THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE (36 page)

'You don't have to worry about the visa,' his brother said. 'Hans has a reliable contact in the Miami Thai Consulate and gets a regular update on issuance numbers and visa design. Apparently Thailand's become the destination of choice for cashed-up fugitives.' He raised his bushy eyebrows and shrugged as if contemplating the reason. 'Must be those eager young pole dancers who'll do anything for a Benjamin Franklin.' He vented a bullish laugh that careened off the walls. Candy put in a good laugh too before finishing off her hot dog.

Haslow was unaware of their antics as he studied the fake visa in his fake passport. 'There's nothing to worry about,' his brother continued. 'You'll arrive at Don Muang airport, customs will glance at your visa, ask a few questions about your stay, if that, then stamp you in. You'll just be one in a line of hundreds.'

Haslow wasn't without reservation. Still it was the best shot he was going to get and he was immeasurably grateful for his brother's support.

'I also organized a little something else for you.' Haslowski snapped his fingers at Candy, much like an Indian maharaj to one of his wallahs. She poked out her tongue, but nevertheless dragged out an overnight bag from under the bed. With surprising strength, she shoved the bag at Haslow who all but teetered from its unexpected weight. Candy winked at him and licked a trace of ketchup from off her glossy lips. Haslow easily pictured her in a cowboy hat and cut-off jeans as she pumped gas at a remote roadhouse. Her tarty exchange with motorists flowing as freely as the gasoline into their sun-beaten vehicles.

Haslow placed the bag on the bed and zippered it open. Cash. Rolls of high-denomination bills bound with rubber bands.

'Go on, take it,' Haslowski said encouragingly.

'No, I couldn't ...'

'Go on, take it,' Haslowski urged. 'Turn it into travellers cheques.'

'No, I ...' Haslow was downright nervous at the sight of so much cash. More than he'd ever seen. With an unsteady hand, he closed the bag. He felt lightheaded and flashes of light danced before his eyes. That the money was laundered was a given. Even so, he had little choice but to take it. He thought again of the reversal of fate. Peter was from all accounts a reputable millionaire; whereas Haslow ... he'd sold his 322i to a Georgetown BMW dealer for less than a reasonable price because he'd insisted on cash (he'd been too paranoid to accept a cashier's cheque for fear of conducting business in a bank). Until now such money had been his only means of support. Saturday evening the DIA had frozen his bank accounts. Each ATM he accessed bore the same disheartening message: YOUR ACCOUNT IS TEMPORARILY INACTIVE.

The research chemist licked his dry mouth. His fingers tingled as if conduits for a mild electric current. 'Thanks Peter, I really don't know what to say.'

'It's okay, Roderick.' Haslowski got up from the bed and looped a solid arm about his brother. Haslow felt the arm tighten and momentarily panicked. His brother chuckled roguishly and slapped him on the back. 'Hey, come on  ... what are big brothers for?'

Goldman leaned back in his seat and studied his friend from UCLA days.

'So, you called Brad Ryan in Hawaii?' Sorenson pulled the ring-tab off a fresh can of beer and stared at the pear-shaped hole, his question rhetorical. 'God knows what his sister Rhonda says about me. Dumb little broad.' He brought the can to his mouth, guzzling a mouthful of amber fluid.

Goldman and Sorenson sat about a circular wrought-iron table on the upstairs balcony at Thirteen's house. Sorenson had just finished his share of the Chinese takeaways. A white carton with chopsticks stood empty and discarded beside his striped beach chair. 'Yeah, Rhonda's a real case, all right.' He shook his head and looked at the cars parked on the driveway below.

Goldman wasn't comfortable Michelle was with Trinda, the attractive coloured girl who'd taken a shining to the house's new female visitor. He didn't like Michelle being out of his sight around these crooked young people, even as Trinda had mentioned pleasantly enough that the backyard's split-level gardens and kidney-shaped swimming pool were well worth the see, along with an authentic Mayan sundial which Trinda professed the ability to read.

'Rhonda's your typical uptown girl,' Sorenson continued. 'A Holmby Hills airhead who likes an occasional roll in the mud. Something wild and dirty to shake her out of her tan lamp and vitamin pill stupor. Anyhow, Rhonda and I are finito.' He took a hefty swig of his beer. 'Fuck Brad and his stupid-ass sister. What do they know?' He chuckled darkly, as if remembering a recurring argument with his former girlfriend. 'Why should I go straight like them? Why the fuck should I?'

