Redshift Part 43

Hunter finds the gun and P.I. license and gets suspicious. Instead of killing him, he ties and gags him and throws him and his bike into the back of the van, and drives back to Georgia.

But Linda has come around a distant curve just in time to see the huge man tossing Ron's bike into the van. She's can't see the license number, but can tell from the peach color that it's from Georgia, and she can describe the van. She pedals like mad; it's at least an hour to the next small town.

Safe in his isolation, Hunter manacles Ron and tries to find out what's going on. He inspects the bicycle and finds the bug, which he triumphantly smashes in front of Ron.

In the process of wheedling and posturing and torturing, he reveals his True Ident.i.ty. He shows Ron the freezers full of food and cooks him up a nice chop.

While all this is going on, Linda is trying to make some cracker police officer take her seriously. She tries to reach Kellerman, but he has an unlisted number. The FBI puts her on hold.

Of course once the tension is stretched to the breaking point, the cops come boiling out of the woods. Hunter is so huge he absorbs about twenty bullets before he falls down dead.

Epilogue.

The coroner of Illsworth County, Georgia, has done hundreds of autopsies, but never one of such a huge person, and he's not looking forward to it. Mountains of messy fat to slice throughbefore you get to the organs. But he prepares the body and makes his first incision. Then he staggers back, dropping the scalpel.

Inside, there's no fat, and not a single organ he can identify. Some of them are shiny metal.

Jack Dann has written or edited over fifty books, including the international bestseller The Memory Cathedral.

His Civil War novel The Silent has been compared to Huckleberry Finn. He's won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and two Ditmar Awards, among others.

He's also been a buddy of mine for twenty-five years, which had absolutely nothing to do with the story you're about to read.

For Redshift he presents an absolute treat: an alternate history concerning Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.

Ting-a-Ling.

Jack Dann.

It was the same dream, the same ratcheting, shaking, steaming, choo-chooing dream of being back on the ghost train with his mother. She is imprisoned in a lead casket in the baggage car, and he knows that she is alive and suffocating. But he can't reach her, even as he runs from one car of the Silver Challenger Express to another. The cars are huge and hollow and endless, and he is exhausted; James Dean, forever the nine-year-old orphan, on his way again-and again and again- to bury his mother in Marion, Indiana.

Mercifully, the whistle of the train rings-a telephone jolting him awake.

"h.e.l.lo, Jimmy?" The voice hesitant, whispery, far away.

"Marilyn? ..."

"Well, who do you think it is, Pier Angeli?"

"You're a nasty b.i.t.c.h."

"And you're still in love with her, you poor dumb f.u.c.k, aren't you."

Fully awake now, he laughed mordantly. "Yeah, I guess I am."

"Jimmy? . . ."

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry. I love you."

"I love you, too. Are you in Connecticut with the Schwartzes or whatever the rack their name is?" Jimmy felt around for cigarettes and matches . . . without success. He slept on a mattress on the floor of the second-floor alcove. Shadows seemed to float around him in the darkness like clouds.

Marilyn giggled, as if swallowing laughter, and said, "Anti-Semite. You mean the Greens, and I'm not staying with them anymore, except to visit and do business. I'm living in New York now-like you told me to, remember? I'm at the Waldorf Towers. Pretty flashy, huh? But that's not where I am this very minute."

"Marilyn ..."

"I'm right here in L.A., and I've got news, and I want to see you." She sounded out of breath, but that was just another one of her signatures.

"I got a race in the morning," Jimmy said, feeling hampered by the length of the phone cordand the darkness as he felt through the litter around his mattress. "It's in Salinas, near Monterey.

You want to come and watch?"

"Maybe I do ... maybe I don't."

"s.h.i.t, Marilyn. What time is it? I've got to get up at seven o'clock in the morning. And I've got to be awake enough so as not to crash into a G.o.dd.a.m.n wall. And-"

The phone was suddenly dead. Marilyn Monroe was gone.

Jimmy should have known better. But it was-he got up and flicked on the light switch-two o'clock in the morning. Not late for Jimmy when he wasn't racing; he'd often hang out with the ghoul Maila Nurmi and the ever-present Jack Simpson at Googie's or Schwab's on Sun set, which were the only places in L.A. open after midnight, or he'd drive ... or talk through the night to Marilyn, who would call whenever she felt the need.

