Card Sharks

with Rudo's mescaline punch. I hadn't gotten drunk since college. You don't know what it's like being a teetotaler in a fraternity.

The pool lights sparkled as they came on, and it was then that I noticed that I was glowing. My St. Elmo'S fire was out, a crackling blue aura around me, sparking and making the lights flicker as I fed on the power.

I tried to damp it. I really did, but then I saw everyone looking at me.

No one said anything for a long while, then finally Tom Quincey went, 'Wow, man! Colors!'

I ran off down the beach, trying to get away. My whole world had suddenly fallen apart. I had suppressed the power for so long, it had finally struck back. The wild card had played its cruelest trick on me and I knew I was going to die, I was getting so dizzy, and I fell down on the shoreline.

Then all my nightmares were around me. Everything I'd always feared would happen. Iack Braun standing over me, glowing gold to my blue: 'You bastard. You think you're so much better than me. I only hurt people because I was scared and stupid. You did it out of spite. nothing else. Traitor ace.' Then Hedda Hopper: 'I always knew you were a joker, Nicholas darling. But now that you know I know, I own you — unless you want everyone else to know.' And I saw her smile. Then there was the Olympic committee taking away medals I'd never won, and J. Edgar Hoover with draft papers, a choice between prison or disappearing somewhere where I'd never see anyone I loved again.

And Marilyn: 'Sony, Nickie. I could never love a sparking electrical freak, so you might as well go anyway.'

Then she was slapping my face and shaking me. 'Nickie! Nickie! What's wrong?'

'I'm an ace.' I'd finally said it, admitted it to her, to myself, to everyone. 'I was glowing. Everybody saw.'

She splashed some water over me and I came to a bit more. 'Nickie, nobody saw anything except you screaming and running off down the beach. Pan said you needed to loosen up, so I slipped some of Tommy's pills in your drink. I'm sorry. I didn't think you would have a bad trip.' She paused and a look passed through her eyes. I still don't know how to describe it. 'What do mean about being an ace?'

I broke down then and I really did start to glow, and Marilyn did notice this time. Tears poured out of my eyes, glowing with foxfire, and I forced the charge out of myself and down the wet sand and into the ocean. For a moment, I think the sea glowed, though that may have just been my imagination.

Then I told it all to Marilyn. Everything I've just told you and more. All my nightmares and my tears.

I must have passed out at the end, since I didn't know where I was until I woke up on somebody's couch the next morning.

Marilyn was there. She said that after I'd passed out, I was still sparking, so she couldn't touch me. She'd run and got Jack Braun and he'd carried me up to his house, and his glow had probably covered mine, so she didn't think anyone else would know. Know that I was an ace.

Nobody but Marilyn and the greatest betrayer in the history of wild cards.

She was crying. I could never stand it when she did that. I think her tears were why I first fell in love with her. She said she was sorry she'd given me the pills, but she hadn't known I was an ace, and she said she never would tell. She said Jack promised not to either.

Marilyn called in sick to the studio for both of us. I was so raw with nerves I could hardly move, so she drove me back to her house.

She left me by the pool while she went to fix lunch. But I had the beginnings of an idea, the product of nightmares and panic: LSD, whatever the stuff was, caused nightmares. I knew it. Mine had been living and waking. Marilyn's came at night.

And Wally Fisk? His had driven him mad.

But doctors know ways to determine the effects of drugs. Marilyn, though it was awful, was slowly getting over her problems. Maybe I would have too if they hadn't been so big, or if the LSD hadn't made me lose control of my ace. But Rudo, I was convinced, could make a far nastier mixture if he had a mind to. The connection was firm, if circumstantial.

And the motive? Rudo may not have hated wild cards, but there was someone who did. And there was Rudo's comment: 'You know Hedda?'

You didn't know Hedda. You feared her, then either avoided her or worked for her. If I had to suspect someone in Hollywood of masterminding a conspiracy against wild cards, there was only one name that would be at the top of my list.

She was just so obvious, I'd never suspected her.

Rudo was the perfect pawn — he could be anywhere on the set, spy out anything she wanted him to, and at the end of production, one of his cigarettes in the film locker and Blythe would be as dead as the original, with no shame to Marilyn or her career, or Rudo's finances or reputation.

I kissed Marilyn and rousted her out of the house and off to work, telling her not to tell anything to anyone, especially Dr. Rudo. I then got on the phone to Hedda, dropped enough hints to leave her drooling, and said I'd be in late to give her the full stories.

She was interested. She'd wait up.

I spent the afternoon back at my place constructing a careful stash of rumors, then set out for Hedda's.

It was near midnight, but she was still there, alone in the office after everyone had left. In some perverse way, I always admired the woman. She worked harder than anyone I knew. It was what she worked at that I had problems with.

Hedda had composed herself for my entrance. That was one of the ways you could tell that she liked you. She had on a blue wool skirt and jacket and this huge hat with ostrich plumes and stuffed doves and ropes of faux pearls. I'd heard that the one time they'd met, Dr. Tachyon had kept after her to tell him the name of her milliner. She'd used that to pillory him in her column for months. The lavender boy from outer space — that's what she called him — and I guess that's the other thing I agreed with her on. People were dying of his virus and he was concerned about hats.

'Nicholas, darling,' she said, smiling. 'Let's see what you have for me.' I gave it to her and she typed for a few minutes, then got on the phone and called in last minute changes.

'Thanks, dearest. That was very useful. So, what favor would you like?'

I hadn't counted on her being that pleased, but as she'd said, I was one of her favorites. 'You guess.'

Hedda dimpled, cocking her head. 'You'd like your little tryst with Marilyn to stay silent until you're both in … less embarrassing circumstances.'

I nodded.

Hedda clucked her tongue. 'Nicholas, dearest, you're going to ruin your career if you aren't wiser with your choice of jobs. And,' she said, 'you may tell Marilyn that associating with these wild card freaks won't do her any good either. My husband had blue skin and not a hair on his body, and the only thing I can say is that it's a good thing for Wolfie that he died before this virus ever showed up. No good can ever come of it, no matter what anyone says.'

I'd heard her stories about De Wolfe Hopper and knew that an overdose of silver nitrate and a bout of rheumatoid fever could make a joker out of anyone. I think bad memories of Hopper left her ill-disposed to any other 'freak.'

Hedda showed me out and locked up behind her, and then I played the next card in the game: I drained my own battery.

It Wasn't hard. I was a good enough actor to fake my car not turning over, then once I'd flipped up the hood and put my hand on the negative terminal, the battery was well and truly dead. The trick was keeping the charge from making me glow.

Hedda came over and tried to start my car, but of course she didn't have any luck either. She also didn't carry jumper cables and I'd made sure to leave mine at home.

In the end, I got what I wanted: Hedda let me into the office to use the phone to try to find an all-night towing service, and told me to lock up when I left.

Once she'd gone, I got out my camera and into her private files. Hedda kept great records and I'd taken impressions of the keys back when I'd worked for her.

Hedda really couldn't blame me. She'd taught me the trade.

There was the file: Rudo, Dr. Pan. I flipped it open and was immediately struck by the swastika stationery,