The Blonde (31 page)

Walls’s mouth was dry. “Kennedy.”

“Right—of course, he was only the second princeling in line for the throne then. Most spies are idealists, rogues, showmen, or some mixture of all three, their schemes far more outrageous than the stuff you find in novels. The outrageousness of an operation, in my experience, has nothing whatsoever to do with its success or failure.”

Both Wallses glanced up when a group of men fresh from a game came into the restaurant and began a flirtatious exchange with the waitress about which of the many unoccupied tables was the best. The son was thinking how little he knew about his father, and was trying to figure the best way to begin asking him where his information really came from; but the father drained his beer and stood to leave.

“I should be getting back,” he said, turning toward the waitress and motioning that he was ready to pay.

Get back where?
Walls thought. But he said only, “This one’s on me.”

Wes Walls smiled and clapped his son on the back as they made their way to the parking lot. “Thanks, D.W. We’ll do it again soon.”

The sun was at its highest point, and they stood awkwardly for a moment on the asphalt, squinting. “It was good to see you, Dad.”

“You, too, D.W.”

Walls slung his stepfather’s clubs into the trunk, and turned to shake his father’s hand. They shook, smiled at each other, and then the older man began to amble back to his own car, his limp slowing him only slightly. The sky was an unyielding blue, the parkland spread around them, birds sang to their fledglings. At that moment it was hard to believe that somewhere out there in the vast unknown people were listening in while other people made adulterous love or agitated for social upheaval. “Thanks, Dad,” he called as he put the key in the ignition.

His father paused and glanced back at him. “Of course, son. Oh, and D.W.?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t be embarrassed to use your mother’s connections.” His mouth twitched mischievously, and he shrugged and opened his palms as though to say,
who can blame me for being just as I am?
“I never was.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

New York, April 1961

MARILYN sprawled across the couch in the Copacabana dressing room, the spaghetti straps of her black dress doing their best to contain her décolletage. She hadn’t bothered with a bra that evening, and she had a few drinks in her already, and she was feeling loose. Frank, seated at the dressing table mirror, his pockmarked skin forgiven by that row of sweet, soft bulbs, was being attended to by five or so hair and makeup people. He himself was wielding the comb, so fiercely that she feared for the rug he wore. No one was paying much attention to her, happily, and she surreptitiously refilled her champagne flute with the champagne-colored combination of bourbon and soda water. Tonight was a night to be well oiled.

An assistant rapped on the door and poked his head in. “Five minutes,” he said.

“Okay, sweetheart.” Frank met her eyes in the mirror. “Get out there where people can see you.”

A daffy, indistinct smile wavered on her lips as she draped her long white fur around her shoulders, plucked her champagne flute from the glass table, and brushed a few strands of peroxided plumage out of her eyes. “Play ‘Luck Be a Lady,’ for me, will you?” she asked as she moved to the door.

“You got it, baby,” he said, twirling in the chair to admire her and letting his hand land with a smack on her black-silk-encased ass.

She waggled her glass at him, and allowed his valet, George, to take her arm and guide her through the wallpapered corridors and into the main room of the nightclub. The table Frank had reserved for her was just under
the lip of the stage—he’d planned that, so that people would see her, right in the middle of his swinging tableau, and wonder whether she slept in his bed. She knew she should oblige, especially since she had gone along with Alan Jacobs’s proposal while thus far managing not to put out. She had waited until Joe returned to San Francisco, but he must know by now with whom she was being seen around town, a lousy reality that she tried not to dwell on. These days she was only trying to survive, anyway—trying to get close enough to Jack again that Alexei wouldn’t lock her up—so who cared what anybody thought of her.

She knew George had been instructed to deposit her at the front and center table, but when she saw the crowd she tugged at his arm and gave him a shy, fearful face. This wasn’t difficult—she was afraid all the time, and she knew she was being watched by Alexei’s people, and so appeared always tentative, out of it, lost. She hoped that Alexei noticed that she was clearing a path back to the president, too, and that this would buy her time to figure out her next move. That he wouldn’t hurt her, or anybody else, as long as she was hanging around Jack’s people. “George,” she whispered, “sit me over there with the Lawfords, would you? I can’t stand being alone tonight.”

