The Altar Of Bones Part 22

She gave the postcard to Ry, and he translated it into English he read out loud: Blood flows into the sea.The sea meets the sky.From the sky falls the ice.Fire melts the ice.A storm drowns the fireAnd rages into the night,But the blood flows on into the sea Without end.

"So what do you think it means?" she said.

"I have no idea."

She studied his face, trying to read if he was telling the truth, but he was an expert at hiding his thoughts.

"And on top of everything else," she said, "somehow the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination has to fit into all of this. I refuse to believe my grandmother could be involved in two separate top-secret conspiracies that have nothing to do with each other. n.o.body's that unlucky."

This time some brutal emotion did cross Ry's face, although still too quick for her to read. She opened her mouth to tell him it was now his turn to come clean, when he said, a little too casually, "Are you sure there wasn't anything else in the chest?"

Zoe shook her head, but she kept her eyes riveted onto his face. "After I found the Marilyn Monroe photograph tucked in the lining, I really checked it over carefully. There was nothing else. Why? You think there should've been something else in there? Like what?"

Finally his eyes met hers, and she saw again the deep, black pain that had been there back in the apartment, after they'd looked at the film. "An amulet," he said.

"Wait a minute. The altar of bones is an amulet? How do you know? And what-?"

He held up a hand. "I'll tell you everything I know, Zoe. Like we agreed going in. But I need to start at the beginning. With my father's confession and how my brother, Dom, was murdered."

ZOE WATCHED R RY prowl the floor as he talked, but when he got to the part about seeing the chalk outline of his brother's body on the floor of the church, she had to look away because she couldn't bear what she saw on his face. prowl the floor as he talked, but when he got to the part about seeing the chalk outline of his brother's body on the floor of the church, she had to look away because she couldn't bear what she saw on his face.

He threw himself back down in the chair, braced his elbows on his spread knees, and looked down at his clasped hands. His voice sounded calm, but his knuckles were white. "Now you know why I didn't let you shoot the b.i.t.c.h. Yeah, we need her alive until we can find out who she's really working for, but mostly I wanted the privilege of killing her myself. That hour I spent at the bottom of the Gulf sucking air out of a tire-that's all I could think about. That and getting over to Port Bolivar, so I could dig up what Dom had written down of Dad's so-called confession."

He gave a harsh, bitter laugh. "I could've stayed down there at the bottom of the Gulf and thought about it for a hundred years and still never come up with anything close to the truth of what kind of man my father really was."

"I'm so sorry, Ry," Zoe said softly. "I can't imagine what it must be like to lose your brother like that. And then to find out that your father ..." Her voice trailed off. She had a hard time putting it into words herself.

He was quiet for a moment, looking down at his fisted hands, then he said, "Growing up, it never occurs to you your dad might not be the man you think he is. He was supposed to have been born on a small ranch in east Texas, near the Louisiana border." Ry breathed a hollow laugh, shook his head. "We even drove out there once to take a look at the old place, but now I've no idea whether any of that was true. I suppose that place could've belonged to anyone."

"Ry, you don't have to-"

"No, you really do need to know the rest of it." Ry reached around for his jacket, which he'd slung over the back of the chair. He took a mud-splattered plastic envelope out of an inner pocket and handed it to her. "But I'll let my father do the talking."

Zoe took a thick sheaf of papers out of the envelope. She unfolded them, looked up once at Ry's white, tight face, and then began to read.

29.

IT ALL started with Katya Orlova and the altar of bones, but it ended with the kill. And not just any kill, but started with Katya Orlova and the altar of bones, but it ended with the kill. And not just any kill, but the the kill. The big kill. kill. The big kill.

You see, I was the man on the gra.s.sy knoll.

Yeah, you heard me right. I'm the guy who shot President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Well, Lee Harvey Oswald shot at at him, and maybe he hit him, or maybe his was the bullet that wounded the Texas governor. Christ, what was that guy's name? Connors? Connelly? Something like that. Funny that I can't remember it, considering ... But then I never cared about him. What's important to know is that mine was the head shot, and that's what killed the President. Lee Oswald got the blame, of course, though most folks never believed he acted alone, and which goes to prove you really can't fool all the people even some of the time. But good ol' Oswald? He was just a Commie punk we set up to take the fall. him, and maybe he hit him, or maybe his was the bullet that wounded the Texas governor. Christ, what was that guy's name? Connors? Connelly? Something like that. Funny that I can't remember it, considering ... But then I never cared about him. What's important to know is that mine was the head shot, and that's what killed the President. Lee Oswald got the blame, of course, though most folks never believed he acted alone, and which goes to prove you really can't fool all the people even some of the time. But good ol' Oswald? He was just a Commie punk we set up to take the fall.

