“Wow,” she said.
Honest to God, Frank thinks, she actually said “Wow.”
Not that Garth’s beach house wasn’t worth a “Wow.” At $1.5 million back in 1985, it should have been pretty impressive, and it didn’t disappoint. It was long, sleek, white, and modern, its floor-to-ceiling windows practically inviting the ocean in.
Frank can’t imagine what the place would go for now.
Six, seven mil easy.
Mike pulled in and opened the door for a second girl, a stunning redhead with green eyes, sophisticated where Summer was naive, exuding an aggressive, experienced sexuality in contrast to Summer’s innocence.
Whatwas her name? Frank tries to think.
Alison. Alison…something. She was from someplace in the South, or at least she had the accent.
Garth came out of the house, followed by Fortunate Son, who was dressed in nothing but a smile and the towel wrapped around his waist.
Turned out that he was the entire A list.
You served her up, Frank thinks now. Served her like a special dish.
Get a grip, he tells himself now. She was ahooker -the fresh, innocent virgin persona was part of her act. Itwas her hook, her appeal; it drove up her price. The gorgeous girl next door you always wanted but couldn’t have.
Unless you were Fortunate Son.
Then there wasnothing you wanted and couldn’t have.
Fortunate Son wanted them both.
Of course he did, Frank thinks. Who wouldn’t? Be honest with yourself-if you could have everything you wanted, wouldn’t you take it? And if you knew you were going to get what you wanted, you wouldn’t have been in any hurry, either. Nobody was going to take it away from you, so why not wait? If you were used to getting anything you wanted, maybe the waiting was better than the getting.
The girls said they really wanted to take showers. They went inside for a while and came out in bikinis; then everyone went for a long walk on the beach, with Frank and Mike trailing behind, out of earshot but within sight.
Nobody went in the water, Frank remembers.
Well, Summer ran in up to her knees and ran back yelling that it was cold, and Fortunate Son wrapped his arms around her and rubbed her back to warm her up. Then they all went back to the house, where lunch was served outside on the deck.
You and Mike sat in the kitchen, Frank remembers, and ate with the cook. You kept the door open so you could see what was going on outside. Funny the things you remember-the men drank beer and the girls had mimosas.
After lunch, the girls said they were sleepy and the men said they could use a siesta, too, and everyone repaired to separate bedrooms. Frank and Mike agreed to split a watch and Frank took the first one. When Mike relieved him, Frank went back to his car, stretched out on the front seat, and fell sound asleep.
When he woke up, he walked back to the house to see what was up. He looked down at the living room through the blue-tinted glass.
Summer, dressed in an open white robe over her bikini, was on her knees on the lush white carpet. Alison was kneeling beside her, gently kissing her neck. Donnie Garth and Fortunate Son sat in two big black leather easy chairs, watching. A bowl of cocaine was set on the chrome and glass coffee table; the remnants of lines looked like white dust.
Alison nuzzled Summer’s neck and Summer said, “If you do that, I can’t stop you.”
Alison said, “I know,” and reached around and unclasped the top of the bathing suit. Alison dipped her head down and kissed one breast and then the other and gently pushed Summer down on her back and then slid down herself, kissing her along her stomach and then across the top of her panties as Summer moaned and said, “I’ve never done this before.”
Alison sat up and pulled the panties off, then opened Summer’s legs and laid down between them, and soon Summer’s hips started to roll; then her back arched and her fingers dug into the lush white carpet.
It was straight from a bad porn movie, Frank thought. A parody, an act-“The Corruption of Innocence”-but a good one, simultaneously stupid, obscene, and compelling. Summer was a good actress-she alternately resisted and succumbed-and, toward the end, she lay with her head in Alison’s lap as Fortunate Son, his dick coated with numbing cocaine, moved in for the final act.
That’s when the radio squawked in Mike’s car. Mike wasn’t paying any attention, so Frank got in and answered it. It was the office dispatcher.
“Christ, I’m glad I reached you,” she said. “Patty went into labor. She’s at Scripps.”
Frank hustled out of the car.
“I gotta go,” he told Mike.
Mike was transfixed on the scene inside the house.
“Now?”
“Patty went into labor.”
Mike didn’t take his eyes off the window. “Go. Go. ”
Frank jumped back into his car and sped out. He made it to the hospital in time and was in the room when Jill was born. He held his daughter in his arms and his life changed.
Like that.
Frank learned later-with the rest of the suckers-that the savings and loan industry was the biggest bust-out scheme in history, dwarfing anything any wise guy ever managed to put together.
Here’s how the scam worked:
Garth and the other S amp;L guys would get themselves savings and loan operations, make unsecured loans to themselves and their partners through shell corporations, then default on the loans and drain their S amp;Ls of all their assets.
Garth took his own Hammond Savings and Loan down for a billion and a half bones.
Identical in shape to your classic Mafia bust-out, Frank thinks now, except we only managed to do it with restaurants and bars, maybe the occasional hotel. These guys busted out the whole country to the tune of $37 billion and Congress hit up the working guy to pay for it.
The whole S amp;L house of cards eventually came tumbling down, and Garth and a few of the others did some time polishing their short games at various Club Feds, and the senators and congressmen who had been on the boat, literally and figuratively, got on CNN to proclaim what a disgrace it all was.
Karen Wilkenson did a couple of years for pandering. John Saunders went away for a year for misuse of bank funds.
Fortunate Son went on to become a U.S. senator.
Summer Lorensen had a sadder ending, Frank remembers. They found her body a few days later in a ditch off the road on Mount Laguna. She ended up a victim of the Green River Killer, who picked up prostitutes, raped and killed them, then stuffed their mouths with rocks.
The police didn’t catch him for years.
Not surprising. Back then, the cops had a phrase for the murders of prostitutes and junkies: “No humans involved.”
But Frank felt bad, thinking about that sweet girl lying off a road with rocks in her mouth.
But then he forgot about it.
He was busy.
The Strip Club Wars were about to break out.
49
Eddie Monaco looked like Huckleberry Finn.
That is, if Huck were fifty years old and had just gotten laid. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, Eddie had this boyish, innocent look about him, and he could always make people laugh.
Nothing seemed to bother Eddie, ever. Life was a party, full of booze, broads, and buddies. And he was no Donnie Garth: Eddie was a legitimate tough guy who had done stints for extortion and counterfeiting. With a sheet, Eddie couldn’t get a liquor license, of course, so he had a front guy who technically owned the Pinto Club. But everyone knew that the club didn’t belong to Patrick Walsh. The Pinto was Eddie Monaco’s.
The strip club sat on Kettner Boulevard, in what had been Little Italy, just a few blocks away from Lindbergh Field. Frank and Mike were running limos out of the airport, and Mike made sure that every businessman who came into San Diego got the word about the Pinto Club.