Читать книгу Low Chicago - Группа авторов - Страница 9

NICK WILLIAMS HAD NEVER been to Chicago before, let alone its Gold Coast district. The Playboy Mansion was Beaux Arts, built to impress, four stories of classical French brick and exposed limestone with a steep slate roof and attic windows flanked with Grecian urns. The chauffeur who’d met him at the airport carried his suitcase up the walkway. Nick carried the Argus’s case himself. He paused for a moment to read the brass plaque set over the main door: Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare. Nick grinned, his high school Latin coming in handy for more than the mottos of movie studios: If You Don’t Swing, Don’t Ring.

The February weather was much cooler than Los Angeles, and he wished he’d brought a heavier coat. But it was warmer inside, especially in the parlor off the black-and-white marble foyer. Hef awaited in an ornate Victorian wingback chair upholstered in rose velvet, flanked not by classical urns but by classic beauties. Two young women, a blonde and a brunette, lounged on matching divans to each side, attired in diaphanous gowns like the Muses of old … or perhaps a more sybaritic interpretation of Old King Cole’s attendants, since the blonde was pouring Hef a snifter of cognac from the requisite decanter of an unlocked tantalus while the brunette reclined near a Delft tobacco jar and a matching porcelain box. The pipe was in Hef’s hand, and he was dressed in a rich black velvet smoking jacket and slippers, all the better to enjoy the roaring fire in the parlor’s fireplace. The porthole television in the burl-wood cabinet opposite glowed like a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. The all-seeing eye within winked and vanished, the CBS logo replaced by the Olympic rings, then the dizzying melody of Strauss’s “Acceleration Waltz” started up, a Dutch beauty entering the Squaw Valley ice arena.

“Ah, Mr. Williams,” Hef said, rising as the chauffeur took Nick’s camera bag, “or may I call you Nick?”

Nick removed his suit jacket, which the chauffeur also took. “Nick’s fine.” He doffed the new gray fedora he’d bought for the trip. He regretted letting it go, feeling like the soft felt was almost a part of him now. But the chauffeur was implacable.

Hef clenched his pipe in his teeth so he could shake hands. “Welcome to the Playboy family.” He glanced up at Nick, who had a good six inches on him. “You’ll do just fine. Swimmer, I understand?” Hef glanced to the television, where the skater twirled through her revolutions. “The agent said you’d hoped to compete in Melbourne, but dropped out.”

“I pulled something in college,” Nick confessed, failing to mention that it was an ace.

Hef swirled his cognac contemplatively. “Any chance you’ll represent us this summer in Rome?”

“Doubtful.” The Olympics tested for the wild card, and while Nick’s ace didn’t help him in the three hundred meter, it would still disqualify him. And tip his hand that he was also Will-o’-Wisp, the Hollywood Phantom, mystery ace of the movie lots, and Hedda Hopper’s horror.

“Can you lie?” Hef grinned. “I know you’ve done some acting, and it will stir up interest on Playboy’s Penthouse.”

“I can lie,” Nick admitted truthfully.

Hef glanced to the chauffeur. “Percy, take those to Mr. Williams’s room.” Hef swirled his snifter. “Care for cognac? Sherry? Port?”

“I don’t drink,” Nick confessed, not mentioning that alcohol made it harder to control his ace, “but I do smoke.”

“Constance?” Hef glanced to the brunette.

She pulled open the drawer of the tobacco jar’s table, revealing it to be a humidor stocked with a wide assortment of cigars. She also lifted the lid of a porcelain box disclosing French Gauloises. Nick took one and allowed Constance to give him a light.

It was good, and Nick took a puff while Hef gestured to the furnishings. “These used to be in the Everleigh Club’s Rose Room.” He took a puff of his own pipe. “Ada just passed away and we were able to acquire her whole collection.”

“Everleigh Club?” Nick cocked his head and took a drag on the cigarette.

“Chicago’s carriage trade brothel. Exceedingly exclusive, but gone half a century next year.” Hef took another puff on his pipe. “Of course, the Playboy Mansion’s my home, and our new Playboy Club will be a gentleman’s club, but it doesn’t hurt to have some of the gas lamp finery.” He took a sip of cognac, then handed the snifter to the blonde. “Thanks, Gwen.” Hef gestured to the foyer and the grand staircase leading up. “May I give you the tour?”

“Please.”

Plush carpeting secured with brass runners led the way to the next floor, which was nothing if not more opulent. “Got the place last year. Built for Dr. Isham and his wife, Katherine, in 1899,” Hef explained. “Supposedly Teddy Roosevelt visited. Let me show you the ballroom. We host our most swinging parties there.” He ushered Nick back up the grand staircase, Constance and Gwen fluttering after them like salt and pepper moths.

If the second floor was opulent, the ballroom was beyond compare, the ne plus ultra in fin de siècle luxury, with tall Doric columns carved in rich mahogany instead of marble, matching paneling, a cavernous coffered ceiling with gilded rosettes and painted beams, a limestone fireplace large enough to walk into flanked with the sculpted visages of guardian lions, and, in the center of the sweeping parquet floor, a piano covered with a fortune in gold leaf, glittering like the hoard from Das Rheingold.

“Ada’s treasure.” Hef looked slyly to Nick. “We had to have it. Do you play?”

“Not one of my talents, I’m afraid,” Nick admitted. “Where is everyone?”

“Oh, they’re around the mansion. Lots of bedrooms. Even rumors of some hidden passageways. Still discovering all the secrets.” Hef gave a wink as Constance and Gwen fluttered right and left around the dance floor in preordained orbits until coming to rest at the piano bench, starting a girlish duet of “Tea for Two.”

Nick let his host escort him across the floor until Hef paused him midway, instructing, “Kick off your shoes. Just had it polished and it’s nice to get the full effect.”

It was a bit odd, but Nick was not going to disappoint his host, and there was a certain childlike fun to sliding across the smooth wood in your socks.

Nick’s ace was electrical, the wild card having saved him from electrocution by turning him into a human electrical capacitor. It mostly gave him the power to toss ball lightning, but along with that came an attunement to the electromagnetic spectrum. Nick sensed something: not electricity, but interference, a good bit of metal somewhere in the floor below them. He didn’t have time to make sense of it, his host beckoning for him to join him at the piano.

Nick took a last puff of his cigarette, then stubbed out the butt on the plum blossoms of the cloisonné ashtray atop the Chinese smoking stand by the piano’s head. “Stand there,” Hef instructed, indicating a small Oriental accent rug by the crook of the piano a few steps back, “you get the best sound.”

Constance and Gwen fluttered their lashes coquettishly, sharing some private joke as they continued their duet, but Nick did as he was told, stepping onto the accent rug. Constance winked, reaching up to turn the sheet music, but instead pulled a gilded lever.

The floor fell out from under Nick, but not the rug, and he felt himself falling down a chute into darkness. He panicked, remembering stories of Chicago’s infamous Murder Castle. He lit up with a nimbus of electricity, but it almost as quickly grounded itself on the copper sides of the chute he was sliding down, the accent rug acting like the burlap sack at a carnival slide to speed his descent. Nick concentrated, letting his electric glow come only to his eyes, illuminating the chute but not grounding on it while his ace sensed something below him, not metal, not earth, but … water.

A bell rang and not just in Nick’s head as he came to the end of the chute and another trapdoor sprang open, spitting him out into light and brilliance.

It was instinct, Nick had felt this before, leaping from the plunge into the high-dive pool at the University of Southern California. Muscles tensed, hands placed together, not in prayer, but to part the water as he entered, steeling himself, pulling his ace taut so none of his internal reservoir would ground out.

The water was warm and the pool was deep. Nick swam down instinctively, then up and over, surfacing at a distance to the strains of more piano music, this time from a black baby grand, and the sprightly chatter and laughter of a pool party.

Women in bathing suits and a few men swam about or lounged poolside, the whole basement chamber decorated with African masks, dracaena, and birds of paradise till it resembled a mermaid’s grotto.

The bell sounded again and the ceiling chute fell open, Hef coming down feetfirst, sans robe, slippers, and pipe, now wearing only swim trunks.

He plunged into the pool, then came up laughing, swimming over to Nick. “Welcome to the Playboy Family. Thought a swimmer wouldn’t be too shocked with our initiation prank.”

Nick smiled, teeth gritted with the realization of how close he’d come to electrocuting everyone. “Not shocked, no.”

“You should have seen him dive!” exclaimed one of a bevy of bathing beauties floating like nereids nearby. “Didn’t even make a splash! Like an eel!”

Electric eel, Nick thought but did not correct her.

Hef laughed and the bell rang again, the trapdoor opening as Constance and Gwen entered the pool together, their diaphanous gowns shed like moth wings, now clad only in daring bikinis, black and white. They swam over, Gwen reaching out to him, smiling. “Let’s get you out of these wet things …”

Nick didn’t resist, Gwen releasing him from his wet tie and unbuttoning his equally soaked shirt, Constance diving down like a pearl diver and taking off his pants. Hands strayed and lingered, flirtatious and beyond. Nick stopped Constance before she pulled his boxers free, but didn’t stop her entirely. If you don’t swing, don’t ring …

Constance put the play in Playmate, splashing back, laughing, having teased him then stolen his socks. Hef swam over as the pair of nymphettes left the pool with their booty. “Let me show you around.”

It was like Neptune introducing his court, except the mermaids were Playmates and the assorted castaway sailors and dolphin riders had been replaced by photographers, editors, and layout directors of the Playboy staff. Nick could hardly keep track of them all. The only one of especial note seemed to be Victor Lownes, Playboy’s promotions director, who was swimming about with a young actress named Ilse. “So, Hef, what do you think about Ilse’s kitten idea?”

