The Empty Glass (21 page)

62.

T
his is Sheila Dent from Panorama City,” a woman said on WOLA as the cab drove me down Wilshire. “As a loyal listener, Miss Laurie, I’d like to thank you for the two times you mentioned Soupy Sales on your show recently. I am an avid Soupy fan and just love to hear about him.”

“We
all
love Soupy, dear one,” Annie said.

“I’ve heard that he will be starring in a new TV series called something O’Toole. Can you tell me if—”

I lit a cigarette.

Tomorrow would be—

You
know.

•   •   •

T
he man at the front desk said that Ms. Carnahan was at WOLA in Burbank. She had been at the show all morning, he said. I told him it wasn’t possible, that the woman who was now Annie Laurie was not Jo Carnahan. Annie Laurie had changed yet again. The man at the front desk said that he was happy to take a message, if I
cared
to leave a message. I said I did not: “I think she’s here.
Someone’s
here. I need to see her. Call and tell her that it’s Ben Fitzgerald and I need to see her.”

“But, Mr. Fitzgerald,” he said. “With all due respect, you’re already here.”

“What?”

“Look.” He picked up the heavy reception book that sat on the desk and turned to the morning’s entries. At 7:15
A.M
., a Mr. Ben Fitzgerald had signed in. “He hasn’t left,” he said. “
You
haven’t left.”

I ran through the lobby to the elevator.

“Sir!” he shouted. He dropped the phone and stepped out from behind the desk.

Elevator: fifth floor. Fourth.

The stairs were to my left. I took them all the way to [redacted].

•   •   •

S
he was on the bed, her head turned toward the
puce
curtains that blew in over the window and the fire escape overlooking the pool and the beach. Her back was propped against the headboard, eyes staring unblinking at the mirror above the dresser, her usually coiffed black hair mussed like a wig that had shifted. Her makeup was smeared, a lipstick stain on her cheek. She wore those dark false eyelashes.

The Wilco on the bedside table was tuned to
Annie Laurie Presents
. Annie Laurie hadn’t died. Annie Laurie was forever, the woman who was not Jo talking about Peter O’Toole, Maureen O’Hara, and Theodore Curphey. She quoted Curphey’s findings:

“Miss Monroe had often expressed the wish to give up, withdraw, and even to die.”

Beside the Wilco: a water glass stained with lipstick; two vials of Nembutal; a half-empty bottle of Canadian Club sitting next to the Monroe diary, the bus locker key, the Sony reel-to-reel, flight records from Conners on Clover Field, and a handwritten note.

WOLA: “On more than one occasion in the past, when disappointed and depressed, Marilyn had made suicide attempts using sedative drugs. On these occasions, she had called for help and been rescued.”

I read what Jo had written on the note:

“[redacted] and life. I don’t know how I can face it anymore.”

But what really got me, Doctor, was the postscript. Who writes a postscript to a suicide note? Jo did, apparently:

“P.S.,” she wrote: “Hell-if-I-know.”

She inhaled—a sharp rattling sound: the sound of Nembutal.

“Jo.” I stepped forward. “Jesus,” I said—and that was when he shot her.

Her head jerked violently to one side, blood shooting like water from a hose and covering the bedding. It spattered up at me, as if someone had thrown a bucket of paint.

The gamy smell of iron filled the room.

I looked up.

Captain James Hamilton raised his Smith & Wesson as he walked from the hall all the way to where I stood—tongue lolling in his mouth, hip cocked—and put the gun between my eyes. The chamber was so close that it separated into two chambers, his face looming behind, as if in extreme close-up, seen through a fish-eye lens. “Here,” he said, taking the vial of pills from the table and holding it before my eyes. It blurred. “Have some.”

“No.”

He pointed the gun at my left foot and blew the tip off my big toe.

“God. Damn!” I shouted, hopping on my right foot, falling to the floor, staring up at the ceiling. “Damn.”

“I know how to take away the hurt.” He handed me that vial of pills, which was now (along with his hand) so much bigger than his body. His face seemed far away. The ceiling fan whirred like a halo behind it. “Here.”

I didn’t take the vial.

He hit my face with the gun and held it to my other foot.

“Okay.” The vial trembled in my hands. I popped a yellow jacket.

“Another.”

I did: the bitter taste in my mouth.

“And another.”

After a while, everything started to blur.

“And this is where we started,” I say. “I mean I’ve told you this already, Doc.”

“Tell me again.”

I felt that I’d spent hours, days, lying on the floor of this hotel with my head on the wood and my eyes open wide as the air came through the vent near my head. The whoosh was all I heard—until I heard the closing of the door, the keys in the lock, the footsteps on the floor stopping only when I turned to see the patent leather shoes beside my eyes, the stub of a cigarette dropped between them, burning.