The lights hurt Jimmy's eyes, and although he hadn't been drinking or doing any drugs, he felt hung over; and as he looked around his rented house, forgetting for the instant that he needed a cigarette, he remembered his dream . . . running through the clattering pa.s.senger cars of the Silver Challenger. "Momma," he whispered, then jerked his head to the side, as if embarra.s.sed.

But eventually the light burned away the dream. He found the cigarettes in his bed, the pack of Chesterfields crumpled, the matches tucked inside the cellophane wrapper; and he sat on the edge of the alcove, his legs dangling, and smoked in the bright yellowish light.

Below him was a large living room with its huge seven-foot-tall stone fireplace. He had bought a white bearskin rug for the hearth, and on the wall was an eagle, talons extended, wings outstretched, a bronzed predator caught in midnight. It belonged to Jimmy's landlord Nicco Romanos. He could almost touch his pride-and-joy James B. Lansing loudspeakers that just about reached the ceiling. Below . . . below him was the mess of his life: his bongos, scattered records and alb.u.m covers, dirty dishes, dirty clothes, cameras and camera equipment, crumpled paper and old newspapers and books ... a library on the floor. The walls were covered with bullfighting posters and a few of his own paintings, but pride of place was given to a bloodstained bullfighting cape that was cut into spokelike shadows by the bright wheel lamp that hung between the beams of the ceiling. Jimmy gazed at the cape and remembered when the Brooklyn-born matador Sidney Franklin had given it to him as a souvenir. That was in Tijuana. Rogers Brackett had introduced Jimmy to the matador, who was a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Brackett introduced him to everyone. All he ever wanted in return was Jimmy's c.o.c.k.

But Brackett knew everyone.

Jimmy could still feel the dark presence of his recurrent nightmare. It blew through him like hot, fetid air, the hurricane of a f.u.c.ked-up past. . . of memory. He had named it, thus making it tangible, absolutely real.

Black Mariah. Black Mariah. Black Mariah . . .

Suddenly frightened, feeling small and vulnerable as his thoughts swam like neon fish in deep, dark water, he huddled close to himself on the landing. He wanted to cry.

Momma . . .

He flicked his half-finished cigarette in a high arc across the room and wondered if it would start a fire. If it did, he would sit right where he was like a f.u.c.king Buddha and die withoutmoving a muscle.

If it didn't... he would race tomorrow.

The phone rang again. He picked up the receiver.

"Hi," Marilyn said. "You ready to go out with me?"

Jimmy laughed. "Why'd you hang up on me?"

"Because you were treating me bad. I've changed. The new me doesn't take s.h.i.t from anybody, not even from the person I love more than-"

"More than who?"

"Anybody."

"More than Arthur Miller?" he teased.

She laughed. "Maybe a little, but you'd better see me now because who knows what could happen later."

"You're married, remember?" Jimmy said.

"But not for long, honey." There was a long pause, and then Marilyn said, "No, not for long." The sadness was palpable in her voice.

"Well, you want me to hang up again or what? ..."

"No."

"You going to see me then? . . . Please, Jimmy, I don't want to be alone right now. I'll come over to you." Then, changing mood, "And who knows, we might both get lucky. Anyway, I'll show you my new car. It's a gift. And it's fabjous."

"From who?"

"I got it for doing a show with Art Linkletter. It's a Caddy DeVille convertible, and it's pink as your cute little a.s.s. I love it." She giggled and blew into the phone. "I'll give you a ride."

"You sure you didn't get it for riding that pink elephant in Madison Square Garden? That was a stunt-and-a-half."

"It was for a good cause. Now make up your mind, I'm hanging up ... one . . . two . . ."

"Okay," Jimmy said. "I'm awake. But how the h.e.l.l am I supposed to drive to Salinas tomorrow?"

"I'll bring you some pills."

"I can't drive stoned out. You want to kill me?"

"No, Jimmy."

He knew she was laughing at him.

"I'd show you the new Porsche, but it's at my mechanic's. I can pick you up with my station wagon. Where are you?"

