The Blonde (43 page)

“Do you know where he went?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Only way to get by in this mean old world.”

“I’ve got to find him—do you understand? It’s more important than I can possibly explain. Do you have any idea where he might have gone? Did he leave a forwarding address? Is there anyone who’d know? Anyone who visited him, knew him?”

The landlady put her hand into her lower back and observed Marilyn. After a silence she shook her head and went back toward the kitchenette, where the mop was stuck in its bucket. Over her shoulder she said: “Only person ever visited him was that Russian lady. Big black hair, long nails, enough perfume to drown a cat. Looked like a whore to me. I suppose she’ll be taking a pay cut now—maybe you’ll find her bawling her eyes out down on Tenth Avenue.”

“Well—thanks all the same.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The mop was in the woman’s hands again, and she didn’t glance up to acknowledge Marilyn’s parting.

THIRTY-NINE

South of Los Angeles Airport, August 1962

THE bungalow was on a street that sloped toward the beach, five blocks or so from the boardwalk, and the yards nearer the water were decorated with the pastel colors of surfboards and bathing suits left out to dry. She supposed it was a temporary neighborhood where people rented for the season. That it was the kind of street where nobody took particular notice of strangers. For a few days she drove by the place, saw the lights on and the car in the driveway, and gleaned that he never went out except for a walk in the evening. She had been hunting Alexei for two months, and in that time she’d grown surer of her hunch: He would never hurt her.

On Friday, when he returned from the daily walk, the strained six o’clock light was filtered through blinds, painting gray and yellow bars on the bedroom floor. By then she had entered the house, by forcing open a bathroom window, and prepared herself for him. She lay on the bed—or rather, the mattress on top of the box spring on the bedroom floor—partially covered by a sheet, her face mostly denuded, just a little lipstick and mascara, her hair pushed back from her forehead and gone wavy after days in which she had neglected the rituals of physical appearance.

She listened as he closed the front door, took three steps inside. Paused. He seemed to quickly realize he was not alone. The slow crinkling of the paper bag he was carrying, as he placed it down, suggested a sudden instinct for caution. The glasses of water she had positioned, on either side of the bed, were still there—a glance reassured her of their presence. To let him
know she knew he was listening, she lit a cigarette and let its smoke waft through the rooms.

She almost couldn’t believe Alexei was there, in the next room, after searching for so long with a doggedness that had left no time for yearning. No dwelling on Jack, what could have been or might yet be. The White House switchboard was under strict orders not to take her calls (as a sweet operator explained to her one night, before identifying herself as a fan). Bobby had stonewalled her, and Peter and Pat had remained friendly in a distant way, inviting her over less, handling her in such a manner that she knew one false move and she’d be dropped. So, Marilyn had kept moving.

She’d taken to carrying a large change purse and placing her calls from pay phones, never using the same one twice. The studio had fired her after a week’s absence (she claimed exhaustion, but nobody believed that one anymore), and she’d taken advantage of the ensuing controversy by giving as many interviews, posing for as many photographers, as possible, figuring that the Russians wouldn’t dare have her killed in front of a member of the press. Plus, the wild look in her eyes seemed to turn the photographers on. She’d told Alan that Douglass Walls had made a pass (“In my own
home
!”)—that once rejected, he had become violent—and insisted he be fired. Alan didn’t believe her, but he did as instructed. After that she’d tried to be in the orbit of either Joe or Frankie, who always had a small army of toughs. Each could smell the other’s recent presence, and disliked it, but they were of that old school of masculinity, and couldn’t resist a damsel, especially when she meant a competition.

It was through Frankie that she eventually discovered Alexei’s whereabouts.

In the final week of July, she’d flown to Tahoe in Frankie’s private plane, mostly because he mentioned that Pat and Peter would be staying at the Cal-Neva that weekend as well. But Pat told her flatly to stop asking if any of her
brothers would be visiting California soon (“Forget them, darling, that’s just what they do—Jack passes his girls down to Bobby, and Bobby to Teddy, so unless you want to go to work on
him
, you had better move on”).
So
, she thought,
the rumor is I’ve been with Bobby, too
.

