Card Sharks

  I didn't feel so bad about that case - believe what you will, it's standard for a P.I. - as I did about what came after. I got into the habit of taking similar photos and selling them to Braun's successive wives. There were enough for an erotic pin-up calendar and another brace of divorce suits. I told myself I was doing it to give the Judas ace a taste of his own medicine, but with 20/20 hindsight, I can say I did it for the money.

  But back then, I was doing it for the money. "What sort of pay are we talking here?"

  Welles named a figure that you'd never find anywhere outside the budget of a major motion picture.

  I know I paused too long. "I need to know all of my duties before I accept anything."

  "Smart man," Welles said again. "You'll be doing anything and everything to protect Blythe. If someone tries something, you'll stop it, and if possible get evidence we can use for P.R." He tapped the ash off his cigar with a final gesture. I watched it fall. "And of course you won't breath a word of this to Hedda or Louella."

  Now there's something you ought to know about Hollywood, or at least the Hollywood I knew: The gossip columnists ran the town. And the two biggest harpies in Hollywood were Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper.

  Louella, or "Lollipop" as she liked to be called, invented the business. She was a neurotic old biddy with a bald spot and a voice like a crow, but at least she could be reasoned with. She didn't have an axe to grind, only papers to sell.

  Hedda was another matter. Hedda was a failed actress who found that all the venom she'd built up over the years actually sold papers and radio spots. She was also a weird old lady who went around in these giant hats and hated everything outside of Middle America prewar, pre-wild card. She hated Reds, she hated Pinks. She hated lavender boys and foreigners and Charlie Chaplin and just about everyone else. But more than anything, she hated wild cards.

  Her files must have pinned about half the people on the Black List. And if you were an ace-in-hiding, you didn't forget that she was thick as the Forty Thieves with J. Edgar Hoover.

  She was also tight-knit with Willie Hearst, whose papers owned Louella, and the animosity between them and Welles was public knowledge. If anyone was to get the scoop, it wasn't going to be Hedda Hopper or the Hearst empire.

  "Let me tell you something, Nick," Welles said. "Blythe is going to be big and it's going to piss off more people than Citizen Kane. But unlike Kane, I'm not keeping it under wraps."

  I paused and took a drag on my cigarette. "You've done a pretty good job so far."

  Welles poured himself another glass of wine. "That, Nick, is the problem. It isn't a secret, but short of taking out adds in Variety, no one knows what's being produced. And with the number of spies and rumor-mongers in this town, it doesn't take a genius to recognize a conspiracy of silence when he hears one.

  "I hired Wally to see just how deep it went. This is what he found before he went nuts."

  He gave me a sheaf of documents: letters, bills, newspaper clippings, insurance claims, unproduced scripts like The Bowery Boys in "Jokers' Town," and scenes cut from 30 Minutes Over Broadway.

  What it added up to was that someone had it out for wild cards, and scenes that made aces a little too heroic had gotten the axe. And movies that showed jokers as anything but monsters terrorizing teenage beach parties invariably had set fires or other accidents.

  Welles swirled his burgundy. "I was over at MGM when they were doing Golden Boy. From what I saw of the dailies, it looked to be a reasonably good film. What happened in the cutting room was criminal, probably in every sense of the word.

  "Someone doesn't like wild cards, Nick," Welles said. "I want you to find out who. Blythe is going to go ahead and it's going to be the best damn picture I've done."

  He gave me a copy of the script and filled me in. They hadn't contracted all of the players yet, and Trumbo was still doing a polish, but Zanuck had lent him Marilyn Monroe for the title. After her performance in Cleopatra, they'd have lines down the block.

  I believed it. Blond Marilyn was nothing compared to raven-haired Marilyn. I was one of ten thousand men wanting to have been that asp.

