“Talk, but no action as yet,” the senator said. “Like I said, it will take time. But I’m staying on top of it, and the minute we have a chance to move we’ll be on it. Don’t forget my state is hurting, too.”
“I know, Patrick,” Bradley said. “And we all appreciate your concern and are ready to back you on anything you want to do.” He paused for a moment. “Right up to the White House.”
The senator nodded seriously. “Thanks, Bradley. But it’s too early to think about that.”
“Just remember, Senator, the independent oil producers are right behind you.” Bradley sipped his drink. “Have you heard anything about Reed Jarvis applying for special consideration to become an American citizen?”
“The Canadian?”
Bradley nodded.
“Why are you interested in him?” The senator looked at him curiously.
“He’s making an offer for Millennium Films and also the seven TV and radio stations that we own. I remember that Ted Kennedy sponsored a bill to get Murdoch a quick citizenship.”
“Are you for or against him?” asked the senator.
Bradley shook his head. “I don’t know yet. I have to get more information on his offer.”
The senator smiled and held his hand toward Bradley. “Just let me know what you decide. I’ll go with you.”
Bradley rose to his feet. “Thank you again, Patrick.” He bowed to Roxane. “Good to see you again.”
Roxane watched him walk away. “I’ve heard some rumors that Bradley has big money troubles.”
Patrick laughed. “So what else is new? Bradley is an old-time wildcatter. He’s used to money troubles, but he’s always been able to overcome them and come up smelling like roses.”
“I don’t understand,” Roxane said. “If it’s true that he is in money trouble, why does he throw a party like this? It has to cost at least two hundred fifty thousand.”
“He’s wildcatting,” Patrick answered. He gestured toward the party crowd. “Look around you. There is enough money here on his guest list to pay off the national debt. Somewhere in this pie he might come up with a plum.”
Roxane looked around at the crowd, then back to him. She smiled teasingly. “Would you like some pussy pie? But just remember, you’ll have to lick your fingers, it’s very, very juicy.”
* * *
IT WAS DRIZZLING lightly as the limousine entered the Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, fifteen minutes from Oklahoma City. An Air Force MP Jeep pulled in front of them and gestured for them to follow. They crossed almost to the far end of the airstrip at the edge of the field.
Before them they could see the plane. “F-Zero-60” was painted on the tail. Around the plane were a number of uniformed ground crewmen, and just as the limousine pulled to a stop, Brigadier General Shepherd, uniformed in a white flight jumpsuit, opened the door. He stuck his head in the back door of the car. “Judge Gitlin, Chuck,” he said quietly, shaking their hands. “We’re ready to go.”
“Thank you, sir,” Chuck said.
The judge looked at the airplane. “It doesn’t look very big,” he said in a nervous voice.
“It’s big enough,” the general answered reassuringly. “Enough room inside for the four of us.”
“You’re piloting us?” the judge asked.
“I’m sitting copilot,” the general said. “I’ve got the best pilot on the base with us for this one. Lieutenant Colonel Sharkey. He’s already logged two hundred hours on these planes.”
“Which one is he?” the judge asked.
The general gestured toward a man also in a flight jumpsuit. He was not very tall, maybe five eight, and very slight.
“He seems like a kid,” the judge said. “If he’s twenty, that’s a lot.”
“Twenty-one,” the general replied. “That’s about the age of kids we want for this plane. Their reflexes have to be fast enough to match the plane. After twenty-four, we move them over to other jobs.”
“Then why are you copiloting?” the judge asked dryly. “I was at your baptism—you’re fifty if you’re anything.”
“I figure that I’m going to wind up fired for doing this job as soon as the Pentagon learns about it, so I might as well have some fun with it.”
“You ever fly one of these bastards?” asked the judge.
“Five times, Judge,” the general said. “Don’t worry, I know how to handle it if I have to.”
“I’m seventy-three years old,” the judge said. “Are you sure this is a good idea for me?”
The general laughed. “Better late than never, Judge. Let’s go.”
