Ikon (22 page)

He caught sight of his wife in the doorway, and gave her another little wave, and cooed, ‘It’s okay, sugar, I won’t be long.’ Then he turned back to Kathy and said, ‘You can imagine what I felt when this representative turned out to be Bobby Kennedy himself. There was one other guy there, but he didn’t look too smart, and I guessed he was just a bodyguard. He didn’t say anything, anyway.’

‘What did Bobby Kennedy say to you? Did he seem worried?’

‘Worried? The guy was jumping all over the place. He couldn’t sit still for a second. He said that a certain lady

movie star, who was a friend of his, was having some trouble. Her life was in danger, he said, and it was vital that she disappear.

I said, well, that wouldn’t be too hard to arrange, but then Bobby Kennedy said that one of his aides had noticed in one of the movie magazines a girl who looked exactly like this certain lady movie star, and asked if it wouldn’t be possible for the two of them to switch roles. He said the idea was that the certain lady movie star would be spirited away and settled someplace out of town; while the look-alike girl would be spirited into the certain lady movie star’s house, given a slight overdose of barbiturate drugs, and then rescued in a blaze of publicity which would establish that the certain lady movie star was still around, and still in town, but which would also give her an excuse to go into a clinic, maybe the Payne-Whitney, where she would be guarded well enough, you understand, but where she would keep any hostile attention away from the certain lady movie star herself.

‘All the time, I knew he was talking about Monroe. Well, that wasn’t no secret. But, I let him say “certain lady movie star” all through the conversation and I didn’t argue. Well, for Christ’s sake, he was the Attorney General. But I did ask what kind of justification he might have for exposing an innocent young girl to the sort of danger he was so anxious that his certain lady movie star shouldn’t be exposed to. And he said, it was a difficult decision, but in the end it all came down to a question of national security. In the larger view, that’s what he said, the whole of America was at risk.’

Daniel asked, ‘Did he say any more? Did he explain what he meant by that?’

‘No, sir,’ said Lieutenant Lindblad. ‘He took one more drink and then he left.’

‘How much did he agree to pay you?’

I didn’t ask for money.’

‘What did you ask for?’

This house, that’s all. A nice house in Brentwood. And I asked him to fix it so that people would believe I was willed it. An old uncle of mine, that was the story.’

‘You found the girl?’ asked Kathy.

‘Sure. Vera Rutledge. I’d seen her myself, in Fotoplay, something like that. Very pretty girl. Prettier than Monroe, if you ask me. Fresher. Didn’t look like she’d been living on Nembutals.’

Kathy took off her spectacles and folded them up. ‘Did you have any inkling at all that Vera Rutledge might be killed? There had to be a risk, after all, if they were going to give her an overdose.’

Lieutenant Lindblad gave a non-committal shrug of his shoulders. ‘I wasn’t particularly impressed by what they were trying to do. It seemed kind of amateurish, to tell you the truth. But, like I said, he was the Attorney General, and I did believe that he knew what he was doing. If you want my opinion, I still think he knew what he was doing, even when Vera Rutledge died. They told me that girl would be ready for rescuing round about four o’clock in the morning, without any danger at all. But they made sure that plenty of other people got around there first; people who would be independent witnesses. Mrs Murray was round there at three in the morning; then Dr Greenson; then Dr Engelberg. By the time the police arrived it was all over. She was long dead.’

Kathy said carefully, ‘Marilyn Monroe made some telephone calls on her last night alive … I mean on Vera Rutledge’s last night alive. But not many people ever admitted receiving them, and the FBI removed the taped record of calls from the Santa Monica telephone company. Have you any explanation for that?’

Lieutenant Lindblad said, ‘I know for sure that the arrangement was for the real Marilyn Monroe to telephone a few people she knew, and act like she was fuzzy and sick, and going over the line from too many pills. But of course she wasn’t actually calling from Brentwood, she was calling long-distance from San Diego, which is the first place they sent her to; and the telephone company’s tape would have shown that no calls came from the Brentwood number to coincide with any of these San Diego calls. That’s why the FBI had to collar the tape as quickly as they could, before some smartass reporter got to it.’

‘Didn’t anybody - ambulancemen, or doctors, anybody like that - didn’t anybody recognize that this girl wasn’t Monroe? She was quite a few years younger, after all.’