  I stubbed out my cigarette and Welles offered another before I had to ask. "Marilyn," he said, giving me a light, "is the risky bit. She's on the bottle, and that wouldn't be half so bad if it weren't for Paula Strasberg, her acting coach, and her new psychiatrist, Dr. Rudo. Between the two of them they've got her loaded down with more pills than any woman should be able to swallow." Welles scrunched down, mimicking the posture and accent of a New York matron: "Marilyn, darling, take one of your tranquilizers." He straightened up then, affecting a haughty look and an aristocratic German accent: "Miss Monroe, I prescribe a Damn-It-All. Take two, they're small."

  I bit my cigarette to keep from laughing. "So you want me to pry Marilyn away from her bottle and pills?"

  Welles was back to himself, trimming another cigar. "I don't care," he said, lighting up and sucking smoke like some sort of directorial dragon. "I don't care if she takes twice as many or goes cold turkey, just so long as she can act. The money for Blythe comes from people who're willing to bet on the combination of Monroe / Trumbo / Welles, not a bunch of philanthropists who'll pay for any actress to play a diseased schizophrenic the government's glad is dead."

  He paused, leaning back in his chair, tapping the cigar with finality. "If Marilyn goes, Blythe is dead too. And whoever doesn't like wild cards gets what they want."

  I may have been a hidden ace, but I was still a wild card. There was no way I was letting this one go. "I'll take it."

  "Deal," Welles said and we shook.

  The next day, I showed up at the lot, bright and early. I'd gone through the papers the night before and read Trumbo's script. It was still rough in places, but genuinely moving, with the mark of Hollywood: It may not have been exactly what did happen, but it was the way things ought to have happened.

  I think someone once said that art wasn't truth, but a lie that made you realize the truth. That was the beauty of Hollywood, and Blythe was beautiful.

  I'd asked Welles if there was some part he could make up that would give me an excuse to be on the lot, preferably near Marilyn. After giving me a director's once-over, he asked if I'd like to be stand-in for Golden Boy. I gave him my best Jack Braun Aw-shucks,-I-can't-act,-Colonel grin and saluted, saying I'd be happy to stand wherever the committee wanted me to.

  My name was at the front gate: Nick Williams, nowhere actor and Golden Boy stand-in.

  I got to meet the cast. Costuming wasn't quite finished, but james Dean had a hat from one of the old Robin Hood flicks. Add a red wig and he'd be Dr. Tachyon. Sydney Poitier, of course, was Black Eagle.

  They hadn't contracted for Harstein yet, but Welles had another stand-in, name of Josh Davidson from New York. He was a little chubby and didn't have a Jewish nose, but otherwise looked even closer to the Envoy than I did to Golden Rat. Everybody liked him, but Welles was looking for a name actor.

  And then there was Marilyn. I know everyone has seen her pictures, but none of that compares to the reality. She was beautiful. The iron butterfly they sometimes called her. Small and delicate, but with this underlying strength, something that told you that yes, this woman could be crushed, but not as easily as you might think.

  Her skin was pale white and her eyes were blue. But her hair ... In Cleopatra, most of the time she'd worn a wig, her real hair too damaged by the bleach. But now it had grown out, and it was dyed a rich, sable black. Ebony on snow.

  It was Cleopatra all over again. Blythe Van Renssaeler had been a beauty, but nothing compared to this. Marilyn was Blythe Van Renssaeler, the way Blythe should have been. It was like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. A beautiful, fragile thing, destined to float briefly, then die.

  Costuming had gone full stop. Her dress was sheer black silk with a silver fox wrap thrown over her shoulders, like the princess from a Russian fairytale. And around her neck she had a triple string of pearls, clasped with an on
yx square set with a diamond. It was the necklace Blythe Van Rennssaeler had worn during the trial.

  She read her lines haltingly, almost childlike, while Paula Strasberg, her acting coach, watched from offstage, along with what could only be her new Svengali, Dr. Rudo. They observed her like butterfly hunters after some prized new specimen, but then, God, she was beautiful.

  They were practicing the scene where Blythe comes to Tachyon's apartment after her husband throws her out. Marilyn was curled up against James Dean's chest, weeping, and those were real tears, not glycerin. And her words: "I don't know what's to become of me. What man could ever love a woman who knows all his secrets?"

