by Dean Koontz
He answered himself: Just wait. Just relax.
The pessimistic half of his mind told him: Impossible. It isn't just the Dragonfly project that's at stake. If this bastard McAlister breaks us on this one, he's going to destroy us altogether.
The optimistic Rice told the pessimistic Rice: He won't touch you. He can't touch you. You have all the advantages.
But I can lose everything I've built these last seventeen years . . .
Don't be a fool. You'll lose nothing. If he gets too close to you—or if anyone else gets too close to you— you can have him killed. You're more ruthless than any of them. That counts for something.
This brief, internal pep talk didn't help Rice at all. He still felt a deep pressure in his chest. He was still tense.
He sat down at his desk again, reached into the open drawer, picked up a second cookie and ate it in one bite. A few crumbs fell onto the front of his shirt. Before he had fully swallowed the second cookie, he popped a third one into his mouth. Then a fourth. A fifth and sixth . . . The very process of masticating, salivating, and swallowing affected him as a tranquilizer might have done. The combination of chocolate and marshmallow seemed to act like an emetic on the time stream of his mind, causing him to flush out the present and the future until only the past remained to tantalize him...
Perhaps the single most important hour of Rice's existence came at eleven o'clock at night, two days before Christmas, in the middle of his twenty-fourth year—although he was not at that time aware of the irresistible forces of change that were already working relentlessly within and upon his life.
At that time he was living in Boston, doing graduate work at Harvard, studying economics and political systems during the day and writing feverishly about politics and social theory at night. Once a month he took the train down to New York City, where he met J. Prescott Hennings, the young editor and publisher of two periodicals that were devoted to the dissemination of every facet of ultra-conservative American thought. Scott Hennings, at least in Rice's opinion, was proof that the American Dream could still come true. Hennings had inherited a twenty-million-dollar real estate fortune which he had built into a fifty-million-dollar empire by his thirtieth birthday. Now he let his businesses run themselves while he dedicated himself to the preservation of the capitalistic system in a world where Communists squirmed on all sides like worms in the walls of an old mansion. Each of his magazines had a circulation of just twenty thousand and a combined readership of a hundred thousand, and every issue lost money. Hennings hardly cared, for he could lose money every day for the remainder of his life, even if he died an octogenarian, and nonetheless leave a fortune behind him. Once a month Rice personally submitted an article to Hennings, with whom he had become close friends. Routinely, Hennings read it the same day, paid two or three hundred dollars for it, and published it forthwith.
None of Rice's Harvard acquaintances had ever read one of these articles or seen a copy of Hennings' magazines. That was of little consequence to Rice. He made rent money writing them—and he was reaching thousands of readers who were already enough in agreement with him to give his theories the careful consideration he could not have received in liberal circles. Indeed, at Harvard he was not well known. He merely used the university's library and other educational facilities much as a man might use a whore —or a whore use a man; he ignored the propaganda and took only the knowledge, and he tried not to be tainted by the extreme left-wing attitudes which lay, in his opinion, like an oppressive blanket of smog over the entire campus. Twice a year he was invited to a party at Hennings' penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, where he could socialize without having to mute or conceal his political views. At these affairs, which he treasured more than he did the money Hennings paid him, he met conservative congressmen, millionaire businessmen, generals and admirals, a few movie stars—and once even George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the National Socialist Party in the United States, had been there in a swastika-emblazoned uniform which, to Rice, was not at all anachronistic here in the 1960s. This was rare air for Rice. This was Mount Olympus, and he had somehow been allowed to mingle with the gods. Rice did not care, therefore, that the Harvard elite had never read or even heard of his monthly essays.
At eleven o'clock at night, two days before Christmas, in his twenty-fourth year, Rice completed a book-length manuscript, an inspired—if unbalanced and unfair—attack on Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Exhausted but unable to sleep, he stayed up all night rereading, correcting words and phrases, agonizing over sentence structure for more dark hours than he'd ever spent agonizing over the condition of his immortal soul.
The next morning he slept on the tram to New York. He delivered the script to Hennings, hoping it could be serialized in one of his magazines and that Hennings could place it with a publisher who specialized in conservative political theory. Although he hadn't known Rice was writing a book, Hennings promised to read it in a few days.
