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Eve, had a flair for it, knowing just when it was the blonde’s turn to suck Johnny’s dick (when she saw the size of it, she grinned and whispered, “Gosh, look!”) or when it was her turn to do it up against that fountain in the middle of the room while the blonde rubbed his back. Eve knew the perfect time to push Johnny down on his back and maneuver the blonde onto his cock and for the first time in the whole deal to start pawing the blonde’s tits and kissing her, which sent Johnny off in a matter of seconds. It was a gift. A lot of women didn’t have it. The blonde—her name was Rita, short for Marguerite; he never forgot their names in the morning—was still there, asleep, when he’d left to come up here to the roof, to the pool. He hated men who tested the water with their pinky toe. He tossed off his heavy robe and jumped into the deep end. When the shock wore off, he went under again, holding his breath and counting to two hundred.
    His head pounded, and not from the depth of the water. He didn’t drink as much as people thought, at least not anymore. The secret? Go from table to table, joint to joint, leaving half-finished drinks everywhere, which no one notices, while at the same time accepting every new one that comes his way, which
everyone
notices. Any poor mook who tried to match him drink for drink got folded into the back of a cab and sent home, courtesy of Johnny Fontane. He controlled his drinking. He controlled what he did and who he did it with.
    He surfaced. He swam a couple laps to limber up, then took a deep breath and went under again. He repeated the drill three more times and got out. At the end of the deck, on the far edge of the roof, was a billboard: HAVE A BLAST ! BEST VIEW OF THE BOMB IN LAS VEGAS ! Underneath a painting of a purple-orange mushroom cloud, on movable letters, was a time, tomorrow morning.
Early
tomorrow morning. Johnny had heard they were going to set up a bar, a breakfast buffet, even crown some broad Miss Atomic Bombshell. What sort of sucker would get up at dawn to watch a bomb go off sixty miles away? Maybe they think they’ll start to glow and set off the slot machines. People want to pay to watch a bomb, they ought to go see Johnny’s last picture. He grabbed his robe and took the stairs two at a time, down to his room.
    She was gone. Rita. Good kid. The room still smelled like whiskey, smokes, and pussy. The statue of the naked lady in the fountain, whose outflung arm had seemed at the time like it was made to hold on to, needed repairs. He got dressed and—just to make sure he didn’t nod off on the way to L.A.—took one of the little green pills Dr. Jules Segal had prescribed.
    Johnny Fontane emerged into the brutal sunlight of the Castle’s VIP parking lot and did not flinch. He grabbed his lapels, so sharp they could cut meat, straightened his jacket, and climbed into his new red Thunderbird. The cops here knew this car. He had that ’Bird going over a hundred before he even left town. He checked his watch. In a couple hours, the musicians would start trickling into the studio. They’d spend an hour tuning and gassing, then for another hour or so Eddie Neils, his musical director this time out, would have them rehearsing. Johnny should make it in time. Lay down the first few tracks, get to the airport by six, hop on the charter along with Falcone and Gussie Cicero, and be back here in plenty of time for the private show he said he’d do for Michael Corleone.
    It wasn’t until four in the morning—after he arrived, exhausted, at the guest suites at the Vista del Mar Golf and Racquet Club—that Tom Hagen realized he’d forgotten his racquet. The pro shop didn’t open until nine, the same time Hagen was supposed to meet the Ambassador on Court 14. Hagen couldn’t bear to be late. He asked the desk clerk if he might borrow a racquet, and the clerk looked at him as though he’d tracked mud on the lobby’s white carpeting. He told the man he had an