Sitting in the front seat, Marty turned around to face us. “Prague is one of the only cities in Europe that wasn't destroyed by the Nazis,” he said proudly. “Most of the original architecture still remains.” He raised his palm toward the window and swept it from left to right in a gentle arc, as if to say, “Behold the wonder and beauty!” Then he said, “Many consider it the most beautiful city in all of Europe, the Paris of the East, so to speak. It's been home to many an artist, and many a poet too. They come here to get inspired, they come here to…”
Holy Christ! I was being bored to death, sweated to death, and smelled to death all at the same time! How could it be? I felt desperately homesick all of a sudden, like a little boy whose parents had sent him off to sleepaway camp and was dying to come home.
“… and the Czechs have always been entrepreneurs. It's the Slavs who gave this country a bad reputation.” He shook his head in disgust. “They're morons, lazy drunks with IQs just above the level of an idiot. They were thrust upon us by the Soviet Union, but now they're back where they belong: in Slovakia. And just watch—in ten years from now they'll have the lowest GNP in Eastern Europe and we'll have the highest.” He nodded proudly. “You just watch!”
“That's interesting,” I said casually, “but if the Czechs are so smart, how come they haven't discovered deodorant yet?”
“What do you mean?” asked Marty, narrowing his eyes.
“Never mind,” I answered. “I was just making a joke, Marty. It smells like f**king lilacs in here.”
He nodded, seeming to understand. “By the way,” he added, “the first company we're seeing this morning is Motokov. They have sole distribution rights to the Skoda”—he slapped his hand on the top of his headrest two times—”so they can flood the world with these bad boys!”
“Hmmm,” muttered the Chef. “I bet people all across Western Europe are gonna line up for the Skoda. In fact, the boys at Mercedes better watch their asses or they're gonna find themselves knee-deep in red ink!”
The War Hero's son nodded in agreement. “Like I said, the Czech Republic is brimming with opportunity. Motokov is just one example.”
The corporate headquarters of Motokov was a gray concrete office building that rose up twenty-three stories above the streets of Prague. Alas, the company needed only two floors for its operations. But the commies had been strong believers in “bigger is better,” viewing concepts like profits and losses as minor trivialities—or at least secondary to the creation of meaningless, low-paying jobs to placate a drunken Czechoslovakian workforce.
We took a linoleum-paneled elevator up to the twentieth floor and walked down a long, silent hallway that seemed low on oxygen. I was about to pass out when we reached a large conference room, where we were offered seats around a cheap wooden conference table large enough for thirty people. But only three representatives of Motokov were in the room, so after we'd taken seats, we were so far apart that you had to raise your voice if you wanted to make yourself heard. Leave it to the commies, I thought.
I was sitting at one head of the table, facing a plate-glass wall that looked out over the city of Prague. At this hour of the morning at this time of June, the sun was shining directly through the plate glass, heating the room to the temperature of the planet Mercury. On the floor were three geraniums in white plastic planters. They were dead.
After a few moments of opening pleasantries, Motokov's president took center stage and began speaking in heavily accented English. The company had suffered greatly due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, he explained. Antimonopoly laws had been passed, basically legislating them out of business. He seemed like an intelligent fellow—an altogether affable fellow, in fact—but pretty soon I began to notice something very odd about him. At first I couldn't place it, but then it hit me: He was a blinker. Yes-he was a world-class blinker! For every word escaping his lips, he blinked his eyes, sometimes more than once.
“So you see,” explained the Blinker, with three rapid-fire blinks, “under the new law, monopolies are no longer permitted, which puts”—blink, blink—“Motokov in a very difficult”—blink, blink, blink—“position.” Blink. “In a way, we have been legislated into near bankruptcy.” Blink, blink.
Sounds like a hell of an opportunity, I thought, especially if your goal is to flush your money down a Czech toilet bowl!
Still, I played the role of the interested guest, and I nodded in sympathy, to which the Blinker blinked on. “Yes, we are on the edge of bankruptcy,” continued the Blinker. “We have the overhead structure”—blink, blink—”of a multibillion-dollar company, but we no longer have the sales mandate.” The Blinker let out a deep sigh. He looked about forty and had very white skin. He wore the sort of checkered short-sleeve dress shirt and blue cloth necktie that reeked of a mid-level bookkeeper at an Omaha meat-slaughtering house.