"No, I want to drive," she said. "I'll be at your place in fifteen minutes. I've got something to tell you that you won't believe. You're still on Sunset Plaza, right?"

"No, Marilyn, I moved, remember? I'm in Sherman Oaks. 14611 Sutton Street. It's a log cabin, you have to-"

"I'll find it. Bye."

"I can't stay out long."

But Jimmy was speaking to dead air.Although he couldn't be sure when-or if-Marilyn would arrive, Jimmy waited outside near the road for her. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt, scuffed black penny loafers, and the bright red jacket that Nick Ray had bought for him to wear in Rebel without a Cause after Jack Warner ordered the film to be re-shot in color. Eartha Kitt had told him to wear the jacket, that it would bring him luck. Something about its color.

Jimmy grinned as he thought about Eartha. He had once tried to seduce her, but she only laughed at him and curled up on his couch. "You shouldn't screw your friends ... or your cat,"

she said. Jimmy could still hear the purr in her voice.

It was a cool night, with the promise that tomorrow would be a perfect day to drive his new flat-four 547 Porsche Spyder. He daydreamed about dancing with Eartha in Sylvia Forte's dance cla.s.s in New York. He daydreamed about driving, dancing, driving; but there was nothing, nothing better than speed, the adrenaline surge that would open deep inside his chest, the pressure in his eyes as the liquid silver curve of the hood swallowed the road in one long drawn gulp, and the beautiful, perfect, third-eye sense that he was about to rise, to lift right off the pavement, to go so fast that the car would shudder like a plane as it became airborne; and he'd rip a hole right through the sky.

Marilyn drove into the gravel driveway. The top of the pink Cadillac was down, although she had neglected to snap on the decorative leather boot. She smiled at him, but she looked tentative, as if frightened that he wouldn't recognize her, or, worse yet that he would recognize her and turn away. She didn't look like Marilyn Monroe. That was the guise that she turned on and off like a lightbulb. Jimmy understood all about that. They'd even discussed it. They were both lightbulbs. Brother and sister lightbulbs. They were monsters that could turn into . . .

themselves, that which was perfect and beautiful and completely cool-hep-can-do-no-wrong; and when they turned themselves on to each other, it was like . . . driving fast, except it was in the eyes and the crotch. She wore tan slacks, a man's sweater that was several sizes too large for her, and a black kerchief tied around her head. If it were daytime, she'd be wearing sungla.s.ses-all part of the uniform of a private person. She wouldn't be wearing makeup either.

"Well, it's certainly . . . pink," Jimmy said as he moved toward the driver's side door. "You mind if I drive?"

"Yes, I do. I'm driving." Marilyn leaned toward him for a kiss.

"But I have something to show you," Jimmy said. "Give you a kick like nothing else."

"You drive like a maniac, Jimmy. You scare me."

"You drive any differently?"

"I may be as crazy as you, but this is my car. If anyone's going to mess it up, it's going to be me. Now get in."

Jimmy put on his pout face, jumped into the backseat-which was littered with slacks, dresses, girdles, shoes, empty bottles of soda pop, receipts, candy wrappers, coat hangers, magazines, blouses, and books- and then crawled into the pa.s.senger seat beside Marilyn. She laughed and hugged him.

"What's all that garbage in the backseat? You're going to lose half of it in the wind."

"I don't care," she said, clinging to him. "You're right, it's all garbage." She smelled strongly of perfume. Joy, her favorite.

"You smell like a French wh.o.r.e."Marilyn didn't reply; she just burrowed against him like a frightened child.

"You want to come inside and see my house?" Jimmy asked.

"No, I want to drive," and with that she shifted the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator. Tires spun in the gravel as the Caddy fishtailed backwards into the street. Jimmy was thrown against the dashboard. Marilyn changed gears and laid rubber as she accelerated down the hill.

"You're high as a G.o.dd.a.m.n kite," Jimmy said. "You didn't even look to see if anything was coming, and you almost put my head through the windshield."

Marilyn giggled as she crossed over the double yellow line. "I love these wind-y roads, except it's so easy to get lost."

"You're always getting lost."