Intellectually, Dave was neither overly bright nor overly dumb; he was average. And he wasn't much of a salesman; he was too honest and forthright, speaking with the sort of slow Southern drawl that couldn't convince anybody to do something they didn't want to do in the first place.
Like most kids from Burtonsville, he didn't grow up with a burning desire to be rich—that would come later—but what he did grow up with was a clear understanding that the world was filled with few chiefs and many Indians and that he was an Indian, and there was nothing wrong with that.
Normally, a six-foot-two-inch country bumpkin like Dave Beall would never go to college; instead, he would take a job at the local garage, doing oil changes and tune-ups, and then pass his weekends trying to get into the skintight jeans of the local Mary Joe Something-or-other. But as luck would have it, Dave was blessed with two wonderful things—speed and strength—which together earned him a full ride to the University of Maryland on a wrestling scholarship.
Along the way, he met a beautiful blond Jewess named Laurie Elovitch, who was half his size and his complete opposite. Laurie was from Long Island, and she came from a very wealthy and politically connected family, so after she and Dave graduated, they moved up to Long Island to be near them. It was understood that a guy like Dave—whom you would normally find sitting on a bale of hay, wearing denim overalls and no shirt—would be a fish out of water in cutthroat Long Island. Everyone assumed that Laurie's father, Larry, would help Dave find his way, that he would use his political connections to get Dave a decent job (perhaps in the parks department or in sanitation).
But again, fate would intervene in the life of Dave Beall—when, in November of 1988, Laurie stumbled upon a help-wanted ad in the New York Timesand Dave became one of the first young Americans to answer the Stratton call-to-arms. Like many young bucks who came after him, he drove to his interview in a piece-a-shit car, wearing a piece-a-shit suit, which, in his case, was so tattered that his future mother-in-law had to use masking tape to stop it from coming apart at the seams.
Nevertheless, he passed the mirror test without incident and then went through the training program and learned how to sell— or, in Stratton terms, he learned to become a killer. Twice a day, as I stood before the boardroom and did my thing, he also came to believe that greed was good, that clients should either buy or die, and that a life of wealth and ostentation was the only true path to happiness.
And— voilà!—six months later, Dave Beall was driving a convertible Porsche, dressing in $2,000 suits, and speaking with the unbridled cocksureness of a world-class stockbroker.
However, it was through his marriage to Laurie that his fate would ultimately be sealed; Laurie would strike up the closest of friendships with the Duchess—thereby thrusting Dave and I into a very unlikely one. We were an odd couple, for sure, yet, as my drug addiction spiraled out of control, Dave became the perfect companion for me. After all, he never had much to say in the first place, and now I was too stoned most of the time to understand him anyway. So we watched movies together, the same ones over and over again—James Bond, mostly, and original episodes of Star Trek—while we holed up in my basement, with the shades drawn and the lights dimmed, and I consumed enough drugs to knock out a family of grizzly bears.
Of course, Dave loved his drugs too, but not nearly as much. (Who did, save Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones?) Either way, he was always sober enough to keep an eye on me, which was the Duchess's order. Her own patience had already run out, so she put Dave in charge of making sure I didn't kill myself before she figured out a way to get me into rehab.
Eventually, she did, but not before I didtry to kill myself.
And as I had stood in Dave's kitchen two years ago, distraught and desperate, chewing on a hundred tablets of morphine, he wrestled me to the ground and stuck his fingers in my mouth and scooped the pills out. Then he called an ambulance and saved my life.
Four weeks later, when I emerged from rehab and arrived in Southampton with my marriage in tatters, it was Dave and Laurie who came out to the beach and did what they could to help us pick up the pieces. While I was well aware that that was something only the Duchess and I could do, it was a gesture I would never forget.
Yet even more telling was how Dave and Laurie acted after my indictment: While most of my friends ran for cover, Dave stood by me, and while most of the Duchess's friends jumped on the dump-your-husbandbandwagon, Laurie tried to convince her to stay.
It was for all those reasons that, as I now sat with Dave in Caracalla restaurant, I felt like the world's biggest louse. I wore dark-blue Levi's, which concealed OCD's devilish little Nagra, and beneath my black cotton sweater was OCD's ultrasensitive microphone, which was rising up my sternum and coming to rest just to the right of my breaking heart.
Although it would be just the two of us this evening, we were sitting at a table for four, set for four, with a starchy-white tablecloth, bone-white china, and gleaming silverware. Dave was sitting just to my left, less than two feet away—so close, I thought, that OCD's microphone would pick up the sound of his breathing. He wore a navy sport jacket over a white T-shirt—typical dress for Dave Beall—and on his large, handsome face he wore the most innocent of expressions: a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.
After a few minutes of small talk, he handed me a stack of papers. “You mind taking a look at these?” he asked. “I'm thinking about going into the currency-trading business. People are making a fortune in it.”
“Sure,” I replied—and Jesus Christ!I thought. How terribly simple this is going to be! This so-called currency-trading business was the latest scam floating around, and I had no doubt that I could get Dave to incriminate himself in under a minute. Still, this had nothing to do with what OCD and the Bastard were interested in; rather, they wanted to know about the brokerage firm Dave had worked for after Stratton closed. Whatever the case, it would be just as easy to get Dave to spill the beans about that.
So I spent a few moments pretending to look at his papers, which had words like yenand deutsche markplastered on them as I snuck peeks around the restaurant out of the corner of my eye. Caracalla was a small place, with maybe fifteen or twenty tables. At eight p.m. on a Wednesday, only a few of them were occupied. It was mostly middle-aged couples, none of whom had any idea of the utter deceit that was transpiring just a few yards away. OCD and the Mormon were waiting for me in the parking lot of a local movie theater, so it was just Dave and me… . the man who'd saved my life… the only friend who'd stood by me.…Our children were friends… our wives were friends… we were friends!… How could I do this?
I couldn't.
Without even thinking, I put down the papers, excused myself from the table, and headed for the bathroom. On the way, I stopped at a waiters’ station and snatched a pen. Inside the bathroom, concealed by a stall, I grabbed a paper towel out of a dispenser, leaned it on the wall, and in big block letters I wrote: DON'T INCRIMINATE YOURSELF! I'M WIRED!
I looked at the note for a second, my heart beating out of my chest. If OCD and the Bastard found out about this, I would be dead meat. They would break my cooperation right on the spot, and I'd be sentenced without a 5K letter. Thirty fucking years!I thought. I did the calculations: I would be sixty-six years old! I took a deep breath and tried to steel myself. There was no way OCD could ever find out. I was certain of it.