Insane City Read online

  Seth turned to Agent Peppers. “Seriously?” he said.

  Peppers frowned, his eyes on Sienna, his mind on the phone call he received the day before from somebody very high up the totem pole that he was very near the bottom of—somebody who could make Peppers’s last seventeen months before retirement extremely unpleasant.

  “Come on,” Peppers said, pulling the whimpering Sienna away from the suitcase.

  “No way,” said Alvarez.

  “I said, come on,” said Peppers, walking away.

  “Jesus,” said Alvarez. He stared at Seth for a few seconds, Seth staring back, two guys meeting their testosterone quotas. Then Alvarez was gone, too.

  “I don’t see why they allow dogs in an airport,” said Rose. “It’s unsanitary.”

  “I have to pee,” said Sid.

  “No you don’t,” said Rose.

  Seth sighed, picked up the suitcases and resumed leading the long, slow march to the car.

  11

  Cyndi was standing outside the Escalade, phone in hand. She was smiling.

  “I got hold of Duane,” she said.

  “And?” said Seth.

  “He found your suitcase.”

  “Yes!” said Seth. He put down his parents’ suitcases and hugged her, their bodies pressing together for two seconds.

  “Where is it?” said Seth.

  “Well, that’s the thing,” said Cyndi.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “OK, what happened is, Duane got to the Clevelander and they had the suitcase and he got it, but then he couldn’t bring it back to the Ritz because he had to go to an emergency at work.”

  “I thought his job was walking around with a snake.”

  “That’s his main job. But he works part-time at Primate Encounter.”

  “Primate what?”

  “Encounter. It’s this tourist attraction, they have, like, monkeys and gorillas, but also some snakes. Duane fills in sometimes for the main snake guy, who’s sick today, so Duane had to go down there right away because one of the snakes, I think he said anaconda, swallowed this lady’s backpack. She set it on the wall so she could take a picture and it fell into the . . .”

  “But he definitely has my suitcase? At Primate Adventure?”

  “Encounter. Right. He has it in his brother’s truck, which he drove out there.”

  “So he’s going to bring it to the Ritz?”

  “Well, here’s the thing. He’s going to try to make the snake throw up the backpack because the lady’s freaking out because all her stuff is in there, her passport and money and credit cards, plus Duane says it’s not really that good for the snake, so he’s gonna try to get it to eat a rat that has some medicine inside it that will make it throw up. I don’t mean the rat will throw up. I mean the medicine will make the snake throw up. But Duane has to figure out how to get the rat to eat the . . .”

  “OK, so when he’s done with the snake, can he bring the suitcase over here?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. He was gonna bring it here, but he got another call, from the Miccosukee casino, which is also having a snake emergency. You know those pythons? In the Everglades? There’s like a million of them out there, breeding like crazy, and one of them got into the casino and it . . .”

  “So my suitcase is at the casino?”

  “No, he’s gonna leave it at Primate Encounter because he says it’ll be crazy at the casino, and after he catches the snake he might have to take it somewhere else.”

  “So where is Primate Encounter?”

  “It’s in the Redlands.”

  “Is that close to here?”

  “No, it’s way down in South Dade. It’s, like, maybe an hour.”

  “Damn. I’ll have to go get it after I take everybody back to the hotel. Could you tell me how to get there?”

  “Sure. I can ride down there with you, if you want.”

  “That’d be great.”

  Sid and Rose had finally tottered all the way to the Escalade.

  “It’s hot here,” said Rose. “How do people live here, in this heat?”

  “What?” said Sid.

  “I said, it’s hot,” said Rose.

  “I know it’s hot. I’m standing right here. You think I can’t feel how hot it is?”

  “Would you like me to get you some water?” said Cyndi.

  “Who’re you?” said Rose.

  “I’m Cyndi,” said Cyndi, extending her hand.

  Rose ignored it, turned to Seth. “Who is she?”

  “She’s a friend,” said Seth. “She’s helping out with the wedding.”

  “Helping out doing what?” said Rose, eyeballing Cyndi’s dress.

  “Is there water?” said Sid.

  “I can get you some,” said Cyndi.

