Never Enough

by Harold Robbins

Hermann Reitsch continued to complain that he had lost all control of his inventions.

  “How much are you worth, Hermann?”

  “More than I ever dreamed, I must admit.”

  “And who made it that way?”

  “You did.”

  “That is because you are a genius at what you do, and I am a genius at what I do.”

  “But I—”

  “We sent you a woman,” said Dave. “Liz likes to take a man’s cock and balls all the way into her mouth. Has she done that for you?”

  “Please!”

  “We’ve got a good business going, Hermann. Let’s not mess it up.”

  Chen seemed to accept the idea that Dave Shea was a partner, not a satrap. He asked him for advice. He had a New York travel agent deliver first-class tickets for Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific Airline, and when Dave and Janelle arrived at Kai Tak Airport, they were picked up by a limousine and driven to his home on The Peak, where they were guests during their stay.

  Chen Peng lived in a magnificent mansion, Edwardian in style that had once been the home of a British millionaire. It was part of a heavily guarded compound with several homes inside.

  The compound included a set of cabanas facing a big swimming pool. Hong Kong was subtropical, and the family spent much time in the pool. Janelle discovered immediately that Chen’s wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law—as well as the wives of some of his executives—swam nude and lounged nude around the pool. Chen was quick to tell her that she didn’t have to do that, too; but she would have been conspicuous if she hadn’t.

  Clearly, Chen Peng liked it; and clearly he liked seeing her naked. He stared, more at her pubic hair than at her breasts.

  They talked business. Janelle participated. It was more than a little incongruous, especially in Hong Kong, that a woman, much less a naked woman, should take part in business discussions, but Dave wanted her. She was not just an ornament, he said to Chen.

  “I have learned to understand this,” said Chen. “American women … Very different. Very different. Look at my women. Pretty, are they not? But the whole collection of them doesn’t have the brains this woman has.”

  “They might if you gave them a chance,” Janelle said to him.

  Chen smiled quizzically, as if he did not quite understand her comment. “Your friend Haye, at Enterprise Bank, has identified a corporation he thinks might be promising. Texas Silicon makes computer chips. They are good ones, as Haye promises and my sources assure me. The company can be acquired. It will require an investment. Not just a few dollars. I would appreciate it if you would look into this and tell me what you think.”

  “High tech is risky,” said Dave. “And the competition is fierce.”

  “I know the company,” said Janelle.

  “And your recommendation would be … ?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t do it. High-tech companies have only one asset: brains; and Texas Silicon has a brain drain problem.”

  “Its people—?”

  “Have lost confidence in it and are moving on. There is great demand for systems designers. They move around a lot. And a lot of them are moving away from Texas Silicon.”

  Chen smiled at Dave. “Do I need another opinion?”

  “I don’t,” said Dave.

  Chen nodded. “Good. Have you other suggestions, Mrs. Shea?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Would you be so good as to look around and see if you can find anything for us?”

  “I’ll be glad to.”

  VI

  Chen’s Edwardian mansion was equipped with Edwardian bathroom fixtures. Enough room for both of them.

  Better than that was the shower stall. It was as big as a small room, and the main shower head was out of reach above. Three walls were marble. There was no front wall, and what water splashed out ran to a drain in the tile floor. Tubes ran around the three walls. They were perforated with tiny holes, and when water was sent through them they sent tiny, high-pressure streams against the bodies. A needle spray. It was cleansing and stimulating.

  Also, the shower was equipped with a bidet head. It shot a stream of warm water into Janelle’s private parts. It was also steam-equipped.

  “We’ve got to get one of these, baby,” she said to him as she spread over it. “American plumbers can—”

  “Sure. You used the one in the Zurich hotel.”

  “But over a potty. I want one like this, in the shower.”

  He remembered the Zurich bidet. As sophisticated as she was, she had never seen one before and was not sure if she should sit facing the wall or facing out.

  As she turned and turned in the needle spray, she put her mouth to his ear and said, “I hope you realize that everything we do in this suite is being taped.”

  “I suppose. Let’s give Chen another show.”

  VII

  On their flight home, where their talk could not be recorded, Janelle had a question for Dave—

  “Do I really try to find something for Chen?”

  “Do you have anything in mind?”

  “There is a company in California that has developed a voice-recognition system. Its technicians are still enthusiastic and aren’t jumping ship yet. They will, though, if there’s not an injection of capital. But of course it’s a very high risk.” She smiled. “We can risk Chen’s capital.”

  “While retaining an interest.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You identify it to him. I know what he’ll do, if he hasn’t already. He’ll set up an account for you somewhere. He’ll make you independent. Independent of me. Maybe not independent of him. And maybe you ought to think about giving him what he wants.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Dave shook his head. “He’s got economic power that can make or break anybody. I don’t say do it. I just say think about it.”

  VIII

  Three days after their return from Hong Kong, Janelle was arrested, and threatened with charges. Two federal marshals, a man and a woman, served a warrant on her and she refused. They handcuffed her and took her to an office of the United States District Attorney. She sobbed most of the way in the car.

