Lomax put his feet up on the jump seat. He opened his briefcase and took out a red folder.
THE DORISH REPORT
A confidential reporting service
He turned to the first page and began reading.
Sir:
An investigation has been conducted pursuant to your request and authorization concerning Grace B. Delaney, Managing Editor, Running Dog magazine, a property of RD Publications, which person resides at 116 East 61st Street, New York, N.Y. 10021, in order to ascertain Grace B. Delaney's background, reputation and responsibility. The results of our investigation are set forth below under headings designed to facilitate your perusal and analysis.
The headings were: Identification, Background, Personal Relations, Credit, Litigation and Finances. Lomax scanned Personal Relations before any of the others but eventually found Finances to be more to the point. Tax matters in particular.
At the bottom of the last page was a statement in italics:
_This report is made available to you at your express request, as you have employed us for that purpose. It is a privileged and confidential communication, and the in form.ation contained herein is not to be disclosed to others, verbally or otherwise_.
It concluded: The Dorish Report, Investigative Confidentiality for the Special Needs of the Seventies.
Trying to hail a cab on H Street, Moll watched the black limousine gradually come to a stop in front of her. The driver was square-jawed, dark suit and cap. The man sitting in the rear, opening the door toward her, was wearing sports clothes and moccasins. He smiled pleasantly.
"Come on, I'll take you."
"Where?"
Shrug.
"To the Senator," she said. "That it?"
Smile.
"The Senator wants to apologize, does he?"
Smile.
"I'll have to take a raincheck," she said. "Tell him next time."
"No rainchecks. We don't give rainchecks."
"Tell him thanks anyway."
"It's urgent," the man said.
His face didn't quite indicate that. The smile was still there but only technically, no longer bearing traces of pleasantness. But it wasn't urgency that had replaced it. Just impatience, she thought. Still, the strangeness of it kept her from walking away. She was feeling a little disassociated. Limousine, driver, Senate aide. If Percival wanted to talk to her, it would be foolish, considering the revelations of the night before, to put him off.
She got into the car, sorting a number of thoughts at once. She noticed they were heading west on K Street. The man in sports clothes lit a cigarette.
"He's at his Georgetown place, is he?"
The man patted his sideburns, one at a time.
"Taking some time off, is he, from his onerous duties on the Hill?"
They passed Washington Circle and were on a freeway skirting the channel. They turned onto a bridge approach and Moll twisted in her seat and looked out the back window, realizing that was Georgetown they'd just left behind.
She began reading road signs aloud, not knowing quite why. At a certain bend in the road, sunlight filled the interior of the car and when she glanced down at the material covering the back seat she saw it was covered with dog hair.
Soon they were passing Falls Church and heading into intermittent countryside, fields of black Angus grazing. The car slowed occasionally for extended stretches of motels, plant nurseries, supermarkets, auto and truck dealerships. Streams and brooks were called runs here. Roadside shops advertised Civil War relics.
2
Lightborne wore a hat with a little feather stuck in the band. It was a gift from one of his customers, who thought it would go well with his Norfolk jacket. He wore the hat just this one time, an after-dinner stroll through the gallery district. It made him feel like a veteran sportswriter covering the Army-Navy game on a clear and brisk November day. Or like a man out for a Sunday drive in his Buick Roadmaster in the year 1957.
The phone was ringing when he got back to the gallery. It was Richie Armbrister, the twenty-two-year-old smut merchant, calling from a special hookup aboard his customized DC-9, which had just landed at JFK.
"I'm back from Europe, Lightborne. We came down in the dark. I hate nighttime landings."
That squeaky voice sent little tremors rippling through Lightborne's nerve apparatus.
"Hear that music? That's my disco. People are dancing. They danced right through the landing. Listen, I want to ask. Is it still warm? Full-length, I mean. The business you mentioned. How hot's the trail?"
"I'd say very warm, Richie, without fear of overstating."
"Good, listen, we'll talk. I'm coming over there. It's a layover, for maintenance. I definitely want to explore this thing. The more I talk to people, the more I hear about profit potentials with first-run. I made new connections in the European capitals. Features. They're feature-crazy. Exhibitors are hollering for more product. So I think I want to get my toe in the water, Lightborne. Eventually distribute worldwide maybe."
These last remarks Richie delivered in a subdued and earnest manner. An encouraging development. Lightborne was heartened.
"Betty's Azalea Ranch," Moll said.
The man read a newspaper.
"Topside Pool Supplies."
About a hundred yards beyond the Centreville Free Will Baptist Church, the limousine turned into an unmarked dirt road. Half a mile in, they passed a one-story L-shaped building, both wings very long, no landscaping out front. Farther on, maybe two miles, the car stopped in a grove of scarlet oaks near a large stone house. Two Shetland ponies stood in a split-rail cedar corral. There was a pond to the side of the house and some stables beyond that.
They got out of the car. Molt watched a small helicopter setting down in a field nearby. Two men hopped out, both wearing skin-tight jeans, denim jackets, sunglasses and Stetsons. They walked toward the back of the stone house as the helicopter slowly rose, slanting now toward the deep woods in the distance. The men were Orientals, she was quite sure, looking boyish in those narrow pants and small-scale western hats.
Earl Mudger stood in the doorway. Molt was aware her escort had paused, leaving her to approach the house alone. Mudger wore a blacksmith's apron and heavy-duty gloves. He was a thickset man with curly hair trimmed close, with ashblond eyebrows and a strong jaw, slightly jutting-the picture of a man who wouldn't yield easily to aging. His eyes were a fine silky blue. He had a bent nose, broadly columned neck and something of a surfer's numinous gleam-his eyes and hair and brows shining just a bit, as though bleached by the elements.
She followed him to a wicker table set under an oak tree. He took off his gloves and apron and tossed them onto one of the extra chairs. An old woman, an Oriental, brought out lemonade and some cookies. Moll could tell Mudger fancied himself a charmer. Tough but winsome. She set her face to Executive Chill.
"Let's us talk some."
"Fine," she said.
"Fact number one, everything Percival told you last night was exaggerated by a factor of seven."
"What did he tell me last night?"
"I can replay it for you any time, Fact number two, it doesn't matter anymore because I'm no longer involved with PAC/ORD, or Radial Matrix, or Lloyd Percival. Born free, that's me. No more attachments. I'm shaking loose. Time to retire."
"A life of meditation," she said.
"Fact number three, you've got the alliances all mixed up, assuming you believe what the Senator's been telling you. Did you ever wonder how Percival's select committee gets their input? Lomax is Percival's man. Lomax is the source of everything the committee knows."