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.”