‘The whole thing was rushed, on purpose, so that nobody got more than a glimpse. As far as the autopsy was concerned … I really don’t know. My guess is that the medical examiners were looking for cause of death, in the belief that the body had already been satisfactorily identified. I really don’t know for sure. Once it was out of my hands, it was out of my hands.’

They left Lieutenant Lindblad’s house twenty minutes later, and drove westwards, looping around by the Will Rogers State Historical Park, and at last reaching the ocean. Daniel parked the Monaco by the side of the highway, and they took off their shoes and walked along the grey sandy beach for a while, with the Pacific seething beside them, and the unearthly twilight of a smoggy Los Angeles summer all around.

‘What do you think?’ asked Daniel.

‘I don’t know,’ said Kathy. ‘I guess it reinforces my Cuban theory in one way. I mean, I think it’s obvious now that Bobby Kennedy really did have Marilyn Monroe smuggled out of Hollywood to save her life; and if she was prepared to agree to give up her whole career and everything, just for the sake of survival, then whoever was threatening her must have been pretty damned threatening. Well - they ended up cutting her head off, didn’t they? But there still aren’t any facts about Cuba or the Kennedys to get my teeth into.’

I would have thought Skellett’s behaviour was enough.’

‘Skellett might be nothing more than a lone crackpot. I don’t think that he actually is, but he could be; and we don’t have any way of proving that he isn’t.’

‘Did you have any more luck with the National Security Agency?’ asked Daniel.

‘Unh-hunh. Wall of silence time. “We regret that in the interests of national security we are unable to respond to your enquiries at this moment in time.” ‘

Daniel stood by the shoreline, his bare toes dimpling the sand, his hands thrust into the pockets of his khaki slacks. ‘What do we do now? Who else do we talk to? Or do we just give up, and throw in the towel, and go back home?’

‘Is that what you want to do?’

He turned and looked at her, and then shook his head. ‘Home isn’t home without Susie.’

‘How about Cara?’

‘Cara came like all the rest of them. Pretty, footloose, sweet and kind. She went the same way. I called the hospital this morning and they said she’d discharged herself. No forwarding address.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kathy. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

There wasn’t any need, was there, really? They come and they go. Susie’s mother was just like that. It doesn’t stop you liking them; it doesn’t stop you loving them sometimes. But it stops you crying over them, when they’re gone.’

They walked back to the car. A few yards further along the Pacific Coast Highway, sitting on a large backpack, was a suntanned young man of about 27, good-looking in a way that Daniel could only think of as prematurely battered, drinking a can of Tab. He wore lederhosen, with a halter front, and a green check short-sleeved shirt, and large grubby sneakers.

‘Hey, sir!’ he called, as Daniel opened the door of the car. ‘Pardon me,sir!’

Daniel paused, and looked at him over the roof of the car. The young man hopped to his feet, disentangling his sneakers from the strap of his backpack, and said, ‘You don’t happen to be heading towards Hollywood? Well, I know you’re pointing south, but the way you walked on the beach, I wondered if you were heading back east.’

‘You’re on a north-south highway and you want a ride east?

The young man sheepishly rubbed at the back of his neck. ‘Actually, I was trying to thumb a ride north, to Santa Barbara. I had a row with my girl this afternoon, and she sort of threw me out. I was going back home to see my parents. Now I’ve been sitting here for two hours without getting a ride and I’ve kind of cooled towards it, you know? I was thinking of going back to Hollywood and looking up this other girl I know.’

‘Indecisive, huh?’ asked Kathy.

The young man nodded. ‘I guess you could say that. Mind you, it doesn’t take a lot to change my mind about going home to see my folks. They’re very heavily into Roche-Bobois furniture and Cy Twombly graphics.’

Daniel reached into the car and pressed the trunk-release button. ‘Get in,’ he told the young man. ‘We can take you as far as Doheny.’

On the way back along Sunset, the young man leaned forward and folded his arms on the front seats and told them all about his girlfriend. ‘She’s from weird, you know? I guess most Hollywood ladies are. Very beautiful. Excellent. But really from weird. Ever since she found out that Halley’s Comet was on the way back, she’s started getting these feelings. She thinks the comet’s going to fly past the Earth just to investigate her.’

‘Maybe she’s right,’ said Daniel. ‘You mustn’t underestimate the importance of the individual.’

‘Hey,’ frowned the young man. ‘You’re not into that stuff too, are you?’

I’m beginning to feel that I might be.’

