In essence, the joke would be on Coleman, and my realbusiness would go on undisturbed. With that in mind, I said to the Chef, “So let's do the stuff you talked about before. What do I gotta do to get things started?”
“You don't gotta do nothing,” replied the Jersey Chef, using a double negative to reinforce how little I had to do. “I got the whole thing set up for you—trustees, nominees, and I can be an adviser to the trust. That'll put another buffer between you and the money. And God forbid the boys downtown start snooping around, then I resign as adviser and the money disappears into Liechtenstein and, youknow… Schhhwiitttt!”—and he clapped his hands and slung his right arm out toward southern Romania— “we'd be good to go then.”
I smiled at the Chef and nodded warmly. He was a man of many talents, the Chef, although his most remarkable was his ability to use an intricate combination of hand gestures and blowing sounds to get his point across. And my favorite was Schhhwiitttt,which he elicited by curling his tongue into a reverse C and then forcing out a gust of air. And as he made the Schhhwiittttsound he would clap his hands, sending his right arm flying out into the distance. The Chef used this sound when he was tying up loose ends of a cover story, as if to imply, “Yeah, and with that last phony document we've created, you know… Schhhwiitttt!…there's no way the feds will ever be able to figure things out!”
In retrospect, as I now sat on the Gulfstream, I knew I'd made a colossal blunder in not using one of the Chef's many fabulous recipes to satiate my Swiss banking appetite. But his relationship with the Blue-eyed Devil had spooked me. It was common knowledge that they were doing business in Switzerland, and, as hot as I was, the Blue-eyed Devil was that much hotter, and they stillhadn't been able to catch him! So how did that bode for myplight? Rather well, I figured. Like the Devil, I was a careful man, always going to great lengths to cover my tracks.
I held on to that happy thought as I reached into my medicine bag and broke out the Valium, downing three blues. It was a lion's dose, I knew, but given the amount of coke I'd snorted, it was just what I needed to get me safely to Czechoslovakia.
Rather than going through the main terminal at Prague's Ruzyně Airport, the Gulfstream was directed to a small private terminal that, up until a short time ago, had been reserved for communist dignitaries. That suited me just fine, given my current state of intoxication, but as they led us to a room that looked like the inner sanctum of the Kremlin, there was something bothering me, something I couldn't quite place my finger on. Danny was standing beside me, looking disturbed. “You smell something?” I asked, scrunching up my nose.
Danny scrunched up his own nose and took two deep snorts. “Yeah,” he replied. “What the fuck is that? It smells like… I don't know, but I don't like it.” He took two more snorts.
I turned to Wigwam. “You smell something?” I whispered.
Wigwam darted his eyes around the room like a wild animal. “It's poison gas,” he said nervously. “I… I gotta get my passport back. I… please… I'm gonna lose it.” He put his index finger to his mouth and began biting his nail.
The worries, I thought. I leaned over to the Chef. “You smell something, Chef?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it's fucking body odor!” he declared. “These commie bastards don't use deodorant!” He scratched his chin, taking a moment to consider. “Or maybe they can't find it in stores. You'd be surprised how commies forgo the normal pleasantries.”
Just then a smelly middle-aged Czech, dressed in blue-gray police garb, walked over. He eyed us suspiciously for a moment, then motioned to a series of high-backed leather armchairs that had been arranged around an enormous mahogany conference table. Not too shabby, I thought. We sat down, and a uniformed waiter appeared from out of nowhere, carrying a tray of dessert aperitifs, which he placed before us without saying a word.
I looked up at the waiter, who was sweating bullets. “Excuse me,” I said humbly. “Why is it so hot in here?”
He flashed me the look of the disinterested and the lobotomized and then walked away without saying a word. As I reached for my glass, Wigwam warned, “Don't drink the wine!” He began looking around nervously. “That's what they want.”He looked back at me, with wild eyes. “You understand?”
Now the Chef leaned over. “I don't think that guy speaks English,” he whispered, “but when I was getting off the plane the captain told me they're having their worst heat wave in a hundred years. I think today was the hottest day in the country's history.”
Inside the taxi I breathed through my mouth.
“You ever smell anything so vile?” I asked Danny.
Danny shook his head gravely. “Never. The guy needs to be dipped in sulfuric acid.” The Chef nodded in agreement, then added more words of wisdom. “Don't worry,” he said confidently. “We're staying in the nicest hotel in the country. I'm sure there'll be air-conditioning there. You can count on it.”
I shrugged, not entirely believing him. “Is Prague the largest city in Czechoslovakia?” I asked the smelly driver.
Without warning, the driver expelled a giant gob of spit onto his own dashboard. “Slavs are dogs,” he snarled. “They are no longer part of country. We are Czech Republic: Jewelof East.” He rolled his neck, as if trying to regain his composure.
I nodded nervously and looked out the window, trying to take in the beauty of the Jewel of the East, but there were no streetlights and I couldn't see anything. Nevertheless, I was still hopeful; after all, our destination was the fabulous Hotel Ambassador, the only four-star hotel in Prague. And thank God for that! I thought. This leg of our journey seemed to be cursed. A bit of pampering would be just what the doctor ordered!
Alas, what the Chef hadn't been aware of was that the Hotel Ambassador had just been rated one of the worst four-star hotels in Europe. Just whyI found out the moment we stepped into the lobby and it was two hundred degrees and a thousand percent humidity. In fact, it was so stifling I almost passed out.
The space was vast and grim-looking, like a Cold War-era bomb shelter. There were only three couches in sight, which were a disturbing shade of dog-shit brown.
At the front desk, I smiled at the Czech check-in girl, a pale young blonde with wide shoulders, enormous Czech boobs, a white blouse, and a nametag reading Lara 2*“Why is there no air-conditioning?” I asked the lovely Lara.
Lara smiled sadly, exposing some crooked Czech choppers. “We have problem with air conditioner,” Lara replied, in heavily accented English. “It is not at work now.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Danny sag, but then the Chef offered more words of wisdom. “We'll be fine here,” he said, nodding a single time. “I've seen much, much worse.”
I recoiled in disbelief. “Really, Chef? Where?”
He smiled knowingly. “You forget I'm from New Jersey.”
Such logic! I thought. The Chef was a true warrior!
Emboldened by his words, I threw down my Am Ex card, smiled at Lara, and said to myself, “How bad could it possibly be? When you're as tired and post-Luded as I am, the tendency is just to pass out from sheer exhaustion.”
Two hours later I was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, stark naked and contemplating suicide. My hotel room was hotter than the boiler room on the SS Titanic.The windows had been bolted shut and the radiator was on. Just why, no one in the hotel could seem to figure out. Nevertheless, there was heat coming from the radiator, nothing was coming from the air conditioner, and I would've paid a million bucks for someone to unleash a swarm of bumblebees to hover over me and flap their tiny wings.