He looked at his shiny Porsche below. Undoubtedly the high-performance car was an ego-nourishing reminder of how well he'd done for himself; and it seemed he harboured no self-reproach over how he made his money, either, for he was only too willing to discuss his illegal livelihood with his old university friend. Most likely he was flattered that Goldman had bothered to visit him. In any case, he carried on with an expansive air.

'Yeah, why should I piss my life away like the wage slaves out there with their home sweet home loans?' He gestured at the unseen metropolis extending beyond the sandstone wall fronting the house. 'Who needs it? I'm forty-grand off being a millionaire.' He lit a Marlboro and crossed his legs. His jacket scrunching against his seat as he brushed aside a scraggy lock of hair. 'I promised myself I'd get out of the game once I made seven figures, and I've nearly done it at thirty-four years of age. Not a bad score by anyone's count.'

Goldman could see it was a special moment for Sorenson, his ego big and bouncy, his beer cold and comforting as he lauded his rapid rise in the LA drug trade. But then, Goldman realized, how many people would be as willing an audience as he was today? Not many.

'You've got to have a nose for this business,' Sorenson went on. 'Move too fast or too soon and you'll end up behind bars, or in a shallow grave ...'

Goldman sipped his beer but had little taste for it. He was both interested and disheartened by Sorenson's confessed sagacity in the narcotics arena. He only wished there was another way to sell his Silverwood Centre formula. But here he was increasingly unsettled and worrying about Michelle. If only she were in the living room and not idling about the back of the house. It didn't seem right that she be arm in arm with him during the lowest point in his life ... She surely deserved better.

'... yeah, I've got it pretty much in the can with Thirteen. In a few months I'll bow out with a cool million under my belt, and I've already got a solid deal in place for laundering the bills.' Sorenson drew hard on his cigarette before flicking it over the railing.

'So, Goldman, what's your scoop after all these years?' Smoke hovered in front of his hawkish face, partially obscuring his narrowed eyes.

The direct question made Goldman uneasy, made him shift nervously in his seat, made him flex his toes inside his scuffed brown loafers. In a ploy for time, he said, 'You know, Thirteen ... I can't quite figure him. These kids? This place?'

Sorenson looked uneasily at his visitor. 'Jesus Christ, Goldman, what's with the sudden interest in Thirteen? 'You better not be a confidential informant.'

'Ah, get away, Rick.' Goldman acted genuinely offended, and in fact was. 'Jeez, mate, how low do you think I'd stoop?'

'I don't know, you tell me.' A hard tone crept into his voice.

'Rick, please ... I'm just here on holiday. I'm staying with one of Michelle's friends in Hollywood Hills, for Christ's sake – '

'So you say.'

Goldman scoffed. 'Listen, I thought to look you and Carl up. You know, for old times' sake. He put me onto you and, jeez, here we are sharing a drink, that's all.' Goldman shook his head, hardly caring for Sorenson's accusing look and voiced fear Goldman had become a police informant. But underneath his indignant bravado, the wanted chemist was growing uneasy from the real reason behind his visit. He didn't want to be cast in a suspicious light before he got down to business. It was the last thing he wanted.

Sorenson glanced at Goldman's shaking foot, then looked back up, his face creased with a larrikin grin. 'Ah come on, dude, I was only joshing. Don't get so hot under the collar, I was just playing with you, was all.'

'Crap you were,' Goldman countered. He took a sip of beer, and both men laughed, somewhat uneasily, but still dispersing a good deal of the tension that had flared between them. Of course an underlying guardedness remained. Neither had had anything to do with the other for an alienating stretch of time. Goldman had seen little of Sorenson since marrying, and had seen or heard nothing of him since moving east. Yet here they were on the balcony testing the durability of a friendship forged when insouciance had had a greater reign in their lives.

Sorenson lit another cigarette. 'Hmm, so you want to know about Thirteen ... Well, he's a complicated sonofabitch. Wouldn't fancy fucking
 
with him ... Anyhow, I met him about a year ago at a record launch for the Western Warriors. We drank beers, racked up lines, and came to the glowing conclusion that whatever I could bake, he could distribute. And now, my snooping friend, we're both profiting from a partnership that's got plenty of mileage to it. Yep, plenty indeed.'