“Still like my original plan, but so long as we get Zelda Wynn Valdes to design the final costume, I don’t much care.”

“Then let me get someone else’s opinion.” Lownes glanced to Nick. “We’ve been batting around outfits for our new place. Hef wants satin corsets, like the gals at the old Everleigh Club.”

“Got some great examples of those now,” Hef pointed out. “Ada’s photo albums are in the library. You need to look at them.”

Lownes nodded while paddling. “Yeah, but Ilse had a swell idea: Playboy’s mascot is the tomcat, so she thought we could have the girls dress up as sexy kittens.”

“Pussycats,” Ilse purred with a pronounced and erotic Eastern European accent.

“Maybe a little too on the nose.” Hef turned to Nick, explaining, “When we were first going to launch, we wanted to be Stag Party with a swinging stag for our mascot. But then Stag magazine sued so we swapped to Playboy and went with the tomcat.”

“So what do you think?” Lownes pressed.

“Not sure, but I like the idea of Valdes.” Nick knew Hollywood politics and when to be a yes-man. “She did Josephine Baker’s costumes, right?”

“Some of them,” Hef agreed. “Not sure if she did the ‘banana dance’ one, but that’s the iconic look we want.” He turned to Lownes and Ilse. “Make a mock-up and I’ll decide.”

“My mother sews,” Ilse told Lownes, who said, “Done.”

It seemed poolside business was as much a thing in Chicago as it was in Hollywood.

They swam on, chatting, mingling, and schmoozing, giving Nick a chance to meet the staff and get a sense of the magazine’s organization. Then, bobbing atop a Jacuzzi that bubbled like a witch’s cauldron or at least a tide pool attached to a thermal vent, sat a familiar face … familiar from newspapers and television. Hef grinned. “May I introduce our next president, John F. Kennedy?”

“Just senator for now,” Kennedy said in his Boston Brahmin accent, raising his shoulders out of the pool, revealing an old scar, “but call me Jack. Who’s this?”

“Our new photographer,” Hef told Kennedy, “Nick Williams. Out from Hollywood.”

“Excellent dive you did there,” the senator complimented. “Probably be even better with swimwear.”

“Everything’s better with swimwear,” remarked a pert Playmate perched on the edge of the bubbling hot tub in a white satin one-piece. It matched her fluffy baby-fine platinum hair, which Nick suddenly realized had huge rabbit ears sticking up out of it. Not the antennae from a television set, but actual White Rabbit–style white rabbit ears, albeit scaled up and sized for an adult woman. Or a joker. A matching fluffy white tail poked out of the rear of her bathing suit as she sat there dabbling her still human toes in the water. “Go ahead and stare.” She laughed. “Everyone does. It’s natural.”

“Let me introduce Julie Cotton,” Hef said, “one of our aspiring Playmates.”

“I’m guessing you’re Nick, the new photographer.” When Julie grinned her ears stood up straighter. “Hef said you were a swimmer.” She looked to Hef. “Can I have him for my photo shoot?”

“If you like,” Hef said, then laughed. “You just got me to agree to give you a test shoot, didn’t you? Clever bunny.”

Julie’s nose wrinkled as the pride transmitted to her ears, making them stand up higher. “Hey, a girl does what she can.”

Kennedy laughed along with her. “That you do.”

She touched her toes with their painted pink nails to his shoulders flirtatiously. “So do you,” Julie said, laughing, “for all of us. You’re a war hero. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’”

It sounded like a quote from something, Nick thought, and evidently Kennedy thought so, too. “Nice line,” he remarked. “Mind if I borrow it?”

“It’s yours.” She laughed lightly. “You’re my favorite president.”

He laughed in turn. “Not president yet. Not even nominee. Have Stuart Symington to contend with, and Lyndon Johnson, and refreshing as this party is, I need to talk with Mayor Daley tonight, or else my party may go with Adlai Stevenson again. But thank you for your vote.”

She gave him a wistful look, as if there were something important she wanted to tell him, but only said, “I did my fourth-grade report on you.”

Kennedy glanced back over his shoulder at the bunny girl. “You’re from Massachusetts? Not many girls would do a report on a lowly representative.”

“My family moved around,” she confessed in an unplaceable midwestern accent, “especially after my card turned.” She smiled ruefully. “You’ve helped us jokers a lot.”

“Not as much as I’ve wanted to.”

“Every little bit counts, and you’re going to do more.” She bit her lower lip, revealing slightly, but cutely, buck teeth. Or bunny teeth. Nick couldn’t tell if it was a joker trait or the way her teeth were naturally.

Nick considered. Julie acted awfully confident for a joker, even more confident than your average ace, and he should know. Maybe she’d drawn a prophetic ace, too?

“Do you think he can beat Nixon?” Nick asked.

Julie gave a pained look. “Yeah, but …” Her left ear flopped over enchantingly as she bit her lip again, looking at Jack Kennedy with profound adoration and hero worship.

“Thanks.” Kennedy smiled, basking in her attention. “Still need to keep up the fight, though. Nixon might still be president.”

“Yeah, but he’s a crook,” Julie swore. “It’ll come out. He won’t be president long. Trust me.” Her rabbit ears positively vibrated.

Nick couldn’t be sure whether Julie was speaking prophecy or the quiet or not-so-quiet rage all wild cards felt for Nixon after the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. What had happened to Black Eagle, the Envoy, and poor Brain Trust was unforgivable, especially after they were betrayed by Jack Braun, the Golden Rat. As a joker, Julie could speak her rage publicly. As an ace up the sleeve, Nick needed to keep his feelings hidden, including his shame and ambivalence.

He’d been rooting for Nixon when the Four Aces trial had been going on, an idiot high school kid in conservative Orange County, his head filled with equal parts swimming and girls—which left plenty of room for hatred of Reds and the twisted victims of an alien virus, except for Golden Boy, whom Nixon praised. But after Nick’s own card turned, he’d gotten a jolt, not just of electricity but of reality. He’d had to reexamine HUAC and himself, not liking what he saw.

Will-o’-Wisp, the Hollywood Phantom, was as much an attempt to assuage his guilt as anything else. Not that idiot high school nat Nick had done much to help Nixon break the Four Aces. But a whole lot of people doing not much added up to a lot so it came to the same thing.

Even so, there were things you couldn’t say when you were up the sleeve unless you wanted to attract attention. “Are you sure?” Nick asked. “I know Nixon’s conservative, but I think he’s an honest patriot.”

“He’s a crook,” Julie stressed. “Trust me.”

Hef chuckled. “Knew you were Californian, but hadn’t pegged you for a Nixon man.”

“My family’s from Whittier,” Nick admitted with a bashful grin. “Went to the same high school as Dick.”

“Hard to compete with a hometown hero,” Jack said with a laugh, “but I’ll try.”

Nick turned his self-deprecating grin to the senator. He’d already decided a while ago Kennedy would get his vote if he got the nomination, but he was not about to tell anyone. Not even Jack Kennedy as it turned out. “I’m willing to listen.”

Nick did. He was not enough of a policy wonk to follow everything, but Kennedy’s stance on civil rights was quite clear, for jokers, aces, Reds, blacks—everyone.

Hef patted Nick on the back. “Convinced now?” He then said to Kennedy, “Remember that same speech, with the same intensity. We’ll have you deliver it tomorrow on Playboy’s Penthouse when we introduce Nick. And I’ll try to get Mayor Daley there for a second chat.”

“Do I get introduced too?” Julie asked hopefully, her ears flopping slightly as she cocked her head.

“We’ll see, but I want to see your test shoot first. Talk about it with Nick.”

“Talk about what?” asked a tall blond middle-aged man walking up along the deck. He looked about Nick’s own height, around six four, and even had the same epicanthal fold next to his eye like Nick had inherited from his mom. “Who’s Nick?”

Nick looked closer, realizing the man looked and sounded like his uncle Fritz, if slightly older and in better shape.

“This is Nick,” Hef said, “our new photographer. Nick Williams, meet Will Monroe, Julie’s … agent.”

Nick shook Will’s hand as he stepped down into the hot tub. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Will’s smile was genuine, but cursory. He gave Nick an intent look, but then distracted by the inexorable draw of celebrity, turned to Senator Kennedy.

“John Kennedy.” The senator introduced himself with a politician’s handshake. “But you can call me Jack. Monroe, huh? Not perchance a descendant of President Monroe?”

“Not so far as I know”—Will Monroe chuckled, sitting down in the hot tub—“but I might have a president somewhere in my family tree …”

“Any relation to Marilyn Monroe?” Nick asked. He’d never met her himself, but they’d been on the same set when he’d gotten a bit part for the swimming ensemble in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Will gave him a sly look. “Not yet,” he said with a chuckle.

“Everyone wants to meet my first centerfold,” Hef pointed out, adding to the merriment. “Hell, I still want to meet her. I just bought pictures a calendar company took before she made it big.” He glanced then to Kennedy. “But speaking of meeting people, think you’ve soaked your shoulder enough to mingle a bit before seeing Daley?”

“Happy to.” Jack Kennedy climbed over the lip of the Jacuzzi and back into the main pool.

Nick could take a signal: Hef had left him to talk with Julie the joker and get ideas for her shoot. This was a test for him as well as her. Fortunately for Nick, he’d gotten over the idea of jokers a while ago, having barely missed becoming one himself.