And then there was the gun.

“Captain Hamilton put the gun to my neck,” I say. “He forced me to write a suicide note. I grabbed the gun.”

“You grabbed—?”

“—his arm was in a sling,” I say. “And then I shot him.”

My eardrums were blown out, the world underwater, but even so I could hear the pounding on the door, the LAPD, hotel security, and bellmen spilling in.

“Memo to newsmen everywhere,” Annie Laurie’s voice: “Reporters who want to interview Tony Randall and ask personal queries had better be in good shape. Randall conducts most of his New York interviews at the Gotham Health Club while exercising. And in the Long, Deep Sigh Department—”

The window over the fire escape was just above the radiator. I climbed through it and down the metal stairs, on my way out to the reservoir.

63.

N
ow, these are the truly damning pictures—the ones that show me stumbling along Wilshire, my right hand covering one eye to stop the street from doubling as the bellmen and cops follow, dark blotches on the sidewalks.

And everything in slow motion.

I tried to hail a cab.

The light was blue and yellow and the sun was high, and everyone was gone. I could hardly raise my head. Everything was too heavy. Including my fingers. The world was too much. Everything—

There were two cabs. And two drivers.

“The reservoir,” I said, climbing into the back.

“Jesus, mister,” the drivers said. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I stubbed my toe.”

“On an industrial blender?”

“Just go!”

I needed to stay awake.

I couldn’t stay awake.

Now you lean back in your chair and light another cigarette. “Hang on a second,” you say. “What did you do with the tape?”

“Left it at Jo’s.”

“You’re lying.”

“No.”

“Oh?” You press
STOP
and change the tape. You take the roll from the reel-to-reel and rummage through the pile of boxes until you find Spool #13, marked “
CAB DRIVER
9/19/62.”

You thread the tape through the machine and press
PLAY
:

“Guy was knocked out of his brain,” the driver said. “Bleeding like a stuck pig and couldn’t stand. He told me to shut up and ‘take me to Lake Hollywood Reservoir,’ he said. He could hardly stay awake, and I thought I saw a gun coming out of his pants. And he was carrying a tape.”

“A tape?”

“Some kind of reel-to-reel. Hell, I don’t know
why
. I just know that he was carrying it like God’s own—”

You press
STOP
. “You took it from Jo’s room.”

“I didn’t.”

“Tell the truth.”

“The truth is the pain is bad, Doc: Give me a Novril.”

“Tell me what happened first. Then you can have whatever you want.”

“The truth is—”

“Hang on,” you say. “Let me change the reel.”

64.

T
he truth is that, yes, I took the tape. I took the diary, too, and carried them both to the street and hailed a cab. But halfway to the reservoir, the drivers got mouthy. I saw it coming. They were smoking and kept glancing up at me in the rearview mirror. The mirror was going double but I could see them giving what I’ve come to call “The Look.”

“You’re not one of those film stars, now, are you?” they asked.

“No one.”

“You look familiar.”

“I get that a lot.”

“I think I know who you are. It’s coming to me, yeah—”

“You going to drive?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Sure, well, here’s some conversation: You know how people ask, ‘Is there a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?’” I asked.

“Sure.”

I took Captain Hamilton’s gun from my pocket. “I’m not happy to see you.”

Lake Hollywood Reservoir is just below the Hollywood sign up in the Hills. We took the freeway to the Barham exit and then Cahuenga to Lake Hollywood Drive.

I told the drivers to park near the gate.

We got out of the car. I walked them up the service road through the vegetation to the base of the dam. In the woods that surrounded it I held the drivers at gunpoint and told them to take off their clothes. They kicked off shoes, then socks. They unbuttoned their shirts.

I did, too.

I put their clothes on and left them naked, taking my clothes and the wallet and the keys back to the cab. I drove in the hat and the clothes that I had stolen and stopped at a Rexall. I bought ten Benzedrine inhalers and cracked two open and balled the paper up and swallowed. Well, the uppers didn’t mix with what I’d taken, but what choice did I have? I needed to stay awake. I could hear my heart beat on the radio. I tasted metal in my throat.

The sun burned past the buildings. The buildings burned, too, though maybe this was only the reflection. I kept hearing sirens. Were they police or fire? Things were creeping from behind the street signs, even as the signs themselves were changing. I couldn’t see the word
STOP
. I must have run through red lights. People on the streets kept waving at me, which I thought meant something terrible. Did they see that I was burning? Did they know that I had killed a man?

It was only later that I realized I was driving a cab.

65.

I
parked outside Verona Gardens and went straight through the lobby up the stairs. I was looking for Max. I was going to take Max. It wasn’t far to the border, and if I hurried I could make it. Then I could disappear. The door to 203 was ajar.

