The Starshine Connection (4 page)

Roxy certainly had better taste in clothing than her ex-escort, Slayton thought. She was sheathed in robin’s-egg blue satin.
Had it been contoured and split more outrageously, she would have looked like a hooker, but with that uncanny intuition all
conscientious dressers possess, she had run right up to, but not past, the razoredge that divided sensuous respectability
from vulgarity. Her earrings were modest hoops of solid 24K; her lips were invitingly wet with gloss. A little tennis-ball
of heat formed in Slayton’s stomach—he blamed it on the scotch.

“And as for
these
dreary things”—she swept her hand to indicate the room, and, therefore, the party in progress—“occasionally they’re worthwhile.
Occasionally I get to meet somebody like you at one of them, somebody who decided not to become jaded at sixteen. Which brings
me to a more intriguing question.”

“You mean, what on earth is someone as wonderful as me doing someplace as dreary as this?”

“Something like that. Yeah, that’ll do. Can I have a vodka martini, please?”

“Would you believe me if I said it’s partially business, partially pleasure?” Slayton hedged, warning himself to be careful.
He could smell impending results. “Onion or olive?”

“Yucch, neither,” she said, scooping up the flared glass. “You want to see my ID or something?”

“No. If they let you through the door at one of these things, you’re old enough to drink whether you’re old enough or not.
And so it goes.”

“Vonnegut,” she said immediately.

“Good,” said Slayton. “See that muckety-muck over there?” He indicated a grizzled man to whom a group of lesser politicos
paid polite attention as he gave his own version of the fireside chat. The man was broad-shouldered, gesticulating, intense.
He held the group as easily as Slayton had cheap-thrilled the latter-day Mods a moment ago.

“Looks incredibly dreary,” said Roxy, smiling again.

“That’s Senator Reed. Franklin Oliver Reed, a Republican worthy from Georgia. Or Alabama. One of those places. All of those
places…”

Roxy giggled.

“One ‘o them Suthrin states. Anyway, they call him the Filibuster King. A particular filibuster he fomented is delaying legislation
that would be particularly beneficial to my corporation.”

“What corporation do you work for?”

“Avatar Limited. And 1 don’t work for it—I own it.”

Slayton realized he had laid it on a bit thick, but admired how she absorbed it without even blinking. She had been around
Washington long enough to be discriminate in the ways she was impressed. Which made Slayton wonder how she had ever wound
up pairing with a deadbeat like Rodney.

“Never heard of it,” she said. “What is it?”

“Chemicals, concentrates, industrial stuff. All of it dreary. Do you need to know more?”

“Only this—is Avatar Limited all you do?”

“If it was all I did, I’d do something direct, like approach our Mr. Reed with a bribe.”

“Instead of—” Her eyes were sparkling now, a lucid and penetrating gray.

“Instead of watching him. Look at the way he holds those people in the palm of his hand—if I can just feel him out a bit,
I’ll be able to calculate what approach would work best. I have time. My company won’t expire if he flounces around delaying
things for another week or month. You do know what a filibuster is, don’t you?”

“A grand process of government whereby our elected representatives attempt to bore each other into submission. Eventually
everyone gets so sick of wasting time they pass a law or bill just to get rid of the guy, get him out of everyone’s hair.
Isn’t democracy wonderful?”

This time Slayton smiled.

“I have time to make my play for him the right one. He’s the only reason I’m here.” It seemed to satisfy her.

“And what about my play for you?” she said.

“How’s that again?” Slayton said with overdone innocence.

“Well, presumably,
Uncle
Ben,” she said with a gilding of sarcasm, “the net result of this dynamic conversation will be you and I winding up together
in a bed somewhere. -At least, I hope that’s the net.”

“How about the gross?” Slayton was enjoying the game.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “Hey, that has nothing to do with it. Look, see that man over there?” She pointed to a man in a European-cut
business suit. He was dark, with authoritative bearing, and stood out like a Ferrari in a lot full of Volkswagen bugs. “Pavel
Drake II. That’s my father.”

Slayton recognized the name of the import tycoon and realized Roxy was probably the only younger woman present who was not
cruising for dollars.

