The Empty Glass Read online

  “You’re under arrest. How many times do I need to remind you of that? Now, what was in the diary?”

  I say nothing.

  The tape is at 23462.

  You take a long drag, cupping your hand over your mouth, and squint against the smoke. “I will wait for five more minutes.”

  The tape: 23465, 23466, 23467.

  “Time’s up.” You stand, turn the Sony off, carrying all but one unused tape from the room. The door slams with the deep echo of metal. The keys hanging from the ring around your belt jangle as, no doubt, you lock the door.

  Seconds later, the lock clicks again. The guard enters, pasty face and dull eyes, and clears away the evidence:

  1. The Smith & Wesson

  2. A vial of Nembutal

  3. A piece of notebook paper reading “Chalet 52” and “July 28”

  4. A stained manila folder containing a number of 8 × 10 photographs

  5. Amahl and the Night Visitors

  6. A bag of ashes

  7. A new red MEMORIES diary

  The guard looks briefly up at me but doesn’t say a thing. He leaves the room and locks the door.

  I hear ticking, footsteps, and then nothing else for hours.

  12.

  It’s hard to tell how much time has passed. There are no windows in the room with the green paint and the ceiling with the light and the fan. I stare at the recorder that is the only thing left—that and the ashtray filled with spent cigarettes but no lighter or matches. It sits on a folded newspaper, dated October 22:

  “Let’s be clear-headed on Communism!” an ad reads. “The League strongly supports the President’s over-due decision to act against the Soviet build-up in Cuba.”

  I sleep, briefly, but I see what I always see when I close my eyes: the drugged woman, crouched on all fours.

  They never turn the light out.

  The Novril is wearing off. I don’t know what time it is—there is no clock—but hours must have passed and the ache is everywhere. I suppose that is why my voice is hard to understand when I finally thread the unused tape into the Sony, clear my throat, and press RECORD:

  “Okay” (I say). “I’ll tell you. The entry I read in the diary was about sex. The man she met at the party, the one she called the General, who wanted to see her house? He showed up at the house. And she showed her house to him. They had sex. Because she believed his lies, just like she believed his brother’s. He wore dirty white socks, okay?”

  Then I shout: “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  No one responds, so I shout until I am hoarse:

  “She said he wore white socks under his suit! Said he was like a little boy! He came to see her house the morning after the party! They ended up in bed! He ended up—”

  The door opens. You walk in with a plate of food and—thank you, sir—the vial of Novril.

  I reach for it.

  “Grabby! Hang on, now. Eat first. A boy’s got to keep his strength up.” You pick the chicken off the bone in mealy shreds and hold it to my lips, feeding me; when I am finished, you say, “Dessert.”

  Dessert is three Novrils.

  I suck the bitter pills from your fingers; the pain fades, my vision blurs, and the whoosh from the vent on the floor is all I can hear as you adjust your glasses and ask one question. Then another.

  —try to say that I can’t hear you, but you don’t understand. It’s silent except for the sea in my head, the sound from the air vent below.

  13.

  February 2, 11:05 p.m. The funny thing was the socks they were white. He wasn’t like the Commander he was a boy and gosh so sloppy. He came to see my house. “I hear you have a new house. Will you let me see your house?” But that is like the joke about the etchings he wanted to come up and see them but it was more because it always is.

  “Hi,” he said at the door. He had a bottle of Dom Pérignon. It’s what I like and Peter must have told him. “House-warming present,” he said.

  I think the word is sheepish.

  I said thank you and tried to get him to relax because he didn’t so I put the champagne on ice and was thinking maybe we might drink it later.

  I am drinking it now.

  But I was nervous, too, Diary!!!! And why torture yourself with hellos? Well, I showed him the house it wasn’t finished on account of I’d just moved. Well, he knew that. The red couch was delivered to the cottage and everything needed fixing but “here is the living room. The couch will go there. It’s Norman Norell. The furniture came from Mexico, a lot of it. Taxco. Eunice helped. The fireplace works. Kiva. I haven’t lit it yet.”

  I took him through the hall that led from the living room into the Telephone Room, Mrs. Murray’s room and my room.

  My room is where I am now drinking and writing and wondering if this will make sense.

  The windows are covered with shades they call them black-outs I can’t sleep if the sun or moon comes inside but the reason I want the shades is so that I don’t see the Man.

  He is there now.

  I take a Nembutal and wash it down with his Dom. The yellow is so pretty and pretty soon I take another with the champagne open on the floor and once I knocked the bottle over or maybe someone else did.

  Okay, get to the point. I am sorry, diary, but the point is that the sheets are still dirty and smell of him or should I say his socks? The stain is on the sheets and then inside me.

  “This is the bedroom,” I said and he just stared kind of gulping like he was swallowing, that Adam’s apple bob. He was shorter than me so I tried bending down but it didn’t really work.

  “Well,” he said. “So this is it.”

  “The bedroom.”

  “This is the bedroom.”