  “He doesn’t need water,” said Rose. “He had some before.”

  “What about my medicine?” said Sid.

  “When we get to the hotel you’ll get your medicine.”

  “Mom,” said Seth, “if he needs his medicine . . .”

  “I gave him his heart medicine and his blood pressure,” said Rose. “He wants the brownies from the suitcase.”

  Seth’s head jerked around. “He wants the what?”

  “The brownies from your Aunt Sarah in California. She sends them to your father. For his gout. He likes them.”

  Seth lowered his voice: “Mom, do you know what’s in those brownies?”

  “Of course I know. It’s marijuana.”

  “Ohmigod, Mom,” said Seth, shooting a glance back toward the terminal entrance. “You brought marijuana? In your suitcase?”

  “It’s medical marijuana,” said Rose. “For his gout. Sarah told me it’s perfectly legal. She gets it from a place.”

  “In California it’s legal,” said Seth. “Here it’s not legal.”

  “Who is she?” said Sid, noticing Cyndi.

  “I’m Cyndi,” said Cyndi, extending her hand.

  Sid turned to Rose. “Is she the one he’s marrying?”

  “Of course not,” said Rose. “He’s marrying the other one. This one is helping with the wedding. He says.”

  “OK, Mom, Dad, let’s get in the car, OK?” said Seth.

  “I have to pee,” said Sid.

  “No you don’t,” said Rose.

  This was followed by several minutes of departure preparations supervised rigorously by Rose: getting Sid settled into the backseat; making sure that Seth had put the luggage in the back; fastening the seat belts; adjusting the seat belts because they were too tight; readjusting the seat belts because they were too loose; readjusting the seat belts because they were once again too tight; insisting that Seth go back and check to make absolutely sure that he had put the suitcases into the back; reminding Seth that he should not make any sudden starts or stops or drive like a maniac because he could give his father a heart attack. Finally Seth was given clearance by Rose to actually leave the airport. He started the Escalade.

  “. . . yes yes oh yes that’s right fuck me baby yes yes fuck me hard you fucking fucker fuck me hard!” moaned the porn-video actress, adding, “FUCK ME WITH THAT BIG COCK!!”

  “OK!” said Seth, stabbing frantically at the dashboard controls as he drove. “Maybe we can have some music! Cyndi, can you put some music on loud right now please?”

  “YES! YES! YES! I’M COMING, BABY! FUCK ME!!!!”

  “What is all that racket?” said Rose, leaning forward.

  “Nothing!” said Seth, hunching close to the video to block her view.

  Cyndi managed to get the audio going. That was the good news. The bad news was, the song currently playing was a tune by 50 Cent titled “I Smell Pussy.” Fortunately, the shouted rap lyrics, intermingled with the porn sound track, filled the Escalade with an incoherent cacophony of obscenity.

  “Who is that shouting?” said Sid.

  “Music, they call it,” said Rose.

  Finally, as they reached the expressway, the porn actors achieved a spe
ctacular fake climax and the video ended. Cyndi was able to stab the audio off just as the rap artist David Banner launched into “Play,” a romantic ballad that begins, “Cum girl, I’m tryna get your pussy wet.”

  “You call that music?” said Rose.

  “So!” said Cyndi brightly. “How was your flight?”

  “That’s not what I call music,” replied Rose.

  They rode in silence to Miami Beach, Seth pulling to the curb near the entrance to the Delano.

  “Is this the hotel?” said Rose.

  “No, Mom,” said Seth. “I’m just picking up Marty and Kevin and Steve. It’ll just be a minute.” She started to ask another question, but Seth was already out of the car, leaving Cyndi to her futile efforts at making small talk with his mother.

  Seth entered the Delano Hotel and walked through its desperately hip lobby, consisting of random weird spaces sparsely decorated with unattractive yet at the same time uncomfortable furniture, then through the pool area, then down to the beach. He spotted the Groom Posse immediately: Big Steve on his feet, looming nervously over the wretched, sprawling, sunburned, semi-comatose figures of Kevin and Marty. Kevin was wearing boxers and a T-shirt; Marty was wearing only Big Steve’s shirt as pants. Although the beach was filling with sunbathers, the Groom Posse was in the middle of an empty circle of sand ten yards in diameter, nobody wanting to get close.