Will Monroe asked Nick, “Join me?” He gave a glance to Julie as well. “You too.”

“Okay,” she conceded, her coral-painted lips forming a perfect moue, “but don’t laugh if I end up looking and smelling like a wet rabbit.”

Nick did a swimmer’s push-up, hauling himself out of the pool and swinging his legs around into the hot tub just as Julie slipped in. He glanced to Will. “From SoCal too?”

“Yep. Hollywood. Grew up in the movie business. Mom was an actress.”

“Anyone I’ve heard of?”

Will Monroe paused, giving a smile of equal parts humor and sadness. “Possibly.”

Nick judged Will Monroe’s age and did the math. “Didn’t make it into talkies?”

“Oh, she had some success there.” Will smiled. “Lost her, well, a few years ago, but it feels like a lifetime away.”

“What about your dad?”

“Never met him.” Will looked sad. “Or at least not that I knew.” He sighed. “Big scandal, of course. But my mom was a bigger star, so she just went on. Papers had a field day, everyone speculating. All I know is that it was someone important, someone powerful: politician, movie mogul, maybe someone in the mob. Mom never told anyone, not even me.” He grimaced. “Every time I asked her, she got angry, then cried. But I think the truth was, she was scared and trying to protect me.”

Nick couldn’t really understand Will’s pain. He had a close relationship with his father—or at least close enough, he’d never told Dad he’d drawn an ace—but mentioning the fact would be cruel. So he just said, “I’m sorry.” After a long moment, broken only by the bubbles of the tub and the bright chatter in the background, he asked, “Any other possibilities? Other leads?”

“Not really.” Will shook his head. “After a while, I learned not to ask. It hurt Mom, and I knew she wasn’t going to give me an answer, so I just went on with my life.” He sighed again. “The only other chance is something I didn’t really pay attention to. When I was busy making The Final Ace, my first major picture, there was this fake psychic who said she knew who my father was and would tell. And she did. Dumped an old beat-up man’s hat on her head, said she was channeling his spirit—like bad community theater with no costume budget. I was so used to people making up wild guesses and bullshit that I completely blew it off until my mother threw lawyers at the psychic to make her shut up.” Will looked up over at Nick, tears in his eyes. “That’s when I knew the psychic had said something right. I’d never seen my mom so scared, not just for herself, but for me. She made me promise never to look into what that psychic said.”

“Even a stopped watch is right twice a day,” Nick pointed out. “I know fake mediums were a big thing in the twenties, but the more convincing ones dug up dirt on their targets first. Could be this medium was a better investigator than she was a psychic.”

“Funny you should mention that.” Will gave a dark chuckle. “The psychic said her phantom had been a private investigator too, some minor gumshoe and background actor who’d stumbled into something bad with my mom and paid the ultimate price.”

Nick felt geese walk over his grave, a horrible horripilation all the weirder for being in a hot tub. But broken watches were often right because coincidence was always a possibility. “Well, at least in the twenties they didn’t have real psychics. Not like now.”

Will chuckled a bit too long. “No, not like now.”

The conversation had taken an odder and more uncomfortable angle than Nick had expected, so he switched the subject. “So, what do you think about Hef guessing the Golden Globe nominations on last week’s Penthouse and scooping the scandal sheets? Louella Parson’s livid, and Hedda Hopper’s speculating that Hef’s a secret ace.”

Will laughed uproariously. “That crazy old bat. Actually, Hef’s picks were my picks. We had a gentleman’s bet, so he asked me to prove it. So I told him who would be nominated.”

Nick was taken aback. “So you’re the ace?”

Will shook his head. “No, just a guy from Tinseltown who knows the score.”

Nick whistled. “Knowing the score like that, you should be composing for the cinema.”

Will shrugged. “They’re both savvy women, but Louella has her ego and alliances while Hedda has a whole arsenal of axes to grind and puts those at a higher priority. Whereas I just have a professional interest in the business and not much in the way of alliances.”

“Except Hef.”

“We go back a long way.”

“Father figure?”

“You could say that.” Will chuckled again.

“So what is your professional interest in the business? Just agent?”

“For the present,” Will said, sharing another chuckle with Julie at some private joke, “but I’ve made some pictures myself. Not acting, mind you—producing and directing. The Final Ace with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hindenburg with Leonardo DiCaprio.”

“Sounds like Rudolph Valentino.” Nick laughed. “Stage names?”

“No, their actual names.”

“Never heard of them. Sorry.”

“Not a problem. Didn’t expect you to.” Will Monroe shrugged. “They’ll be famous in Hollywood one day. So will I.”

“You already are to me,” Julie Cotton told him. Her rabbit ears were, as warned, beginning to look bedraggled, like a wet bunny.

She was being kind and flirtatious, but Nick had been around Hollywood enough that he knew how the casting couch worked. Yet even so, he asked, “So what’s the story with you two? How’d you get together?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” she said, glancing to Will. “I was working as a waitress, hoping to be discovered, then fate just threw us together …”

“She brought me a martini,” Will reminisced. “Next thing we knew, we were naked together in a hotel room.”

“A swanky hotel room,” Julie bragged. “The Palmer House.”

“We realized we shared a future.”

“Then Will suggested we visit his friend Hef and here we are.” Julie looked about herself to the Playboy grotto and waggled her ears, a party trick making them point to their surroundings as expressively as a model’s hands.

Nick shrugged. It all sounded relatively innocent or at least unremarkable. Julie was hardly the first young woman to hook up with an older man, and when you were a joker, your options were even more limited.

Even so, there was something that was itching him. Julie seemed unusually self-confident even for a modern woman, let alone a joker, and the brashness of most jokers of Nick’s acquaintance was a mask over self-loathing. Nick knew that trick too well himself. Will displayed a similar confidence, and a lot more than you’d expect for a middle-aged producer who didn’t much make it out of the silent era and was now playing host to a young protégée. Then again, as astute as Will was with the pictures biz, it wasn’t a bad move to go in as the power behind the throne to a new player on the media world stage.

“You think Hef’s going to move out to Hollywood?” Nick asked.

“You can bet money on it,” Will told him.

The banter continued, pleasant but innocuous, and after setting a time for the photo shoot tomorrow, they moved on, as did Nick, chatting with Playmates, both past and aspiring, and generally getting a sense of the place. Constance and Gwen showed him the way to his room so he could freshen up before dinner, then left him to his own devices and bemusement.

The bedroom was small as things went in the mansion and nowhere near as palatial as the ballroom or Hef’s bedroom, which the girls deliberately led him through. Nor was it bedecked in Gay Nineties grandeur. It had plain paneling and few frills, looking to be originally intended as maid’s quarters, but had been expertly painted in black and turquoise, the latest colors, with matching carpeting, geometric sunbursts, and sleek modern furnishings. Nick’s camera bag sat on a desk, his suitcase had been placed at the foot of the bed, and his jacket and hat awaited on a valet stand along with his freshly laundered and pressed pants, shirt, and tie. His shoes were likewise by the bed, his socks inside, clean and dry.

Somewhat stubbornly, Nick put the same outfit on, went to dinner, and noted seat arrangements. Hef sat at the head of the table like a convivial king, Senator Kennedy at his right hand, in the place of honor. Apparently the dinner with Mayor Daley had been canceled or postponed. An aspiring Playmate whom Nick had been only briefly introduced to—Sally something-or-other—sat to his right. Kennedy ignored her, focusing his attention on Julie Cotton sitting opposite, Julie alternately doting on his words or making him laugh with her at some witty repartee. Will Monroe sat between her and Hef, the left-hand place of a king’s secret adviser, his attention focused on Kennedy, his expression a mixture of hope and sadness when his immediate dinner companions weren’t looking at him, but masking it quickly with Hollywood poise when anyone gave him their attention.

Nick tried to understand what was going on with Will, but then realized that, though the man looked old enough to be Nick’s father, and did resemble a slimmer version of his uncle, in place of Uncle Fritz’s jocular charm, Will Monroe’s resting expression was that of a lost little boy, looking alternately to Kennedy and Hef as if there were something he desperately wished to ask them or tell them but couldn’t find the right words.

Nick was seated much farther down the table with a group of photographers and editors interspersed with Playmates and hopefuls. Their banter was a mixture of ribbing and jealousy; it was well known that Nick was the pretty boy brought out from Hollywood more for his looks in front of the camera than his talent behind it. It made for some unexpected camaraderie with the Playmates, some of whom had aspirations of their own beyond modeling, including Gwen and Constance, who sat flanking Nick like they had Hef earlier in the day.

One of the editors laughed and remarked, “So, you got the hot seat. Joker Julie talked Hef into having you shoot her.”

“Kill da wabbit,” Constance sang under her breath with barely disguised jealousy to the tune of “Ride of the Valkyries.”

A layout director with a heavy beard grinned and paused cutting his steak—the food at the mansion was top-notch—to tell Nick, “Hef’s a man of his word. He was calling Julie Cottontail his ‘clever bunny.’”

“Dumb bunny is more like it,” Gwen stated, a little too loudly, cutting viciously into her steak. When all the men looked at her, she said, “Don’t you gentlemen know? All the girls do.”

“Know what?” asked the editor.

“Julie just asked Dr. Zimmerman for the pill. Just like that. Like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.”

“The pill?” Nick echoed. “You mean birth control pills? Those aren’t fully legal yet, are they?”

“No,” Constance said, rolling her eyes, “not unless you have severe menstrual cramps.”

“Surprising the number of women who now have severe menstrual cramps,” Gwen remarked. “The pill might get legalized later this year, if we’re lucky.”