  I was thinking it might happen with the champagne later but it happened then when he leaned to kiss me first my cheek and then he was all over me “like,” as they say, “a cheap suit.” Well the suit wasn’t cheap but he wore socks under the trousers. NEWS FLASH!!!! White socks.

  I said that already.

  Then he was almost naked in his underwear and white socks I kept laughing at the socks and when I pulled on the edge of his shorts I saw the wrinkly lolling thing like an ugly Florida of flesh that always made me laugh but I tried not to. It was sadder than his socks. Well you can’t laugh at that.

  But I couldn’t help it so he needed to show me how important he was to establish his power which is why he told me what he shouldn’t have. He talked about the Bay of Pigs. He talked about Castro.

  I wrote it down, dear diary. I made notes on a napkin after he left:

  Robert Maheu at the Brown Derby. Johnny Roselli. Poison in a pen or Castro’s soup. Or [redacted] But Jack pulled the plug. When all those boats hit Bahia de Cochinos, and all the rebels died. The CIA. The CIA.

  That was it. That was all. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I knew that this was his little-boy little-man search for approval.

  From ME!!!!!

  • • •

  Dad?”

  I jumped and dropped the diary to the floor. I turned and saw Max. He was standing at the end of the hall, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.

  “Jeez, Maxie, you scared me.”

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “How you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “The bad air gone?”

  “It’s gone. What are you doing up?”

  “I could ask you the same question, sport. It’s late.”

  “It’s early.”

  It was 2:15.

  “You’re smoking again,” he said.

  “I’m not.”

  “You have cigarettes.”

  “Didn’t light them.”

  “You were going to.”

  I picked the Kent pack up, crushed it, and dropped it to the floor. “You happy?”

  He nodded.

  “Now, go back to bed.”

  “Tuck me in again?”

  “Sure.”

  I walked him down the hall and tucked in
his toes and then pulled the bedspread up to just under his chin and kissed his forehead. “Now, you go back to sleep. How many fingers?” I asked at the door.

  “Three.”

  I left the door open three fingers so that he could see into the hall and was heading back to the front room when I heard his voice: “Dad?”

  “Yeah, sport?”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “Home.”

  “Why aren’t you home?”

  Hey, try answering that one, smart guy. “I wish I knew,” I said. “Now, go to bed.”

  Back in the living room, I picked up my glass, saw the light in the last of the bourbon, and drained it.

  I drifted into sleep, awakening either two minutes or two hours later to the sound of honking outside.

  It was 2:15.

  The car kept honking, someone laying on the horn.

  Someone was yelling, “Shattap!”

  I walked across the room and looked out.

  It was the Ford Fairlane.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 6

  14.

  MARILYN MONROE FOUND DEAD!

  Sleeping pill overdose! Empty bottle near bed!

  I bought the Times from the newsstand on the sidewalk and carried it back to 7-A and sat on the couch while Max slept. I read everything anyone knew about the death that was bigger than the Soviet explosion of a nuclear bomb in Uppsala, bigger than Nixon at the helm of the GOP, bigger than the fact that little William Webb, Jr., the state’s only Thalidomide baby, would undergo a bone graft from his legs to his arms on August 23.

  Russia’s newspaper Izvestia claimed that Hollywood and “Western values” had killed Monroe.

  Coroner Curphey offered his “presumptive opinion” that death was due to “an overdose of a drug. Further toxicological and microscopic studies should be available within forty-eight hours, though it will be about a week before an investigation establishes whether or not Miss Monroe’s death was an accident.”

  But the big news came from Marshall Cantwell’s article in the Times:

  Mrs. Monroe’s body was discovered after her housekeeper and companion, Mrs. Eunice Murray, awoke about 3 a.m. and saw a light still burning in the actress’s room.

  But the bedroom door was locked. She was unable to arouse [sic] Miss Monroe by shouts and rapping on the door, and immediately telephoned Miss Monroe’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson.

  Dr. Greenson took a poker from the fireplace, smashed in a window, and climbed into the Monroe bedroom. He took the telephone from her hand and told Mrs. Murray, “She appears to be dead.”

  He called Dr. Hyman Engelberg, who had prescribed the sleeping pills, and pronounced her dead on his arrival at the house a short time later.

  Dr. Engelberg called police at 4:20 a.m. and two officers arrived in five minutes.

  • • •

  Do I need to tell you what’s wrong with this picture, Doctor? Mrs. Murray, Dr. Greenson, and Dr. Engelberg had all told Jack Clemmons that Murray woke just after midnight. But here the time had been conveniently moved forward three hours.

  In the same article, Pat Newcomb was said to be “nearly hysterical with grief” and was quoted: “When your best friend kills herself, how do you feel? What do you do?” She added: “This must have been an accident.”

  Her best friend killed herself. But it was an accident.

  • • •

  I dropped Max off at summer school in El Segundo, then headed to the Esso station. I fiddled with the radio knob until I landed on Annie Laurie Presents. I heard swelling strings and an announcer saying, “Live from Hollywood, it’s Annie Laurie Presents—and this is Annie Laurie!”

