Ikon

by Graham Masterton

  Xadine was aghast, no colour in her cheeks at all. Titus jabbed his finger at her again and said, ‘Let me tell you ething, my lady, you’re a very beautiful woman. You’ve got everything it’s ever going to take. But when you start snorting coke at embassy parties, and when you start trying to get at my moral conscience by making up crappy bad-taste un-American stories like that - that’s when you and I are going to fall out. And when you and

  I fall out - boy, I can tell you, you’re going to know about it.’

  Titus,’ she whispered. Tor God’s sake. Don’t you realize?’

  ‘I realize that I married a princess with the brain of a witch, that’s what I realize. But can anyone tell what this princess is going to do? Well, I’ll tell you. This princess is going to take off all her clothes, and this princess is going to grovel on the floor and kiss my feet, and tell me she’s sorry, and that she apologizes abjectly not only to me, but to the United States of America, and the proud heritage which made this nation great.’

  Titus, you’re incredibly drunk.’

  ‘Oh, no, Nadine. Not drunk. Intoxicated, maybe, poisoned. Poisoned by everything you’ve told me. But not drunk. Not any more. No man could stay drunk, not with you around. You’re the most sobering influence since Fernet Branca.’

  Titus -‘

  ‘Fuck you, lady!’ roared Titus, and smashed his glass of whiskey against the fireplace. Then with two savage wrenches, he pulled open the front of Nadine’s evening-gown, baring her breasts, and stripped it right down to her waist.

  ‘How dare you tell me such shit,’ he trembled. ‘I’ve fought for this country and sweated for this country all of my adult life. I’ve seen my friends disembowelled; I’ve seen my family go crazy with grief. I’ve given everything and anything for that flag of stars and stripes and for the American constitution.’

  He stood up. He was so drunk that he had to grab for the arm of his chair to steady himself. Then he began to sing, in a loud, flat voice, the last verse of The Star-Spangled Banner.

  ‘Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation,’

  ,Nadine clung at his sleeve, and said, Titus, please.’ But Titus slapped her away, and stood in the centre of the room, his eyes crimson and swollen with alcohol, and sang at the top of his lungs,

  ‘Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.’

  Nadine said, Titus, please. You have to listen.’

  Ive listened enough, damn it! I’ve known ever since FVC married you how much of a goddamned pacifist you are. I couldn’t have failed to, really, the way you’ve always taunted me. Nuclear imbalance, you said, like it was some kind of joke. And now all this. The American Capitalist Oblast. You think that’s funny? You damn well think that’s funny?’

  Titus!’ screamed Nadine. ‘It’s true! But I don’t want to have to kill Colleen! Please! Listen! If you don’t listen, I’ll have to kill Colleen! Titus! Titus! Damn you, Titus! God se you, Titus, I love her!’

  Titus swung around and punched Nadine with his dosed fist, right in the jaw. She fell back with a sound ike a malt-sack falling from a second-storey window. Then Titus fell down beside her, on his knees, and ripped apart her gown until she was almost naked, except for her self-support stockings and her silk eau-de-nil panties.

  ‘Jesus, you’re a bitch,’ he snarled at her. She opened her eyes, concussed, and stared at him as if she didn’t know who he was. Titus?’ she asked him.

  He dragged down her panties, baring the vivid pink slit of her vulva. He jostled himself out of his own clothes, eccept for his shirt, and his straying starched collar; and then he clambered on top of her. She didn’t resist, couldn’t. He was too heavy, too powerful, too enraged, too insistent, too drunk. His penis was like a nightstick., •asculine, thrusting, but somehow inanimate. He jammed it into her again and again and again, raping her, because she didn’t participate and she didn’t consent; and

  then he turned her over and jammed it into her again, into her bottom, and her hands gripped the thick pile of the Persian rug and tore it out in agonized handfuls. He shuddered, and came, deep inside her tightest place, and she closed her eyes and tried to hope that this would be her ultimate sacrifice to everything she had been born and trained to believe in. She couldn’t give any more, except for her life.

  Titus stood up, swayed, and tried to focus on her, triumphant and lewd. ‘You’re nothing, you know that? A Washington whore. A political groupie. You know that? You make me sick.’ Then, with the inaccurate gait of Jacques Tati, he made for the door.

