Los Angeles
January 2000
The back door to the club was locked, so we had to go around to the front. The bouncer did a little double take when he saw the condition of my face, but he clearly remembered us. He opened the velvet rope and let us through.
I found a bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I washed the dirt off my face. Then I tried to splash water on my hair and restore some kind of order again. When I had done all I could, I went back outside and found Lucy. As we worked our way across the dance floor, we could see Julian and Ramona sitting at that table high above us. Wesley was sitting there with them. Julian caught sight of us, and his cool might have slipped for half a second, but he recovered just as quickly.
Lucy and I went up the spiral staircase, got past the balcony bouncer, and made our way to the table. Wesley got up like a gentleman and gave Lucy back her chair.
“We were wondering where you ran off to,” he said.
“I told you,” Julian said. “The man had to go attend to his business. To make sure everything is ready.”
“What happened to you?” Wesley said. “You look like you got run over by something.”
You don’t understand English, I told myself. Don’t even look like you’re following what he’s saying.
“Oh, he did,” Lucy said, sliding her fingernails through her messed-up hair. “He got run over real good.”
Then to prove her point, she reached over and raked those same fingernails across my cheek. It hurt like hell, but it got Wesley smiling and nodding his head in appreciation.
“Okay, seriously,” Julian said. “I think it’s time to stop fucking around, don’t you?”
It was all part of his act, as I’d realize later. Get right in the guy’s face. Act a little too anxious. Push the deal like you can’t wait one more minute to make it happen.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Wesley said. “Let’s do some business.”
Julian turned to me and said something in Russian. Or if he was making it up, at least it sounded like Russian.
I waited a beat. Then I gave him a nod.
“So where do we do this?” Julian said.
“Let me go make a trip to the cash machine,” Wesley said. “You guys just hang here for a while, eh?”
“Works for me. Can you send another bottle over?”
Wesley gave him a big smile. “Coming right up, my friend.”
He took his leave and walked over to the upstairs bouncer. I kept watching him. As he turned, I could see a sudden flash of condescension on his face. We were all just kids, the look said. It was almost too easy to play us.
That’s when the whole setup started to become clear to me. The whole seemingly insane yet totally brilliant idea behind what Julian and his gang were doing. You don’t wait for the target to put the money in the safe. You make the target put the money in the safe. You get close to him. You get to know him. You find out what he wants. You tell him he can have it. You tell him that you know somebody who knows somebody else who knows exactly how to get it. You tell him you’ll arrange the deal so that everybody comes out ahead. You do all of this in such a way as to make him believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s smarter than you. That in the end, he’s the one who’s going to come out ahead.
It doesn’t even matter what it is. In this case, it was Ecstasy. Not the cheap, dirty pills you can find in every club. The real thing. One hundred percent. Does that make you a drug dealer all of a sudden? Of course not! It could be rocks from the moon for all you care, because you’re not actually going to deliver anything at all.
Of course, your man has every reason to be suspicious, because after all who the fuck are you to appear out of nowhere and to tell him that he can have exactly what he wants? So he knows going in… he knows that there’s a chance you’re totally full of shit. He wouldn’t be where he is today if he didn’t know this. But he plays along, because what the hell, maybe you can deliver. He’s got nothing to lose, he figures, because he’s a smart man and you’re a cheap, dumb punk, and he’ll make sure he sets it up the right way. So you let it happen. Everything he wants, you give him. You want to see a sample? Here it is. You want us to bring everything to a certain place at a certain time? whatever you say. We’ll be there.
You let him call the shots. You let him gather up his money and hold on to it. Keep it right in his back pocket until you’ve proven that you can deliver everything you said you could. Tere’s no way he can lose here, because he isn’t even touching his money until he knows it’s a safe play.
Absolutely no way to lose.
Unless… Oh, hell, let’s just imagine here… Let’s just say that while he’s got all that money sitting in his back pocket, someone else comes along and takes it before the deal can even happen. Yeah, that might be the one slight complication that could get in the way.