The place had been ransacked. The TV was on. Steam came from the bathroom past the closet filled with hangers. The bathroom door was open, neon strips bracketing a fogged mirror. Water shrieked through the hooked sink faucet and hissed from the shower. The toilet was open and running. The rug on the floor was spattered with blood.

A porkpie hat sat on the nap.

I pulled the curtain back.

My wife lay in the bathtub, naked and hogtied with hose. A sock had been stuffed in her mouth. Her skin was stained with broad burns from the water, which I turned off.

I pulled the sock from her mouth.

“Jesus—”

“They broke down the door.”

“Who’s
they
?”

“People. Looking for Max.”

“Where’s Max?”

“With Johnny.”

“Where?”

“Santa Anita.”

“Did you tell them that?”

“They hurt me.”

“Rose. Did you tell them?”

I ran to her phone and called: “Operator,” I said, “we need help. In Verona on the Boulevard. She’s . . . Man, she’s really . . . Jesus. Burned—”

She wanted me to leave her.

She told me to find Max.

I picked up the hat.

That’s how you found the fingerprints.

66.

I
took two more tubes from the glove compartment and broke them and swallowed the strips. The metal spread through my blood again, coating the back of my throat. I kept swallowing. I wanted to wash it out, but I didn’t have a water glass.

The fire started up inside, but outside it was gone, replaced by sudden storms. Lightning danced as I drove to Santa Anita. I never saw it cut the sky, just the black clouds booming behind the Santa Monicas. It was secondhand evidence, like a shadow on a wall instead of a person walking.

But people were walking everywhere. They were waving, too.

I parked and, well, didn’t have an umbrella—or a hat, thanks to the pie—and by the time I made it through the gate and bought a racing form, my suit was soaked. I figured I needed it. It cut the metal out.

I went up to the main line, diary and tape in hand, the beer stands and the monitors, the haze of smoke, men in straw hats and bad shorts, losing tickets on the floor, tellers behind the windows.

I found Johnny and Max in the ticket line and pretended to read the racing form as I watched the gangster spread a sheaf of Hamiltons at the window: “Five dimes on six to show in the second.”

Johnny opened his black umbrella and walked with Max into the grandstand apron, toward the stretch, and sat on one of the benches. I lit a Kent and walked into the sea of bobbing umbrellas as the horses filed out to the gate.

“Johnny,” I said.

He flicked his cigarette, still burning, to the ground, and looked up, giving me that Mafia stare.

“Dad!” Max shouted.

Johnny smiled. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“It’s like Davy Crockett said: Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”

“You’re not Davy Crockett,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

My hand was in my pocket. “Your girlfriend is burned in the bathtub. She said you were here. They were looking for Max.”

“Who?”

“The people who hurt her.”

“LAPD,” he said.

“How do you—?”

“On the one hand you have the Chicago outfit, Ben. On the other hand you have the LAPD. One is trying to protect the Kennedys. The other is trying to fuck them. Guess which one is on your side?”

“He isn’t wearing a hat,” I said.

“What?”

“The man who hurt my wife isn’t wearing a hat. And he’s here. He must be. She said—”

He looked around. “All these umbrellas—”

The nasal track announcer’s voice came over tinny speakers: “Dagger’s Point still in front, Dagger’s Point by a length and a half, here comes Bullet Proof on the outside, Dagger’s Point coming after him—”

People were standing. They were shouting. You could shoot someone in that noise and no one would hear.

“Wait a second!” Johnny stood. He shouted, too. He had won on Dagger’s Point. Max sat quietly staring into his lap. The crowd pressed in as I stood on the bench and looked over the umbrellas and saw nothing except Johnny leading Max back to the ticket window.

I ran after them, tripping on a stair, and when I stood I saw the man.

Cagney sat under a black umbrella at the edge of the stairs to the right.

He didn’t have his porkpie hat, but his umbrella followed me as I walked to the window—and put the gun to my son’s head.

•   •   •

Y
ou need to change the tape again.

“Are we almost done?”

“You tell me.
You’re
the one who kidnapped your son.”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s not what the
Mirror
said.”

“The
Mirror
lies.”

“Oh? They said—do I need to quote?—‘a deranged drugged man put a gun to his son’s head at Santa Anita—’”

“To stop them from hurting him the way they hurt my wife.”

“
You
hurt your wife. You were stoned.”

“—trying to stay awake.”

“You hurt Max, too.”

“No.”

“You
threatened
to.”

“To get him out of there.”

“—gun pointing to his temple, left hand hooked under his neck. You
punched
—”

“He fell.”

“—was
bleeding
.”

“Look,” I said. “I tried to stop it.”