fact to apologize. Skip it.'
'Sure.' Khalehla went on to the next firm on the printout. As she spoke she wrote two words after Off Shore Investments, Limited. Check out.
Ardis Montreaux Frazier-Pyke Vanvlanderen, born Ardisolda Wojak in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, walked into the marble foyer of the suite at the Westlake Hotel in San Diego. She threw her sable stole over the back of a velour chair and raised her voice, her speech a cultivated mid-Atlantic, rather more nasal stage British than old-money American, but still afflicted with the harsh tones of Pittsburgh's Monongahela Slavic in the upper registers.
'Andy-boy, I'm home! We've got less than an hour to get up to La Jolla, so move it, sweetie!'
Andrew Vanvlanderen, heavyset with stark white wavy hair and dressed in a tuxedo, walked out of the bedroom, a drink in his hand. 'I'm ahead of you, babe.'
'I'll be ready in ten minutes,' said Ardis, peering into a foyer mirror and fingering the curls of her perfectly coiffed, frosted brown hair. She was closing in on fifty and of medium height but gave the impression of being younger and taller due to erect posture, a slender figure topped by generous breasts, and a well-co-ordinated face punctuated by large, penetrating green eyes. 'Why not call for the car, sweetie?'
'The car can wait. So can La Jolla. We've got to talk.'
'Oh?' The Vice President's chief of staff looked over at her husband. 'You sound serious.'
'I am. I had a call from your old boyfriend.'
'Which one, darling?'
'The only one who counts.'
'Good God, he called here?'
'I told him to—’
'That was dumb, Andy-boy, just plain dumb!' Ardis Vanvlanderen walked rapidly, angrily out of the foyer and down into the sunken living room. She sat in a red silk wing-backed chair and abruptly crossed her legs, her large eyes riveted on her husband. 'Take risks with money—on commodities or futures or your stupid horses or any goddamned thing you like, but not where I'm concerned! Is that understood, darling?'
'Listen, bitch—Dragon Bitch—with what I've paid out, if I want first-hand information I'm going to get it. Is that understood?'
'All right, all right. Cool off, Andy.'
'You start a rhubarb and then you tell me to cool it?'
'I'm sorry.' Ardis arched her neck back into her chair, breathing audibly through her open mouth, her eyes briefly closed. In seconds she opened them, levelled her head, and continued. 'Really, I'm sorry. It's been a particularly rotten Orson day.'
'What's Viper done now?' asked Vanvlanderen, drinking.
'Be careful with those names,' said his wife, laughing softly. 'We wouldn't want our all-American gorillas to learn they're being bugged.'
'What's Bollinger's problem?'
'He's feeling insecure again. He wants a written ironclad guarantee that he'll be on the ticket next July or we settle ten million on him in a Swiss account.'
Vanvlanderen coughed a swallow of whisky into his glass. 'Ten million?' he gasped. 'Who the fuck does that comedian think he is?'
'The Vice President of the United States with a few secrets in his skull,' replied Ardis. 'I told him we wouldn't accept anyone else but it wasn't good enough. I think he senses that Jennings doesn't consider him a world-beater and would let him go.'
'Our beloved telegenic wizard, Langford Jennings, hasn't a goddamned thing to say about it!… Is Orson right? Does Jennings dislike him?'
'Dislike's too strong. He just dismisses him, that's what I hear from Dennison.'
'That one's got to go. One of these days Herb's going to get more curious than we want him—’
'Forget him,' interrupted Mrs. Vanvlanderen. 'Forget Dennison and Bollinger and even your stupid horses. What did my straying,