“Yes, but then Julie just bounces in going, ‘Where can I get the pill? I lost my prescription, because my old doctor is being a baby now, so I need a new one.’”

“Doc Zimmerman was not being a baby for refusing her,” Gwen stressed. “He’s got a wife and a baby boy to look after. He could have lost his license.”

Constance nodded in violent agreement. “He has to play along with Congress’s charade. They’re the real babies here.”

“Yeah, but Julie’s no prize either. Crazy bunny is more like it,” Gwen added. “Julie claims she’s been on birth control for years when Enovid has only been available for two.”

“Clinical trials for a couple years before that, if you were lucky enough to get picked,” Constance chimed in, “not that they’d pick a teenager, let alone a joker.” She shrugged and took a dainty bite of steak. “Julie got the pill anyway, but only because Hef called in a favor and had us give her a talk first.” Constance shrugged. “Might as well call her lucky bunny.”

“Oh?” Nick asked.

“Yeah,” Gwen agreed in hushed tones with a glance up to the head of the table, “she could have ended up in jail. Around Christmas, Hef got a call from the Palmer House. These crazy swingers had set up in his favorite suite and were charging everything to his tab. Guy claimed he was a friend of Hef’s from Hollywood and had the passwords from Hef’s little black book. Hef didn’t know a thing about it and hasn’t even been to Hollywood yet. But he went down to have a chat, and the next thing we know, he’s paid the Palmer House, brought them back to the mansion, and they’ve been here ever since.”

Constance stabbed a potato with her fork. “I think he just admires their chutzpah.”

Nick had to admit that he did, too, though he was fairly certain there was more to Will Monroe and Julie Cotton’s story than just chutzpah.

Nick awoke to a presence at the foot of his bed. Actually two.

He was used to tuning out the electrical energy in other human beings, but only when awake. Asleep, it made him jumpy, and soon after drawing his ace, he’d even shocked people who tried to wake him up, but never so badly he hadn’t been able to blame it on static electricity.

A locked door solved most of that risk, and getting in the habit of sleeping in the nude explained the need for a locked door. Fortunately, mentioning this peculiarity at the Playboy Mansion was greeted with cries of “Who doesn’t?”

He opened his eyes the barest crack, seeing only darkness except for a dim bit of illumination from the narrow window. No one was standing at the foot of his bed, but his bed was placed against the wall, and the presences he sensed were just on the other side of that wall. And each bore double Ds—not breasts, but batteries.

Somewhere there had to be an ace or deuce who could sense breasts, but Nick was not him. But batteries were easy, their size and charge, and whether or not the circuit was connected. These were paired D-cells in a configuration Nick immediately recognized as indicative of flashlights switched off. And the height they were held at suggested the bearers were female, breast size unknown, but given what he’d seen at the Playboy Mansion thus far, probably at least a B-cup, likely a C or above.

And by the glimmer of moonlight coming in the window, once Nick’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see a tiny strip of paneling was missing, and behind the missing strip he could see the glitter of a pair of eyes belonging to the owner of one of the pairs of batteries and the presumed flashlight.

Nick tamped down the instinct to fluoresce with an aura of light and energy. It had happened a few times and was the worst defense for an ace trying to keep his card up the sleeve, and the only thing that had saved him before was that no one had seen his face. But Hef and half of the Playboy staff knew who was sleeping in the former maid’s bedroom, and then they’d not just get the show they’d been hoping for, the former swim champion sleeping alone in the buff, but also get to see an ace blowing his cover.

Using a parlor trick to draw some of the energy out of the batteries and light up the flashlights was also not a good idea, nor was ionizing enough energy to light up the light bulbs in the room without touching the light switches. But touching the lights as a nat would …

Nick reached out and pulled the chain of the bedside lamp.

The light crackled to life as the slot in the paneling slammed shut. Nick felt the pairs of double D batteries retreat along with the associated human energy fields.

Being able to control electricity did not mean being able to control light, and Nick was blinded by the sudden glare. But once his eyes adjusted, he got up and went and looked at the paneling. The panels were smooth and polished, but he could just make out the crack in one, set in to look like a bit of piecework used to remove a knothole. Nick’s ace, however, could sense the metal behind, the interference consistent with an iron bolt and a hinge.

Two more hinges were detectable as well as a latch. Feeling around on a nearby section of panel revealed a knothole not large enough to warrant removal, but the center functioned as a button. The panel at the foot of his bed swung out.

Nick had already been dropped down one secret chute—thankfully into a swimming pool and not a vat of acid—and now he’d been spied on through a peephole from a secret passage.

The chance that the architect of Chicago’s Murder Castle had designed only one such building was not a chance that Nick was willing to bet his life on. So while it would usually be the height of foolishness for a former swimmer to wander nude into a dark cobwebbed passage, most former swimmers weren’t aces who could conjure ball lightning charges that could hang in the air with the same illumination as Chinese lanterns. Plus his will-o’-wisps moved as he willed. And Nick could sense other people, especially if they carried flashlights.

Whoever had spied upon him was definitely shorter since they hadn’t broken the cobwebs at his head height. He used his hands for that, not wanting to set the mansion on fire, and explored down the passage, will-o’-wisps bobbing before and after.

A few yards down, he found the bolt-and-hinge arrangement of another Judas peephole. Nick recalled his will-o’-wisps, letting the energy ground back into his reservoir, dousing their light, then popped the peephole and gazed out into the bedroom of two Playmates. A night-light provided soft and erotic illumination of one lying on her back in a languid pose, breasts exposed and glorious. Nick wished he’d brought the Argus and some Kodak 120. The second Playmate was not in a flattering pose, sprawled face-first into the pillow, arm dangling over the side of the bed, having apparently lost a wrestling match with the comforter.

Nick shut the peephole and proceeded on, keeping his ace alert for the presence of batteries, especially moving ones. There were a disconcerting number of flashlight D-cells throughout the mansion, all switched off at the moment, stored at heights you’d expect for dresser drawers, until Nick sensed one move and then have the circuit connected, turning on.

He vanished his will-o’-wisps back into himself, dousing the light, ready to race blind down the passage, realizing that perhaps he hadn’t thought this plan through completely. The flashlight batteries moved forward and back, again and again, as if their holder were searching for something. Nick held his breath, hearing only the pounding of his heart and then a low oscillating whine reverberating through the walls.

The batteries continued to move and the whirring hum was joined by the sound of a woman moaning. Moaning in pleasure …

Nick brought a glow to his eyes long enough to find the peephole, then spied in, seeing a Playmate atop her bed, naked in the moonlight, demonstrating that flashlight batteries could be used in other handheld tools, in this case a vibrator, as she came closer to finding what she was looking for, that something being her G-spot.

“Oooooo!” the Playmate moaned, having found it.

Nick found his erect penis sticking into cobwebs. He wiped them free then shut the peephole. The Playboy Mansion was showing itself to be less Murder Castle and more Voyeurs Paradise. But there was still more to explore.

A secret stairwell led up and down. Nick chose upstairs, finding a peephole into the library: currently unoccupied but with a light left on. A collection of photo albums lay on the coffee table, one open to boudoir photos of beauties half a century past.

Nick proceeded on, spying through another peephole into the ballroom, empty at the moment. Then he sensed the presence of two sets of flashlight batteries on the move, not in pleasure, but coming up the stairs at the end of the passage. Nick grabbed the knob on the panel in front of him and turned. It wouldn’t budge and the flashlights were nearing the top of the stairs. He pulled his will-o’-wisps into himself, plunging the secret corridor into darkness.

The darkness did not last long, beams of light illuminating the end of the hall. Nick fumbled desperately then found the catch, releasing it. The panel beside him slid aside, a hidden pocket door, but rolled slowly. Nick squeezed through the gap the moment he could, turning his shoulders sideways.

The ballroom was illuminated by moonlight through the grand windows. Nick ran to the piano, pulling on the gilded bar to the right of the music stand. He heard a click from the trapdoor, then ran to stand atop it. For a second time, he fell down the secret chute, this time on purpose. But this time also without the rug or pants. The cobwebs he was covered in offered scant protection as he discovered the slide was not so smooth when you slid down it naked.

He dove on instinct.

The pool was not deserted, but everyone there was drunk, no one questioning his use of the slide or his apparent decision that clothing was optional at this hour.

Nick took one of the mansion’s guest robes from the poolside cabinet then went back to his room, half expecting someone to be waiting for him.

No one was. After a long while staring at the secret panel, Nick pulled the chain on the bedside table lamp and went back to sleep.

The next day, Nick went out of the mansion for a walk until he found a convenient phone booth and dialed a number. A woman’s voice answered: “Hedda Hopper’s office. Who may I say is calling?”

“Nick Williams,” Nick answered.

“Nicholas darling,” Hedda replied. “So, what did my favorite gumshoe find out for mother?”

Nick started with the petty gossip: the Playboy Club’s theme was still undecided, but a toss-up between a revamped Everleigh Club corset models and sex kittens.

“How quaint. I’ll tell Lollipop. Let’s see how she spins that.” Hedda laughed nastily. “But on to my question. Is Hef an ace?”

“No,” said Nick.

“Does he employ one?”

“Probably not, but …” Nick related the bare details about Will Monroe and his Golden Globe picks.

“Well, far be it from me to say I’m happy with being beaten at my own game,” Hedda remarked, “but I’m at least pleased that it isn’t some cheating ace. Will Monroe, you say? Name’s not ringing any bells. Likely assumed. I’ve never heard of those pictures or those actors either. DiCaprio and Schwarzenegger? A wop and a kraut? And one of the films is Hindenburg? Smells like German cinema. You said ‘Monroe’ is blond? How tall?”