Now the Blinker reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. Apparently his two underlings took this as a signal to light up too, and next thing I knew, the room was enveloped in an ominous cloud of cheap Czech tobacco smoke. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Danny, whose right elbow was on the conference table, with his chin cradled in his hand. And he was sleeping. Sleeping? Sleeping!
Through exhaled smoke, the Blinker went on: “That's why we are now focusing our attention on Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises”— What the fuck? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Why that?—”which we plan to roll out”—blink, blink-“very aggressively over the next five years.” The Blinker nodded in agreement with his own thoughts and blinks. “Yes,” continued the Blinker, with a rapid-fire double blink, “we will focus our efforts on fried chicken and mashed potatoes; the Kentucky Fried brand, of course, which is quite delicious if—”
SMASH went Danny's head onto the conference table!
There was absolute silence now, as everyone, including the Blinker, stared at Danny, astonished. His right cheek was pressed against the conference table, and a tiny river of drool was slowly making its way down his chin. Then he started snoring one of those deep guttural drug snores from way down in the bread basket.
“Don't mind him,” I said to the Blinker. “He's just jet-lagged from the trip. Please continue. I'm intrigued at Motokov's plans to capitalize on your underserved fried-chicken market.” I shrugged. “I wasn't aware that the Czechs were such lovers of fried chicken.”
“Oh, yes,” blinked the Blinker, “it's one of our staples,” and then he started blinking again, and Danny kept snoring some more, and the Chef kept rolling his eyes, and Wigwam's toupee was slowly turning into glue, and every last one of us, including the Blinker himself, was sweating to death.
The rest of the day was no better—lots of smelly Czechs, boiling offices, smoke-filled rooms, and Danny drooling. The War Hero's son shuffled us from company to company, each one in a similar situation to Motokov. Without fail, they had bloated overhead structures, inexperienced management teams, and a limited understanding of the basic tenets of capitalism. What amazed me, though, was the tremendous hope shared by every person we met. They all kept reminding me that Prague was the “Paris of the East,” and that the Czech Republic was really part of Western Europe. Slovakia had nothing to do with them, they assured me. In fact, it was populated by a bunch of retarded monkeys.
It was now six p.m., and the four of us were sitting in the hotel lobby on the dog-shit brown couches, in desperate need of salt pills. I said to the group, “I don't know how much more I can take of this: there's no amount of money worth this abuse.”
Danny seemed to agree with me. “Please!” he begged, rubbing a golf-ball-size welt that had formed on his right temple. “Let's get the f**k out of here and go to Scotland!” He bit his lower lip, as if on the verge of a breakdown. “I'm telling you, Scotland is beautiful! It's the land of milk and honey!” He nodded his head eagerly. “It's probably in the low seventies there, without a drop of humidity. We can play golf all day… smoke cigars… drink brandy… I bet we can even find young Scottish hookers who smell like Irish Spring soap!” He threw his palms up in the air. “I'm begging you, JB—throw in the towel on this one. Just throw it in.”
“As your attorney,” added Wigwam, “I strongly advise you to follow Danny's advice. I think you should call Janet right now and get the plane fueled up. I've never been so miserable in my life.”
I looked at the Chef. Apparently he wasn't ready to throw the towel in yet; he still had questions. “Can you believe how that bastard from Motokov kept going on and on about Kentucky Fried Chicken? What's so good about Kentucky Fried Chicken?” He shook his head, as if still confused. “I thought they eat mostly pork in this part of the world.”
I shrugged. “I'm not really sure,” I said, “but did you count how many times that f**ker blinked? It was incredible!” I shook my head in awe. “He was like a human adding machine. I've never seen anything like it.”
“Yeah, well, I lost count at a thousand,” said the Chef. “He must have some kind of disease, probably peculiar to the Czechs.” He shrugged too. “Anyway, as your accountant I have to agree with Wigwam: I strongly advise you to hold off making any investments in this country until they start using deodorant.” He shrugged again. “But that's only one man's opinion.”