  Then Jo’s voice, like mink incarnate: “Hello, dear ones! ‘I was never used to being happy, so that wasn’t something I ever took for granted.’ Now, who said those words? The answer: the late Marilyn Monroe, who died yesterday at thirty-six. Rest in peace, dear one. And in the Long, Deep Sigh Department: Darling Tab Hunter is seeing Naughty Natalie Wood again. But take heart: Tinseltown Tattlers swear that Natalie would and Tab . . . wouldn’t!”

  I pulled into the lot over the black hose that rang a bell. The gas jockey in a gray suit and a tiny cap like a railroad engineer’s ran from the glass building, a greasy towel slung over his left shoulder.

  He took the Rambler.

  • • •

  I carried my briefcase past the pumps, standing underneath the palms that hung limp in the heat, to the phone booth. I riffled through the white pages that dangled on a chain from the shelf.

  The listing was under “Times, Los Angeles,” the number Osbrn 9-2527.

  I stood at the phone and called.

  “L.A. Times,” the switchboard said.

  “Marshall Cantwell, please.”

  “—second.”

  A buzzing, followed by a voice: “Cantwell.”

  “Yes, hi, Mr. Cantwell. This is Ben Fitzgerald down at the County Coroner’s? Was wondering if I could ask you a stupid question.”

  “Sure.”

  “The time that was printed in your article today, about the Monroe death?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, you quoted Mrs. Murray, the housekeeper, as saying that she woke at three A.M. That accurate?”

  “Mr. Fitzgerald, I’m a reporter.”

  “I know. Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a misprint or something. Mrs. Murray told you that she woke at three A.M.?”

  “She did.”

  “Did you talk to Greenson and Engelberg about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they verify the time?”

  “Mr. Fitzgerald, I find this line of questioning insulting. You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

  “Please just answer the question, and then I’ll hang up. Did they verify the time?”

  “Yes.”

  He hung up.

  I shook my last Kent from the pack in my pocket, but I didn’t light it.

  It was Day One.

  I chewed on the butt, opened the phone book to the M’s, but found no listing for a “Eunice Murray.” There was an “E A Murray” on Fourth Avenue, and an “E J Murray” on Oxford.

  The first was the wrong number. The second didn’t answer, so I turned to the G’s, my finger going down the names:

  “Greenson Ralph R MD”: 436 N Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills.

  I dialed CR 1-4050.

  A woman answered. “Dr. Greenson’s office.”

  “Dr. Greenson, please.”

  “The doctor isn’t in right now.”

  “When do you expect him?”

  “Not soon. He’s on vacation.”

  “Vacation.” I scrawled this on my pad. “When will he return?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not . . . sure. Are you his secretary?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re not sure when he’s returning?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “What if I had an emergency?”

  “Is this an emergency?”

  “No, but what if?”

  “Are you a patient of Dr Greenson’s, sir?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Would you like to schedule an appointment?”

  I hung up, my finger moving down the white pages again to the second number: “Dr. Hyman Engelberg”—9730 Wilshire in Beverly Hills, CRestview 5-4366.

  He, too, was on vacation.

  “Is the whole world on vacation?” I asked Engelberg’s secretary.

  “I can’t speak for the world, sir. I can only speak for Dr. Engelberg. He’s in the Côte d’Azur.”

  “The Côte d’Azur.” I scribbled this on the paper, then called Clemmons.

  “Hello?”

  “Jack, it’s Ben.”

  “Ben. How’s it hanging?”

  “To the left. As usual. Look, Jack. Did you see the papers this morning?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you know what I’m calling about. The timeline
changed. Reporter from the paper swears that Greenson, Engelberg, and Murray all told him that Murray woke up around three. They told you midnight, though, right?”

  I heard him breathing, kids fighting in the background.

  “Jack?” I said. “You there?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You said they told you midnight.”

  “So?”

  “So all three changed their story. First it was midnight. Then it was three. Someone got to them, Jack.”

  “Fitz, this isn’t a great time. We’re packing up.”

  “Packing.”

  “Taking a few weeks off.”

  “How nice for you.”

  “Could really use the break. Get out of this heat.”

  “Great,” I said. “In the Côte d’Azur?”

  “Where?”

  “You going to the Côte d’Azur?”

  “What gave you that idea? Florence, Fitz. We’re going to Florence.”

  “Who’s paying for it, Jack?”

  “’Scuse me?”

  “I said who’s paying for your trip?”

  “Kinda question is that?”

  “Murray told you midnight, Jack. Greenson told you midnight. Engelberg told you midnight. Isn’t that right?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Does it matter? The poor girl overdosed, for crissakes. All the papers say she overdosed. Who cares when they found her? She had a history of this. She wasn’t murdered.”

  “Who said anything about murder?”

  “It’s in her history, her genes. Her mother—”

  “Who said anything about murder, Jack?”

  “The truth is that I can’t say.”

  “Jack—”

  “The truth is I don’t know.”