Bombshell

Chapter Twelve Apartment on Main Street

Walt Disney was depressed. This was not one of those suicidal bouts of depression the fifty-nine-year-old movie mogul had suffered in the early days, back when the weight of his growing studio had been so crushing. It seemed, ever since his friend and employee Ward Kimball had got him interested in scale-model railroading, he’d no longer had to fight that sort of battle with himself.

The railroad at Disneyland was an offshoot of the scale-model railroad he’d had constructed around his home in Holmby Hills, much to his wife Lillian’s consternation (cutting through her beloved gardens as it did). Between this hobby, and his in-house masseuse at the office (and the occasional belt of booze), Walt had managed to avoid the specter of another nervous breakdown.

Nonetheless, these last few years, he’d been sparring with melancholia, if not outright depression, despising growing older, a process emphasized in the mirror each day (“Mirror, mirror…”) by his thinning, graying-on-the-sides hair, his increasingly droopy eyelids, his jowly cheeks, and his spreading paunch. The public might like the image of “Uncle Walt,” but in his mind, Walt Disney viewed himself as the same vital young animator who had built on meager drawing talents and abundant entrepreneurial instincts to create a Hollywood kingdom.

Having the State Department yank the rug out from under the planned festivities for Premier Khrushchev had really hacked Walt off royal. Would he be reimbursed for the expense and trouble he’d been put to? No! Would he look a fool in the press, after he’d courted so much attention for the Russian visit? Yes!

One of his great pleasures, as the “mayor” of Disneyland, was to meet and greet world figures, and he relished the chance to show off his park, his personal personification of the American dream, to the world’s most famous Red.

Walt would have got a particularly big charge out of showing off his Disneyland Navy. Under his hands-on supervision, old-fashioned cannons had been affixed to the steamers that churned through the Adventureland’s jungle and down his version of the Mississippi, and he had assembled the paddle-wheelers — along with his Jules Verne submarines — in the Tomorrowland lagoon with an eye on presenting them to the Soviet leader, with tongue in cheek, as “the tenth largest battle fleet in the world.”

Not that losing the publicity of a Khrushchev visit was anything that concerned him… crowds remained strong, fed by the Disneyland TV show, even if the Davy Crockett fad had finally burned out, replaced by Mousekeeter caps and the God-given puberty of Miss Annette Funicello.

The only negative remained the ongoing complaints about the high price of admission (fifteen dollars, which included a book of ride coupons). Walt had to charge what he did because the park cost a lot to build and maintain — he had no government subsidy, after all! The public was his only “subsidy.” Hadn’t he mortgaged everything he owned, put his studio itself in jeopardy for “Disneylandia” (as it had originally been called)?

Walt glanced at the fancy version of a Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist: it was approaching two a.m., and he still hadn’t gone to bed… just sat there with his bottle of Scotch and pack of cigarettes, puffing like one of his prized scale-model steam engines, going over Bud Swift’s latest draft of Pollyanna, a fine piece of sentimental craftsmanship which had brought a tear or two to his eyes.

Seemed like everything made him cry these days.

Sometimes he just had to get away to this apartment, his private personal retreat, free from Lillian and Holmby Hills. He had chosen the decor himself — lavender-, red-, and pink-flocked wallpaper, thick red rugs, lush upholstery, heavy drapes, wind-up phonograph, china knick-knacks, faux gas lamps, brass bed, the furnishings Victorian all the way.

“Hell, Walt,” Ward Kimball had said, one of the few who dared kid him like this, “what fella wouldn’t feel at home here — darn thing looks like a New Orleans whorehouse!”

Walt had just laughed and held his temper in check, but the remark had cut him: he had done his best in the apartment to replicate the living room of the Disney family farmhouse back in Marceline, Missouri. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to make much use of this hideaway lately; brother Roy had gently broken it to Walt that a rumor was rife among Disney employees that Walt was using the apartment as a love nest for unceasing assignations with various young women.

The rumor was ridiculous, unfounded — he was not a womanizer, had never been sexually driven; like any studio boss, he could have had one starlet after another, if he so desired, and when he happened to walk through a dressing room where shapely girls were in various states of nakedness, he remained unimpressed: if you’d seen one naked girl, you’d seen them all.

