The Marilyn Tapes

Lenihan

He should be happy. Next to him on the seat were the tapes so desperately wanted by his boss, Jack Kennedy. Tapes that few other men would have been able to track and seize the way he had.

There was a 6:35 flight this evening. He would go back to his hotel room now and pack.

He looked down at the manilla envelope. You wouldn’t think that a package so small could be so important.

He tried not to think of Drury’s little daughter.

Sara

No way they could drive after the tires had been slashed. Michael shut off the engine and sagged in his seat.

“We didn’t have any choice, Michael.”

He shook his head miserably. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“The first thing we do is get out of here,” Sara said. “Then we can find out where he’s staying.” She opened the door. “C’mon. We have to find some kind of transportation.”

“I wanted to kill him,” he said, as they started walking.

“So did I.”

Melanie

She stood there frozen, a fragile girl-woman in the throes of despair. She had killed a little girl. Mr. Hoover was going to be furious. She had to keep him from finding out.

She stood there and watched the blood seep forth from beneath the door.

She hadn’t really wanted Laura to die. Just show a little respect, a little... fear.

“Laura.”

She put her hand on the doorknob. She would see a sweet little girl with bullet holes in her chest. Or, maybe even worse, in her face.

She shouldn’t have gotten so angry. But Laura had been misbehaving.

Now just the roll of ocean, the cry of the birds.

“Laura, I’m going to open the door now, all right? I promise I won’t hurt you.”

Slowly, she opened the door.

She peered into the shadows of the closet.

Oh, my God, my God, Laura. My God in heaven.

Sara

The cab ride took almost an hour. Sara and Michael sat silent, holding hands, the whole way.

The Fenwick was several blocks from Wilshire, near its chief rival, the Ambassador. It was surrounded by rolling lawns that ran on for three square blocks. The Fenwick boasted its own self-contained world with a swimming pool, movie theater, six restaurants, bank, brokerage office, post office, doctor, nurse, art gallery and more than twenty-five shops right on the grounds.

As the cab swept into the winding drive, Sara looked up at the towering structure. On the top four floors, each room had a veranda.

Michael led Sara inside to the front desk.

“Has Mr. Lenihan returned? Room 1756?” Michael asked.

The desk clerk dialed Lenihan’s room.

Sara turned around for a quick look at the lobby. The ornate pillars and vast expanse of carpet gave the lobby the feel of a set from Ben Hur.

And then she saw him. Coming in the east door, fast. David Lenihan.

Lenihan didn’t see them. He bore toward the wide bank of elevators.

A man was pursuing him, coming closer now as Lenihan reached an open elevator. The man carried a dark valise.

Sara recognized the man, of course. Everybody who worked in Hollywood knew him as one of the key players, Del Mayhew.

Why would Del Mayhew be trotting after David Lenihan?

Mayhew hurried aboard the elevator and the doors closed just as the two men started to argue.

“He doesn’t seem to have returned yet, sir,” the desk clerk said.

Mayhew

Del Mayhew got inside the elevator, panting and sweating, just as the doors rolled shut.

He had been trying to catch up to David Lenihan from the parking lot.

“What the hell do you want, Mr. Mayhew?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Why didn’t you say anything this morning when I visited you?”

“I needed to think things over.”

Lenihan smiled. “Well, you’re a little late, Mr. Mayhew. I’ve taken care of everything now.”

The elevator stopped at the sixth floor. An older couple in tennis whites got on. Mayhew and Lenihan stood silently facing the front of the elevator. The couple rode to the twelfth floor and then got off.

When the elevator started moving again, Mayhew said, “This afternoon you waited for the Drurys outside of Curtis Simmons’ house. I know what you took from the Drurys.”

“You do, eh?”

Mayhew thumped his valise. “I have a quarter of a million dollars in here. In unmarked bills.”

Lenihan tried not to react to the dollar number, but he couldn’t help but glance at the valise.

“The money is for you, Mr. Lenihan.”

“For me? Why?”

“I knew you’d eventually lead me to the tapes. And now I want to buy them from you.”

“They’re not for sale.”

“Come on, Mr. Lenihan. A quarter million, unmarked. Think about it.”

They reached the seventeenth floor. The doors opened and Lenihan said, “Our business meeting is over, Mr. Mayhew. So long.”

He stepped off the elevator and started down the empty, plushly carpeted hall to his room.

Mayhew held the elevator doors open, considering what to do next.

Only one thing to do.

He stepped off the elevator and walked after Lenihan, who was fumbling with the door key.

Mayhew took the gun from his pocket and stuck it into Lenihan’s back.

He was about to ask Lenihan for the tapes right there, but a woman came out of a room down the hall and walked toward them.

“Why don’t we go inside and have a few drinks and talk about it some more?” Mayhew said in a normal voice. “We can probably wrap this up in a few minutes.”

Lenihan opened the door and stepped through.

As Mayhew entered behind him, Lenihan suddenly swung the door back, cracking Mayhew on the forehead and driving him to his knees.

“You sonofabitch,” Lenihan said, as he flung Mayhew into the room and slammed the door shut.

He turned and aimed a kick at Mayhew’s jaw.

Melanie

Laura was propped up against the back of the closet, vivid red blood staining her blouse.

“Oh, no,” Melanie said. “Oh, no.”

All she could think of was what Mr. Hoover would say when he found out.

It wasn’t easy lifting Laura out and carrying her over to the couch. Melanie didn’t want to get blood all over herself. She didn’t like the inert, lifeless feeling of Laura in her arms. Melanie had handled a few corpses in her time and she knew what dead weight was.

