Card Sharks

by George R. R. Martin

  "You okay, Nick?" Josh asked. "Anything bothering you?"

  I had a sudden urge to tell him everything - and I mean everything - but I took a deep breath of the wind coming in off the ocean and the impulse passed. "I dunno," I said. "Just twitchy, I guess. I heard something funny under the pier."

  "Probably sea lions," Flattop said. "They sleep on the crossbeams."

  I knew it wasn't sea lions suspending crab traps above the water line. "Anyone care to play detective?" I didn't wait for an answer, just swung around onto the ladder and led the way down.

  Josh was a little tipsy, and so was Flattop, but I was so hyped and paranoid that I didn't question the wisdom of taking a couple of drunks on a jaunt through the underpilings of a pier. As it turned out, I shouldn't have worried about Flattop anyway, since those overstretched digits of his let him climb like a monkey. Josh got by by holding onto his belt.

  I don't know if you've ever been under a pier, but halfway down there's a whole network of beams and crossjoists, sturdy enough to support almost anything, though it's generally just used by the sea lions who hop up at high tide. It was low tide now, a good twelve foot drop to the water below.

  I followed the prickling in my skin, avoiding the occasional sea lion, and soon heard the sound of an outboard motor. That was the main source of electricity. On one of the nearby pilings, a metallic circle gleamed in the reflected light of the water.

  A boat had tied up to the pilings, and three men were busy affixing another to the tar-soaked wood with duct tape. From the size and shape, I knew exactly what it was - a film cannister.

  Maybe I should remind you, since it's generally only known in Hollywood, but film used to be made with nitrocellulose. That's half of what you make dynamite with, and any blast you see in a motion picture generally comes from a few old reels and a match.

  I probably don't need to tell you that, but from what happened next, all I can say is that they don't breed for brains in New York. The outboard engine had covered the sound of our arrival and the men in the boat hadn't noticed us yet, but then Josh called out as loud as he could, "Excuse me! You don't want to be doing that, do you?"

  They turned around and next thing there were guns out. Flattop pulled Josh to the planks, which was lucky for him since a moment later a bullet whistled through in the space where he'd been.

  That was all the time I needed. My St. Elmo's fire was up and my will-o'-wisps were out. They went straight for the guns.

  Honestly, I'd only thrown shockers, not enough to kill a person, just enough to zap them unconscious, but electricity has a mind of its own and it likes metal. You run a couple hundred volts through a loaded gun, well, all I can say is you don't have a gun anymore.

  You don't have a hand either, not that it mattered, since there were a couple strays, one of which went for the engine, the other for the stuff in the bottom of the boat.

  The explosion would have looked good on film, if you like things like that. Bodies flew everywhere and I fell to the planks next to Josh and Flattop, struggling to pull my St. Elmo's back inside before I killed them too. Saltwater splashed over me and I felt the energy arc and sizzle.

  Then there was a gurgling sound as the boat went under. In the distance, I could hear the barking and splashing as frightened sea lions jumped back into the ocean.

  A moment later, everything was back to normal except for a few bubbles and bits of flaming debris on the surface of the water.

  Josh was babbling something about there being too much wind, then Flattop looked at me and I almost gagged at the hero-worship in his weird eyes. "You're Will-o'-Wisp...."

  I looked away. "Yeah, I guess so." The film spool taped to the piling glinted evilly, a white envelope stuck to its face, water dripping from the corners.

  "Who's Will-o'-Wisp?" Josh asked.

  I gritted my teeth, wishing Pete would take that note out of his voice. "Will-o'-Wisp's a hero. He's saved the lives of a lot of jokers. He's about the only one who protects us out here ... but no one knows who he is."

  I looked over at Flattop, now being supported by Josh. I shrugged. "I got an ace. I shocked a few people I saw beating up jokers, and no one seems to remember your face if you've got glowing eyes." I lit them up with a little foxfire for demonstration. Yd done it a few times in the mirror, and I knew that under the shadow of hat it could make you look pretty scary. More than that, it kept people from remembering my face, which is important if you're up the sleeve.