But the rumors had to be quashed — he insisted on moral behavior from his employees at the park, and a single “damn” or “hell” would get a staffer fired on the spot — and, now, only occasionally did Walt use the apartment above the fire station adjacent to city hall, here on Disneyland’s Main Street.

That first six months he had spent all his days and nights at the park. Lillian had accompanied him at first, until one morning a guard at the Monsanto exhibit refused to let Mr. and Mrs. Disney inside, before opening. Walt had shown the guard his driver’s license, and had been admitted… but the guard still refused Lillian. Walt fired the son of a bitch, of course — anyone who’d paid to visit the park deserved the same courtesy given a guest at the Disney home — but Lillian was highly insulted.

After that, Mrs. Walt Disney refused to go to Disneyland.

Walt, however, hated to leave the place, and had the private apartment installed, to give him twenty-four-hour access to the nostalgic world he’d created, which he found so preferable to the real one. Often, during the day, he would amble along Main Street, chat with visitors, tousle the kids’ hair; but just as often crowds of autograph seekers would make that impractical. Instead, he would sit locked in his Main Street apartment and stare out the window wonderingly at the Americans from every state and every walk of life who were strolling down his boulevard of unbroken dreams.

And bittersweet tears of joy at this manifestation of his imagination, tinged with the sting of a lost youth and forever bygone America, would stream down his face and pearl in his mustache.

He looked out into the darkness, only a few security lights providing pools of occasional illumination on his Main Street, which represented to Walt the heart of a small Midwestern town from his childhood. He had designed the park so that, at first blush anyway, it provided a trip into the recent past — his past.

With the railroad defining the borders of the park, its main station was plopped down right at Disneyland’s main entrance. From here, visitors — starting at the small square with its town hall and fire station (over which his apartment nestled) — would wander down the archetypically American Main Street, whose storefronts bore such familiar names as “Elias Disney, Contractor” (Walt’s father) and “Main Street Gym, Christopher D. Miller, Proprietor” (his grandson).

Main Street provided an operating base for concessions, too, but (no matter what anyone thought) Disneyland wasn’t about money to Walt. He wanted to create a home away from home for all Americans, and hence had — with his cartoonist’s instincts — seen to it that everything on Main Street was built slightly smaller than life-size, to create a sense of friendliness, intimacy, a childlike world.

At the end of Main Street, an unlikely sight for small town Americans beckoned: Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Walt had dangled this “weenie” (as he put it) to keep people moving, to propel the park’s visitors onward, visual magnets pulling them into the next world of attractions.

Following this route clockwise, visitors moved from Main Street, finding themselves in Adventureland, then Frontierland, Fantasyland, and finally Tomorrowland, the logical conclusion to a journey that had begun in the nostalgic past. But — unlike a movie, where a viewer was drawn through a linear sequence — Disneyland could be enjoyed however the visitor pleased: a left turn, a right turn, changing the sequence of events and the “story” being told. This concept delighted Walt.

But for all of the lavish lengths that he’d gone to, to bring each of his “lands” to life, Walt himself remained most happy, most at home, with Main Street. Right now he sat on the over-stuffed sofa at the window, a black cigarette in one hand, glass of Scotch in the other, staring down at the dark street — empty of people, let alone horse-drawn streetcars.

His advisors had been after him to add a security force at the park, and he was considering doing so — perhaps he’d dress them like Keystone Kops — but he felt convinced that Disneyland was secure after dark. The Anaheim police did their drive-bys, didn’t they? In four years there had been no break-ins, no vandalism — that would have been un-American. That thought was just fading when the two figures in black moved down Main Street, into his God-like view.

Walt sat forward, eyes wide as Mickey Mouse. The window had been cracked open — no air-conditioning in his apartment, they didn’t have that back at the turn of the century, you know — and he could not only see the men, but hear them.

He could not, however, understand them: it was some Oriental language, Japanese, Korean…?

No, Chinese…

Long-sleeved black t-shirts and tight trousers, black gloves, only their faces showing, the slender young men were Oriental themselves. One seemed to be in charge, and was pointing off toward Adventureland, then gestured forward, to Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

In their hands, their right hands, were weapons — automatics, affixed with extended snouts that Walt supposed were designed to silence their fire.

At that moment a distant but distinct mechanical grinding sound froze the two men, and caused Walt to sit up in alarm. Was that… one of the rides? On the midway?