He hesitated a while, but she clung to his arm so desperately that he had no choice. “You better make him happy later, so he forgets to fire me.” He gave in, and led her to a less conspicuous table with a white tablecloth and a small lamp at its center. As she followed along, Marilyn dangled her fingertips at people she didn’t know, and smiled her red smile, giving them what Frank wanted, which was the illusion that a Sinatra concert meant entrée into a special realm of nicotine and liquor and midnight urges, where goddesses might show up unannounced.

“Mrs. Lawford—” George began.

The woman with the russet hair glanced up at the valet, revealing a face more handsome than pretty. At the party she had hosted—for her brother, after he won the nomination last summer—she had seemed only one of
many sisters, but Marilyn had since singled her out as a likely friend, the best way back into his life. Just looking at her conjured Jack: the arrangement of her features, the aristocratic mouth and the short, unobstructed forehead, the easy way she had of hanging expensive clothes on a slim frame. Like Marilyn, Pat wore a black cocktail dress, although hers involved a great deal more fabric in the skirt and at the neckline. “George, must we continue with this rigmarole? I’ve told you a thousand times. Call me Pat, darling.”

“Pat, may I introduce you to Miss Marilyn Monroe? She’s Frank’s special guest this evening, and he was hoping you two would look after her.”

“Of course, George.” A scarlet, thin-lipped smile came and went from Pat’s face, seemingly without the effort of any other facial muscle, and then she shifted her attention. “What a pleasure to meet you! I can’t tell you how excited Peter and I are to see
The Misfits
. Please, won’t you join us?”

“Thank you,” Marilyn replied tentatively, lowering herself into the chair that George held out for her. On Pat’s other side sat Peter, his dark brows knit together, mouthing to himself, an anxious concentration freezing up his features, which was an expression Marilyn knew well. “Hello there, Peter,” she called, and he glanced over, as though surprised, and quickly grabbed her hand to kiss her knuckles.

“Stage fright.” Pat rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, he’ll be better company after he does his bit.”

“Oh, well …” A smile flickered at one corner of Marilyn’s mouth, and she exhaled a melancholy breath. “
Salud
, I guess.” She raised her champagne flute, and Pat met it with her old-fashioned, and they both drank. “Actually, you’ve hosted me before,” she went on, as though just remembering. “I should probably thank you for that, too. Last summer, out in Santa Monica, during the convention. What a party that was.”

“Oh, yes.” Pat hooked the elbow of her slender, freckled arm over the backrest of her chair, twisting to face the newcomer more fully. “I remember seeing you across the room. I would have loved to talk to you, but that was
quite a week for my family, as you can imagine. I was barely home myself—Mother and Father had a place in Beverly Hills, and of course we had rooms downtown, too. The party went on at the beach pretty much all week, and I confess I had to go elsewhere just to get some rest. Quite a few people drank too much to get home and had to stay the night, and the next night, too. But that’s why we keep that house, you know. Peter and I, we love company.”

“It’s a beautiful house,” Marilyn whispered, as though a house were a wonder not quite to be believed.

“Thanks, darling. You should see the one my family keeps in Palm Beach. Have you ever been to Palm Beach?”

Marilyn shook her head.

“You must come sometime.” If Marilyn had believed this, then she might have taken it as a sign that her troubles would soon be over, but the way Pat shrugged and glanced away, removing a cigarette from an ivory case and fixing it into a silver cigarette holder, made her think that this was just the sort of empty invitation she issued to let people know that she liked them. It made sense that she alone amongst her siblings had married into Hollywood. Her regal posture, the way she inhabited her surroundings, her unconcealed indifference to the nervous husband beside her—now being called onto stage—suggested a proclivity for contentment.

A smattering of applause traveled across the nightclub, and then the lights dimmed, and everyone hushed while the cone of the spotlight illuminated Peter’s charming, rueful face. “Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the Copacabana. I am here to introduce a man who needs no introduction. And yet I will say a few words …”

Marilyn focused her attention stageward, as she assumed Pat would until her husband stepped down. But Pat, uninterested in the mild palaver Peter was warming up the crowd with, inclined her head toward Marilyn and said, “I’m so awfully glad you sat with us. You know these boys can be such a bore when they get together; it’s nice to have another girl along for the ride.”

