Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

Other animals, their intelligence is not the equal of ours. Yet they are still living creatures, and have more intelligence than we credit them with. They deserve life and respect, as much as we do.

But our very existence forces us to make hard choices. It forces us to prey on other creatures when the need is great.

I had always been a predator, by choice, without need. I had spent a lifetime preying on the weaknesses of others. The wild card made me a predator in truth, and gave me no choice in the matter.

I've learned from it. I learned that one must forgive oneself for what one has had to do to survive. And I can forgive myself everything. Everything but how I abandoned Clara that day.

I understand why it happened, don't mistake me. I'd spent a lifetime being untrustworthy and shallow and hypocritical. And now I had become a creature whom I feared at least as much as Brand and Jessica did.

How could I know that all that had happened in the past few days would force me to find a strength I didn't know I had? Nothing in my past had prepared me to trust that I could protect Clara from the worst of what I had become.

I wish I could forgive myself for that failure of faith.

Brand kept his promise, to my surprise. They kept me shut up in the utility room for a couple of days, until my digestion had proceeded far enough along for me to stay awake for more than a few moments at a time. Then he let me go, with a suitcase stuffed full of personal memorabilia, a hundred dollars cash, and a check for two thousand dollars. I'm still grateful to him for that.

He held Clara in one arm and opened the door for me with the other.

"Where are you going, Maman ?" she asked. I paused out in the hallway and looked back, but all the words lodged in my chest, the place where the rock was starting to form.

Brandon shushed her. "That's not your Maman . It's just an animal that looks a little like her."

She struggled in his arms, reaching out to me. "I want Maman !"

"Hush! Maman is dead," he said, and closed the door. Her rising wail, faint through the door, followed me down the hall.

I suppose that's all.

No, no. Please don't apologize. It was time for the story to come out. These are tears of release. Just let me be for a moment, will you? I'll be all right.

There, now. Much better, thanks. It's odd. I actually feel better for having told it. It's weighed on me so heavily for so long. I've kept that secret inside for so long, of how I abandoned my daughter. Perhaps the key to forgiving oneself is through the telling of the tale.

My, it's three-thirty in the morning. Would you like to sleep on the foldout? My boyfriend is on call at the Clinic tonight, and this oak branch is quite comfortable for me. I only sleep when the temperature drops too low, or after eating a heavy meal.

No? Well. Certainly. No offense at all. Though you must take care out on the streets this late.

Here, before you go. I'd like you to have these notebooks; they contain the notes I made on what happened. I wrote everything down soon afterward so I wouldn't forget the details. They might help you in your research.

Oh. One last thing you should know. This may be paranoia on my part, but, well, it has returned to me over and over. As I related to you, Brand told Dr. Rudo on the phone that the photos the detective had taken weren't very incriminating. That closeup of him with Sirhan Sirhan, Kennedy's assassin, was damning. Perhaps he was lying to Dr. Rudo, but why?

And I remember how much Clara wanted a photo of her Papa , and how I had left her alone with the photos when I had that argument with Jessica. That photo was definitely the best shot of Brand's face, of the whole batch. I keep wondering.

But now I'm being paranoid.

Come, let me put on my electric sleeve and I'll escort you to the subway station.

"I'd like you to ring Ms. Monroe's room."

The hotel clerk looked at Hannah as if he had gas. "I'm sorry, but Ms. Monroe has left very specific instructions that she not be disturbed. What did you say your name Was?"

"Rudo. Pan Rudo. R-U-D-O."

The clerk consulted his monitor, tapping at the keyboard. "Oh, I'm sorry, Ms. Rudo. Your names is on the list she left. You may use the white phone to your right. Dial asterisk, then 44."

"Thank you." Hannah went to the house phone and punched in the number. The voice that answered was still instantly recognizable: breathy, soft, and warm, not much changed despite all the years. "Hello?"

"Ms. Monroe, I must see you."

"Who is this?" The voice took on a touch of irritation. "Who gave you this number?"

"Nick Williams asked me to call, Marilyn. You remember Nick, don't you?"

There was silence on the other end. For a few seconds, Hannah thought that Marilyn had hung up, then the woman spoke again, and her voice sounded much older. "Where are you?"

"In the lobby of the hotel. I need to see you alone, Ms. Monroe."

"Give … give me a minute and then come on up. I'm in the Lindsay Suite. Seventeenth floor."

Riding the elevator, Hannah had time to wonder whether this was a mistake. In the three days since she'd spoken with Lamia — three days in which she'd found herself starting at every noise and peering suspiciously at every person that entered the apartment building — Hannah had come up empty. Clara van Renssaeler, who might or might not still have a photograph of her father with Sirhan Sirhan, refused to meet her the first two times she called. The third time Hannah reached her, there was such a strange tone in the woman's voice when she agreed to a meeting that Hannah deliberately missed the appointment. A friend of Father Squid's, known as Blind Spot, went by the restaurant and reported back that the establishment was oddly deserted except for a table of three suspiciously attentive men. Hannah didn't try to call Clara again.

Much of Lamia's notebooks consisted of hearsay from friends, and none of them Hannah contacted cared to discuss what had happened back then. Most of them seemed to have put Joan van Renssaeler out of their minds entirely. "Her? She abandoned her daughter. Just up and left her family…."

It was Father Squid who read in the paper that Marilyn Monroe was in New York for a charity revue. Hannah had nodded, thinkin it simply a mocking serendipity, but the mention had nagged at her. She knew already that there was little that the three of them could do. They had nothing, nothing but hearsay and a few interconnected names.

Marilyn, if Nick's story were true, had once had hard evidence: the copies of Hopper's files. Hannah wished she could have brought Quasiman with her, but Hannah had figured that there'd be enough trouble getting to the woman as it was; with an obvious joker accompanying her, there'd have been no chance at all. And as much as she hated to admit it, Quasiman was becoming a liability. He seemed to have reached the limit of his ability to maintain his focus on their problem. For the last few days, he'd forget her or Father Squid for an hour or more, then suddenly snap back to lucidity for a few minutes before drifting away again. "I want to come with you, Hannah," he'd said. "Please. Let me help you." But she'd said no. "Just … just keep thinking about me," she'd told him. "Come and bail me out if you sense that I'm in trouble. Can you do that?"

"I'll try. I'll try…."

The problem was that, even as she knocked on the door to Marilyn's suite, Hannah still wasn't sure what she was going to do. She saw the glass of the peephole darken as someone looked through.

"You're the one who called?" asked a voice through the door.

"Yes."

"Come in." The door opened just wide enough to admit Hannah.