Card Sharks

by George R. R. Martin

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.

  I got it all, then carefully put the files back in order, my hands shaking all the while and I know I was sparking from the stress.

  I went out into the outer office, made sure to move the phone book and the telephone slightly out of line, locked up, then went and recharged my battery.

  It was four A.M. by the time I got home. I put the film in the developer first thing. I wanted to call Marilyn but for all I knew, J. Edgar had the phone bugged. Hedda had her spies everywhere. I should know.

  But oh my God, I didn't know where to turn. I could tell Welles, but what would he do? Make a film of it? Likewise with Trumbo and the rest. And Flattop? I could trust him, but there are some things people are better off not knowing. It would be like telling Poitier about the KKK.

  The police were out of the question. Even the ones I knew I could trust would have to hand it up, and J. Edgar would know about it before the day was out. Hoover had been Hedda's conspirator since before HUAC.

  There was only one possibility: Marilyn. Maarilyn Monroe was one of the worlds greatest actresses, no matter what the critics said. If she could just elude the Card Sharks' snare without arousing their suspicions, she could live to deliver the negatives t
o the President.

  I knew just the time: Jack Kennedy's "Happy Birthday" bash at Madison Square Garden. On a stage in front of a million people with a thousand flashbulbs popping, Hedda's Card Sharks wouldn't dare try anything. Marilyn could deliver the evidence into the President's hands without anyone the wiser and the sharks would all fry for treason.

  I got the negatives and a double set of prints into an envelope and got to Marilyn's house just before seven. Her housekeeper, Mrs. Murray, let me in, and I surprised Marilyn in the middle of putting on her mascara.

  I take it as a measure of her trust for me that she didn't do anything other than grab her makeup case after I got the overnight travel bag she always kept packed. My expression must have spoken worlds.

  I don't know what Mrs. Murray thought. Maybe that we were eloping, I don't know.

  I got Marilyn into the car. She took one look at my face, then silently paged through the stack of photographs I handed her. I headed west and we hit the Pacific Coast Highway.

  It was either Northern California or Mexico. I headed north. I wasn't sure where we were going, but it had to be far away if we wanted to miss Dr. Rudo's May Day celebration.

  At last, Marilyn put the photographs back in the envelope. "These are Hedda's, aren't they?" I think she said.

  I nodded, then I couldn't take it anymore. I pulled off the side of the road by one of the beaches and poured it all out to her.

  She just listened silently, then asked for the keys. She said she knew a place up the coast, the Brookdale Lodge, an old inn up in the Santa Cruz mountains. It had bungalows in back and the folks who ran it were very discreet about who was staying there, at least until after they left.

  The iron butterfly. It was such an appropriate name. I'd just revealed a plot against her life, and she calmly went about finding a place to hide until the storm was over. Marilyn made me take one of her tranquilizers, and I slept in the car on the way up.

  It was then that I realized I had told Marilyn my secrets, my fears, my lies, all of them. And she still loved me. It was the most wonderful day of my life. It was also the most frightening.

  Marilyn took charge of the espionage game as if she'd been born to it. She got us a room, then went to the local bank, rented a safe deposit box and secreted one set of photographs.

  Then we went back to our hotel room and she called Welles, laughing and apologizing about having stolen his Golden Boy stand-in for a quick jaunt. She asked him to convey her apologies to the Lawfords and the Kennedys, but she just couldn't stand the pressure. But she'd make sure not to miss the "Happy Birthday" bash later that month.

  I was seeing a great actress at work: Pretend you've run away for a short fling, then call and apologize to everyone you've let down. The Strasbergs' Method served her well.

  At the hotel gift shop, she bought a toy tiger. She ripped a seam in its neck and slipped the negatives inside, then stitched it back together with her sewing kit. It was the perfect thing to give the President as a present in front of a million people. I hid the last set of photographs under the catpeting in the trunk of my car.

  The getaway was mad and beautiful. Marilyn took me out to dinner at the inn, which had a creek running through the old Victorian dining room. She said there was supposed to be the ghost of a priest or a drowned girl who walked through every once in a while, but we never saw it.

  Funny, isn't it; a dead man telling ghost stories.

  And then came the hardest thing I've ever done. We drove back down the next day, the day Hedda's column was supposed to run, and pretended that nothing had happened. Marilyn went on with her role, and Welles called me into his office and chewed me out. He'd hired me to protect his movie, dammit, not run off with the star, make them run a day over budget, and piss off the President and the Attorney General in the process.

  I tried Marilyn's Method, doing Lovestruck Swain Grovels Before Boss. I managed not to get fired, but mostly, I think, because Welles didn't want to upset Marilyn. If I'd become her pet, well, he'd dealt with bigger expenses, and at least she'd lightened up on the pills.

  Marilyn had gone off them all cold turkey, in fact. She couldn't swallow even one, knowing that they were the intended murder weapon had the Card Sharks plans for her succeeded. She drank more, though, and two days later fired Dr. Rudo. I got to watch the scene as she tore into him, calling him the most overpriced gigolo in Hollywood, and underendowed to boot. She threatened to tell the AMA and Louella Parsons how many times they'd had sex on his psychiatrist's couch.