What if Laura’s parents demanded to speak to her before they handed over the tapes?

She laid her on the couch as if she were the most precious thing in all the universe. She knelt next to her and put her ear to Laura’s mouth.

She couldn’t hear or feel any breathing.

She put her hand on Laura’s chest, detecting no movement.

Then Laura moaned.

“Laura? Laura, can you hear me? This is your friend Melanie and everything is going to be fine.”

Maybe she could escape Mr. Hoover’s wrath yet...

“Mommy,” Laura mumbled.

She didn’t open her eyes. She lay on the couch, one side of her white blouse soaked with blood, and muttered “Mommy” over and over again, as if it were a magical incantation.

She was very pale and had a fever; her forehead was hot.

Melanie soaked a towel with cold water and laid it over the girl’s body. She decided to put her in a place where nobody could find her for a long, long time. If ever.

Melanie needed to get out of the country before the police found out what she’d done to Laura. Not even Mr. Hoover would be able to help her then.

“Laura, everything’s going to be fine now.”

Her blue eyes opened.

“Mommy?”

“No, Laura. But I’m your friend and I’m going to help you.”

“Mommy?”

She saw that Laura was delirious.

“Just rest now.”

“Mommy?”

She was tired of Laura now. Didn’t want to see her any more. Or hear her whining. She went into the kitchen where she found a thick roll of tape. Perfect for what she had in mind.

Hoover

As the day wore on with Hoover never leaving his office and taking no calls (except for Clyde’s), the director felt some brief solace contemplating the life he would have once Melanie delivered.

And after John F. Kennedy heard the tapes.

I’ve been thinking of a new office building for the Bureau, Hoover would say.

I’ve been thinking that perhaps you should create a new cabinet post for me.

You know, Mr. President, I’ve got some friends I’d like to see get good jobs in your administration.

Then let’s see that bastard smirk at Hoover again. Or whisper behind his back.

Or ever refuse the director anything again.

Say, Edgar, I was wondering if you’d like to spend a weekend at Hyannisport...

Say, Edgar, how would you like to spend Easter weekend at the Florida compound?

Say, Edgar, we’ve got a foreign affairs problem that I could really use your input on.

That would be one of the first things Hoover demanded. He had pleaded with FDR during World War II to be put in charge of foreign as well as domestic intelligence. But FDR had never liked Hoover and so he created the OSS, which eventually became the CIA, and foreign affairs had forever been put out of Hoover’s reach.

Until now.

Mayhew

He wasn’t going to be stopped. He was going to get the tapes and take them straight to Rossetti. He grabbed the foot that David Lenihan had just landed on his jaw and jerked Lenihan off his feet.

Both men got to their knees and grappled in the lavish front room of the suite. Mayhew caught Lenihan in the mouth, hard enough to cut his lip with his big Masonic ring and bang Lenihan’s head back against the wall.

He then connected with Lenihan’s solar plexus. Lenihan exhaled like a deflating balloon.

Mayhew looked down at him. “You don’t give me those tapes, Lenihan, I’m going to kick your face in.”

He hauled back with his leg and swung it.

Lenihan, however, ducked, caught the ankle, and bit his calf so hard that Mayhew screamed.

He drove his fist into Mayhew’s crotch, and Mayhew collapsed, sobbing.

Mayhew looked like he was finally finished. Lenihan sighed with relief. It was all he could do to stumble backward toward the open veranda doors. He wanted fresh air.

Then, much to his horror, Mayhew was on his feet, charging Lenihan, shoving him across the veranda.

Kneeing Mayhew’s face, Lenihan broke loose and dove to his left, rolling up against the veranda wall.

Mayhew’s momentum carried him into the low wall... and over it.

Seventeen floors, straight down.

“Jesus,” Lenihan muttered.

Mayhew shrieked all the way down.

His screams stopped when he caved in the top of a black vintage ’51 Packard.

Lenihan stared over the veranda rail and felt sick.

Sara

Seconds before Del Mayhew pitched over the veranda and fell to his death, Sara and Michael reached the doorway of David Lenihan’s suite.

The door was ajar. Hearing the battle inside, they waited a few moments before entering the room. One of the two men would be the victor, and that one would emerge with the tapes. They’d just wait for the winner and take them from him.

Suddenly they heard the fading scream.

Easy enough, even from the corridor, to tell what had happened.

One of the men had fallen from the veranda.

As the man screamed all the way down, Sara pressed her face into Michael’s shoulder.

Then there was silence.

The survivor was in the suite. With the tapes. Not expecting any visitors. Now was the time.

Easing the door open, pistol ready, Michael looked around.

Through the open doors of the veranda he could hear people yelling below. In the distance, a siren already wailed.

Had both men fallen to their deaths?

Then he heard water running in the bathroom.

“Wait here,” he whispered to Sara.

Michael edged toward the bathroom. He tried to see through the small opening of the door, but all he got was a sharp angle of mirror with nobody’s reflection.

He steadied the gun in his hand. Would he really be able to use it?

Yes. For Laura s sake.

He eased the door open a few inches. Lenihan was washing his face at the sink.

Two quick strides across the bathroom tiles, and Michael raised the pistol by the barrel. He hammered Lenihan’s head with the butt.

Lenihan fell back against the sink, blood streaming from his scalp.

Michael pinched Lenihan’s nose and shoved the business end of the gun into his mouth.

“You awake?”

Lenihan nodded, gasping.

“So where are the fucking tapes?”

When Michael eased back the hammer, Lenihan shuddered.

Louella

Maria the maid and Juan the gardener were amazed at how the day had turned out.

