“Sure,” Hotchins said, “I’ll think about it.”
More silence.
Hotchins felt boxed in, but the furies began to settle down inside him. Perhaps DeLaroza was right. And yet he had never known anyone like her. Her sexuality had given him a new vigor, a vitality that he had missed for years. It was not a motivation; it was fuel for the motivation. And yet if giving her up was part of the key to winning …
“Let us get back to the money,” DeLaroza said. “We have … commitments from individual contributors for almost a million dollars. I can call them in today. In the meantime I can make the funds available through my own accounts. Immediately if necessary. Oh, don’t worry, it will be done properly. Nothing would ever appear as a loan.”
Hotchins held up a hand. “I trust you, Victor. I am sure it will be done in a way that’s above …” He started to say “suspicion” but quickly changed it to “reproach.” He sank back in the seat. His shoulders drooped and he sighed. “I’m sorry too,” he said. He held out his hand and they shook.
“There will be many anxious times,” DeLaroza said. “I sometimes forget that we are both emotional men.”
“It’s forgotten,” Hotchins said. “Look. I’ve got to get back. It’s hard for me to get away at all these days, even for a few minutes. They want an itinerary when I go to the bathroom.”
“Get used to it,” DeLaroza said. “Your private days are about over.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Hotchins said. “Thanks.”
He left the car and DeLaroza settled back. The smile vanished from his face. He sat deep in thought for several minutes. Yes, his private days are over, he thought, and so are mine. Thirty years of living in shadows and now, in a few short days, the recognition he had needed for so long would be his. He had built an empire and was about to create a king and now, finally, he would have what he deserved—applause. An ovation! The plan to emerge from his self-imposed cell of secrecy had started forming in his mind when he met Hotchins. It had taken sixteen years to gestate. Sixteen years. And now the blood hammered in his temples. Four more days.
He pressed the button, lowering the window between the front and back seats of the car. Chiang, his chauffeur-bodyguard, handed him a cassette. Another addition to the Gwai-lo file. It was time to discuss matters with Kershman.
_____________________
Gerald Kershman was sprawled face down on the bed, his hands and feet bound to the corners by velvet cords. Sweat stung his eyes and he gulped for air as the strips of leather bit into his already tortured flesh. He turned his face into the silk sheets that muffled his cries of pain. The naked young man standing over him with the cat o’ nine tails was hard and lithe; his blond hair tumbled in sweaty ringlets over his forehead.
Finally Kershman turned his face toward the youth. “Enough,” he gasped.
The blond, who was in his late teens, lowered the whip and stood over him. Kershman took several deep breaths and shivered involuntarily and then relaxed. “Untie me,” he said.
The young man freed him, and Kershman, his back and rump slashed with red welts, struggled from the bed soiled with his own semen and grimaced with pain as he sat on the edge. He was a small, fat man with thick, contemptuous lips and froglike eyes. Black hair curled obscenely on his shoulders and back. He reached out to the night table near the bed with chubby, trembling fingers, feeling for his thick glasses and putting them on with some effort.
“Okay I get dressed now?” the youth asked.
Kershman stared at his naked body for a few more moments and nodded. He wiped the sweat from his face with a towel and watched as the young hustler slipped on a pair of red bikini briefs and arranged himself. “You really love it, dontcha?” he said. “I never seen nobody eat up a beatin’ like that before.”
“Shut up,” Kershman groaned. He got up and walked toward the bathroom, a silk bathrobe trailing from one hand.
“Hey,” the blond said, “how about my bread?”
“You’re not through yet,” said Kershman. “Come in here.”
He lay face down on a massage table in the opulent bathroom and pointed to several bottles of ointment and balm in a tray attached to the table. The boy spread them on carefully, chattering aimlessly as he did. Kershman turned his face away from the youth. Tears edged down the side of his nose. They were tears of humiliation, not pain. The blond completed his task and Kershman eased himself off the table.
