So, in retrospect, it didn't come as much of a shock to me when the Chef and I met two days later in my office, and he thought my idea of bringing “a token of good faith” to our meeting was a fabulous one.
He went about explaining his money-laundering scheme in the most intimate detail—even mentioning the names of James Loo's overseas relatives who would be assisting us in Asia. Then he named the banks and the shell corporations we would be using— finishing with the airtight cover story we would stick to if Coleman and his boys were to ever catch wind of this.
It was an inspired plan, which involved the purchase of real estate in half a dozen Far East countries and the maintenance of a full-time staff overseas, to operate a series of legitimate businesses-clothing manufacturers in Vietnam and Cambodia, and electronics manufacturers in Thailand and Indonesia, where labor was cheap and workmanship was prideful.
Yes, the plan was brilliant, all right, but it was also wildly complicated. In fact, it was so complicated that I found myself wondering if a jury would ever be able to understand it. So I grabbed a legal pad off the brass-and-glass coffee table, ripped off a sheet of paper, picked up a pen, and began drawing a diagram.
With my voice lowered conspiratorially, I said, “So let me get this straight: I'm gonna give James Loo fifty thousand dollars”—I drew a little box with James Loo's name inside it, as well as the amount: $50,000—“and then James will have one of his people smuggle the money overseas to his sister-in-law, Sheila Wong,* in Singapore”—I drew another box on the other side of the pad, with Sheila's name inside it, and then drew a long straight line connecting the two boxes—”and then Sheila is gonna use that money to fund accounts in Hong Kong and the Chanel Islands and Gurnsey…” and before I was even finished talking about Sheila's role in our scheme, the Chef had grabbed the pen from me and begun drawing a diagram that fairly resembled the blueprints to a nuclear submarine. And as he narrated his plan, with a mixture of pride and relish, the Nagra rolled on, recording each of his words.
When the Chef was done, he said, “Now this is a f**king Picasso—although you better throw it in the garbage!”
I crumpled the note into a tiny ball and did just that. “Better safe than sorry,” I said casually. We exchanged a Mafia-style hug, a firm handshake, and then confirmed our plans to meet James Loo on Monday. I suggested the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Manhattan, where, by sheer coincidence, I explained, I would be staying for a few days with my new girlfriend. But it was no coincidence, of course. Long before Loo and the Chef arrived there, OCD and his tech team would have the room wired for sight and sound.
When I met OCD afterward, I joked that I was up to my old tricks again—passing notes and such—although I had saved this particular note for posterity.
With that I handed him a sealed envelope with the tape and the crumpled note inside. “You better go stop at Macy's and pick up a steam iron,” I said jokingly. “You're gonna need it.” Then I climbed into my Mercedes and headed back out to the Hamptons.
But, alas, over the next days I began feeling guilty again.
In fact, by that Sunday evening, the thought of ratting out the Chef had become wholly depressing. Apparently, falling in love with KGB had softened the sting of recent events—those terrible betrayals that had ignited flames of revenge in the glare of which I had come to view friends as enemies and enemies as friends. Now, however, I wasn't so sure again.
It was a little before nine, and KGB and I were enjoying our nightly ritual—sitting on a white cotton blanket, near the water's edge, with a small fire blazing away, struggling against the first chills of autumn. Just over the horizon, an orange full moon hung heavy in the night sky, with the dark waters of the Atlantic just beneath it.
“It looks close enough to touch, doesn't it, sweetie?”
“Da,” she replied cutely. “It look like Swiss cheese.”
“Looks,” I said, correcting her. “It looks like Swiss cheese.”
“What you mean?” she asked.
I grabbed her hand and squeezed it lovingly. “I mean, you have a habit of leaving the s off words, especially verbs. Like you just said, ‘It look like Swiss cheese,’ when you should have said, ‘It looks like Swiss cheese.’ It's no big deal, really; it's just a matter of singular or plural. You see, when you say it, it relates to one thing, so you would say looks, but if you were talking about they, which is plural, you would say, ‘They look like Swiss cheese.’ Again, it's really no big deal, but it just kind of sounds funny. It's sort of hard on the ears.” I shrugged my shoulders, trying to make light of it.