  Nadine sat up amongst the rags of her torn evening-gown. There were vivid red fingermarks on her breasts, and on her stomach. Her head ached with a sharp, shrill, endless pain. She lowered her head in sexual defeat and tiredness, and watched as a white dewdrop was squeezed out of the scarlet rose of her anus. Titus had invaded her soul and her privacy, both erotically and politically, without care, without any feeling at all; as if she were there to be used, and nothing else. He had denied her where Colleen had aroused her and accepted her, he had given her coldness and clubs where Colleen had given her kisses and understanding. And yet the irony was that it was Colleen whom Ikon had asked her to kill; and Titus whom Ikon had asked her to care for.

  Titus came back into the room, pushing the door open so hard that it banged against one of the occasional tables.

  ‘Are you coming to bed?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, she said. Then, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen, he enunciated. Then, more softly, ‘Listen, I’m sorry I hit you. Sorry I hurt you. You just - made me lose my temper.’

  He looked down and saw the white dewdrop on red flesh and the flicker in his eyes told her that he was aroused again. Titus was a soldier, after all. His success had always been measured by the pain which he had been able to inflict on other people. That was what sol—

  fiers were for. He had hurt her; badly; and yet he felt triumphant.

  Later, in bed, just before morning, he whispered in her car. ‘That stuff about Russia.’

  “Yes?’ She could imagine her voice rising to the high •Kjulded ceiling like an airship filled with chilled helium.

  ‘Well, that was bullshit, wasn’t it?’

  ‘If that’s what you want to think.’

  The American Capitalist Oblast? I mean, that’s a joke, right? A sharp, intellectual joke. A little too sharp for a •egular patriotic guy like me.’ •u’re still drunk.’

  no, I’m not. There wasn’t one single officer in Nam who could drink me under the table. Not one. Not one smgle officer. And in those days we were drinking Chivas Regal with Singha Beer chasers. You ever drunk that Singha Beer? Comes from Thailand. Two - just two of those - would wipe your average American beer drinker ?ct completely. Two.’

  Nadine said, ‘Titus, it’s true. Ikon is true. The American OWast exists; and has done,for twenty years.’

  Titus squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Nadine, he said. ‘You ,d I are going to talk about this in the morning. You got me? And another thing we’re going to talk about is your fading children, all right? Got that? Meanwhile I’m going to go crash out on the library couch.’

  Thank God for that,she told him. The bitterness in her voice was like lime-peel under the fingernails.

  He stood and watched her as she painfully got up from the floor, gathering her torn clothes, and limped towards the stairs. He couldn’t even begin to understand at that •oment the agony she felt; not just physically, from what I-* had done to her, but mentally. There was no alternative jeft to her now but to poison Colleen Petley; no hope but - destroy the one person in whom she had felt able to r.vest her romantic trust.

  nlast, for. Christ’s sake, said Titus, as she passed

  It wa
s only at five o’clock in the morning, when Titus woke to find his cheek pressed against the shiny brown hide of the library couch, and a slick of dribble coming out of the side of his mouth, that he thought for the very first time that Nadine might not have been joking; and that Ikon’s administration might for twenty years have been a hideous reality. He sat up: the library clock chimed five. He thought: Jesus H Christ.

  Upstairs, Nadine’s bed was empty, cold, and unslept-in. Titus stared at it for almost five minutes. Then he picked up the telephone and dialled Joe Jasper.

  Twenty-Four

  It had taken furious arguments; slammed doors; and moments of silent pain and unexpressed agony; but at last Kathy Forbes had persuaded Daniel to come with her to Los Angeles. It had taken two days without a telephone call, two days without a ransom note, two days without anything but knots in his stomach and two nights without sleep. And always, that remembered rhyme,

  ‘My daddy is dead, but I can’t tell you how; He left me six horses to follow the plow. With my whim wham waddle ho!’

