Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

Sound returned to the tape. Over a background crash-and-clatter of Chevy-bashing, the directional microphone captured the laughter and most of the running commentary between Karla and the congressman as they enjoyed the spectacle in the street below.

The violence aroused them. Jonathan's hands slid from Karla's shoulders to her breasts. Soon he was joined with her, from behind.

Earlier, the congressman had admired Karla's "nasty mouth." Now he proved that he himself could not have had a dirtier mouth if he'd spent the past few years licking the streets of Washington, D.C. He called the woman obscene names, heaped verbal abuse on her, and she seemed to thrill to every vicious and demeaning thing he said.

Noah pressed STOP on the remote control. "There's only more of the same." He took the videotape from the VCR and put it in a Neiman Marcus shopping bag that he'd brought. "I've given you two more copies, plus cassettes of all the raw footage before we edited it."

"What a perfectly appropriate word — raw."

"I've kept copies in case anything happens to yours."

"I'm not afraid of him."

"I never imagined you were. More news — Karla's house was bought with Circle of Friends money. Half a million disguised as a research grant. Her own nonprofit corporation holds title to the property."

"They're all such selfless do-gooders." Constance Tavenall's voice was crisp with sarcasm but remarkably free of bitterness.

"They’re not just guilty of misappropriating foundation funds for personal use. Circle of Friends receives millions in government grants, so they're in violation of numerous other federal statutes."

"You have the corroborating evidence?"

He nodded. "It's all in the Neiman Marcus bag." He hesitated, but then decided that this woman's exceptional strength matched the congressman's weakness. She didn't have to be coddled. "Karla Rhymes isn't his only mistress. There's one in New York, one in Washington. Circle of Friends indirectly purchased their residences, too."

"That's in the bag? Then you've completely destroyed him, Mr. Farrel."

"My pleasure."

"He underestimated you. And I regret to admit, when I came to you, my expectations weren't terribly high, either."

In their initial meeting, she acknowledged that she would have preferred a large detective agency or a private security firm with nationwide reach. She suspected, however, that all those operations did business, from time to time, with individual politicians and with the major political parties. She was concerned that the one she chose would have an existing relationship with her husband or with a friend of his in Congress, and that they might see more long-term profit in betraying her than in serving her honestly and well.

"No offense taken," Noah said. "No sane person ought to have confidence in a guy whose business address is also his apartment— and the whole shebang in three rooms above a palm-reader's office."

She had settled in a chair at a nearby writing desk. Opening her small purse, extracting a checkbook, she asked, "So why're you there? And why isn't your operation bigger?"

"Have you ever seen a really good dog act, Ms. Tavenall?"

Tweaked by puzzlement, her classic features had a pixie charm. "Excuse me?"

"When I was a little kid, I saw a fantastic performing-dog act. This golden retriever did all these astonishingly clever tricks. When I saw what potential dogs possess, how smart they can be, I wondered why they're mostly happy to hang out doing dumb dog stuff. It's the silly kind of thing a little kid can get to wondering about. Twenty years later, I saw another dog act, and I realized that in the meantime life had taught me the answer to the mystery. Dogs have talent. but no ambition."

Her puzzlement passed to pained compassion, and Noah knew that she had read the text and subtext of his remark: not more than was true about him, but more than he intended to reveal. "You're no dog, Mr. Farrel."

"Maybe I'm not," he said, although the word maybe issued from him without conscious intention, "but my level of ambition is about I hat of an old basset hound on a hot summer afternoon."

"Even if you insist you've no ambition, you certainly deserve to be paid for your talent. May I see that final bill you mentioned?"

He retrieved the invoice from the Neiman Marcus tote, and with it the airsickness bag still packed full of hundred-dollar bills.

"What's this?" she asked.

"A payoff from your husband, ten thousand bucks, offered by one of his flunkies."

"Payoff for what?"

"Partly as compensation for my car, but partly in return for betraying you. Along with the videotapes, I've included a notarized affidavit describing the man who gave me the money and recounting our conversation in detail."

"I've got more than enough to destroy Jonathan without this. Keep his bribe as a bonus. There's a nice irony in that."

"I wouldn't feel clean with his money in my pocket. I'll be satisfied with payment of that invoice."

Her pen paused on the downswing of the l in Farrel, and when she raised her head to look at Noah, her smile was as subtly expressive as an underlining flourish by a master of restrained calligraphy. "Mr. Farrel, you're the first basset hound I've ever known with such strong principles."

"Well, maybe I've padded your bill to make up for not keeping that ten thousand," he said, though he had done nothing of the sort, and though he knew that she was not for an instant disposed to take seriously his suggestion of dishonesty.

He was dismayed by his inability to accept her compliment with grace, and he wondered — though not with any analytic passion— why he felt obliged to slander himself.

Shaking her head, gentle amusement still written on her face, she returned her attention to the checkbook.

From the woman's demeanor and a quality of mystery in her smile, Noah suspected that she understood him better than he knew himself. This suspicion didn't inspire contemplation, and he busied himself switching off the TV and closing the doors on the entertainment center while she finished writing the check.

While Noah watched her from the doorway, Constance Tavenall left the presidential suite, carrying the congressman's doom in the Neiman Marcus bag. The weight of her husband's betrayals didn't pull the lady's plumb-bob spine even one millimeter out of true. Like a sylph she had come; and after she turned the corner at the far end of the hallway, disappearing into the elevator alcove, the path that she had followed seemed to be charged with some supernatural energy, as the aura of an elemental spirit might linger after its visitation.

While the red and then the purple dust of twilight settled, Noah remained in the three-bedroom suite, roaming room to room, gazing out a series of windows at the millions of points of light that blossomed across the peopled plains and hills, the shimmering dazzle of an electric garden. Although some loved this place as though it were Eden re-created, everything here was inferior to the original Garden in all ways but one: If you counted snakes an asset, then not merely a single serpent lurked within this foliage, but a wealth of vipers, all schooled in the knowledge of darkness, well practiced in deception.

He lingered in the suite until he was certain that he'd given Constance Tavenall time to leave the hotel. In case one of the congressman's minions coiled in a car outside, waiting to follow the woman, Noah must avoid being seen.

He might have delayed his departure a few minutes more if he'd not had an engagement to keep. Visiting hours at the Haven of the Lonesome and the Long Forgotten were drawing toward a close, and a damaged angel waited there for him.

SO HER BROTHER was on Mars, her hapless mother was on dope, and her stepfather was on a murderous rampage. Leilani's eccentric tales were acceptable conversation over dinner in an asylum; but in spite of how looney life could sometimes be here in Casa Geneva, and though the relentless August heat withered common sense and wilted reason, Micky decided that they were setting a new standard for irrationality in this trailer where genteel daffiness and screwball self-delusion had heretofore been the closest they had come to madness.