His private jet approaching Dutch Harbor from Anchorage, Alaska, Jay La Roche was reclining in his Spanish calfskin chair, a bevy of “gofers” attending his every need. He had lost only one deal in his life, and her name was Lana, née Brentwood, now, in his view, wasting herself in some berg of an island, “playing at nurse,” as he derisively put it. He’d kicked her out in Shanghai years ago, he told Francine and anyone who would listen, and, for the kind of money La Roche had, a lot of people did. He neglected to tell the whole truth: that in Lana’s case she had been the one to leave him when, in a frenzy of his orgiastic sadism, he’d beaten and choked her till she was near death — the climax of his sexual passion often, as Francine could attest to, being to urinate and defecate on his partner.
At those moments he was uncontrollable, but he consistently viewed such forays as occasional lapses, a self-deception that even now allowed him to think he could get his wife to come back to him. He had tried, through Congressman Hailey, to get her transferred out of Dutch Harbor nearer to New York. Hailey had tried but failed, even though urged on by La Roche’s color stills of the elected official’s dalliances with several congressional page boys.
“What happened to him?” Francine had asked, trying to be nonchalant but remembering the congressman’s name had been mentioned once or twice to her by Il Trovatore’s barman as a warning about never crossing La Roche.
“Had an accident,” La Roche explained. “Gun went off in his mouth.” What disturbed Francine wasn’t so much the story of the suicide — she’d seen enough of those in her time— but the way Jay told it. He enjoyed it. A lot. And she knew what was bugging him about Lana. Though Francine had never met her, only knowing what she looked like from the photo he kept in the New York penthouse and from some of the old magazine photos of the wedding before the war, Francine figured it was Lana’s very resistance to La Roche that drew him to her. She was the only “piece of ass” next to his male secretary, La Roche had told Francine, who had been “stupid” enough to run away from him. By “stupid” Francine knew Jay meant Lana had been the only woman who’d had the guts to try to run from him. But to an ego like Jay’s, the very fact that somewhere in the world, in this case in Dutch Harbor, there was somebody — anybody, especially a woman — whom he couldn’t own “tit-to-toe” and “right through,” as he delicately put it, wasn’t merely galling, it was intolerable.
Now he was telling the stories of how he’d beaten Uncle Sam — how though he was the largest supplier of chemical warfare agents to the United States, he was also the sole supplier of GB, Sarin, and VX nerve gas to Asia. Chinese, North Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese — La Roche didn’t care who he sold it to, and when the Congress passed legislation forbidding U.S. citizens to trade with the enemy, La Roche’s army of lawyers had gone on the march, as he gloatingly explained it, finding, Jay boasted to Francine, “as many loopholes” as “chickens in a barnyard.”
If La Roche’s metaphors were mixed as he told the story, everyone on his private jet knew that “chickens” meant child prostitutes, of either sex, whom Jay frequently used as “dawn breakers.” Just as his lawyers had found a way out of Congress’s restrictive legislation by the use of “front” nonenemy Asian companies, primarily in Burma, through which to ship the poison-gas-producing liquids to Iraq, North Korea, and China, so too had the lawyers protected him from the slightest whiff of “chicken” scandal. The lawyers’ hands were strengthened by La Roche’s ownership of his tabloid chain in North America and western Europe. If a decent paper went up against La Roche, as his wife had once done when she told him she’d sue for divorce, they would soon find themselves, as she had, up against not only La Roche’s battery of experts but against threatened tabloid “exposes”, of their families. Lana had been so naive at first, La Roche boasted to Francine, that she actually believed that if the stories he’d threatened to publish about her parents weren’t true, the papers couldn’t print them.
“How about this for a headline?” he’d threatened her. “ ‘Retired Admiral Brentwood Denies He is Homosexual!’ “ Occasionally, he’d told Francine, “someone like that fool Hailey,” who couldn’t use his influence in Congress to have Lana transferred, would snuff it rather than have his family smeared across the tabloids. But usually it worked.
“That’s enough,” he said, pushing the hair dryer away, checking the back and sides of his lean, darkly handsome face in the mirror, pulling out his gold mouthwash nebulizer, squirting it, rolling his tongue around and showing off his immaculate white teeth.
As the plane began to descend, Francine’s sulkiness increased. Till now she’d been under the illusion that she was what he called his “number one pussy”—with all the lavish goodies and status that attached itself to the scrum of sycophants surrounding him.
“Moment we land in this burg,” he instructed his flunkies, “I want lots of pictures in that Army PX. You know the kind of crap — corporate sponsor visits to thank our boys and gals at the front.” The fasten seatbelts sign was on, but Jay ignored it. “You got it? La Roche Chemicals pays tribute to our brave boys wounded in battle. Pile it on. And Francine — keep your fanny off the corporate gifts there.” There was loud, raucous laughter. “And for Chrissake cross your legs. I don’t want to see your beaver all over the New York Times.” There were more loud guffaws.
