Still, both of us, it seemed, needed to figure out a way to reconcile a completely insane past with any possible future. Perhaps, I thought, we could do it together; perhaps, once we got past the language barrier, she could help me make sense of what had happened in my life, and I could help her make sense of hers. With that thought, I took a deep breath and went for broke:
“Can I kiss you?” I said softly.
To that, Miss Yulia Sukhanova, the first, last, and only Miss Soviet Union, smiled bashfully. Then she nodded.
CHAPTER 22
STAYING THE COURSE
Not that night, but the very next day.
And it was beautiful; in fact, not only was it beautiful but, thanks to some very savvy biochemists at the Pfizer drug company, I performed like a world-class stud.
Indeed, just before I picked up KGB at the Creature's Sag Harbor cottage, I swallowed fifty milligrams of Viagra on an empty stomach. In consequence, by the time we pulled into my driveway that afternoon, I had an erection that the DEA could have used to break down a crack-house door.
It's not like I was impotent or anything (I swear!), but, nonetheless, it had seemed like a prudent move. After all, to consume a blue bomber, as a Viagra was affectionately known (due to its purplish color and bombastic effect), was the equivalent of taking out a biochemical insurance policy against the most dreaded of all male complexes: performance anxiety.
I had been a biochemical stud, not just that afternoon but into that evening as well. What Pfizer doesn't advertise on the label (and what every man who's taken one knows) is that blue bombers have a way of lingering in your system for a while. So, eight hours later, while your erection might no longer be suitable as a battering ram, it's still stiff enough to hang a few pieces of dry-cleaning on.
Somewhere around the fourteenth hour, the last blue-bomber molecules have been metabolized to the point of worthlessness, turning you back into a mortal man again. It was for that very reason that, precisely fourteen hours later, I took another blue bomber, and then fourteen hours after that I took yet another.
KGB, I figured, could handle it. Yet, sometime late Wednesday afternoon, even shebegan to complain. She was limping toward my master bathroom, dressed in her Soviet birthday suit, which consisted of a commie-red ribbon in her hair and nothing else, and she was muttering, “Bleaha muha! Your thing don't go down! There is something wrong here! It crazy! It crazy,” and she slammed the bathroom door behind her, muttering a few more Russian expletives.
Meanwhile, I was lying in bed, faceup, dressed in my American birthday suit, which consisted of a federally issued electronic monitoring bracelet and a Viagra-induced erection that was stiffer than steel, and I was fairly beaming. After all, it's not every day that a five-foot-seven-inch Jew-boy from Queens gets to send the first, last, and only Miss Soviet Union limping to the bathroom with her loins on fire! And while there was no denying that the boys at Pfizer had a hand in that, it was very much besides the point.
The point was that I was falling in love again.
In fact, later that afternoon, when KGB told me that she had to head back to her apartment in Manhattan, I felt my heart sink. And when she called me a few hours later, saying that she missed me, my spirits soared. And then when she called again, two hours after that, just to say hello, I immediately called Monsoir and told him to pick her up at her apartment and bring her back to the Hamptons.
So it was that she arrived later that night, carrying a very large suitcase, which I gladly helped her unpack. And just like that we became inseparable. Over the next few days we did everything together: ate, drank, slept, shopped, played tennis, worked out, rode bikes, Rollerbladed, went Jet-Skiing—we even showered together!
And, of course, at every opportunity, we made love.
Each night we built a fire on the beach and made love on a white cotton blanket, beneath the stars. And, of course, with each upward thrust, I would sneak a peak toward the dunes, checking for the dreaded Igor, who, according to her, was merely her brother-in-law who had come to the States to keep an eye on her. And while her explanation had seemed a bit thin, I decided not to press the issue.
When the weekend arrived, no partyers appeared. The Creature had seen to that—spreading the word that 1496 Meadow Lane was closed for business. The following Monday morning, I dropped KGB off at her Midtown apartment to pack up more of her belongings, and then I headed down to 26 Federal Plaza to meet with the Bastard and OCD. Not surprisingly, I was back in the Bastard's good graces again, so the meeting went quickly.
The topic was the upcoming Gaito sting, and we came to a quick decision that I would try to set one last meeting with the Chef before James Loo came into town. The goal was simple: to get James Loo to accept cash. I would tell the Chef that I wanted James Loo to know that I was serious—and to know that James Loo was serious too. I would provide Loo with a small cash deposit, as a token of good faith: $50,000, I would suggest, which he could use to get things going.
At first I was skeptical of the plan, thinking that the Chef would smell a rat. But, on second thought, I knew he wouldn't. For some inexplicable reason, something had clicked off in his mind, something related to the irrational joy he got from getting around the law.
He was a complicated man, an otherwise law-abiding citizen who would never dream of breaking “the law” as heconsidered it— which is to say, all laws not having to do with securities trading, the movement of money, and its subsequent reporting to the IRS. If you were to ask the Chef for advice on how to rob a bank or how to kite checks, he would either report you to the authorities himself or, more likely, lose your number forever.
This, however, was different. We were talking about money that, in hismind, we had stolen fair and square—no violence had been committed, no guns were placed to people's heads, the victims were nameless and faceless, and, most important, if we hadn't done it ourselves, someone else would have done it just the same. In consequence, we were justified to hide our dirty money from those who meant to find it.
So, in retrospect, it didn't come as much of a shock to me when the Chef and I met two days later in my office, and he thought my idea of bringing “a token of good faith” to our meeting was a fabulous one.
He went about explaining his money-laundering scheme in the most intimate detail—even mentioning the names of James Loo's overseas relatives who would be assisting us in Asia. Then he named the banks and the shell corporations we would be using— finishing with the airtight cover story we would stick to if Coleman and his boys were to ever catch wind of this.
It was an inspired plan, which involved the purchase of real estate in half a dozen Far East countries and the maintenance of a full-time staff overseas, to operate a series of legitimate businesses-clothing manufacturers in Vietnam and Cambodia, and electronics manufacturers in Thailand and Indonesia, where labor was cheap and workmanship was prideful.
Yes, the plan was brilliant, all right, but it was also wildly complicated. In fact, it was so complicated that I found myself wondering if a jury would ever be able to understand it. So I grabbed a legal pad off the brass-and-glass coffee table, ripped off a sheet of paper, picked up a pen, and began drawing a diagram.
With my voice lowered conspiratorially, I said, “So let me get this straight: I'm gonna give James Loo fifty thousand dollars”—I drew a little box with James Loo's name inside it, as well as the amount: $50,000—“and then James will have one of his people smuggle the money overseas to his sister-in-law, Sheila Wong, *in Singapore”—I drew another box on the otherside of the pad, with Sheila's name inside it, and then drew a long straight line connecting the two boxes—”and then Sheila is gonna use that money to fund accounts in Hong Kong and the Chanel Islands and Gurnsey…” and before I was even finished talking about Sheila's role in our scheme, the Chef had grabbed the pen from me and begun drawing a diagram that fairly resembled the blueprints to a nuclear submarine. And as he narrated his plan, with a mixture of pride and relish, the Nagra rolled on, recording each of his words.