The killing shot was all mine.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here, because it really started one July night a year before the Kennedy killing, the night I first heard about the altar of bones. We were sitting in a red leather booth at the Hollywood Brown Derby, eating Cobb salads and drinking a pa.s.sable but overpriced '59 St.-emilion. We being myself, my bride, Katya, and Marilyn Monroe.

Yeah, that that Marilyn Monroe. The movie star. Marilyn Monroe. The movie star.

Funny how those two simple words both describe her to a T, yet fail to do her justice. Just like all the other millions of words written about her, before or since her pa.s.sing, have failed her. Maybe that's because we all keep looking at her through the screen of our own delusions and lies.

I know I did.

BEFORE THAT NIGHT, I'd been spying on Marilyn Monroe for the past seven months, and by that I mean official, sanctioned spying.

I had a day job as a location scout for Twentieth CenturyFox, but that was just a cover set up by my employer, the Central Intelligence Agency. In spite of the McCarthy fiasco, the powers that be back in Langley were convinced Hollywood was a seething hotbed of anti-American activity. My mission was to make friends with the locals so we could separate the dangerous Communist wheat from the chaff.

Personally, I thought the a.s.signment was bush league from the getgo, and a waste of my time and talents. My previous posting had been the Congo, where I'd been sent to a.s.sa.s.sinate a couple of people who will have to remain nameless, so the L.A. gig felt really tame to me.

Although things did get more interesting once the president of the United States began engaging in reckless national security pillow talk with an actress who ate barbiturates like c.o.c.ktail peanuts. The powers that be really got their panties in a bunch when they found out about that, probably because Marilyn also happened to be the ex-wife of the playwright Arthur Miller, who'd once been denied a pa.s.sport for "supporting the Communist movement."

So getting close to Marilyn's good friend Katya Orlova, asking her out on a date, had been just part of the job, a way for me to get close to Marilyn herself. It was my own idea to marry the girl, and I still don't know why I did. Maybe I was just bored, stuck out there in Tinseltown.

But I think it was more complicated than that. In years I was still young, only twenty-six, but I'd been knocking about my whole life. I came into the world an orphan, so I never had a family, and I was too secretive to have any friends. My only women were either wh.o.r.es or one-night stands. Katya was the first person to tell me she loved me and mean it. She made me feel something I'd never felt before. I guess the word would be cherished cherished.

Anyway, the truth was I liked being married to Katya. We had fun together.

She had this eight-year-old kid by another lover who was long out of the picture, and so we made up this little family together, just the three of us, which I kind of liked. Anna Larina-that was the kid's name-had almost died when she was four, of leukemia, I think, but somehow she'd gone into remission, and Katya spoiled her some because of that. She wasn't a bad kid, though. She was just tough to get to know.

So Katya and her kid, and my "job" at the studio where I got to hobn.o.b with glamorous movie stars-all those things were good. But that wasn't the best part. The most interesting, the most deliciously ironic twist to the whole thing was that the CIA-so busy seeing a commie behind every actress's bush and under every director's bed-didn't have so much as a clue that Mike O'Malley, their das.h.i.+ng guy in Hollywood, was himself a mole for the KGB.

Why? you ask. Why was I a mole who sold out his country's secrets to the Communist enemy?

Well, it started with a small thing. I overdid it betting on the ponies and got in deep with a loan shark who was threatening to shoot out my kneecaps if I didn't pay up. And about the time I was starting to feel desperate, this guy comes along and offers me a thousand bucks for the name of a double agent down in Mexico City. And the thing you don't realize at the time is that if you do it once, you got to keep on doing it, because you're compromised then, you can't go back. And after that, the hole you've dug for yourself just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

I don't think I was born with much of a conscience, though, because giving up that guy in Mexico City, knowing he'd be killed-it never really bothered me. And the things I did afterward? They didn't bother me much either.

