“Danny!” I sputtered loudly. “What the fuck are you doing, you deviant?”
Danny wriggled his right arm free and pushed the young hooker off his face. He lifted his head and tried his best to smile, but his face was nearly frozen. Apparently he had gotten his hands on some cocaine too. “Ize zgezzing zcrummed!” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“You’re getting what? I can’t understand a word you’re fucking saying.”
Danny took a deep breath, as if he were trying to muster up every last ounce of manly strength, and he snapped in a staccato beat: “I…get…ting…scru…ummed!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I muttered.
Saurel said, “Ah, I do believe the man has said that he is getting scrummed, as if he were a rugby player of some sort.” With that, Jean Jacques nodded sagely and said, “Rugby is a very popular sport in France. It appears that your friend is, indeed, being scrummed, but in a most unusual fashion, although one I entirely agree with. Go upstairs and call your wife, Jordan. I will take care of your friend. Let’s see if he is a true gentleman and will be kind enough to share the wealth.”
I nodded and then went about searching Danny’s room—finding and flushing twenty Quaaludes and three grams of coke down the toilet. Then I left him and Saurel to their own devices.
A few minutes later I found myself lying in bed, contemplating the insanity of my life, when all at once I got a desperate urge to call the Duchess. I looked at my watch: It was 9:30 p.m. I did the calculation—4:30 a.m., New York time. Could I call her that late? The Duchess loved her sleep. Before my brain could answer the question, I was already dialing the phone.
After a few rings came the voice of my wife: “Hello?”
Gingerly, apologetically: “Hi, honey, it’s me. I’m sorry I called so late, but I’m really missing you bad, and I just wanted to tell you how much I love you.”
Sweet as sugar: “Oh, I love you too, baby, but it’s not late. It’s the middle of the afternoon! You got the time change backward.”
“Really?” I said. “Hmmm…well, anyway, I’m missing you really bad. You have no idea.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet,” said the luscious Duchess. “Channy and I both wish you were home with us. When are you coming back, my love?”
“As soon as I can. I’m flying to London tomorrow, to see Aunt Patricia.”
“Really?” she said, slightly surprised. “Why are you going to see Aunt Patricia?”
All at once it occurred to me that I shouldn’t be talking about this on the phone—and then all at once it occurred to me that I was getting my wife’s favorite aunt involved in a money-laundering caper. So I pushed those troubling thoughts aside and said, “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I have other business in London, so I’m going to stop in on Aunt Patricia and take her out for dinner.”
“Ohhh,” answered a happy Duchess. “Well, send Aunt Patricia my regards, okay, sweetie?”
“I will, baby, I will.” I paused for a brief moment, then I said, “Honey?”
“What, sweetie?”
With a heavy heart: “I’m sorry for everything.”
“For what, honey? What are you sorry for?”
“For everything, Nae. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I flushed all my Ludes down the toilet, and I haven’t done one since the plane flight over.”
“ Really?How does your back feel?”
“Not too good, baby; it hurts really bad. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if there’s anything I cando. The last surgery made it even worse. Now it hurts all day long, and all night too. I don’t know—maybe all the pills are making it worse or something. I’m not really sure anymore. When I get back to the States, I’ll go see that doctor in Florida.”
“It’ll work out, my love. You’ll see. Do you know how much I love you?”
“Yes,” I said, lying. “I do. And I love you back twice as much. Just watch what a great husband I’m gonna be when I get home, okay?”
“You’re already great. Now go to sleep, baby, and come home safe to me as soon as you can, okay?”
“I will, Nae. I love you tons.” I hung up the phone, lay down on the bed, and began pushing in the back of my left leg with my thumb, trying to find the spot where the pain was coming from. But I couldn’t find it. It was coming from nowhere, and everywhere. And it seemed to be moving. I took a deep breath and tried to relax myself, to will away the pain.
Without even knowing it, I found myself saying that same silent prayer—that a bolt of lightning would come down from out of a clear blue sky and electrocute my wife’s dog. Then, with my left leg still on fire, the jet lag finally got the best of me and I fell asleep.
CHAPTER 15
THE CONFESSOR
Heathrow Airport! London! It was one of my favorite cities in the world, save the weather, the food, and the service—the former of which was the worst in Europe, the middle of which was the worst in Europe, and the latter of which was the worst in Europe too. Nevertheless, you still had to love the Brits, or, if not that, at least respect them. After all, it’s not every day that a country the size of Ohio, with a natural-resource base of a few billion pounds of dirty coal, can dominate an entire planet for more than two centuries.
And if that wasn’t enough, then you had to be awed by the uncanny ability of a few select Brits to perpetuate the longest-running con game in the history of all mankind, namely—royalty! It was the most fabulous scam ever, and the British royals had done it just right. It was utterly mind-boggling how thirty million working-class people could come to worship a handful of incredibly average people and follow their every move with awe and wonder. Even more mind-boggling—the thirty million were actually silly enough to run around the world calling themselves “loyal subjects” and bragging about how they couldn’t imagine that Queen Elizabeth actually wiped her own ass after taking a dump!
But in reality none of this mattered. The simple fact was that Aunt Patricia had been spawned from the very marrow of the glorious British Isles. And, to me, she was Great Britain’s most valuable natural resource.
I would be seeing her soon, right after I cleared British Customs.
As the wheels of the six-seat Lear 55 touched down at Heathrow, I said to Danny, in a voice loud enough to cut through the two Pratt & Whitney jet engines, “I’m a superstitious man, Danny, so I’m gonna end this flight with the same words I started it with: You’re a real demented fuck!”
Danny shrugged and said, “From you, I’ll take that as a compliment. You’re not still mad at me for keeping a few Ludes off to the side, are you?”
I shook my head no. “I expect that sort of shit from you. Besides, you have this wonderful effect of reminding me how truly normal I am. I can’t thank you enough for that.”
Danny smiled and turned his palms up. “Heyyyy—what are friends for?”
I smiled a dead smile back at him. “That aside, I’m assuming you don’t have any more drugs on you, right? I’d like to pass through Customs uneventfully this time.”
“No, I’m clean—you flushed everything down the toilet.” He lifted his right hand up in the scout’s honor mode. Then he added, “I just hope you know what you’re doing with all this Nancy Reagan crap.”
“I do,” I replied confidently, but deep down I wasn’t so sure. I had to admit that I was slightly disappointed that Danny hadn’t squirreled away a few more Ludes. My left leg was still killing me, and while my mind was dead set on staying sober, the mere thought of being able to numb out the pain with even one Quaalude— just one!—was a fabulous prospect. It had been more than two days since my last Quaalude, and I could only imagine how high I’d get.
I took a deep breath and pushed the thought of Quaaludes back down below the surface. “Just remember your promise,” I snapped. “No hookers while we’re in England. You gotta be on your best behavior in front of my wife’s aunt. She’s a sharp lady and she’ll see right through your bullshit.”