for themselves.’
‘Hmm. I have always thought that an effective idealist is one who gets what he wants in such a way that the public thinks he is doing them a favour by taking it.’
Lowenthal laughed. He held up his glass to DeLaroza. ‘Good shot.’
‘We were going to be blunt.’
All right, Lowenthal said to himself, what the hell.
‘I want to be attorney general.’
DeLaroza settled back in his chair and slapped his hands together. ‘Well, sir, that is what I call the beginning of wisdom. And what is the problem?’
‘I don’t think there is any. I’d make one hell of an attorney general.’
‘No question about it. And as I see it, no competition. So, will you think about our plan to announce here on Monday? Sleep on it. We can talk in the morning, over breakfast. Donald should be back late tomorrow afternoon, hopefully with Senator Thurston’s endorsement, and I am sure it will be the first thing he will want to know.’
Lowenthal nodded and lifted his glass again. ‘To sleeping on it,’ he said with a smile.
‘No, sir. To victory.’
On the sixteenth floor of the Mirror Towers, DeLaroza’s holding company, Internaco, maintained a guest apartment, a handsomely decorated suite, its silk-draped windows overlooking the city. There were two keys to the suite. One was given to the guest, the other was kept by the guard. After sending Lowenthal back to his hotel in his private limousine, DeLaroza took an elevator to the apartment. He stood outside the door listening for several moments and then very quietly slipped the guard’s key into the lock and opened the door.
Howard Burns, standing in front of the windows, staring out through a cold haze that circled the city in the wind, was captivated by the city lights, which looked like hazy shards in a kaleidoscope. He heard the key enter the lock and the door open. He whirled, crouching as he did. The wine glass clattered off into a corner and the .22 Woodsman appeared in its place, like a coin in a magician’s sleight-of-hand trick.
‘It’s me!’ DeLaroza screamed, falling back against the door jamb.
Burns stared at him with a flash cf white hate, his hands trembling, his trigger finger twitching in the steel guard. He stood that way for a very long time and then slowly bent his elbow and pointed the weapon at the ceiling. The hand was shaking. ‘That’s how close you came,’ he said nodding to his hand. ‘Walk in on me like that, fro’m behind, no knock, no nothin’. Whatsa matter, you crazy?
‘1 thought you’d be asleep. I thought after...’
‘Asleep? Who you shittin’, asleep? I’m high. I’m up there somewhere. I blew a chippie’s head off an hour or two ago. Whadya mean, sleep?’
‘I am sorry, I, uh, I don’t know...’
‘No, that’s right. Somebody always does it for you. No powder burns on your lily whites, is there? Shit, lookit that, I spilled my fuckin’ think. You don’t walk in behind somebody!’
‘All right, all right.’
Burns went to the wet bar and poured himself another glass of Bertolucci red wine and plunked an ice cube in it. ‘I seen that circus downstairs. I sneaked a look on the way up here,’ he said.
DeLaroza stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
‘You oughta be sweatin’, a dumbass play like that,’ Burns said. ‘Thirty years you stay clean, then all of a sudden you’re gonna walk right out there on the trap door and spring the trap yourself. Whaddya want, me to tie the noose around your neck?’
‘It’s safe now. I have been working for this moment since 1945. The dangers have all been removed.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Listen to me, Howard —,
‘Bullshit. I scratch the colonel in Hong Kong, Corrigon
shows up. I scratch Corrigon, there’s the dame. Now she’s outa the way, who’s next, hunh? Who’s gonna pop outa the box next? You think somewhere there ain’t somebody’s gonna look at that face of yours and start thinkin’ and then start rememberin’? Lemma tell ya, partner, I been Livin’ like that for seven years. A new name, new business, new place. Had to give up everything and live in Nebraska. Nebraska for Chrissakes. Shit, they don’t even get all the fuckin’ television stations in Nebraska. Took me two years to find a bookie. And with all that, see, with the Feds practically feedin’ me with a spoon, I was waitin’ every time I turned around to see somebody from the old life.’
‘It is thirty years for me,’ DeLaroza said, ‘not nine. Nobody will recognize me. I do not even look like the same man.’
‘I’d spot you in a minute, kiddo. That phony accent, red beard, all that fat, that wouldn’t throw me.’ Burns sipped on his wine, then added, ‘You bring it down, I go down with it, know what 1 mean?’
‘There is no way to put us together.’
‘Oh no? How about those Chinks on the boat? The gook that picked me up tonight? How about the guard downstairs when we come in’?’
‘They have no idea who you are.’
‘Well, they ain’t blind, are they? One picture, pow! I’m made. They’ll dump me, don’t make no difference if I’m in Yokohama, Singapore, or the fuckin’ South Pole, I’m a gone gosling.’
‘Look, what you did with your life, I cannot do anything about that. I did something else. What you were is your