In the sunny morning, kittens and puppies and rabbits had played in the back yard, and Miss Louella had been so happy you would have thought her husband had come back from the grave and promised to take her out to a nightclub.

Even in the afternoon, Miss Louella had walked through the house smiling at anybody she saw.

But now, at dusk, they did not see Miss Louella at all.

She had been in the den for nearly two hours, ordering a cocktail every half hour or so, brooding, angry.

Couldn’t the staff do anything right? she fumed. Didn’t they know she liked ice in her drinks? Didn’t they remember that she wanted the short-stem cocktail glasses, not the long-stemmed ones? Didn’t they have any respect for her, a woman who slaved to support not just a daughter, a staff, a mansion — but a legend? Didn’t they know how difficult it was to be Louella Parsons when so many people wanted to cut you down, wanted to see you fail and humiliate yourself?

Did they have any idea at all of how heavy a burden this all was?

She dialed her phone.

“Hello.” It was a young man’s voice.

“To whom am I speaking?” she asked.

A sigh. “Miss Parsons, right?”

“Right.”

“He hasn’t come in yet, Miss Parsons. As soon as he does, I’ll have him call you. Just like I promised.”

“I’d like your name please. When I finally do talk with Mr. Rossetti, I’ll be able to tell him the name of the insensitive young man who was so uncooperative.”

“You’ve called four times in an hour and a half, Miss Parsons. It’s just that I’m busy. Mr. Rossetti left me all this ledger work to do.”

“I don’t like whiners.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Parsons. You want my name?”

“No, you seem to have learned your lesson. The next time I call, I trust I’ll be treated much better.”

“Yes, Miss Parsons.”

She sat in the awful, lingering silence of her den.

Where the hell was Rossetti?

Washington, D.C

Hoover

Clyde Tolson sat at his desk at home and picked up the ringing phone. It was his private line.

“Yes, Edgar?”

“Clyde, I’m scared.”

“Maybe things will work out.”

“You know better than that.”

“There’s at least a good chance they will.”

“Why don’t you come over to my office? We’ll have a drink.”

“I don’t want a drink. I’ve got a stack of paperwork here.”

“Maybe we should fly out there. Maybe we can help.”

“To L.A.? It’s too late. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.”

“I don’t like that attitude, Clyde.”

“I don’t either, but right now that’s the only attitude we can have. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I hate waiting.”

“There isn’t a choice.”

“Clyde. I’d really appreciate it if, as my best friend, you’d come and have a drink with me.”

“For Christ’s sake—”

“You know I don’t like blasphemy. Just one drink.”

“All right. One drink.”

“If you had to bet, which way do you think it’ll come out?”

“Fifty-fifty. Melanie is a psychopath, Edgar. You knew that when you sent her out.”

“I think she’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be over right away, Edgar.”

“Good boy.”

Sara

Three blocks from the hotel was a Hertz office. Michael emerged jangling a set of keys to a green Pontiac sedan.

Shutting her door, Sara said, “We need to call her. I saw a phone booth a block down.”

He pulled out of the parking lot in three violent jerks.

The evening traffic had started. Moving a single block took eight minutes.

“We’ll take Laura out for dinner tonight,” Sara said vacantly, as if talking in her sleep. “It’ll be just the three of us.”

He found the phone booth and pulled in.

When he got out, Michael saw that a young man with a beard had slipped into the booth first.

For the next four minutes, Michael paced while the young man went through a symphony of facial expressions. Then, abruptly, he kicked the door open and stomped out, cursing.

Michael dove into the booth, closed the door, took the piece of paper with the phone number on it from his shirt pocket, and splashed his coins on the small metal ledge.

He dropped a dime in the slot with trembling fingers. He carefully dialed the number.

The line was busy.

“Sonofabitch,” Michael said.

He immediately hung up, scooped his dime from the coin return and inserted it again.

He must have dialed the wrong number.

Kidnappers were supposed to keep their lines clear at all times.

Busy again.

Shit.

Again.

And again...

Melanie

She knelt next to Laura.

Laura smelled pretty bad. Not only from the blood, but she’d peed on herself.

Melanie had once kept a wounded guy she was torturing six days in a garage. Gangrene set in. The guy smelled so bad Melanie gagged when she got near him. But she got her information, and when she was finished with the guy she cut him up into fourteen chunks, put the chunks in a dark plastic bag, and rowed the bag out to the middle of the river and dropped it over the side. Mr. Hoover had been very happy about the information that Melanie had obtained, but suspicious when she told him that she hadn’t used excessive force on the guy. The man’s body was never found.

Suddenly, Melanie noticed something. Laura wasn’t moving. She shook her gently, as she had before, trying to wake her.

But the little girl did not move at all.

Melanie leaned forward, trying to hear if Laura was breathing. Nothing.

She put her thumb to Laura’s wrist, felt for a pulse. Nothing.

She slowly set Laura’s skinny arm down.

Ten-year-old Laura Drury was dead.

Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover sat in his office doing deep-breathing exercises.

He had recently seen a TV show in which a psychologist said that the best way to forestall panic was to close your eyes, begin inhaling deeply, and exhaling slowly.

Impulsively, J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and one of the world’s most respected men, jabbed his finger down on his intercom.

“Any calls for me from California?”

A frustrated sigh. “No, Mr. Hoover. Not since you asked me three minutes ago.”

“You didn’t leave your desk?”

“No, Mr. Hoover.”

“Very well,” Hoover said gruffly. “Carry on.”

Breathe in.

Slowly exhale.

Why the fuck hadn’t he heard from Melanie?