“About my height. Couldn’t tell precisely. We were both sitting down.”

“Still not tall enough,” Hedda’s tinny voice snapped over the phone, speculating out loud. “Murnau was a freak back when they weren’t common, just one inch shy of seven feet. And he was queer as a three-dollar bill. But there are rumors of him having a love child with some actress. Still … Just how old is this ‘Will Monroe’?”

“I’d guess mid-fifties, maybe a little less.”

“Likely too old then, unless Murnau fathered him at ten. But thirteen/fourteen? Murnau/Monroe? If I were Murnau’s love child looking for an alias, that is what I would go for. And who knows? Very tall boy, very small woman? It’s really not outside of possibility, especially if it’s what put Murnau off girls to begin with …” The phone held silence except for the static, then Hedda pronounced, “I’ll dig on this end, you dig on that. See how far down the rabbit hole you can get.”

“Okay,” Nick said, “but speaking of rabbits …”

He told her about Julie. Hedda was not pleased. “Well,” she said, “it would compromise you as my spy to have you take unflattering pictures of her, so do your best. But on to my most pressing question. Why is Hefner so certain that Kennedy will win the presidency?”

Nick wondered how to phrase it without tipping his own voting preferences. “Hef’s as liberal as they come, and Kennedy was visiting the mansion …”

“Kennedy?” Hedda nearly shrieked. “Talk about burying the lede! Tell me everything.”

Nick did.

“Flirting with a joker prostitute in a hot tub?” Hedda fumed. “What I wouldn’t give for pictures of that!” After a moment of sinister static, Hedda added, “Fortunately I know a photographer …”

Once the call concluded, Nick reached frantically for his cigarette case. He felt dirty after that conversation, and even dirtier after he realized he’d used his last match in the book, then on reflex mimed lighting one and shielding it in his hands to light a cigarette. In reality, he conjured a tiny will-o’-wisp in the palm of his hand.

He took a slow draw till the cherry caught, then pulled the electric charge back into himself and flicked his hand sharply to toss the nonexistent match into the gutter before it could burn his finger. Nick took a drag on his cigarette, checking those in view for any reactions. But no one evidenced any, not the smart young couple out walking a pair of pugs, not the boy on the bicycle wearing a crowned beanie.

Nick exhaled a cloud of smoke. There was not much remarkable about a tall man in a fedora and an overly thin coat walking down the sidewalk with a cigarette. Will-o’-Wisp, or at least reports of him, was left safely back in Hollywood. At least for the moment.

After collecting the Argus’s case from his room, Nick found his way to the library. He glanced to the coffee table with the photo albums and, from the angle of the open one, guessed which bookshelf held the peephole and presumably the secret door.

Julie Cotton was already there, apparently oblivious to the secret passage. Today she wore nothing but lingerie, a white satin singlet with bustier, customized like yesterday’s swimsuit with a spot for her fluffy tail to stick through, sticking up in the air as she bent over a random assortment of garments stacked on a red velvet sofa. “What do you think?” she asked, straightening up and gesturing to the collection.

Nick thought she’d have given a great show to any voyeur using the vintage peephole but only said, “I think you won’t have a chance to wear all those. The point of Playboy is to see women with their clothes off, not on.”

She smiled. “I thought you read it for the articles.”

“That too.” Nick grinned. “But the pictures bear repeat viewing.”

“True,” she admitted, “but we girls get interviews too. If you could ask me one question, what would it be?”

“How did your card turn?” Nick answered honestly.

“Exactly. Most guys will beat around the bush a bit, but that’s what everyone wants to know. And, you know, if there are any other surprises down there …” She reached up to the top of her bustier, putting her hands atop her large and very natural-looking breasts. “Want a peep?”

Nick nodded.

With a stripper’s training, she teased the edge of one side of the bustier down, then the other, exposing two pink and perfect aureoles before finally letting him see her full breasts. They were magnificent, smooth and firm with pale white skin and the faintest tracery of blue veins, without any visible stretch marks. She slid the costume down, exposing her slim middle, perfect navel, and finally, the surprise.

The surprise was something Nick both halfway expected and, he realized on some level, hoped for. The hair of her feminine triangle, while matching her natural platinum blond, also matched the soft down of an angora rabbit, just like the fluffy fur on her ears and tail.

She let the costume fall to her feet, stepping out of it, then turned around so he could see only her pert derriere and the fluffy white cottontail she twitched flirtatiously as she peered at him over her shoulder.

“Julie … Cottontail?”

“Yep.” She cocked her head and her ears flopped coquettishly. “If you think the kids teased me with that before my card turned, you should have heard them after.” She turned, falling back on the sofa, and laughed as her breasts bounced with the springs. “I was seven and mad for bunnies. Had some as pets, had the slippers, had them sewn on my clothes, Bugs Bunny pajamas, the works. Even rabbit wallpaper and bunny cutouts my mom glued on my lampshade. Plus all the books. The Velveteen Rabbit, of course, and the March Hare and the White Rabbit from Alice, and Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny from Beatrix Potter. But my favorite was Rabbit Hill, this old kids’ book that won the Newbery Medal.” She looked troubled then, but then most wild cards did when discussing the trauma of their card turning.

Nick also put together her age now with what she’d said. “You were one of the first,” he realized. “You changed back in ’46 when the blimps blew.”

She gave him a wide-eyed look like a frightened bunny. “Yeah, on Wild Card Day. In ’46.” She looked away. “All I knew is that I had an awful fever like the kid in The Velveteen Rabbit, then I dreamed about … Rabbit Hill … and I woke up like this.” She looked up at him and her ears twitched. “What about with you?”

“What?” Nick asked. “What about what with me?”

“What was it like when you turned your card?”

“I’m not a wild card,” Nick denied on reflex. “I’m a nat.”

“You sure?” Julie asked, her ears perking up a bit straighter. “You asked me the way us cards ask each other, like you already knew what it’s like.” She tilted her head the other way. “Don’t worry. If you’re up the sleeve, it’s okay.”

Hef was right. Clever bunny indeed. But all Nick said was, “Sorry, really, I’m just a nat.” He then added, since it was true and gave him cover, “I’m just from Hollywood. Lots of jokers end up there for B movies. Makes easy costuming for monsters.”

“That’s exploitative,” Julie remarked disapprovingly, sitting there naked beside a pile of costumes.

“It’s a job,” Nick pointed out.

Julie gave a wry grin. “Speaking of which, since I’m already nude, wanna do my centerfold?”

“Centerfold?”

“Hey, aim high. Worst Hef can do is say no.” She grinned wider, fishing around in the pile of props until she came up with a circlet of braided wheat. “What better Miss March than the March Hare?”

With that, she placed it on her head, reaching up and pulling it down over both ears. On any other model, it would have looked like a head wreath for a harvest queen or a classical accessory for a Gilded Age tableau of the Greco-Roman goddesses, the wheat sheaf crown of Demeter/Ceres. But on Julie Cotton, tilted rakishly askew like the halo of a hungover angel, it made her resemble Tenniel’s illustration of the Mad Hatter’s chum from the Mad Tea Party.

“Got a teacup?” Nick asked.

“Oh yes.” Julie produced one from her pile of rummaged props. “And I’ve got something even better …” With that she hopped over to the bookshelf, doing a mad little dance en route with terpsichorean grace before pulling down a volume.

She flipped it open, revealing a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with hand-tinted illustrations. The page she’d chanced on bore the illustration of Alice and the Cheshire Cat.

A scrap of paper fluttered out, landing on the floor in between them. Nick reached down and picked it up. The penmanship was round and feminine, European in style, with two words: possible costume.

Nick showed Julie. “Lownes wants the Playboy Club girls to be dressed up as sexy kittens.”

“The Pussycat Dolls.” Julie rolled her eyes, then raised her teacup and the book, thumbing forward a couple pages to show the illustration for the Mad Tea Party. “Rather than fake kittens, wouldn’t it be better if the first Playboy mascot were an actual bunny girl?”

She was audacious, he gave her that. Playboy had yet to even feature a black girl. “You need to sell that to Hef, not me,” was all Nick told her as he took the first photo.

Julie was easy to work with, eager and almost ridiculously photogenic. She donned a gentleman’s waistcoat and pocket watch to give the impression of the White Rabbit, assuming the White Rabbit was a young woman with large breasts. “I’m late! I’m late!” she cried, holding a running pose with a ballerina’s poise, purposefully pointing her ears back to give the impression that she was racing like the wind.

Nick used half a roll of film for that, getting her from multiple angles.

Julie cycled through her pile of props: A carrot and a shotgun made for Bugs Bunny. An Edwardian red woolen wrap and a series of three poses made for Peter Rabbit’s sisters, Flopsy, Mopsy, and, of course, Cottontail. The Velveteen Rabbit was less obvious, but a beautiful nude reclining on divan with an assortment of vintage children’s toys was still a sexy pose.

“So what’s Rabbit Hill about?” Nick asked, changing film, remembering back to childhood. He’d never read the book, but he’d thought it was relatively new, not a reprint of a forgotten classic. He recalled a cover with a rabbit hopping gaily over a hill. There’d been a new copy on the shelf at his school library, but the book had looked too cutesy to bother with, so it hadn’t crossed his recollection till she’d mentioned it now.

“Um, rabbits. On a hill.”

“I sort of expected that.” Nick thought back. “The rabbit on the cover was naked, right? Bouncing in the air but standing up?”