She let go of my hand. “What do you mean: hard on ears?”
“The ears,” I said calmly, although a bit of frustration had slipped out around the edges, “and that's a perfect example of what I mean.” I took a deep breath and said, “You never say the word the, Yulia—ever! And it's probably the most commonly used word in the English language! It gives a certain rhythm to things, a certain flow, and when you don't say it—like when you just said ‘hard on ears’ or when you say, ‘I want to go to store,’ it just sounds funny. I mean, it sounds like you're uneducated or something, which I know you're not.” I shrugged again, not wanting to make a big deal of it, although I couldn't help myself. We were spending all our time together, and her bastardization of the English language was starting to get to me. Besides, I was in love with her, so I felt it was my obligation to teach her—or to train her, so to speak—and lead her gently down the road to a little village called Assimilation.
“Anyway,” I continued, “if you really want to improve your English, I would start with those two things: using the word the and knowing when to add an s to the end of a verb.” I smiled and grabbed her hand. “From there, all good things will follow.” I winked at her. “And if you want, I could even be your teacher! Every time you make a mistake I can correct—ow! What are you—owww! Stop—that hurts! Owww! Owww! Owwwwwwwwwwwwww!” I screamed. “Let go of my fingers! You're gonna break them! Stop!”
“You little puta!” she muttered, as she bent my fingers backward in a KGB finger lock. “You and your stupid English language—ha! America think they own world! Bleaha muha! Capitalist pigs!”
Thinks it owns the world, I thought, as I screamed, “Let! Go! Of! My! Fingers! Please! You're gonna break them!”
She let go, then turned her back to me and began muttering, “Stupido Americano… This ridiculous!”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I began shaking my fingers in the air, trying to stop the pain. “You could have broken my fingers with that f**king KGB death grip!” I shook my head angrily. “And who the hell are you to call me a little puta? Do you think I'm a little whore now? Five minutes ago you were saying how much you loved me, and now you're calling me names!” I shook my head sadly, as if I were very disappointed in her. Then I prepared for makeup sex.
After a few seconds she turned to me, ready to make friends again. “Praste minya,” she said softly, which I could only assume meant thank you, and then she started babbling something in rapid-fire Russian. Her tone was rather sweet, actually, so I could only assume she was saying that she had tried to break my fingers out of love. Then she said, “Come here, musek-pusek; let my kiss your palcheke,” and she grabbed my fingers and began kissing them very softly, which led me to believe that palcheke were fingers.
Feeling vindicated, I leaned back on the blanket and prepared for my reward (meaning, she would kiss my erect penis), and just like that she was lying next to me and we were kissing. It was a soft, mellow kiss, a slow kiss, a Russkie kiss, which seemed to last for a very long time. Then she rested her head upon my shoulder, and the two of us, lovers once more, stared up to the heavens, beholding the awesome expanse of the universe—the orange moon, the glittering stars, the fuzzy white band of the Milky Way.
“I'm sorry about before,” I said, lying through my teeth. “I won't correct you anymore if you don't want me to. I mean, I don't care if the moon looks like Swiss cheese or look like Swiss cheese, as long as I'm looking at it with you.” With that, I kissed her on the crown of her pretty blond head and drew her close to me.
She responded by putting her long, bare leg over mine and cuddling even closer to me, as if we were trying to become one person.
“Ya lublu tibea,” she said softly.
“I love you too,” I said just as softly. I took a deep breath and stared up at the moon, wondering if I'd ever been happier than I was right now. This girl was truly something special—Miss Soviet Union, for Chrissake!—the very catch of the century, and, most importantly, she was the perfect antidote to the backstabbing Duchess.
With a fair dose of nostalgia in my voice, I said, “You know, I remember looking up at the moon as a kid and being totally blown away by it. I mean, knowing that people had actually been up there and walked on it. In 1969 you were only a year old, so you were too young to remember that day, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
“My parents had this little black-and-white TV set in the kitchen, and we were all crowding around it, watching Neil Armstrong go down the ladder. And when he took his first steps on the moon and started bouncing around…” I shook my head in awe. “I wanted to be an astronaut that day.” I let out a few embarrassed chuckles. “Boyhood dreams,” I said, smiling. “Which somehow led me to Wall Street. I would have never imagined it that day.”
