Rainy had never been poor, but she had never before been in a car that had a private stereo, a private television set, a chauffeur who looked like John Houseman—and, she discovered when the chauffeur invited her to make herself a drink, a private bar stocked with fresh ice cubes. She leaned back with a Seven-Up she didn't really want, staring out the window at the rain as though she lived this way all the time. She was sure she was fooling no one, but there was no one to see.
If the car was grand, the house was awesome. Danny Deere must have been warned from the gatehouse, because he was out under the pillared porch roof waiting for her when the car arrived, and came bareheaded out into the rain to open the door for her. "Thank you for coming out on Christmas," he said, taking her elbow. She could not reconcile this person with the bumptious clown who had trampled past her at the ASF meeting. "I bet you score a lot of women this way," she said.
He grinned. "All I ever want, doll." And then to the chauffeur, "All right, Joel, now get lost."
That was more like it. "I bet you lose a lot that way," she said as she let him help her off with her raincoat.
"What way is that, doll?"
"Talking to that nice old man like that."
"Who, Joel?" He stopped and stared at her for a moment, as though she had said something so inane and inappropriate that he was embarrassed for her. Then he shook his head and pointed to the couch. "He's got no bitch," Danny said reasonably, moving to the bar. "He used to be my producer, you know that? And what you don't know is, I'm paying him more now than he made then."
"Really?"
"Yes, really. Scotch or bourbon?"
"Nothing. Maybe a bourbon and ginger, but weak. Of course," she said, "there's been a lot of inflation since then."
Danny grinned. "Work on it a while, doll," he invited. "You're sure to come up with a reason why I'm screwing him by paying him forty-five thousand a year." He mixed the drinks triumphantly. There was no reason to spoil the story by mentioning what happened to the money after Joel got it. Nearly seventeen thousand went to the IRS; three hundred dollars a week, in cash, came kicked back to Danny Deere personally. But that still left the old man with almost fifteen thousand a year to put in the bank, because what did he have to spend money on here? And a title as vice president and marketing consultant, so it could all be deducted from the business expense. With his back between Rainy and the bar, Danny Deere put a double shot in her drink and carried it over to her. "I didn't bring you here to talk about his troubles anyway," he said. "I got a problem."
She tasted the drink and shuddered. "You know, I suspected that."
"And you're just the doll that can solve it for me. It makes a difference to me what you people are going to decide."
He sat down, oppressively close to her on the big couch. "What people is 'you people', Mr. Deere?"
"You know goddam well. You and old lady Bradison and the hunkie and Townie Pedigrue's kid brother."
She reached to set the drink down, edging away in the process. It was really a very seductive couch, in a most handsome room. She was itching to get up and look at the paintings on the walls and see the view in the courtyard— no, not a courtyard! It was all glassed in! "Well," she said, "I guess everybody's worried about earthquakes around here."
"No, doll," he said patiently, "I don't mean whether L. A.'s going to go down with the turds, I mean whether you people are going to say it will. That's what matters to me."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Deere, but I really can't release information before—"
"Fine, 'cause that's not what I want. I don't just want to know what you're going to say, I want to tell you what it is. I want you to say it's practically going to be the end of the fucking world, and I want you to say it so it's scary."
He moved closer to her and she flared, "Back away, friend! My God! Do you know what you're asking?"
He shrugged and withdrew the hand that was touching her thigh. "Don't bullshit me, doll," he said mildly. "You're not some land of priest. You got no holy duty involved here."
"No, but I've got a job. And that job is to find out the truth, as well as I can, and report it. This committee isn't some Academy Awards jury you can rig, it's a determination of fact."
"So's a court trial, doll," he observed.
She was caught off stride. "What?"
"So's a court trial, and that don't stop the lawyers from trying to bend the facts their way. Holy shit, doll, the reason you're doing this is you people all disagree on the facts, right? So are you telling me there's no room for arguing? Specially if I, like, retain you?"
"What?" She was repeating herself and knew it.
"I said, if I retain you. Like five thousand dollars. Cash."
She stared at him, and then got up and headed for the wet bar. It was the first time she had ever been offered a bribe. She tipped half the whiskey into the sink and replaced it with tap water, but even after taking a sip her reflexes failed her. She didn't know how to react. Indignation sounded appropriate; but she didn't feel indignant, only stunned.
"I'll give you five thousand dollars," Danny repeated from the couch. "Come on back and sit down, doll, while I explain it to you. I want you to tell the world the big Q is coming to come, and it's easy for you. You got the swing vote. The hunkie's going to vote no, and old lady Bradison's going to vote yes."
She was shaken. "How do you know that?"
"I know," he said patiently. "So you swing it. If it really bothers your conscience you can wait a while—sixty days anyway; no less than that. Then you can say, oh, wow, you just turned up this new evidence and you're changing your mind. And you come out with this." He pulled an envelope out of the pocket of his leisure suit and pushed it across the coffee table to her. "Off the books. You don't declare it. Just have a good time with it, and Merry Christmas."
He stood up and took the drink from her hand. "Don't make up your mind right now," he said genially. "And while you're thinking it over, let me show you my house."
The big question in Rainy Keating's mind was, Why was she doing this? Why was she letting this man offer her a bribe, and then give her the two-dollar tour of his house, for God's sake, like some rich uncle from Waukegan? Not to mention his hands, because every time she went through a door, or turned to look at a painting, he was helpfully touching her. She didn't even like him. He was shorter than she, though Rainy was not a tall woman. He was by no means a nice man or a kind one. Not to mention the fact that at the moment her big interest was seeing just where this thing with Tib Sonderman was going to go.
Still, the tour was interesting—no, fascinating! She had never been in a home like this. The paintings were on every wall, and they were every style and school she had ever heard of. The silver service on the dining room sideboard was lustrous sterling. The pool table in the game room, the one-armed bandits that stood along the wall, each with a fire-bucket of quarters next to it; the stereo speakers in every room, the deep-pile rugs, the sculpted plaster ceilings—it was what she had imagined Hugh Hefner's pad to be like. Or Louis the Fourteenth's. Danny saved the best for the last, of course, and of course that was his bedroom. It did not have its own bathroom. It had its own bath suite, three connecting rooms: one with toilet and washstand, one with a vast shower and a marble tub, one with a ten-foot Jacuzzi. The bedroom itself was almost bare—he demonstrated the concealed closets and dressing tables in the walls—with the bed, circular, to be sure, on a pedestal in the middle of the room. She resolutely stayed in the doorway. "How come no mirrors on the ceiling?" she asked.