The pilot was already in his seat, and he turned around to shake their hands. “Judge Gitlin, Mr. Smith.”
They both greeted Lieutenant Colonel Sharkey. A ground crewman climbed inside the plane and strapped the two passengers into their seats. He removed the judge’s white felt hat and fitted him with a flight helmet, then did the same for Chuck. The general slipped into his seat. “Don’t worry about the helmets,” he said. “Sometimes it gets a little rocky taking off and landing, and I don’t want you to bump your heads.”
“It’s not my head I’m worried about,” the judge said sardonically. The swing-out doors closed. “How long will this flight take?” he asked.
“Between an hour fifteen to an hour thirty,” the pilot said. “Depends on the weather conditions at the landing point.”
“How many miles?” the judge asked.
“Eleven hundred and seventy miles.”
“Jesus,” the judge said. “That’s almost a thousand miles an hour.”
“About,” the pilot said. He began turning on switches. A humming noise filled the cabin. Slowly the plane began to roll along to the head of the landing strip, then he turned into it; ahead was a soft blue-lit path of landing lights outlining the strip. The plane stopped and waited like a bird ready to fly.
A hollow voice echoed from the overhead speakers. “F-Zero-60. Hold position for five minutes. Two commercial flights are on your flight path.”
“Roger, tower, I read you,” the pilot answered.
“How do you control where you’re going?” the judge asked, his voice echoing in his helmet earphones.
“I don’t have to do anything beyond entering the flight data,” the pilot said. “I just take it up and put it down. The minute I reach my altitude for the flight, automatically the plane takes over. When we’re about one hundred miles over the Pacific below Los Angeles, then it comes back to me and I start taking it down.”
“Jesus Christ!” the judge said. “I guess the only thing we have left to figure out is how to stick a rocket up our asses and point us in the right direction.”
The hollow tower voice spoke to them. “Clear for takeoff, F-Zero-60. Good flight.”
As the plane took off, a loud pop echoed behind them as the airplane sped down the runway, and it seemed like only a second before it was climbing straight up into the night sky.
3
THE GIANT GAME room was situated about a half-floor below the ballroom. Beyond that was the large rolling glass door that enclosed a complete gym loaded with the latest Nautilus equipment as well as mirrored walls in which aerobic dancers and exercisers could watch themselves in the height or depth of their glories. Outside the windows was a large path that led the way to the swimming pool. As big as the game room was, it was packed with the performers whom the Shepherds had hired for their party. The room was filled with the odor of grass being smoked down to the fingertips. More than half the performers were not only stoned, but drinking champagne as if it were tap water, and snorting coke, their noses burning with the ice-blue Peruvian being passed around.
Rainbeau sat in a corner of the room, which his two giant black bodyguards had taken as his private territory. Next to Rainbeau was a beautiful black girl whose long, wild, frizzed blond wig almost covered her face. She accompanied Rainbeau on the electric mandolin. Her sister, almost a carbon copy of her, played the bass guitar.
&n
bsp; Beside them was Jaxon, the drummer, his pale white face frozen in ecstasy with the rush of cocaine, and Blue Boy, the piano player, who looked like a black version of the Gainsborough painting. The group kept to themselves, neither talking to nor looking at anyone else in the room. With three videos on the top ten, they didn’t have to bother. Besides, Rainbeau was angry that he was hired for the party and not invited to it as a guest. He was also angry that he had had no choice in the matter. The deal he had made with Daniel Peachtree gave him the right to do the song he wanted, and they’d paid for the full cost of the video—and that came to a lot of money, almost as much as making a motion picture.
He heard her voice before he saw her. No one had a voice like hers. Pure cunt. He looked up. She was standing outside his circle. “Thyme,” he said, “come on over here.”
The bodyguards made room for her to move closer. “What are you doing down here?” she asked.
“Doin’ a gig,” he said. “You too?”
She seemed puzzled. “Not really, I came up with Peachtree on his private plane.”
“You’re a guest?” he asked.