  She was led into the office of Tabatha Morgan, the same woman who had interrogated Alexandra.

  “Mrs. Shea … You are, I believe, the third Mrs. Shea. Anyway, tell us about CalINet.”

  Janelle sobbed. “What do you want to know about it?”

  “What do you know about it?”

  Morgan handed Janelle a box of tissues and waited while Janelle wiped her eyes. She did not offer, though, to take off the handcuffs. That was psychological.

  Janelle sighed. “I’m a computer systems designer and a consultant. That’s what I was educated to be—”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Shea. You were a teenage prostitute, weren’t you.”

  Janelle shook her head. “No! I have never been a prostitute.”

  “Okay. Your mother is.”

  “I don’t know about that. She was a good mother and took care of me. Maybe she made some money on the side. I don’t know about that. What’s it got to do with anything, anyway?” Janelle sobbed.

  “Well … we’re trying to figure out what your husband is doing. There is evidence to make us think he has huge overseas accounts, most recently in Hong Kong, on which he does not pay taxes and which he uses to play illegal games in the stock market. His second wife is in Bedford Hills, as I’m sure you know. She insists she has no foreign accounts. Now comes you. You want to tell us you’re completely innocent of how your husband makes his money?”

  “Harcourt Barnham paid him a bonus for his last year with them. He’d made so much money for the bank that they paid him four million dollars. That’s on his tax return. You have to know that.”

  “We figure he made ten times that.”

  “Forty! I’d know. I would know. And I don’t know. How can I prove a negative?”

  “So you’re not going to tell us anything?”

  �
��What do you want me to tell you?”

  “Why don’t you volunteer something?”

  Janelle thrust her hands forward. “Take these things off me! Please! Take them off …”

  The woman nodded at the marshal who sat behind Janelle, and the marshal used a key and unlocked the handcuffs.

  “Now do you want to tell us something?”

  “What do you want me to tell you?”

  The assistant district attorney grinned. “You’re a tough bitch, aren’t you?”

  Janelle shook her head.

  “Just keep it in mind, kiddo. We’re looking at David Shea. And at you. Anytime you want to square with us, you can do it.”

  IX

  “You owe me big time, mister. I sat there in goddamned handcuffs, and I didn’t tell a thing.”

  Dave sighed loudly. “If I’d wound up in trouble, you’d have been in the same kind of trouble.”

  “I thought they were going to lock me up. I was scared out of my wits. But I didn’t lose my wits. That woman … that district attorney woman. She’s got it in for you. She called me a tough bitch. She talked about Alexandra, too.”

  “I think we’ve got to use the Hong Kong connection.”

  “Without going out there. Your trips to Zurich have raised suspicions. Trips to Hong Kong, same thing.”

  “You’re probably right. Of course, you can go.”

  “And fall into bed with Chen? Is that what you want me to do?”

  “I want you to use your own best judgment.”

  “Christ, man, you are a bastard!”

  X

  MARCH, 1997

  At age thirty-nine, Emily had begun to worry about whether or not Cole was becoming bored with her. He was attentive. He was loving. But she could not help wondering if their love affair had not gone stale. He didn’t want sex as often. It wasn’t because of his vasectomy. He insisted he got as much pleasure as ever.

  She became more adventuresome. She wore high heels and stockings with garter belts. Also crotchless panties and bras with holes to display her nipples. With children at home, she had to confine all this to their bedroom. She wished she could wear those things around the house. When they traveled, she took them with her and wore them in their hotel room.

  Finally, without saying anything to him, she returned to the doctor who had pierced her nipples, and Jenna’s, and had him pierce her inner labia and install rings. As a young woman she had been embarrassed by her shiny pink petals, which showed outside her. Now she decided they were erotic.

  She would not hang weights on them as Alexandra had done. But she bought big rings; an inch in diameter. Cole was in San Francisco, and when he came home she was healed and ready to show them. No weights. But she had done something else. She had bought a delicate silver chain that went through the rings and back around her butt and held her spread open. If that didn’t arouse him, she couldn’t imagine what would.

  XI

  APRIL, 1997

  Jenna, now seventeen, was a confirmed exhibitionist. Her greatest thrill was to let the boys who were her good friends see her. She had said nothing about it to her mother or father, but she wanted to try nude dancing, or maybe just figure modeling. She figured she could do it if she went away to college, somewhere distant from Wyckoff. As the time came to begin looking at colleges, she took an interest only in ones hundreds of miles away, in places like Ohio and Michigan.

  She had no notion that nude dancing or modeling would be her career. She thought she wanted to be an architect and intended to study for it.

  She remained a virgin. She was also going to graduate valedictorian of her high school class. The high school didn’t like it—the girl with rings in her nipples, who reputedly let boys see those rings—but they couldn’t deny her academic record.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I

  JULY, 1997

  When Janelle arrived in Hong Kong, it was now a Chinese city, the Handover having taken place on July 1. The flags were different. The royal symbols had been removed from public buildings. The money and the postage stamps no longer bore the image of the queen. But there was no conspicuous troop presence in the city. The same police were on the streets, polite and helpful, only with red badges on their caps. She had come through immigration as easily as before. The officer who stamped a visa in her passport spoke English.

