But he didn’t protect Marilyn.
He didn’t catch her.
He cast her aside.
She was an innocent, and she died. Died because our President is a phoney.
I know I’m getting all-uptight about all this. Even through Brad warned me not to.
I’m back on the pills, wondering when they’ll begin to calm me down
I sit in front of the mirror, writing down all the things that come into my head.
They’re not nice things anymore, I gotta admit.
*
Chapter 39
Brad’s now full of reasons why Bobby might wanna call round on Marilyn.
‘She’s getting pushy about becoming First Lady, see? She ain’t your regular broad who can just be pushed aside. She ain’t gonna take that lying down, not Marilyn, no sirree. It’s one thing playing around with silly little broads no one’s ever heard of. But this is Marilyn Monroe, sex symbol to the world.
‘And boy, what has she got on them, eh? This girl ain’t no dumb blonde, we both know that kid. She’s been taking notes. There were notebooks all over her house kid, you know that?
‘Those dumb Kennedys, kid, just to impress her they’re telling her things they shouldn’t be telling the head of the CIA. Secrets they definitely ain’t wanting the American people to get to know about. Take Cuba, kid; all that guff about how well our wonderful President played it getting the Ruskies to junk their missiles. Fact is, they turned him over good and proper. What you ain’t reading in the papers is how boys like me had spent ages setting up our own missiles in Turkey, a spit-throw from the Rusky border. And every single one of these had to be taken down kid – years of work, ruined. Now you tell me, that sound much like a victory to you?’
He’s gabbling away, not noticing at first I’m not giving him my full attention.
Fact is, now Marina’s gone, I’m not eating so well.
Fact is, ads I see on the TV or even just hear on the radio have me wishing she was here, making sure I was eating right.
Rosarita Mexican Foods; for some reason, that has me thinking of her.
In the magazines Marina left behind there’s an ad for Maidenform, this girl sitting on a leopard; ‘I dreamed I charmed the spots off a leopard.’
I think of Marina every time I see it. She could charm the spots off a leopard, no problem.
Everywhere I go, The Angels are singing My Boyfriend’s Back.
I’m watching a lot of TV, like Mom used to do. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. I’m watching that a lot for some reason.
Dobie’s at this swank junior college now. St Peter Pryor. Still always getting cheated by the rich kid, Chatsworth, though.
Ain’t that what this Holden Caulfield from The Catcher would be like?
Maybe not; he’s angry with all that lifestyle, ain’t he?
Not old Dobie; that’s what he’d like to be – rich. And successful with the girls.
Which he clearly ain’t, just as he clearly ain’t ever gonna be rich.
His pop makes sure of that, only happy when Dobie’s at the end of a broom, sweeping out the store.
That’s my life; a life sweeping out stores, if I’m lucky.
Brad eventually cottons on to the fact my mind ain’t focusing right on the things that matter anymore.
He says I need a change.
He moves me out of the apartment, sets me up in a new place. An eight-by-twelve-foot room up in Oak Cliff.
Just in case, he says; it don’t pay to stay too long in one place.
*
All hell’s let loose in Alabama.
Churches bombed. Young black girls killed.
Black kids entering schools they ain’t supposed to be seen at.
The police lining up to stop them. To send them back on their way.
The Alabama governor saying he ain’t gonna allow these black kids in these here schools. The Alabama governor being told he ain’t got no choice.
I find it pretty hard to follow what the heck’s going on out there.
The phoney making out he thinks it’s all terrible. Making out he just ain’t gonna let this happen anymore.
Way I see it, September’s an odd month.
Marina’s back, her friend Ruth driving her all the way back from New Orleans.
She’ll be staying with Ruth, Lee having decided to stay behind for a while.
Besides which, I hear, Marina’s pregnant.
*
I sit in front of the TV more than ever.
Mom would have loved it. Her son, sitting alongside her, eyes as glazed as hers.
‘And all these wonderful new programmes too!’ she’d have said.
She only ever used the word ‘wonderful’ when it applied to TV programmes. Like she’d got it out of her TV guides.
The Judy Garland Show; wow, how she’d have loved that! (‘Wonderful, wonderful!’)
Outer Limits, now that might’ve not been for her. But My Favorite Martian, that would’ve had her giggling away for sure. That’s the kinda science fiction she’d like.
Where even the aliens are so dumb they get it all wrong.
Then there’s The Fugitive. A guy on the run, fleeing from town to town.
A few months ago, I wouldn’t have believed it.
*
I meet up with Marina in a small diner.
A place suggested by Brad because it’s out nowhere. A place where hardly anyone goes.
Bobby Vinton is on the jukebox when I walk in, slowly breathing his way through Blue Velvet.
The place is more or less empty, people behind the bar looking bored. Unhappy even that another customer has walked in, disturbing their daydreams.
She’s seated at a table, looking much the same as she always did. A weary smile, but a beautiful smile, all the same.
She struggles to stand up as I approach the table, her stomach jutting out in a huge bump. She has to wiggle her way up from the seat to stop the bump catching on the table.
She takes my hand in a loose handshake.