Think about being with Clyde on the Colorado river, fishing on a warm summer morning.

She could be so goddamned irresponsible, Melanie could.

Gently breathe in.

Gently breathe out.

He stabbed the intercom button. “I’m expecting a call from California. I want it put through the moment it comes in.”

“Yessir. I’ve written that down, sir.”

How could Melanie do this to him?

Melanie

Getting the dead girl rolled up in a small rug and loaded into the trunk took five sweaty minutes.

She had to move fast so nobody from the highway would see, and carefully so she wouldn’t get blood all over her. She’d saturated a bath towel with blood.

Some time ago, the phone had started ringing.

It would either be the dead girl’s parents or Hoover.

Either way, she wasn’t going to answer. She had taken it off the hook.

The drive to the woods took fifteen minutes. She followed asphalt roads till she found an area that plunged down to a deep ravine.

She wheeled the car off the road and drove deep into the woods, stopping when the trees got too thick. She got out and went over to the edge of the ravine and looked down. A narrow blue creek ran through the bottom. There was maybe a mile of timber here, cedars and spruce and hemlock.

She spent ten minutes checking out the nearby land, making sure that nobody was around.

She took the shovel from the back seat and went half way down the ravine and started digging.

Her hands blistered immediately. For all her expertise with the martial arts, she had the palms of a princess.

And then there were the Bluebirds.

She didn’t even hear them till they were right at the edge of the ravine, cute little girls in their cute little Bluebird uniforms led by some birdy middle-aged woman with a whistle that tweeted every few minutes.

Melanie dropped to the ground and lay flat.

They wouldn’t be able to see anything unless they came right down here.

“Girls,” the leader said, “let’s go on up the road there to the water fountain and fill our canteens.”

And they took off.

She waited a few minutes to make sure and then pushed himself to her feet.

Had to hurry now. Finish. Get out of here.

She picked up the shovel and fitted it into her bloody hands and started shoveling again.

Twenty minutes later, she went back to her car, and took the dead girl out of the trunk and carried her quickly over to the ravine and down to the shallow grave.

She began shoveling dirt onto Laura’s sweet, dead, rug-covered body.

Sara

They found a restaurant nearby. They ordered only Cokes. There was no way Sara could eat. The place was mock-Italian, with Chianti bottles holding candles on red-and-white-checkered tablecloths.

The phone was ten feet from their booth.

Every couple of minutes, Michael put down his cigarette and went to the phone.

It continued to be busy.

Something had gone wrong.

Returning to the booth, he said, “Maybe she wants us to keep calling.”

“Laura’s dead.”

“Sara. Listen to me. The woman doesn’t have any reason to kill her. She has every reason to keep her alive.”

“I’m just so scared.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Maybe you should try again.”

“Right.”

They had been in the restaurant for nearly an hour now.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice said.

“This is Michael Drury!” he spouted with relief.

“I’ve been waiting for your call.”

“I’ve been trying to get through for the past hour.”

“What about the tapes?”

“We want our daughter.”

“You know the deal, Mr. Drury.”

“We have the tapes.”

There was a pause. “You’d know better than to lead any policemen here, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course. All we want is our daughter. We don’t care about anything else.”

“Write this down.” She sounded young, bright, confident.

“Just a second,” he said. He wrestled out his small notepad and pen.

“All right,” Michael said.

“Here’s the address.”

Michael wrote it down.

“I’ll give you an hour and a half to get here.”

“I want to speak to my daughter.”

“You’ll see her soon enough. She’s fine.”

The woman hung up.

He walked back to Sara, took her hand and together, in an eager panic, they scurried back out into the clamor of the fading day.

Rossetti

He was on the way to his private club, in the massive black Cadillac that his employees kept so shiny and fine, when the phone signalled. He reached to the dashboard and picked it up. He always drove himself. Chauffeurs made him uncomfortable. Having chauffeurs suggested that you worked for the Mob. Except for movie stars and an occasional tycoon, the only people who had chauffeurs were mobsters.

Nobody ever called him on the car phone, except with an emergency. So this would not be good news.

It was Karla, the efficient secretary.

“Have you been listening to the radio?”

“No, I haven’t, Karla. Why?”

“Your friend, Mr. Mayhew.”

His chest tightened.

“What about him?”

“He had some kind of accident. At least they’re calling it an accident. Apparently he fell from a veranda at the Fenwick. Seventeen stories.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“He’s dead, of course. I figured you’d want to know since you two called each other so much lately. Should I send flowers to his home?”

“Please. That would be nice.”

Of course it was no accident. Somebody had gotten to Mayhew.

And now somebody would try to get to Rossetti.

He drove for a while in stunned confusion, missing his exit ramp and not even noticing it for eighteen miles.

His superiors had counted on him, and now that he had failed, they would punish him. A quick death did not frighten him. Death was darkness and nothing more. But he hoped they would not torture him because then he might die without dignity. He feared he would beg and sob and foul himself the way he had seen other men do when their deaths were long and painful.

Kill me quickly. Let me have my pride.

He decided not to wait for his superiors to come to him. He would go to them.

At the next off-ramp he came around and back in the direction of downtown Los Angeles.

He lifted the phone receiver. There was someone he needed to call before he spoke with the godfather. She was one more person he had let down.

Sara

She saw the house from the highway. Against the backdrop of ocean and darkening sky, the place looked lonely. Somewhere inside was Laura.

“You want to hand me the gun?”

This time she didn’t protest. If killing somebody was the price for getting Laura back, so be it. She took it from the glove compartment and set it on the seat beside Michael.

