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“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.”

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