“No. Just disappointed.”
“You’re too positive about us,” she said. “You should be more careful. You should have some doubts like I do.”
“I have no doubts,” he said. “We’re right for each other.”
“But you should have doubts,” she said. “For instance, doesn’t it seem odd to you that I’m such a physical match for your first wife, for Annie? She was the same build as I am, the same size. She had the same color hair, the same eyes. I’ve seen those photographs of her.”
He was a little upset by that. “Do you think I’ve fallen for you only because you remind me of her?”
“You loved her a great deal.”
“That has nothing to do with us. I just like sexy, dark women.” He smiled, trying to make a joke of it — both to convince her and to stop himself from wondering if she was at least partly right.
She said, “Maybe.”
“Dammit, there’s no maybe about it. I love you because you’re you, not because you’re like anyone else.”
They rode in silence.
The eyes of several deer glittered in the brush at the side of the road. When the car passed, the herd moved. Paul caught a glimpse of them in the rearview mirror — graceful, ghostly figures — as they crossed the pavement.
At last Jenny said, “You’re so sure we’re meant for each other. Maybe we are — under the right circumstances. But Paul, all we’ve ever shared is good times. We’ve never known adversity together. We’ve never shared a painful experience. Marriage is full of big and little crises. My husband and I were fairly good together too, until the crises came. Then we were at each other’s throats. I just can’t… I won’t gamble my future on a relationship that has never been tested with hard times.”
“Should I start praying for sickness, financial ruin, and bad luck?”
She sighed and leaned against him. “You make me sound foolish.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“I know.”
Back in Black River, they shared one kiss and went to separate rooms to lie awake most of the night.
4
Twenty-eight Months Earlier: Saturday, April 12, 1975
The helicopter — a plush, luxuriously appointed Bell JetRanger II — chopped up the dry Nevada air and flung it down at the Las Vegas Strip. The pilot gingerly approached the landing pad on the roof of the Fortunata Hotel, hovered over the red target circle for a moment, then put down with consummate skill.
As the rotors stopped churning overhead, Ogden Salsbury slid open his door and stepped out onto the hotel roof. For a few seconds he was disoriented. The cabin of the JetRanger had been air-conditioned. Out here, the air was like a parching gust from a furnace. A Frank Sinatra album was playing on a stereo, blasting forth from speakers mounted on six-foot-high poles. Sunlight reflected from the rippling water in the roof-top pool, and Salsbury was partially blinded in spite of his sunglasses. Somehow, he had expected the roof to bobble and sway under him as the helicopter had done; and when it did not, he staggered slightly.
The swimming pool and the glass-walled recreation room beside it were adjuncts to the enormous thirtieth- floor presidential suite of the Fortunata Hotel. This afternoon there were only two people using it: a pair of voluptuous young women in skimpy white string bikinis. They were sitting on the edge of the pool, near the deep end, dangling their legs in the water. A squat, powerfully built man in gray slacks and a short-sleeved white silk shirt was hunkered down beside them, talking to them. All three had the perfect nonchalance that, Ogden thought, came only with power or money. They appeared not even to have noticed the arrival of the helicopter.
Salsbury crossed the roof to them. “General Klinger?”
The squat man looked up at him.
The girls didn’t seem to know that he existed. The blonde had begun to lather the brunette with tanning lotion. Her hands lingered on the other girl’s calves and knees, then inched lovingly along her taut brown thighs. Obviously, they were more than just good friends.
“My name’s Salsbury.”
Klinger stood up. He didn’t offer to shake hands. “I’ve got one suitcase. Be with you in a minute.” He walked back toward the glass-walled recreation room.
Salsbury stared at the girls. They had the longest, loveliest legs he had ever seen. He cleared his throat and said, “I’ll bet you’re in show business.”
Neither of them looked at him. The blonde squeezed lotion into her left hand and massaged the swelling tops of the brunette’s large breasts. Her fingers trailed under the bikini bra, flicked across the hidden nipples.
Salsbury felt like a fool — as he always had around beautiful women. He was certain that they were making fun of him. You stinking bitches! he thought viciously. Some day I’ll have any of you I want. Some day I’ll tell you what I want, and you’ll do it, and you’ll love it because I’ll tell you to love it.
Klinger returned, carrying one large suitcase. He had put on a two-hundred-dollar, blue-and-gray-plaid sportcoat.
Looks like a gorilla dressed up for a circus act, Salsbury thought.
In the passengers’ compartment of the helicopter, as they lifted away from the pool, Klinger pressed his face to the window and watched the girls dwindle into sexless specks. Then he sighed and sat back and said, “Your boss knows how to arrange a man’s vacation.”
Salsbury blinked in confusion. “My boss?”
Glancing at him, Klinger said, “Dawson.” He took a packet of cheroots from an inside coat pocket. He fished one out and lit it for himself without offering one to Salsbury.
“What did you think of Crystal and Daisy?”
Salsbury took off his sunglasses. “What?”
“Crystal and Daisy. The girls at the pool.”
“Nice. Very nice.”
Pausing for a long drag of his cheroot, Klinger blew out smoke and said, “You wouldn’t believe what those girls can do.”
“I thought they were dancers,” Salsbury said.
Klinger looked at him disbelievingly, and then threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, they are! They dance their little asses off every night in the Fortunata’s main show-room. But they’ve also been performing in the penthouse suite. And let me tell you, dancing is the least of their talents.”
Salsbury was perspiring even though the cabin of the JetRanger was cool. Women… He feared them — and wanted them desperately. To Dawson, mind control meant unlimited wealth, a financial stranglehold on the entire world. To Klinger it might mean unrestricted power, the satisfaction of unquestioned command. But to Salsbury, it meant having sex as often as he wanted it, in as many ways as he wanted it, with any woman he desired.
Blowing smoke at the cabin ceiling, Klinger said, “I’ll bet you’d like having those two in your bed, shoving it in them, one after the other. Would you like that?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“They’re hard on a man,” Klinger said, chuckling. “Takes a man with real stamina to keep them happy. You think you could handle both Crystal and Daisy?”
“I could give it a good try.”
Klinger laughed loudly.
Salsbury hated him for that.
This crude bastard was nothing more than an influence peddler, Ogden thought. He could be bought — and his price was cheap. In one way or another, he helped Futurex International in its competitive bidding for Pentagon contracts. In return, he took free vacations in Las Vegas, and some sort of stipend was paid into a Swiss bank account. There was only one element of this arrangement that Salsbury was unable to reconcile with Leonard