Marilyn had been trying to kill time without letting down her guard when she spotted Sam Giancana entering the ballroom. He’d been flanked by a large entourage that included a pale, voluptuous woman whose black hair was wound in an elaborate pile on top of her head, and who possessed a stare of blank, continental indifference. There was something gorgeous and secretive about her, and with a flash of intuition, Marilyn saw what had happened—that Alexei, when recruiting a source who was most malleable when she was loved, had become attached. Attached enough that he was furious when Marilyn guessed her real profession. But, as she was to discover over the course of a long and lurid evening, Alexei’s source in the Giancana outfit was in fact his number one Russian hooker—not, as she had angrily declared in Payne Whitney, his third favorite.

The hooker’s name was Vera, and Marilyn had cornered her in the ladies’ lounge, where they quickly bonded over their portable medicine chests and the technical difficulties of fellating Frank Sinatra. By the time they returned to the party, arm in arm and plenty looped, Marilyn had the situation pretty well figured: Giancana’s main mistress—a singer whose fame must have seemed sparkling enough when the actress who played Lorelei Lee on the big screen wasn’t hanging around—was unwilling to perform the kind of tricks a professional would, a fact which guaranteed the coexistence of these two women while cooling their mutual resentment not at all.

“He used to love me, before
she
came around,” Vera confessed, in her slurred, muddy accent, when Giancana and Phyllis (the official girlfriend) were on the dance floor. “Now he only brings me out when he thinks there might be an orgy.”

That she was fast friends with an even bigger star made Vera bold, and
then chummy, and then intoxicated, and by the time Marilyn dropped that she knew Alexei—musing first that
she
used to have a Russian friend, and explaining, once it seemed safe, that she had worked for him, that they had cut ties when it seemed the FBI might be on to them, but that she had some big information now and needed to get in touch—she was sure Vera would help her any way she could. The idea that she and Marilyn Monroe had been secretly connected all this time seemed to fortify her, imbue her with fresh importance. She was certainly willing to whisper the address of the bungalow, south of the Los Angeles airport, where Alexei had told Vera he could find her, if she were in trouble.

Marilyn closed her eyes, took a breath, listened to him crossing the bungalow’s main room, approaching her. Everything came down to this.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered, opening her eyes. There he was, filling the doorframe, his features in high relief with the end-of-day shadows. He was dressed to blend with the summer population, in blue jeans and a white T-shirt and a bomber jacket, but this only made him appear old. The translucent blue eyes watched her and revealed nothing as she took a last drag of the cigarette and put it into a tea saucer on the floor. “Isn’t that the way? Soon as you start looking out for a man, he’s nowhere to be found.”

He glanced at the water on the far side of the mattress from her. “Poison?”

She gave no sign of surprise at this turn, that he had so easily read her plan. It was only half her plan—the backup, in case her hunch was wrong. Instead she let her mouth quiver open, her eyes become wide and vulnerable. “Don’t you like talking to me anymore? Can’t we talk a little?”

“You thought you would seduce me, and afterward, when I was spent and thirsty, I wouldn’t think before I drank. That I’d just reach out, and take the nearest glass.”

Marilyn pushed her head into the wall, so that her back arched slightly and the shape of her breasts showed through the sheet. “There must be something you want? Something I can do to make things right between us.”
Her knees swayed together and apart, and she let her hand slide down the inner slope of her thigh. She stretched her naked toes, held his gaze. “Let me repay my debt. I’ll show you what a good girl I can be. All this time we’ve spent together—you must have thought about it. Imagined how it would be. Tell me what it is. I’ll give you everything, anything you want. Only, let me try it my way—you don’t have to kill Jack, I can convince him of anything you say. He loves me, you know. He said he wants to marry me.”

