Insane City (29 page)

boss’s daughter.

“Meghan,” said Castronovo. “What are you doing out here, this hour?”

“That’s what I want to ask you,” said Meghan. “What are you doing?”

“This doesn’t concern you,” said Brewer.

“Don’t tell me what concerns me. I want to know where you’re taking these people.”

“Listen, Meghan,” said Brewer, “we’re just carrying out your father’s wishes here. These people

were staying in Seth’s room and they weren’t supposed to be there, no legal right. So your father asked us

to . . . to relocate them.”

“Does Seth know you
relocated
them from his room?”

“It’s not his decision,” said Brewer. “Your father’s paying for the room.”

“So that means it’s OK for you to just yank them out of there in the middle of the night? A woman

with two kids? With a baby?”

“They’re going to be fine,” said Castronovo. “Nobody’s going to hurt them.”

“They don’t look fine to me,” said Meghan. “They look terrified.”

Brewer stepped closer to Meghan, looming over her, putting his large frame between her and the

Haitians. A big-man intimidation move.

“Meghan,” he said. “Your father’s not going to like this, you interfering with us. Why don’t you just

go back to your room and chill out, OK?”

“You mean just go smoke a joint? Get stoned?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Meghan stepped around Brewer, went to Laurette, who was watching her uncertainly. She put her

hand on Laurette’s shoulder. She could feel the bones through her thin, worn blouse.

“Are you OK?” Meghan said.

Laurette didn’t answer.

“They don’t speak English,” said Castronovo.

“So you haven’t explained what’s happening to them?”

Castronovo shrugged.

“Where are you taking them? Are you taking them to the police?”

“No,” said Castronovo. “We’re taking them to Delray B—” He stopped, seeing Brewer shake his

head.

“They’ll be fine,” said Brewer. “We’re just getting them out of this hotel, where they’re not guests

and where they have no legal right to be, OK? We’re doing this at your father’s request because he

doesn’t want their presence here to interfere with your sister’s wedding. You don’t want these people to

ruin your sister’s wedding, do you?”

“Right,” said Meghan. “God forbid anything should interfere with Tina’s wedding.”

“OK, so if you don’t mind, we’re going to—”

“ I
do
mind,” said Meghan. “These aren’t animals you take to the shelter and dump. These are

people
.”

“They’re illegals.”

Meghan snorted. “And of course you care
deeply
about the law. Like when you shot the Jet Ski from

the beach. No law against
that
, right?”

Brewer said nothing.

“Listen,” said Meghan. “Just leave this woman and her kids with me, OK? I’ll get them a room. I’ll

pay for it with my money.”

Brewer shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “We do what your father tells us to do.”

“What if my father told you to kill them? Would you do that?”

“Meghan, come on. We’re just doing our job here.”

“I’ll call my father.”

Brewer smirked. “Go ahead, call him.”

Meghan reddened. She knew what would happen if she called Mike. He’d tell her to go to bed and

stay out of this. She felt helpless and foolish, resorting to a child’s threat.
I’ll tell my daddy on you.

“Let’s go,” Brewer said to Castronovo. “Good night, Meghan.”

They turned away from her and resumed walking toward the parking lot, herding Laurette, with the

baby, and Stephane. The Haitians went docilely. Meghan stayed where she was. Laurette turned and

looked back at her, their eyes meeting for a moment. Then Brewer said something, and Laurette turned her

head forward again.

When they were almost out of sight, Meghan started following. She reached the edge of the parking

lot in time to see Brewer and Castronovo putting the Haitians into the backseat of a black Lincoln

Navigator. The men got into the front seat, Castronovo driving. He started the Navigator and backed out of

the space. Meghan went a few steps closer, next to one of the palms that lined the edge of the lot. The

Navigator started forward. As they went past Meghan, Brewer, in the front passenger seat, glanced at her,

shook his head and looked away.

Laurette, in the backseat, met her eyes again.

This time it was Meghan who looked away.

38

Wendell and Marty had finished the dong bo pork. They both agreed it was delicious, totally

worth the effort involved in persuading Mr. Woo to sell the newly named Majestic Transglobal Rooster.

They were no longer hungry. They were content now to lie on their backs in the sand and watch the

moon’s leisurely journey across the sky.

They had been utterly silent for more than half an hour when Corliss said, “We’re high, aren’t we?”

Marty said, “I do believe we are.”

“But not from drinking wine.”

“No. I think we’re baked.”

“Baked?”

“We’re on the choongs.”

“On the
what
?”

“Choongs. We’re stoned. High on pot. Or as the kids today call it, with their crazy slang lingo,

marijuana
.”

“But we didn’t smoke marijuana.”

“Correct.”

“So how did we get on the choongles?”

“Not the choongles. Just the
choongs
.”

“The choongs. How did we get on them?”

“I think it was when we ate dessert.”

“You can get high from dessert?”

“You can if it’s brownies and somebody puts pot in them.”

“Somebody put pot in the brownies?”

“I think maybe somebody did.”

“Who would have done that?”

“I dunno. Maybe Seth, as a joke. Maybe Meghan. She likes pot. But whoever it was, pretty soon after

we ate the brownies was when I started to feel the buzz.”

Wendell thought for a while, then said, “I had three of those brownies.”

“Whoa. Really? Then you are seriously baked, sir, because that was some strong weed. I only had

one and I’m still buzzed. Or, as the kids say today, on the choongles.”