“I guess so,” she answered. “It doesn’t make sense. I saw Michael and Brooke Shields up there.”
“Michael doesn’t work for Peachtree.” He looked at her. “Neither do you, right?”
“Check,” she said.
Rainbeau said, “He laid a hundred grand on us for this gig.”
“It still ain’t right,” she said. “Probably you would do it for nothin’ if he asked like a gentleman.”
Rainbeau nodded. “Some people don’t have no class,” he agreed. He changed the subject. “What would be your pleasure? We have it all.”
“I want to sing with you,” she said, looking into his eyes.
“We got no song together, no rehearsal. Besides, you’re a guest and I’m just a hired hand.”
“Horseshit,” she said. “We can put something together that’ll work for us in five minutes.”
“You’d do that for me?” he asked, slight surprise in his voice.
“We’re the same kind of people, aren’t we? Maybe I’m black and you’re Puerto Rican but we come from the same street.”
He stared at her silently for a moment, then, “How did you find us down here?”
“One of the asshole security men thought I was one of the entertainers, he shoved me down the steps.”
“Balls,” he said. “Where was Peachtree?”
“Probably somewhere getting his boyfriend to give him head,” she answered.
His eyes met hers. “You mean it? What you said earlier?”
“Anytime, anyplace,” she said. ‘We’ll be great together.”
“I have an idea,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“You know my song, the first one I hit, ‘I’m Just a Boy’?”
“Every word,” she said.
“Okay, you sing, but instead of boy you say girl. Then I’ll do your song, ‘The Boy I Love.’ Only I sing it the ‘girl.’ We know the music, the arrangements should be a piece of cake.”
She hugged him close to her. “Oh, baby. I love you. Really I do.”
He kissed her cheek. “Now, let’s try to get it together.”
* * *
AT EXACTLY THE stroke of midnight, a drum roll brought Bradley and Charlene to the center of the stage. The room was silent as Bradley took the microphone.
“Friends and honored guests,” he began, his faint mid-western drawl enhanced by the sound system. “For many years in Oklahoma, Charlene and I had an annual party in honor of our firstborn. On this day in 1955, Charlene and I stood on the ground beneath the derrick, Shepherd Oil Well Number One, our firstborn, as the gusher shot up into the sky, then fell, covering us completely with black gold. We were holding each other, screaming to each other, but the only thing I could remember about what Charlene said to me was, ‘Now, Bradley, you can finally get a store-bought suit.’”
A wave of laughter and applause filled the tent as guests rose from their seats. Bradley held his hands up, and slowly the guests returned to their seats.
Bradley, holding Charlene’s hand in a gesture of acknowledgment, smiled. “To cap the story: I finally got my store-bought suit two years later, after Shepherd Oil Company Well Number One Hundred came through and I needed a suit to go to the bank, because now that I had money I had to borrow money to pay my taxes.”
Again the crowd laughed and applauded. “Thank you all for coming, and now you can relax, have a good time, and enjoy the show and dinner.” Charlene and Brad held up their hands and waved warmly to their guests.
The music started and the stage began to turn as if on a disk, and Bradley and Charlene, together with the orchestra that had been seated on the stage, gradually disappeared from view as the lights dimmed, and finally there was total darkness.
* * *
WHEN THE LIGHTS came on again, there was a completely new stage set and rock and roll music was blasting away. Then the spotlight picked out a young man in midair landing in front of the group, his half-naked body painted in colors and sparkling with sequins, a microphone in his hand. There was a roar of applause as the crowd recognized the exciting showmanship style of Rainbeau. A moment later, another singer appeared, to the delighted surprise of the guests. Thyme stood beside him, in white floating chiffon that silhouetted her beautiful dark nudity beneath the costume.
Reed Jarvis, leaning against a marble column, whispered almost to himself as they began their song and dance. He felt a numbness in his stomach. “That’s almost pornographic. I can’t believe it at a party like this.”