On Christmas Eve, 1964, Rice was alone in New York. He spent the evening in his hotel room, eating candy bars and pretending to watch television and trying not to think of his book. He had a nightmare in which Hennings rejected the book, called it a piece of unpublishable trash, and tried—with the help of four men in storm troopers' uniforms—to use the three hundred typewritten pages as a suppository which, though applied to Rice's anal canal, would cure him of his mental hemorrhoids. He woke up with loose bowels and ran for the bathroom.
Hennings didn't call Christmas Day, and Rice told himself this was to be expected. Scott had two children. He wouldn't give up his holiday to read the script. Yet Rice cursed him and ate more candy.
That evening the pressure became unbearable. He went walking in Tunes Square, where happy crowds lined up at theaters and street-corner Santas endured the final hours of their reincarnations. Oblivious of the cold wind and snow flurries, he kept his mind on that commodity which he had left his room to find: a professional piece of ass.
He found one: a pretty young brunette on Forty-second Street. He weighed only two-thirty in those days, and she wasn't much put off by him as some prostitutes eventually came to be. They set a price. He said he had no hotel room, but she knew a place where a key cost six dollars and there was no register to sign.
In the room he sat and watched her undress. She stripped without ceremony or style. Her breasts were large, belly flat, legs long and lovely. She was firm, unmarked. She seemed sweet and wholesome except for the plastic sheen of her eyes and the hard twist of her mouth.
When he began to take off his clothes, she stretched out on her back in the center of the bed, closed her eyes. Nude, he got onto the bed and straddled her chest as if he wanted her to use her mouth on him. She opened her eyes in time to see that he was about to strike her. She screamed—just as his fist chopped her chin, split her lip, broke a couple of her teeth, and knocked her unconscious. Breathing heavily, muttering, giggling, he pummeled her face, breasts, and stomach. He used his fists and open hands and finger-nails. His climax was spontaneous and intense. Then, whimpering, he washed the blood off his hands and chest. He dressed and left the room and walked out of the hotel into the wind and snow.
That night he slept well.
The telephone woke him at nine o'clock. It wasn't Hennings, as he expected it to be. The voice was cool, businesslike, and yet feminine. She identified herself as Evelyn Flessing, personal secretary to Mr. A.W. West of Southampton, Long Island. She said, "Mr. West would like very much to have you to dinner this evening—if you are free, of course."
Although he had never met him, Rice didn't have to ask who A.W. West was. West's grandfather, Edward Wallace West, had been in the oil business in the early days of the Texas fields but was driven out of that racket by John D. Rockefeller's hired thugs. Salvaging only a few million dollars from his oil interests, Edward hired his own thugs, cops, judges and congressmen. Then he bought a railroad. He had learned ruthlessness from Rockefeller, and he proceeded to make tens of millions of dollars
out of his many trains, resorting to violence when there was no legitimate way to destroy a competitor. Later, Edward's son, Lawrence Wallace West, moved the family money out of railroads and into aircraft design, production, and sales. During the Second World War he quadrupled the West fortune. When the Korean War began, Alfred Wallace West, grandson of Edward, was in charge of the wealth, and he expanded the West holdings in war-related industries. He also invested in Las Vegas hotels and casinos when he foresaw that the desert town would become the richest resort in the United States. Booming gambling revenues, munitions sales, and profits from a dozen other industries swelled the West fortune past the billion-dollar mark in 1962. And now the name A. W. West was synonymous with the kind of superwealth unknown before the twentieth century; it was as common and revered a name in banking circles as were Rockefeller, Getty, Hughes, Rothschild, and a handful of others.
Evelyn Flessing said, "Mr. Rice?"
He knew this was not a hoax. Hennings was the only one who knew where he was staying—and Hennings was utterly without humor. "Why would A.W. West want to have dinner with me?"
"You've written a book that interests him a great deal."
"I see."
"Then you'll join him for dinner?"
"Yes. Certainly. I would be delighted."
"Mr. West's limousine will be at your hotel at five-thirty."