“Ooh, that’s a good idea!” Julie exclaimed. “Let’s do that!”

With that she leapt onto the sofa and began bouncing, not so much like a child on a bed as a naked woman on a trampoline. Nick began to take photos, Julie’s glorious breasts bouncing for all to see, “all” in this case meaning him and the camera.

And maybe someone using the peephole. Nick felt a presence there, the electrical energy the hazy outline of a living being but with the telltale nuggets of a flashlight.

He wasn’t a professional dancer, unless you counted a bit part in the men’s water ballet in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but a swimmer and actor could still do sudden leaps. Nick did, angling the Argus to get a wild action shot of Julie while in the background snapping the spying eyes. The peephole snapped shut and the flashlight batteries completed their circuit as they retreated, the hazy human energy along with them. Nick continued shooting Julie until the film roll was exhausted and so was she.

He was a bit, too, and also curious if the spy in the secret passage would come back. “Want to take a break?” he asked. “Look at the albums from the Everleigh Club?”

Julie smiled. “Hef said something about those. They’re here?”

“I think so.” Nick picked a spot on the love seat with the best angle on the closed peephole, which now looked like nothing more than a strip of carved laurels.

Julie, still nude, picked up the open album and brought it back to the love seat so they could both look at the pictures.

The Everleigh Club girls modeled bustiers and corsets, some sporting headbands with oversize poppy rosettes to each side, the fashion of the era. White ink, neatly penned onto the album’s black paper, gave the names of the girls and the various special occasions. This album, dated 1902, featured a visit from the smiling, bearded, and mustached Prince Henry of Prussia. Ada and Minna Everleigh, the club’s eponymous proprietresses and madams, posed with the prince, a bevy of girls about them.

Julie giggled as she paged through the rest of the album, but Nick was distracted by the dual tasks of trying to monitor the peephole and the very close presence of a beautiful naked woman snuggled into the love seat beside him.

“Let’s look at another!” Julie closed that album and picked the next at random: 1908. Highlights included a tableau with the girls costumed as Eskimos, a pair of selkie maids in sealskin coats, and a polar bear played by a large woman clothed only in a polar bearskin rug, all fawning over Admiral Peary, the famed polar explorer. A page on, another nude woman played mama bear, but this time with a brown or at least sepia-tone bearskin rug, hunted by none other than Teddy Roosevelt. Beside TR, playing his guide and gun bearer while looking directly at the camera and grinning ear to ear, stood a young man with pale skin, dark hair, and dark soulful eyes, and an amusingly upturned pug nose.

“It’s Pug!” Julie exclaimed, pointing to TR’s pug-nosed guide.

Nick read the caption: Our intrepid guide, Gary Peterman, leads President Roosevelt to the lair of Ursula, the She-Bear!

“Who’s ‘Pug’?” Nick asked.

“Um, a child actor,” Julie answered. “He’s a friend of Will’s.”

“Here he is again.” Nick pointed to the next page, where Teddy Roosevelt posed formally if cheerfully with Ada Everleigh while Minna was escorted by Gary Peterman, again with the goofily charming grin, giving both thumbs up to the camera like the world’s cheeriest Roman emperor.

“Child actor?” Nick questioned. “I assume you mean on stage, right? Because this guy’s at least twenty and these photos are from 1908.”

Julie bit her lip and looked at Nick anxiously. “Um, yeah. On stage. Pug’s career didn’t make it into talkies. I mean silents. But he was hoping to start it up again.”

“Again? Is he still around? He must be in his seventies.”

“Um, I hope so. Will will want to find him. And he needs to see these. Sorry.” She got up, clutching the photo album to her ample chest as if it were the most precious thing in the world, and ran out of the room like the White Rabbit late for a croquet date with the Queen of Hearts. Naked croquet.

Nick felt the presence at the peephole again and took a picture of the eyes that appeared the moment it was opened. The peephole shut as quickly and the flashlight batteries retreated. Nick suspected Gwen and Constance. But eyes were distinctive and there were a lot of Playmate photos. What was more intriguing was Julie and Will. For as much as they maintained a playful affability, Julie was possibly Will’s daughter. They acted like they had a shared history, but not necessarily a sexual one.

But more to the point, Will had mentioned that he was a bastard, his mother an actress, his father presumably a rich and powerful man, but one who could be undone by scandal. Will Monroe, perhaps not the illegitimate son of F. W. Murnau, but the bastard son of Ada or Minna Everleigh and one of their prominent guests? Prince Henry of Prussia would certainly explain Will’s Germanic look, as would the Dutch origins of the Roosevelt dynasty. And Gary “Pug” Peterman, the former child actor, then apparently Ada and Minna’s trusted majordomo? Who better to act as surrogate father to the famous madams’ unacknowledged son and nephew?

This also explained Will’s interaction with Kennedy and for that matter Hefner. Teddy Roosevelt was long dead, Prince Henry likewise, but the senator was the closest Monroe might come to actually meeting his father, or at least a man like him. And Hefner was the closest thing Chicago had to a carriage trade brothel keeper like the Everleigh sisters.

Then there was the Everleigh sisters’ fortune. If Monroe was the unacknowledged bastard son of one, but could find proof in the albums Hefner had purchased from Ada’s estate, then he might have a good chance of suing for at least that half of his inheritance, maybe even extracting acknowledgment or at least hush money from the Roosevelts or whatever was left of the Prussian royal family.

So many possibilities. Nick didn’t know if he’d guessed the right one, but he meant to follow the rabbit hole down.

That night, the taping of Playboy’s Penthouse went much as planned: Nick was introduced as the new Hollywood photographer, then served as a foil for Kennedy to give his speech. Then Julie bounced in, introduced as nothing more elevated than a “prospective Playmate,” but that in itself was a civil rights statement, as was Kennedy’s conversation with her, pledging his support to the joker community.

Nick was rotated out for this, relegated to the sidelines of the penthouse cocktail party that was really just a soundstage at WBKB. Mayor Daley entered. Will Monroe stood beside Nick as they watched Julie hop to fetch drinks for Kennedy and Daley, Hef smiling, ever the genial host. Nick got out his cigarette case and wordlessly offered one to Will.

“Shorry, don’t shmoke,” Will told him, slurring his words. He’d been moved to the sidelines to keep up the Playboy image of social drinking, not wanton inebriation. “Y’shouldn’t either. Things’ll kill you.”

“These are filtered. Companies say they’re safe now.”

“They’re lying,” Will stated flatly. “It’ll come out. Trust me.”

He was curiously insistent about this, like a prophet. But Nick had heard fire-and-brimstone health warnings before, mostly recycled temperance rants like Carrie Nation going on about President Grant and his lips rotting off. “Well, Prohibition didn’t turn out too well either.” He nodded to Will Monroe’s scotch.

“I’ve got reasons to drink.” Will raised his glass. “Trust me on that too.”

“And I’ve got reasons for not drinking.” With that, Nick put his cigarette case away and lit his cigarette with one of the numerous matchbooks that littered the set. He then whispered sotto voce, “So, Kennedy reminds you of your father?”

“What?”

Some of the best clues were dropped by drunk people, so Nick pressed on. “Put two and two together. You think your father was someone powerful, maybe a politician. Julie ran off with the album with the photos of Teddy Roosevelt. You’re the right age. I’m guessing either TR or Prince Henry of Prussia, with an outside chance of F. W. Murnau.”

“Always loved his work, but that would be a trick.” Will Monroe guffawed and took a swig of scotch. “Murnau was gay …”

“Or maybe Admiral Peary?”

“No, try again.”

“Gary Peterman?” Nick prodded and saw Will Monroe’s eyes go wide. “I was thinking he was a surrogate father, but maybe he’s your actual father? Julie said Pug was a child actor, and you mentioned the psychic said your father was an actor …”

“Pug and I had a father-son relationship, but it’s not what you think.” Will Monroe’s eyes narrowed as he nursed his scotch, then he shrugged. “Maybe you’re my father. Who knows?”

“I wasn’t around in 1908 to have an affair with the Everleigh sisters.”

“The Everleigh sisters?” Will chuckled. “No, my mom’s an actress. A famous one. But I’m not going to tell you who. But my father?” Will smiled, his expression equal parts bemusement and admiration as he looked Nick up and down. “You even look like me, or at least like I used to. Still swim laps, try to keep in shape. But no one stays young forever …”

“Except the Golden Rat,” Nick put in. “Guy’s in his thirties, but still looks like he’s in high school.”

“Just you wait.” Will Monroe chuckled and took another swig of scotch, adding, “Jack swore he wasn’t my dad, and I finally believed him, but he looks like me too. Or did. Or will.”

Nick took a long drag on his cigarette and raised an eyebrow at the drunk man. “So Jack Braun is not only strong and invulnerable, but he can travel in time?”

“Maybe not now, but he will.” Will downed his glass. “I wonder where he is now.”

“In Hollywood somewhere boning a starlet.”

“No, I meant my old poker buddy.” Will Monroe staggered, putting his arm around Nick for support. “Jack’sh the one who told me about the Palmer House game.” He paused. “If I tell Jack now to not go to the poker game, then …”

Nick didn’t know what Will was talking about, but he did know that a drunk was passing out on him. Nick dropped his cigarette as Will dropped his glass. It shattered on the floor of the set, scotch and glass shards flying everywhere, as he grabbed the older man around the middle and eased him to the floor.

