There was a silence as they pondered this.
"What you have in Mudger," the Senator said, "is the combination of business drives and lusts and impulses with police techniques, with ultrasophisticated skills of detection, surveillance, extortion, terror and the rest of it."
"It's like what Chaplin said in connection with _Monsieur Verdoux_. The logical extension of business is murder."
Percival shuddered, a bit theatrically, to indicate his feelings on the subject. He leaned forward to freshen her drink. She waved him off, smiling politely. He got some ice cubes from the bucket on the liquor cabinet and carried them back in his left hand, watching them slide into his glass one by one. Streetlights were on outside. No further sound of children playing. Moll watched him drink quietly. He finished one, started another.
"I like tall women," the Senator said.
"So he wants to diversify."
"Let me ask you something."
"Sure."
"Did you ever smoke grass?"
"Did I ever smoke grass? Yes, Senator, in my time."
"I guess you must have."
"Being a woman with a past," she said.
"What I wanted to know. Do you have any with you?"
"Sorry."
"It's something, candidly, I would have liked to have done. Some years ago with my youngest daughter, when she was about twenty or so, I thought we should do this because I knew she smoked, I knew she smoked."
"You thought it would bring you two closer together."
"I really wanted to," he said.
"Where, in the Capitol rotunda?"
He finished his drink and poured another.
"I like tall women."
"I'd be interested in hearing more about this Earl Mudger person. If you want this thing to see print, you ought to tell me everything you know. He wants to diversify, you say."
"I wonder this."
"Yes?"
"What can I call you?" he said. "Candidly."
"Molt will do."
"Moll, can you keep a secret?"
"Sure, try me."
"I was in contact with a man. Never mind details, like name and such. We met at a party. First there was a party. New York gallery opening followed by a party. You know the agenda. The talk: politics, sex, movies and dog shit. You know the kind of thing. Then a second party that branched off from this. A small, small gathering of like-minded people. Very small. We had interests in common."
"Like what?"
"That's not part of the secret. That's a different secret."
"Please go on," she said.
"This man I met. The second party. I found out later he was a systems engineer. Did contract work for Radial Matrix. Strictly on the up-and-up. Not connected with their covert function. But this was learned later. At the party he had something to sell. Something I was interested in buying. We were like-minded people there. Conversation flowed mostly in one direction. And I learned about this man's proposal to sell. So we talked and made arrangements to talk again. In my position, being the position I hold, this was done discreetly, taking enormous precautions. But I did give him a certain phone number where he could reach me. This was done because he refused to be contacted himself. There was total insistence on this. What I also later learned was that in his work for Radial Matrix, strictly on the up-and-up, he and Earl Mudger struck up an acquaintanceship. See, Mudger was interested in making the same buy I was. Diversification. His plan to diversify. So then before we could even talk again the man I talked to is found stone cold dead in some condemned building in New York. But this is just between us. Deep background. Because I trust you."
"I understand."
"So now, I'd be willing to bet, there are two investigations going on. I'm investigating them. And I'd be willing to bet they're investigating me. Blackmail in mind. Purposes of blackmail. So we must tread lightly. Everything we do is subject to extreme cautionary procedures."
She watched his head fall forward. Two minutes later he snapped awake.
"I'm curious about the house, Senator."
"Do you have any grass or not?"
"I love looking at other people's houses."
"I want to smoke grass with a tall woman."
"Show me around, why don't you?"
"If I show you around, we have to go to the bedroom. You have to be shown the bedroom just as much as other rooms. All rooms count the same in a house when it's being shown."
"Show me the bedroom, Senator."
"Call me Lloyd," he said.
He struggled to his feet and held out his right hand. She took it and allowed him to lead her up a short staircase. At the top of the stairs he fell down. He got up, with her help, and then headed into the bedroom, where he fell again. She watched him crawl toward the king-size canopy bed.
"Where's your housekeeper? Don't senators have housekeepers? Some little old granny to button the trap door in your pajamas."
"Gave her the night off."
"Part of your seduction scheme, was it? Jesus, Lloyd, too bad. All that trouble for nothing."
"It's all lies. I repeat. We never had this talk."
She helped him up on the bed and waited until his breathing grew steady and he passed beyond the outer edges of sleep. Then she went down the hail and turned left, interested in finding the easternmost end of the house, the surface that abutted the brown frame structure next door.
The walls here were lined with antique sconces and turn-of-the-century handbills and steamship prints. She examined three small rooms. In the last of these were two banister-back chairs, a spinning wheel and a Queen Anne writing table. Moli noted the position of the fireplace. East wall. The screen was not in place before the open recess. It was leaning against one of the chairs.
Cleanest fireplace she'd ever seen. She moved closer, bending to inspect. It wasn't a working fireplace. No flue. Nothing but solid brick above. She leaned further into the recess. The back section was hardwood. Probing in the dimness, she touched a small latch. When she lifted it and applied pressure, the section swung open. A priest's hole. She moved through hunched way over, not actually crawling. Immediate sense of confinement. Near-total darkness.
This constricting space ended after she'd moved forward fifteen feet. Standing full length she felt along the walls on either side. Her hand found a dimmer-switch and she eased it out and turned it about ninety degrees.
She found she was standing on a grillwork balcony overlooking an enormous room of Mediterranean design. She walked down a closed staircase lined with stained glass panels, abstract. The floor below was parquet with a centered rectangle of peacock tiles. There were large tropical plants.
On the walls were perhaps fifty-five paintings. Pieces of sculpture stood among the plants. There were small displays of pottery, jewelry and china. A stone fountain depicted a woman on her knees before an aroused warrior. Mounted in a tempered glass segment of one wall was a bronze medallion scene of Greek courtesans. There was a large bronze on the tiled rectangle: two men, a woman.
Moll moved first along the walls, looking at the paintings and drawings. Very nice, most of them, all labeled. Icart. Hokusai. Picasso. Baithus. Dali. The Kangra school. Botero with his neckless immensities. Egon Schiele with his unloved nudes. Hans Beilmer. Tom Wesselmann. Clara Tice.
She crossed the floor several times, studying the sculptures, the pottery, the section of hand-carved choir stall-naked woman with gargoyles. She realized there were no doors or windows. He'd had the whole house sealed from the inside, all openings bricked and plastered over. Portable humidifiers for the plants. Elaborate lighting system. The only way in or out was through the fireplace in the "real" house.