After the woman hung up, Rice tried to call Hennings, but Scott was unavailable. He had left a message: "Have a pleasant dinner in Southampton."
What in the hell was going on?
What did it mean?
Had Hennings read the book? Apparently.
Had he passed it on to West? Obviously.
Had a busy man like A.W. West taken the time to read the script, virtually overnight? So it seemed.
Why?
The next eight hours passed slowly. He paced around the room, switched on the television, switched it off, paced, switched the set on again . . . He ate two lunches in the hotel coffee shop, came back to his room, paced. He snacked on peanuts and would have devoured time if it had been edible.
At five-thirty, when the Phantom IV Rolls-Royce arrived, Rice was waiting for it. He identified himself to the chauffeur who came around the car to greet him, and he allowed the rear passenger door to be opened and closed for him. He was conscious of people looking at him as no one had ever looked at him before, and he felt giddy.
Behind the wheel once more, the chauffeur put down the electrically operated glass partition between the driver's and the passenger's compartments. He showed Rice the small bar—ice, glasses, mixers, four whiskies—that was hidden in the back of the front seat by a sliding chrome panel. To the left of the bar another panel concealed a small television. "If you wish to speak to me," the chauffeur said, "push the silver intercom button. I can hear you, sir, only when the button is depressed."
"Fine," Rice said, numbed.
Leaving Manhattan, they crawled with the rush-hour traffic. Once on tie superhighway, however, they moved, doing nearly twice the posted speed limit. They passed four police cruisers, but were not stopped. At seven-thirty they entered the oak-framed drive that led up a gentle slope to the West mansion.
The house loomed like an ultra-expensive Swiss hotel or clinic. Warm yellow light spilled from fifty windows and painted the snow-skinned lawn. Inside, a doorman took Rice's coat, and a butler showed him to the study where A.W. West was waiting for him.
West looked like a billionaire. He didn't appear to be some sort of gangster, as Onassis did, and he didn't look like a high school principal, as David Rockefeller did; nor did he have that prim, asexual, acidic manner that made Getty seem like a Calvinist fire-and-brimstone preacher. West was tall, silver-haired, slim. He had dark eyes and a deep tan. His smile was broad and genuine. He was obviously a man who enjoyed life, enjoyed spending money every bit as much as he liked making it.
In the great man's company Rice felt awkward and insignificant. But before long they were chatting animatedly, as if they were old friends. At eight-thirty they went into the main dining room, where two maids and a butler served dinner. It was the best meal Rice had ever eaten, although; later he could not recall what most of the dishes had been. He remembered only the conversation: they discussed his book, and West praised it chapter by chapter; they discussed politics, and West agreed with him entirely. A.W. West's approval was to Rice what a voice from a burning bush might have been to a religious man. He no longer felt awkward and insignificant, and he did not overeat
After dinner they went to the library to have brandy and cigars. When he lit the cigars and poured brandy, West said, "You haven't asked why Scott sent me your book, why I read it, or why you're here."
"I thought you'd get around to that in your own time."
"And so I have."
Rice, growing tense again, tasted his brandy and waited.
"It's often said that I'm one of the six or seven most powerful men in the country. Do you believe that?"
"I suppose I do."
"Most people think I can buy and do whatever I want. But even a billionaire's power is finite—unless he's willing to risk everything."
Rice said, "I don't understand what you're getting at."
"I'll give you an example." West put his cigar in an ashtray and folded his hands on his stomach. His feet were propped on a green-velvet-covered footstool. "In 1960 I was determined John Kennedy would never sit in the White House. He was soft on Communism, an admirer of Roosevelt's socialism, and a fool who refused to see Communists in the black equal-rights crusades." West's face was red beneath his tan. "In order to stop Kennedy, I channeled three million dollars into various political organizations. I wasn't alone. Friends of mine did nearly as much. Kennedy won just the same. Then we had the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, missiles in Cuba, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, race riots . . . Anyway, it was clear that Kennedy was destroying this country. And it was also clear that even a man of my power and wealth couldn't keep the Irish bastard from serving a second term. So I had him killed."
Rice couldn't believe what he had just heard. Gaping, he waited for West to smile, waited for him to say it was a joke.
