Donald Westlake - What's The Worst That Could Happen?

“Does he? And what do you suppose that’s all about?” But even as he asked the question, Brandon realized what the answer must be, so he amended his statement, saying, “Oh, of course. The big cheese.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Sharon said, with her understanding smile. The rapport between Brandon and Sharon, it sometimes seemed to him, was almost as perfect as that between himself and his dear wife, Nell, who at the moment was away on another of her shopping expeditions into the wilds of America, this time to Dallas.

Brandon picked up his toast and said, “Has he arrived?”

“Flew in from the East this morning,” Sharon reported. “We had a cottage open.”

“Good,” Brandon said, and bit off some toast, and ruminated on the state of his world.

For instance, of course they had a cottage open. In the old days, the six cottages around the Battle-Lake were almost always completely booked, with clients ranging from oil sheiks to rock stars, but since the shift in emphasis all over this city to a family trade, and the shift of those splendid high rollers of yesteryear to other oases of relaxation, mostly outside the United States, the cottages—two and three bedrooms, saunas, whirlpools, satellite TV, private atria, completely equipped kitchen, private staff available on request, all far beyond the budget of the average family—were empty more often than not, and were used these days mostly by TUI executives and other businesspersons having some relationship with TUI. In fact, when the big cheese himself, Max Fairbanks, arrived next Monday, he too would be put in one of the cottages—the best one.

But here was Earl Radburn already, on Wednesday, a full five days in advance of the big cheese, which did seem like overdoing it a bit. Swallowing a smooth taste of coffee, Brandon said, “Have you set up an appointment?”

“Three P . M ,” the irreplaceable Sharon told him, consulting her steno pad. “With Wylie Branch, in cottage number one.”

Where the big cheese would stay. “Ah, well,” Brandon said. “Into every life a little boring meeting must fall. We’ve survived worse.”

Outside, the silent children shrieked.

Not since the glory days of Versailles, with its completely artificial cross-shaped great canal on which gondolas took palace guests for outings, sham battles were fought by real ships, and musical extravaganzas by torchlight were presented on great floating barges, had the world seen the like of the Battle-Lake at the Gaiety Hotel, Battle-Lake and Casino on the Strip at Las Vegas. The recirculated waters of the lake housed thousands of fish imported from all five continents, gliding sinuously together through the plastic lily pads near the concrete shores o’erhung with plastic ferns and miniature plastic weeping willows.

At the hotel end of the lake yawned a great cave opening, closed by barred gates at all times except when the ships came out. These were great sailing ships, men-o-war and frigates, one-half life-size replicas of such famous seagoers as John Paul Jones’s Bon Homme Richard, Captain Kidd’s Adventure, and Sir Francis Drake’s The Golden Hind. Radio-controlled, these ships wheeled and ran, regardless of wind, their sails flapping every which way as they fired loud and smoky broadside after loud and smoky broadside, sometimes at one another, to the cheers of the crowds in the stands ashore. Some ships were even equipped with masts that would suddenly flop over and dangle, having presumably been severed by a musketball from somewhere or other.

These sea battles took place twice a day, at 4:00 P . M . and again half an hour after sunset, the earlier one being devoted mostly to wheeling and racing, while the evening show featured gaudy broadsides and at least two ships catching spectacularly afire.

The sound effects for all the battles came from speakers in the trees spaced around the lake, the same speakers that produced birdcalls at other times of the day, so that the effect was truly stereophonic, meaning you couldn’t tell exactly where any particular sound came from, but a loud boom occurring at the same instant that a ship out on the lake released a great puff of white smoke led most observers to conclude that the boom and the smoke were somehow connected.

The lake ranged from four to nine feet deep, and tourists were not encouraged to throw coins into it, but many of them did anyway, which meant a problem with the homeless, three of whom had so far drowned in their efforts to harvest some of the cash stippling the Gunite bottom. Still, the Battle-Lake was a major tourist attraction, at least as popular as that other place’s volcano, and so the occasional loss of a homeless person (who by definition was not a paying customer, after all) was a not unreasonable price to pay.

What a way to go, here in Paradise, your hands full of coins, your lungs full of recycled water.

When Brandon entered the spacious living room of cottage number one at three that afternoon, Earl Radburn in his knife-crease tan clothing stood at the picture window, with its view out over the Battle-Lake, at the moment peaceful, with the tall Moebius shape of the hotel beyond it. Hearing Brandon enter, Earl turned and said, “I don’t like that lake.”

“Most people speak well of it.”

“Most people don’t have to protect a fellow with ten billion dollars.”

How do you respond to a statement like that? Brandon looked around, and over in the conversation area he saw Wylie Branch sprawled in the angle of the sofas, one arm thrown out over the sofa-back on each side, one cowboy-booted foot up on the glass coffee table. His tan chief of security uniform was its normal neat self, but next to Earl Radburn’s air-brushed display even Wylie looked sloppy. And when he sat all casual and easygoing like that, like the rancher he would have been if his daddy hadn’t played too many tables too long here in Vegas—at other people’s joints, needless to add—when he seemed completely relaxed and amiable like this, it almost always meant he was utterly riled about something. Looked as though Earl had already put Wylie’s nose out of joint.

And now the damn man was trying the same thing with Brandon, who would not rise to the bait. Nodding at the lake, he said, “Well, Earl, if you’re worried about submarines coming up out of there to kidnap Mr. Fairbanks and take him away to Russia or someplace, make your mind easy. The lake has no outlet, and nobody with a submarine is currently registered at the hotel.”

Ignoring that, Earl came away from the window toward the conversation area, saying, “We got a very specific problem here this time.”

“Which us boys,” Wylie explained, smiling broadly the while, “ain’t up to handling by ourself.”

Earl, who really could be obtuse, took that statement at face value: “We’ll bring in whatever additional manpower we decide we need,” he said. “Wylie, of course, your people will be at the center of our defensive structure, since they already know the terrain.”

Wylie’s smile grew as broad as that cave mouth over there. “Us dogs will surely appreciate that bone, Earl,” he said.

Which snagged Earl’s attention for just a second or two, Brandon could see the faint loss in the man’s momentum, but Earl’s capacity for narrow concentration could sail past bigger boulders than Wylie Branch’s irritation. Almost immediately back on track, Earl seated himself at catty-corners to Wylie (but out of arm’s reach, Brandon noted) and said, “Sit down, Brandon, let me tell you about it.”

No point getting annoyed at Earl; he was who he was. So Brandon merely sat down, some distance from both of them, and Earl said, “Mr. Fairbanks played a little joke a while back that he’s beginning to regret.”