Bombshell

by Allan, Barbara

  After the clapping subsided, Sinatra, the studio’s designated master of ceremonies, spoke. “Mr. Khrushchev,” the singer said, with a sweeping gesture to the nearby set, “before we film an actual scene from the movie, Can-Can, I should explain what it’s about.” He grinned boyishly. “Frankly, it’s about a bunch of pretty girls and some fellows who like pretty girls.”

  Oleg translated, and the premier smiled, nodding his recognition of a common human situation—you didn’t have to be American, or Russian, or French for that matter, to understand this dynamic.

  “In the picture,” Sinatra continued, “we go into a saloon.” He paused, then said with a straight face, “That’s a place where you go for a drink.”

  Again Oleg spoke, and Khrushchev roared with laughter.

  The room echoed this laughter; it reminded Harrigan of a gangster movie, where a Capone-type ganglord laughed and all his men, a step behind, laughed self-consciously with him.

  “But before we film the dance number,” Sinatra went on, “Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan will perform their song from the picture…. It’s called ‘Live and Let Live.’” Sinatra looked directly at Khrushchev with a more restrained smile, now. “And I think that’s a marvelous idea, don’t you?”

  On cue, trotting out from the back of the set came the legendary Grand Old Man of world show business, Chevalier, looking dapper in a black tuxedo with silver quilted lapels that complemented his silver hair; he was followed almost immediately by the much younger Jourdan, handsome, tanned and suave, wearing a gray suit with double-breasted vest and black Stetson bowler.

  If either Frenchman had any qualms about following the likes of Frank Sinatra, he didn’t show it, as they launched into their number.

  In his famous French accent, Chevalier advised Jourdan to live and let live, and Jourdan—in an equally thick accent—countered with advice to be and let be. With a gesture to his ears, Chevalier suggested they should hear and let hear, and Jourdan pointed to his eyes to recommend they see and let see.

  A cute number, and Harrigan noted that when the pair sang in unison—to the effect that the business of the one was the business of the other—a smiling Khrushchev sat forward and nodded in agreement.

  Harrigan frowned—that was peculiar. How in hell could the premier have understood those last words? Troyanovsky hadn’t had time to translate….

  Maybe Khrushchev was just nodding his approval of the performance.

  As the Frenchmen continued their act, Harrigan walked the floor. He had paused among the technicians, when a hand settled firmly on his shoulder.

  Harrigan about jumped out of his skin.

  “Sorry Jack,” a voice whispered in his ear, followed by a wry chuckle. “Should’ve known better than to come up behind a gunfighter like you.”

  Harrigan let out some air. Were his nerves that shot? He turned to Sam Krueger, his Los Angeles–based FBI contact, and admitted, “Jesus I’m jumpy.”

  “Who isn’t?” Krueger smirked. The FBI man stood several inches shorter than Harrigan, his sandy hair cut military short, his eyes hard and professional in the round, pleasant face. He curled a finger for Harrigan to follow him.

  Harrigan did, whispering, “What the hell is it, Sam?”

  Krueger shook his head: not here.

  When Harrigan had first met the FBI agent at the Los Angeles Airport, just before the Russians landed, he’d been immediately impressed with Krueger’s competence, and his friendly yet professional manner. Perhaps the agent had sensed—or seen the dark-circled eyes that gave it away—Harrigan’s fatigue, and had stepped up to the plate, in this critical game, to play Roger Maris to his Mickey Mantle. It was Krueger’s job to stay out in front of Harrigan, checking security at each of the sights Khrushchev would visit in the city.

  Harrigan trailed Krueger over to the edge of the set, where beneath a fake gaslight lamppost, the FBI agent handed Harrigan a piece of paper.

  Harrigan frowned as he read it. “Hell, Sam,” he whispered, “I might’ve expected a bomb threat at the Ambassador Hotel tonight… but three?” He folded the paper and stuck it in his pocket. “We got a full fuckin’ moon tonight, or what?”

  “Are you surprised? Guy this famous, this hated, comes to town, all the kooks come out. Knock this guy off, you’re famous right now—and half the country thinks you’re a hero.”