  "I would," Dean said, and I know I mouthed the line as he said it. That moment was magic. Marilyn stood there, the silver fox wrap sliding softly off her shoulders, like a chrysalis off a butterfly. And one by one her tears hit the floor.

  That was the moment I truly fell in love with her.

  Then there were people swarming around her, Paula Strasberg shrieking like some Jewish grandmother from Hell, alternately congratulating her and asking if she wanted one of her tranquilizers, Dean hugging her, then Welles swept through them, pulling Marilyn free of the knot. He gave her directorly compliments and she started to laugh and dried her tears, then Welles steered her and her admirers over in my direction and introduced me to the crew.

  I don't know what my first words were to her. Probably something stupid and obvious like "That was wonderful" or "I've been a fan for a long time." It didn't matter. That was Marilyn's moment, and I think there's no way to do it justice. She was brilliant.

  Then the tension was broken by Josh Davidson going, "How did you do that?"

  Marilyn suddenly calmed down and started giving him a whole explanation of method acting, and Paula took them off into the corner.

  And I found myself face to face with another hero from a Wagnerian opera.

  The joke was, the voice matched. "She is very complex, yes?"

  I think I sort of vaguely nodded as I looked at the owner, trying not to laugh: Welles' impersonation had been spot-on. Like I said, he was another blond-haired, blue-eyed type, and even had the same little Kirghiz fold to the corner of the eye as I did. He looked like my uncle Fritz.

  The German extended his hand. "Miss Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Pan Rudo. You were very moved."

  I suddenly noticed that a tear had escaped down my cheek. I brushed it aside and shook hands, saying something about how any actor would have been moved by that performance, but I know it didn't sound believable. I was scared. If I'd let go any more, I would have lit up like a ship in a rainstorm.

  Rudo laughed and offered me a cigarette. I accepted and lit up in the more conventional sense. After all, without alcohol, I had to have some vice. Cigarettes were as good as any.

  Dr. Rudo's cigarettes were expensive and French. So, I think, was his suit, and as I learned later, his tastes in wine.

  We talked a while and I learned that he'd come to the States before the war, from Dresden. A Prussian aristocrat most likely, or maybe the air of fallen nobility just worked to his advantage as psychiatrist to the stars.

  As soon as the rumors worked themselves free, I wanted to question him about Wally Fisk and just exactly what might have happened to him. But I wasn't going to broach the subject until I heard it from someone else, so I just made small talk.

  Everything else was the usual pre-production wrangle, and somewhere in there I managed to link up with Flattop.

  Flattop was an old friend, or at least friendly informant. He was a joker ace. That's A-C-E, as in American Cinema Editors, not ace P.I. or ace wild card like I was. He was also a joker and an almost-deuce: You never noticed him except when you were looking right at him. But when you did, you wondered how you could have missed the guy, since his irises were candy-striped orange, yellow and green, one inside the other, like a photographer's test pattern, his fingers were twice the length they should have been and his toes were almost as long, and he had a six-ounce Coca-Cola bottle screwed into a socket in his left arm, right inside the elbow.

  But he was a good looking guy for all that, with a nice even smile, clean-cut, straight-arrow looks, a cross around his neck, and dark brown hair cut in a conservative flattop.

  Like most jokers, he was also pathetically happy to have anyone just treat him like a human being. I'll admit I used him shamelessly, but you could find out half of what was going down on any lot for the price of just fifteen minutes with Flattop.

  "Ooh, Marilyn is pissed off, man," Flattop said as he fiddled with some editing equipment. I tried to ignore the fact that he used his prehensile toes for half the job. "Zanuck stuck her on this pic for the last spot on her contract, and I don't know what deal Welles made to get him to do it. She'd walk if she could."

  "What's the problem?"

  "Didn't you know, man? This is a wild cards pic and that old witch Hopper's declared War. She's been flying around the set trying to twist Marilyn's arm. I Wouldn't be surprised if she hired a stunt plane and had it write 'Surrender Marilyn!' over the studio."