KGB chuckled back, although her chuckles had an edge to them. “This is big American joke,” she said confidently. “You knows this, right?”
“What—that every kid wants to be an astronaut?”
“Nyet,” she replied quickly. “I talk about moon”—the moon, for Chrissake! What's so f**king difficult about it? “There is English word for this moon thing you do. It is, uh, how do you say… falcefekaceja… ah! Hoax! You make hoax!”
“We make a hoax. Are you trying to say the moon landing was a hoax?”
“Da!” she exclaimed happily, and she popped upright and stared down at me. “This is hoax against Soviet people! Everybody know this.”
“Knows,” I replied through clenched teeth. “Everybody knows this, Yulia, and you're not actually gonna look at me with a straight face and say that you think the United States faked the moon landings to embarrass Mother Russia! Please don't tell me this!” I stared at her, incredulous.
She compressed her lips and shook her head slowly. “This landing you speak of is filmed in movie studio. Everyone in rest of world know this. Only here people believe. How do you think America fly to moon when Soviet Union can't? We had female in space while you were flying monkey! And suddenly you beat us to moon? Oh, please—this is hoax! Look at pictures. You see flag wave on moon, but there is no atmosphere. So how can flag wave? And day is night, when night must be day; and earth rise, when it must fall. And there is belt of radiation…” and on and on KGB went, explaining how the moon landing was nothing more than a giant hoax filmed in a Hollywood movie studio, with the sole purpose of embarrassing her beloved Soviet Union. “We will talk about this with Igor when you meet,” continued KGB, “and then you will see truth. Igor is famous scientist. He tame fire.”
I shook my head in disbelief, not knowing quite how to respond to that. “Well,” I said, fighting back the urge to tell her that her former Soviet Union, including its defunct space program, had become nothing more than a joke, “every human being is entitled to their opinion, although I will tell you that to pull off a conspiracy like that you'd need a thousand people, with every last one of them keeping the same monumental secret, and in this country, I can assure you, if more than two people know something, it doesn't stay secret very long. And I don't want to even mention the fact that there were actually three moon landings, not just one. So let's just say, for argument's sake, that the government actually had faked the first moon landing and had been lucky enough to get away with it—why would they press their luck again? It would be like: ‘Hey, gotcha once, Mr. Brezhnev! Now I want you to watch very closely as I do it again, and see if you can catch me this time!’ But, hey, what do I know? I mean, maybe aliens did land in Roswell, and maybe you were right yesterday when you said America never actually fought in World War Two”—that was KGB's other pearl of wisdom, shared with me by the tennis court after I beat her six-love, six-love in eleven and a half minutes, at which point we play-wrestled on the grass, an activity that ended with me screaming, “Let me go! Stop! You're hurting me! You're hurting me!”—”and that America stole the plans to the first atomic bomb from Russia and not the other way around.” This had tumbled from her commie-red lips as we watched a History Channel documentary discussing weapons of war. KGB had informed me that Russian people—which is to say, Soviet people—were responsible for virtually every meaningful invention, from the atomic bomb to the X-ray machine to fine literature to Bazooka chewing gum. “The truth is, Yulia—and I say this out of love, as in ya lublu tibea—what I'm really interested in is Igor's cure for fire. Now, tell me what that's all about, because that's what I find most fascinating!”
She looked at me for a moment, shaking her head wryly. “Wouldn't you like to knows!”
“Yeah,” I shot back, “I would like to knows! So why don't you tells me!”
She stared at me with narrowed eyes. Then she motioned with her heart-shaped chin over to our perfect little beach fire, at the base of which rested a Duraflame. “You see flame?”
I nodded. “Yeah, what about the flames?”
KBG snapped her long, slender fingers, and the air went pop! “Just like this,” she said proudly, “Igor can make flame go away.”
“And how does he do that?” I asked skeptically.
“He control atmosphere,” she answered nonchalantly, as if controlling the atmosphere were no more difficult than adjusting a thermostat.