He veered left on the road leading to the house. He went all the way to the end of the road and pulled up beside the garage.

“I don’t see any lights,” Sara said.

“She said to go to the back door,” Michael said.

They got out.

There was a car in the garage.

They started up the creaking stairs to the back door.

He knocked. He knocked again.

“I just want to go in there and get her,” Sara whispered. “Why isn’t she answering?”

He knocked a third time.

He tried the doorknob. Locked.

The stairs creaked.

“Michael,” Sara hissed.

Up the stairs came a sleek red-haired woman, not much over twenty. The gun looked silly in her hand, a young girl playing at an adult’s game.

“Hi,” the woman said brightly. “You must be Laura’s parents.”

“Where is she?” Sara said.

“Gosh, why don’t you relax a little? We’ll talk about Laura in a minute. But right now I want you two to stand about three feet apart.”

“What?” Sara said.

“I speak plain English, Mrs. Drury. I want you to stand three feet apart.”

Sara and Michael parted.

“That’s fine.”

She came over to them cautiously, keeping the gun aimed at Michael.

She patted him down efficiently. She had no trouble finding his weapon.

She stuffed his gun in the waist of her skirt.

She moved to Sara. “You’re very pretty.”

Sara swallowed hard, controlling her desperation.

“Laura got your looks. She’s lucky.”

The young woman’s hands felt obscene on Sara’s body. Pat, pat, pat. Looking for weapons. But lingering, too.

“I take it the tapes are in your car.”

“Where’s our daughter?” Sara said. “We want our daughter first, at least to see her.”

“I’m the one holding the gun, Mrs. Drury.”

Melanie took a quick step toward Michael, grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled his head down while she brought her knee up into his face.

Michael’s nose dripped blood.

She drove her knee up between Michael’s legs.

He sagged to his knees and doubled over.

Sara lunged toward her but Melanie stopped her with the gun in her face. “I’ll kill you and your husband right here, unless you give me the tapes.”

“Don’t do it, Sara,” Michael said from the floor.

“You’re smarter than that, Mrs. Drury. Go get the tapes.”

Sara nodded and set off down the stairs.

On the way down, Sara tried to figure out a way to take the woman’s gun away when she returned.

Only when they had disarmed her were they going to find their daughter.

Something was in the garage, scuffling around.

She hesitated, listening, then continued to their car.

She reached into the glove compartment, took out the manilla envelope, and closed the car door.

A woman stepped out from the shadows at the rear of the garage, holding a gun and putting a shushing finger to her lips. When she came forward, she limped on her right leg, as if crippled.

The woman leaned in close. She wore a blue windbreaker and jeans. Sara assumed that the woman had parked her car somewhere up the highway and had snuck back here.

“I’m going to help you,” the woman said. “My name’s Vanessa Tully. That woman killed my husband. Just wait here and be quiet.”

Vanessa Tully went over to the stairs and started climbing them in her awkward way.

Melanie

Everything was going to work out fine. In a few moments, she would have the tapes and be gone. Mr. Hoover would be happy. They wouldn’t find Laura for years, if ever. Europe would be fun.

She looked down at Drury.

She should give him an extra kick in the groin just for existing. She hated handsome men.

One extra kick.

No harm in that.

She kicked him.

Michael

For Michael, there was just the slow roll of tide and the breeze from the ocean.

And the pain.

Then, without any warning, the woman stomped on his balls a second time.

He heard himself yowl. He was just a trembling animal now — afraid of the pain and afraid he would die.

And then he saw the other woman, sneaking up the stairs.

A slender, limping woman, with a gun.

The redhead had her back to the top of the stairs, enjoying the misery she had inflicted on him.

The second woman, now on the porch, said, “Turn around slowly and put the guns on the railing. Yours and Mr. Drury’s.”

Melanie hesitated, her shoulders hunched in surprise. The other woman took a couple of steps closer and put the pistol against the back of Melanie’s head.

“The guns, Melanie.”

She reluctantly obliged.

“Now turn around and face me.”

Michael crawled over to the porch railing and hauled himself to his feet.

“Where’s the little girl?” Vanessa asked Melanie.

“In the house.”

Sara appeared at the top of the stairs. She walked past Vanessa, Melanie, and Michael, straight to the back door. Michael joined her.

“Give them the key,” Vanessa said.

Melanie took out a key and handed it over to Sara.

The Drurys went inside. They searched the house.

“Laura! Laura!”

Their voices came back to them in awful echoes.

In one of the bedrooms, Michael found the rope that had been used to tie Laura up. In the living room, Sara found blotches of blood that had soaked into the couch. In the bathroom, Michael found a towel that had been used to soak up blood.

In the front closet, Sara found bullet holes and blood spots on the walls.

“In here!” she called.

Michael knew he was going to see something he did not want to see.

Vanessa

Vanessa couldn’t help herself. She smacked Melanie on the mouth with the butt of her gun.

“What did you do with their little girl?”

“She’s in there,” Melanie said through bloody lips.

“You’re lying.” Vanessa smiled icily. “Tell me the truth, Melanie, or I’ll kill you. Where is their little girl?”

She hit Melanie even harder this time and at long, long last Melanie told her the truth.

Michael

Michael peered into the closet. Six bullet holes. And a hint of gunsmoke odor in the air.

“She killed her, didn’t she?” Sara said.

He took her in his arms and let her sob into his shoulder.

Melanie

Melanie looked at Vanessa and grinned. “It’s too late, you may know where Laura is but it’s too late.”

Vanessa shouted for Sara and Michael to come out of the house.