  Against Kathy’s direct advice, Daniel had told Pete Burns that Susie was missing, and Pete Burns had solemnly put out a Missing Child poster, with a black-and-white photograph of Susie on the day that Daniel had bought her that blue spotted frock for Thanksgiving, and Daniel had been so proud of her, and thought she looked so pretty, until he had heard her talking to Levon’s daughter out in the back yard, saying, ‘Can you believe this dumb dress? Daddy thinks it’s so cute, so I have to wear it. But can you believe it? It looks like an anteater’s nosebag.’ Daniel had said nothing at the time, but a week later, when they had gone out visiting, and Susie had asked him what she should wear, Daniel had said offhandedly, ‘Oh, just throw on the old anteater’s nosebag.’

  Pete Burns, as a matter of course, had passed on the details of the case to Lieutenant Berridge in Phoenix. Under ‘Possible Suspects’, was the name ‘Skellett’.

  Daniel had left a forwarding address; and on the last Thursday in August they had flown out of Sky Harbor, eastwards at first, and then curving around to the southwest so that he could see the whole criss-cross landscape of Phoenix spreading out towards the New River Mountains.

  He had thought of Cara. She was still in hospital, with twenty-six stitches and three fractured ribs. Then he had glanced at Kathy, sitting next to him, and she had smiled sympathetically and he had felt at least that he was not alone.

  Now he and Kathy were installed in a quiet rented cottage just off Sunset Boulevard, and were spending most of their time trying to talk to anyone who could remember Marilyn Monroe. Some agents and actors ate the lunches they bought at the expense of the Arizona Flag, and told them apocryphal stories about the night that Marilyn died, or about imaginary arguments between Marilyn and Ralph Roberts, or anything that came into their heads. But most of the Hollywood professionals just shrugged, and averted their eyes, as if Marilyn’s going was still a personal embarrassment, as if all of them were individually responsible for that week when she had failed to turn up on the set of Something’s Got To Give. As if all of them had gathered together and crammed Nembutals down her throat, to extinguish that bleached-blonde angst forever, and give them, who knows, some kind of haunted peace from the sexual spirit of the late 1950s.

  Every one of them said, ‘She’d be 56 years old now, if she were still alive, you know that? Fifty-six years old. She would have hated it.’

  And most of them said, ‘You want to know about Marilyn? What for? It’s all over. It’s all dead and buried.’

  Then, by chance, they met Rollo Sekulovich.

  It was on the morning of the third day. They were eating breakfast at the Sunset Hyatt, and Daniel had just come back from the pay phone, checking with Pete Burns to find out if there was any news of Susie. The restaurant smelled of burned coffee and bacon; and there was that jangled conversation of businessmen who have just woken up; wives who are just about to go out shopping; waitresses who refuse to serve anything that isn’t written on the menu. ‘It says two eggs, right? You have to have two eggs. No, I’m sorry, you can’t have one egg and pay for two. I have to give you the two eggs, in case you complain.’

  Kathy said, ‘No news?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘Nothing. Not even a ransom note.’

  That isn’t a bad sign.’

  ‘It isn’t a good sign, either.’

  I know. I’m not going to pretend that everything’s fine and dandy. It’s not my style.’

  Daniel sat down, and stared at his plate of Canadian bacon and eggs. ‘You think they’ve killed her?’ he asked.

  ‘No, said Kathy. ‘Everything points away from it. I mean, why would they kill her? If they want money, they’ll keep her alive, if they want a hostage they’ll keep her alive. If they want you, they’ll keep her alive.’

  ‘Why would they want me?’

  ‘Maybe a little Air Force bird told them that you’d been snooping around the morgue at Williams Air Force Base. Maybe that’s the whole reason they kidnapped her.’

  ‘If they want me, why don’t they contact me? It’s this damned silence. I don’t even know if she’s dead or alive. I don’t even know where she is, or what they might have

  done to her. And she’s mine, you know? My daughter. My responsibility.’

  Kathy reached across the table and touched his hand. ‘You’ve got to stop blaming yourself. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘Nobody else was responsible. Not even her mother.’

  ‘Have you gotten in touch with her mother?’

  ‘Candii? What for? She wouldn’t care. Too busy whooping it up somewhere with some poor man’s Howard Keel.’

  It was then that a man in a loud purple blazer sat down next to them, and said, ‘Okay if I join you people?’