  “The other half will be heading for bomb shelters. Do I need to—”

  “My men are already on it,” Krueger told him, shaking his head, keeping his voice low. “We’re going over that hotel from top to bottom—broom closets to the honeymoon suite.”

  “Good idea—you need to check every screw.” Harrigan looked at his watch. In four hours Khrushchev was scheduled to speak at the Ambassador at a banquet for a large civic group. Would there be enough time for a thorough check of the facility?

  Krueger answered the unspoken question. “If there is a bomb,” Krueger said confidently, “we’ll find it…. Probably just cranks. Typical hollow threats.”

  “But we have to assume they’re not,” Harrigan said.

  “Roger that…. I’m heading back to the Ambassador, now.”

  Harrigan nodded. “Understood. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  He watched the FBI agent disappear into the shadows of the soundstage, then turned his attention back to the set where Chevalier and Jourdan had finished their routine. Bowing, they graciously received the enthusiastic applause, which rang through the massive chamber. Sinatra once again took center stage.

  “And now,” the singer announced, “we’re going to film a real scene that will be used in the movie. Mr. Walter Lang, the director, will explain the procedure…. Mr. Lang, I turn the show over to you.”

  From his director’s chair at the front of the stage rose Walter Lang, who even at sixty was tall, dark, and handsome enough to be his own leading man, a beefier George Raft with similar slicked-back black hair, straight nose, and prominent chin. Lang strode onto the set with typical confidence, turning to face the audience, speaking in the strong, authoritative manner that was needed to keep the volatile likes of Sinatra and MacLaine in line.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice only slightly touched by his Memphis, Tennessee, upbringing, “I must have complete silence on the set. We are going to film the big dance number that comes at the end of the movie.”

  Harrigan, of course, knew this was a lie… call it a fib. The camera had been checked earlier for security reasons—along with the other equipment—and contained no film. The sham was designed simply to show their V.I.P. guest a good time.

  Lang returned to his director’s chair.

  He called out, “Are you ready, girls?” Then, “Cue the music!”

  A pre-recorded tape began to play a lively, orchestrated number.

  “And… Action!”

  Flowing from the wings of the second-story set, from both the right and the left, came a bevy of beautiful girls, twelve in all, slender red-haired Juliet Prowse among them. Wearing colorful velvet dresses, the women shrieked and squealed as they descended the staircase, lifting the hems of their petticoats in Moulin Rouge style to revel shapely, long legs encased in provocative black stockings.

  When the last of the dancers reached the floor, a thirteenth appeared—Shirley MacLaine, similarly clad.

  As she came dancing down the stairs, Lang stood from his chair and shouted, “Cut!”

  The music stopped. The girls on the floor stopped mid-twirl.

  “Shirley, darling,” the director said to the actress, “your entrance needs to be a little quicker.”

  “All right, Mr. Lang,” she responded sweetly.

  The director returned to his chair. “Places everyone! This will be take number two…. Quiet, please!”

  The soundstage fell silent.

  “Cue the music!” Lang repeated. Then, “Action!”

  The scene began again, this time continuing through MacLaine’s entrance as she joined in on the z
estful choreography.

  Amused by the harmless deception, Harrigan watched Khrushchev watching the dancers. The premier seemed to be a normal enough male, red blood running in the Red’s veins—he was smiling as the chorines jumped in the air, then fell to the floor in the splits, got up and whirled some more, shaking their legs before finally kicking them in the air.

  But when the dancers bent over in unison, showing their lacy-pantied posteriors in a flirtatious flip to the Russian delegation, Khrushchev’s smile disappeared, and he turned a whiter shade of pale, bolting to his feet.

  His smile had become a scowl, and he spoke tersely in Russian, his face growing redder than his politics, as his wife tried to calm him, with pacifying but ultimately unavailing gestures.

  The commotion in the balcony brought the dancers and the music to a halt—no need for Lang to pretend to end the scene with a shouted “Cut.” And certainly no one needed to cry, “Quiet on the set”—the silence was ominous, nerve-racking, as all heads turned toward Khrushchev.

