The Gold Coast

26

Sandy, however, has only just now been able to get off with Bob Tompkins for a little conference. They retire to Bob’s bedroom with a friend of Bob’s that Sandy hasn’t met yet, and sit on a gigantic circular bed.

Eight video cameras:

Two walls of screens show them sitting cross-legged, from eight angles.

Life in the kaleidoscope: which image is you?

Bedspread of green silks. Wallpaper bronze flake. Carpet silver gray.

Oak dressers, topped by a collection of ornate hookahs:

Ceramic jars, copper bowls, woven tubes,

Six speakers play soft zither music.

A poem is a list of Things To Do.

Have you done them yet?

“This is Manfred,” Bob says to Sandy. “Manfred, Sandy.”

Manfred nods, his eyes bright and very dilated. “Good to meet you.” They shake hands across the green silk.

“Well, let’s try out some of my latest while we talk about Manfred’s proposition.” Bob puts a big round wooden platter on the middle of the bed, between the three of them. He gets a smallish hookah from the collection, puts it on the platter, sits down, fills one part of the multichambered bowl with a black tarry substance. There are three tubes coming out of the bulbous ceramic base of the pipe, and they each take one and breathe in as Bob waves the flame of a lighter over the bowl. The moment the smoke hits his throat Sandy begins coughing his lungs out. The other two are coughing too, more moderately but only just. On the wall screens it looks like a whole gang of men have just been teargassed in a bordello.

“Gee,” Sandy chokes out. “Great.”

The other two wheeze their laughter. “Just wait a couple of minutes,” Bob advises. He and Manfred take another hit, and Sandy tries, but only starts coughing again. Still, the pattern of the bedspread has lifted off the bed and begun to rotate clockwise as it becomes ever more elaborate; and the bronze flake wallpaper is glittering darkly, breaking up the subdued lamplight from the dresser into a trillion meaningful fragments. Strangely beautiful, this chamber. “A great reckoning in a little room,” Sandy mutters. He puts his thumb over the soapstone mouthpiece of his tube while the other two smoke on. Advanced-lane opium smokers, here. Pretty primitive stuff, opium—noisy as hell, kind of a sledgehammer effect to the body. Sandy finds himself thinking he can do better than this in his lab. Still, as a sort of archaeological experiment… Jim should be in on this, didn’t the Chinese who built the California railroads use this stuff? No wonder there are no more railroads.

When Manfred and Bob are done smoking, they sit back and talk. The talk flows in unexpected channels, they laugh a lot.

Finally Manfred tells Sandy their proposition. “We’ve got a very illegal drug from Hong Kong, by way of Guam and Hawaii. The amounts are fairly large, and the DEA has got a spike into the source, so it all added up to trying a different channel for getting it in.”

“What is it?” Sandy asks bluntly.

“It’s called the Rhinoceros. The tricky thing about sexual arousal is that you have to be stimulated and relaxed in the right degrees of both, and in the right synergy. Two systems are involved and both have to be squeezed just right. So we’ve got a couple of compounds, one called Eyebeep and the other a modified endomorphin imitant. They self-assemble in the limbic region.”

“An aphrodisiac?” Sandy says stupidly.

“That’s right. A real aphrodisiac. I’ve tried it, and, well…” Manfred giggles. “I don’t want to talk about it. But it works.”

“Wow.”

“We’re sailing it over from Hawaii, that’s our new route. Our idea is to make a brief rendezvous with a small boat that will come out from Newport and meet us behind San Clemente Island. Then the small boat will bring it on in. I realize it’s a risk for the last carrier, but if you were willing to do it, I’d be willing to pay you for that risk, in cash and in a part of the cargo.”

Sandy nods noncommittally. “How much?”

“Say, twenty thousand dollars and six liters of Rhino.”

Sandy frowns. Is there really going to be a demand for six liters of some strange new aphrodisiac? Well… sure. Especially if it works. OC’s new favorite, no doubt.

Still, the plan goes against Sandy’s working principle, which demands a constant low profile and labor-intensive work in small quantities. “And what percentage of the total does that represent?”

