VII
The Senator
Jilly slid her silk robe across her thighs. She inhaled deeply on her cigarette and let
the smoke billowed out. She stubbed the remainder out in the ashtray.
“You know I am a baby. Don’t I always take care of you? I’ll see you on Sunday. We’ll make up for lost time. I promise you. I’ll be extra sweet to you.”
She leaned back on her sofa and looked across the room. Beneath a brass light hung a large aerial photo of A-Basin. Along the face of the mountain a pair of red dotted lines extended across it. They signified a proposed high speed Vista Bahn. The lower left hand corner had a large red circle drawn in a portion of the parking lot.
“No one suspects a thing. I have the pictures just like you asked. Yes, you’re absolutely correct, it would be a perfect place for a Helipad. The only thing is we are going to have to move fast. If we don’t they are going to ruin everything. They? The klutzy Olympian and his ski bum sidekick. They have been counseling Joe on ways to block the takeover and are always off skiing instead of taking care of the mountain. The place will be in shambles by the time we get our hands on it.”
She stood up and walked across the room and reached down on a portable glass bar. Raising her wine glass. She twirled it gently around and pressed her lips to the
receiver.
“Here’s to the start of a profitable partnership Senator,” she whispered.
* * *
Senator John Blackwell walked to the door of the Keystone Condominium penthouse and opened the French doors that looked out onto the slopes. Taking a long drink of brandy, tasting the warmth, he swallowed and felt the smoothness make its way down to his sizable belly. This would be the year. He had introduced legislation that would allow drilling and mining on National Forest Lands under the guise of National Security Interests. The White River National Forest above Arapahoe Basin Ski Area had large deposits of Molybdenum and the lease would soon be his. He would have it all, he would own or control all the lands and businesses from the I-70 corridor at Eisenhower Tunnel most of the town of Dillon, the Reservoir, all the way to Frisco and the Valley from the water to the Continental Divide including the Ski Areas of Keystone and Arapahoe Basin The material contracts alone for the nuclear submarines were worth more than most countries defense budgets and would make him the new breed of multi billionaire businessmen. He had plans to join the space race once he had finished extracting the metals from the mountains. There was nothing that was going to stop him, certainly not some old mountain man and a group of societal misfits bent on singing Kumbaya, My Lord and playing patty cake in powder snow. He was anointed to be a mover and a shaker, born to wealth, and privilege. There were those that were destined to rule and those destined to serve, John Blackwell served no one but John Blackwell.
Jilly quietly let herself into the penthouse and walked across the room to where the Senator was standing, staring out the window at the slopes of Keystone. She quickly slid her hands around his waist and surprised him as she hugged him tightly.
“I didn’t think the morning would ever end. The lawyers were going on and on about the difficulty of mineral rights on National Lands and the sale of precious metals even if it was to the government. How it might be construed as a conflict of interest. Honestly, it was so boring. All I could think about was spending the afternoon here with you.”
“So, it was agreed on, if I posses the lease to the ski area I also have the rights to the
minerals underneath the mountain.”
“Yes, they are all yours. I have locked that in, all that is left is the meeting at your office in Denver for the signing over of the contracts. I spoke with the Insurance Underwriter and it is all taking care of. They will loose there Insurance next week. There is no way out for them. The Mountain is yours, Baby.”
“When this is completed and my divorce is final I am going to take you to Paris. I love Paris in the Spring!”
“I can’t wait for you to be rid of her, the old witch. She has been so unreasonable. If she wasn’t such an old washed up hack, I might feel sorry for her. Her and those unwanted waifs she calls children. We can have it all. You have the money and power and I will get you the missing piece, the Mountain. I told you the first night we spent together that I would deliver the Old Man and the Mountain to you. They are about to be ours, I promise you, we will spend our days on the Riviera and Entertaining the Elites.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I have learned from my time in the Senate that it isn’t “Over Until It’s Over. You have done well, you are destined to be a mover and a shaker.”