Sorenson turned towards the house and nodded at someone inside. 'Gerry who's with that chocolate honey, Trinda, is Thirteen's right-hand man. Everyone calls him Eighteen. The two of them are the heavyweights of Fast Cash Boys, a gang of crims Thirteen founded a few years back. All the dudes round here are connected one way or another to Fast Cash Boys.'

'So why do they call each other by numbers?'

'That's what they go by when they do break-ins. Any night guard who gets pistol-whipped and tied up by a bunch of guys in ski masks is less likely to remember a number than a name when later filing a police report. I'm telling ya' – Sorenson chuckled darkly – 'they've done that many jobs the numbers have simply stuck.'

'So they mostly break into warehouses?'

'Jesus, Goldman, are you
sure
you're not a
fucking narc
? I mean, honestly.' He blew cigarette smoke through his nostrils and looked this way and that before locking eyes with his inquisitive guest. 'Yeah, Thirteen's networked, largely through Deuce, that skinny four-eyed geek who tinkers with keyboards. Deuce gets intelligence on a lot of good stuff.' Sorenson swallowed more beer and sucked greedily on his cigarette. 'Thirteen's nose is on the money. He's diversified and prospering.'

'Hmm, looks like it.' Goldman gestured at the large house and well-to-do street outside.

'Nah, the house belongs to his old man, some rich film producer. Thirteen hasn't paid rent in years and his old man hasn't got the guts to kick him out. Apparently Thirteen bashed him once. Anyhow, it seems dad regards the house as a fair price to have his crazy son out of his hair. In any case, Thirteen's planning to buy the house off him. And it won't be long until he does. Like I said, the dude's prospering.'

Respect was evident in Sorenson's smoke-rasped voice. 'Fast Cash Boys recently broke into a medical supply house and stole cartons of growth hormone. A mountain of it. Christ, the stuff's worth more on the black market than smack or coke. Bodybuilders and athletes love the stuff, but it's hard to get legally. It triples what steroids do for muscle growth and apparently doesn't show up in urine samples.

'Thirteen's got a crew of muscle heads moving the stuff for him in gyms up and down the coast. I heard he just turned a white coat who works at an Irvine laboratory that makes the stuff. One of the guy's duties is to destroy ampules of growth hormone that've passed their use-by-dates.'

A crash sounded from inside the house as the long-haired youth with round glasses lost possession of a speaker box he was attempting to lift.

'See Deuce in there,' Sorenson said, with a contemptuous wave of his hand. 'He's a total geek ... and an ass-kick to boot. Still, he's an electronics whiz who can find any security system's weakness from a blueprint or manual. Thirteen pays him wads for what he knows.

'Deuce got Thirteen interested in Silicon Valley. Word is a big boom's happening up there. Deuce's plugged into it, and generally knows from his geeky pals what's happening in the industry. He's put Thirteen onto some good strikes. Fast Cash Boys recently broke into a Santa Clara warehouse and made off with fifty-grand worth of semiconductors. Thirteen's lined up a fence who's gonna ship them to Korea.'

Carl, old buddy, it was probably your semiconductors they took.
Goldman brushed the disturbing thought aside, his hand tightening about his beer, all the while his unspoken business with Sorenson gnawed at him like an unrelenting curse. He had to get the ball rolling, but he couldn't broach the subject ...

Afternoon sun slanted across the vehicles on the driveway below. Golden-crowned sparrows hopped and chirped amidst trees lining the eastern wall of the property. A climbing jetliner rumbled in the distance. A noisy LAPD helicopter cut through the air as it approached from the other side of the city. It banked sharply and with a blur of rotors sped off into the brightening sunset.

'So, I imagine your expertise in cooking speed plays no small part in Thirteen's empire.'

'Got that right,' Sorenson said proudly. 'My kick-ass powder is one helluva of a cash cow.'

Goldman looked over the wrought-iron balcony and felt deep in where he didn't belong. A queasy sensation had worked its way under his skin and showed no sign of letting up. He was keen to leave Sorenson's shady world for the sunny heights of his proposed future with Michelle, but knew just the same he couldn't afford to get ahead of himself. He had to get his hands on some cash. With his bank accounts frozen, he and Michelle had precious money between them for any kind of life abroad.

Goldman looked inside the house. Relief washed over him. Michelle was with Trinda and a young blond runaway named Aaron. The women were checking out Deuce's music-making equipment. Deuce had become vocal about an aspect of the homemade system and seemed excited by the attention of his attractive audience.