  It was a spout of venom worthy of Hedda. Budo glared at me the Whole time, but I didn't say a word.

  That evening I got a call from Marilyn. She wondered if I could come home a bit early. I didn't even question the reason; I knew how much pressure she was under. I think the only thing that held us together that week was holding each other in our arms at night. I hadn't gone to my own place except to pick up clothes.

  I slipped into Marilyn's house, under the portico with its strange little inscription: My journey ends here. I never thought of it as an epitaph. It sort of fits, you know.

  I went inside the house and called Marilyn's name. Then I heard her voice from the back yard, stuttering like she always did when she was scared "N-Nickie, could you come out here?"

  I didn't suspect anything. I really didn't. When your nerves are that raw, it's either suspect nothing at all, or suspect everything and go mad. And I'd already seen enough of madness.

  I Stepped outside the house, and in the late afternoon light I saw the impossibly high hat stacked with a florist's shop of silk begonias, Hedda and a chromed pistol resting in the shade beneath. She sat in the deck chair as if she were a countess holding court, one leg crossed over the other.

  Marilyn sat to one side in another chair, clutching the toy tiger, while Dr. Rudo sat a bit behind and kept a businesslike Luger pointed at her back.

  "You see," Marilyn said then. "There's n-nothing to be shocked about. He'll do whatever I want."

  I came closer, taking Marilyn's signal, and put my hands in the air where both Hedda and Rudo could see them and where I could throw my will-o'-wisps.

  "Hello, Nick," Hedda said as if it were nothing more important than one of her afternoon teas. "You've always been practical, so please don't play the hero. You'll just get both yourselves killed."

  She pulled back the hammer of her gun. "Stand by the edge of the pool please."

  "Your scheme's ruined, you know," Marilyn said.

  Hedda bowed her impossible hat slightly. I know, darling. You've really fucked things to a turn."

  "I'm pregnant," Marilyn said.

  There was a moment of dead silence. At last Hedda licked her lips. "Could you repeat what you just Said, dearest?"

  "I'm Pregnant," Marilyn said it with the exact same tone and inflection. "Do you W-want to know who the father is?"

  Hedda paused, the nature of her profession plain on her face. "Does it have any bearing on the present situation?"

  "Most l-l-likely, since the father is either J-Jack or Bobby Kennedy. I f-found out last week."

  "Are you considering an abortion, dearest?"

  "No." Marilyn said it definitely, with force. "I'd decided I was going to h-have it, both for myself, and to spite all the m-men who've u-used me."

  There was a look on Rudo's face I couldn't quite make out "Which men, Marilyn?"

  "Jack. Bobby," she said, and her voice became harder, clearer. "Zanuck. It would serve them all right. It was going to be the one thing I was going to do for myself. Darryl Zanuck stuck me on this lousy jokers pic for the last spot on my contract and there was nothing I could do about it. Except this."

  She gripped the toy tiger in her lap, her knuckles turning white on the plush fur. "If I puff up without a husband, the protests will wreck any pic I work on. It'd serve Zanuck right to have to swallow the entire budget for gyping me on my contract. And the scandal would toss Jack and Bobby out on the street with the jokers they love so much. I planne
d to sink this filthy jokers pic myself."

  Marilyn turned towards Hedda, slowly. "You don't believe me. But there's a lot about me you don't know, Mrs. Hopper. You want the exclusive? When I was nine, I was raped. By a joker." Her face contorted and tears began to run down her cheeks, smearing her mascara. "It was at my foster parents' house. One of them - you know I had four different sets. These ones rented out rooms, and one of their boarders was a joker. He had these furry green eyebrows that moved when you talked to him, but I'd been told he was a nice man, and I was too young to know what sort of monsters jokers were. So I went into his room and he took out his penis and it was all spiky. Sharp, green spikes, curving backwards, like a foxtail, and he ... he ... stuck it into me."

  She let go of the tiger and her head collapsed into her hands. "He r-raped me," she blubbered between her fingers, her voice quaking like a little girl's. "I bled for days. And I was so ashamed I never told anyone.

  "It was years before I learned that normal men weren't like that. All green and spiky." She shook with sobs. "You know some of it, Dr. Rudo. I told you about Flattop following me around. I'm afraid of him. His penis is probably as stretched out and spiky as the rest of him. His diseased body makes me sick."

  Hedda and Rudo looked as if they didn't know if they were hearing the truth or a method actress giving the performance of her life. But I knew from Hedda's expression that Marilyn was offering a scandal that would both kill the movie and hang the Kennedys with rope to spare.

  "Darling," said Hedda, testing, "I know you've spent the night with Jack Braun."

  Marilyn shrugged, straightening back up and wiping some of the tears from her cheeks. "That was business. I've done a lot worse on the casting couch than just give a joker a blowjob to get help with a script. His dick's normal enough. And," she said, "a girl does what she has to."

  I was the only wrinkle in the plan, but Marilyn was working to take that out.

  "N-Nickie always wore a condom," she said "I m-may be a little tramp, but I'm not going to have a love child by a nobody." Marilyn looked at me. "Sorry, Nickie," she said, "but you're nobody special."