of your favorite cases and people," I pleaded.

Most of his private dick work, Henry joked, occurred in and around L.A., where the real action was. He had partied and smoked a few joints with Robert Mitchum a week before he got busted with actress Lila Leeds and a few others on marijuana charges in 1948. He did some investigative work for Lana Turner in 1958 that helped get her fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane off the hook for stabbing gangster Johnny Stompanato to death with a kitchen knife. Justifiable homicide so ruled the jury in twenty minutes.

Henry had known Joe DiMaggio quite well. They got together whenever Henry came to San Francisco. Joe introduced him to Marilyn Monroe. Henry's eyes brightened as he talked of her. Then Henry shocked me with his tale that the Kennedy's had Marilyn killed to silence her and that DiMaggio knew who had President Kennedy assassinated and it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald, the mafia, Castro, the CIA, or the FBI. DiMaggio knew because he had hired Henry to do an unofficial clandestine investigation into the deaths of Monroe and Kennedy to satisfy his own doubts. But Henry wouldn't tell me much more, other than the fatal dose of Nembutal that killed Marilyn in 1962 had not been willingly ingested by her but administered by enema by another. I had no reason not to believe him. But this sounded too incredulous. My female intuition usually lets me know when a man is trying to deceive me. Unfortunately, I don't always pay attention to it. Henry had no reason to impress me with untruths. I mean, it's not like he wanted to seduce me or anything.

As the plane landed Henry pulled out his wallet. "Here my dear, I want you to have this." He handed me ten crisp one hundred dollar bills.

"Huh? "What is…uh…this…uh…for?" I stuttered in surprise.

"I have more money than I can possibly spend, especially since I won't be around much longer. No family. Most of my friends are dead. I have thoroughly enjoyed the brief time we have spent together talking, Annie. With this money I would like you to buy yourself a lovely new dress and allow me the great honor of taking you to dinner during your stay in San Francisco. At your convenience of course. I know a fabulous French cuisine establishment."

"I'd like that, Henry. Mark, the man I told you about, will be working some of the time so I'm sure we can get together for dinner. I just hope you don't make Mark jealous, you cute old coot! And I definitely want to hear more of your wild and crazy stories." I laughed gaily and gave Henry a little peck on the cheek and squeeze as we departed the plane at San Francisco International Airport.

Mark met me at the airport and we embraced and kissed. But it just wasn't the same. The words he spoke were the right ones but something just didn't ring true.

"Annie, I missed you so much! It's been so long since we held each other. I love you, my darling." I detected just a slight trace of insincerity.

Once in Mark's car, I attacked him. "Mark, find the first somewhat secluded spot and park. Unless you want me to give you a blow job while you're driving. There is a certain amount of thrill to that possibility but I don't want to cause an accident."

"Annie, we need to talk about the sex," Mark cautioned. "I think we