This is the way Julian set it up. It’s perfect. Your mark’s watching you fumble around trying to look cool and to set up the deal. While he’s doing that, somebody else sneaks around behind him and picks his pocket. Even if that “pocket” is an eight-hundred-pound iron box protected by two separate alarm systems.
The ladies excused themselves for a moment. Julian came around the table and sat in the chair next to me. He leaned in close and whispered in my ear.
“You’re doing great,” he said. “You’re a natural. You haven’t said one wrong word tonight.”
He gave me a little punch in the shoulder, grabbed Lucy’s champagne flute, and raised it. He waited until I got mine and did the same.
“A la Mano de Dios.”
I understood it this time around. To the Hand of God. That’s what you call this kind of operation. When young con artists get together with young burglars and set up the perfect crime.
“Here’s the important part,” he said, leaning in close again. “When he goes home to get the money, and he sees that it’s gone… his head is going to go through the fucking roof, right? When that happens, it’s our job to put our heads through the fucking roof even higher than his. We tell him he’s a no-good fucking con man, what kind of bullshit move is this, et cetera, et cetera. You get what I’m saying?”
He paused and took another sip of champagne.
“We play it all the way through. Right in his face, all the way out the door.”
The ladies came back to the table. Ramona grabbed Julian like she had no plans to let go that night. Lucy bent over and wrapped her arms around my neck. I was overwhelmed by her hair, by her scent, by the feel of her skin against my cheek.
She was just playing her part, I knew. But still.
“Have some more champagne,” she said to me. “It’ll numb the pain.”
I wasn’t sure what pain she was talking about. The pain in my body from everything I’d done that night? The pain in my heart? Or something else entirely.
Either way, I drank some more champagne. In this nightclub in this city on this night, with these lights flashing and this music pounding away on the dance floor below me… I couldn’t help wondering what would happen next. With these strange, beautiful people… it seemed like it could be anything.
Wesley came back. His face was red and his ponytail was undone. Julian gave me a quick wink as he stood up. Then I watched the two of them go at it. Wesley waving his arms around, Julian sticking his finger right in Wesley’s face. The upstairs bouncer had to step between them, and all hell broke loose for the next minute until we were all stumbling down the back steps and out into the night air.
Julian hailed a cab and we all squeezed into the backseat. Ramona gave the driver an address and we were off, rolling down Sunset Boulevard. Between the champagne and the company and the night itself, I was starting to feel disoriented.
Then we were going east on an expressway. The lights whizzing by us.
Then we were crawling slowly down a narrow street where people were dancing. They had to move to let us pass, one by one, inch by inch.
Then we were out of the cab and going into another club. This one was called El Pulpo. It was crowded and it smelled like spicy food and everyone was speaking Spanish.
Then I was dancing. Me. Actually dancing on a dance floor. I stopped dancing and drank a bottle of Mexican beer. Then I was dancing again.
I was dancing and feeling warm and almost good. Almost wonderful. As close to wonderful as it was possible for me to ever get, in my whole life.
All these strangers around me, speaking a language I didn’t know. Yet I felt like I belonged there. There was nowhere else to be that night except this sweaty little crowded nightclub in East L.A.
Lucy was in front of me now. Her arms in the air, a distant smile on her face. She was dancing, and it felt good to be close to her. I reached out and touched her. One hand on each hip.
Another man put his hand on her shoulder, turned her toward him, and said something into her ear. She took his hand and with one smooth motion twisted it all the way around until he was down on his knees. She kicked him once in the stomach and let him go. He crawled away, and she turned back to me like nothing had happened.
The music got louder. People were shouting.
More dancing. The way I felt connected to Lucy now. In a way I hadn’t felt since Amelia. Not just her but Julian, too. And Ramona. Even to Gunnar, still wiping the sweat from his face now, back at the house. Counting all that money.
More shouting. Louder and louder.
A thought came to me. If I ever talk… it’ll be on a night like this. I’ll just open my mouth and-
Lucy was saying something to me. I leaned in closer to hear it.
“You’re one of us now,” she said, her lips touching my ear. “You belong to us.”