  ‘Go ahead, said Daniel. Then, to Kathy, ‘Who have we got on the list today? Did you manage to get in touch with MGM? Isn’t there anybody else who might have known what Marilyn did on that last night? The police, maybe, or doctors?’

  ‘Excuse me, said the man in the purple blazer, ‘are you talking about Marilyn Monroe?’

  Daniel and Kathy looked at each other, and then Daniel said guardedly, That’s right. We’re, uh, journalists. Writing a book on famous scandals in Hollywood.’

  ‘Well, there’s always plenty of material,the man grinned. He reminded Daniel of Ed Koch, only shorter. Same bald dome, same prominent Yiddish nose, and something of the same experienced glitter in the eyes. ‘But when you talk about Marilyn, then you’re talking. That was a scandal, all right. You talk about Marilyn and half the people in Hollywood start shitting their pants, even today, if you’ll excuse my Hebrew. I knew Marilyn. Sure, you don’t have to look surprised. I knew Marilyn just about as well as my cousin Fruma. And, to tell you the truth there wasn’t much in it, except Fruma has a bigger chest.’

  Kathy said, ‘You saw Marilyn the night she died? Or that week?’

  The man said, ‘Better than that. Or more interesting than that. But, listen, I should introduce myself. Rollo Sekulovich, I’m an agent. Most people call me RS. You’ve heard of Christy Welcome? She’s one of my girls. Girls, I handle mainly. New girls, giving them some kind of

  movie work without the necessity to screw producers, excuse me. Call me a one-man social mission, if you like. But Christy Welcome didn’t have to sleep with Don Op-penheim to get that lead part in Triple Murder; and Jean Prisnik didn’t have to sleep with Jim Martin, although she did. Well, she liked him, he’s a nice guy. But let me tell you something else: I have the same surname as Karl Maiden, did you realize that? Maiden Sekulovich, that’s his real name. Can you imagine the Streets of San Francisco with Maiden Sekulovich? And Kirk Douglas was born Issur Demsky; so Michael Douglas would be Michael Demsky. Can you imagine that? A TV series with Sekulovich and Demsky?’

  Kathy forked up the last slice of her tropical-fruit salad. ‘You want to tell us about Marilyn?’

  ‘Marilyn, sure. It’s an interesting story. Maybe you won’t
believe it, who knows? But you can always check. Maybe the Brentwood police know somebody who remembers that night, one of their officers. It was twenty years ago, right? But I can remember it clear like today. You want to know why? I had a new girl called Vera Rutledge. What a name, you know? Vera Rutledge. Sometimes I think people become actors just to get rid of their crappy names, excuse me. Did you know that Robert Taylor was born Spangler Arlington?’

  ‘What about Vera Rutledge?’ Kathy persisted.

  ‘She was terrific,’ said Rollo Sekulovich. ‘She was blonde, natural blonde, and she looked exactly like Marilyn. Marilyn had a nose-job, you know that, but Vera didn’t need anything like that. She looked like Marilyn should have looked like, only her big disadvantage was that Marilyn happened to have looked like that first. Ten years earlier, I could have made Vera a big-name star. She had that luminous look about her skin, you know, like Marilyn had; and that kind of innocent-sexy come-hither look in her eyes. Vera Rutledge, one of the great names that never was.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘This is the point,’ said Rollo Sekulovich. ‘Vera Rutledge

  was invited to a party the same night that Marilyn died … a party that Marilyn was expected to go to, too. I tipped off my friends on the Times that there was going to be a good look-alike picture if they could get Vera and Marilyn together - you know the kind of thing I’m talking about - ‘Marilyn meets Marilyn’ - or ‘The Twin Monroes’ - or something like that. Well - about midnight I’m still working on a new contract for one of my latest girls -Darlene Hughes, I think it was - yes, right, I’m sure it was, Darlene - and this guy Rick Montez calls me from the Times and says neither Vera nor Marilyn showed up at this party, and of course he’s pissed about it, excuse me.’

  ‘It’s a matter of history where Marilyn was,’ said Kathy. ‘So what are you telling me that’s new? A starlet called Vera Rutledge didn’t show up to the same party twenty years ago that Marilyn Monroe didn’t show up to?’