“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.”
“Why do I even have to meet her? I trust you to look out for me. Just tell her that if something should happen to you—God forbid—she should take instructions from me. Besides, I wouldn’t mind roaming the streets of London a bit. Maybe I’ll go down to Savile Row, get a few new custom-made suits or something. Or maybe I’ll even go down to King’s Cross and check out some of the sights there!” He winked at me.
King’s Cross was London’s infamous red-light district, where for twenty British pounds you could get a blow job from a toothless hooker with one foot in the grave and a raging case of herpes. “Funny, Danny, very funny. Just remember that you don’t have Saurel here to bail you out. Why don’t you let me hire you a bodyguard to take you around?” It was a phenomenal idea, and I was dead serious about it.
But Danny waved me off as if I had a screw loose or something. “Stop with the overprotective crap,” he exclaimed. “I’ll be juuuustfine. Don’t you worry about your friend Danny! He’s like a cat—with nine lives!”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. But what could I do? He was a grown man, wasn’t he? Well, yes and no. But that was besides the point. I needed to be thinking about Aunt Patricia right now. In a couple of hours I would be seeing her. She always had a calming influence over me. And a little bit of calming would go a long way.
“So, love,” said Aunt Patricia, strolling arm in arm with me along a narrow tree-lined path in London’s Hyde Park, “when shall we get started on this wonderful adventure of ours?”
I smiled warmly at Patricia, then took a deep breath and relished the cool British air, which at this particular moment was thicker than a bowl of split-pea soup. To my eyes, Hyde Park was very much like New York City’s Central Park, insofar as it being a tiny slice of heaven encircled by a burgeoning metropolis. I felt right at home here. Even with the fog, by ten a.m. the sun was high enough in the sky to bring the entire landscape into high relief—turning five hundred acres of lush fields and towering trees and well-trimmed bushes and immaculately groomed horse trails into a vision so picturesque it was worthy of a postcard. The park was favored with just the appropriate number of sinuous concrete walking paths, which were all freshly paved and hadn’t a speck of litter on them. Patricia and I were walking on one of them at this very moment.