The men in black conversed again in their foreign language — not loud, but not whispering — and then the leader used a word that was not Oriental, nor was it English, though this was one word in the flurry of percussive gibberish that Walt Disney recognized: Khrushchev. Then the two men split up, going in their separate directions, moving quickly.

Walt stood slowly (his arthritis allowed nothing else), and he covered his mustached mouth with a hand.

What could this mean? Why were two foreign intruders, with guns, stalking his park in the wee hours? Why would they mention the Russian chairman’s name, when Khrushchev was no longer scheduled to visit the park? Or did the two Oriental gunmen think Khrushchev was still coming to visit, tomorrow, as originally scheduled, and had sneaked in to be on hand to assassinate the premier when the sun came up…?

He was not afraid — he was surprised, but also he was angry, a cold fury unlike the volcanic resentment he’d expressed at the canceling of the Khrushchev visit. His Magic Kingdom had been invaded — and one thing you didn’t want to be, in Walt Disney’s world, was the son of a witch out to get Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.

Walt mentally kicked himself for putting no telephone in the apartment — no phones at the turn of the century, either, and anyway he didn’t want to be disturbed here — and dug his key chain out of his slacks pocket. A backroom behind the concession stands across the way had a working phone.

But who should he call? The Anaheim police? Or the State Department? Even without Khrushchev on the grounds, the foreign intruders at the park would seem to be the business of the American government, after all. Had he added that agent — what was his name, Harrison? — to the names and numbers in the little black book he carried?

Walt dug that out, too, knowing it was time to leave the charming past and re-enter the dangerous present.

Under the moon’s watchful ivory eye, revolver in hand, Jack Harrigan — with cadaverous CIA agent Munson on his heels — raced across the manicured lawn of the Beverly Hills Hotel, dodging the heavy foliage as if avoiding shell holes on a battlefield, heading for bungalow number seven.

Although it was well after two in the morning, a light in the front room shot rays out around the edges of the drawn curtains, tiny beacons of hope in Harrigan’s very dark night.

The State Department man ignored the bell, pounding on the door instead with the ball of a fist, his gun in-hand behind his back. “Miss Monroe, it’s Jack Harrigan… Open up!”

No sound came from within.

He banged again.

Impatient, Munson said, “Damnit man, I’ll break a window…”

Like a safety patrol boy at a grade school, Harrigan held his out a hand in “stop” fashion. “No — I hear something. Wait…”

And then the lock clicked.

The door cracked open, revealing wide, brown eyes that were not Marilyn Monroe’s, peering back out at them from behind the chain-latched door.

The secretary.

“It’s May, isn’t it?” Harrigan asked, forcing a smile, not wanting to frighten the woman further. “Forgive me, but I’ve forgotten your last name.”

“It’s Reis,” she said quietly, guardedly. “May Reis.”

“Do you remember me, Miss Reis?”

Her face bisected by the chain, the secretary nodded.

“I’m with the State Department,” he reminded her, “and this gentleman is another government agent… his name is Munson. It’s important that we speak with Miss Monroe.”

The secretary shook her head, eyes narrowing. “She’s not here.”

Harrigan glanced behind the woman, taking in what he could of the living room through the cracked door. Munson’s breath was hot on his neck, an over-eager suitor.

“Where is she, Miss Reis?” Harrigan asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Is she inside — with Mr. Khrushchev?”

The secretary’s eyes grew wide again… with fear possibly, and perhaps something else… The burden of a secret? Harrigan was certain she knew where the missing pair had gone.

“She’s not here,” May Reis insisted. “They’re not here.”

They’re not here!

“Has she taken him somewhere?” Harrigan demanded.

The woman said nothing, her mouth a tight line, her face blank but for a twitchy nervousness about the eyes.

“Please let us in,” he said firmly.

“No.”

“Miss Reis, this is a matter of national security, of international importance.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“I don’t need a warrant in a case of crisis like this. Open the door, or we’ll open it. Understood, Miss Reis?”

The woman closed the door. Harrigan could hear the chain being unlatched. Then the door opened again, wide this time.

The two men stepped inside the lavish, white-appointed bungalow, Harrigan keeping the weapon behind him, Munson leaving the door slightly ajar.

Harrigan approached May, who had retreated to the beige sofa, but she didn’t sit. Her chin high, the little woman wore a blue robe and fuzzy slippers, her short, brown hair disheveled, dark circles rimming troubled eyes.

