The Blonde (44 page)

The force of the bullet knocked him backward, onto the floor in the hallway. He shrieked, a moan of pure agony that began high but soon became low and guttural. The sheet had fallen to her feet, and she stood, naked, every muscle tensed with the gun. For another minute Alexei screamed in pain, grasping at the place on his leg where his blue jeans were torn open and soaked with blood. Then he went quiet. His breathing was still ragged, but he had put the pain away somehow and focused his attention on her. Despite his injury, he appeared more wary than angry. “I’m sorry,” he managed, through heaving breaths. “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck sorry.” She cocked the gun and pointed it at his face. If he moved fast, he could grab an ankle; he was stronger than she, and surely he knew the best way to take her down. The sheet had fallen to her feet, and she hoped that her stark nakedness would unnerve him, give her some advantage.

“Let’s talk. Don’t you want to talk? Remember how much you wanted to talk? I’m your father, N.J., isn’t there so much more we need to tell each other?”

She regarded him down the shaft of the gun. “You’re going to tell me what they have planned for me. What they have planned for Jack. That’s all I want to know.”

“N.J., don’t be a fool. Forget about that. Here I am. Don’t you want to know how this came to be?” The blood was spreading across the beige linoleum. He leaned forward, on his elbow, as though testing how close he could get to her.

She stepped away, jerked the gun to show him she meant business.

He nodded that he understood and drew back. “Listen. Be reasonable. I can help you, my dear. But I’ve got to call a doctor—I’m bleeding too much. Call him, all right? I’ll give you the number. After that, we’ll figure everything out. We’ll take care of you.”

“Take care of me?” She exhaled sharply from the lowest point of her exposed belly. “I’m not calling nobody. Anyway, how can I trust you? What if this is just another lie? A lie you’ve trained me all this time to believe in.”

“N.J., you don’t have any choice. If you kill me, I can’t shield you anymore. They’ll find you. You won’t last long on the run, you know that, don’t you? I’m your father—you were right, you sensed it. I could never harm you.” Again he reached out, the same tentative gesture, resting his hand on her foot. It was a gentle touch, protective, neither menacing nor carnal. “Think about it. How many men have had the opportunities I’ve had, and haven’t made a pass at you?”

The metallic odor of blood was strong, and Alexei had begun quietly to stroke her foot. She relaxed her arms slightly, so the gun was no longer aimed at his head but a few feet away on the floor. He marked this change, and his hand on her foot became more reassuring, more intentional, as though he believed he had her.

“N.J., my dear, give me the gun.”

But the nickname, the “my dear,” had lost their magic. They made her sick now. She tightened her grip, narrowed her eyes, pointed the gun at his face. Fast as a cat, he yanked her leg out from under her, and she fell hard on her tailbone. She gasped in shock. For a moment they breathed in tandem, both watchful, making their own calculations. She had the gun, her only power. Another moment, and she wouldn’t have that. But if she killed him she’d never hear the story, how she really came to be. All her life seethed in her, every neglect, humiliation, every moment of desperation and of hope, the inescapable wound of her origin, which had led her here, to this forgotten bungalow. If he was her father, still he wasn’t, for what kind of father would do what he had done? And yet even after everything, she wanted to know. The who and the why, how he had become the person sprawled before her, about the blood spreading over linoleum, which was her blood, too. What he thought when he first saw her mother, the color of the dress she was wearing when she smiled at him that long-ago day. Then everything got very quiet, and her lungs ceased their fluctuation, and she heard the clear, high, determined voice of a child saying: “But I don’t
want
to know.”

She braced herself and fired. The first thing she felt was how her palms burned. That part she had forgotten. Alexei was splayed on his back, arms like a cross, mouth ripped open, a smash of matter and bone at his temple where the fatal bullet had entered his skull.
It’s over
, she thought, aware that she could only afford to believe that one a few minutes longer.

