Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

She left me by the pool while she went to fix lunch. But I had the beginnings of an idea, the product of nightmares and panic: LSD, whatever the stuff was, caused nightmares. I knew it. Mine had been living and waking. Marilyn's came at night.

And Wally Fisk? His had driven him mad.

But doctors know ways to determine the effects of drugs. Marilyn, though it was awful, was slowly getting over her problems. Maybe I would have too if they hadn't been so big, or if the LSD hadn't made me lose control of my ace. But Rudo, I was convinced, could make a far nastier mixture if he had a mind to. The connection was firm, if circumstantial.

And the motive? Rudo may not have hated wild cards, but there was someone who did. And there was Rudo's comment: "You know Hedda?"

You didn't know Hedda. You feared her, then either avoided her or worked for her. If I had to suspect someone in Hollywood of masterminding a conspiracy against wild cards, there was only one name that would be at the top of my list.

She was just so obvious, I'd never suspected her.

Rudo was the perfect pawn — he could be anywhere on the set, spy out anything she wanted him to, and at the end of production, one of his cigarettes in the film locker and Blythe would be as dead as the original, with no shame to Marilyn or her career, or Rudo's finances or reputation.

I kissed Marilyn and rousted her out of the house and off to work, telling her not to tell anything to anyone, especially Dr. Rudo. I then got on the phone to Hedda, dropped enough hints to leave her drooling, and said I'd be in late to give her the full stories.

She was interested. She'd wait up.

I spent the afternoon back at my place constructing a careful stash of rumors, then set out for Hedda's.

It was near midnight, but she was still there, alone in the office after everyone had left. In some perverse way, I always admired the woman. She worked harder than anyone I knew. It was what she worked at that I had problems with.

Hedda had composed herself for my entrance. That was one of the ways you could tell that she liked you. She had on a blue wool skirt and jacket and this huge hat with ostrich plumes and stuffed doves and ropes of faux pearls. I'd heard that the one time they'd met, Dr. Tachyon had kept after her to tell him the name of her milliner. She'd used that to pillory him in her column for months. The lavender boy from outer space — that's what she called him — and I guess that's the other thing I agreed with her on. People were dying of his virus and he was concerned about hats.

"Nicholas, darling," she said, smiling. "Let's see what you have for me." I gave it to her and she typed for a few minutes, then got on the phone and called in last minute changes.

"Thanks, dearest. That was very useful. So, what favor would you like?"

I hadn't counted on her being that pleased, but as she'd said, I was one of her favorites. "You guess."

Hedda dimpled, cocking her head. "You'd like your little tryst with Marilyn to stay silent until you're both in … less embarrassing circumstances."

I nodded.

Hedda clucked her tongue. "Nicholas, dearest, you're going to ruin your career if you aren't wiser with your choice of jobs. And," she said, "you may tell Marilyn that associating with these wild card freaks won't do her any good either. My husband had blue skin and not a hair on his body, and the only thing I can say is that it's a good thing for Wolfie that he died before this virus ever showed up. No good can ever come of it, no matter what anyone says."

I'd heard her stories about De Wolfe Hopper and knew that an overdose of silver nitrate and a bout of rheumatoid fever could make a joker out of anyone. I think bad memories of Hopper left her ill-disposed to any other "freak."

Hedda showed me out and locked up behind her, and then I played the next card in the game: I drained my own battery.

It Wasn't hard. I was a good enough actor to fake my car not turning over, then once I'd flipped up the hood and put my hand on the negative terminal, the battery was well and truly dead. The trick was keeping the charge from making me glow.

Hedda came over and tried to start my car, but of course she didn't have any luck either. She also didn't carry jumper cables and I'd made sure to leave mine at home.

In the end, I got what I wanted: Hedda let me into the office to use the phone to try to find an all-night towing service, and told me to lock up when I left.

Once she'd gone, I got out my camera and into her private files. Hedda kept great records and I'd taken impressions of the keys back when I'd worked for her.

Hedda really couldn't blame me. She'd taught me the trade.

There was the file: Rudo, Dr. Pan. I flipped it open and was immediately struck by the swastika stationery, but after I parsed through a bit and looked at the comments in Hedda's handwriting on the attached page, the reason for the hooked cross and the size of the sword over Rudo's head became clear: In 1938, Dr. Pan Rudo was in Vienna, experimenting on mental patients with his dauenschlaf technique under the auspices of the Nazi party. Five died before the Nazis felt it best for Dr. Rudo to leave for Switzerland. He'd gone to New York afterwards, perfecting his technique all the while.

I thought of Wally in the hospital. The easiest thing to repeat is a mistake.

I took pictures of everything in the file, reading through occasional bits and glancing into related files.

Hedda seemed to have a whole clique of agents called the Card Sharks. Dr. Rudo was one, helping her in her crusade against wild cards, not that I would expect a Nazi to have any compunctions about genocide.

Hedda's partner, or perhaps just contact with other sharks, was J. Edgar Hoover. The files were stuffed with F.B.I. transcripts, courtesy of same. Likewise, money came from Howie Hughes and Willie Hearst, and they were responsible for some jobs. There was a copy of a letter from Hedda to Howie, blistering him for having bungled the job on the Santa Monica pier.

There was also a file on Will-o'-Wisp, the ace vigilante. Hedda had got my height and build right, but the rest was wild speculation and frothing. I was a major priority for the sharks, either termination or conscription.

Then I got to Marilyn's file, sticking a little out from the others. There had been a recent addition.

It was an obituary. It isn't unusual to find obituaries in the files of celebrities. What is unusual is to find them postdated, describing the manner of death. It was scheduled for May Third.

I remember that column as if I'd read it last Week. It was last week, for me.

The headline read: BRILLIANT CAREER CUT SHORT.

Hedda had written below that: Marilyn Monroe — brilliant life, tragic death. What happened? Ask Jack and Bobby! Pretty Marilyn was due to Wish Jack 'Happy Birthday' at his big fundraising bash in New York come the nineteenth, but evidently Jack wanted to have his present early. But he and Bobby played too rough and the pretty toy broke.

"Hedda told Marilyn never to go near that Lawford house. Marilyn paid the price for not listening to Mother, but let's see the Kennedy boys weasel out of this one! The Kennedys, the most famous crime family in America!"

It went on from there. The plot was simple: Tomorrow John and Robert Kennedy would be staying the night at Peter Lawford's. So would Marilyn, as I already knew.

Dr. Rudo would slip Marilyn just a few too many of Paula Strasberg's trademark tranquilizers, so the Kennedys would be sure to wake up with the corpse of Hollywood's greatest star.

The President and the Attorney General would be politically ruined. Paula Strasberg would be implicated for manslaughter. And Marilyn would be dead before the filming of Blythe was complete.