And as long as I'm confessing, I'll tell you something else. I loved the spy game-the disguises and the lies, and the double-dealing. I even loved the killing. It was all I game to me, and I loved to play it.

SO WE WERE at the Brown Derby one night in the summer of '62. Katya, Marilyn, and me. at the Brown Derby one night in the summer of '62. Katya, Marilyn, and me.

Marilyn was in what she liked to call her "disguise," and I'll admit, it actually wasn't a bad disguise at that. She had covered up her platinum hair with a scarf, hadn't put on any makeup, and she didn't look quite so luscious to me then, with her freckles and plain brown eyes. And she was wearing this dress, some cheap thing with little pink flowers on it. G.o.d knows where she'd gotten it-probably off the discount rack in Macy's bas.e.m.e.nt. Yet, even so, on her it still clung in places so s.e.xy that in some states she would've been arrested for indecent exposure.

But the best part of her disguise, the genius of it, I thought, was how she could change the way she walked. She'd lose her swivel-that hip-swaying, b.u.t.t-undulating thing she could do that was pure, one hundred percent s.e.x appeal. That was pure Marilyn Monroe. If the woman could have patented the move, it would have sold like the Hula-Hoop, and she'd have made a mint off of it too.

And the funny thing was, she could've used the money. She was only getting a hundred K for starring in Something's Got to Give Something's Got to Give, which might seem like a lot for those days, but when you figure Liz Taylor was paid a million for Cleopatra Cleopatra, and when you're a movie star, you got to live like a movie star ...

So, anyway, Marilyn was in her "disguise" that night, but she had the maitre d' seat us close to her place on the "Wall of Fame"-these framed caricatures of famous and maybe not-so-famous movie stars and other Hollywood big shots that went all the way back to 1929. And she made sure it was a booth with a phone jack, so the waiter could bring a telephone over should an important call come in. Also, no sooner do we sit down then some girl with a cigarette tray and a camera comes along and offers to take our picture for a buck, and Marilyn says, "Sure, honey. Why not?"

I didn't get the logic of this, going incognito to a place where everyone was sure to recognize you anyway. All that time I spent around the woman, and I never understood the first thing about her. But then I'd probably never seen her when she wasn't acting.

"You look at her and see a world-famous movie star," Katya told me once. "But inside she's feeling like a scared little girl, afraid that if you stripped away her blond hair and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she'd just be a n.o.body. She wants to be loved for herself, unconditionally, and not as a s.e.x object."

Unconditional love. Yeah, it sounded good all right, but I'd discovered long ago that there were conditions attached to just about everything. Still, maybe that explained how a world-famous movie star ended up being best friends with a cameraman's gofer.

Because when Katya Orlova loved you, she did so unconditionally.

SO THAT NIGHT at the Brown Derby, over our Cobb salads, Marilyn started talking about s.e.x in that breathy bedroom voice of hers. at the Brown Derby, over our Cobb salads, Marilyn started talking about s.e.x in that breathy bedroom voice of hers.

"If they gave out Oscars for faking it," she said, "I'd have so many on my mantelpiece it would crack right in two. I've done some of my best acting convincing my lovers I was in the throes of ecstasy."

"I doubt they took all that much convincing," I said, thinking that all the guys she'd slept with probably hadn't given a rat's a.s.s if she came or sang the "Hallelujah Chorus."

She made a face at me, but her eyes were fairly dancing with delight because she liked being teased, and she liked the idea that right at this very moment I was probably imagining what a romp in the sheets with her would be like, and, yeah, I was. I'm not dead.

But then the smile turned brittle, and an awkward silence fell over the table. So Katya, ever Marilyn's rescuer, said, "You haven't eaten much of your salad tonight, darling. Only rearranged it on your plate. You need to eat. You're getting too skinny."

This pleased Marilyn so much she held out her forearm, gave her flesh a good squeeze, then laughed again. "Jack likes me skinny. He never came out and said it, but I think he thought I was too fat there for a while. He likes me to pose in front of him wearing nothing but a fur coat, and then I do this thing with my shoulders and the coat slides off ..."

Katya and I exchanged a look, but neither of us said anything. To Marilyn, it was as if we weren't there, or she was just too dense to realize how really bizarre it was for her to talk so nonchalantly about s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the president of the United States.