Daniel Peachtree appeared beside him. “Reed,” he said, “this is Hollywood, not Winnipeg, Ontario.”
Reed turned to him. “You don’t look so good. What happened, you fall down a flight of steps?”
Daniel shook his head. “I tripped over a cypress in the garden while I was looking for your girlfriend.” Then he looked at Reed. “Who’s that Jed Stevens? He says he’s got two hundred million in with you.”
“He has the money if he wants in,” Reed answered. “But it’s not his money that’s in my deal. He’s just checking it out for his uncle.”
“Then he’s not a partner with you?”
“Hell, no,” answered Reed, watching Thyme as she went into her solo number. “I don’t have partners, and he won’t be a part of us after tomorrow.”
“That easy?” Daniel said sarcastically. “I hear Bradley has no intention of bowing out tomorrow. At least, he doesn’t sound like it to me.”
Reed shrugged and glanced again at Thyme onstage, then back to Peachtree. “I still want to fuck that girl,” he said. “Have you talked to her yet?”
“I was trying to find her when I ran into the fucking cypress hedge in the garden. The first time I’ve seen her is right now, onstage.”
Reed looked at him. “All I want to know is, can you arrange for me to fuck her or not?”
Daniel didn’t smile. “I don’t know,” he said. “The name of the game is money. If money doesn’t tempt her, she won’t be a player.”
“I don’t care what it costs, you just get her,” Reed said flatly.
* * *
JUDGE GITLIN SANK tiredly into the easy chair in the upstairs library and looked up at Bradley. “It’s only two in the morning for you here in California but it’s five in the morning for me.”
Bradley handed the judge a four-finger shot of corn whiskey. “This will wake you up.”
The judge nodded. He emptied the glass. “Another taste,” he said.
Bradley nodded and refilled the glass. This time the judge sipped it slowly. He looked up at Bradley. “That’s a big do you’re having down there.”
“Hollywood bullshit,” Bradley said. “It’s something you have to do.”
“Costs a penny,” the judge said. “You have the money to pay for it?”
“That’s up to you.” Bradley poured a drink for himself. “I’m not only drownin
g in oil, but the piranhas are eating on my flesh.”
“What about the money you owe to the bank already. Twelve million? And twenty-five million to me personally?”
“Down for a penny, down for a dollar,” Bradley said wryly.
The judge stared at him. “I know you. You come from a long line of Indian traders. How can I get you the money when the federal and state auditors are climbing up my ass?”
“Fantasy Land. The eight acres I bought at the far end of the marina I had you hold in trust for me. It was never turned over to the studio. As a matter of fact, Jarvis and I never even discussed bringing Fantasy Land into the studio-and-television deal. At the time he wasn’t interested. It was not until Disney said they were opening in France that he even talked to me about it.”
The judge looked at him shrewdly. “You never used any money from the picture company to develop it?”
“No. I never did anything with it. Just left it there lying fallow.”
The judge thought for a moment. “So maybe it’s worth fifty or sixty million. The way I see it you have no choice. Take his four hundred million and run. Take the option he offered you, that costs you nothing. If things look good, pick it up. If it looks bad, let him shove it up his ass.”
“I feel like an asshole,” Bradley said. “I was going to show the movie business how to do it.”
“There are others who went for worse. You’ll still get four hundred million out of it. You could have lost the whole damn pot. Sit tight. Oil will straighten up sooner or later, the real estate you own around the marina for Fantasy Land will do nothing but go up. All you hurt is your pride.”
Bradley looked down at the judge. “Is that it? Just pride?”
“Our family has never been known for being humble.” The judge smiled. “Jes’ tell that Jarvis feller you’ll take his money an’ wish him luck. You stay in the neck of the woods you know best. Oil and land.”
“I guess you’re right,” Bradley admitted. “But, man, this business is real fun.”
“You’ll have another shot,” the judge said wisely. “Who says that Jarvis fellow is any smarter than you were? He can go on his ass just as easy. Then maybe you’ll be able to get back in.”
The Piranhas Page 11