“Your name’s Nick Williams.” Will grabbed Nick’s hand and squeezed it, looking at him plaintively. “William’s my first name. But my mother always called me Will …”

The alcohol on Will’s breath was almost overpowering and the fumes from the spilled scotch even more so. Nick felt a shock going through him from the contact high and it was all he could do to keep his internal battery in check.

“Are you him?” Will begged, clutching his hand. “Are you my father? Will you be?”

“I’m sorry,” Nick said honestly. “I can’t be.” He gritted his teeth with the effort to keep from lighting him up like a Christmas tree and shocking Will to death, but he forced the bleeding electricity away into an invisible ionic charge.

Floodlights overloaded, light bulbs exploded, cameramen began swearing, then with a crack and a pop and a cascade of sparks, the studio was plunged into darkness.

“What the hell!?” came Hef’s voice. “We’re on air!”

“Not anymore!” someone called back. “Blew a circuit breaker!”

Nick knelt by Will, cradling him like a baby, the only illumination the cherry of the dropped cigarette then the flare as it caught the spreading pool of scotch. The drunk man’s face crumpled up like a wet paper bag in the hellish glow. “My father …” He sobbed a child’s sob. “My father … I never knew my father …”

Nick laid a hand of solace on the drunk’s forehead, brushing back his hair from his eyes. “I’m sorry,” Nick apologized, “I don’t know who he is.”

Back at the mansion, Hef had a couple Playmates who were also trained nurses. They were given the job of hydrating Will and getting him to bed. Hef took another couple Playmates to bed himself, and while there were Playmates ready and willing to join Nick, he begged off, preferring to turn in early for the night.

Of course, he’d also seen Julie Cotton still fawning over Kennedy, and part of a private investigator’s job was taking pictures of men having affairs. Hedda had wanted pictures of Kennedy and Julie in a hot tub, but Nick thought he could find even hotter water than that.

This time, however, he brought a flashlight and wore clothes to explore the Playboy Mansion’s secret passages, including his hat.

The mansion had more than one set of passages. The main ones, until him, had not been explored by anyone tall, judging by the breaks in the cobwebs. The secondary corridors had not been explored in years, if that, opening in secret off of already secret passageways.

Of course, most explorers weren’t able to sense the electromagnetic interference caused by a spiderweb-covered bolt. Nick could and in short order found his way down a cobweb-draped corridor that led to the room where Jack Kennedy was staying.

The peephole bolt was rusted shut, but electricity removed rust. Nick looked out into dimness, able to make out the silhouettes of a four-poster bed and the two people in it, one atop the other, the one on top sporting a round tail and distinctive long ears.

“Did you hear that?” asked Julie Cotton.

“Mmm, hear what?” asked Jack Kennedy in his Boston Brahmin drawl.

“That sound.”

“Just someone slamming a door somewhere.”

Julie’s ears twitched in silhouette. “No, it was closer than that.” They swiveled toward Nick.

Nick started to swing the peephole shut but there was a faint creak so he stopped. Julie’s ears stood straight up. Hoping her eyesight was only human, Nick covered the slot of the peephole with the soft gray felt of his hat brim. It muffled sound as well, but when he finally thought it safe to steal a glance, Julie’s silhouette was again facing forward.

“—only thing creaking here is the bed,” Jack insisted, thrusting up into her, making the springs creak with his exertions.

“I don’t think so.” Julie’s ears twitched. “These ears are for more than just petting, you know.”

“Then it’s a rat.” Another thrust. “This place is old.”

Nick did feel a bit like Judas, but he wasn’t one of Kennedy’s disciples, the man was just a politician, and what’s more, a married man, having an affair when he had not just a wife but kids. If Nick was a rat, he certainly wasn’t the only one.

“Okay,” Julie said, “but promise me one thing. Don’t ever go to Texas.”

“Can’t promise you that.” Jack laughed. “You’re a crazy bunny.” A grunt. “I like you, Julie.” Grunt. “But it’s a big state.” Grunt. “Gonna have to stump.”

“I don’t care if you stump! Just don’t go there after you’re elected.”

“Might wanna run for a second term …”

“I want you to too,” Julie cried, beginning to sob, “but you won’t. Trust me, you won’t. Just promise me you won’t go to Dallas.”

“Dallas is a big city.”

“Then just promise me you won’t go to Dealey Plaza,” Julie sobbed. “Don’t go anywhere near that damned school book depository …”

“Okay,” he moaned, “on one condition …”

“What?”

“You quit teasing me with the crazy talk and we just have wild bunny sex!”

“Deal!”

With that, Julie began bouncing as gaily as the rabbit on the cover of Rabbit Hill, except instead of a hill, she was atop Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

This was the money shot, but the room was too dark, and it would give away the game to use a flash. But unlike most photographers, Nick had an ace. He bled off electricity into the air like a Tesla coil, the ionic charge making the light bulbs light up on their own.

Light up they did, enough to get three clear shots until the bulbs in the chandelier went up like flashbulbs, overloading one after another.

“What the hell!” cried Jack.

“What on earth!” cried Julie.

Nick cried nothing, only used the distraction to slam and bolt the peephole.

The bulb in his flashlight had blown, too, but he had will-o’-wisps to light the way.

Two days later, Nick deposited a stack of photos on Hef’s desk. A second smaller stack of photos and their negatives were hidden under the lining of the Argus’s case.

Two other photos and negative frames, one with a blurry photo on the model but a good focus on the background, another just a shot of a bookcase, had been left out. Nick had compared the eyes in the library peephole with the eyes of the Playmates and matched them with Constance and Gwen, as expected.

Hef picked up the photos, flipping through them without comment, then began to lay them in groups atop the desk. “White Rabbit, March Hare, Peter Rabbit’s hot sisters … What’s this?”

“The Velveteen Rabbit,” Nick answered.

Hef nodded and came to the last set of photos, flipping through them. He paused at one. “Great action shot. Got centerfold written all over it.”

“Centerfold?”

“Yep,” Hef said, “had a gentleman’s bet with Will. He won. Asked me to make Julie centerfold. Was thinking of doing it anyway, but later. But these photos? I’m moving her up to Miss March. And we’ve got the new theme for the club. That harpy Parsons somehow got word we were doing kittens, so we’re going to switch it up and unveil bunnies instead.” Hef gazed at the centerfold, Nick’s shot of Julie bouncing gaily in the air, then laid it on the desk. He then opened a drawer and pulled out a book, setting it beside the photograph with a grim chuckle. “Knew I’d seen this pose before.”

A shiny Newbery Medal sticker adorned the cover of Rabbit Hill, a bunny bouncing beside it in the same pose, a hill with a little red house in the background below. “My daughter Christie’s seven,” Hef mentioned. “I asked Julie what sort of book a seven-year-old girl would like. She suggested this.”

Nick reached out and flipped it open, noting the title page and the words below: The Viking Press—New York 1944. “Two years before Wild Card Day …”

“Must have made quite an impression.” Hef tapped the nude. “So will this.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re going to need a clothed shot for the cover, but that doesn’t have to wait until Valdes swaps the kitten costumes into bunnies. Julie already has her own ears and tail.”

“Should I be the one to tell her?”

Hef mused. “Sure. Go ahead. You’ve earned it.”

Nick knocked on the door of Will and Julie’s suite. Julie opened it.

“Congratulations, Miss March,” Nick greeted her.

Her face lit up while her ears stood up straight. “Are you kidding me?”

“No, it’s almost as much a promotion for me as it is for you. I’ve gone from the pretty boy chosen for his looks to the guy who can actually shoot centerfolds.” Nick grinned. “May I come in?”

“Of course.”

Nick stepped inside. The suite was decked out in Oriental splendor, more elegance from Ada’s collection. Will was there, too, on a chinoiserie sofa, getting an early start on the scotch. “Sorry about the other night,” the older man apologized. “I babble when I’m drunk.”

“No need. I think you were telling the truth, some of it anyway. You’re trying to find your father.

“And you told some of the truth too.” Nick looked to Julie. “I may not be a wild card, but one thing I do know about wild cards is they seldom lie about what happened when their card turned, not the little details. You said your favorite book when you were seven was Rabbit Hill, that it was an old book. But if you were seven on Wild Card Day, that book was only two years old, and it’s not even an old book now.” Nick paused, then continued before Julie could dissemble, “But it will be for you, in the future where you’re from.”

Julie’s jaw dropped, exposing her bunny teeth.

“You’re not just a joker, you’re a joker-ace.” Nick pointed at her. “You’re the White Rabbit. You’ve got some power to murder the time, make it six o’clock and always teatime or fall down the rabbit hole into the past, taking others with you. But your power’s not perfect and you overshot, taking Will here, who wanted to find his father, to sometime a little before he’s born. But he won’t say who his mother is, because then his parents might never meet and he’d never be conceived. Am I right?”

Julie said nothing, but Will took a slug of scotch. “Not quite, but close,” he admitted, and took another swallow. “Very close.”

Nick nodded. “The only thing I’m not sussing is Pug. Is he your son and you lost him when you fell down the rabbit hole to meet his granddad or is something else going on?”

“Something else.” Will took another drink. “Abigail’s former boyfriend sent him back to the Everleigh Club.”

“Who’s Abigail and who’s her boyfriend?”

“Abigail’s a young actress—British, talented, was hoping to put her in a vehicle with Pug. Abby’s also an ace. She can read other aces’ powers, even copy them. We call her the Understudy.” Will regarded his scotch, then set it down and looked straight at Nick. “Her former boyfriend was one of the other players’ bodyguards, introduced as ‘Mr. Meek’ but I’m sure that’s an alias. He was a dead ringer for Donald Meek.”