The young man looked towards Kathy, and said, ‘Is your husband feeling okay, ma’am?’

‘He’s not my husband. But, sure, yes, he’s feeling all right.’

The young man suddenly stuck out his hand. ‘I didn’t introduce myself. What an airhead. My name’s Rick Terroni. You’ve seen me a hundred times before, on the movies. And television. Pratfaller Extraordinaire, that’s how I advertise myself. That’s a specialist kind of a stuntman, like I make my living falling on my ass. Somebody

gets pushed over, hit by a car, kicked by a horse, sits on a collapsing deckchair, slips on a squashed tomato, that’s what I do. You ever see that movie where Ryan O’Neal walks up those steps and then slides on all of those marbles? That was me, doing the sliding. Let’s face it, Ryan O’Neal doesn’t want to walk around for the rest of the week with a multi-coloured ass.’

‘Pleased to know you/ said Daniel.

They drove in silence for a while, past the gates of Bel Air, and then Rick Terroni said; ‘You guys seem kind of down. Is that impolite of me to say so? Is there a bereavement in the family? You’re coming back from a funeral?’

Daniel said, ‘It’s nothing, okay?’

‘If you say so. It’s just that I’ve got a nose for misery.’

‘A nose for misery?’ asked Kathy. ‘What kind of a self-commendation is that?’

‘Did I say it was a self-commendation?’

Daniel pulled up at Doheny, with an unnecessarily violent jerk on the brakes. That’s it, then,’ he said. ‘You’re back in Hollywood.’

Rick peered out of the Monaco’s window. ‘Hm,’ he said, ‘Doheny Drive.’

That’s where I told you, Doheny.’

‘You can’t take me any further?’

‘Unh-hunh. That is it.’

Rick took a breath. ‘Listen, he said, ‘the real truth is that I don’t have anyplace to go.’

‘You want a home, as well as a ride?’ asked Daniel.

I didn’t say that,Rick protested. ‘If you want me to get out, I’ll get out.’

‘Daniel,said Kathy, ‘He’s not a bum. Come on, we can give him one square meal and floorspace for tonight. The Flag will pay for it. Hell, the Flag’s paying for this car, and for you. So you and he are just about equals, when you think about it. Two bums together.’

Daniel turned around to Rick with a smile that would have soured cream. ‘You’ll have to excuse my wife,he said, as he pulled out into the traffic of Sunset Boulevard again. At the moment, he didn’t particularly care, one

way or the other. He didn’t even know why he was here. He should be in Arizona, taking care of Cara and waiting for news of Susie. Two days ago, following Kathy Forbes to Hollywood had seemed like the only positive thing he could do. But now he was beginning to feel that it was a terrible dead end, a news story that never was, the tearful parent interviewed on the evening news bulletin, ‘If I’d known what those animals were doing to my daughter… .’

He made a squealing left into Sunset Plaza, narrowly avoiding an oncoming truck, and pulled up beside their rented house. Kathy touched his arm, and said, ‘Are you all right?’

He stared at her. He felt as if his eyelids would never close again. ‘Yes, sure, I’m all right. A little tired, maybe.’

Rick Terroni said, ‘Listen, if you guys are into something that’s none of my business … I mean, I feel like I’m interfering or something like that… I can easily find someplace to sleep… .’

Kathy said, ‘Do your parents really live in Santa Barbara?’

‘Sure they do.’

‘And do they really have Roche-Bobois furniture and prints by Cy Twombly?’

Rick looked away; at a huge billboard of Olivia Newton-John. ‘Well, not precisely. But they’d like to. That’s if they knew what it was. I saw it in Architectural Digest while I was waiting at the dentist.’

‘When was the last time you worked? In movies, I mean, or in television?’

‘Couple of months ago. I doubled for Keiller Pierce in Nightmare II. He had to fall off a balcony. He looked over that balcony, you know, down at the ground where he was supposed to fall, and he said, “If you think I’m going to jump down there, you’ve got to be fucking joking.” And the director said, “Keiller, it’s cinchy,” and gave him a shove, and Keiller toppled right off that balcony and broke both of his ankles, and the picture was held up for seven months while he learned how to walk all over again.

So that’s why, when it came to the balcony scene, they made me do it.’

‘And that was the last job you had?’

‘I’m shortlisted for Son of Cannon. That’s a new TV detective series, with this young fat guy. Well, plump.’