‘Jack!’
No kiss this time, not even on the forehead.
We sit back down, go though the usual stuff, ‘Good to see you,’ ‘What can I get you?’
A waitress as thin and pale as a cigarette pours me a coffee.
She takes the money Marina leaves for her with a ‘thank you’ that tails off into something sounding like a prayer for a happy day.
I make an effort at sounding pleased about the baby.
‘When will…you know?’
‘Soon. Less than a month.’
She asks about the pills. I ask if Lee will be staying in New Orleans.
He stayed on a few extra days, to collect an unemployment cheque, she tells me. Then he moved on someplace else for a while.
She either don’t know where he’s going or she don’t want to let me know.
She also tells me how he’d been arrested after getting himself into a scuffle. He’d been handing out pro-Castro fliers.
‘Maybe he’s heading there, to Cuba,’ I laugh.
She doesn’t laugh. She just gives a half-smile, half-grimace.
Ruth pulls up outside in the car, waves through the car’s windows rather than getting out.
Marina says she’s sorry, she has to go now.
She’s already wiggling up from her seat once again. I help her out to the car, like she’s some frail old lady.
I get the kiss on my forehead as my reward.
*
It’s as I’m heading back to the dingy room I call my apartment that I spot Rake.
I almost miss him. It’s so dark inside the bar, I only get a glimpse of him as I pass the open door.
That glimpse is enough to make me double back, check if it’s him or not.
I don’t know many people with hair like a badly trimmed bush. Even fewer with hair like that topping a body that looks like its been wrung and hung out to dry.
For obvious reasons, we called him Rake. The guy working as a gardener for Marilyn.
Strange thing was, his hair might never have seen a comb, but the bushes were always trimmed like he was wet-shaving a Mafia don.
As I walk in the bar, I say ‘Rake?’
He almost dies of a heart attack.
His whole body jerks like he’s been struck by lightning. His drink leaps outa his glass, slops across the bar top.
‘Christamighty!’
He’s wide-eyed when he turns around and sees me.
‘Thank Jesus it’s only you Jack!’
Going by the looks I’m getting, nobody else is pleased to see me in here.
Rake throws what’s left of his drink down his throat, grabs the half empty bottle by him.
He casually slides a few crumpled bills towards the bartender. He puts his free arm around my shoulders, leading me outside.
‘Goddamn it Jack, I thought you were dead!’
He says it like he’s saying it’s dark at night, like it’s the most obvious statement in the world.
Wow, is he drunk! So drunk he sways even though he’s leaning on me.
I quickly guide him away from the main street, away from where the cops could see him rolling around with a half empty bottle in his hand.
I’m lucky he weighs little more than a dried leaf.
He mumbles something about coming here to get away from everybody. Something about how he didn’t want to end up like me.
‘Like me?’
‘Dead Jack, dead. I thought you’d been murdered too.’
He’s words are slurred, over emphasised.
‘No, I’ve not been murdered Rake. But who else was murdered? What do you mean, “murdered too”?’
‘Marilyn, who else Jack? She was murdered as sure as they’re gonna murder me and you once they find out we know.’
*
Chapter 40
Norman, good old homey faced Norman Jeffries, was more or less there when it happened.
Not sure that really comes under the duties of a caretaker, being there when your employer is murdered.
His mom-in-law, Eunice, she was there too. Not so much of a surprise there, of course.
Rake’s weeping drunkenly now and again as he tells me the story.
Seems poor old Norman couldn’t keep that secret swilling around inside him any longer. Went and got himself crazed-drunk just like old Rake here.
Let it all pour out of him like he needed to share it with someone before it just tore him apart.
‘Damn fool gave me a death sentence!’
Rake’s sobbing, wiping away the tears even as he takes another swig from his bottle. Old Taylor bourbon whiskey (‘The gift most likely to be remembered,’ it said in an old Time magazine of Lee’s.)
He takes the drink deep down, but spits out his words.
‘Might as well have gone and put a goddamn gun to my head himself! Might as well have pulled the goddamn trigger!’
He weeps, his back bent.
‘We cain’t run from them Jack! They’re everywhere.’
‘Who’s everywhere?’
Rake turns to look at me, surprise wiping the self-pity from his face.
‘The state Jack!’
He says it like it’s obvious, like I should’ve known.
‘You cain’t run away from the state Jack. You cain’t even leave the goddamn country, because as soon as you try it, they’ll know where you are.’
He snivels again, his nose running as he raises the bottle to his lips once more.
Then just as Norman let the tale pour from his lips, Rake tells me everything that happened the night Marilyn died.
*
Bobby was there that night, there at the time I’d called round.
Two men with him.
They’d shown up just after nine thirty, asked Norman and Eunice to leave the house.
Norman and Eunice, they head round to a neighbour’s house. Stay there until Bobby and the men leave around ten thirty.
When Norman and Eunice return to Marilyn’s, she’s already lying face down in her bed. Already naked and holding the phone in her hand.
As Rake’s telling me all this, I’m gasping every now and again in shock.
Otherwise, I let him drunkenly ramble on.
