thinking about it.”
“I know.” She glanced up at the wood beams of the ceiling. A smell of onions turning sweet in a frying pan wafted from the kitchen. “Listen, Jack, I need to talk to you—”
“Me, too, baby.”
What was that in his voice—all of a sudden he sounded far away, short of breath, distracted. “I mean it’s kinda serious. I need to tell you that—”
“You thought I meant the usual talk? No. No—I have something serious to say to you, too.” He cleared his throat, and she realized that the thinness of his voice was actually nerves, and her heartbeat began to make itself known. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking for anything. I might be going crazy, I don’t know. But what that phony shaman said out in the desert—what he said about feeling at home—that just keeps repeating in my head like a skipped record.”
“Yeah?” Her voice had gone reedy, too.
“Yeah. Listen, I don’t want you to belong to anybody else. I want you to be mine. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But if the world can blow at any minute—and believe me, that’s about the size of it—seems to me we might as well be as happy as we can until then. Don’t you? Marilyn, would you marry me?”
“But you’re already—”
“I know, I know. Maybe it couldn’t be right away. But you know that’s all for show, don’t you? And I can’t live like that. Not forever. So say you will, and we’ll figure everything else out tomorrow.”
“Yes.” She had never been so keenly aware of the blood traveling through her body, how it pulsed between her toes, up the backs of her knees, in the tip of her tongue, to the rhythm of her heart. Her own aliveness had never been so vivid. “Yes, yes.”
“When can I see you?” he went on, forceful again. “Tell me tonight. Get on a plane tonight? I’ve got to see you.”
“Yes.”
“Go now. I’ll meet you at the Carlyle.”
“Yes.”
“You remember the procedure? How to get to me at the Carlyle?”
“Yes.”
“Marilyn—I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Through the glass of the front door she could see the Greensons’ yard, the overgrown garden, the daisy-dotted lawn stretching out toward the westernmost point of the property, where you could see all the way down to Santa Monica, the vast blue sea beyond. The old green Dodge that she’d bought last week at a garage for fifty dollars was parked in the shade of an oak tree. In a nearby room Mrs. Greenson was saying something that made her daughter laugh, and Marilyn silently placed the receiver in its cradle. There was no sound from his office. If he saw her, he would ask her how the conversation had gone, how her confession had been received, and she couldn’t answer that.
Jack was going to marry her, he wanted her always, which was what she’d been seeking her whole life. A man like that to give her always. The reason she’d gotten close to him in the beginning was too complicated to tell him over the phone. She couldn’t risk telling him over the phone. She was too afraid he’d take it all back. When they were together she would explain the whole thing from the beginning, the very beginning, the original hurt of her father’s leaving, and why she’d gone to such insane lengths to find him. But just now she wouldn’t be able to make any of that come out right. Her head was too scrambled, and her heart too sure. In the meantime, he was the president. Surely Jack was well protected already, and as soon as she was with him she’d be well protected, too.
Her handbag was still on the couch in the office, but that didn’t matter. She’d managed to board planes with just her name before. Very quietly, she stepped out of her shoes, picked them up by the ankle straps, and tiptoed for the door.
THIRTY-EIGHT
New York, June 1962
IT was morning when she arrived in Manhattan, but she was not the first customer at the Joy Tavern. A cabbie in a dirty blue jean jacket was discussing the vicissitudes of the stock market with a genteel housewife whose diamonds refracted brilliantly but whose wig sat at an off angle. Both appeared deaf to the yips of the Pomeranian in her lap. Marilyn had telegrammed the Carlyle before boarding her flight, saying that Miss Green would arrive at eight A.M., but she was early, so she ordered a screwdriver and daydreamed about a time when she wouldn’t need a pseudonym. “Say, aren’t you Marilyn Monroe?” the bartender asked.
She placed her finger perpendicular to her smile. “But don’t tell anyone, okay?”
He winked, and let her be. She knew when the hour changed because a church bell began to sound. The car came to a sudden stop outside the bar a few minutes later, reminding her that haste and agitation still existed in the world. A man in a black suit climbed from the backseat, pushed through the bar’s front door, let it bang shut behind him, surveyed the scene, and approached Marilyn at a purposeful gait. “Miss Green?”
“Yes?”
“This is for you.”
The man was young and had an arrogant, unsmiling face. He held out a green leather jeweler’s box, which ought to have pleased her, but there was something in his insistent presentation that made her want to refuse. As soon as she took it from his hands, he nodded his good-bye and departed, more rapidly than he had arrived.
