Misfit (6 page)

 

“I met him two years ago on a blind date in Los Angeles, and a couple of days ago we started talking about this.”

As she spoke about
this
to eager reporters, the
Examiner
reported, “DiMaggio puffed nervously on a cigarette.”

 

It was more accident than miscalculation that found them in the real estate department on the third floor. They'd been trying to leave the building, figuring they could move down the two flights of stairs and into the waiting blue Cadillac that would whisk them up McAllister Street toward the Marina. They were taken somewhat by surprise at the relentlessness of the press and the fans who began tailing them down the hallway. The pace hastened, and soon they were engaged in a full game of chase. From above it must have looked like a wedged school of fish moving through the halls, with the newlyweds at the point, turning corners and circling around, knowing they had to give up on the stairs when it became clear they too would be jammed. They dashed around the circumference of the third floor, her heels sometimes catching on the marble, opening doors and closing them, pulling up short just before getting trapped into corners, doubling back, hoping to find the elevator that would drop them straight to the first floor, forced to navigate less by instinct and knowledge and more by adrenaline.

Cornered in the real estate department office, unsure of what to do (Marilyn without her coat, accidentally left behind in the judge's chambers), they stared through the small rectangular window in the door, wires crisscrossed into diamond shapes. In the glass, the couple could see their reflections, a sort of waxy version of themselves laid over the swelling crowd outside. The room felt deadened, as though it were a bubble of silence. Already it was understood not only that this protective bubble was temporary but also that it was bound to pop, because that's what bubbles do—they pop.

They took smalls steps backward until they were stopped against the service counter, neatly arranged with organized stacks of forms at each end and a clipboard with a sign-in sheet in the middle. Pods of empty desks were abandoned behind them. On one desk a phone rang but stopped after a single ring, the bell momentarily hanging and then fading like a chime.

She pushed her back harder against the counter. A black plastic nameplate fell to the floor.

They waited like hostages. Hands pressed against the smooth blond wood. No words. Just slow breaths. A whistling through his nose. They looked once at each other and, as though on cue, nodded. On an unspoken count of three they rushed at the door, pulling it open and running straight into the mob, hands held and eyes closed, like warriors making their last stand against a force dozens of times their size, not
even bothering to dodge and weave a path through the wave of bullets, believing only in the hope that there's always a way out.

 

One more piece of advice from the
San Francisco Chronicle
's “Hints for Homemakers”:

Marilyn Monroe
was intended to be about the wanting, never the having. And now Joe, representing all the men in the world who've wanted you, suddenly is in your home with his hands on your body and his breath on your neck. To be fair, you initially did find the storybook marriage intoxicating, in part due to the improbability of that being your life, the little orphan girl of the crazy mom now envied for doing something so big as to marry a superstar ballplayer. But too soon he wants to change things. Remove you from the spotlight. Chastise you for always having to act like Marilyn Monroe. The boundaries get confused. And he tells you that you need to stay home and be a wife, and in fairness you can see that he really does value that
role by the way he points to his sisters and his mother as prime examples of womanhood, but this storybook is starting to make less and less sense because he really doesn't want you to be the main character in it anymore, and you can feel the rage inside him when he visits the set of
The Seven Year Itch
on Lexington and Fifty-Second in New York and sees you showing your legs take after take and flirting with the gathering crowd and the press in between, and he walks off the set, heading straight back to the St. Regis Hotel, where, even though he barely says a word when you return, you can see the outrage building, almost expanding in his gut, until he bursts out that he doesn't understand why you do this, and why you don't want to be freed from this degrading career and realize the opportunity he's giving you to have a settled life as a homemaker.

And now sometimes he won't talk to you for days, sometimes a week at a time, and you ask him what's wrong and he tells you to leave him alone, and it's hard to know what's what, only that he bristles every time you talk about a potential new movie deal or magazine shoot, and he seems to puff larger, as though it's a further betrayal; and on occasion he reminds you how much you need him, how he protects you, and you'll say you don't want his protection, and that's when he shuts down—all he ever knows how to do is get disturbed and indignant when you're lousy with grief; and you run into the bedroom and slam the door and lie on the bed, waiting to hear his footsteps leaving the
house, remembering being taken to the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society, crying as you were led through the door, trying to explain to whomever would listen,
Please, please don't make me go inside. I'm not an orphan, my mother's not dead. I'm not an orphan—it's just that she's sick in the hospital and can't take care of me.

The suit was settled four years after the incident, and a little less than a year after the actual filing. Florence Kotz, a forty-year-old secretary from Los Angeles, named several defendants—most notably Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. According to a wire report, her suit claimed that she was “seized with hysteria when the defendants allegedly broke down her apartment door and flashed lights into her eyes on the night of November 5, 1954.” Kotz asked the Los Angeles Superior Court for $200,000 in damages. She settled for $7,500.

It took three years for Virginia Blasgen, owner of the apartment building where Kotz lived at 754 North Kilkea Drive, to be awarded a default judgment of $100 from the small claims court in Los Angeles for the damage done to the apartment door. In addition, she received $5.75 for court costs.

 

But that night of November 5, years before any legal settlements, Virginia Blasgen has been looking out her
window on and off for the past hour. She initially sees only two men hanging around the front of her rental property across the street, at 754 North Kilkea. Her father built that apartment house, and now she owns it. Eventually it will go to her boy. She has to keep an eye out. It isn't just property she's protecting. It's a future.

She parts the curtain further with her right hand; her view is partially blocked by a large elm. The taller man stamps around, looking agitated, slightly unguarded. They seem determined and confident. Almost hammy. The “little one,” she'll later recall, “was jumping up and down, and looking at me and smiling.”