FORTY

Los Angeles, August 1962

THE gun went off once more before she left—to break the lock on the suitcase in the bedroom closet—and then she dressed quickly in the black slacks and loose black sweater she had left in the bathroom earlier. There was nothing else in the house: The cupboards were bare; the closet held only three pairs of pants and three white dress shirts. The shopping bag Alexei had returned with—a carton of milk, a dozen eggs, a loaf of white bread, the afternoon edition—remained on the built-in hutch by the entry. She plucked the newspaper before knocking over the other contents as she left, thinking that would give the impression of a struggle, a story for the investigators to chew on. She stopped at a pay phone a half mile down Highland, to call the police and report that while walking her dog down to the beach she had heard shots near the bungalow’s address. Then she merged onto the Pacific Coast Highway, sequined with taillights in the darkness, and drove north trying not to think the word
kill
.

After passing through two more towns without any sign of a tail, she pulled into a liquor store parking lot. She tried Jack and Bobby from the pay phone, got the usual response, and in the backseat began to go through the contents of the suitcase: a leather-bound book full of notations she could scarcely begin to comprehend, the carefully organized and coded communications, the sheer quantity of cash, assorted personal documents. A sense of mounting panic came over her as the vastness of what they’d planned—were still probably planning—emerged. But the sight of her own false passport and birth certificate—using the names Sophie Mortenson, and Mrs. Ivan
Lancer, and an old photograph from her brunette days—gave her a brief breath of calm. What could Alexei’s possession of these documents mean except that he had not given up on her, that his sense of paternal obligation was real, that despite everything he wanted to give her another life? And then, realizing that even in death he was able to tug at her loyalty, melt her to his purposes, she had to shove open the car door and be sick on the already dirty asphalt.

It was while using Alexei’s newspaper to clean the vomit off the edge of her car that she noticed the small item about the attorney general’s trip to San Francisco that weekend. After that, she didn’t think much. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, started up the engine, and drove steadily, never more than five miles over the speed limit, to the Lawfords’, making a wild left turn across two lanes that elicited horn blasts from the oncoming cars.

She knew the man who opened her door—he’d worked parties there before—but even so he didn’t immediately recognize her, dressed down as she was. “Miss Monroe—are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said.
Yes
, even though every time she closed her eyes she saw her father’s mangled leg, his blank face. The body torn open and the spirit gone, the whole human mechanism revealed as so many fragile, unreliable parts. When the security man reached for the keys, she pushed down the lock and closed the door. “Leave it where it is, I won’t be long. Are Mr. and Mrs. Lawford here?”

“He is.” He glanced at the other attendants nervously—there were too many of them, she thought, for an ordinary night at the beach house. “Let me park your car, and have you announced.”

“No. No! There isn’t time. I won’t be long.”

“All right, but—”

He was still protesting when she hurried past the gate, through the interior courtyard and the rooms of the house, which was lightly populated in
the post-dinner hour with a few hangers-on. She found Peter outside, waving a lit cigarette close to his ruddy face, legs crossed dandy-like, his cocktail balanced on his lap so he could use both hands to punctuate the story he was loudly telling a handful of guests overdressed for a casual dinner party. Behind them the surface of the pool glowed.

“Peter—”

“Marilyn!” He leapt to his feet at the sight of her, but was not so surprised as to spill his cocktail. “Jesus Christ, are you all right? You look like hell, baby. Where are your shoes?”

“Uh … in the car, I think.”

“Is that blood on her foot?” a woman lounging on a nearby deck chair drunk-whispered to her companion. There were six or so like her, staring at Marilyn with salacious pity, an expression she was pretty well acquainted with by then.

“Fine, I’m fine. Is Pat here?”

“She’s on her way to Hyannis. But now listen, Marilyn—”

“Bobby’s in California, isn’t that right? Is he coming here, too, Peter?”

