Card Sharks wc-13

by Stephen Leigh

  Flattop, of course, got the first effects and started staring at the pool lights, with the Toms joining in soon after. Rudo didn't say or do much out of the ordinary, so I concluded that it was just like fraternity brothers getting drunk for the first time and Flattop and Tommy and Tom were playing it up. There was something about Tom Quincey that set me on edge, though I couldn't quite say what.

  Marilyn, however, thought him amusing. She said he'd followed her here from New York and had refused to go away ever since. I knew they had a relationship too.

  Welles and Trumbo were at loggerheads over the direction of the script — pretty much whether it would be "Orson Welles's Blythe" or "Dalton Trumbo's Blythe" — and Trumbo went into a paranoid jag about capitalist interests wanting to subvert the proletarian heart of his story. Welles told him to get stuffed and that the heart of the story was the romance between a New York blue-stocking and an alien prince, and it would be hard enough getting it to play in Peoria without holding out for Moscow too.

  Everyone at the party seemed generally enthused for the project with the exception of Paula Strasberg, and even she loosened up after Josh went on about the evils of the HUAC and how brave it was for Bobby and the President to end the Blacklist by going to see Spartacus.

  Paula got drunk then and started to demand McCarthy's head on a stick, but people had to remind her that he was already dead and his head would be a bit mouldy.

  After the requisite head-butting, Welles and Trumbo tried to figure out who to get for Golden Boy and Harstein. Pat Lawford then mentioned that jack Braun lived down the street.

  I should have remembered that. After the eight-by-tens I'd taken, that's all he had left.

  Marilyn, very drunk by this point, and stoned on an interesting mixture of Paula Strasberg's tranquilizers and Tommy's LSD, suggested that everyone invite him to the party. Who better to play Golden Boy than Golden Boy? He'd already done it in one movie.

  This notion was entertained in varying levels of seriousness, but Trumbo thought it could be useful to at least get Braun's input in on the script, he being the only one of the Four Aces both easily accessible and living.

  Marilyn and Tommy, bearing bottles of champagne and wearing nothing more than bathing suits, elected to be the ones to go be neighborly and invite him over. I, being the only sober person left, volunteered to shepherd them down the street.

  I can't forget Jack Braun's expression. He had a bottle of cheap scotch in one hand and the door in the other and I knew he must think he was hallucinating. I mean, if you open your door at ten o'clock in the evening, you don't expect to see Marilyn Monroe in a bathing suit, accompanied by a teenager and the detective who'd taken pictures of you en flagrante delecti.

  Of course, I'd made sure Braun never saw my face — I'm not suicidal, no matter what you might think — and you don't take candid pictures of the strongest man in the world if you expect him to know who you are. All he must have thought looking at me was that I was another Malibu Siegfried, even if I was half Irish.

  I don't know of any man who'd say no to an invitation from Marilyn Monroe. That man was certainly not Jack Braun. He and his scotch joined the party at the Lawfords's, and everyone was still there except Paula and Josh.

  Braun got a lot of attention, but didn't want to talk about the Four Aces, or the script. He said he'd had enough of playing Golden Boy and wouldn't take the part. That was probably a relief — I don't recall Welles ever offering it. "I'm not a hero," Braun said between drinks. "I just get paid to swing on vines and talk to chimps. I don't even do my own stunts — They've found it's cheaper to get an actor who doesn't glow when he slams into trees than to retouch all the negatives."

  To demonstrate, he stood up and pounded his chest, flashing gold like a strobe light, then gave a yell as he jumped into the pool in his clothes. It may not have been part of the mystery I was paid to solve, but I at least knew why Tarzan always used the same closeup of Braun beating his chest.

  The rest of the evening went by in a blur. I wasn't drunk or stoned, but everybody else was, and that helped. I played the sober gallant and drove everyone home who didn't crash at the Lawfords's.

  Marilyn didn't do either. The next day I discovered that she'd spent the night at Jack Braun's.

  Braun followed her to the set, as under her spell as any man, though he'd joined the circle who'd actually gotten to touch her. I hated him for it, but then there was a peculiar scene that made me wonder just what I had to hate.

  Braun was drunk, as usual, and stumbled out of Dalton's trailer. He was shouting back at Trumbo: "No, you're right, I'm a scum and I betrayed my friends. Everything should stay except the last scene — I never got a chance to say goodbye to anyone."

  Braun walked down the street, kicking rocks into Sherman Oaks, and a cloud of French cigarette smoke materialized next to me. "A very troubled man, don't you think? He is haunted by his past. He does not think himself a hero."

  I looked over to see Dr. Rudo, smoking one of his trademark cigarettes. He offered me one and his lighter.

  I lit up, figuratively, and passed the lighter back. "He's not a hero."