Inside, on a bed of red tissue paper, was a gold cigarette case engraved To Johnny. The case had b
een cleaned, although inside was a folded, typewritten note that said We cannot possibly accept this lovely gift. All best wishes. Robert F. Kennedy
“Oh, shit,” she muttered.
The bartender’s eyes darted in her direction. “You all right?”
“Got a telephone?”
He indicated it by lifting his chin. “Pay phone in the back.”
She tried to keep herself steady as she dialed the number. Tried not to assume the worst. Yet there it was, the shrill bleat of a disconnected line. She closed her eyes, put the listening end of the receiver against her forehead. A hundred voices clamored within her, in fury and disappointment, but she took a breath, tried again. The air was thin, as though she were at a high altitude, and the result was the same. Her agony did not make it less obvious what had happened. Somehow Bobby knew what Jack had said to her last night; he had made Jack think better of it; they’d have changed the number she used to contact him before she even landed in New York. “You’re crazy,” Bobby must have said to Jack. And probably: “She’s crazy, too.”
The bar had no gravity. Patrons, bar stools, bottles of booze, mirrors—the earth had no hold on them. These seemed off-kilter, one second from flying at her. She was furious at herself for not listening to Greenson, horrified that she had selfishly believed in everything turning out all right.
She had the operator connect her to Pilar Florist on Second Avenue. “This is Marilyn Monroe,” she said. “I’d like to order an arrangement of purple irises for the children’s wing at Sloan-Kettering.”
“Marilyn Monroe?” the woman said, and made a sound like spitting. “Never heard of her.”
The line went dead, and Marilyn didn’t call back. Instead she tried Jack’s private line at the White House again and again until her fingers went numb and she had to admit that it was no mistake, not some error of dialing. By then, her heart felt like a little mouse that had been shot up with amphetamines and left to run in a ball till dawn. The elation of the last twelve hours had been cut down clean, and in its place was the stark lonesomeness of all her years. He meant it, she wanted to tell herself, but the other feeling was so much stronger. The feeling of lying awake on a hard orphanage cot, another girl’s feet shuffling against her pillow, and knowing that if she died there would be no one in the world to care. She had only a few minutes to allow the devastation to come and go. Afterward there would be so much else to see to, and no time to waste on self-pity. You’ll get him back, she told herself and, trying hard to believe it, left the Joy Tavern with what dignity she could summon.
You’ll get him back, she mouthed to herself as she rode in a taxi across town, and as she climbed the five tenement flights. She would get him back, but in the meantime she had to find Alexei, make him tell her what he’d meant when he said her replacement was on the way. She had to, and anyway she wasn’t afraid. She had seen that Alexei couldn’t do the job himself—if she found him alone, she’d be all right. Her heart was broken, anyway. How could they harm her now? The door to the studio apartment was already open, and she could see through it to the old floorboards, which were shiny where they had recently been mopped.
“Hello?” she called.
A few moments later a woman in a beige housedress and mules appeared from the back of the place. She flinched in recognition when she saw Marilyn but, out of politeness or maybe resentment, gave no other sign that she knew who the visitor was. “Can I help you, miss? You here to see about the apartment or something?”
“No—I was looking for the man who used to live here. A man named Alexei Lazarev. Do you know where he is?”
“He’s gone. That’s what men do, girlie. They go.”
“When did he leave?”
“I haven’t heard a peep from him in weeks. Then a couple of gentlemen cleaned out his things—they must have come in the night and been careful not to make a sound. Creditors maybe, or the bookie. I didn’t hardly realize anybody was here until they were on their way out—but they paid through August, so I don’t complain.”
“Do you know where he went?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Only way to get by in this mean old world.”
“I’ve got to find him—do you understand? It’s more important than I can possibly explain. Do you have any idea where he might have gone? Did he leave a forwarding address? Is there anyone who’d know? Anyone who visited him, knew him?”
The landlady put her hand into her lower back and observed Marilyn. After a silence she shook her head and went back toward the kitchenette, where the mop was stuck in its bucket. Over her shoulder she said: “Only person ever visited him was that Russian lady. Big black hair, long nails, enough perfume to drown a cat. Looked like a whore to me. I suppose she’ll be taking a pay cut now—maybe you’ll find her bawling her eyes out down on Tenth Avenue.”
“Well—thanks all the same.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The mop was in the woman’s hands again, and she didn’t glance up to acknowledge Marilyn’s parting.