  The interpreter, standing beside the fuming premier, spoke solemnly… patronizingly.

  “Mr. Khrushchev,” Oleg said loudly enough for all to hear, despite the lack of a microphone, “considers this dance immoral—and says in Russia, we find faces prettier than backsides.” Then he announced, “We are leaving.”

  A concerned murmur spread through the crowd, as a stunned Shirley MacLaine covered her open mouth with a hand, her choking sob audible as she fled the dance floor in tears.

  Harrigan sighed and shook his head in disbelief. Again, he couldn’t be sure—had Khrushchev really been offended? Or was Twentieth Century Fox being outsmarted by that Russian-style twentieth-century fox?

  In the parking lot outside the sound stage, Harrigan had just helped Mrs. Khrushchev into the back seat of their limousine when Spyros Skouras motioned to him from a soundstage doorway.

  Skouras looked understandably distressed; an enormous amount of money had been spent for the catastrophic luncheon. But this was the kind of bad publicity money couldn’t buy….

  Harrigan approached the studio boss.

  Skouras raised an eyebrow as he said, “Miss Monroe…”

  Harrigan felt a sudden chill, despite the warmth of the day. “Yes—what about her?”

  “She wants to see you.”

  “What? Well, where is she?”

  “At her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  Harrigan frowned. “She’s back there already?”

  Skouras nodded.

  “And… she asked for me?”

  “Specifically. By name. She seems to know you are in charge of Khrushchev.” He shook his head. “How does she know these things?”

  Harrigan ducked the question with one of his own: “What does she want? I don’t mean any offense, sir, but I have bigger fish to fry.”

  “She is one of the biggest fish in town.”

  But Harrigan had no time to placate any movie star, even Marilyn Monroe. Particularly Marilyn Monroe….

  The president of Fox was saying, “She says it is matter of life or death…. That’s what she said, in those words. Life. And death.”

  “Whose?”

  Skouras looked past him, toward the limousine where a glaring Khrushchev, accompanied by his uniformed KGB guards, was getting in. “That Russian son of a bitch.” The studio boss shrugged. “So don’t talk to her. I don’t give a damn what happens to that fat bastard.”

  And Skouras disappeared back into the soundstage, closing the door, making as effective an exit as any of his stars might have mustered…

  … leaving Jack Harrigan feeling like a bit player in his own life.

  And now he had no choice but to once again go calling on Marilyn Monroe.

  The State Department agent tightened his belt—hoping to keep his pants from landing down around his ankles… again.

  Chapter Seven

  GOODBYE, KHRUSHCHEV

  MARILYN MONROE—HAVING traded the little black dress for her comfy white robe, but still wearing her black high-heeled shoes—paced nervously in the living room of her Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, the spiked heels leaving a trail of little bullet holes in the plush white carpet behind her.

  For the past hour, ever since returning from the Fox luncheon, the actress had been chain-smoking, adding more and more cigarette butts to an already overflowing ashtray.

  Normally, Marilyn didn’t smoke—any camera, professional or amateur, catching the movie star with a cigarette drooping from her famous lips made for bad publicity. It wasn’t a health concern; she simply didn’t look her best. And of course cigarettes made the likes of Bogart or John Wayne seem like men; but for a woman, in this world of double standards, smoking remained a filthy habit. Furthermore, tobacco stained Marilyn’s teeth, gave her bad breath, and—over time—would encourage tiny wrinkle lines around her mouth. Besides, she had far more serious cravings than nicotine.

  But once in a while, now and then, here and there… when she was really tense… Marilyn did light one up. And her anxiety at the moment outdistanced attending an important Hollywood party, or going before the camera on a soundstage, either of which could paralyze her. She was a woman of enormous self-confidence, which happened to be undermined, somewhat, by cataclysmic self-doubt.

  Sighing smoke, pausing in her pacing, she turned to her secretary in building despair. “May—what if he doesn’t come?”

  In the limousine on the way back from Fox Studios, Marilyn had, in hushed tones, told May what she’d overheard in the bathroom at the commissary… and why she was convinced that Nikita Khrushchev was marked for assassination—tonight.

