Ikon

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Why didn’t the guy who killed her take the body in the first place?’ Daniel wanted to know. ‘He could have

  dumped her in the desert somewhere and nobody would have found her for years, if at all.’

  ‘I thought about that, too. But if Margot Schneider had simply disappeared without trace, the police would have started making much more intensive inquiries into her background; where she came from, who her relatives were, that kind of thing, instead of accepting the apparent fact that here was poor Mrs Margot Schneider and here she was dead.’

  Kathy paused, and then she said, ‘She was the right age, she had the right kind of physique, and the police found hairs in the bathroom washbasin which corresponded with her natural hair colour, before she bleached it. There was a circular mark on the back of her right arm, too.’

  ‘You really believe it was possible? I mean, you really believe it was her?’

  ‘I’m - what, 75 per cent sure of it. Eighty per cent. Why else did Skellett react so violently when I asked him if she was connected with Cuba? I couldn’t fit the bricks together but I could tell that they all came out of the same box. Kennedy - Monroe - Margot Schneider. If Margot Schneider hadn’t been Marilyn Monroe, why would Skellett have bothered to torture me? He tried to tell me that Margot Schneider was part of a Soviet spy ring or something like that; but he completely failed to explain why the very mention of Cuba in connection with Margot Schneider was enough to make him speed through Phoenix at 90 miles an hour, kill two cops, and then behave like a medieval torturer. And I can tell you something - whatever Skellett knows about Margot Schneider, or Marilyn Monroe - it was sufficiently devastating to make it worthwhile blowing one of his own men into tiny little pieces, just to help him get away.’

  Daniel said, ‘Why did you ask him about Cuba?’

  ‘No particular reason. Reporter’s nose for trouble, I guess. It was the biggest political storm that was brewing at the time, in 1962. I just took a shot at it. I’ve been reading through most of the books on Marilyn Monroe’s

  death, and trying to form some opinions about the various theories on why she died, and how; and I couldn’t find any idea that was actually solid enough, actually concrete enough - either to justify somebody killing her, or to justify her going into hiding in Arizona for the rest of her life.’

  ‘Didn’t somebody once say that she was killed by agents of the Communist party because she was threatening to expose Bobby’s plans to legalize a whole lot of left-wing political organizations?’

  Kathy Forbes shook her head. There are scores of theories, most of them cranky. Hardly any of them stand up to the simple test of asking yourself, would Marilyn Monroe really have done that? She wasn’t a politically active person, neither was she vengeful. No, it’s my view that she simply overheard too much from Jack and Bobby; listened to one too many of their political problems. And one day they realized that she knew so much about one particular political problem that her life could be in danger. Their lives were in danger, too, as we know from what happened in November, 1963, and in June, 1968, and it makes much more sense to me that all three of them -Marilyn, Jack, and Bobby - were under threat from the same people. Skellett’s people, whoever they are.’

  She replaced her sunglasses, and then she said, ‘Whether Marilyn died in 1962 or not, and I really believe now that she didn’t, she was killed because of something she knew that was crucially important, and as far as I could judge, Cuba was the only crisis big enough. What’s more, if Margot Schneider really was Marilyn Monroe, the crisis was long-lasting enough to make it worthwhile somebody murdering her after twenty years. Now, which crisis can you think of that Jack and Bobby were faced with which is still going on today? Which crisis could still harbour a secret dangerous enough to kill people for? The Mafia, possibly; spies, not likely. No, I chose Cuba, and Skellett’s reaction proved me right.’

  ‘Now there’s Willy,’ said Daniel. ‘Where do you think he fits in?’

  ‘I don’t know, said Kathy. ‘I’ve been swivelling the whole thing around in my mind like a Rubik’s cube, ever since you telephoned me this morning.’

  ‘I never could solve Rubik’s cube.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only done it five times. But let’s try some theories out and see if they fit. Or half-fit, at least. The first thing we know for sure is that your friend Willy was killed in a very similar way to Margot Schneider, in the same general locality, within three days. And the method of killing was sufficiently unusual to make it quite likely that he was killed by the same individual. I mean, you don’t get too many flexible saw murderers.’

