Chapter 26: Fish or Cut Bait!

“This room is bugged,” Athena told me. “Go ahead and tell the man what you know. Don’t use his name.”

“What am I babbling about this time?”

“Marilyn.”

I glanced at the man, then yanked off my dress. Billie blinked in surprise, then pulled her own dress. Athena frowned at me, stayed dressed and shook her head to indicate that she wasn’t going to play.

“Now that I have your attention, sir,” I said, “and you can see that I don’t have a wire, I need to remind you that this presentation is being filmed. I don’t know if you are out of camera range or not.

“On the subject of Marilyn Monroe, she was murdered in her guest cottage and moved into her bedroom. The Attorney General of the United States participated in the coverup. The man who organized and carried out the murder and part of the coverup was Sidney Korshak, and he was operating under contract from Chicago.”

Our guest gasped in shock.

“The movie industry is a money-making machine,” I continued. “I still don’t have all of the answers yet. When you met Miss Monroe at Cal Neva for the final time, that was her last chance. Athena can get you photos and films of Marilyn’s final gang bang if you wish, or you might ask for one. Sam Giancana made a trophy film of that event. The reason was that Miss Monroe had been warned to stay away from the Kennedy Brothers and she ignored the warning. Not even being committed to a mental health hospital to get off pills and booze helped. No matter—her reputation was already soiled and so when it was reported that she killed herself, that was taken as gospel. I know that the Press is controlled but I didn’t know that it is that controlled. Makes Pravda look independent.”

I explained that it’s not what I knew, but what I could prove to a court—to a jury. The world had already made up its mind.

“Marilyn was not addicted to pills and booze,” Athena interrupted, “even though she was forced to take them on set and participate in orgies after filming stopped for the day. The doctors at her hospital tore her body down trying to cure her. In Sharpe Focus had been working with Marilyn and she was frequently late because we were repairing her body as much as possible while she was making movies. The reason Jackie knows all of this is that we allowed Jackie to see summaries of the information Marilyn passed to us.”

There was more. The state of Marilyn’s body proved that she had been bathed and moved after being murdered—and her body chilled to disguise time of death. Someone had interrogated Marilyn before she died. As for the reported crime scene, her regular bedroom was undergoing renovation.’ “Sir, do you know any woman who will tolerate the stench of turpentine? I couldn’t prove it, but it seems that the water in her bathroom was turned off, too. That, alone, should have raised eyebrows. The cover-up was sufficient because so many people were involved.”

The reason that Marilyn had to die was money. Hollywood was a money-making enterprise. Movies are high-risk endeavors with a low success rate, but there was money. Organized crime bankrolled the movie industry and exercised considerable control over the finished products—but money was the motive for killing Marilyn.

“The movie’s box office doesn’t matter,” I said. “Korshak gets paid by the producers and Korshak gets paid by the unions—gets paid first. The banks also pay Korshak to pretend to loan the studios money—the real money comes from the Teamsters and other unions. If someone didn’t dance when Korshak called the tune, then bad things happen. And there’s the completion bonds, too. The movie makes its backers money even when the movie isn’t completed. Who cashed in Miss Monroe’s life insurance policies? Or did the policies pay out?”

“They paid,” Athena assured me. “Insurance paid enough to stay out of court but not enough to hurt them.”

“Miss Monroe seemed to have been set up for death over a period of months,” I added. “I can’t pinpoint when the narrative that Miss Monroe was suicidal was started, but it was established withc several reported suicide attempts that weren’t.”

“Zara managed to save her life, health and sanity,” Athena butted in. “That’s why they had to use so much drugs.”

The stomach was empty. Nothing in the colon. I speculated that the drugs could have been injected through the nose and into the sinus membranes, or through the vagina into the uterus. I denied being a doctor—I was just an experienced killer who had to murder multiple men and make it look like natural causes. The autopsy had to appear genuine. That suggested someone with more clout than Korshak. While “the fixer” had clout with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office, and the Department of Justice was involved. The Attorney General of the United States had covered his trail but his fingerprints were all over the coverup. Going through Marilyn’s bedroom was a waste of time. Nothing connected to the murder was ever there. Nor were Marilyn’s documents, love letters, appointment book—those wouldn’t have been left in her bedroom during renovation. Guest cottage, probably. Her home office, quite probably. Since police just tore into the bedroom and didn’t have probable cause to check the rest of the house—to include the washing machines that were operating early that morning, they didn’t.