“How about in the Investigator, Mr. La Roche?” It was one of the La Roche tabloids.
“Hey! Now you’re talking. Legs wide apart, Francine.” There was another snorting, snuffling run of laughter. Francine watched him as he bent low, slightly off balance, looking out the window. If she knew anything, he was on something — not booze, nothing you could smell. She’d seen him like it often enough — before he’d hand her the strap for her to play “Mommy.”
“Maybe Lana’s on duty?” someone said. La Roche turned around, his face thin stone. “Hey, joker. This little soiree I told you to fix up with our gallant boys in the sticks is costing me change. I told the army, the navy, the fucking air force I wanted to meet all the nurses. If she isn’t there, joker, I’m gonna throw someone outta the fucking plane.”
The laughter died.
After the Lear touched down on the rain-slashed runway, droplets streaming against the Perspex, the plane taxiing toward the small, but obviously busy, terminal, Francine saw a row of heavy khaki overcoats and navy blue uniforms. She recognized Lana before the plane came to a stop. You could spot her at once, Francine thought — one of those women who looked beautiful even if you draped them in a sack. Gorgeous figure that was flattered, not flattened, by the Navy Waves’ dark blue uniform. And the spiffy little white hat with the snappy upturned brim made Francine sick. And Lana’s dark hair — that was the last straw. Whipped with rain and it just sat there, full and behaving itself. Ten minutes in that weather and Francine knew her own hair would be a wet mop.
Francine slipped on her siren-red coat, but despite the cold she left enough of it open so there’d be no mistake about her cleavage. Hell, she had to do something. She followed Jay out. He shook hands with the base commander, but ignored the rest of the staff, particularly Lana, as he and his party were ushered into the waiting USO army cars. With Lana left back on the tarmac, Francine was starting to feel better already.
Colonel Rodin, the commanding officer of Dutch Harbor, loathed La Roche and his ilk, but he was a professional and he wasn’t a fool. La Roche had splashed a lot of money and publicity around — and God knew the men posted in “America’s Siberia” deserved a little attention. Besides, if La Roche wasn’t happy and leaned hard enough on the Alaska congressman for Dutch Harbor and environs, there was a very good chance the CO could find something he loathed even more than La Roche: pushing a pen back in Washington. Even so, he afforded La Roche professional military hospitality but no more.
After the photo session, during which a bunch of reporters from Anchorage, including a photographer and reporter from Stars and Stripes, got their shots of the multinational financier shaking the CO’s hand, Colonel Rodin excused himself. In the crowded PX he sought Lana out and told her that Washington had “requested” that they be as cooperative as possible to La Roche Chemicals, “a major military contractor.”
“I’d prefer not to, Colonel,” Lana said rather grimly.
“I understand, Lieutenant. I’m merely conveying Washington’s wishes. Tell you—” He hesitated but said it anyway. “None of my business but I don’t blame you. They don’t look my sort of people either. Must be at least six guys there of draft age.”
“Health exemptions,” Lana said knowingly. “Four-F.”
Colonel Rodin grunted. “I guess. Well, please yourself, Lieutenant. Whatever you do is okay by me. Walk out if you want.”
“Thank you, Colonel. I appreciate that.” But she knew she had to at least say hello or some toady back in Washington was going to get paid to complain to the Pentagon about Colonel Rodin’s unhelpfulness.
As she walked over toward him through the crowd, La Roche didn’t turn around but kept talking to Francine.
“She coming?” he asked.
“Yes,” Francine said. “Lah-de-dah, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Jay.”
He swung around. “Lana!”
Francine wanted to throw up but, as instructed, moved off, swiping another drink from a tray passing by, its bearer, a GI, all but losing his eyeballs to the wonders of her chest.
“How are you, sweetie?” Jay asked Lana.
“Fine. You?”
“Terrific, terrific. What you think of my little party?”
She could hardly hear herself in the buzz of the PX commotion. “Very nice.”
“Yeah. Something for the boys at the front. And you gals, too, of course.” He laughed easily. “Get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
He lowered his voice, still smiling. “Hey, loosen up, babe. Muhammad comes to the mountain, right? Isn’t that enough?”
“For what?”
He reached out and took another soft drink. “See? No booze. On the wagon.” He downed the pop in one go. “Want you to come back, babe. Miss you. Hey — hey — before you say anything, I want to say I’m sorry. Mea culpa. Okay?” He moved to touch her arm. She withdrew it.
“Hey, swear to God, Lana. Checked in with a shrink. The whole bit. Cost me a bundle but I’m straightened out.”
“I’m glad.” It was the first thing she’d said to him that she had meant.