Norman reckons Marilyn’s dead. Eunice calls for an ambulance.
Then she gets on the phone to Dr. Greenson.
Norman’s still there when Lawford and Pat Newcomb arrive at the house. Both of ‘em panicked as hell.
They don’t need to call Bobby, like Lawford claimed.
He’s already been round, been there while Marilyn died.
*
I’m shaking. Not sure if it’s with fear, shock or just plain, simple anger.
I seem to be going through different emotions in turns. Like I no longer have any control over my body.
Old Rake, all he was full of was fear. Fear like I’ve never seen, like it’s eating away at his innards.
‘What’ll we do?’ I say to him after he’s finished telling me what happened that night.
He looks at me like I’m stupid.
‘What’ll we do? We keep damn quiet about all this Jack, that’s what we damn well do!’
‘But the cops, the cops have to know about this!’
He hangs his head, starts bashing clenched fists against his skinny thighs.
‘I shouldn’t’ve told you, I shouldn’t’ve told you!’
He begins repeating it like some new, weird song. Like repeating it might make everything all right.
‘Look, don’t worry about all this Rake. I ain’t gonna go telling anything to the cops, promise.’
He looks up, his eyes glazed but happy, a kid who’s been crying so long for an ice cream he’s finally got his way.
‘No one Jack, you cain’t tell no one.’
He smiles with relief.
Abruptly, his expression changes, like he’s magically slipped on a trick-or-treat mask.
‘You cain’t trust anyone Jack, any one! See, I’ve got this agent helped me get away-’
‘Me too Rake! There are some good guys, see-’
Rake backs away, like I’ve suddenly come out in boils and cysts.
‘Good guys? You crazy Jack?’
He twirls a finger by the side of his head.
‘You cain’t tell who the good guys are any more! This agent, he could just be fooling you Jack! Leading you on!’
‘If you need any help Rake, let me-’
‘No, we cain’t see each other again Jack! It’s too dangerous. You might’ve been followed.’
It’s as if this ain’t even dawned on him until now. Suddenly, his head’s spinning this way and that. Looking up the street, down the street.
Studying everyone who’s within shouting distance.
His eyes now are crazed, bulbous and bloodshot. Like they’re gonna explode all over me.
‘I’m moving on – cain’t tell you where.’
He stares at me with those eyes, an alien telling me the earth’s doomed.
Then he’s gone, running off.
Clutching tightly on his bottle, unaware or uncaring that the booze is spilling out behind him.
*
Chapter 41
I sit in front of the mirror, g
oing through my exercises.
I’m writing, let it all pour out.
JFK – the big phoney.
The guy who makes out he’s protecting the innocents of the world. When, really, he’s just arranging for them to be murdered.
*
‘So what’s he like, this Rake?’
Brad took the news of Rake’s story like he wasn’t surprised. Like he’d already figured all this out long ago but just hadn’t got round to telling me.
‘Tall, skinny, like he’s never ever gonna put any meat on his bones. Hair like a used mop.’
‘I mean, is he believable kid?’
He sighs, like I should’ve known this.
‘If we get him to stand up in court, are our twelve upstanding citizens of the jury gonna believe him? Believe him when he says the brother of our highly-popular President killed Marilyn Monroe?’
I think about Rake standing up in court. Like you see on Perry Mason.
He’d last about five minutes, tops. He’d crack under questioning, deny it all.
‘Nope,’ I say. ‘But you believe him, right?’
‘I believe him kid. I’ve still been doing my own digging on this case. Turns out, wouldn’t you know it, that Marilyn's publicist, Arthur Jacobs, had been told of Marilyn's death sometime between ten and ten thirty that night. Poor guy, he had to leave a concert to deal with the press issues.’
‘So you knew about this, but ain’t got around to telling me?’
‘Hey kid – it’s as I said. I can’t exactly call myself Bobby’s greatest admirer, right? But even I find it hard to believe he’s gonna be mixed up in this at this level. There’s a part of me still saying he ain’t gonna stoop to this. Still saying there’s gotta be a mistake amongst all these here facts stacking up against him. But, see, here’s the clincher kid; the guy who took Marilyn to the mortuary Sunday morning, know what he says? He says there was advanced rigor mortis – that’s when the body starts stiffening up kid.’
‘Yeah, so anyone who lives within ten foot of a TV knows Brad. So he’s saying she died earlier than when Dr Greenson said, yeah? How much earlier?’
‘Between nine thirty and eleven thirty, kid.’
‘Then we’ve got him, we’ve got Bobby.’
He stares hard at me.
‘We ain’t got nobody kid. We’ve just got ourselves an even bigger problem than I already thought we had.’
*
Chapter 42
Lee’s back.
Like Marina, he’s moved in to Ruth’s house.
‘I’ve been to Mexico City, Jack,’ he says. ‘Come back by bus, would you believe it?’
We’re in the same diner I’d met Marina in. The same waitress gives us the same line that sounds like a mumbled prayer for a nice day.
‘I think I might move into the apartment Brad’s set up for you kid. If that’s all right by you? Leave Marina to stay with Ruth.’