West didn't smile. "I wasn't the only one involved. I can't take all the credit. Hennings was part of it. And two other men."
Rice shook his head and repeated the litany which the American people had been taught by television, radio, and newspapers: "Lee Harvey Oswald was a psychotic, a loner, one man with one gun."
"Oswald wasn't very stable," West agreed. "But he wasn't even slightly psychotic. He was a sometimes CIA agent, a scapegoat. He never pulled the trigger."
"But the Warren Commission—"
"Wanted to reassure the public, and quickly. Those men wanted to believe in Oswald. Investigators often prove what they want to prove. They're bunded by their own precepts."
Andrew Rice quivered inside. He felt weak, faint, almost giddy. He wanted to believe West, for if one could assassinate a President and get away with it, the future of the United States was not, would never be again, in the hands of men who were in sympathy with the worldwide Communist movement. If men of great wealth, those who had the most to lose in a Communist takeover, were willing to assume this sort of indirect leadership of the country, leadership through assassination and whatever else was necessary, then democracy and capitalism were safe for an eternity! But it was too good to be true, too easy . . . He said, "It's difficult to believe so many people could be misled."
"Americans are sheep," West said. "They believe what they're told. They don't read. Most of them are interested only in sports, work, families, screwing each other's wives . . . In the vernacular—'They don't know from nothing.' And they don't want to know from nothing. They're happy with ignorance." He saw that Rice wanted to believe but was having trouble accepting it. "Look, there are enough clues in the Warren Report to convince any reasonable man that Oswald was either part of a conspiracy or a scapegoat. Yet you never bothered to study the report a
nd piece together the facts. If you accepted the commission's verdict, why shouldn't the average man accept it. You're a genius, or near it, and you never doubted."
"What clues?" Rice asked.
Leaning forward in his chair so that they were in Something of a huddle over the footstools between them, West began to count them off: "One, the autopsy notes were burned. Do you think that's the usual procedure in a murder case?"
"I guess it isn't."
West smiled. "Two. Oswald was given a paraffin test to see if his cheeks held nitrate deposits—which they would have had to hold if he'd recently fired a rifle. The test was negative. In any ordinary case, in any ordinary court, this would probably have cleared him of murder. Three. The first medical report from Parkland Hospital, later confirmed by autopsy, said the President was shot in the temple. The report still stands. Yet the commission decided that Oswald shot the President in the back of the neck. One bullet?"
Rice said nothing. He was sweating.
Caught up in his argument, smiling, West said, "Four. Julia Ann Mercer, resident of Dallas, observed Jack Ruby debark from a truck and climb that grassy knoll carrying what appeared to be a rifle wrapped in newspapers. Subsequent to the assassination, she tried to report Ruby to the FBI. We had men in the FBI, and she was ignored. The next day, as you know, Ruby murdered Oswald. Five. The Zapruder film shows that the fatal shot slammed the President backward and to his left. The laws of physics insist that the bullet came from in front and to the right of him. The grassy knoll. Yet we're told he was shot from behind. Six. A Dallas businessman named Warren Reynolds saw the man who shot Officer Tippit and chased him for approximately one block. He informed the FBI that the man who had shot Tippit was not Oswald. Two days later Reynolds was shot in the head by an unknown assailant. He survived. FBI men visited him in the hospital, and when he could talk again he had decided that it was Oswald who had shot Tippit. Domingo Benavides was only a few yards from Tippit when Tippit was shot. Benavides described the assailant as a man who did not even vaguely resemble Oswald. He was not asked to testify before the commission. Acquilla Clemons, another police witness, saw Tippit's killer and gave a description matching that supplied independently by Benavides. She was not called to testify before the commission. Mr. Frank Wright, whose wife called the ambulance for Tippit, was adamant that Oswald was not Tippit's killer. He was not called before the Warren Commission. A waitress, whose vantage point for the Tippit killing was not nearly so good as that of Benavides or the others, became the state's star witness. Even she could not identify Oswald, according to testimony in the commission report—yet in the summary the commission says she did positively identify Oswald." He was still smiling. "Did you bother to read the report and locate this kind of material? There are hundreds of things like it."