  "He could be, Mr. Williams. That is his great lie. He cannot ever be close to another for fear of hurting them."

  I wasn't sure whether he'd said that to gauge my reaction, or if he just got off on summing up people's lives in a couple of lines. I think it was a little of both.

  That was the last I saw of Braun, but I saw a good bit more of Dr. Rudo.

  Marilyn ran round the studio in a daze of alcohol and Paula Strasberg's tranquilizers. I knew, though not from experience, that if you mixed the two you got a feeling of euphoria.

  If what Marilyn was going through was euphoria, you can have it.

  In the next few days, they contracted Ron Ely for Golden Boy and Jeff Chandler for Harstein. I never saw much of either, Ely for the obvious reason, Chandler because what few scenes he had with Golden Boy, he practiced with Ron. Jim Bacchus, the eternal father figure, came on as Archibald Holmes and kept making Rebel Without A Cause jokes to Dean: "Well, I see you've gotten into trouble again. Now we've had to move across the galaxy. I hope you're satisfied."

  I did a quick prowl around Wally Fisk's apartment, but his fire had been thorough, and I didn't find anything not already included in the notes I'd gotten from Welles. The only thing I'll say about Fisks's detective work is that he'd constructed an impressive case that someone was sabotaging pro-wild-card films. The question of who was left open. And the question of how Blythe was going to be killed was up in the air as well.

  And the only man who might have a clue had gone mad.

  However, the scuttlebutt had worked its way around and I heard about Wally from Flattop and about six others. Now that it was safe, I sought out Dr. Rudo.

  He said he'd had one or two conversations with Fisk, but could hazard a guess as to what happened.

  "Conscience, Mr. Williams," he said, flicking his cigarette. "Conscience can be a terrible thing. A private detective must bury his very deeply, or else it may rise up and destroy him. I suspect that is what happened to the unfortunate Mr. Fisk."

  He asked if I knew what case Wally had been working on, but I said I didn't know. I didn't say how close he'd come to my own reservations about my profession.

  That done, I called up a contact in the press. Now, I know I was supposed to keep my investigation secret, but let me explain: A major Hollywood detective had gone mad, and if I wanted an interview for a case I was not officially working on, I'd need an alibi for a case I was officially working on. Bit actors wear a lot of hats, and it's hardly unusual for one to pick up a bit of extra money as a spy or journalist. I slipped my Press Pass into the band of my fedora and headed down to County General.

  Hospitals were places I'd always hated, and the lockdown ward was always the worst. It stank of urine and pain and sedatives. The set designers for Blythe had tried to convey the dismal inadequacy of a state hospital, but none of that could compar
e with the reality.

  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.

  The jokers were the ones left, and after a day of entertaining the tourists, they mostly kicked back at the Menagerie, L.A.'s single joker bar. It was on the pier, next to the merry-go-round, and the few nats in the place were th
e fuzzy sweater set. That made me nervous more than anything else. The only things I liked Greek were the letters on my fraternity pin.

  Flattop introduced Josh and me around, and I smiled and tried my best not to stare. The two I remember in particular were Richie, who the wild card had turned into a sort of human aquarium, and Panda Bear, who spoke bad pidgin like she was auditioning for a Charlie Chan movie. Her accent was Mexican underneath, not that I'd point it out to a lady, especially one with fangs and claws.

  Josh and Flattop seemed to enjoy the beer, and I got by with soda water like I usually did. The conversation mostly went around Blythe — Flattop had told his friends about the project and they were all excited, especially with the prospect of being extras — and Hedda's latest column, where she'd called the Menagerie a "cess pit of freakishness" and said the city fathers should clear it and "all the other rubbish" off the public pier.

  This went over like you'd expect it would, but you had to give it to Hedda, she was at least consistent — she'd never voiced approval for the Exotics For Democracy, even when they'd been making the cover of LIFE. And as she always pointed out, she'd disapproved of Hitler long before the war.

  Sometimes I wondered whether I would have been as well disposed to wild cards if I hadn't been one. Somehow I don't think so.

  Everyone swapped Hedda jokes and threw darts at her picture in the corner and there was a big laugh when Josh put on Panda's hat and got up on the table to imitate Hopper doing her "This is my town!" speech from her television show.

  I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Something had been itching me all the time I'd been in the Menagerie. How should I put this? I needed solid ground under my feet. My ace made me sensitive to the electromagnetic spectrum, and I could sense where things were: people, electrical wiring, metal, the ground. It wasn't anything really clear, not like sight or hearing. More of a prickling in the back of my neck and the hair on my arms. I was used to feeling the ground beneath me, both as a barrier and a sap to my power. It was gone, along with the clutter of metal struts and power lines, and I'd gone hypersensitive. The free ions were soaking into me like heroin into an addict.