Winter Kills by Richard Condon

dancer, at half the speed of a gently falling leaf. Pa was wearing a scarlet linen waistcoat under a white bawneen jacket. He had a sheared mink overcoat across his left forearm and a large billycock bowler on his head. His face was so deeply creased with lines that it looked as though it hadbeen plowed by a combine. He was smoking a thick black cigar. He smiled horrendously when he saw Nick, displaying what looked like row upon row of huge white false teeth that seemed to have been made of mother-of-pearl.
    “I knew you’d be here, you little son-of-a-bitch,” he bawled. “What’s this I hear about you screwing Carswell’s secretary in London?” The two men came together and embraced with a great show of fake feeling.
    “Carswell is through,” Nick shouted over the sound of the engines.
    “Don’t be a chump,” Pa said. “Where are you going to find another guy who knows his stuff like Carswell?”
    “I’ll run Jemnito, Pa. You’re just a salesman working on commission.”
    “Some salesman. Who got you the Alhart field in Tanzania? Who set you with Somoza in Nicaragua? Who’s gonna fit you into the North Slope after someone else figures out how to get the oil out? Me, your commission salesman.” He threw a long bony arm around Nick’s shoulders and began to march him off to the house, asking Si, who trotted beside him, if he could find him three roast beef sandwiches and a bottle of beer.
    “Hey, you guys,” somebody yelled behind them, “wait for me!”
    Nick turned and had the satisfaction of knowing that his father could not have known he was going to be there, because a small blonde, with muscular legs and a mouth as depraved as a Venetian principessa’s, wearing a fantasy pink-and-blue mink coat in wide checkerboard squares, was descending on the miniature elevator. Pa gestured to her angrily as if she had been a stowaway. “Get the hell out of here,” he yelled. “Get back in that chopper. Eddie will take you back to Chicago and I’ll call you next week.”
    “I will like hell,” she shouted. “My ass is sore now from riding in your goddam airplanes.”
    “Eddie!” Pa yelled at the top of his voice.
    “Yes, sir?” a short gray-haired man yelled back from beside the lift.
    “Put her in the De Mille cottage and give her a bottle of booze. And see that she doesn’t bother anybody. I’m going to have a visit with my son.” He took Nick’s arm and dragged him quickly into the main house. Si bolted the door after them just in time, because the young woman’s small form hurled itself against it and she hammered on it with her fists.
    “Jesus.” Pa grinned. “If we only had some way to tell they had a temper when they first looked good to us, right?” He kept walking. Nick followed him through a complex of corridors to the “small” sitting room that adjoined his father’s sleeping quarters. The room was decorated with photographs, busts, medals and paintings. Tim with Malraux and De Gaulle. Tim with Khrushchev. Tim with Adenauer. Tim with the Supreme Court. Tim with the cast of Hello, Dolly at Rockrimmon. Tim with the cast of the Bolshoi Ballet at Rockrimmon. Tim accepting honorary degrees. Tim with Harold Macmillan. Tim between Floyd Patterson and Archie Moore. A life-size portrait of Tim in oils by James Richard Blake, famed for his portrait of Edward VII. Tim with the senior class of Wellesley at Rockrimmon. Tim with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A bust of Tim by Edward Delaney. An illuminated display case of Tim’s decorations: the Vatican State Order of the Golden Spur conferred “motu proprio”; the Order of Charles III (Spain); the Order of the Elephant (Denmark); the Order of Merit of the Principality of Liechtenstein; the Yugoslavian Grand Star; the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor (France); Polonia Restituta (Poland); the Grand Cross with Collar (Italy); the Baden-Powell Medal for the Perpetuation of World Scouting (Britain)—all earned through connections of Pa’s