A decade of martial arts training had not been in vain. With the speed and precision of a ninja, Melanie ripped the gun from Vanessa’s hand.

Then Melanie jumped on her.

Vanessa

Vanessa fought back. She heaved herself forward, slamming Melanie back against the porch railing.

The old wood cracked and they both plummeted to the sand below.

The gun flew out of Melanie’s hand.

Vanessa scrambled to get it.

Melanie tackled Vanessa and threw her down.

By the time Michael and Sara were on the porch to see, Melanie stood with her back to the house, holding the gun on Vanessa.

“You’ll be sorry you ever found me,” she said.

“You killed my husband.”

“Was that such a loss?” Melanie smiled.

Vanessa was raving. “He was my husband and he loved me!”

Melanie put two bullets in Vanessa’s belly and one in her chest.

Vanessa slumped to the sand.

At the same instant, Michael leaped from the porch onto Melanie’s back, throwing punches as he wrapped himself around her.

Melanie was incredibly strong. She took Michael for a bronco ride down the beach, trying to throw him off her back. Finally she fell and Michael was pitched over her head.

Michael got to his feet while Melanie was still on her knees. She was raising her gun when he kicked it from her hand. It tumbled into the scrub growth.

Michael dove after it, found it, and whirled around.

Melanie came sailing at him.

Reflexively he pulled the trigger.

The bullet exploded Melanie’s heart.

“No,” he said, realizing what he’d done. “No, no!”

He leaped at the dying woman as she fell over on her back.

Michael started slapping her face back and forth.

“Where is my daughter, you bitch?”

Blood spread across Melanie’s chest.

Sara dropped to her knees next to Michael. She gently touched his arm and said, “There’s no use.”

“Dead?” Michael shook his head. “She can’t be dead.”

He grabbed Melanie by her blouse, pulled her up and shook her violently.

“What did you do with our daughter!”

Gradually he calmed down, letting Melanie slide to the sand.

“Let’s go, honey,” Sara said.

“I didn’t mean to kill her. I wanted to tell you about Laura.” He sounded insane.

“I know,” she said, helping him to his feet.

Melanie

At first there was just blackness. It was very cold. Melanie was afraid. She felt vulnerable, the way she’d felt when she was five.

There was no more pain. But there was terror. Oh, yes.

It was freezing. She felt herself shivering. She wished there were some light, even faint starlight. It was like being submerged in dark, deep water.

And then she saw her.

Just ahead.

Walking down a long white tunnel.

Calling her name. Beckoning.

Jessica.

“I love you, Jessica! I love you!” Melanie cried out.

And Jessica kept walking toward her.

Smiling now.

Michael

The pain from Melanie’s first assault was worse when his senses returned, and it took them a long time to reach the beach house.

“We’ll find her,” Sara kept saying. “We’ll find her.”

The sound of the waves obscured Vanessa Tully’s moaning as they passed her, and they almost didn’t hear her.

But Sara heard, and steered them over to her.

“She’s dead,” Michael said.

“Maybe not.”

Sara dropped to her knees and put her head close to Vanessa’s face. Moonlight gave Vanessa’s face a ghostly pallor.

“Vanessa.”

No movement. But then a slight moan.

“We’re going to get an ambulance for you, Vanessa,” Sara said. “Can you hear me?”

Vanessa’s eyes flickered.

“Did she tell you where our daughter is?”

Vanessa was able to tell them in a halting, whispered fashion. Then her trembling hand reached out in the sand. And beyond her stretched fingertips lay the envelope containing the tapes.

Right where Sara had dropped it.

Sara kissed Vanessa on the forehead, then took her hand as the woman crossed over into death.

Michael went to the beach house, called for an ambulance, and gave a quick rundown to the police. Then he went downstairs to the garage.

Inside Melanie’s car, on the floor of the back seat, he found a small spade. He touched the dirt-caked edge of the metal. The dirt was moist.

Taylor Park, Vanessa had told them. Michael stared at the fresh dirt. A terrible conclusion suggested itself. Laura had been killed and buried.

Louella

“Telephone, ma’am. It’s Mr. Rossetti.”

“Oh, thank you.” She’d had more to drink than she’d intended and had fallen asleep in the armchair in her den. She had given up trying to find Rossetti.

At last. She’d be able to call that little prick Gibbons and rub his face in it.

She got up from the armchair with difficulty and tottered to her desk phone. “I hope you know how hard I’ve been looking for you, love.”

“Louella, it’s bad news.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I didn’t make my connection.”

“You don’t have the tapes?”

“No.”

“And you won’t be getting them?”

“I’m sorry, Louella.”

“But I’ve already told the newspaper—”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“But what could possibly have gone wrong? You sounded so sure about it.”

“The source fell through. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

He hung up.

She sat for a long time next to the phone, the famous Louella Parsons, who would now have to endure Gibbons’ humiliation.

No tapes. No boxed column, photo inside, carried on the front pages of the biggest dailies in America. Nothing.

A very old woman now, lost in her loneliness, she began to cry.

When she was finished crying, she called Gibbons and told him.

He was every bit the sneering prick she thought he’d be.

Laura

Darkness. Nightmare.

She was in her room and it was so dark that not even moonlight peeked through the curtain. And something in her sleep had scared her. Maybe it was the cute little dog that turned into the hissing, lashing snake. The nightmare she had so often.

Darkness. And she hurt.

But this was not her room. This was... somewhere else.

Dirt. Taste of — dirt!

And then she remembered.

The terrible woman. Her melting ice cream. Banging her head against the wall. Hiding in the closet. Then gunshots. Rocking, trying to escape them.