“Lots of aliases going around right now, ‘Will Monroe,’” Nick pointed out. “You think you’re the son of some president, but it’s not Monroe, and it’s not Roosevelt. Who is it really? Kennedy? Nixon?”

“God I hope not.” Will reached for the scotch. He took a good swallow. “Lot of suspects. But Jack Braun wouldn’t have any reason to not acknowledge me. Same thing with Hef. Hef ended up being my mentor, and Jack’s been my poker buddy the past few years. Beyond that, I really don’t know.”

Nick took out his cigarette case. “You weren’t kidding about the cigarettes, were you?”

“No,” said Will, “it all comes out.” Julie nodded in agreement.

Nick glanced to her. “So what’s the deal with Dealey Plaza?”

She looked shocked. “How did you …”

“I talked with Kennedy,” Nick lied quickly. “He said you were adamant that he not go anywhere near Dealey Plaza in Texas. Why? What happens there?”

Julie’s ears wilted like wax tulips in the sun. “He dies. Assassinated. By Oswald.”

“We’re not talking about the magic rabbit Walt Disney sold to King Features, right?”

“No, Lee Harvey Oswald.”

“Harvey’s the invisible rabbit from that Jimmy Stewart movie.”

“I am not making this up!” Julie ranted, her ears standing back up. “Yes, it’s a dumb name, but he kills Jack Kennedy!” Her ears began to turn pink and quiver with rage. “But anyway, it doesn’t matter, I’ve already changed history. I had sex with Jack Kennedy.”

Will considered her over his drink. “You plan for him to fall in love with you and leave Jackie and the kids?”

“Pretty much,” Julie admitted. “Sucks for Jackie, but I figure she’d rather be a divorcée than a widow. At least that way her kids have a living dad. And I’m not jealous—I can share. Plus I’ve got my ace in the hole. It’s not much of an ace, and I always considered it more of a joker, but I’m using it. Already have.”

“What’s that?” Nick asked.

“Along with a rabbit’s sex drive, the wild card gave me a rabbit’s fertility.” Julie grinned, showing her rabbit teeth. “You won’t believe the number of birth control pills I had to go through till I found one that worked. And they won’t make it for another fifty years.” Julie picked up a carrot from a snack tray and nibbled it like Bugs Bunny. “And Kennedy’s a Catholic, and with me pregnant now, that means the baby will arrive in November, just in time for the election. What do you think Jack’s chances will be then?”

Nick stared at her. Kennedy having a love child with a joker Playmate? Hedda’s photos were now just icing on Nixon’s inauguration cake. “Wait, I thought you hated Nixon.”

“I do,” Julie swore. “Asshole’s responsible for getting my grandpa killed in Vietnam. You won’t believe how bad that screwed up my family. But Nixon’s president in ’69 anyway, so why not move up the timetable? Either Oswald ices him in ’63, or Tricky Dick gets caught for Watergate a few years later. Win-win either way.”

“Watergate?” Nick echoed, beyond perplexed.

“I’d recommend you watch All the President’s Men,” Will remarked, topping off a new glass of scotch, “but that’s not going to be made until 1976. If ever.” He took a sip, considering. “Going to royally screw up Hoffman’s and Newman’s careers. Are we ever going to get the Butch Cassidy Film Festival?”

“You really are a movie mogul in the future,” Nick realized, looking at Will. “That’s why you know all this.”

“That and a film history major,” Will admitted. “Who knew it would come in so useful?”

“I studied joker rights.” Julie cocked her ears. “Playboy didn’t have a joker centerfold until a letter-writing campaign in 2003. Then they overcompensated and recruited a bunch of cat girl jokers for The Pussycat Dolls. But I thought, now that I’m here in 1960, why not do it early when it might do some good?”

Nick nodded. “Looks like you thought of everything.” He glanced at both of them. “Anything you’d like me to do?”

Julie bit her lip. “If anything happens to us, promise me you’ll keep Kennedy away from Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.”

“That’s when he dies?”

“Yeah,” she said sadly, her ears wilting, “he does.”

“Then I promise,” Nick swore.

The Playboy Club opened, appropriately, on Leap Day, February 29. The chic, the influential, and the press were lined up outside. Hedda Hopper, being all three, arrived in style, her latest millinery confection bewilderingly beribboned and festooned with swags of lemonyellow silk and twists of cream-colored lace, its resemblance to a lemon meringue pie accentuated by rhinestone-encrusted lemon-wedge hat pins.

Hollywood’s harpy queen arrived early, with Hef himself squiring her in, bringing her by Nick’s table. “And let me introduce Nick Williams, our newest photographer, out from your town.”

“He’s even more handsome than Louella said. Lollipop scooped me about you hiring him.” Hedda gave Hef the world’s most insincere smile. “But I’ll try to not hold that against him.”

“Nick here even photographed our new centerfold, tomorrow’s Miss March,” Hef bragged.

“Well then,” Hedda said, still smiling, “you won’t mind if I join this handsome young man to get my own scoop?”

“Of course,” said Hef, “but Nick’s sworn to secrecy.”

“Humor me?”

Hef took this offer as a chance to extricate himself from the Terror of Tinseltown and go greet less venomous guests. “Of course.” He gave Nick a glance of mixed gratitude and warning.

Once Hef had left, Hedda snugged into the booth beside Nick, shedding her shawl and, in the same motion, reaching into the pocket of Nick’s jacket where there was an awaiting packet of photographs and negatives. She slipped this into her pocketbook, covering the motion as an excuse to take out a compact and check her lipstick. “There,” she pronounced, clicking the clasp shut, “I should probably take a powder room break in a bit, see if there’s anything shocking.”

Nick smiled, wondering how Hedda would feel if she knew those photographs, regardless of whether they caused Kennedy to withdraw from the campaign due to blackmail or scandal, would eventually lead to her hero Nixon’s death or disgrace. Then Nick frowned, wondering how he would feel himself. Once Nixon won, if all other things remained unchanged, would there still be an assassin awaiting him in Texas in November 1963? Would there be a slightly different date or site? And if Nick foiled Nixon’s assassination, would it make him complicit in Nixon’s later crimes, including the death of Julie’s grandfather? Or would that war even happen if the Watergate scandal, whatever it was, occurred a decade early?

Nick didn’t know what to do, but his decision could wait. November 1963 was almost four years away. A lot could happen in that time. The point might be moot. Nick hoped so.

He looked across the room to where Will Monroe sat, still looking, in quiet moments, like a lost little boy, aside from the glass of scotch. Nick wished there was something he could do to bring him comfort, to help him find his father.

But after Will was born? Well, then there’d be ample time to find out whoever his father was, and his mother, too.

Of course, Nick considered, Will had said the psychic had channeled his father’s spirit, and with this being in the future, the psychic could be an ace instead of a charlatan. But that future was also a long time away. And it might be changed.

After seating the fourth estate, the second was ushered in, the foremost being Senator Kennedy and his beautiful wife, Jacqueline. Hef seated Jack and Jackie with Will Monroe, whose demeanor immediately changed to one of genial surface charm, the mask of Hollywood.

Hef took the stage and the microphone. “Gentlemen, ladies, our beloved guests and fellow swingers, welcome to the Playboy Club. I know there’s been some speculation as to our secret theme, the surprises for our March issue, and I thank you for waiting for Leap Day. But now, without further ado, I’d like to reveal the reason why. Cy, would you like to begin?”

Cy Coleman, the pianist, started into the Playboy’s Penthouse theme song, but quickly segued into a jazzy variation on “The Bunny Hop” as the curtain went up and the Playboy Playmates were revealed in their new costumes, the Playboy Bunnies, wearing silk bustiers in jewel tones with matching satin ears on their headbands. They were all huddled together in a knot, leaning forward, fluffy cottontails facing out like a bunch of bunnies. But then they rose, turned, and parted, revealing that they all bore trays on straps, like cigarette girls.

All save Julie Cotton, who rose up from where she’d been hidden, revealing herself as wearing the same satin bustier designed by Zelda Wynn Valdes, but with her own ears and tail.

Gasps erupted from the audience, none louder than Hedda Hopper’s. Nick took a certain pleasure in that.

“Let me introduce Miss March, Julie Cotton!” Hef announced with a showman’s flourish.

All the other Bunnies promenaded down into the club with their trays, but instead of being filled with candies and cigarettes, they bore the March issue of Playboy.

Hedda accepted hers, and opened it to the centerfold. Men about the club were doing the same. “Well, Nicholas darling, it appears you may have a future in photography,” Hedda sniffed after a long look, “but I would suggest you look for more worthy subject matter.” She folded the magazine back up, turning across the way to view Julie Cotton cozying up to the Kennedys. Julie leaned over and whispered something in Jack’s ear. His expression went from happy to shocked, but just as quickly covered as Julie turned to chat with Jackie, who smiled back graciously, seemingly oblivious to the news Julie had whispered to Jack.

Hedda, however, was a better judge of human expression, and Nick watched her hard old eyes as they noted every nuance. Her lips pressed to a hard line. “You must excuse me, Nicholas.” She clutched her purse with an iron grip. “I have a sudden urge to powder my nose.”

She patted him on the shoulder and winked, then sashayed off to the ladies’ room. Nick watched Hef continue to work the crowd while Julie chatted with Jack and Jackie, secretly plotting the future course of her life and theirs.

Will Monroe’s eyes locked with Nick’s, looking like he desperately wished to tell him something, but couldn’t find where to begin, or how.

Nick gazed back. He felt the same.