  And the secretary—who knew how to sort through the frivolities and the serious concerns that equally characterized her charge—had also been alarmed, and suggested that Marilyn contact Spyros Skouras immediately on returning to the bungalow.

  “Have him paged on the soundstage,” May advised, not in the least humoring her. “You’re right—this could be very serious indeed.”

  At the moment a somber May, in the same prim navy suit she’d had on since morning, was seated at a small white secretariat near the entrance to the master bedroom. Always pragmatic, even in a crisis, she was attending to Marilyn’s mail that had been forwarded from New York.

  The secretary looked up from her work. “Mr. Skouras told you he’d contact your Mr. Harrigan, didn’t he?”

  “Yes… but what if… Agent Harrigan doesn’t come?”

  May seemed to frown and smile simultaneously; she knew nothing of the brief tryst between Marilyn and the State Department man last summer. Some things Marilyn did not trust even to May… who, after all, still had certain loyalties to Arthur.

  “Then I’m sure,” May said gently, “he’ll send someone else who’s involved with the premier’s safety and security.”

  “But I want to talk to Mr. Harrigan.” Even Marilyn herself, finished with the cigarette and now biting her platinum colored nails, could hear the pouty little girl in her voice. “Mr. Skouras said he’d make sure it was Mr. Harrigan.”

  “Why does it matter? Do you know Mr. Harrigan?”

  “A little. He’s the one who contacted me, and gave me those materials on Mr. Khrushchev. I’m just… used to talking to him, is all.”

  May shrugged, smiled reassuringly. “Then I’m certain he’s the one who’ll come around. Agent Harrigan’ll probably want to talk to you about your meeting with Khrushchev, anyway. I understand these agents like to debrief civilians they recruit.”

  I’ll say, Marilyn thought.

  “Anyway, Spyros won’t let you down,” May said to her, calming yet firm. “I’m sure he could tell how urgent you consider this, and how upset you were.”

  “I wasn’t upset,” Marilyn said, lighting up a fresh Chesterfield, “he was upset! With me!”

  May looked up from her work. “Why?”

  Marilyn shrugged and began to pace again. “For skipping the show. He said the premier asked about me. I
guess I was supposed to sit next to Mr. Khrushchev… but I just couldn’t, knowing what I know. Y’know?”

  “I know.”

  Abruptly she stopped again, eyes popping. “Was I a fool not to go? Not to sit next to the premier, and warn him? But I would have had to use a translator, and who knows who might have heard me? One of the conspirators might have! How do we know the translator himself isn’t in on it?”

  May was patting the air with both hands. “Now, dear… calm yourself… you have a genuine concern, but you’re starting to make a movie out of this.”

  “If this were a movie,” the actress said, irritably, “I’d know what to do!”

  And if this were a movie, a leading man would enter, and believe her, and solve all her problems.

  Marilyn started back in pacing, puffing the cigarette, wobbling in the heels. The shoes hurt her toes, but she didn’t dare kick them off; her feet were swollen and she’d never get the fucking heels back on again.

  “It’s so goddamn hot in here,” Marilyn said irritably. “Is the air-conditioning working?”

  “I think so.”

  The actress untied the robe, letting it fall open over her otherwise naked form.

  May started to rise from the desk. “I can open some windows….”

  “No!” The whole business with the KGB guards in the bathroom had fueled Marilyn’s paranoia. What if they somehow knew she’d been there? What if someone had seen her leave the restroom after the guards had? “Please, May… let’s keep the curtains closed.”

  May shrugged and nodded, and returned to the letters.

  Marilyn sank down on the couch. “Maybe I should call the White House…,” she wondered aloud.

  May’s eyes tightened as the woman formed a response—a public figure like Marilyn Monroe calling the White House was no wild fancy, and definitely a possibility… MM might even be put through to Ike himself—but Marilyn discounted the notion herself.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, Guilaroff’s pageboy ’do bouncing. “They’d think I’m just a dumb blonde, well-meaning but nuttier than a Baby Ruth.”