“She has a swimming scene and, knowing Marilyn, might just slip out of her suit…”

I reminded Miss Newcomb that I needed two passes, and was assured they’d be waiting at the studio gate.

So how did I rate? Big-shot agent? Top Hollywood columnist? Producer sizing up MM for his next picture, maybe?

No. I was just a private detective, or anyway I used to be. Since my agency grew to three locations (LA, Manhattan, and the original Chicago office), I’d become mostly a figurehead, bouncing between them, handling publicity and sucking up to big-money clients. I couldn’t remember when I last knocked on a strange door or parked outside some motel with a camera, much less carried a gun.

But Nathan Heller, president of the A-1 Detective Agency, me, had indeed done a number of private eye jobs for Miss Monroe, starting with bodyguard duty in Chicago on her Gentlemen Prefer Blondes junket, and more recently tracking down a guy named C. Stanley Gifford, who she thought was her father, in the sense that he was the likeliest candidate for having knocked up Mom, who currently resided in the latest of many nuthouses.

Old C. Stanley missed the boat, or maybe his gravy train, when my client used the info I gathered to call her potential pop and say, “This is Norma Jeane-I’m Gladys Baker’s daughter.” Apparently thinking this was a touch, the idiot-unaware that Norma Jeane Baker had transformed herself, through no little effort, into Marilyn Monroe-hung up. On her second try, she got C. Stanley’s wife, who told the caller to contact her husband’s lawyer if she “had a complaint.”

Anyway, we were friendly, Marilyn and I, and for a while had been very friendly. In the interim I had transformed myself, through no little effort, into “the private eye to the stars.” This was a nice trick since I lived in Chicago, though the A-1’s ongoing security job with the Beverly Hills Hotel meant I had a bungalow whenever and for however long I might need one.