“All right,” he said, “you can leave now.”
“The bread, the bread,” the hustler said, snapping his fingers at Kershman. The small man looked at him and hate filled his eyes. His lip curled viciously.
“You snap your fingers at me one more time,” he said, “and I’ll have them broken, one at a time.”
“Hey,” the blond said. He stepped back, balling up his fists.
“Your bread,” Kershman said wearily, “is on the dresser.”
The younger man went into the bedroom and emptied the contents of a brown manila envelope, eagerly counting the bills. His eyes lit up. “Jeez, thanks,” he said, “ya want me to come back again tonight?”
“I don’t want to see you again,” Kershman said. “You show your face around this building again and you’ll regret it.”
The hustler looked at him for a moment and then grinned. “Wotsa matter, doll, was I too rough on you?”
Kershman stood in the bathroom doorway, regarding him through thick glasses that distorted his already bulging eyes, his mouth still trembling from the combination of pain and ecstasy. He said, “If it makes you feel any better, you were magnificent. I happen to prefer one-nighters.”
“Sure, honey, that’s cool. Different strokes for different folks, right?” He pulled on his leather jacket and left.
Kershman struggled into his clothes and left his apartment, taking a private elevator down one flight to the eighteenth floor of the Mirror Towers, where the giant computer awaited him. There were only three entrances into the sprawling computer complex which consumed most of the eighteenth floor. One was by private elevator from Kershman’s apartment, the second a private elevator between DeLaroza’s office and the console room. The third was by the exterior elevator, which had to be programmed to stop as it descended from the top two floors. Special keys activated the computers and the elevators.
Only three other people worked in the computer complex, none of whom really understood its complexities or the maze of interlocking information it contained. They were simply technicians.
It was a little after 2:30 when Kershman’s elevator opened and he entered the main console room, the nerve center of the complex. A young woman wearing a white uniform was stringing a spool of tape on one of the computer banks.
“Anything unusual?” Kershman asked.
“Not really,” she answered brightly. “We have to complete the annual audit on WCG and L today. I’m running the totals now.”
“Fine,” Kershman said and went into his private office. The audit on West Coast Gas and Light Company, when complete, would require Kershman’s final personal touch, since DeLaroza planned to have its directors apply for a rate increase.
It was a measure of Kershman’s financial genius and tenacity that while still an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business he had once appeared at the office of the president of Ticanco, one of the world’s largest conglomerates, and asked for an appointment. Although he was told it would be impossible, Kershman had appeared at the office every morning at precisely 8:30 and remained there until five in the afternoon. After twenty-six consecutive working days, he had exhausted the executive’s resistance and was finally ushered into his office.
“You have two minutes,” the man said sternly. “If you can’t state your business by then you’re wasting your time as well as mine.”
“Oh, I can do it in one sentence,” Kershman replied confidently. “I can show you an absolutely foolproof method that will save you eight million, three hundred tho
usand dollars in corporate income taxes this year. Are you interested?”
The actual saving was a little under seven million dollars, but it had earned Kershman, an orphan from the slums of East Saint Louis, his tuition and a generous living allowance for the remainder of an educational odyssey that included two more years at Wharton, three years at Harvard, where he earned a doctorate in corporate finance, and a stint at Georgetown Law School, where he received his degree in international law. After completing his studies with distinction at all three universities, Kershman had refused a generous offer from Ticanco, to go to work instead for the Internal Revenue Service where during the next three years he designed an infinite variety of schemes for beating the income tax laws. By the time he was thirty-three Kershman was earning six figures a year as a consultant for several corporations.
