The executives were right about the money to be made in Vegas. The shows were grossing telephone numbers and those profit share clauses in my royal contract with the company were lighting up like the rows of pokie machines in the casinos. And then there were the women. In Las Vegas there are more women on the make per square metre than anywhere I’ve ever been. The female body adorns every nook and cranny of the city. Sex doesn’t just sell in Vegas, it drips from the walls. This should have been the ultimate for me, a place to rut until I could rut no more, a place to choose my mates as though concocting a pizza (‘I’ll have a blonde with a Hispanic topping, please’) and exhaust myself on their silicon bodies and moulded faces. So why wasn’t I happy? Why wasn’t I out there gambling, drinking, snorting and fucking like every other sad bastard in the city? Jo was dead, that’s why.
The news reached us on our arrival in Vegas. Detective Ryan, true to his word, had kept Bebe informed: the life support machine had been turned off that morning. I wonder in what tone he had passed on the information. I couldn’t help but feel that the man was out to get me and now he really had something to get me for.
In absence of sampling the women of Las Vegas I’d taken heavily to the booze, especially whisky—I nursed the bottle from before breakfast until bed. In my hotel room, fit for a Roman emperor, I sprawled on silk pillows drinking and talking to Bebe. The Driesler interview and subsequent articles were the main sources of our conversation. The man had become an irritant for which I could find no cure. Bebe had warmed to the Driesler sermon about morals with some zeal. I think he saw an opportunity to save me and took my temporary abstinence from the flesh as a sign that perhaps, at last, I wanted to change. However, he was careful enough to arrange the parties as of old in case I slipped from what he assumed was some new moral high ground. Stubbornly choosing to ignore my drastically increased alcohol intake, he lectured me about the historical fall of elites, first the priesthood and then the politicians—once admired, they were now lampooned and despised. He insisted Driesler was right to foresee the importance of the scientists and to warn about their downfall. Neither Bebe nor Driesler quite came out and said it, but the implication was that there was more to the warnings about my morals than my creation of a pop show for science. Bebe thought it time for the moral leadership to come from science. ‘Let the writers booze and copulate,’ he said at one point before falling silent. His message was loud and clear, but was the company listening? Surely their squeaky clean, Mr Nice Guy image would fit with this just swell.
On the afternoon before the last show a shrill blast interrupted us. Bebe nodded into his mobile phone without speaking, then replaced it on the table between us. ‘George is on his way up.’
I hadn’t spoken to George Mason since the Dorchester party when I’d thankfully spurned the young woman on his arm. Now, despite the fact I was due back in England in less than two weeks, he’d flown to me for a meeting. Since learning of the visit the day before, I had chosen to ignore its implications. I sat in my hotel room, whisky in hand, unusually calm and quite drunk.
Bebe checked himself in the mirror, quickly wiping the corner of his mouth with a wet finger to remove a fleck of toothpaste. Once the knock came he moved fluidly to open the door. Four men entered, led by George. He was in his mid-thirties with a pencil-thin face and high cheekbones. His hair was greased and swept back and he wore small frameless glasses. A strong smell of expensive aftershave liberally applied trailed him as he entered the room. Briefly he introduced me to the three men with him, whose names I instantly forgot. It didn’t matter, they were surplus to requirements, simply there to watch and learn.
Bebe fussed around Mason as though he was a royal. For the most part Mason ignored the attention, but he at least acknowledged the orange juice Bebe poured him with a slight incline of the head. ‘How are you, Jack?’
‘Fine.’
‘I hear the show is going well, very well indeed.’ He pulled a briefing paper from a case carried by one of his minions and laid it flat on his knees.
‘Yes it is, George,’ answered Bebe on my behalf before sitting on the sofa edge like a lady in an Austen novel being introduced to her future husband.
‘Good, as you know I saw it in London. It’s extremely impressive, Jack, everything the company hoped for when they invested so heavily in you. You’re aware, aren’t you, Jack, that the company has put a huge amount of time and money into you?’
‘Oh, I’m aware, George. Rarely does a day go by when I’m not reminded of the fact.’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘But,’ I continued, ‘it’s all right, I say to myself, because just look at the money I’m making for you all and just look what I’m doing for the good name of Taikon.’
Bebe laughed nervously, but he was the only one to respond and the four Taikon boys sat in company-ordered silence.
‘Interesting to see what our friend Mr Driesler has been saying recently. You’ve been keeping up with that, Jack?’
‘Every word, George.’
‘This thing with the girl in New Zealand…’
‘Jo, she has a name and it’s Jo.’
‘…this is worrying us. What you got up to before was hardly acceptable, but we turned a blind eye, because we all have our weaknesses. I think we’ve been more than fair in letting you lead the kind of life you wanted, but you must accept there were risks for us. You know how much reputation is important for the company, you know how damaging it would be if too much of what you do got out into the media. We took the risk because you’re important and what you have to say is important and it was all part of a bargain. But this thing with the girl, this is a different league, Jack. I mean, for Christ’s sake, she’s dead, and she effectively died in your bloody hotel room. The hospital was just an unfortunate intermediary.’
‘Did you rehearse this speech, George, or are you ad-libbing? Because if you are, you’re doing really rather well.’
‘This isn’t funny, Jack. In fact it’s very serious and I think you’d better start treating it that way. Your little vices have killed a girl.’
‘Not looking very good for the company image, is it?’
‘No, and as I’m sure you know, if it’s looking bad for the company it’s looking bad for you. If we pull the plug on you, you’re finished. If we drop you, no one else will touch you because there’ll be a legal blanket round you so tight that not even the light of day will get through without our say-so. You’d be finished, Jack, finished, so shall we start to take this a bit more seriously?’
All three of the company gnomes nodded in agreement at George’s wise words. I even saw Bebe joining in.
‘What have you come to say, George?’
‘This Driesler article is getting a lot of press. For some strange puritan streak in society what he’s saying about morals is hitting a nerve. The great unwashed, it seems, want some morals. The papers are giving it coverage, as is TV. No one seems to give a stuff about the science, but they have picked up on the other. So we have a problem, Jack. Just at the time that the spotlight might fall on you as the world’s highest profile scientist you’re snorting enough cocaine in hotel rooms with Russian hookers to blow a young girl’s brain apart. Not to mention lying to the police. How’s that going to look?’