Page 70 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

ON THE SAME Friday the thirteenth as the Santa Monica Beach photo shoot, a report lands on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s desk from the FBI office in Mexico City.

The memo is labeled “MARILYN MONROE—SECURITY MATTER —C [Communist].”

It details information passed along by an unnamed source claiming that Marilyn had information about political matters overheard while she was at Peter Lawford’s residence with one of the Kennedy brothers a few days earlier.

The only Kennedy brother who’s recently been in Los Angeles is Bobby. And the most likely informant to the Mexican FBI is Marilyn’s lover José Bolanos.

“She was very pleased, as she had asked the President a lot of socially significant questions concerning the morality of atomic testing,” the report notes.

“Subject’s views are very positively and concisely leftist; however, if she is being actively used by the Communist Party, it is not general knowledge among those working with the movement in Los Angeles. ”

The FBI is already alarmed to know of Marilyn’s continued connection to suspected agent Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who is currently staying with his wife Nieves in Marilyn’s New York apartment at 444 East 57th Street.

Field writes Marilyn a letter thanking her and calling her apartment “the key to the success of the whole expedition.”

“We hope you are winning your battles in Hollywood,” he writes. “We kind of figure being who and what you are you will come out on top.”

But Marilyn isn’t feeling victorious.

Days after the FBI report, Bobby stops taking her calls.

The sudden cold shoulder—so reminiscent of what happened recently with Jack—leaves Marilyn furious.

“He should face me and tell me why,” she rants to friends. “Or tell me on the phone. I don’t care. I just want to know why. ”

When Marilyn can’t get through to the attorney general, she turns to his sister for help.

“Forget it,” Pat Lawford tells her. “Bobby’s still just a little boy.

But you have to remember he’s a little boy with a wife and seven kids.

” Not only that, but a staunch Catholic who’d been named “Father of the Year” just two years earlier.

There’s simply no way he’s ever going to sacrifice his career and reputation to leave his wife for Marilyn.

But Marilyn is deeply hurt and can’t let it go.

“He owes me an explanation!” she complains to her friend Bob Slatzer. “I want to know what happened, and I want Bobby to tell me himself!”

She continues unsuccessfully trying to reach him: on his private number, at the Justice Department, and even at home in Hickory Hill. If Bobby Kennedy keeps ignoring her, she tells Slatzer, “I might just hold a press conference. I’ve certainly got a lot to say!”