The Blonde (46 page)
As soon as the helicopter departed he sprinted toward the house, but they had already gone inside. A handful of people in evening wear drank cocktails on the far side of the swimming pool, talking animatedly and oblivious to the man who had rushed to the edge of the property and continued lurking in the shadows. He distinctly heard the name Marilyn said by one of them, but over the next half hour she did not emerge, and he saw no sign of her in the upstairs windows or balconies. Growing anxious, he had driven up and down the highway watching the Lawfords’ for some sign of her, and had then camped at the corner of Fifth Helena for a long stretch. But her house remained dark all the while. Morning was lightening the sky, and he felt melancholy, and confessed to himself that this was the end of his solitary road.
Toll had not been pleased by the predawn call, but as the hours accumulated, as he took in the evidence that Walls laid before him, as he pored over the transcripts and began to see the logic, his esteem for his subordinate seemed to grow even as he became increasingly alarmed by the gravity of the situation. He made a few telephone calls, assured himself that the president was in fact in Massachusetts and not at the Lawfords’, and told Walls to try Marilyn at home. Walls was shocked when Marilyn answered her own
phone, and he could think of nothing to do but hang up as soon as he recognized her voice. After that, Toll rubbed his eyes tiredly and told Walls to go home.
“We’ll decide what to do tomorrow. You’re exhausted, and I need you in fighting form so we play this right. Go get your beauty rest, okay?” Walls must have appeared reluctant, because his boss rose to walk him to his car, at which point he administered a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “Great work, kid. And don’t worry. We’re gonna nail this bitch.”
But he couldn’t rest. He could only imagine things he might have missed, scenarios he hadn’t yet considered. And on Sunday morning, having lain wide-eyed in the darkness counting twenty-two, and twenty-three, and twenty-four hours since he’d convinced Toll of Marilyn’s secret identity, he found himself fully dressed in a black suit of Italian wool that would be stifling once the sun climbed high, driving past the gated palaces of Beverly Hills as though without a fixed destination, but all the while moving toward her.
In this he was not alone.
When he arrived her cul-de-sac was already jammed with vehicles, and a helicopter raged overhead. Walls, possessed by the notion that Toll had staged a raid already and cut him out of it, parked with his wheels on the curb, a few blocks up Carmelina, and jogged heedlessly into the fray. But it was a different boss he encountered at her gate.
“Douglass.” For a moment Walls thought Alan would act surprised, but he seemed unable to summon the energy. His face was ashen, and his shirt was buttoned wrong so that its hem, which he had not succeeded in tucking under his belt, hung unevenly. “How did you—?” And then he answered several unspoken questions in rapid succession. “Oh, never mind. What does it matter now. I’m glad you’re here.”
Walls would have asked him what was happening if he’d had a single wit about him. Instead they started walking over the brick patio toward the
house, where a pair of police officers stood at the door. “Who are those people?” he managed eventually.
“Press, mostly. I don’t know how they found out—they got here just as I did. Maybe they heard it over the police radio, or maybe the operator who took Ralph’s call couldn’t resist making an anonymous tip.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing, yet.”
What is there to tell?
he wanted to ask. But there wasn’t any need, because the police officers were standing aside to make way for the gurney pushed by a man wearing a checked sport coat and dark glasses who might have been of Japanese descent. A step behind him was a man with deep-set eyes and close-cropped, graying hair, in a tweed jacket. Walls could imagine him speaking in the steady, sober voice he knew as Dr. Ralph Greenson. As the procession moved into the sunlight, toward the hearse parked just inside the gate, Greenson reached out protectively, resting his hand on the white cloth that covered the body. In his face, Walls had a glimpse of what real sorrow looks like. Leather straps crossed the cloth, fastening her in place, and Walls found that he had involuntarily put his palm over his mouth as they shoved the whole contraption into the back of the vehicle.
The coroner’s van drove slowly through the mob and away. For a while he and Alan stood together in silence.
“How did—”
“We won’t know for sure until the coroner’s report comes back.” Alan sighed, lifted his gaze to the sky. “I hope to god it was an accident, but it smells an awful lot like suicide.”
Walls, too, looked at the sky. He felt tricked. Three years of his life had been devoted to following Marilyn, listening to her weird little voice telling tall tales, watching her wallow and wiggle and lie. He had thought about her more than he’d ever thought about anybody. He still wanted to punish her for what she had thought she’d get away with. This was entirely too sudden
an end—but maybe death was always like that. He had apparently held the vague notion that in a moment like this one saw something—a cloud unfurling, branches bending, a flash downpour—while the spirit freed itself. But the setting did not accommodate. Besides the crowd of photographers jostling for position on the street, all appeared perfectly ordinary. “Was there a note?” he wondered out loud.
If Alan replied Walls didn’t hear it. He’d spotted Toll striding toward them, his brimmed felt hat tipped over his face and his trench coat flapping around his legs. He was flanked by five similarly dressed men, their shoulders broad under their black suits. Walls knew these men—he had trained with them, not so long ago—and he briefly remembered what he’d thought it would mean to be an agent of the Bureau. A rigorous and exciting life; inclusion in an elite pack. But as he watched the cavalcade approach, he felt apart.
“Agent Walls, who is this?” Toll demanded.
“Alan Jacobs, Marilyn’s flack.”
“
Agent
Walls?” Alan’s mouth trembled and his eyes grew large, as though he might cry. Instead he slapped Walls across the face.
“Get him out of here.” Toll was waving his badge in Alan’s general direction, and Walls, hoping it didn’t show how much the slap hurt, reached for his former boss’s elbow to lead him away. “Not him, you.”
“Me, sir?”
