It was early evening, and we were high above southern Poland, although I was a good deal higher than that. But I wasn't nearly as high as Danny, who was sitting across from me and had completely lost the power of speech. He was in the latter half of the drool phase, which is to say, he was at that point of his high where he could no longer get the words out without a river of saliva dripping down his chin.
“Iz iz guz zehnzamea!” he exclaimed, with a thick gush of saliva. Over the last two hours he'd consumed four Quaaludes, nearly a pint of Macallan's single-malt scotch, twenty milligrams of Valium, and a two-gram rock of Bolivian marching powder, which he'd Hoovered up his nostrils through a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill. Then, about ten seconds ago, he'd taken a hit from a thick joint of Northern California sinsemilla, which led me to believe that what he had been trying to say was: “This is good sinsemilla!”
As always, I found it literally mind-boggling how normal Danny looked. What with his short blond hair, average build, and boiling white teeth, he gave off a wonderfully WASPy whiff, the sort of whiff you would expect from a man who could trace his genealogy back to the Mayflower.He was dressed casually this evening, in a pair of tan cotton golf pants and matching short-sleeve polo shirt. Over his pale-blue eyes he wore a pair of conservative horn-rimmed glasses that made him look that much more refined, that much WASPier.
Yet, with all this WASPiness, Danny Porush was a purebred Jew who could trace his roots back to a tiny kibbutz near Tel Aviv. Nevertheless, like many a Jew before him, he tried to be mistaken for a blue-blooded WASP—hence, those wonderfully WASPy glasses, which had clear lenses in them.
Meanwhile, the interior of the cabin looked like a flying DEA seizure locker. Between Danny and me, on a mahogany foldout table, a brown leather Louis Vuitton shower bag was overflowing with a fabulous medley of dangerous recreational drugs—a half ounce of sinsemilla, sixty pharmaceutical Quaaludes, some bootleg uppers, some bootleg downers, a sandwich bag full of cocaine, a dozen hits of Ecstasy, and then the safe stuff, from the doctors: a vial of Xanax, a vial of morphine, some Valiums and Restorils and Somas and Vicodins, and some Ambiens and Ativans and Klonopins, as well as a half-consumed pack of Heineken and a mostly consumed bottle of Macallan's to wash things down. Pretty soon, though, all the nonprescription stuff would be gone, shoved up our collective assholes or buried deep beneath our scrotal sacs, as we negotiated our way through Czech Customs.
My trusted attorney, Wigwam, was sitting to Danny's right. He was also dressed casually, although, in his case, he also wore his perpetually glum expression and horrendous-looking toupee. It was mud brown in color, a poor match to his pale complexion, and had the consistency of desiccated straw. In fact, despite the Iron Curtain coming down four years earlier, it was still a safe bet that his horrific hairpiece would draw some second looks from the Czechs.
In any event, Wigwam was buzzed too, although, as our attorney, he was held to a higher standard. He understood that he was not to get sloppyuntil afterwe'd finished dealing with the Czechs. So he'd gone heavy on the coke and light on the Ludes. It was an inspired strategy that made perfect psychotropic sense; after all, taking a Quaalude was like drinking three bottles of grain alcohol on an empty stomach, while snorting cocaine was like consuming eight thousand cups of coffee intravenously. The former made you sleepy and sloppy, while the latter made you pumped up and paranoid. Insofar as business was concerned, it was more effective to be pumped up and paranoid than sleepy and sloppy. But, alas, Wigwam had accidentally snorted himself into a coke-induced paranoia.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Wigwam muttered. “This cabin reeks of skunk weed! Can't you put that shit out, Danny? I mean… we're… we're… we're”— spit it out, Wigwam-“we're gonna end up in Czech jail, for Chrissake!” He paused, wiping the beads of sweat that had formed on his pale, paranoid brow. He was actually good-looking, in a boyish sort of way. He was average height, with fine, even features, although he had a bit of a paunch going. “I'm gonna get disbarred,” he moaned. “I know it. Ughhhhhhh ….” It was a paranoid drug groan, and as soon as he'd finished groaning he put his toupee in his hands and shook his egg-shaped skull in despair.
The Chef was sitting to my left, and he was straight as an arrow. In fact, he'd never done a drug in his entire life—being that rare breed of man who could surround himself with world-class drug addicts and be entirely okay with it. The Chef was handsome, in a striking sort of way, like a trimmed-down version of Mr. Clean. He was completely bald on top, with a prominent forehead, a very square jaw, piercing brown eyes, an aquiline nose, and an infectious smile.
The Chef was a born-and-bred New Jerseyite, who could lay his Jersey accent on real thick, especially when the occasion called for it, as it did now. “Whaddaya, whaddaya?” the Chef said to Wigwam. “You godda gedda grip dare, Andy! If you're worried about the smell, then turn on them overhead air vents. The pressure is so low ow dare”— out there—“it'll clear the stench out in two seconds flat.”
Indeed. The Chef was absolutely right. “You should listen to the Chef,” I said to Wigwam. “He has uncanny reasoning skills in these situations.” I reached over and placed my left hand on Wigwam's shoulder and offered him a concerned smile. “On a separate note, I strongly advise you to take a couple of Xanax. You need to even yourself out a bit.”
He stared at me.
“You look like a train wreck,” I said. “Trust me, a couple a Xanax is just what the doctor ordered.” I turned to the Chef. “Isn't that right, Chef?”
“Indeed,” the Chef agreed.
Wigwam nodded nervously. “I guess I will,” he said, “but I need to do some housekeeping first.” He rose from his chair and began walking around the cabin and opening air vents. I looked at Danny, who was still smoking a joint. “In spite of our attorney being a cokehead,” I said, “he's got a valid point. Why don't you get rid of that joint just to be safe.”
Danny held up the half-inch-long joint and cocked his head to the side, as if inspecting it. He turned the corners of his mouth down and shrugged, then threw the joint into his mouth and swallowed it. “Eating possgets you fucked up!” he slurred proudly.
Just then Wigwam sat back down, his jaw still doing a coke addict's version of the Latin hustle. “Here,” I said, grabbing the appropriate vial from the LVbag. I unscrewed the cap and poured out a few pills. “The correct dosage is two blues…” I paused, thinking for a moment, “although at this altitude there's no way to be sure. The body might be more susceptible up here.” I shrugged.
Wigwam nodded nervously, still trapped in the deep trough of the worry phase. If I plunged into the story of how he'd lost his hair while still in high school and then got caught cheating on his SATs, there was a better than fifty-fifty chance he would make a mad dash for the emergency exit and jump. But I took pity on him and said nothing.
I turned to the Chef and smiled respectfully. “Getting back to business,” I said, in hushed tones, “I wasn't all that impressed with the people I met in Switzerland, so I'm not going forward with them. They didn't seem trustworthy enough.” I shrugged again. That was a lie, of course, and as much as I hated lying to the Chef, I had my reasons.
Back in the United States, an obsessed FBI agent named Gregory Coleman was hot on my trail, and I needed to set up false trails for him to follow, to divert his attention away from my realSwiss accounts. I would have the Chef assist me to that end—opening a Swiss account for me that I would never actually fund but whose existence I would leak to Agent Coleman. And when Coleman petitioned the Swiss government to open my account, I would fight him tooth and nail on it, as if I actually had something to hide. It would keep him occupied for a good two years, I figured, maybe even more. And when he finally did gethis way and the account was opened, he would find out that I had never actually funded it.