  "'Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men....'" Josh intoned.

  "Beats me, but it sure as hell isn't the police." I took out a cigarette and used a tiny will-o'-wisp as a lighter.

  I didn't even have time to take a puff before the bomb's envelope went up in a flash of blinding white fire. We hit the planks just as a second explosion blew, louder than the first without the water to cushion it.

  Once my eyes cleared from the dazzle, I saw what was left behind: the piling, cracked through and bent sideways. Small flames licked at the tar-soaked wood.

  "Oh shit," Josh said.

  Oh shit was right. I totally lost it and my St. Elmo's went up like a beacon. I got to my feet, bristling with energy, and moved away from Josh and Flattop so I wouldn't run the risk of killing them too. My mind went into overdrive as the pieces clicked together. The dripping envelope. The magnesium flare. The blast.

  "The tide's the timer," I said. "We've got to disarm the suckers before the water gets high enough to finish the job." One of the things I'd learned was that bombs got a lot more powerful the greater the resistance around them. Anything that could crack a piling on the surface could shear right through underwater.

  I could feel where the other cannisters were taped to the pilings, but they were too far down for me to reach. But Flattop - I swear, the man could literally hang upside-down by his toes. His Exacto knife made short work of the duct tape, and he came back up with a bomb, the envelope-fuse thankfully dry.

  It was hard, but I pulled the St. Elmo's fire back inside myself, then gingerly pried the envelope loose from the tape. Underneath was a strip of grey metal, the end leading to a hole drilled in the upper edge of the canister. The seam where the halves fit together was carefully tarred shut, waterproofing the ensemble until the tide did its work.

  I slit the envelope with my penknife. Inside was some glittery powder. I dropped it into the water and it went up in a flash of white fire.

  Pete touched the metal strip. "Magnesium."

  I nodded. "In the powder too." I carefully pulled out the wire, then got out my penknife and pried apart the halves of the canister.

  Black and grey flecks drifted free, dancing in the ocean breeze. Just like I thought, someone had run film through a coffee grinder. Messily, since there were a few larger chunks and snippets mixed in.

  I took out one of the largest and held it up to the moon. The film was scratched, but the image was still clear: Jane Russell and her bosom got up in a western outfit. I slipped it in my pocket and closed the canister.

  The fuse was simple stuff with a formula out of any chemistry textbook: three parts ammonium chloride, three parts ammonium nitrate, and three parts powdered magnesium. Stuff you could get at any hardware store, nursery, or chemical supply company. The same with the magnesium strip. Or the whole ensemble could be found in the special effects department of a movie studio. It was the Jekyll and Hyde formula: The mad scientist pours a vial of tap water into a beaker with a dusting of the powder in the bottom and a photogenic flare goes up. Add magnesium wire and some cannisters of nitrocellulose and you could kiss the entire Santa Monica pier goodbye.

  Flattop collected the remaining film bombs and we took them back to the trunk of my car. While we did that, Josh used his jacket to beat out the flames on the one demolished piling. Do you find it suspicious that the police never came to investigate the explosion? So did I, which is why we didn't call them.

  "Jesus, Nick," Flattop said as I locked up the trunk, bombs carefully defus
ed. "I never knew you were an ace. And man, not just any ace ... you're Will-o'-Wisp."

  "Shut up," I snapped. "You don't know what you're talking about. You got rid of the bombs, and you didn't have to kill three people to do it."

  "But, Nick -"

  "Let him be," Josh said and Flattop shut up.

  I was really rattled. I'd only killed once in my life - before I'd figured out how to measure my charges - and I'd sworn I'd never do it again. Guns and explosives were something I'd never really taken into account. A private detective doesn't make his living by getting in fire fights, and the bastards I'd dealt with before had been into baseball bats and nailed boards.

  And I'd just blown my cover. There were now two people who knew I was Will-o'-Wisp. And one of them was a nat and the stupidest blabbermouth I'd ever met. Josh's speech under the pier should have won the Oscar for idiocy.

  "Josh, please. You can't tell anyone this." I fumbled with my keys, not making eye contact. "You've got my life in your hands."