“That would explain how come Greta ate the whole pizza despite the carbs.”

“It would. Also why you bought two restaurants.”

They both burst out laughing, thinking about the Transglobal restaurant empire.

“Seriously,” said Marty, when they’d settled back down, “are you starting to feel buyer’s remorse? I

mean, you’re Wendell Fucking Corliss.”

“I am indeed. I am Wendell Fucking Corliss.”

“So when you wake up tomorrow and you are no longer high and you still have two restaurants, are

you going to feel like you, Wendell Fucking Corliss, made a stupid mistake?”

Wendell pondered it. “I don’t care,” he said.

“Seriously? It’s a lot of money.”

Wendell made a farting noise with his mouth.

“Come again?” said Marty.

“Do you know how much money I spent tonight on restaurants?”

“Including the helicopter?”

“Sure, include the helicopter.”

“A million dollars?”

“No. It was about seven hundred and twenty thousand. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it

was a million. Let’s say I spent a million dollars tonight so we could have some dong bo pork and a

pepperoni pizza.”

“Which you did not get any of.”

“Which I did not get any of. Now, let’s say I do that again tomorrow night.”

“Buy two restaurants?”

“For a million dollars.”

“OK.”

“And then let’s say I do it the next night, and the next, and the next. And I keep doing it.”

“OK.”

“Do you know how long it would take me to run out of money? Take a guess.”

“OK, spending a million a night.” Marty frowned, trying to do some mental calculations, which he

was not good at even when he was not baked. “I dunno,” he said, “five years?”

“Longer.”

“Ten years.”

“Longer.”

“
Twenty
years?”

“The answer,” said Wendell, “is just about a hundred years.”

Marty sat up. “Are you shitting me?”

“I am not shitting you. I am constipating you.”

“You’re what?”

“Shouldn’t that be the opposite of shitting somebody? Constipating them?”

“I guess it should.”

“My point is, the money is nothing. It has no material effect whatsoever on my life. It does not matter.

What matters is, this was the most fun I’ve had in as long as I can remember. And you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because it was
ridiculous
. There was no logical upside to it. Which is
extremely
uncharacteristic

of me. The one principle I’ve lived my life by is: Don’t do anything ridiculous. Always pursue the upside,

always avoid the downside. Take risks, but always
calculated
risks. Everything I have ever done has

been calculated. When I was at Harvard, you know what I did?”

“What?”

“I studied! I studied
all the time
so I could get better grades than everybody else, so I could get into

Harvard Business School and get better grades than everybody there and get my MBA and go out and

make more money than everybody else. You know what I did not do at Harvard?”

“What?”

“I never got high. Not once. This was in the early seventies.
Everybody
got high then. There were

people in my dorm who were never
not
high, as far as I could tell. I walked by their rooms, smelled the

pot, heard them playing the same Van Morrison album over and over and over again, and I thought they

were idiots. It wasn’t a moral thing. It was a rational calculation. Drugs diminish your mental capacity

and distort your sense of reality, and when your mental capacity is diminished, you make foolish

decisions.”

“Like buy a restaurant just to get a pizza delivered.”

“Exactly. So I never did anything like that. I was extremely disciplined and focused all through

college and graduate school. Then I went out and excelled at rational risk taking, and I became very

wealthy and influential. I became Wendell Fucking Corliss. A complete prick.”

“Oh come on. Not a
complete
prick.”

“Yes! Complete! Ask anyone who has ever negotiated with me. ‘What a prick,’ they’ll say. And

they’ll be right! I
am
a prick. I am
proud
of my prickitude. I can out-prick
anybody
in a business situation.

This is the essence of being Wendell Fucking Corliss.”

“Yeah, but that’s a pretty good thing to be, right? You have a mansion and a jet and a helicopter and

probably a giant boat.”

“Actually, I have several of each of those things.”

“Right. And you can go anywhere you want in the world and do whatever you want.”

“True, I
can
do whatever I want. But in the course of becoming, by discipline and focus and careful

calculation, Wendell Fucking Corliss, I have somehow become very limited in my ability to imagine

things that I might enjoy doing because I automatically rule out anything that’s irrational or might be

viewed as ridiculous. So I end up doing basically the same things that all extremely wealthy people do,

and I do them with other extremely wealthy people. I have come to simply assume that only extremely

wealthy people are worthy of socializing with me. And you know what I have found?”

“What?”

“I have found that extremely wealthy people can be fantastically boring. Not all, but many. Because

it turns out that, in most cases, the only thing they’re really good at is getting rich. I’ve been bored to death

in some of the most fabulous places on the planet. And yet these are the people I associate with as a

matter of policy. May I be frank with you?”

“Please.”

“I was standing outside this hotel with the Clarks when you and your friends arrived. Do you

remember?”

“Dimly.”

“Unless I’m mistaken, all you were wearing at that time was a shirt. Except you were wearing it as

pants, with your legs in the sleeves.”

“Oh yeah. That was Steve’s shirt. My balls kept falling out the neckhole.”

“That they did. Do you want to know what my initial impression of you was?”

“I’m guessing not positive.”

“Correct. I thought you were an idiot, a clown. I was appalled that I, Wendell Fucking Corliss,

would be attending the same social event as a repulsive buffoon such as yourself. No offense intended.”

“None taken.”

“And I was also appalled when I realized that you were going to be at the rehearsal dinner.”

“I totally understand.”