“I don’t know about that, baby. I think it’s a little family trip to San Francisco, with the children. You know, ride the cable cars, that sort of thing, probably no time to come visit us out at the beach …”

“I’ve got to talk to him, Peter. Can you get him on the line for me? You could, couldn’t you? It would be better to see him in person, but the phone would be a start, and—”

“Marilyn, you’ve got to stop this,” Peter interrupted her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and drawing her away from the gawking guests, out of the glare of the upstairs windows and toward the beach. “You’re acting like a madwoman, you know that, don’t you?”

“I’m not crazy, Peter, please, you’ve got to listen to me, this matters more than anything—”

“Didn’t Pat have a chat with you up in Tahoe? She was supposed to. You
have to pull yourself together, baby. I know you and Jack enjoyed each other, but that’s over. It’s gotta be. And whatever happened with Bobby—that’s over, too. There are already too many stories, and you know how once there’s a little scandal people love to fabricate on top of that. Of course you didn’t help yourself—that stunt you pulled at the Garden was practically pornographic.”

“Forget the Garden. That was a thousand years ago, okay? This isn’t about me and Jack. It’s for Jack’s safety. We’ve got to do something before they kill him. Okay?”

The muscles of Peter’s face pulled in strange directions—he seemed unsure whether to be amused or afraid. With some effort he removed her hands from his shirt collar—where they had, unbeknownst to her, assumed a furious grip—and began to lead her back toward the house. “You can’t say that kind of thing,” he told her with quiet intensity. “I’m going to send you home—someone is going to drive you—and tomorrow I’ll come around to check on you, all right?”

“No!” she shrieked, breaking his hold and darting backward. He turned, saw that she was tense and ready to run away from him, around the pool, if necessary. “You’re going to listen to me, Peter.”

“My god, Marilyn, what does that doc have you taking? We knew you were a little free with that stuff, but this is—I mean, Christ, I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Peter—” She would have said more, but the sound had by then become too loud to ignore, the whooshing of the blades violent against the sea air. She and Peter went quiet and drifted toward the glass wall that separated the Lawfords’ property from the public beach, watching the helicopter’s vertical descent, its lights illuminating the hilly sand below.

“Marilyn,” Peter implored her, grabbing her arm. “You can’t be here.”

She freed herself and ran through the gate at the edge of the pool deck, across the sand, which was damp with evening dew. Peter was behind her,
but he was too late. The big blades were still
thwacking
through the night, but underneath, through the darkness, she could make out a man jumping down onto the sand and striding in her direction. Hope made her heart light and fast, but she still smiled, even when his features became clear and she knew it was Bobby. As much as she longed for Jack, it was better that it was Bobby—she remembered his fierceness, and thought he would know what to do; and his kindness, that day in Palm Springs, and felt he’d be a good one for taking confession. Even at a distance his gaze was unrelenting.

“Bobby!” she called, throwing herself into his arms.

“Marilyn.” He held her for a moment, and with his arm around her shoulders, they began to walk toward the house. “I’m glad to see you,” he continued warmly. “I was hoping we could have a little talk this weekend.”

She could see Peter’s silhouette against the illuminated house, the guests behind him arrayed on the patio furniture, in poses alert to a brewing drama. “Listen, we don’t have much time,” she said, putting her face close to his, holding on to the lapel of his jacket. “Peter thinks I’m crazy, but I’m not. You don’t think that, do you? That I’m crazy?”

“Of course not. You’re just sensitive, and you’ve been hurt.”

“No. Bobby, Bobby, I’ve done something terrible. I didn’t know what I was doing—I should have—I—”

“It’s all right.” He was rubbing her back as they moved across the sand where the wrens had left their crisscrossing, birdbrained tracks. “It’s all right. There’s isn’t anything I can’t fix.”

“Good.” She squeezed her eyes shut and told herself
Go
. “Listen, Bobby, the thing is, I’ve been spying on Jack. For the Russians. I tried to stop, but they wouldn’t let me. And then I tried to tell him, but I couldn’t. And I’ve killed somebody—the man who asked me to spy—but—but—I think they’re still going to murder him—the president, I mean—and I have all these papers, and I don’t know what they mean except that …”