To Kershman the world became a giant financial chess board and he took Machiavellian delight in developing methods for circumventing the international trade agreements and treaties which were its rules. In 1968 Kershman had proposed to one of his clients that within a few years the Arab nations would use their control of oil to dominate prices all over the world. Kershman, a Jew, had negotiated a dangerous and volatile deal with two Arab nations which, in exchange for enough guns and ammunition to supply their armies, would provide to the company Kershman represented crude oil at a low fixed price for fifteen years. The arms were delivered by boat to Turkey and from there were shipped overland by caravan to the Mideast. The oil was sold to a refinery in Jakarta, shipped to a refinery in Yokohama, and resold as surplus to the Y and D Oil Company in Philadelphia. By 1975 Y and D had grown into one of the largest U.S. gasoline companies, with its own coast-to-coast chain of filling stations. It constantly undersold all competitors by two or three cents a gallon.
Y and D was owned by Victor DeLaroza. He was amazed by Kershman’s ability, as well as by the alacrity with which a Jew had dealt with Arabs. In the seven years that had followed the oil deal Kershman had become the financial architect of DeLaroza’s tentacled empire, carefully constructing a maze of contracts, stock transfers, holding companies, and silent corporations throughout the world which concealed the ownership of more than three hundred corporations, controlled the prices of three major industries, and had on its payrolls (including several heads of state) more than a hundred thousand people. Only Kershman and the electronic brain on the eighteenth floor understood the complicated corporate polygamy he had created, although two men were being groomed to succeed him if the need should arise.
In exchange DeLaroza had insured Kershman’s loyalty by providing him with an opulent cocoon, an outrageous lifestyle which Kershman could never have achieved personally—a salary of two hundred thousand dollars a year, stock equity in several key corporations, an executive jet, homes in Tokyo, London and on Crete. To satisfy Kershman’s gluttonous appetite for gourmet food, there were open accounts in the world’s greatest restaurants and a personal chef from the Cordon Bleu who created exotic dishes in Kershman’s own kitchen when he was not traveling. And there were bonuses, each one unique, among them an awesome pornography collection that included five priceless volumes stolen from the personal collection of King Farouk by the same thief who had stolen a Picasso from the Musée de l’Art Moderne, a Rembrandt from the National Gallery in Washington, and three Van Goghs from the private collection of a Greek shipping magnate.
Finally, to protect Kershman from the danger of scandal-making indiscretions, a onetime film actor named Tod Donegan, whose sexual deviations had destroyed a promising film career, had been hired as Kershman’s Judas Goat, to cruise the gay haunts and deliver to the financial wizard young lambs for his sexual slaughter and—although he secretly despised the less than attractive Kershman—provide the service himself when Kershman so desired.
The protective shell provided by DeLaroza had done its job. Kershman had become a pathologically private man, terrified by normal social situations. He had no close friends and seemed irresistibly drawn to the sordid side of life. His need to occasionally escape the cocoon was fulfilled by playing fantasy roles. He cultivated bizarre relationships, subtly exploiting them in order to bolster a veneer of superiority that covered a battered and confused self-image. One was an alcoholic veterinarian who worked for the humane society. Kershman frequently visited him on those days set aside for the extermination of unwanted animals. Kershman often achieved orgasms watching the puppies and kittens in the final spasms of death. Another was a self-defeated police detective to whom Kershman represented himself as a journalist for several foreign news agencies so he could accompany the policeman on assignments or buy him lunch and listen to the gruesome details of some particularly shocking police case.
Kershman had just poured a cup of tea when the red light near his phone began blinking. It meant that DeLaroza wanted him. He picked up the receiver and punched 0. DeLaroza answered immediately.
“Can you come up here right away, Dr. Kershman?” he said softly.
“Of course,” Kershman answered. He went into the console room and unlocked the private elevator to DeLaroza’s office. He punched out an intricate code in a hidden keyboard and the car rose two stories.
DeLaroza was seated behind his desk pondering over an open briefcase.
He nodded and handed Kershman the cassette from the meeting with Hotchins. “Add this to Gwai-lo,” he said.
“Right away.”
“Are you totally current with the laws regarding political contributions?” DeLaroza asked.