  Daniel wiped sweat from his face. T could use a beer,’ he said. ‘Do you think we could continue this discussion down at the saloon?’

  ‘Sure,’ Kathy nodded. ‘Do you mind if my friend comes along? He looks tough, but actually he’s very harmless.’

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ Daniel remarked, and then wondered if he had sounded too macho.

  Twenty-One

  They sat at a dark corner-table drinking beer by the neck while the local ‘cowpokes’ entertained the tourists with gun-twirling and pretended drunkenness. Kathy’s heavyweight bodyguard dragged his chair back a few feet out of earshot, and tossed peanuts into his mouth by the monotonous handful. The buxom girl behind the bar gave him a sassy wink or two, but he remained expressionless and unmoved.

  Kathy said to Daniel, T have about four main theories why Willy Monahan was killed by the same man who killed Marilyn Monroe. None of them may be completely right. For instance, we have to allow that he may have been disposed of by somebody at Williams AFB who cut his head off in the same way as Marilyn’s for no other reason except to throw us off the trail. The two homicides might be completely unconnected. But my feeling is that if the murderer wanted people to think that both murders were committed by the same individual when in actual fact they weren’t, then he or she wouldn’t have kept Willy’s death such a secret. Whoever killed Willy didn’t particularly want anyone to know what had happened to him; unless they were devious enough to make it all seem like a mystery, so that anyone who had actually twigged what was going on, like you and Ronald Kinishba, would be flushed out into the open. Maybe that’s too devious. I don’t know.’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult for me to get into the air base mortuary,’ said Daniel. ‘Getting out was the tough bit.’

  ‘Well, that’s something to bear in mind,’ agreed Kathy. ‘Now - we have to think what Marilyn Monroe could possibly have known about Cuba that related to what your friend Willy Monahan had learned about the missiles at Williams AFB. So, let’s shift the Rubik’s cube around and see what we come up with. Monroe - Kennedy -Cuba - missiles. Nuclear missiles were the principal point of contention in the Cuban crisis of 1962; so maybe what Willy Monahan discovered was something to do with a disarmament agreement that was reached between Kennedy and Khruschev. We all know about the treaty of July 25, 1963, which prohibited all nuclear tests except those conducted underground; and that was a direct result of the crisis over Cuba. But maybe there were other agreements, secret agreements which only a few people ever got to hear about.’

  ‘You mean those missiles that Willy discovered weren’t ever supposed to work against Soviet planes? That Kennedy might have agreed with Khruschev that US planes wouldn’t be able to shoot down any Soviet aircraft?’

  ‘It’s a theory.’

  ‘But surely subsequent Presidents would have done something about it. I can’t see Marshall Roberts allowing US fighter planes to fly around with useless weapons.’

  ‘A couple of years ago, I couldn’t see Marshall Roberts agreeing to the RING talks.’

  Daniel sat silent for a moment, then took another swallow of cold beer. ‘It seems incredible.’

  That’s what I thought. But the more I went over the idea, the more I rearranged it in my mind, the more sense it seemed to make. That could be dangerous, of course. Journalistic theories have a habit of fitting all the known facts, and s
till remaining preposterously untrue. But if there had been a number of secret nuclear agreements between Kennedy and Khruschev; if the price of getting the Russians to take their missiles out of Cuba and back to Russia had been much higher than the rest of us poor suckers were led to believe at the time, then Marilyn Monroe’s murder would begin to make sense, so would Willy’s, and so would Jack and Robert Kennedy’s. Skellett’s behaviour still seems a little peculiar, to say the least. I don’t know why he had to make such a three-ring circus out of recovering Marilyn’s body when she was already safely dead. All he did was draw everybody’s attention to the murder, when it could easily have remained as another one of those nasty unsolved mysteries, for ever and ever. But maybe we’ll find that out later.’

  ‘You don’t think we ought to go to the police?’ asked

  Daniel.