Thirty minutes later we were on our way to the airport. The fact that twenty Czechs were waiting for us for a five-hour traditional Czech dinner was merely incidental. At six o'clock tomorrow morning we would be in the land of milk and honey, and I would never see these smelly Czechs again.
Scotland was gorgeous, but its beauty was lost on me.
I had been away from the Duchess far too long. I needed to see her—to literally feel her in my arms, and I needed to make love to her. Chandler, of course, was also waiting for me. She was almost a year old then, and who could guess what startling intellectual feats she'd accomplished the week I was gone? Not to mention the fact that the Ludes were running out, which meant that we'd be going to work on the narcotics. Then the nausea and vomiting would set in, as well as the intense constipation. And there's nothing worse than being stuck in a foreign country with your head perched over a toilet bowl, while your descending colon is frozen like a glacier.
It was for all those reasons that I nearly collapsed in the Duchess's arms when I walked through the door of our Westhampton Beach house on that Friday morning. It was a little after ten, and all I wanted was to go upstairs, hold Chandler for a moment, and then adjourn to the bedroom and make love to the Duchess. Then I would sleep for a month.
But I never got the chance. I was home for less than thirty seconds when the phone rang. It was Gary Deluca, one of my employees, who happened to bear an odd resemblance to Grover Cleveland, the dead president with the bushy beard and perpetually grim expression. “Sorry to bother you,” Grover said grimly, “but I thought you'd want to know that Gary Kaminsky got indicted yesterday. He's sitting in jail, being held without bail.”
“Really,” I said matter-of-factly. I was in that state of extreme weariness where you can't immediately fathom the consequences of what you're hearing. So the fact that Gary Kaminsky had intimate knowledge of my Swiss dealings wasn't troubling me—at least not yet. “What did he get indicted for?” I asked.
“Money laundering. Does the name Jean Jacques Saurel3* ring a bell?”
That one got me! Woke me right the f**k up! Saurel was my Swiss banker, the one man who could sink me with Agent Coleman. “Not really,” I said tentatively, clenching my ass cheeks. “Maybe I met him once, but… I'm not sure—why?”
“Because he got indicted too,” said Grover. “He's sitting in jail with Kaminsky as we speak.”
To my own surprise, it still took OCD more than three years to secure an indictment against me, despite the fact that Saurel began to cooperate almost immediately. And while some of the delay had to do with the loyalty of my Strattonites, more of it had to do with my recruitment of the Chef to help me devise a cover story. In fact, as my house of cards was collapsing around me, the Chef was busy cooking up one of his legendary recipes. And this particular recipe was so tasty and so mouthwatering that it kept OCD scratching his head for more than three full years.
And now the Chef was a wanted man. He had a federal bull's-eye on his back, and not just because he'd aided and abetted me, by helping cover up my money-laundering debacle, but also because of his relationship with the Blue-eyed Devil. Jam up Gaito, reasoned the Bastard, and he'll roll over on Brennan, who was the true target.
In truth, I wasn't so sure of that. The Chef was fiercely loyal to the Devil—selling his soul to him, so to speak—and he was the sort of battle-hardened cook who could stand the heat in the kitchen, preferring, in fact, to conjure up his recipes right beside the flames. The Chef loved the action—no, he lived for the action—and after all those years of working with the Devil he'd become completely desensitized. Things like fear, self-doubt, and self-preservation were foreign concepts to the Chef. If you were his friend he stood up for you; if you were in trouble he went to war for you; and if your back was truly to the wall—and it was either you or him—he would fall on his sword for you.
Perhaps that was why today, this very afternoon, the Chef had defied the conventional wisdom and taken my phone call. After all, the first rule of thumb in my world—meaning, the villains’, thieves’, and scoundrels’ world—was that when someone gets indicted, you lose their phone number forever. It was like becoming a leper, and whether a leper actually touches you or not, it doesn't really matter. If you even get close, he infects you just the same.
So tomorrow would be D-Day, the FBI plan simple and devilish: The Chef would come to my house, and I would be wired. After a few minutes of small talk, I would casually bring up the past and get the Chef to incriminate himself. And as sad and de spic able as that was, what choice did I have? If I didn't cooperate they would indict the Duchess; and if I didn't cooperate my children would grow up without a father; and if I didn't cooperate I would risk becoming Mr. Gower! All I could hope for was that the Chef would be smart enough not to incriminate himself, that he would dance close to the line but wouldn't actually cross over it.
