“No. It’s just what I need. An educated young white who can talk to other educated young whites. The kind of people who not only have enough money to buy drugs but enough to be able to afford to be discriminating about who they buy them from. People who don’t want to circle MacArthur park in their Mercedes. People who want to call a discreet phone number, place an order, and have it delivered. Like sushi. People like that, Officer Haas.”
He leaned close.
“Those are the only kind of people who can afford to buy Dreamer.”
Park stopped twisting his wrist.
“Sir.”
Bartolome put the roll of papers on his desk.
“Have you seen anyone with it yet? Close up. Someone you know?”
Park touched the watch without looking at it.
“My mother. But I didn’t see her. She died fast.”
“Good.”
Bartolome nodded twice.
“That’s good. One of my brothers got it early. Before the test. When they still thought it was a virus. Quarantine. Nonstop tissue samples. Experimental treatment. On top of the fucking thing itself. His last week, that was when they allowed the first human Dreamer trials. His number got drawn, but he was in the placebo group. I saw a woman who got the real thing. She slept. She dreamed. Woke up, she smiled, talked to her family. She’d been screaming nonstop for five days before that. Covered in lesions. Those went away, too.”
He looked at another picture on the walclass="underline" dress blues, the day he got his bars, between his two cop brothers, arms draped over one another’s shoulders.
He looked away.
“Afronzo-New Day Pharm has finally agreed to a federally brokered deal to lease the patent on Dreamer internationally. A-ND will have to settle for profiting just a little less obscenely on this deal than they would have. Man, they can nationalize the banks, car manufacturers, utilities, and telecom, but as long as Big Pharm is still in the black those cocksuckers in Congress will scream ‘free market’ like someone nominated Marx for President.”
He rubbed his nose and grunted.
“Anyway, no telling how long it will take for overseas production to ramp up, and even when it does, if it ever does, demand is going to stay way ahead of supply. But that’s over the borders and across the seas, and I don’t have the energy to give a shit. For the time being America has all there is and everyone wants it and we have to keep people from killing each other for it. To wit, FDA is going to take it off Schedule A and invent something called Schedule Z. Totally regulated. Distributed out of hospital pharmacies only. Administered directly by hospital personnel to admitted patients. One dose at a time. Rare exceptions will be possible for hospice and home care, limited scrips, signed by two doctors. Every box, every bottle has an RFID tag. Small batch produced, the pills in each batch will have three unique identifying features.”
He put both hands on top of his head, fingers knitted.
“Everyone at least knows someone who has someone close who’s had SLP. Pretty soon, everyone’s gonna have someone they know well. Someone they love. Trade in Dreamer, if it hits the street, that’ll cause a war. The stuff that’s already out there, the counterfeits, that low-grade Southeast Asian knockoff junk; we’d like to cut it off, but that’s not our mandate. We’ll be working DR33M3R, the real stuff. A bottle here or there, a few dozen pills, that’s gonna happen. But we can’t have this stuff hitting the street in quantity. Busts of scale, that’s what we’ll be after.”
Park crimped the bill of his cap.
“People have to know distribution is fair and equal and blind to money, class, and color. People can’t start thinking it’s only for the rich and the white.”
Bartolome eyeballed him.
“Haas, to hell with what people think. Eighties crack? You know anything about how bad that was? You don’t. You weren’t here. It was bad. This, Dreamer, this is the highest-profit-margin dope in history. What I’m concerned about is a drug war. If someone figures out how to intercept the distribution chain or manufacture a quality clone, we’ll go from the skirmishes out there straight to trench warfare in days. Some local cartel starts pulling down Dreamer money, they’ll be outfitting their people with Russian and Chinese military ordnance. We’ll need a flyover just to patrol Crenshaw.”
Park nodded.
“What kind of resources are they committing?”
Bartolome blew out his cheeks.
“At the Fed? Got me. LAPD?”
He unlaced his fingers and pointed at himself and then at Park.
“No expense spared.”
He put his hands back on top of his head.
“So, Officer Hass.”
He rocked back in his chair.
“Does this sound like the kind of duty you’re suited for?”
Park stood, fitted his cap onto his head, settled the weight of his weapon on his hip, and nodded.
“Yes, it does, sir.”
Bartolome closed his eyes.
“Welcome to Seven Y, Narcotics Special Units. Go back to Van Nuys and clear your shit out of your locker. Anyone asks, you got transferred to Venice. That’ll make them hate you even more.”
Park stayed where he was.
Bartolome opened one eye.
“Yeah?”
Park scratched the side of his neck.
“One thing.”
“Yeah?”
Park touched his badge.
“I’m not good at lying.”
Bartolome rolled his eye.
“It’ll come to you, Haas.”
Parker nodded, turned to the door.
“Haas.”
He stopped.
“Sir?”
“Hear your wife is pregnant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A kid, that will make this kind of thing a lot harder.”
Park didn’t say anything.
Bartolome opened his other eye.
“You like that, don’t you?”
Park didn’t say anything.
4
CENTURY CITY WAS WHERE THEY KEPT THE LAWYERS.
Being lawyers, they were among the first to have themselves walled in when it became apparent that the pandemic wasn’t going to simply kill the poor and be done with it. Century Park East and Century Park West were sealed at Santa Monica and West Olympic by twelve-foot-high concrete tank barriers. Constellation Boulevard was now a pedestrian mall running between CPE and CPW The only way in or out was through the checkpoint gates at the north end of Avenue of the Stars.
The record labels, production companies, networks, talent agencies, and studio corporate offices that made CC home had long been seeking this kind of security from interlopers. No longer did they have to fear an unsolicited demo tape, head shot, or spec script. The gun towers were finally in place, and, rumor had it, a convoy of armored fighting vehicles was parked in one of the 20th Century Fox lot’s many empty soundstages. Ready to whisk the inhabitants to safety should they come under siege.
I had a pass.
Of almost equal importance, I had a car that was suitably obscene and a wardrobe that matched. I’d been careful to choose both for the occasion.
Conspicuous consumption was the mode in these circles. Driving a Prius might still have scored status points in West Hollywood, but the power elites had taken to declaring their faith in the future and the sustainability of rampant consumerism by rededicating themselves to the better things in life.
African famine relief, environmentalism, election reform, alternative fuels, building homes for the poor, greenness of any shade, they all seemed to smack of ostentation, a self-glorifying austerity that betrayed a distinct lack of optimism.
If the rich could not be seen to believe that things were going to improve, then what hope for the masses?
I gave my name at the gate, let a black-uniformed, typically chiseled and severe Thousand Storks security contractor scan the RFID tag on my national ID card, pressed my thumb into a biometric reader, waited while they called to confirm my appointment, and took the parking ticket the contractor handed me, noting the sign that warned I’d be charged twenty-five dollars for every fifteen minutes, without validation.