  Big Steve saw Seth approaching. “Finally!” he said.

  “Jesus, Seth,” said Kevin, getting to his feet. “What took you so long?”

  “Oh, right,” said Seth. “My bad, failing to anticipate your need to be rescued after you left me, the groom, unconscious at the bar and went off and got robbed and all ended up fucking naked.”

  “Objection,” said Marty, struggling to rise. “We weren’t all naked. Just me. And Kevin had no pants.”

  “Jesus, Marty,” said Seth. “Will you please put away your balls?”

  “Oops,” said Marty, tucking himself back into the neckhole of Big Steve’s shirt.

  They made their way back through the Delano lobby. “Where’d you get this?” said Kevin as they approached the Escalade.

  “It belongs to the stripper’s boyfriend,” said Seth.

  “The stripper showed up?” said Kevin.

  “She did,” said Seth. “And she’s in my room with her boyfriend, who’s the size of a post office, and Marty’s going to get rid of them both or I’m going to kill Marty.”

  “Not a problem,” said Marty, dismissing the matter with a wave of the hand he was not using to keep his balls inside Big Steve’s shirt.

  “There’s another thing,” said Seth. “There’s these Haitians in my room.”

  “There’s what?” said Big Steve.

  “I’ll explain later,” said Seth. They had reached the car. Seth pasted on a smile as he opened the door and said, “Mom! Dad! Look who’s here!”

  “It’s an oven in here,” announced Rose. “Are you trying to kill us in this heat?”

  “It’s Marty, Kevin and Steve!” said Seth.

  Rose peered at the Groom Posse and said, “Were they in an accident?”

  “Sort of,” said Seth. “But they’re fine. Guys, you remember Cyndi from last night?”

  Cyndi waved from the front seat.

  “Cyndi from last night is still here?” said Kevin, brightening.

  “Yeah,” said Seth. “It’s complicated.”

  “He says she’s helping with the wedding,” said Rose. “He doesn’t say how.”

  “I can think of lots of ways Cyndi could help,” said Kevin.

  “Kevin’s married,” said Seth.

  “I can tell,” said Cyndi. “Hey, don’t forget you need to get diapers and formula.”

  “Damn, that’s right,” said Seth. “OK, we’ll stop on the way back.”

  “Diapers and formula?” said Big Steve.

  “Just get in,” said Seth.

  Kevin, Marty and Big Steve clambered back into the third-row seat. Seth started the Escalade and discovered, to his horror, that the video system had rebooted and was now displaying the opening scene of the porn movie in which the cable installer knocks on an apartment door, which is opened, as so often happens in apartment life, by a woman wearing only a lavender thong. To blot out the video sound track Cyndi quickly got the audio system going again, which proved to be a mixed blessing inasmuch as the selection currently playing was the singer Riskay’s plaintive love ballad about a woman who suspects that her boyfriend is unfaithful, titled “Lemme Smell Yo Dick.”

  They pulled away from the curb encased in a cocoon of cacophonic cursing. There was no conversation, other than Sid asking Rose what all the shouting was and Rose informing Sid that maybe some people called it music but she, Rose, did not call it music.

  12

  Mike and Marcia Clark, impeccably attired in casual yet very expensive resort wear, stood outside the entrance to the Ritz-Carlton, waiting. A few yards away, their security guards, looking as unobtrusive as possible for men the size of forklifts, kept an eye on the surroundings.

  Mike, for the twentieth time, glanced at his scarily complex, $380,000 Swiss watch, which had so many dials on it that it took real determination to decipher the actual time. The Clarks were not used to waiting. They were used to having people wait for them, inasmuch as, being Mike and Marcia Freaking Clark, their time was exponentially more valuable than the time of anybody they were likely to encounter. They were waiting for a man named Wendell Corliss, who resided in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he ran a hedge fund worth more than most member nations of the European Union.

