Fade to Black (27 page)

Summoning his strength, Eric rose to his feet and pulled Marilyn across the roof to the stairway. Ignoring her protests, he pushed her into the enclosure and threw the bolt to lock her inside. She pounded on the door, but he ignored her.

He backed away, delirious.

“This is my story!” he shouted to the world, clutching at his stomach. “This is . . . Arthur . . . Cody . . . Jarrett! I’m late . . . I can’t keep them waiting . . . Nobody waits for me . . .”

A SWAT officer quietly made his way up the inside staircase, his eyes turned upwards, his rifle clutched in position at his side for a quick shot. The steps wound upward in an interweaving mesh of metallic grilling. He could soon make out the top of the staircase and the fragmented outline through the steel webwork.

Slowing his ascent and tightening his grip over the trigger, the sharpshooter closed in on the form. When he reached the last flight of steps and saw Marilyn sprawled out on the grating of the platform, he still kept his rifle trained on her.

“Okay,” he called out, “Stand up, slowly.”

Marilyn didn’t move. The officer came up to her and nudged at her with his hand. When there was still no response, he set aside the rifle and reached to her wrist for a pulse. There was one, but it wasn’t normal. He noticed her hand was clasped shut, and he gently pried apart her fingers to find the pills.

“Oh, Christ, lady,” he muttered as he lifted her up in his arms, “How many of those did you take?”

She was still unconscious, dead weight for him to carry. He paused long enough to confirm his deduction that the door leading to the roof and Eric was locked, then took up his rifle again and carried Marilyn carefully but swiftly down the steps.

“Where the hell is Binford now?” Gallagher wondered aloud, staring at the roof.

Behind him, the crowd was growing larger. Curiosity seekers in the back pushed forward, creating a wave that eventually crashed against the row of police officers barricading the courtyard.

A paramedic van, its siren going and its roof light shining out in bluish circles, slowly made its way through the crowd to Anne’s police cruiser. A pair of attendants rushed out to Moriarty, who was leaning against Anne for support. The attendants looked at him. He waved them away.

“Wait!” Moriarty shouted, spotting the sharpshooter coming out of the theatre with Marilyn.

The paramedics muscled through the crowd with a stretcher while police officers cleared a passageway to the van. The sharpshooter helped the paramedics place Marilyn into the stretcher as Moriarty hobbled up to them, using Anne as a crutch.

Moriarty asked, “What happened to her?”

“I found these in her hand,” the officer said, handing one of the paramedics the pills.

The paramedic made a face when he saw the pills. After inspecting Marilyn, he took one end of the stretcher and signalled for his partner to take the other.

“We’re going to have to work fast,” he muttered, “or she’s going to end up the same way the other Marilyn did.”

As they whisked her off into the ambulance, Anne assured Moriarty, “She’ll be okay, Jerry. I’ve handled enough overdoses on patrol. She can’t have been unconscious for all that long, and that’s when they’re most apt to be in trouble. Look, I’m taking you to the van so they can look at that—”

She was interrupted by a renewed outburst from the crowd around them. Hands were pointing up at the theatre roof again.

Eric appeared, having climbed up to the lip of the sloping Oriental roof over the archway, where he tottered precariously. He had his gun.

“Eric!” Moriarty shouted upward again, “there’s still time!”

Gallagher turned to the SWAT sharpshooter beside him.

“If he points that weapon this way, hit him. You understand? Do you hear me? If he points that thing, hit him!”

“Gallagher—” Moriarty protested.

“Shut up!” Gallagher told him.

Eric was reveling in his memory of Cody Jarrett’s death at the climax of
White Heat.
Trapped atop a refinery tower, Cody had stood off a fusillade of gunfire, shooting back until he finally lunged forward and fired point blank into a gas main, triggering his own holocaustal death.

This was Eric’s greatest performance. As good as Cagney, he thought. They had to see that down there. Look at them all. So small. So small.

He took a bow, as if he were at curtain call, receiving a standing ovation.

The fanfare came from the barrels of half a dozen rifles. The shots ripped into him, knocking him back with sheer force, most of them direct hits.

He was dying. He could feel the life draining from his many wounds.

“Stinkin’ cops,” he sputtered, spitting blood as he rose to his knees. “They didn’t give me a chance.”

Weakened, he still managed to come to his feet and stumbled toward the closest offshoot at the base of the roof, curving upward and outward like the petal of a leaf, unfolding with new life.

“I’m ready now, Ma . . . I’m Cody Jarrett . . .”

He slipped, falling back, almost down over the edge of the roof. He caught himself, worked his way back to the petal.

“I’m the Duke . . . The Man with a Thousand Faces . . .”

His voice was a pained wheezing, an excruciating effort to match the slow climb up the rungs bracing the offshoot.

“. . . The Prince of Darkness . . . I’m the Thin Man . . . Little Caesar . . . The Man Who Knew Too Much . . .”

He finally reached the edge of the offshoot, teetering in his final moment of glory.

“I finally made it, Ma!”

A final volley of rifle fire plowed into him.

“Top o’ the world, Ma! . . .”

CHAPTER •
33

It was early dawn. The rising sun threw a long shadow across the courtyard.

A worker, tall, lean, in his early thirties, screwed one end of a hose into a faucet spigot near the enclosed pagoda where a massive boulder was being sculpted by stages into a bust of John Wayne.

The worker turned on the water as high as the pressure would allow and untangled the hose as he pulled it out into the courtyard. There was a nozzle attached to the end he was holding, and he adjusted the spray to a narrow jet, turning it toward the ground.

There was the chalk outline of a body over the two squares from
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
In the square containing Marilyn Monroe’s hand and heel marks, there was a pool of dried blood near the outline of the head.

The worker held the spray on the bloodspot for several seconds. The chalk and most of the blood washed away, but there remained a faint discoloring in Marilyn’s square.

Another worker, older, stocky, pushed a broom on the other side of the courtyard.

“Hey, Orlando,” the younger worker cried out to him. “It didn’t all come off. You think we should paint it over or something?”

Orlando looked up and shook his head.

“Ain’t necessary. Stain’ll go away once enough people walk over it. They always do.”