Toll didn’t meet his gaze, he just tipped the hat lower. “We have an investigation to see to, and someone pretty important needs to talk to you. Agent Amberson will escort you. Now, Mr. Jacobs, let’s not get in each other’s way, what do you say …”
There was more to their conversation, but Walls couldn’t hear, as Amberson was more or less pushing him through the gate. Walls looked over his shoulder, and saw how Toll’s head bent toward Alan’s in discussion as they strolled up the patio and disappeared into the house. The reporters and photographers assembled in the cul-de-sac called out to the two agents
in their black suits for information, but Walls could only take a final glance at a crime scene he, too, would have done anything to understand.
The limousine was idling somewhat beyond his own poorly parked vehicle. Amberson pointed it out, and then retreated in the direction of Marilyn’s house, leaving Walls alone. One of the rear passenger doors was pushed open from inside, so he climbed into the backseat and found himself opposite the attorney general of the United States. He wore a tailored navy suit, but his hair flopped over his forehead.
“Hello, Douglass. I’m Robert Kennedy.”
“I know who you are,” Walls replied as the limo began to move.
“We’re all pretty impressed with you.”
“We?”
“SAC Toll and I.”
“So you know? That she was a—”
“Yes, I know what she was. Toll did the right thing. He called his boss, and his boss called me, and by chance I was in the area and able to come down and express my gratitude to you personally. My gratitude, and that of my entire family.”
“Sir, I should be back there.”
“Yes. You’re right, of course. And I want you to know I respect that—your tenacity in this case.”
“Thank you,” Walls replied with more diffidence than he had intended. He cleared his throat, deepened his voice. “But I’ve got to go back and search the property. I know more than anybody about their operation and what they planned. If the Russians disposed of her, they surely made it look like an accident, or suicide, but I could—”
“It’s not going to be that kind of investigation.”
“What? But she—”
“She’s dead, poor girl. She got herself mixed up with some bad people. But I did always like her personally.”
“ ‘Poor girl’?” Walls hoped he didn’t look as wretched and incredulous as he felt. Perhaps at birth, but the woman he knew was sly, manipulative, capable of unspeakable betrayals—anything but a poor girl.
“Listen, she’s dead. That’s what matters. She can’t do any harm now.”
“But what about the Gent? He’s still out there—”
“There was a homicide Friday night in a rented bungalow in a beach community south of the airport. A man who fits your description of her handler. They must have known you were on to them, that it was a matter of time, maybe they even knew you went to Agent Toll—someone in KGB decided to terminate the operation. Obviously they made the decision to eliminate the entire cell.”
“Well.” Walls exhaled in frustration and glanced at the window. “With all due respect, I don’t know if that’s obvious, sir. I’d like to make damn sure.”
The attorney general leaned in, forcing Walls to return his gaze. The muscles around his blue eyes constricted, and Walls couldn’t help but wonder how someone so young-looking could come across so grave. They had moved through similar rooms, but life had handled them differently. “Agent Walls, I’m going to be straight with you, all right?”
“All right.”
“The president of the United States was having an affair—we don’t want that generally known, but it’s nothing new, and our boys in the press rise above that sort of tawdry reporting. That he was having an affair with a Soviet spy is another matter entirely. I don’t think I really need to explain to you how deeply we need to bury this. Right now four people know—Toll, the Director, you, and me. And we’re the only people who are ever going to know.”
“But what about the agents Toll has combing the place?”
“They were told enough that they won’t guess at more. They know that she was a girl with some personal problems—everybody knows that—and that she had a thing with the president—which plenty of people already
suspect. Toll told them she kept a diary of things she liked to talk about with Jack—on sensitive topics, about his opinions and policies and so forth—and that we have to clean her place out, make sure there isn’t anything incriminating she’s left behind. Anything that might pose a threat to national security.”
“Mr. Attorney General, I think you’re making a mistake,” he said with as much deference as he could muster given the fire in his chest. “You want to keep it a secret, sure. But I think this thing is much bigger than any of us know. I think you need to investigate it aggressively.”
“You are permitted your opinion,” Kennedy replied evenly as he switched the cross of his legs. “But you’re not going to share it with anyone. Do you understand? Your file on Marilyn is going to be destroyed, and that’s the end of it.”
Out the window sprinklers were churning rainbow droplets across bright green lawns. A boy on a bicycle was hurling newspapers over grand, gilt barriers, and Walls, watching them because he didn’t want to face the conversation he was having, realized how early in the day it was to feel so beaten. “Where are we going?”
“The Santa Monica Airport.” Kennedy lifted his wrist to check the time. “My wife and children are staying at a ranch up in Gilroy, and I’ve got to join them. Mass begins at nine thirty. After I’m dropped off, my driver will take you wherever you want to go.”
“Why did you need to tell me? Why couldn’t Toll have—”
“Because this is between you and me. And because you’re never going back to the Los Angeles division. You’ll get a healthy severance—and for a few months, you can do whatever you like.”
“You mean you want to buy my silence? I’m really not cut out to swan around poolside, you know, or jet off to Europe, or …”
“Yes, I knew you’d say something of the kind. And I wouldn’t insult you like that. So I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. When you’re ready, come back to Washington. Think about where you see yourself, where you want
to go. Perhaps you’d even someday like to run for office. In the meantime, imagine how you’ll get there, wherever you’re going, whatever it is you’d like to become. Any job in government you are remotely qualified for, it’s yours. Think about it; get back to me. I’ll take care of everything.”
They had stopped at a traffic light, and Walls, whose jaw was too set in anger to talk anymore, opened the door and climbed to the sidewalk. He had no idea where he was or where he ought to go, which was fine by him.
“Agent Walls.” He glanced over his shoulder and saw the attorney general perched at the edge of the limousine’s rear seat. “Can I count on you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll never speak of it.” As his gaze drifted over the clean concrete, he added bitterly, “Nobody would believe me anyway.”