“He’s the reason I wound up here with Rodney.” She gave a shrug of capitulation. “Social imperative. I owed a favor; Rodney
was it. Son of one of his friends. Daddy and sonny, both dreary as hell.”

“I wouldn’t do that to my daughter if she looked like you.”

“And what
would
you do to his daughter?” She ran a pink tongue lightly across her upper row of teeth.

“I’d tell her that her daddy has had a little too much to drink,” came a voice from behind Slayton. “And that she should stop
dripping all over the floor long enough to drive her daddy back to the townhouse.” The voice was stern and humorless.

Slayton turned around.

He was confronted by a tall, awesome woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in a De la Cortero evening gown that must have cost
a thousand dollars. Her eyes blazed their way through poor Roxy like amber coals;
smoldering
was ample to describe her entire demeanor. She seemed striking enough to be able to swing a compass needle off true north,
and Slayton made the mental connection in admirable time.

“Mrs. Drake, I presume?” he said.

Anna Lynn Converse-Drake, Pavel Drake II’s third wife and Roxanne’s second stepmother in nine years, waved her less-than-amused
stepdaughter away with a regal bearing that Slayton found just a bit hard to take seriously. But Roxy split—she clearly disliked
being in the same time zone with her so-called mother—leaving Slayton alone in the jaws of the tigress.

Another facet immediately became clear to Slayton: Pavel Drake seemed to like them young. Mrs. Converse-Drake was perhaps
ten years her daughter’s senior, on the outside. The party flowed into the hole Roxy cut through the crowd, and momentum obliterated
anything that may have remained of an awkward moment.

“That was a little fierce, wasn’t it?” Slayton said neutrally.

“Never mind Roxanne,” the woman said. “She attempts to mate with everything in sight, indiscriminately. She’ll be hooked on
some other young stud’s arm in a matter of minutes.”

“Young stud?” Slayton could not believe his ears.

“Metaphor. Generalization. Sorry.” She said it the way one might say
excuse me
to a total stranger.

“So, this bitchy facade isn’t all true to form,” Slayton said under his breath, fully intending that she hear.

“You wouldn’t have liked Roxy anyway,” she said. “Strictly bush-league. A man who looks like you clearly isn’t interested
in bopping girls just out of their teens. You could have just about anyone at this little social jousting tournament.” She
had obviously done this speech many times at many parties, and Slayton could feel what was coming next. “So the question remains,
mister—”

“Slayton. Ben.”

“That makes your initials
B.S.,
and I suppose that answers my question as to what prompted your
real
interest in Roxanne.”

“She’s a very attractive girl.”

She brushed a stray wisp of hair away from her crowning-glory coif and picked a menthol cigarette from a burnished holder
on the bar. Slayton lit it before she could object. She continued in contemplative exhalations of gray smoke.

“No. There are attractive girls all over Washington. But only one of them is Pavel Drake’s daughter. You can forget it, Mr.
Slayton.”

Slayton abruptly felt whirled around and disoriented. “You obviously didn’t hear my spiel about Avatar Limited.”

“I heard it, and that’s bullshit, too. If there were a chemical products company that big, I would have heard about it. So
we’re back to the original game.” She smiled a predator’s smile and added, “So far you’re not making it very interesting.”

The realization smashed home in Slayton’s brain—this woman got a kick out of power-tripping over her stepdaughter! God only
knew what kind of vicious infighting had produced such a strange brand of rivalry. She had been turned on by the prospect
of snatching him away from Roxy.

The game-plan after that was fairly easy. He replied, “Well, I’m in the wrong room, with the wrong lighting.”

“That’s a boring cliche, Mr. Slayton.”

He was ready for it, and instantly snapped, “And you’re gobbling it up like a death-camp survivor who’s just been introduced
to a fried chicken dinner. Chicken is quite apt, don’t you think,
missus
Drake, considering the silly, minor-league sexual innuendos you’ve been broadcasting ever since we started—tell me, does
it ever occur to you that you have about as much style as your stepdaughter when it comes to the art of a pickup?”

Her eyes flashed an evil violet, and yellow anger shone quickly through at first, but as Slayton plowed on through his recitation
she began to smile. By the time he was finished she was laughing. She had to put her drink down. Finally, she could not meet
his eyes without laughing again, and Slayton didn’t give her a second to breathe.