The rental is a triplex, with a small studio on the bottom and two larger apartments on top. It's Mission style, typical of the quiet residential neighborhood, with a brilliant green lawn, not so easy to maintain under the shade of the giant elm. One of the upstairs units is rented out to an actress named Sheila Stewart. She seemed like a nice girl when Virginia showed her the efficiency, responsible and clean. She reported having steady work, and came armed with the first and last months' rent, ready to take the place. Virginia mentioned some concern about her being an actress, inferring a different lifestyle standard, and Sheila Stewart assured her she was of a serious nature—that when she wasn't auditioning she prized her classes and her rest. Sheila Stewart has so far lived up to that claim. But seeing the men gather in front of the building makes Virginia wonder if Sheila Stewart hasn't taken on another prize.

DiMaggio says he's not fooling around any longer. He wants to bust right through the door. It's dark and it's nearing midnight, and the sky is clear, almost invisible. Under the umbrella glow of a street lamp, he leans against his Cadillac convertible, his shoulders pressed against the canvas top, talking at Barney Ruditsky, a private investigator, and Phil Irwin, a retired cop who works for Ruditsky. They've both arrived within the last fifteen minutes, along with Henry Sanicola and DiMaggio's friend Bill Karen, who wait quietly in the backseat of the car. Warming himself up, Sinatra lounges in the front passenger's seat, jangling the car keys and tapping his foot.

DiMaggio's insisting that if indeed she's inside there, they might as well go in now. His muscles tense. His entire body constricts. “I don't know why we just don't go in and bust this guy up,” he says. Shadows from the lamplight burrow into the lines in his face, aging him. “Make sure he's the one that gets fucked, and not her.”

Ruditsky speaks in a low voice, trying to draw DiMaggio closer. Quiet him down. Bring on some calm. He's trailed enough women to be able to predict a man's reaction—especially that of one so recently and publicly humiliated. “Better to think out what we should do,” he suggests. “What we're after.”

“I know what we should do. What I'm after.”

Sinatra leans out the window, elbow on the door. “I tell you what you should be doing, Philly,” he tells
Irwin. “You should be helping the old detective calm Joe down into a logical plan.”

DiMaggio snaps back at Sinatra that his plan is to see the fear in this guy's face. “I want to hear his skull cracking on top of her. Like an egg.”

“Well, I'm sure you three will work it out,” Sinatra says. He slides over into the driver's seat. “I'm going to move this car over a couple of blocks. Out of sight. No need to make it too easy on the cops.”

 

Sinatra and DiMaggio were eating at Villa Capri when the call came in from Ruditsky. Irwin had spotted her. She'd gone into the house on North Kilkea they had under surveillance, the one they were sure was the cover for her affair. Sinatra took the call from the maître d'. He didn't have a good feeling about where this was heading. They had knocked back a few over dinner, and though not fully anticipating this development, it was as if they'd been preparing for it. DiMaggio had been jawing on and on about her. Knowing she was putting the hump on that clown, Hal Schaefer. A stinking vocal coach. And a fucking queer, if he didn't know better. And he was just supposed to sit here accepting it because a court had granted her an
interlocutory decree
; but that meant there was still a waiting period before the divorce was legal, therefore she was still his wife, and if she was still his wife, then she didn't get to do that kind of shit . . . And he went at Sinatra nonstop until the phone call, never betraying an emotion,
just getting more stiff and more wooden with every thought.

But that was dinner.

After confirming that Ruditsky was certain, Sinatra said he'd take it to DiMaggio.

 

Just to be clear: The interlocutory divorce decree was granted to Marilyn Monroe by the Los Angeles Superior Court on grounds of mental cruelty.

 

Sinatra comes walking around the corner, dancing a mock jitterbug as he approaches the boys, Sanicola and Karen in tow. Irwin stands alone, a cigarette between his fingers, pointing the red ember toward the shadow where Ruditsky and DiMaggio huddle.

Ruditsky looks as though he's working hard to keep his cool. He's no piece-of-shit private eye. Making his reputation as a New York City cop in '28, he went undercover beneath a bedsheet on a slab in a Second Street Turkish bathhouse, with his piece on his stomach, just waiting to bust up the so-called “Poison Ivy” gang. After that he collared the likes of Legs Diamond and Dutch Schultz, and the main West Side thugs, such as the “Pear Button” gang. He came west after the TV studios decided to make a series,
The Lawless Years
, based on a memoir he'd published. He worked as a technical consultant on the show and then moved on to movies, making sure the police and criminals were portrayed with some degree of accuracy. The PI work
came on the side, only the right cases when the right people asked. He doesn't quite know why he has to answer to DiMaggio. After all, it was Sinatra who hired him. Yankee Clipper or no Yankee Clipper, Ruditsky has little patience for this kind of amateur bullshit about cracking skulls. “But I'm telling you,” DiMaggio is saying, “I'm not fooling around here any longer. Let's just kick the door in.”

Ruditsky says, “We have to make it count for something.”

“No need to worry on that.”

“Pictures, for example . . . Something to hold over her, rather than giving her something to hold over you. A good photo will be worth thousands to you, Joe. Your lawyer shows it to her lawyer, and there you go. Thousands saved.” Ruditsky motions for Irwin to get the camera out of the trunk, mouthing to remember to charge the flash.

“I don't like this,” DiMaggio says. “Don't like this at all . . . Frank, do you like this?”

“I think we should listen to Barney.”

DiMaggio looks at Ruditsky. “He says I should listen to you.”

“We get the pictures, and then we go. You'll have everything you need.”

“But I want them to be afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“When I kick down that door, I want to see it in their eyes.”

“Frank,” Ruditsky says. “He says he still wants to kick down the door.”