They begin to dicker over amounts. It goes on slowly, genially, as a kind of theoretical discussion of how much such a service would be worth if one were to contemplate it. A lot of joking from Bob, which the other two appreciate. This is the strange heart of drug dealing; Sandy has not only to come to a financial agreement with Manfred, but also to reach a certain very high level of trust with him. They both have to feel this trust. No contract will be signed at the end of their dealing, and no enforcement agency will come to one’s aid if the other breaks their verbal agreement. In this sense drug dealers must be much more honest than businessmen or lawyers, for instance, who have contracts and the law to fall back on. Dealers have only each other, and so it’s crucial to establish that they’re dealing with someone they can trust to stick to their word. This, in a subculture of people that includes a small but significant number of con artists whose very art consists in appearing trustworthy when they are not. One has to learn how to distinguish between the false and the real, by an intuitive judgment of character, by probing at the other in the midst of the joking around: asking a sudden sharp question, making a quick gesture of friendliness, making an outright, even rude, challenge, and so on; then watching the responses to these various maneuvers, looking for any minute signs of bad faith. Judging behavior for what it reveals of the deeper nature inside.

All this subtle business taking place, of course, under a staggering opium high; but they’re all used to that kind of handicap, it can be factored in easily. Eventually Sandy gets a secure feeling that he is talking to a good guy, who is acting in good faith. Manfred, he can tell, is coming to a similar conclusion, and as they are both pleased the meeting becomes even friendlier—a real friendliness, as opposed to the automatic social imitation of it that they began the meeting with.

Still, the basic nature of the deal is not something Sandy likes, and he stops short of agreeing to do it. “I don’t know, Manfred,” he says eventually. “I don’t usually go in for this kind of thing, as Bob probably told you. For me, in my situation you know, the risks are too high to justify it.”

Manfred just grins. “It’s always the high-risk projects that bring in the highest profits, man. Think about it.”

Then Manfred gets up to go to the bathroom.

“So what does Raymond think of this?” Sandy asks Bob. “How come he isn’t doing the pickup himself?” For Raymond has done a whole lot of major drug smuggling from offshore in his time, and claims to enjoy it.

Bob makes a face. “Raymond is really involved in some other things right now. You know, he’s an idealist. He’s always been an idealist. Not that it keeps him from going after the bucks, of course, but still it’s there. I don’t know if you ever heard about this, but a year or so ago some of Ray’s friends in Venezuela were killed by some remotely piloted vehicles that the Venezuelan drug police had bought from our Army. They were good friends, and it really made Ray mad. He couldn’t really declare war on the U.S. Army, but he’s done the next best thing, and declared war on the people who made the robot planes.” He laughs. “At the same time keeping an eye out for profits!” He laughs harder, then looks at Sandy closely. “Don’t tell anyone else about this, okay?” Sandy nods; he and Bob have done a lot of business together over the years, and it’s gone on as long as it has because they both know they form a closed circuit, as far as information goes, including gossip. And Bob appreciates it, because he does love to gossip, even—or especially—about his ally Raymond. “He’s been importing these little missile systems that can be used perfectly for sabotaging military production plants.”

“Ah, yes,” Sandy says carefully. “I believe I’ve read about the results of all that.”

“Sure. But Raymond doesn’t just do it for the idea. He’s also finding people who want these things done more than he does!”

Sandy opens his eyes wide to show how dubious he is about this.

“I know!” Bob replies. “It’s a tricky area. But so far it’s been working really well. There are customers out there, if you can find them. But it’s murky water, I’ll tell you. Almost as bad as the drug scene. And now he thinks he’s been noticed by another group who are into the same thing.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I know. So he’s all wrapped up in that now, trying to find out who exactly is out there, and whether he can come to terms with them.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Sandy says.

Bob shrugs. “Everything’s dangerous. But anyway, you can see why Ray isn’t interested in this smuggling deal. His mind is occupied with other things these days.”

“You bet.”

Manfred comes back from the bathroom. They try a few more puffs of the harsh black smoke, talk some more. Manfred presses Sandy to commit himself to the aphrodisiac smuggling enterprise, and carefully, ever so diplomatically, Sandy refuses to make the commitment. What he has just heard from Bob isn’t any encouragement. “I’m going to have to think about it, Manfred. It’s really far out of my usual line.”

Manfred accepts this with grace: “I still hope you’ll go for it, man. Think about it some more and then let me know—we’ve still got a week or so.”

Sandy looks at his watch, rises. “I’ve got a working day tomorrow, starts in about four hours actually. I should get back home.” Farewells all around and he’s off, into the living room where Tashi, Jim, Humphrey, Abe and Arthur are sitting around talking to people. “Let’s go home.”