“Oh, N.J.” Alexei’s head swung disappointedly, and he could not meet her eye. He focused on the ground as he slipped his hand under his jacket. The gesture made her heart tick faster—but after that, she knew where to find his weapon.

“You’re going to kill me?” Her voice broke over the question. She didn’t believe he would—his lack of desire told her he couldn’t—but saying the word let the fear in. Her breasts rose and fell with her frightened breathing, and for several seconds his hand remained invisible, inside the jacket, somewhat below his heart. “I didn’t think you had it in you. After you came to my house. When you had your chance, but didn’t take it. I thought you’d never. Not after all the time we spent together. Not before we—”

“Can you even imagine a purposeful life?” He spit the words, but still didn’t lift his gaze off the floor. “Do you know the training I’ve had, how long I’ve been at this game? And you, you
stupid
girl—you thought you could climb in the bathroom window and put an end to me, just like that. After all I taught you—and you didn’t even remember to close the window behind you. Anybody could see it from the street.”

Her face went white, and her heart beat a furious tattoo. “You really gonna snuff me out, then?”

The room had become murky with sundown, but this only made the whites of his eyes, not directed at her, that much brighter.

“You can’t, can you?” she went on. “I knew you wouldn’t. I know the reason why.” The tremble was still in her voice, but she was growing sure. She
saw it all, the whole conspiracy—not what they had planned for the country, but what they had planned for her. He had known, before he ever spoke to her, the way her heart softened when someone called her
my dear
. The odd, far-away tenderness she held for the child Norma Jeane, whom she must once have been. How she reacted when someone said Norma Jeane’s name, seemed to care for the girl. She was almost sure now, and really he’d been telling her so all along, lodging the idea in her subconscious from the beginning. He knew how to pronounce those syllables better than anyone who had ever lived. “It’s the same reason you don’t want to fuck me. You’re my father. Aren’t you? That man, in the hospital, he was just an actor. An image, to give me hope. This whole time, it was you who was my real daddy.”

He did not reply, but his gaze migrated slowly to meet hers. The grip he had on whatever was inside his jacket relaxed. She could see the vein in his neck, his blood pulsating.

“It’s true, huh? That’s why I’m not like the others. Why you can’t kill me as they told you to. Or I guess maybe as you’d like to. That would be too cruel, even for you. I mean, to kill your own daughter.”

“Yes, my dear.” A sigh worked down his torso, distending a belly she hadn’t known he had. He released the grip on the hidden gun so his hands could clasp together as though in prayer. After a moment, he spread them over his face. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time. But I ought to have known you wouldn’t need me to figure it out.”

Tears surged unbidden to the rims of her eyelids, and she did not have to remind herself to make her voice girlish and scrubbed of guile. “You know how long I’ve waited? For—this?”

“Yes.” His head tipped compassionately, and he opened his arms, beckoning her.

With an arm across her chest to hold the sheet in place, she stood unsteadily. She kept the sheet up, but didn’t try to hide her nakedness, which she hoped would make him uncomfortable, make her seem delicate
and hapless. “Do you know how hard it’s been?” she said as she approached. “How lonely and lost I’ve always felt deep down?”

“Yes,” he said. He was watching her with a sympathetic light in his eyes, and when she reached him she found there was some part of her that wanted an embrace, and that made it easy to throw her arms around his middle, rest her cheek against his chest. One of his hands rested on the small of her back; the other stroked the crown of her head, and she turned her face to gaze up at him, just as she’d always imagined she someday would. He smiled at her, sadly, with half his mouth, and she smiled back.

“I had it all planned, just what I’d say when I finally met him. You.”

“What was it?”

“I’d say …” She let her eyelids sink a little, and sighed as her fingers tiptoed down his chest,
da da da da
. “I’d say …” Without changing her soft, contented expression, she thrust her hand into his jacket, grabbed the gun, cocked it, aimed for his knee. Pulled the trigger.

There are some things that happen in life, no matter how young, which the body does not forget.