  ‘No, sir. If even one-half of this bears any relation to the real facts, then we’re dealing with some very heavy people indeed; and the fewer people who know what we know, the better. I don’t very much fancy being beheaded, do you?’

  I thought you were going to publish the whole inside story in the FlagT

  ‘All I’m going to publish in the Flag, Mr Korvitz, is “My Kidnap Ordeal by Kathy Forbes” with all the salacious details of what they tried to do to me. I haven’t told anyone about my Marilyn Monroe theory yet, except you,

  and Skellett, and that was only because Skellett tortured me. I really think it’s too early and it’s too damned dangerous. Unless, of course, you’re one of Skellett’s agents, in which case you’re probably going to take me out right now and string me up from the town gallows.’

  Daniel finished his beer. ‘What do you think we can do? Any ideas? Any sane ideas? Maybe it’s best if we don’t do anything. Pretend it never happened. I mean, what possible effect can you and I have on the history of the entire world?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ asked Kathy. ‘If Kennedy made a secret disarmament deal with Khruschev that US missiles should be totally ineffective against Soviet airplanes, and if President Roberts is still sticking to the terms of that agreement today - you know what a news story that would be? We’d be famous for ever. And rich. You want to run a diner all your life?’

  ‘I want to stay alive for all my life, that’s all.’

  Kathy said briskly, ‘Well, it’s up to you. I’ve got to investigate it, because it’s my job. My instinct, too. If you don’t want to help me, well, that’s it, don’t help me. But I’ll have to make you promise not to blow the story to any other newspaper. I think after what I’ve been through I’m entitled to an exclusive, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re really going to start poking your nose around in this? You’re serious? After the way they’ve been killing people off, blowing people up, sticking goddamned -needles in you?’

  ‘Mr Korvitz - ‘

  ‘Please, Daniel.’

  ‘Daniel, I have to. It’s my vocation. This is the kind of break that every newspaper reporter has dreams about.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘First of all, I’m going to Los Angeles. I want to talk to as many people as I can who saw Marilyn Monroe in the last few days of her life, and particularly on the night of her alleged death. I want to talk to the mortician who laid her out and everybody who saw her body. If there’s even the slightest suggestion that the body they buried at Westwood isn’t Marilyn … well then, we’ll know that we’re on to something.’

  Daniel rubbed his eyes, tiredly. ‘It would be easier, you know, if it didn’t all sound so goddamned far-fetched.’

  ‘Mr Korvitz, Daniel, the whole trouble is that it isn’t far-fetched. It’s actually less far-fetched than all the accepted historical explanations about Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It fits the facts better, and it could account for all kinds of apparently inexplicable trends in the way that this country has been governed for the past twenty years.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Daniel, unconvinced.

  ‘Let me spend some time in Los Angeles, and then get back to you,’ said Kathy. ‘Maybe we can talk it over again.’

  ‘All right,’ Daniel agreed. Suddenly it didn’t seem so important to find out why Willy had died, or how. Suddenly it seemed more important that Willy should be left to rest in peace, and not have his sleep troubled by distant rumbles of thunder from 1962. Daniel had heard how violent thunderstorms could bring corpses rising out of the fresh earth in country graveyards; as well as cause women to miscarry, and milk to turn sour.

  They said goodbye to each other in the dusty parking-lot. Daniel was fairly sure that he would never see her again, this snappy and over-enthusiastic lady reporter, although he would probably take the trouble to read her story in the Arizona Flag, and follow her investigations into the Cuban Missile Crisis. He shook hands with her politely and went back to his car. He sat down behind the steering-wheel, and sorted through his keys, and didn’t know why he felt so down.

  He was just about to start up the engine when Kathy came across again, and leaned into the open passenger window.

  ‘You know what you’re feeling now, don’t you?’ she asked him.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You’re feeling fear, that’s what,she told him. ‘And do you want to know something, I respect you for it. It means you’ve got enough imagination to recognize that what I’m saying to you is true, or could be. I know you’ve got a little girl, Daniel. I know you’re the kind of guy who wants to be left alone. But just remember you had enough guts to break into that airbase to find out what had happened to Willy; and you had enough guts to come here and talk to me about it.’