  “May I inquire, Mrs. Shea, if there is any significance in your traveling to Hong Kong alone, without Mr. Shea?”

  She sat over dinner with Chen Peng, in the dining room of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. She was wearing the emerald-green silk cheongsam she had bought on her first visit to Hong Kong. It was the only one she had, but she judged it appropriate for this meeting.

  “We have a runaway prosecutor on our tails,” she said. “Do you know what that is, Mr. Chen?”

  “I do. I also know who your runaway prosecutor is. Miss Tabatha Morgan. Guilt or innocence mean nothing to those people.” He smiled. “Maybe she wants to be mayor of New York.”

  “You seem to know everything,” said Janelle.

  “It is my business. And, Mrs. Shea, can we drop the ‘mister’ and ‘missus’? Why don’t you call me Peng? And may I call you Janelle?”

  “Of course … Peng.”

  “I have taken a liberty,” he said. He handed her a passbook and a bank card. “I have established an account for you in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. As you can see, it is in the name Lily Hu. I have made an initial deposit to it in the amount of one hundred thousand American dollars. Your Internal Revenue Service will be entirely unable to trace that. Whether or not you choose to tell your husband about this is entirely your affair. May I suggest you don’t? If the runaway prosecutor somehow nails him—isn’t that the American term?—you will have … Well, we shall see how much you have. I am doing something else. I am having a Chinese passport forged for you. I can do the same for your husband if he should need to take refuge here.”

  “You are a very practical man, Peng. I sense that all Chinese are. Why are you doing this?”

  “I want you to help me identify American high-tech companies that I might want to invest in. I venture to hope as well that we can be yin and yang.”

  “Yin and yang,” she said. “I know what that means.”

  “It is not a condition. We have a business relationship.”

  “I’ve heard that the Chinese have made an art of fucking … better than anyone else in the world.”

  “Well … we learn what are called the Emperor’s Glorious Postures. What you call the missionary position is not one of them. Anyway, some of the nine require the agility of acrobats. I’m afraid I can’t do those. Some require special furniture. I have that in my hotel suite. While … there is no reason why you should accept anything of the kind. I would be honored if you would.”

  “Let me think about it,” she said. “In the meantime, I have been thinking about companies you might want to acquire.”

  II

  In spite of the reservations and apprehensions of the staff of her high school, Jenn had graduated at the head of her class and made a brief valedictory speech, as was expected.

  “We are people,” she said. “We have become what our parents made of us and gave to us—and what our teachers have given us. But now we move along. Now we take responsibility for ourselves. We hold our future in our hands.”

  Hardly anyone in her audience hadn’t known that the valedictorian had platinum rings in her nipples. Some of the other girls in the audience had rings, too, most of them silver. Others determined that they would get theirs.

  She had been accepted by the University of Michigan, one of several universities that had accepted her; and she had been awarded a tuition scholarship.

  In July, she was in the woods with four girlfriends, including Amelia and Linda and four boys. They sat on the grass at the edge of a tumbling stream. The three girls were naked, though the other two were diffident but willing. They compared breasts. Amelia, had very big ones
. She complained from time to time that they defined her, that nobody knew her except as the girl with the big hooters.

  “It pisses me,” said Amelia, “that you guys get to see us naked but we don’t get to see you. How about pulling out your pricks, anyway, and letting us see them? Maybe one of you guys will get to be known as the one with the big dong.”

  The four boys who were there opened their flies, none of them with enthusiasm, and pulled out their penises. Bill Morris, Jenna’s favorite, with whom she had smooched and had allowed to grope her, had an ordinary one, neither very big nor very small.

  “Okay, girls. Now you see them. Now let’s see you kiss them.”

  Amelia knelt and kissed each one in turn. So did Jenna. She kissed each boy’s penis. All she did was put her lips to each one and kiss it, the same as if she were kissing his mouth. Linda wanted no part of what was going on.

  Bill Morris felt the blood rushing to his groin. He asked her to lick his. She did that. She ran her tongue over the skin of his shaft and over his glans.

  “Take it inside your mouth, honey,” he begged.

  “Dream on, lover,” she said as she stood up and reached for her clothes.

  III

  Everyone in Hong Kong carried a cell phone, even schoolchildren. Chen provided one to Janelle, and she took it wherever she went. She used it to talk to Dave at home.

  Sitting on a bench on the Hong Kong waterfront, she dialed their apartment. It was noon in Hong Kong and would be midnight in New York.

  “He is especially interested in high-tech companies. I’m thinking about Drake. What do you know about Drake?”

  “Not a hell of a lot, but I can find out.”

  “I can tell you this much,” she said. “Drake is another genius. But he is more realistic than Reitsch. He won’t be a pushover like Reitsch was. He’s the guy I mentioned to you before, in Silicon Valley. Voice recognition. He can make your computer work without touching keys. You just talk to it. Two things are coming in the high-tech world. Miniaturization, so you can carry a computer in your pocket or purse. That and voice commands. The whole damned world is going to be run this way.”