"To tell you the truth, Jack makes love like a boy," she went on, "but it's still kind of sweet, and it never matters because he actually talks to me about politics and things. He treats me like I have a mind, that I'm not just all t.i.ts and a.s.s."

I blinked at that, couldn't help it. I held a forkful of salad halfway to my mouth while my mind tried to process this remarkable piece of self-delusion. I thought of the secret files I'd read on the President's s.e.xual exploits. The orgies in the White House swimming pool, countless one-night stands, or rather more like thirty-minute stands, a near endless stream of women, both cla.s.sy and low, and the way he talked about them. He called them "poontang." t.i.ts and a.s.s.

Yet here was Miss s.e.x Appeal Personified thinking the man valued her for the wonders of her mind.

"James Joyce could really penetrate the human soul, don't you think?" Marilyn was now saying, and don't ask me how she got from f.u.c.king the President to English Lit 101. "I've been reading Molly Bloom's mental meanderings-see, I can be clever with words just like you, Mike.... Now, here is Joyce, a man, writing about what a woman thinks to herself, but he got it, didn't he? All our pain and insecurities. And I've been reading Shakespeare too, memorizing whole chunks, because I've been thinking I could produce and act in the Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Film Festival. I'll approach all his major plays from the female point of view."

"Oh, darling, I like it," Katya said, and I knew the enthusiasm in her voice wasn't faked, bless her. She had the most generous heart-when she believed in you, she believed all the way down to her toes. "A woman's Shakespeare. And think how it will show everyone what a really fine actress you are."

Marilyn beamed. "I feel certain I'll win an Academy Award for one or more of my Shakespearean woman. Don't laugh, Mike."

"I'm not," I said, and if anyone deserved an Oscar, it should've been me.

"Oh, Kat," Marilyn said to my wife, "you don't know how I've so wanted to talk to Jack about this, to get his opinion too, but when I tried to get hold of him, I found out they'd changed his number, the special one he gave me for the Oval Office. So I called the main switchboard, only they wouldn't put me through."

Well, well, well, I thought. Now, this was interesting Now, this was interesting.

I remembered the Democratic fund-raising tribute in Madison Square Garden a few weeks ago, of course, with Marilyn in her fur stole and a $12,000 Jean Louis beaded gown, oozing s.e.x and singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President." She couldn't have declared more boldly and plainly to the world what was what than if she'd gone on What's My Line What's My Line and said, "I am having s.e.x with John Fitzgerald Kennedy." and said, "I am having s.e.x with John Fitzgerald Kennedy."

So it was hardly a wonder if the President's handlers had reacted to that night with a dawning horror, and better late than never in my opinion. The affair had started back in December, and everybody who was anybody in Was.h.i.+ngton knew about it. The press corps sure knew all about it, but they kept that kind of stuff off the front page, not wanting to tarnish the image of the office, or so they said. h.e.l.l, maybe they just liked Jack, wanted to see him get reelected, and, besides, more than a few of them, especially the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post guys, got invited to those White House pool parties. guys, got invited to those White House pool parties.

But then Marilyn had to go and smack everyone in the face with it. And what with brother Teddy's senatorial primary looming in September and the administration still reeling over the Bay of Pigs fiasco, they sure didn't need the scandal of a White House love affair of any sort to tarnish the Camelot image, let alone one with the most famous woman in the world.

"At least I've been able talk to Bobby about it," Marilyn went on. "I met him that night I sang 'Happy Birthday,' and he's been such a big help through everything these last few weeks. He's a wonderful person to tell your troubles and your dreams to."

I swallowed a snort along with a piece of bacon and nearly choked. Katya was making little soothing sounds in the back of her throat, but a worry crease was now between her eyes.

Marilyn planted her elbows on the table, leaned into us, then cast a furtive look around the restaurant as if eavesdroppers lurked behind the potted palms. "I guess you've probably heard the rumors about Bobby and me. It seems like suddenly all Hollywood can't talk about anything else."

"Now there's a puzzle," I said. Katya kicked me in the s.h.i.+n.

"Well, they aren't true. Sure, we've made love, but when I hear about some of the stuff we're supposed to have done-well, it isn't true."