“Of course, sir. The full disclosure laws …”
“I don’t care for a review,” DeLaroza said, “just make sure that everything we do with the Gwai-lo file from now on will stand the most rigid investigation.”
“I’ve always been extremely careful on that file,” Kershman answered.
“I want to move five million dollars into the campaign account. We’ll start with a million. I’d like it in today if that’s possible. The rest of the money will be made available to you during the next ten days or so in cash from my personal accounts.” He shoved the briefcase across the desk. “Here is the first million. Any problems?”
“No, sir. I would suggest we make them all personal contributions. Keep them low, no more than fifty thousand per individual, range from thirty to fifty I would say. We can backdate the contributions and arrange for Jefferson Trust to loan this million, using the pledges as security. That way it will not appear as if all the contributions were made in a short period of time. I’ll rearrange the accounts and—”
“Doctor.”
“—we can reimburse with bonuses spread out over—”
“Dr. Kershman?”
Kershman, who had been momentarily entranced by his evaluation of the ploy, stopped. “Yes?”
“I’m not interested in how. I assume you know exactly how to handle that. Just keep me informed on the progress. I would like to know which of our people we are going to use, so I can brief them personally.”
“Right.”
“I think that should do it,” DeLaroza said.
“May I ask, sir,” Kershman said, “are we going to move on the final phase of the Gwai-lo project?”
“Yes. The cassette is self-explanatory. I may add some personal notes to the file later today.”
“Well,” Kershman said, his thick lips rolling back in a fat smile, “may I say I am delighted?”
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” DeLaroza said.
“Yes sir. I was hoping it would be this election.”
DeLaroza smiled and leaned back in his chair. Not even Kershman knew that he had been planning this move for more than sixteen years. He felt a sudden surge of excitement. His fingertips tingled.
“He’s ready,” DeLaroza said. “He’ll never be readier.”
6
“Jesus,” Friscoe bellowed as he swept debris into one corner of his desk, shoving into a single disordered pile case reports, file folders, bits of paper, a half-eaten
Swiss cheese on rye and a cardboard container of coffee with what looked like penicillin floating on top. “I wish to hell we could get the goddamn cleanup committee down here. What we got here is the makings of a bubonic plague.”
He was stringing a reel of tape on the Sony which now sat on the cleared space on his desk.
“What we got, Sharky, is about two hours of phone taps here, spread over about three, four weeks. It’s all legal—Judge Alvers gave us the flag. Now before we get into this good I want you to listen to this take just so’s you’ll get an idea of the range of this little operation. We got each take tagged on front, so you’ll know who, what, and where. The rest, it speaks for itself.”
He turned on the switch and adjusted the volume. The tape hissed for a moment and then Livingston’s voice came on.
LIVINGSTON: This is tape PC-1, a recording of a telephone conversation between the subject, Tiffany Paris, made from the phone in her apartment, Suite 4-A, the Courtyard Apartments, 3381 Peachtree Street, Northwest, November 22, 1975, one ten P.M., and two male callers, the first identified as Neil, n.l.n., and the second Freddie, n.l.n., also referred to as Freaky Freddie.
Click.
TIFFANY: Hello?
NEIL: What’s happening?
TIFFANY: I’m dead. That joker last night belongs in the zoo.
NEIL: Yeah, well, his money’s as green as anybody else’s. Guess who I’ve got on the phone?
TIFFANY: I’m too tired for guessing games, Neil.
NEIL: Freddie.
TIFFANY: Freaky Freddie?
NEIL: Freaky Freddie.
TIFFANY: Don’t tell me. What’s on his mind?
NEIL: Now what the hell you think’s on his mind?
TIFFANY: Oh not now. I’m just not ready for him. I haven’t even had a bath….
NEIL: Hey, you know the score. When he’s ready, he’s ready, and right now he’s ready.
TIFFANY: I’ve got to get my head on straight. Tell him … have him call back in twenty minutes.