And then—

The woman wrapping her in a blanket or something and packing her in the car.

And then—

The piney air of a forest. She loved forests.

And then—

She was being pushed down into a hole in the ground. Unable to talk. Something clanking. Feeling pressure, weight on her. And dirt hitting her face...

All the while trying to scream. But nothing came out.

Then all the light went out, and she was breathing dirt.

Just darkness now — heavy, black.

And she couldn’t breathe.

Mommy. Please come and get me, Mommy.

Darkness.

Sara

The cops beat them to Taylor Park, three squad cars with cherries blazing into the blackness, splashing six officers in crisp dark uniforms with their red flashing lights.

The police fanned out, beginning their slow walk through the forest, flashlights probing, looking for any sign of a young girl.

In the eerie light, the woods looked unreal, the trees like props on a movie set.

They parked and Sara got out. A tall uniformed man came over to them. “You’re Mrs. Drury? I’m Sergeant Winthrop, LAPD.”

“Has there been any sign of her?” Sara asked.

“Not yet, ma’am.”

“We’d like to go into the woods, too,” Sara said. “To search.”

“No problem,” the sergeant said, “just so long as you don’t interfere with the officers.”

As if being summoned by a voice, Sara started walking along one of the trails that would lead her into the dark woods.

Laura

She remembered something she wished had stayed forgotten.

In science class, she’d learned that in a small, closed place, when the oxygen was used up, the person suffocated and died.

She was using up all her oxygen.

There couldn’t be much left. This was such a tiny place; she was wrapped in so tight, with so much heavy weight on her. She couldn’t move any part of her body.

Suffocation. And death.

Mommy. Please. Can’t you hear me?

Just darkness, deeper than any night she’d known.

Sara

She was just starting down the gully, trying to keep her footing on the rough slanting earth, when she sensed somebody behind her, and then saw the arrow of a flashlight beam.

“I thought I’d help you.”

She couldn’t believe it. David Lenihan, the man from Washington.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to find your daughter. It matters to me, Mrs. Drury. Believe it or not.”

“You’re a strange man, Mr. Lenihan. I don’t know whether you’re good or bad.”

“That’s the hell of it, isn’t it? I don’t know, either. Let’s just find your little girl.”

Cop

The rookie’s name was Runyon. Red hair. Freckles. Pug nose. Six months a cop.

Runyon flashed his light around. Ground was dry but spongy with moss. People had no respect for forest land. Busted bottles and empty cigarette packs and used rubbers and even a few pages of nudie magazines in here. Lot of twisted people in this world, who ought to be—

His light flashed over something to the right of a massive hemlock. He caught it in the beam.

He broke into a run, yelling, “Hey, over here! Over here!”

Michael

Michael heard the cop just over the rise.

Clutching his flashlight, he set off running into the thick undergrowth.

Pine branches slashed his face, but he didn’t feel them.

Laura had been found.

He came upon several young cops standing over something white in the brush. Everything was dark except for where the beam of the cop’s flashlight shone.

Something white. Still.

Michael stopped.

“Aw, shit, Runyon,” said an older, heavier cop crouched in front of the rookie. “Just a friggin’ sheet, all rotted. It ain’t your fault.”

“Well, I’m sorry anyway.”

Just then Sara’s scream pierced the dark woods.

Sara

Laura was down there, Sara knew it.

She could see the freshly turned earth.

Placing her newly borrowed flashlight beside the mound of dirt, she fell to her knees and dug with both hands.

“Hold on!” she shouted. “Hold on, Laura!”

Lenihan dropped to his knees on the other side of the makeshift grave and began to dig. And to call out to her. “We’re almost there, Dulcie! Don’t worry!”

Even in her frenzy, Sara realized that Dulcie must be the name of Lenihan’s dead daughter.

Michael

Michael thought Sara was hurt when he first heard her scream. But when he saw her digging, he ran to her side and joined in.

A cop fell to his knees and helped. Another cop held two lights aloft and trained them on the grave.

Then, faintly, it came: a sound like bursts of a high-pitched hum.

“Laura!” Sara cried. “Laura!”

Less than two minutes later, Sara and Michael Drury held their dirty and frightened, sobbing and gasping daughter in their arms.

“The friggin’ rug saved her,” said the sergeant, shaking his head as tears rolled down his face. “It trapped a pocket of air and let her breathe.”

Sara

The ambulance bearing Laura and Michael left for the hospital.

Sara was in the back seat of a squad car, still parked at the woods. For all the blood on Laura’s arms and chest, her gunshot wound was superficial. While the extent of Laura’s psychological trauma was still unknown, physically she was stable.

Sara had desperately wanted to go with the ambulance, but the white-haired detective named Robbins, seated beside her, had forced her to remain. He insisted repeatedly that she had to tell him everything, that her recollection of the details was “a matter of the greatest urgency.” He wanted to know everything about the case from the time Bellamy came to the office and told her about the combination to the safe.

Rain had begun to fall, sparkling the windshield. Detective Robbins turned on the wipers.

Dazed, Sara had told Detective Robbins everything she knew.

“But you don’t know what was on the tapes?”

“No. Just something worth money and lives.”

A knock on the driver’s window.

“Call for Detective Robbins from the commissioner,” said a cop to the driver.

Robbins waved his acknowledgment. “We have a direct line in the police van over there. Excuse me for a few minutes.”

Sara laid her head back against the seat.

All human noise was distant and forgotten. Just the soothing rain and the rhythm of the wipers.