Robert Kennedy, the President's brother and Attorney General of the United States, had been out here in Hollywood a lot this summer to drum up financing for the filming of The Enemy Within The Enemy Within, his bestseller about his crusade against organized crime. I knew for a fact there'd been some pretty wild parties at this Santa Monica beach house belonging to Bobby's brother-in-law Peter Lawford. The place had lots of bedrooms, but the scuttleb.u.t.t going around was that Bobby and Marilyn's favorite place to get it on was in the bathtub.

"I think all these awful rumors are getting to Bobby," Marilyn said. "Because now something funny's going on with him too. It's like they're all trying to shut him off from me, just like they're doing with the President."

I opened my mouth, and Katya kicked my s.h.i.+n again, so I shut my mouth.

But Marilyn seemed to have read my thoughts as if they'd appeared in a comic-strip bubble above my head.

"I'm not stupid, Mike, so quit thinking I am," she said, and looked both wistful and tough at the same time. Quite a feat, I thought. "I think they've got him convinced I'll go blabbing about us in a press conference, because he told-"

She'd been all set to come out with something really juicy before she cut herself off, I was sure of it, and I nearly swore out loud. But then she said instead, "Jack sent someone out to my house to tell me it's over. He should have at least had the courage to tell me good-bye to my face."

"Oh, Marilyn." Katya reached out and touched her arm. "You know how men are. They don't like scenes."

"Is that how men are, Mike?"

I had a tough time looking her in the face. It was like her heart was on the verge of being broken. Really broken, and that surprised me. Surely any girl who'd been around as many blocks as she had knew the score. I mean, it's not like she ever believed Jack would divorce Jackie and marry her, did she?

I said, "Honestly? We'd rather be boiled in oil, skewered on a spit, and then flayed alive. When it comes to women, we're all cowards. Every one of us."

Marilyn nodded solemnly, as if I'd revealed the answer to one of life's great mysteries, and for the first time I, Mike O'Malley, felt sorry for her. Katya had told me about Marilyn's childhood, born a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, her mother in and out of insane asylums while she was shunted off to orphanages and foster homes, unwanted and unloved, and so she'd created a s.e.x G.o.ddess, a woman no man could ever possibly leave. And now here she was being dumped like yesterday's garbage, and, yeah, it was stupid of her not to have seen it coming, but it was also sad.

Then she said something out of the blue that floored me.

"I can survive this, though, because for the first time in my life I feel strong inside myself. Oh, I know that what I have might not last forever-fame is fickle, as they say. But if it goes, then it goes, and I'll survive because I know my true worth. Not only do I know what I can do, I know what I must do."

This time Katya reached across the table and took her hand. "You've always been a strong person. No one could get to where you are without being strong inside. And tough."

Marilyn gave her a smile that trembled at the edges. "And you've always seen the best in me, Kat. That's why I love you. But I haven't always seen the best in myself. Until now. So they don't need to worry about me, those switchboard operators and those men with their dark suits and hard faces. I'll never embarra.s.s him."

"I know it will be hard, but you really are doing the right thing," Katya said, but she still looked worried. Or maybe, like me, she wasn't sure where all this was going, but she had an inkling it wasn't to a happy place.

"Oh, I am," Marilyn exclaimed. "I know I am. Because Jack needs me now more than ever. This is a man who can change our country. He shared his vision with me, so I know. If he has his way, no child will go hungry, no person will sleep in the street and get his meals from garbage cans ..."

There was more, and all of it sounding like the worst sort of campaign-ad dreck, so I tuned her out and amused myself by trying to see how many of the caricatures on the wall I could recognize.

And then I heard her say to Katya, "That's why I'm going to give him your magic amulet, Kat. Your altar of bones. To do all he needs to do. At least I can help him in that way."

Altar of bones?

It was such a non sequitur, and a really weird one, that I almost missed Katya's reaction. And I'd only ever read about this in books, but her face actually drained of blood, like someone had come along, whipped out a knife, and slit her throat.

When she could finally speak, her voice was a strangled, harsh whisper. "Marilyn, please. It was to be our little secret. You promised."

"I know, and I was going to keep my promise, really I was. But that was before. He's not well, Kat. He's sicker than most people know. The Addison's disease is killing him, he's in pain all the time. So I've got to give it to him, because there's no end to what he will achieve if he's given the chance."

Katya's hands were lying flat on the table, pressing so hard her knuckles were white. I reached out and wrapped my fingers around one of her wrists. I squeezed, hard enough to get her attention. "What is this altar of bones?"