  Daniel said, ‘You’re the second person today to tell me how gutsy I am. I’m beginning to feel like Audie Murphy.’ ‘I’ll be in touch, okay?’ said Kathy, and left him. He shrugged to himself, and started up his car. The engine coughed, backfired loudly, and died away with a whine like a broken washing-machine.

  Kathy, who had been halfway back to her own car, walked over again and looked in at the passenger window. ‘You don’t happen to need a ride?’ she asked him. As they drove back to Apache Junction, they began to relax with each other. Kathy told Daniel how she had gone to California, and then come back to make her name on the Flag. ‘I thought I was going to win the Pulitzer Prize the first year I was there.’ Daniel told her about Candii and Susie; and about the attractions of living a simple and uncomplicated life in the shadow of the Superstition Mountains.

  ‘Are you afraid of life? Afraid of success? Or what?’ asked Kathy. ‘I’m not being rude. It’s just that you seem to want things out of life that don’t actually exist, like women out of country-and-western fantasies, and complete peace and quiet. There isn’t any such thing as complete peace and quiet. Life will never leave you alone. And all the women I’ve ever met who look like country-and-western fantasies are pretty as cotton-candy on the outside and hard as reinforced concrete on the inside.’

  Daniel said, ‘I don’t lack confidence, I can tell you that. I don’t lack determination, either. But I look around me and begin to wonder what all that confidence and determination is going to bring me. Money? I’m eating okay. Happiness? I’ve got my daughter, and my occasional girlfriends. Fame? I’m famous with the people who know me. You may think I’m backing off, opting out, but I don’t seriously think so. What I want is what I’ve got, and I think the real strength comes in saying to yourself, thaf s it, I’m happy.’

  The trouble is,’ said Kathy, ‘I don’t believe that you

  are.’

  They drew up in front of Daniel’s Downhome Diner. Kathy said, ‘I noticed this place on the way out here. Do you think you could spare us a cup of coffee, and a muffin maybe? Neither of us had time for lunch.’

  Daniel hesitated, and Kathy said, ‘You could send the cheque to my paper. They’ll pay you.’

  Daniel grinned. ‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘I think I can just about afford to treat y
ou.’

  But the second that Daniel walked into the place he realized there was something wrong. Pete Burns was in there, and two Highway Patrol officers, and three or four other regular customers, but none of them was eating. Then he saw Cara’s legs on the floor, in between the chair-legs, and he felt as if everything was suddenly rushing in to meet him with the velocity of a locomotive, faces, chairs, tables, walls, and Pete Burns was turning to say something with an expression which he knew in that first explosive instant meant bad news.

  ‘There were two guys. They came in here about a half-hour ago. Neil says they asked for you.’

  ‘She’s not dead, Daniel. Daniel, she’s not dead. Okay? She’s going to be fine. They hurt her a little, that’s all. But the doc put her under a sedative, and she’s fine. Listen, will you calm down?’

  ‘They asked for you by name. That’s what Neil says. Jimmy here heard them too. They said, where’s Daniel Korvitz; and when Cara said you were out, and she didn’t know where, they started pushing her around, you know? One of them hit her with something; nobody saw what it was, but it lacerated her face and her shoulder. Maybe a broken bottle. The ambulance is coming, anyway. The thing is, Daniel - ‘

  Daniel stared at them blurrily. Somebody jostled against him and he turned around; but then Pete Burns said, The thing is, Daniel, Susie was coming home from school right then -‘ ‘Susie?’

  ‘Well, it was pretty bad luck. A couple of minutes later and she would’ve missed them completely. But they were just leaving and the school bus turned up, and when she came into the diner and said, you know, where’s my daddy -‘

  ‘Don’t know what the hell they hit her with. Will you look at those cuts?’

  ‘Pete, what happened? Where’s Susie?’ ‘Daniel, I’m real sorry about this. I was only about thirty seconds away from here myself. It was bad luck, that’s all. You know what I mean? A crappy combination of circumstances.’