The fuse was simple stuff with a formula out of any chemistry textbook: three parts ammonium chloride, three parts ammonium nitrate, and three parts powdered magnesium. Stuff you could get at any hardware store, nursery, or chemical supply company. The same with the magnesium strip. Or the whole ensemble could be found in the special effects department of a movie studio. It was the Jekyll and Hyde formula: The mad scientist pours a vial of tap water into a beaker with a dusting of the powder in the bottom and a photogenic flare goes up. Add magnesium wire and some cannisters of nitrocellulose and you could kiss the entire Santa Monica pier goodbye.
Flattop collected the remaining film bombs and we took them back to the trunk of my car. While we did that, Josh used his jacket to beat out the flames on the one demolished piling. Do you find it suspicious that the police never came to investigate the explosion? So did I, which is why we didn't call them.
"Jesus, Nick," Flattop said as I locked up the trunk, bombs carefully defused. "I never knew you were an ace. And man, not just any ace ... you're Will-o'-Wisp."
"Shut up," I snapped. "You don't know what you're talking about. You got rid of the bombs, and you didn't have to kill three people to do it."
"But, Nick -"
"Let him be," Josh said and Flattop shut up.
I was really rattled. I'd only killed once in my life - before I'd figured out how to measure my charges - and I'd sworn I'd never do it again. Guns and explosives were something I'd never really taken into account. A private detective doesn't make his living by getting in fire fights, and the bastards I'd dealt with before had been into baseball bats and nailed boards.
And I'd just blown my cover. There were now two people who knew I was Will-o'-Wisp. And one of them was a nat and the stupidest blabbermouth I'd ever met. Josh's speech under the pier should have won the Oscar for idiocy.
"Josh, please. You can't tell anyone this." I fumbled with my keys, not making eye contact. "You've got my life in your hands."
"Don't worry." He patted me on the shoulder and helped me into the car. Ironic, isn't it? The drunk helping the sober man. "I was in New York the first Wild Card Day. I had friends infected with the virus. And I know what can happen to aces who get found out. Believe me, I know."
I don't know why I believed him, but somehow I did. And I didn't worry about it anymore. Maybe when you reach the breaking point, you find it's either that or go mad.
This is going to sound like the craziest thing, but it's what honestly happened next. Josh suggested we go to a party, never mind the load of bombs in the trunk, and Flattop and I thought it was the greatest idea in the world.
I don't know if we'd been invited to the Lawfords's that evening. It didn't matter - Josh talked our way in, we borrowed swimsuits, and it was like a dozen other parties. Marilyn and I flirted shamelessly.
Finally it got so late that everyone had to call it a night. Flattop and Josh hitched a ride with Trumbo, but someone needed to drive Tommy back to the dorms. I volunteered, being sober as usual, and Marilyn came along for the ride.
As soon as we left the party, my conscience and worry started back up, eating at my brain. I'd killed three men. Two people knew my secret. I was driving down the Santa Monica Freeway with the Goddess in the seat beside me and enough nitrocellulose in the trunk to blow up a pier. And to top it off, there was a sixteen-year-old sex maniac in my back seat giving a discourse on surrealism, metaphysics, and the need to break through mental barriers.
I think the effort it took to stifle my wild card was the only thing that let me keep my sanity.
Once we'd dropped off the boy genius, Marilyn said she wanted to go for a swim. Like I said, I'd gone to USC and had been on the swim team. I also had a key I'd never turned in and went and swam laps whenever I got stressed.
I'd kept myself in good shape.
The pool was in the basement of the athletics hall. It was like something from a De Mille epic, an old Twenties aquatic gymnasium with green tile around the edges and heraldic dolphins at the corners.
The ceiling was high above the pool, with windows along the sides covered with Wire grates, but the effect was more like stained glass than an athletics hall. And the light shone up through the water and reflected off the enamel, the patterns shifting and changing as you swam.
We were alone, and the pool was silent except for the echoes.
Marilyn took off her dark glasses and scarf and lay them on one of the chairs. I caught a whiff of her perfume - Scandal, I think - then she put an arm around my shoulders and I could smell the champagne on her breath. "Oh, Nickie," she laughed. "This is so silly. I forgot my swimsuit back at Peter and Pat's.
"Oh well," she said, "it's not as if we weren't born with swimsuits." Before I could stop her, she slipped away and stripped down to her bra and panties.
"Marilyn, no, you're drunk." I grabbed for her as she stepped back towards the pool.
I didn't get Marilyn. I got her bra.
She fell backwards with a splash, then came back up, her famous breasts bare in the water. "You're wicked, Nickie."
"Marilyn ..." I leaned over, holding out the bra, but next thing I knew she pulled me over into the pool on top of her.
I came up sputtering, and she dunked me a second time, then swam away, laughing. But it's a mistake to turn your back on a would-be Olympic swimmer. I kicked off my shoes and followed.
Marilyn got to the edge of the pool and started to pull herself up on one of the dolphins, but I pulled her back in. We wrestled, and somewhere in there her panties slipped off.
"Ooh, Nickie, you are wicked ..." Marilyn screamed with laughter and pounced on me. The panties Went flying out of my hand.
I let her get her revenge and we played strip water polo, my shirt and socks and the rest drifting down to the bottom of the pool. It was one of the craziest and most wonderful moments of my life. We played tag, ducking and bobbing under the water, then came close, our arms around each other. Marilyn gave me a long, slow kiss.
"Nickie," she said, drawing back. "You're always so tense. Dr. Rudo says you're keeping secrets. Lots of them."
It was that obvious then.
"Tell me a secret," Marilyn said.
I was tempted to tell her then and there. I mean, she'd slept with Jack Braun. She wouldn't care if I were an ace or a joker or whatever I was.
But it was my life, and it was all I had. And no woman could ever love a murderer.
I gave her the old line: "If I told, then it wouldn't be a secret."
"You're crying, Nickie," she said. "Dr. Rudo says that tears are secrets trying to come out."
It was just the chlorine, but I held her then, her skin against mine, naked in the pool. I could feel the electricity flowing inside her body, and the tight core of energy coiled inside mine, wanting to come out. I knew if I said anything more, I'd lose control, so I kissed her.
She was the first woman I'd kissed in years, and I think I really did start to cry. I never let myself open to another person. Secrets are like that. Lies are like that.
And a relationship built on lies would never last. I knew that from experience.
And I knew it would be the same with her, and I think that was most of why I cried, but God she was beautiful. I wanted her so much, but the energy was boiling up inside me and I knew if I gave off a pulse too close, I would shock her to death.
I broke away and swam off, fast as I could, to the other end of the pool. I let my entire charge flow out and forced it through the bolts of the underwater light to ground itself in the wiring. The bulb popped like a strobe and all the lights in the hall went dark, but the charge was gone and I was safe and drained and crying like a baby.
Marilyn swam up beside me in the dark pool as I babbled something about faulty wiring and electrical danger.