Sara closed her eyes and dozed. When she opened them, Lenihan was sitting beside her.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” She smiled. “Thanks for helping me with Laura.”

“My privilege.”

“I know why you helped me, Mr. Lenihan. Your daughter, I mean. I’m sorry you lost her. I also know that you’re with Washington and that you want the tapes.”

“All that’s true.”

“I know. I want you to have them. I certainly never wanted them.”

Lenihan’s relief was palpable. “Can I do anything for you?”

Sara smiled. For the first time in days.

“You can tell me what’s on them.”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

Sara sat up. Pawed sleep from her face.

“There’s a plane leaving in one hour and ten minutes, Mrs. Drury. In order to make it, I need to leave right now.”

She took the envelope from her jacket pocket and handed it to him.

“I’m sorry about your daughter, Mr. Lenihan. I’m sure you loved her very much.”

She reached across the seat and grasped his hand.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Drury. I hope things go well with the three of you.” The sorrow had returned to his eyes and voice. He stuffed the tapes into the pocket of his Burberry coat. “Thanks.”

He stepped into the rain and the night and was gone.

Tolson

Tolson knocked on Edgar’s door.

Edgar sat behind his desk in his private office: as usual, with his jacket on, his hair perfectly combed, as if posing for an official picture.

Clyde closed the door behind him. “Friend of mine from the LAPD called. They’ve got a positive ID on a body.”

“Melanie?”

Clyde nodded.

“Sonofabitch.”

Edgar suddenly looked old and frail. Clyde felt sad. Both of the men knew that what had been at stake here was far more important than the tapes; it was their power and their future.

“Sonofabitch.” Only a whisper now.

“Why don’t you have a drink, Edgar?”

“No, thanks.”

“There’ll be other ways to get Jack Kennedy. This is just a setback.”

Edgar looked up at him. “They aren’t afraid of us any more, Clyde. Not the way they used to be. Those tapes would have brought us back.”

Clyde started to speak but stopped himself. Why lie any more? Edgar was right. The tapes had been vital to sustaining the kind of power — and fear — that Edgar and Clyde had for so long enjoyed.

“Well, if you’re not going to have a drink, I am.”

He went over to the concealed bar and poured a Scotch.

He carried the drink to the window and looked out on Washington.

“We’ve still got a lot of good years ahead of us, Edgar.”

“No, we don’t and you know it. They’re going to get us soon enough. All those bastards.”

Clyde looked down at Edgar. Uncomfortably, he put a hand on Edgar’s shoulder.

“We’ll go fishing, Edgar, and say ‘fuck you’ to all of them.”

But Edgar was neither watching nor listening. He was somewhere else.

Clyde finished his drink, put his glass back on the bar, and left the office.

There were times when Edgar needed to be alone, and this was one of them.

Clyde would have to be strong for both of them, just as he’d been so many times over so many, many years.

Lenihan

At L.A. International Airport, David Lenihan made the call that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States, had been anxiously awaiting.

The number was private, known by only three people in the world.

“It’s done,” Lenihan said.

“You got them?”

“I got them.”

“Oh, David... David. You saved our ass. Bless you, my son.” He laughed. He was a charming bastard, JFK was, no doubt about it.

“I’m on my way back.”

“I’ll have champagne waiting.”

Lenihan had wondered if he’d actually have nerve enough to say it. He hesitated and then spoke. “Jack, a little girl was almost killed because of this.”

“I’m sorry, David. You know I wouldn’t—”

“I’m not going to clean up any more of your messes. Do my regular job, fine. But no more of your private scrapes. You’re jeopardizing the whole country. Do we understand each other, Jack?”

Lenihan had known how Jack would react. Icy silence. Nobody talked to Jack Kennedy that way.

Finally: “We’ll talk when you get back.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy hung up.

For a moment, David Lenihan felt a spasm of remorse. He would never again be in Jack Kennedy’s innermost circle.

But then he smiled. He didn’t want to be in Jack Kennedy’s innermost circle anyway.

He picked up his luggage and walked toward the gate.

Sara

Laura yawned. “I’m kind of sleepy, Mommy.”

She smiled. “I know. It’s eleven-fifteen at night.”

“We’ll be here in the morning when you wake up,” Michael said, leaning over the hospital bed and kissing Laura on the forehead.

The doctors had wrapped her shoulder wound in gauze, stitched her facial lacerations, and taped a badly gouged knee. She looked like a war veteran.

The rain streaked the window with silver drops. Outside, it was dark, but this night was not scary.

After she was asleep, Sara said, “She looks so beautiful in her bed.” Tears filled her eyes and her throat got raspy. “I love her so much, Michael, I can’t tell you.”

He took her to him, but as she came into his arms, she knew it was gone: that brief troubled intimacy that had been theirs again over the fear of losing Laura. They were distant again.

“I’d better tell you,” Michael said. “Kathryn is waiting for me downstairs.”

She smiled. “I figured that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No reason to be,” Sara said, feeling lonelier than she could ever remember. “You’ve got your life now, and I’ve got mine.”

He left, and Sara sat alone by her daughter’s bedside.

Suddenly, Jeff appeared in the doorway. He came into the room and sat down.

“I saw Michael leave. Can I sit here awhile?”

“Sure.”

For a while they sat and said nothing. She was comfortable enough with Jeff not to talk. Then Sara slept. For the first time in years — in decades, it seemed — her sleep was dreamless and profound. She knew now that everything would work out. There would still be pain and doubt and memories, but she was free now of Michael’s shadow. Free.

She slept.

And in the morning when she awoke, she saw Jeff coming through the door with orange juice for Laura and coffee for Sara.