  "Don't worry." He patted me on the shoulder and helped me into the car. Ironic, isn't it? The drunk helping the sober man. "I was in New York the first Wild Card Day. I had friends infected with the virus. And I know what can happen to aces who get found out. Believe me, I know."

  I don't know why I believed him, but somehow I did. And I didn't worry about it anymore. Maybe when you reach the breaking point, you find it's either that or go mad.

  This is going to sound like the craziest thing, but it's what honestly happened next. Josh suggested we go to a party, never mind the load of bombs in the trunk, and Flattop and I thought it was the greatest idea in the world.

  I don't know if we'd been invited to the Lawfords's that evening. It didn't matter - Josh talked our way in, we borrowed swimsuits, and it was like a dozen other parties. Marilyn and I flirted shamelessly.

  Finally it got so late that everyone had to call it a night. Flattop and Josh hitched a ride with Trumbo, but someone needed to drive Tommy back to the dorms. I volunteered, being sober as usual, and Marilyn came along for the ride.

  As soon as we left the party, my conscience and worry started back up, eating at my brain. I'd killed three men. Two people knew my secret. I was driving down the Santa Monica Freeway with the Goddess in the seat beside me and enough nitrocellulose in the trunk to blow up a pier. And to top it off, there was a sixteen-year-old sex maniac in my back seat giving a discourse on surrealism, metaphysics, and the need to break through mental barriers.

  I think the effort it took to stifle my wild card was the only thing that let me keep my sanity.

  Once we'd dropped off the boy genius, Marilyn said she wanted to go for a swim. Like I said, I'd gone to USC and had been on the swim team. I also had a key I'd never turned in and went and swam laps whenever I got stressed.

  I'd kept myself in good shape.

  The pool was in the basement of the athletics hall. It was like something from a De Mille epic, an old Twenties aquatic gymnasium with green tile around the edges and heraldic dolphins at the corners.

  The ceiling was high above the pool, with windows along the sides covered with Wire grates, but the effect was more like stained glass than an athletics hall. And the light shone up through the water and reflected off the enamel, the patterns shifting and changing as you swam.

  We were alone, and the pool was silent except for the echoes.

  Marilyn took off her dark glasses and scarf and lay them on one of the chairs. I caught a whiff of her perfume - Scandal, I think - then she put an arm around my shoulders and I could smell the champagne on her breath. "Oh, Nickie," she laughed. "This is so silly. I forgot my swimsuit back at Peter and Pat's.

  "Oh well," she said, "it's not as if we weren't born with swimsuits." Before I could stop her, she slipped away and stripped down to her bra and panties.

  "Marilyn, no, you're drunk." I grabbed for her as she stepped back towards the pool.

  I didn't get Marilyn. I got her bra.

  She fell backwards with a splash, then came back up, her famous breasts bare in the water. "You're wicked, Nickie."

  "Marilyn ..." I leaned over, holding out the bra, but next thing I knew she pulled me over into the pool on top of her.

  I came up sputtering, and she dunked me a second time, then swam away, laughing. But it's a mistake to turn your back on a would-be Olympic swimmer. I kicked off my shoes and followed.

  Marilyn got to the edge of the pool and started to pull herself up on one of the dolphins, but I pulled her back in. We wrestled, and somewhere in there her panties slipped off.

  "Ooh, Nickie, you are wicked ..." Marilyn screamed with laughter and pounced on me. The panties Went flying out of my hand.

  I let her get her revenge and we played strip water polo, my shirt and socks and the rest drifting down to the bottom of the pool. It was one of the craziest and most wonderful moments of my life. We played tag, ducking and bobbing under the water, then came close, our arms around each other. Marilyn gave me a long, slow kiss.

  "Nickie," she said, drawing back. "You're always so tense. Dr. Rudo says you're keeping secrets. Lots of them."

  It was that obvious then.

  "Tell me a secret," Marilyn said.

  I was tempted to tell her then and there. I mean, she'd slept with Jack Braun. She wouldn't care if I were an ace or a joker or whatever I was.

  But it was my life, and it was all I had. And no woman could ever love a murderer.