Munson went into the bedroom, returned moments later, shaking his head.

“So they’re not here,” Harrigan said, and returned his weapon to its shoulder holster.

“I told you they weren’t,” the secretary said, not successful at hiding her alarm at the sight of the gun.

Folding his arms, planting himself before the petite woman like a sentry, looking down at her gravely, Harrigan did his best to intimidate the secretary, to shake her professional cool. “We have to find them, and soon — their lives are at stake.”

“Lives…?”

“Didn’t Marilyn tell you? Somebody tried to murder Premier Khrushchev tonight… in his bed, here in the hotel.”

May collapsed onto the couch, sitting there numbly, staring at hands clasped tightly in her lap. Harrigan waited with strained patience, aware that Munson was pacing behind him, mindful that the CIA agent would use a more forceful tactic on the woman if Harrigan failed in his approach.

Finally the secretary spoke. “Marilyn told me not to trust anyone… not even you, Mr. Harrigan…” She looked up sharply at Harrigan, her distress turning suddenly to anger. “This is your fault!”

“My…?”

“Why didn’t you listen to her?” the secretary demanded. “You pretended to take her seriously… but you lied to her. You shrugged her off, because she was just some, some… dumb blonde to you!”

Munson stepped past Harrigan and loomed menacingly over the woman. “Lady, we don’t have time for your soap opera — where the hell are they?”

Eyes and nostrils flaring in fright, May reared back on the couch. Harrigan shot Munson a look, and the CIA agent backed off.

Harrigan took a seat next to May.

“Marilyn was right,” he admitted, his voice gentle. “The attempt to kill Khrushchev took place at two o’clock this morning, just as she’d predicted, based upon what she overheard…”

May was nodding at his words.

“…and, yes, it’s my fault. I wasn’t there to stop it. I promised her, and I let her down… I let both of you down.”

Harrigan hoped that this admission of culpability would soften the woman, but her lips remained a tight, stubborn line.

Harrigan sighed. “And now she’s helped the premier, and made herself a target, as well. This is an assassin, Miss Reis — a highly skilled, completely ruthless killer… and he’s after both of them, right now.”

The secretary stiffened, turning toward him on the sofa. Her eyes were friendly, but still she shook her head. “Marilyn said they’d be safe, where she’s taken him… that nobody could ever find them… and in the morning…”

Munson broke in. “The fact that we didn’t find you with your throat slashed means the killer didn’t need the information you’re sitting on.”

She blinked. “What?”

Harrigan touched her arm. “Agent Munson is correct. The assassin would have broken in here and made you reveal what you knew…”

The woman stiffened. “I would never have told him.”

Harrigan knew an assassin like this would have the information out of her in about ninety seconds, but he said only, “I believe you, but you would have died protecting Marilyn. That the assassin did not bother you means he is already on their trail… that he most likely followed them, wherever they’ve gone.”

The woman’s eyes filled with terror. She stared searchingly at Harrigan for what seemed forever but was in reality about five seconds, during which the State Department agent waved the CIA man back.

“They’re at the amusement park,” she said, finally.

Harrigan frowned in disbelief. “Where in hell?”

“Disneyland.” May Reis swallowed. “Marilyn took Premier Khrushchev to Disneyland — you wouldn’t, so she did… They went in a Buick… a blue rented Buick sedan. Please, Mr. Harrigan… please… make it up to her. Help them.”

Harrigan’s frown deepened, as he turned away from the secretary’s earnest, moist-eyed gaze. Could this be true? It seemed ridiculous to him, although considering Marilyn Monroe was the mastermind here, maybe not…

That was when Sam Krueger blew in. “Jack — that phone’s going to ring in a second… and it’ll be for you!”

“What?”

Krueger planted himself near that front door, hands on hips, smirking. “Pal, it’s the chief of the Anaheim police.”

“Anaheim…?”

On the end table by the couch, the phone rang.

Harrigan reached for it, hand hovering over the receiver, and looked curiously at Krueger, who snapped, “It’s for you, I said.”

A crisply professional voice on the other end of the line said, “Agent Harrigan, this is Chief Coderoni at Anaheim.” “Yes, sir.” A pause, then: “Mr. Disney asked me to call.”