Marilyn beamed and snuggled against her fur. “Well, it’s nice for me, too.”

“Are you and Frank the new item?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, we’re more just like—”

“I don’t care what goes on behind closed doors, darling, I really don’t. I’m sure Frankie is a terrible pain. But stick around, would you? We’d have
such
fun.”

“Thanks.” Finally Marilyn was beginning to relax, and when the waiter came by she didn’t bother explaining what was in her glass, and whispered, “Just a little champagne, if you have it, please.”

The room had meanwhile applauded as Frank swaggered to center stage, and he and Peter began laughing, shifting on their feet, lightly snapping their fingers, ribbing each other in a way that she supposed was meant to be good-natured. After a while Peter retreated to a stool in the shadow, and Frank advanced toward the microphone with his boxer’s intensity. For a moment he gazed steadily into the far back reaches of the club, and then he cleared his throat and said, “This first number is for a good friend of mine who just so happens to be gracing us with her presence tonight, Miss Marilyn Monroe …”

A drumroll sounded as he gestured toward the empty table in the front row, and the spotlight drifted in the direction he’d indicated. His upper lip tensed when the spotlight showed only an empty seat. Marilyn, swallowing her dismay, put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Frankie!” she stage-whispered. “Over here!”

The spotlight found her, and she stood and lifted her white whip of an arm so the audience could see her figure, which inspired much clapping and cat-calling. Once she sat down, and the attention of the room was focused once again on Frank, he chuckled as though her unpredictability hadn’t bothered him. “That dame’s never where she says she’ll be, but who can blame a guy for following her around. Am I right?”

The room noisily agreed, and then the string section started up, and
Frank leaned into his microphone, stretching out the syllables of the half-sung, half-shouted opening line of “Luck Be a Lady.”

The music washed over Marilyn, who was glad that neither Sinatra nor anybody else was looking at her any longer, and she sat back and happily accepted the champagne that the waiter brought. There was another old-fashioned for Pat, too, and this time it was the Kennedy sister who offered her glass to cheers. Then she draped an arm over Marilyn’s shoulders, and Marilyn realized she was shaking with silent laughter. “That was to die for,” she whispered, between giggles. “Did you see the look on Frankie’s face?”

“He’s gonna be mad later,” Marilyn whispered back.

“Who cares? Stick with me, darling, he won’t show his temper when I’m around. He’s too proud of being the president’s friend to be a bastard in front of anybody who’s got Jack’s private line.”

Up on stage, the rhythm had picked up, and Frank’s singing had grown full and flowing. He blew on a fistful of imaginary dice, and tossed them into the audience—it was one of those theatrical moves from the big band days. But she couldn’t really laugh at him, only reflect that he was lucky to have that voice.

He was singing about luck as though luck were a woman, and Pat was still giggling, although Marilyn wasn’t sure if it was because Frank’s feathers had been ruffled, or because she was pondering what the lyric about some other guy’s dice really meant, and Marilyn was glad to be out in the world, and beginning to think she might have some luck left, too.

“When are you coming back to the Coast?” Pat had eased away slightly, but her arm rested protectively on the back of Marilyn’s chair. “Say it’ll be soon. I think you and I are going to be fast friends.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Santa Monica, May 1961

“WHAT are you doing out here all by yourself?”

“Oh, I …” Marilyn glanced up from her lounge chair and watched Pat descend from the brightness of the house to the unlit place on the patio where she had been listening to the Pacific crash up against the rim of the continent. There were several truthful answers to this question, none of which she found advantageous to share. She was tired, was the simplest—in the months during which her friendship with Pat had blossomed, she had been happy to fulfill the unspoken expectation that she brighten up the dinner parties the Lawfords hosted, doing a sweet little drunken dance, or spilling some movie gossip, or murmuring a naughty bon mot so that their guests would have an anecdote to take home about what Marilyn Monroe was
really
like. Of course she had filled the same function before, but always with a larger goal in mind, and she had been performing in this capacity for a few months now without even a glimpse of the thing she was really after: Jack.