“This film” had officially been shut down by Fox for recasting or outright scrapping, and Marilyn fired.

I pushed aside half a plate of scrambled eggs and lox, quickly paid the check, and tooled the Jag back to my bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. My digs were just the basics-living room, marble fireplace, two bedrooms, two baths, private patio. The spare bedroom had a desk that I used for work, and from there I tried to phone Marilyn at her North Doheny Drive apartment, but a dozen rings got me nowhere.

Trying Pat Newcomb at the Arthur Jacobs agency got me a little somewhere-a receptionist put me through to the publicist’s male assistant, who took my name and number and said he would pass it right on to Miss Newcomb, who was out.

I went on about my business, spending the day at the A-1 office in the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles-we were hiring, and my partner, Fred Rubinski, and I interviewed half a dozen ex-LA cops. Despite what Jack Webb might have you believe, not every LA cop is intelligent, reliable, and honest, and it was a chore.

Anyway, the following Monday I was reaching for the phone to make a TWA booking back to Chicago when the damn thing rang, making me jump a little. Maybe I wasn’t as tough as I used to be.

“Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner,” Pat Newcomb said. She sounded tired.

“I guess you’ve had your hands full.”

“I have. I’m at Marilyn’s now, as it happens.”

“The Doheny pad?”

Marilyn’s actual residence was an apartment on East Fifty-seventh in New York, but since she and Arthur Miller divorced, her Hollywood address had been at a triplex in West Hollywood, owned by Frank Sinatra. Frank’s Negro valet, George Jacobs, lived there, and usually one or two of the singer’s squeezes, or sometimes a pal needing a temporary roof. Which category Marilyn fell into, I wasn’t sure.