“Now, here’s how you go about it,
missus
Drake, you take my hand”—he took her hand—“and say, ‘golly-gee, Mister Slayton, sir, I covet your corpus so badly that I’m
making my martini glass steam up.’ Now since that oxidizes the alcohol, that leaves us with only one thing to do!”

She had to stop to wipe her eyes. “Which is?”

Slayton rolled his eyes like an exasperated gay man. “No, silly,
besides
that! Is mating all you can think about?”

“Right now it is, Mister Bullshit.”

“I mean we should go somewhere for a drink. Something I wish to share only with you.” Slayton was priming his hole card for
use.

“I say again, sir, which is—?”

“And I say again, besides
that.
”

“We have gallons of free alcohol of every variety right behind you. Or are you too inebriated to notice?”

“Not this kind of drink. This is a private kind of drink.” In his hand he palmed a miniature version of the Starshine bottle
he had seen in Winship’s office.

Anna Drake’s eyes widened in recognition, and that was all Slayton needed to know. He had assessed her character flawlessly.
He replaced the thin bottle within his jacket.

She was quiet for a moment, and her eyes never went back to the now-insignificant martini. “Why do you offer this to me?”
she said.

“Because, if you’ll pardon the expression, you seem to be the only woman at this party with the guts and the balls to handle
an experience like this.” Slayton’s sincerity was not entirely bogus; she
did
seem headstrong and recklessly brave.

“So that’s what you’re doing here,” she whispered. “But Jesus Christ, you must realize who we get that stuff from already!”

“I know,” Slayton lied. “You overheard the problem I described to Roxanne? It’s almost the same as that story.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Listen, I don’t want to talk about it so openly. I am interested in you as a customer, but right now I’m interested enough
in other ways to suggest we both get the hell out of here if we’re going to talk about this thing any more. Okay?”

Anna took a deep drag of her cigarette, and leaned back onto the bar. “I go to maybe a hundred of these damn things a year,
at least. My husband and I have a little arrangement. I don’t do anything to scandalize him or hurt his business interests,
and I’m the perfect wife. So he allows me to sleep with whom I wish. Pavel has a medical difficulty that won’t entertain either
of us to discuss. I sleep with whom I wish. That’s why your sniffing around Roxanne attracted me… at first. Pavel understands.”

Slayton resumed his neutral tone. “That’s why he always drinks enough at these things to leave before he has to see who you
choose to spend the night with. I see.” It did not surprise—or offend—him in the least, and she seemed to sense it.

“That little bitch, Roxanne,” she said. “
She
is not the perfect daughter. The people with whom she sleeps have a habit of perpetual detriment as regards my husband’s
business.” Her eyes were focused away from Slayton’s.

“Which is why you watchdog her,” he said.

“When it’s feasible. Let’s get out of here. Do you have any plan as to where to go, Mister B.S.?”

Slayton crooked his arm. “You lead, madame.”

“I like to lead,” she said.

Mrs. Drake’s escape route was well-planned. In practically no time she and Slayton were comfortably ensconced in a lavishly
appointed but anonymous Washington hotel complex where, apparently, she maintained a suite. None of the appointments of the
rooms gave themselves immediately away as being hotel-issue.

The days he had wasted in near-fruitless Georgetown bashes washed away as Slayton anticipated exploiting his first lead. He
was aware of the irony that his success as an agent would probably depend, tonight, on his prowess in the rack.

“‘Things, they do have a way of coming ’round,’” he sang to himself.

“What?”

“Nothing.” His gaze remained on the decanter of Starshine he had brought up from the car. He was fully aware of the ruthlessness
of what he was doing. The stuff had proven ill effects on “sensitives.” To get leads on Starshine, he was possibly writing
off Anna Drake—who seemed like a nice person, nice in the way a woman in her position who could juggle money and power, overlord
lives and chuck legions of parasites, or endure an impotent husband and a hateful stepdaughter could be termed “nice.” Or
sane.

She emerged from the connecting room wearing the sheerest gown Slayton had ever seen, one that cost a bundle as obviously
as it displayed her pert and well-proportioned breasts to their best, teasing advantage. Knowing full well that the silhouette
effect caused by light from the connecting room pleased Slayton, she remained by the door.