I looked at her for a moment, astonished, and also trying to calculate how much money I could have made with some wacky Russian scientist willing to claim he controlled the atmosphere. It was just the sort of thing the Strattonites would have eaten up. I could have stood Igor before the boardroom dressed in a wizard's costume, like Professor Dumbledore from Harry Potter, and I would have said into the microphone: “Behold Professor Igor and his cure for fire….” The Strattonites would have gone wild-clapping and cheering and then lighting Lake Success on fire, so Igor could show his stuff.
I said to KGB: “Ohhh, I get it now! I think I've actually seen this in the movies. It was in Austin Powers: Dr. Evil had figured out a way to control the weather, and he was looking to hold the world hostage. On second thought, maybe that was James Bond. Or was it Superman?” I shrugged. “I'm not really sure.”
She shrugged back. “Laughs all you want, big shot, but I not joking. Igor can cure fire, and I am shareholder in company. One day he will…” and as KGB kept talking, I stopped listening. I think she actually believed what she was saying, and not just all this nonsense about Professor Igor but everything. She had grown up with a different set of history books, listening to Soviet TV, where we were the Evil Empire determined to rule the world. I snuck a peek at my watch: It was nine-thirty. I had to be at the Plaza Athénée by nine a.m. tomorrow morning, which meant I had to leave the Hamptons at six-thirty.
It was time to end this night, which I couldn't do until I had made love to KGB in front of the fire. It was our ritual, after all, something that both of us looked forward to each day. So now I would have to agree with her. Yes, I would say: In spite of my earlier skepticism, I am now convinced that Igor's cure for fire shall change the world. Now, be a good girlfriend, KGB, and make love to me. I don't care that you're a closet communist. I love you anyway!
And that was exactly what happened.
The next morning, at precisely eleven a.m., the Chef and James Loo walked into Room 1104 at the Hotel Plaza Athénée. It was a one-bedroom, two-bathroom suite, and the Chef and James Loo were likes two lambs walking into a slaughterhouse.
I greeted them at the front door, first hugging the Chef and then exchanging a hearty handshake with James Loo, who was short, thin, slightly balding, and wearing an expensive sharkskin suit with no necktie.
I led him and the Chef into the main salon, directly off the entry gallery. The bedroom was on the opposite side of the suite, and the door was closed nice and tight—and for good reason. Inside that bedroom, wearing headphones, revolvers, and some very serious expressions, were four FBI agents—namely, OCD, the Mormon, and two tech guys, both of whom were in their mid-thirties and looked liked they should be working at Circuit City, fixing computers.
We had spent the last two hours analyzing the living room-checking various camera angles and such and places to hide the bugs. It was a small space, perhaps fourteen by twenty feet. Three tall windows that looked out over 64th Street admitted a great deal of light—too much light, actually, according to the tech guys, so we closed the bordello-red curtains to reduce the glare.
I offered my guests seats on the couch, and then I took a seat in one of the armchairs. That was just fine with the boys in the bedroom. At this very moment, they were watching us on a twelve-inch closed-circuit TV screen that received images from a pinhole camera concealed inside a digital clock. The clock was resting on one of the side tables, placed there by the tech guys. Ironically, I wasn't wired today; only the room was, pursuant to a court order. The only thing I was concealing was a very fat envelope with $50,000 inside. It was in the left-inside breast pocket of my navy sport jacket, and I was to hand it to Loo at the appropriate moment.
After a few minutes of small talk, I said, “I want you to know, James, that Dennis has vouched for you a hundred percent. And that means more than anything to me.”
James nodded dutifully. “Likewise,” he said. “Dennis vouched for you too, so I am very comfortable.”
“And that's very good,” said the Chef, who had little capacity for ass-kissing. “And now that we got dat ouddada way, let's move on to the good stuff!”
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “The sooner I get my cash overseas the better. And by the way, James, I want you to know that the fact that you've done a lot of business with Bob makes me that much more comfortable.” I nodded respectfully. “It's like getting an endorsement from the Pope, you know?” Actually, more like Darth Vader, I thought.