  I gave her the old line: "If I told, then it wouldn't be a secret."

  "You're crying, Nickie," she said. "Dr. Rudo says that tears are secrets trying to come out."

  It was just the chlorine, but I held her then, her skin against mine, naked in the pool. I could feel the electricity flowing inside her body, and the tight core of energy coiled inside mine, wanting to come out. I knew if I said anything more, I'd lose control, so I kissed her.

  She was the first woman I'd kissed in years, and I think I really did start to cry. I never let myself open to another person. Secrets are like that. Lies are like that.

  And a relationship built on lies would never last. I knew that from experience.

  And I knew it would be the same with her, and I think that was most of why I cried, but God she was beautiful. I wanted her so much, but the energy was boiling up inside me and I knew if I gave off a pulse too close, I would shock her to death.

  I broke away and swam off, fast as I could, to the other end of the pool. I let my entire charge flow out and forced it through the bolts of the underwater light to ground itself in the wiring. The bulb popped like a strobe and all the lights in the hall went dark, but the charge was gone and I was safe and drained and crying like a baby.

  Marilyn swam up beside me in the dark pool as I babbled something about faulty wiring and electrical danger.

  "Shh, Nickie," she said. "Sometimes you've just got to let things happen. I want you, and if you want me, I'm here."

  She floated there like some water nymph from an old tale, Lorelie or Calypso or Nimue. I reached out to touch her breasts and she drew back, then laughed and grabbed my arms, drawing me towards her. We fit together, mouth to mouth and body to body, and her legs folded around me as my arms went around her.

  We did it right there, in the pool, in the dark, with the shadows dancing off the ceiling and the echoes calling back to us from the corners of the gymnasium.

  If there was anyone who saw, they never interrupted.

  When it was over, we were both giggling with nervous laughter, Marilyn's intoxicated, mine drunk on fear and sobriety. And love.

  She'd wanted me for me. And she knew I kept secrets and didn't care.

  I think I could have loved her just for that.

  I was in love, for the first time, really, and so, I think ... at least I'd like to think ... was Marilyn.

  I was like a giddy teenager. It was like nothing I'd ever had, even before the wild card.

  But you're probably wanting to know what happened with bomb
s and all that. The next day Flattop and I went through the larger snippets, but had trouble placing them. The breakthrough came from Marilyn.

  Marilyn had been friends with Jane Russell ever since Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and she identified the first clip I'd found. "Oh sure, Nickie," she said. "That's from The Outlaw Jane did for Howard Hughes. But don't show Jane. The film was an absolute bomb."

  I gave Marilyn a kiss and she forgot about it, but I didn't. The rest of the snippets came from The Outlaw and other bad adventure flicks, all from RKO, owned and operated by one Howard Hughes. Hughes' paranoia about disease was legendary, so it was likely he'd been behind the bomb attempt, not that there was anything you could prove.

  The Hearst papers carried an article about a Japanese mine from World War II drifting into the Santa Monica pier. How it managed to hit six feet above the water line was never explained.

  The pier was closed for "structural damage" and the Menagerie was shut down, though in a much less bloody fashion than was no doubt planned. A check of public records showed the long arms of Howard Hughes and Willie Hearst pulling the strings. Hopper's column raved about the planned renovation, during which no doubt the Menagerie would lose its liquor license.

  In an unrelated piece, the bodies of three men were found Washed up on the beach. The corpses were identified the next day as belonging to three of RKO's special effects men. The obituary listed the cause of death as a "boating accident." Their names correlated with Wally's suspects for several sabotaged pics.

  I had evidence, but nothing I could present to anyone, Welles included. And it was just more conspiracy work for the files - nothing about any particular plot against Blythe.

  But Marilyn was the key to the whole house of cards. If she fell, the whole thing would collapse. I stayed close by her during the day, and at her house at night. There really wasn't anything else I could do.

  She had a small place in Brentwood, with an inscription above the portico that read Cursum Perficio, "My journey ends here." Sometimes we dallied in the house, and sometimes in the pool in the back yard, memories of our first time together.