  It sounded like standard tactics for Hopper. First she gave you a friendly warning, then she blasted you in her column. Welles's "conspiracy of silence" might end quite soon.

  It was getting late in the day, and there was a lot more information I wanted to pump Flattop for. I asked if he'd like to go out for beer after he finished up.

  "But you don't drink, Nick," he pointed out. Like I said, Flattop was perceptive.

  I shrugged.

  "There's a party out in Malibu tonight. They actually invited me." He smiled and there was the strangest mixture of pain and happiness in his weird eyes. "This is the first one I've been asked to since ..."

  I clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't sweat it, Pete." That was his name, actually. Peter Le Fleur. Sometimes I was jealous of him. His wild card was out for everyone to see, so he didn't have to lie to anyone about who or what he was, including himself.

  Then again, I didn't get the joker treatment.

  He folded his elongated fingers over my hand and I made sure I didn't flinch. It wasn't as if there was anything I could catch from him. "Thanks, Nick. If you want to tag along ..."

  I thought of Marilyn. "Wouldn't miss it."

  The party was at Peter Lawford's beach house in Malibu. It was pretty exclusive: cast and crew favorites, along with Rudo and Strasberg and some others. Poitier was absent, but that was to be expected. And Davidson had talked his way in, so I wasn't the only stand-in.

  Lawford was there, of course, three sheets to the wind, riding on the fame of his wife's brothers, one of whom was actually present. Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, was in the pool, flirting with Marilyn, as was James Dean.

  It was a moment to make an entrance, and I took it. I did a three-sixty off the board and the water cleft perfectly. I'd had an athletics scholarship to USC and Olympic hopes, but I had to give them up when they started testing for wild cards, not that being an electric eel shaved any time off me in the fifty meter.

  Once I came up, there was some gratifying applause and I managed to insinuate myself into the conversation with Marilyn. It was light politics, Dean going on about getting Tachyon back into the country, but the pauses let me discover what I'd heard rumored: Marilyn and Bobby were having an affair.

  It wasn't any part of my ace. A detective just gets a sixth sense for that sort of thing. It's a matter of ordinary animal magnetism and body language. Bobby Kennedy wanted Marilyn and acted like he'd had her before.

  Marilyn's reactions were more subtle, with a note of anguish underlying the laughter, but I could tell that she wanted Bobby in more of a primal way, more like a little girl wants her father than a woman wants a man.

  Dean was attentive, but didn't desire Marilyn in any manner beyond the general. He had a long scar down one leg, visible even through the ripples of the pool. I'd never seen it before, but I knew it was a legacy of the car crash that had killed Liz Taylor an
d nearly claimed him, back at the end of Giant.

  He didn't drive quite so fast anymore.

  Marilyn hadn't given Dean a second glance, but she looked straight at me.

  There was chemistry there, and it wasn't the sort you got with the wild card. I made a total fool of myself, but then that was the general idea. Once or twice I felt Welles giving me a look, but dammit, I was more than just being paid to stick around Marilyn. I wanted to be with her.

  The party went all night and I ran into a number of other hangers-on, the youngest of whom was Tom Quincey, a freshman from USC who looked younger and kept babbling on about Aldous Huxley and his book, Destiny and the Doors of Perception. It seemed Huxley had been at the party, but had left early, though Tom was more than happy to tell me all about him and showed off some white tablets he'd left behind. "They're LSD!" he said. "From the Swiss pharmacy. See - They're stamped with the Sandoz mark!"

  I'd never seen LSD tablets, but Rudo came over and explained that they were perfectly legal, non-prescription. "Similar to mescaline," he said. "They expand perceptions."

  To demonstrate their harmlessness, Rudo and Tommy both popped a couple. I chose not to indulge, not wanting to see What they did with my Wild card, but Marilyn and the Lawfords tried some, and so did another Tom, Douglas I think, a musician friend of Quincey's. Flattop amused everybody by taking the half-empty Coke bottle from his arm and filling it up the rest of the way with the Lawford's rum and a couple of Tommy's tablets before plugging it back in.

  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.