Jay told the lawyer to get lost, and when he was off the phone Jay had disconnected the jack. Then he walked over slowly toward the bed where Lana lay on her back, legs draped over the end of the bed. Jay told himself he mustn’t hurry, but by the time he’d pulled off her panty hose, rolled her over, undone her bra, and rolled her back over again, her legs lolling down further over the end of the bed, he knew he’d have trouble drawing it out. But hell, that was half the fun, and no matter what she said after coming to from the chloral hydrate of the Mickey Finn, he’d call the lawyer, who would swear blind that Mr. La Roche hadn’t touched her, no matter how sore she felt or what she said.
Naked himself, standing over her, he reached down, rolled her over again onto her stomach, slipped his hands beneath her, squeezed her breasts, then took one shot with the Polaroid to make sure it was working properly. Let this fucking Shirer marry her after this little peep show had done the round of the base. Already he had the headline for his “rags,” as she’d called them: WAVE OFF BASE WITH ACE. All you could see in this photo was her buttocks, but later when he flipped her again, finished doing it in her mouth — chained her up a bit — he’d take a mug shot of her. Franklin would recognize her easy enough then.
One thing he knew he could count on was that medically she’d be clean as a cucumber. No VD pushed into her. He’d been too careful about that. And if she started squawking to anyone after, he’d remind her of what her precious daddy and mommy would look like splashed across the National Investigator. He spread her buttocks apart and, spitting on the soap bar, ran it up and down thirteen times. Thirteen was lucky.
There was a knock on the door. He tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t let up. Quickly he grabbed his Chinese robe with the gold brocade dragons rampant on emerald silk — the same robe he’d used when he’d had her in Shanghai. There was another knock on the door and, cursing, he went over and looked through the peephole. It wasn’t the lawyer but the snot-nosed junior reporter from the Anchorage Spectator, intent on getting a story from La Roche. La Roche knew the type — young, persistent, dreamed of the Pulitzer, and a pain in the ass when you wanted a piece of tail. And if you told them to scram they’d write fuckin’ lies about you. He opened the door. “Listen,” he told the kid, “I’m busy right now.”
“I’m sorry for the intrusion, Mr. La Roche, but I just wondered if I could get a few comments on the—”
The kid’s fervent earnestness was all too familiar to La Roche. Everybody thought that when you were rich you knew some secret. Whenever you farted they took it to be a prediction of the market. He’d offer the kid a twenty, but he knew the kid wouldn’t take it. Full of integrity and all the other loser philosophy.
“Later, kid. All right? Come around in the morning— about—”
“You remember Congressman Hailey, Mr. La Roche?”
“What?”
“A Congressman Hailey. You know, the one you said you’d show all those pictures of with other men — if he didn’t try and transfer a pilot to—”
“Hey!” Jay said. “Don’t you come around here—”
“I’m his son.”
The bullet from the silencer passed straight through the would-be newspaper reporter’s notebook into La Roche’s mouth, flinging him hard against the door, coming out high up on his neck. La Roche, eyes bulging, jawbone quivering violently, staggered forward, his mouth full of blood, pouring down over his robe, turning the gold dragons red. As he slumped to the hallway carpet, James Hailey, Jr., shot La Roche again, point-blank in the face. Then he put the gun to La Roche’s temple, pulled the trigger again, and, unhurriedly pocketing the firearm, walked quickly back down the fire escape stairwell, and down by Dutch Harbor.
After wiping all prints from the gun grip, he tossed it far out into the frigid black water, called a cab, and told the driver he had to catch a plane in half an hour from Dutch Harbor to Juneau and then on to the lower forty-eight.
Fifteen minutes later a shoe salesman, after checking into Davy’s, found Jay La Roche lying across the hallway.
Noting the time, and after taking a blood sample from Mrs. La Roche as she lay unconscious on the bed, the police could quickly ascertain that she had been completely out of it at the time of the murder, the high concentration of chloral hydrate showing up in her blood sample. Besides which, there wasn’t a weapon.
“Did Mr. La Roche have any enemies?” the Dutch Harbor police chief asked La Roche’s lawyer.
The lawyer said, “Let me count the ways,” and his gut began jiggling like jelly.
“What d’you mean?” the police chief asked.
“Shall we say, Sheriff, that Mr. La Roche had many competitors and, in a big business like his — a man makes enemies on the way up. People think they were badly done by.”
“Then he won’t be missed,” the police chief proffered.
The lawyer had tears in his eyes — he couldn’t hold in the laughter.