“God, but you’re beautiful.”
She said nothing, unmoved.
“Lana — this stinking war—” He glimpsed Francine watching them, sipping her Diet Coke. “Changed everything, right? None of us are the same people.” For a moment neither of them spoke. “Look, honey, you want the divorce, you can have it.”
She looked up at him.
“Yeah. I mean it. That’s what I came to tell you. But I want to do it civilly. You know — sit down, figure out a little something for your folks.”
“They’re all right.”
“You know what I mean. Your brother Ray — all those bums — I know a few people who—”
“Ray’s doing fine, Jay. He’s all—”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Look, I’ll level with you. I wanted to see you — that’s the truth. We’re also opening up a new plant in Anchorage. Perfume.” He laughed, that easy, gentle, good-looking laugh that had been the first thing that had attracted her to him. It seemed inconceivable now — so long ago. How she could have fallen—
“Crazy, isn’t it?” he said. “Whole damn world’s at war and people want to buy more perfume.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Well, not really I suppose—” She stopped.
“What d’you say you come into Anchorage for a day or two? We’ll settle it there. I’ll have the papers drawn up. Anything you don’t like — hey — we’re two reasonable people, right?”
“Are we?”
“Sure we are. Look, you don’t have to worry. I know about Shirer.” She felt the involuntary chill of a threat pass through her but said nothing. “That’s fine,” he went on. “I’ve got no problem with him. That’s why I came up. I don’t expect you to come back. I—” He looked thoughtfully down at his empty glass.
He’s making it up, she thought. He’s making it up as he goes along.
“I know I haven’t been any good for you, Lana.” He suddenly brightened. “On the other hand, if it wasn’t for me you’d never have met this guy and — hell, don’t make it hard, babe. All I’m saying is I know I gave you a rotten deal. A rotten deal. I can’t go back and fix that, but I can try to make amends.” He looked down at her and spoke softly. “It’s partly selfish. But I need to wipe the slate clean. I need to talk, Lana. Just you and me — sit down and straighten—”
“I don’t think so, Jay.”
“I know. Hell, on my past performance if I were you I’d think, ‘Bug off,’ but you’ve always been fair, babe. But we can’t talk here.” He looked around. “In this dump — I mean-no offense but — it’s a zoo, right? Look, forget Anchorage. We’ll settle it here. There a hotel in this burg?”
“I’m not spending a night with you, Jay. If you think you can con me into a good-bye— Well, you know what I mean. No way.”
“That’s not what I meant. Hell, bring a chaperon if you like. I just want it settled.” He smiled. “I’ll buy you a hamburger.”
She sighed. “Why don’t you just send the papers through the mail, Jay?”
“You think I haven’t thought of that? But my damn lawyers freaked out. I told them you’d settle easy enough. There’d be no hassle. But they want it watertight. Which means they want to charge me twenty thousand bucks. It has to do with the board, too, Lana. La Roche Chemicals. The agreement you sign has got to be — well — final. They need to see it — tell us what we can and can’t change. Hell,” he said. “You try to tell them to do it through the mail.”
She recognized the relentless legality of it.
“There’s a small hotel cum café—Davy Jones,” she said. ‘It’s not very fancy, but we could meet there I suppose.”
He shrugged. “Fine. Eight o’clock?”
“All right.” She turned to go.
“Lana?”
When she looked at him, both arms were dangling by his side in a way she’d never seen him before. He looked defeated. “I’ll send a driver if you want.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ll get a base cab.”
“I still love you, babe. I only wanted to see you. Is that so terrible?”
When La Roche’s entourage moved out of the PX, Francine could tell something had happened to him. A young reporter, his ID press badge reading Anchorage Spectator, tried eagerly to get a few words from him. “My name’s Johnson, Mr. La Roche. Anchorage Spectator. I was wondering if you’d care to say a few words about—”
“Fuck off!” La Roche told him.
“What are we doing, Mr. La Roche?” one of the flunkies asked.
“There’s some rat-hole in this place called the Davy Jones. Make reservations for dinner, if they know what that is. Eight o’clock. For two. And a room for me.”
“We’re booked into the Excelsior, Mr. La Roche. Nice little hotel overlooking the—”
“Well go there and draw up divorce papers.”
“Divorce papers?” the lawyer said. “But we didn’t bring any — I mean — we didn’t know you wanted anything like that on this trip, Mr. La Roche. I don’t think—”
“Then give me one of the company contracts. Something that looks legal. Can you do that much?” Jay sneered.
“Yes. Right away, Mr. La Roche.”
“Have them ready for me by eight o’clock so I can take ‘em with me to that Davy joint. And Marvin?”
“Yes, Mr. LaRoche?”
“Tell Francine to get her ass over to that hotel room. Now!”