Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

I talked briefly with the doctors and asked about the blood panels, but they didn't show any sort of drug or poison. Wally was as clean as the next man.

He was also completely insane. They had him in a straight jacket and I don't think he even recognized me. In the movies, the madman sputters some sort of cryptic clue or shouts a warning at the investigator. Wally only stared at the wall and drooled.

The doctors were slightly more helpful, but not very. They only confirmed Dr. Rudo's diagnosis: acute attack of conscience. Wallace Fisk was being tormented by his own personal demons and so far no therapy had helped.

I asked to have a little time with him alone, playing the role of grieving friend, though I was really just shocked former colleague. But I knew a bit about shocks, including that the electrical sort could sometimes knock people like Wally back into some form of sanity.

As soon as the nurse had left, I popped one of my little lightning balls into my hand. Will-o'-wisps I called them, 'cause they just sort of floated and bobbed unless I kept a grip with my mind.

This one was only three inches across, just a shocker, not even enough to knock someone out. I let it ground on one of the buckles of his straightjacket.

He jolted, but didn't change expression. I tried a couple more, a little larger, then bobbed one in front of his eyes kind of like a hypnotist's pendulum. I'd usually never risk something like that, but even if Wally remembered, I could explain it away as the hallucinations of a madman.

I called his name several times until he blinked and I saw his eyes focus on the will-o'-wisp, then I let it slip back inside me and waved my hand in front of his face. "Wally," I said, "what do you remember? What's the last thing you remember?"

His voice was hoarse from not having spoken, but I got him to describe a relatively ordinary day snooping around the Fox lot, checking for anything that might look like sabotage, but not turning up any more than I had. He'd blacked out everything since then, which was good.

Then I made a mistake and asked him if he remembered me.

He turned and took one look at my face and started screaming and raving, well, like a madman. It was just like the stuff in the movies, lots of "Stay away from me!" and "No!" and "I didn't mean to!", thrashing around enough to make the bed lift off the floor.

I didn't know whether I should shock him again or just get away, but before I could do anything the nurses rushed in. They listened long enough to realize he wasn't making any sense, then got out the sedatives. A minute later, the doctors cornered me and asked what had happened.

I told them everything except my attempt at electroshock therapy, and they let me go, not much wiser, and a little less sane.

I went back to the studio and watched throughout the week. The mystery, however, was not much closer to being solved. Wally had discovered evidence of a conspiracy against wild cards, then had gone insane, imagining that everyone he'd ever lied to or investigated was coming to get him.

It explained why he'd burned his apartment — destroy it and destroy his files. But Fisk's reaction to my face … I don't think I looked very demonic, and only knew Fisk vaguely from past cases.

However, there was another face very similar to mine … belonging to Dr. Pan Rudo. Did Fisk have Rudo on his conscience?

Of course, Wally might have started screaming if I'd shown him a hand puppet, but I wasn't about to investigate Kulda, Fran and Ollie. Dr. Rudo, however, gave me the beginnings of an idea. A psychologist with a knowledge of drugs, especially psychoactive ones, might be able to brew a potion that would drive a man mad, but that would be undetectable with the standard blood panels.

Motive, however, was a problem. Dr. Rudo was Marilyn's psychiatrist, and if he wanted to kill the film, he had enough influence to make her quit and let it collapse on its own. And so far as hating wild cards went, Rudo showed no more disdain for Flattop than he did for anyone, and was actually kinder to Jack Braun than anybody should be.

Then again, maybe he was just currying favor with a potential client. If there was ever a man in need of a shrink, it was Braun.

As for the movie, Blythe was proceeding without a hitch. Trumbo had polished the script with Braun's input, the filming had begun, and I was becoming closer to Marilyn.

Maybe I wasn't quite honest about why I was around her — Welles was paying me, after all — but it hurt to see her with men who just wanted her for their own status. Bobby Kennedy wanted her because his brother had had her, Jack Kennedy wanted her because he was the President and could have anything, and Tom Quincey wanted Marilyn because he was a randy little bastard and wanted everything.

After one of the Lawford parties, he even propositioned me.

I didn't know what to make of it. I'd met boys who liked boys before, but I'd never met one who liked both boys and girls. To make things worse, I double-checked his school records and found that while he was a freshman at USC, he was also sixteen, not eighteen.

I didn't know if Marilyn knew. I hoped no one else did, or it could have been used to blackmail her.

And in addition to the boy genius with the non-preferential dating habits, there was Dr. Rudo. When I asked about him, Marilyn, in a more drunk than usual moment, confided that she'd slept with him as part of her therapy.

I'd seen the signs, but I'd refused to believe them. Rudo went to the top of my list of all-time bastards. I had half a mind to sic the AMA on him and get his credential revoked, but I knew the scandal would wreck Marilyn and wreck Blythe .

I also didn't want to betray any confidences. I may have been a spy, but if someone entrusted me with a secret, I'd take it with me to the grave.

I think I would have even kept it beyond that, if it weren't for the way things turned out.

But right then, things were turning out great. Now that main filming had begun, we stand-ins weren't quite as much in demand and I had more time to myself. Flattop held court in the cutting room, showing everyone the best of the dailies. They were the most powerful pieces of film I'd ever seen. Blythe would be amazing once she was complete.

I remember one day I was there with Josh Davidson, watching the scene where David Harstein was locked in HUAC's soundproof glass booth. In the flickery light of the projector, Jeff Chandler beat against the glass: "Alright, you Nazis! When are you going to turn on the gas? That's what you did before, isn't it?"

Josh's lips moved silently as he watched and there were actual tears on his face. "That's just the way it happened. It's just the same."

I gave him a pat on the back. "I know. They cut out the Envoy's silver tongue, clipped the eagle's wings, and shattered the mind of the woman who knew too much. They couldn't stand for anyone to be different from them."

Josh sighed. "And they put pressure on the strong man until he bent."

Flattop nodded as the clip came to an end, the impassive faces of Nixon and his cronies taken straight from the newsreels. "This is going to do great things for wild cards. People are finally going to get a chance to see who the enemy really is."

The lights came on and Josh stood up slowly, looking a little pale and shaken. "I don't know about you two, but I could use a drink right now. Anyone want to join me?"

Flattop smiled a bit shyly and held up his foot-long fingers. "Not many places take jokers."

Josh smiled. "Then we go wherever you go. My treat."

The Santa Monica pier was the closest thing L.A. had to a Jokertown. Everything was so spread out, and there were so few wild cards overall, it wasn't something that would come about. The few aces and jokers the city had to offer before the McCarthy witch hunts had set up in the old carnival booths and freak shows along the pier, though the mind readers and crystal gazers had long since been snapped up by J. Edgar, at least the real ones.