THIRTY-NINE
South of Los Angeles Airport, August 1962
THE bungalow was on a street that sloped toward the beach, five blocks or so from the boardwalk, and the yards nearer the water were decorated with the pastel colors of surfboards and bathing suits left out to dry. She supposed it was a temporary neighborhood where people rented for the season. That it was the kind of street where nobody took particular notice of strangers. For a few days she drove by the place, saw the lights on and the car in the driveway, and gleaned that he never went out except for a walk in the evening. She had been hunting Alexei for two months, and in that time she’d grown surer of her hunch: He would never hurt her.
On Friday, when he returned from the daily walk, the strained six o’clock light was filtered through blinds, painting gray and yellow bars on the bedroom floor. By then she had entered the house, by forcing open a bathroom window, and prepared herself for him. She lay on the bed—or rather, the mattress on top of the box spring on the bedroom floor—partially covered by a sheet, her face mostly denuded, just a little lipstick and mascara, her hair pushed back from her forehead and gone wavy after days in which she had neglected the rituals of physical appearance.
She listened as he closed the front door, took three steps inside. Paused. He seemed to quickly realize he was not alone. The slow crinkling of the paper bag he was carrying, as he placed it down, suggested a sudden instinct for caution. The glasses of water she had positioned, on either side of the bed, were still there—a glance reassured her of their presence. To let him know she knew he was listening, she lit a cigarette and let its smoke waft through the rooms.
She almost couldn’t believe Alexei was there, in the next room, after searching for so long with a doggedness that had left no time for yearning. No dwelling on Jack, what could have been or might yet be. The White House switchboard was under strict orders not to take her calls (as a sweet operator explained to her one night, before identifying herself as a fan). Bobby had stonewalled her, and Peter and Pat had remained friendly in a distant way, inviting her over less, handling her in such a manner that she knew one false move and she’d be dropped. So, Marilyn had kept moving.
She’d taken to carrying a large change purse and placing her calls from pay phones, never using the same one twice. The studio had fired her after a week’s absence (she claimed exhaustion, but nobody believed that one anymore), and she’d taken advantage of the ensuing controversy by giving as many interviews, posing for as many photographers, as possible, figuring that the Russians wouldn’t dare have her killed in front of a member of the press. Plus, the wild look in her eyes seemed to turn the photographers on. She’d told Alan that Douglass Walls had made a pass (“In my own home!”)—that once rejected, he had become violent—and insisted he be fired. Alan didn’t believe her, but he did as instructed. After that she’d tried to be in the orbit of either Joe or Frankie, who always had a small army of toughs. Each could smell the other’s recent presence,
and disliked it, but they were of that old school of masculinity, and couldn’t resist a damsel, especially when she meant a competition.
It was through Frankie that she eventually discovered Alexei’s whereabouts.
In the final week of July, she’d flown to Tahoe in Frankie’s private plane, mostly because he mentioned that Pat and Peter would be staying at the Cal-Neva that weekend as well. But Pat told her flatly to stop asking if any of her brothers would be visiting California soon (“Forget them, darling, that’s just what they do—Jack passes his girls down to Bobby, and Bobby to Teddy, so unless you want to go to work on him, you had better move on”). So, she thought, the rumor is I’ve been with Bobby, too.
Marilyn had been trying to kill time without letting down her guard when she spotted Sam Giancana entering the ballroom. He’d been flanked by a large entourage that included a pale, voluptuous woman whose black hair was wound in an elaborate pile on top of her head, and who possessed a stare of blank, continental indifference. There was something gorgeous and secretive about her, and with a flash of intuition, Marilyn saw what had happened—that Alexei, when recruiting a source who was most malleable when she was loved, had become attached. Attached enough that he was furious when Marilyn guessed her real profession. But, as she was to discover over the course of a long and lurid evening, Alexei’s source in the Giancana outfit was in fact his number one Russian hooker—not, as she had angrily declared in Payne Whitney, his third favorite.
The hooker’s name was Vera, and Marilyn had cornered her in the ladies’ lounge, where they quickly bonded over their portable medicine chests and the technical difficulties of fellating Frank Sinatra. By the time they returned to the party, arm in arm and plenty looped, Marilyn had the situation pretty well figured: Giancana’s main mistress—a singer whose fame must have seemed sparkling enough when the actress who played Lorelei Lee on the big screen wasn’t hanging around—was unwilling to perform the kind of tricks a professional would, a fact which guaranteed the coexistence of these two women while cooling their mutual resentment not at all.