  But that was not why Mike was waiting for him. He was waiting because Corliss was in a position to give him one of the few things he wanted but could not buy. It happened that Mike belonged to a fanatically exclusive and secret group of powerful businessmen called the Group of Eleven. The Group of Eleven, as the name suggested, was limited by its charter to eleven members. If you wanted to join, you had to wait for somebody to die—assuming you even knew (and very few people did) that the Group of Eleven existed. It was almost impossible just to be considered for membership, let alone be admitted. Warren Buffett had been deemed too nouveau. Donald Trump’s letters were returned unopened.

  The members of the Group of Eleven gathered periodically at fabulously luxurious undisclosed locations for retreats, during which they talked frankly about the kinds of things that men at their level of achievement have on their minds, such as golf and the cruising ranges of their helicopters. There was one topic, however, that the Group of Eleven did not discuss, although it was never far from their thoughts when they got together. It was too painful to bring up, too sensitive even for these tough, commerce-hardened men. For the truth was that despite the fact that they seemed to have everything a man could want—immense wealth, power, influence and spectacular surgically enhanced second or third wives—there was one thing they did not have, and because they did not have it, it was the one thing they wanted above all else.

  They wanted to belong to the Group of Six.

  This was an even more exclusive group, a group so secret that the only people on the planet who knew it existed, outside of the men who actually belonged to it, were the deeply envious members of the Group of Eleven. They had to live with the knowledge that, although they were treated like gods by the mortals around them, they had not reached the pinnacle. There was a higher peak, upon which wealthy men were holding helicopter range discussions to which they were not privy. This gnawed at their guts like a cancer.

  It especially gnawed at Mike Clark. He had become obsessed with the Group of Six, consumed by the desire to join it, and now he saw his chance. A prominent eighty-seven-year-old industrialist had recently died; Mike was pretty sure the man had been a member of the Group of Six. That meant there was an opening, and Mike intended to fill it.

  The key to his plan was Wendell Corliss, the man Mike was waiting for outside the Ritz. Mike was fairly certain that Corliss was one of
the five surviving members of the Group of Six. Corliss had the personal charm of an iguana, but that did not deter Mike, who had cultivated Corliss relentlessly—bringing him in on lucrative business deals, contributing massively to his pet charities, sending him fawning congratulatory notes for every minor achievement, kissing up to him at social events.

  His boldest move had been to invite Corliss to his daughter’s wedding. To his delight, Corliss had accepted. This was Mike’s big chance: He would spend quality time with Corliss, show him what kind of man he was, what kind of family he had. He would not mention the Group of Six explicitly—that would be a serious breach of etiquette—but by the end of the weekend, Corliss would think of Mike as a man he could confidently recommend for membership. Tina’s wedding had created the perfect opportunity; now it was a matter of closing the deal. And nobody closed a deal better than Mike Clark.

  “Is that his car?” said Marcia, pointing down the driveway.

  Mike looked and saw a maroon Bentley Mulsanne approaching, followed by a black SUV.

  “Shit,” said Mike.

  “What is it?” said Marcia.

  “I should’ve brought the Bentley.”

  “But I thought you said—”

  “I know what I said.” What Mike had said was that he didn’t want to bring the Bentley fearing that Wendell Corliss would find it pretentious. Instead, Mike had gone with a rented stretch limo. But here Corliss was, arriving in his Mulsanne, which he must have had flown down from Greenwich. “Shit,” said Mike again, wondering if there was time to have his Bentley flown in. Or maybe his Maybach, so Corliss wouldn’t think he was mimicking him.

  No time to think about it anymore; the Bentley was pulling up, a Ritz doorman hustling toward it, only to back quickly away when confronted by two massive bodyguards who’d jumped out of the trailing SUV. Mike was glad he had thought to have his security on hand for the Corliss arrival, even though he didn’t really expect to need them. Good to show Corliss how he rolled.

  One of the Corliss bodyguards opened a rear door of the Bentley. Out stepped Wendell Corliss, a tall, gaunt, bald man with ice-blue eyes that remained intensely predatory no matter what the rest of his face was doing. Emerging behind Wendell was his third wife, Greta, a tall, Amazonian Swede who had begun her climb to social prominence by working as the Corliss family au pair and who compensated for her humble origins by treating all forms of hired help like cockroaches.