Free One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz

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 that 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 recreated, 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