That was my only hope.
1*Name has been changed
2*Name has been changed
3*Name has been changed
CHAPTER 9
WIRED FOR SOUND
ood Lord—they're defiling my daughter's bedroom!
It was early afternoon, and I was sitting on my gray slate patio, in a $1,200 Smith & Hawken teak armchair, when that horrific thought came bubbling up into my brain. And while I couldn't see them, I knew they were there—Frick and Frack! Tweedledee and Tweedledum! OCD and the Mormon were camped out in my daughter's perfect pink bedroom, sneaking peeks at me through the tiny gaps in the perfect pink slats of her Venetian blinds.
What kind of father would allow such a thing to happen? I was supposed to be Chandler's protector! Her guardian! Her savior! It was a daddy's job to keep intruders out; yet now there were two armed intruders defiling her bedroom, as a hundred fifty immaculately dressed Barbie dolls and an equal number of wildly overpriced stuffed animals looked on in utter helplessness, bearing silent witness to Daddy's failure as a protector.
Meanwhile, the Chef was due to arrive any minute, so I needed to grab hold of myself. I needed to rein in all these stray thoughts roaring through my brain—the guilt, the remorse, the panic, the sheer f**king terror! In truth, it wasn't really my fault that the FBI had declared eminent domain over my daughter's perfect pink bedroom; the problem was one of geometry, since Chandler's window happened to be at the perfect angle for OCD and the Mormon to take clandestine snapshots of the Chef as we sat outside on the gray slate patio and I went about destroying his life.
Such shame I felt! Such terrible dishonor! Me—the ignoble rat!
Still, it happened to be beautiful outside. It was one of those glorious, uplifting days, where a young man of worth and substance can relish Mother Nature and all she has to offer. And what better place to do it than from the fabulous gray slate patio at Chez Belfort? The scenery, after all, was beautiful; behind me, my ten-thousand-square-foot gray stone mansion rose above the grounds with the grandeur and magnificence of the Palace of Versailles; before me, the crystal-blue waters of my Olympic-size swimming pool sparkled like diamonds; and, beyond that, my breathtaking pond and waterfall system was pumping out thousands of gallons of water per minute, as a jet-powered fountain shot up a thick stream of it twenty feet into the air, in a dazzling display of wealth and excess. Such beauty I'd surrounded myself with! Such opulence!
Then my spirits sank. That lousy pond and waterfall had set me back a million f**king bucks, a million f**king bucks I could really use right now! Just this morning I had had a debilitating attack of money anxiety. I was alone in bed when the cruel reality of having to disgorge most of my assets to the federal government hit me like an iron wrecking ball. Next thing I knew, my heart was beating out of my chest, and I was sweating profusely. I started panicking.
And why was I alone? Because that dirty Duchess hadn't even come home last night! Apparently she'd zeroed in on a new gold mine and was now in the process of staking her claim. It was only a matter of time until she became the blond-headed arm candy of another mine owner. Where did that leave me? What woman would want a broke and penniless Wolf who'd ratted out his friends?
I took a deep breath and resisted the urge to sneak a peek up at my daughter's Venetian blinds. I had been up there myself—less than five minutes ago—and the scene was sheer bedlam. The Mormon had been pacing back and forth (while smiling broadly and kindly) with a Minolta camera dangling from his neck, like some grinning Japanese tourist. Meanwhile, OCD had been hunched over on his knees, affixing an ultrasensitive tape recorder just above my loins, using a roll of masking tape he'd purchased at Staples.
For my part, I had mostly been complaining. “Jesus—this is gonna hurt like a bitch when you take it off!” I'd snapped at OCD. I was alluding to the fact that most of my pubic hair would be ripped off when he removed the recorder.
“I know, I know,” OCD had replied sympathetically, as he carefully avoided my pubic hair with the back of his hand. “But you gotta trust me on this one; there's no better place to hide a tape recorder.” He shrugged as he secured the last piece of masking tape four inches above my scrotal sac. “Even someone as suspicious as the Chef is gonna think twice before he pats down your balls!”