Lately Herb has been trying to interest me in a tract of commercial land along the northwest corridor near the corporate headquarters of Texas Instruments. We are on the way to dinner at one of his favorite joints, a Steak and Ale on Research Boulevard, the main drag out of Austin toward Lampasas and San Saba. When we drive past the property he wants me to buy and develop as a shopping mall, he slows his Caddy and nods. “There it is,” he says. Before we get to the restaurant, Herb pulls in at an establishment known as The Safe Place where I visit my safe deposit box, clean it out, and extract a hundred grand for Herb.
“You can’t go wrong on this, Paul,” he tells me at dinner as he lights up another Pall Mall. “Even if you just hold it for a year or two and sell.”
“Will you put that fucking thing out, please? At least until I finish my meal.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” He squashes the cigarette and gives me a flustered look. “Sorry.” He knows I hate cigarette smoke, particularly when I’m trying to eat.
I’m sure the commercial tract is a good investment. Texas is booming, in particular Austin’s northwest corridor. But with my looming legal entanglements, the last thing I need is to be buying more property. The hundred Gs I just gave him settles my bill on the florist shop. I’m thinking of liquidating everything and making myself scarce until… whatever. I am living absolutely in the moment, playing the hand, upping the stakes—something I can’t explain to Herb. Still, my need to keep Herbert close and with his eye on the next big payday won’t allow me to say no. “We need to sell the place in Blanco before we talk about buying anything else,” I tell him.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” he says and digs into his chicken-fried steak.
“I want to concentrate on the florist shop and the ranch in San Saba.”
He nods, quick, jerky up-and-down moves with his narrow, balding head. “That’s smart.”
“I’m thinking of building some greenhouses out at the ranch and growing the plants and flowers we sell at the shop. Become my own supplier.”
“I like that. That’s good,” Herb agrees.
Of course, I’m thinking of growing pot out there, if they ever legalize it. And jojoba. “You know about jojoba, Herb?”
“No, what is it?”
“Good stuff. The oil produced from the seed. And aloe vera. The future is in these natural products. Cosmetics. Oils and healing salves. Organic farming. That’s my dream for the place in San Saba. Keep the whole horse-breeding business going. Raise some cattle. And use the shit to fertilize the fields. Develop that place into an organic farming enterprise.” I’m waxing evangelical now. “Open organic produce stores right here in Austin. And be our own supplier.”
“That sounds like a good plan, Paul.”
“We’ll even get you off those cancer sticks. And the chicken-fried steak,” I chide him. “You know what that chicken-fried steak and all those cheeseburgers you eat are doing to you, Herb?”
He smiles, lowers his eyes, and looks away. “You’ve told me.”
“Not only are you clogging your arteries—that’s bad enough. But you’re also lining the walls of your colon with dead animal fat. You know where that leads?” I take some perverse delight in lecturing this guy. “A clogged colon, Herb. And that leads to colon cancer. That’s what they call literally coming to a bad end.”
He chuckles, squirms in his seat as though feeling his colon backing up. He knows I enjoy teasing him, and that I’m trying to get him off the subject of buying more property. But Herb’s tenacious, he says, “You could build your greenhouses right here on Research Boulevard. Be that much closer to the flower shop. These folks are ready to negotiate. I could make them an offer.”
“Let me think about it.”
We are having coffee and after-dinner drinks when Jonathan Livingston Seagull strolls in with his lopsided, forward-leaning gait. He too has taken to wearing cowboy boots and a black Stetson hat with a little gold marijuana leaf pinned to it. Before I left New York, I met with the Seagull and gave him the key to a stash house I’d rented in Dripping Springs midway between Austin and the ranch in Blanco. He had directions to the place and knew what to do once he got there: chill, look around, and find a suitable landing strip. We just bought a new, turbo-charged Aero Commander to haul 1,200 pounds of choice sinsemilla buds packed in big burlap bales out of Southern Mexico before the federales seize it.
“What should I tell these folks?” Herb asks as he lights another cigarette. We’re standing in the parking lot outside the restaurant. I summon the will to say no.
“I can’t do it, Herb. Not now. We need to put the place in Blanco on the market. Let me stay focused on what I’ve got going on and not get spread too thin.”
“Gotcha,” he says. “Okay, Paul. Thanks for the dinner.”
“Fuckin’ guy,” I say as Herb walks off and gets in his Caddy. “He doesn’t quit.”
I look around the parking lot, nearly empty now going on eleven. The Seagull and I walk to the new Cadillac Eldorado we just bought.
“You want me to drive?” he asks.
“Yeah, you better. My head is spinning.”
I fire up a joint, take a couple of hits, and roach it before getting in the car. Deep sigh of relief as I ease into the leather bucket seat. I seem to have shaken my Heat, left it back East. As I was preparing to leave New York, I went to elaborate lengths to make sure I wasn’t followed. Playing out my French Connection fantasy, I took the subway to Port Authority, wandered around in the crowd, and then caught the bus to Newark where I flew out using a clean credit card. I want to believe that Wolfshein isn’t aware of the Texas component to the operation and the Paul Quinlan identity—at least not yet, although he seems to know about everything else. I have a picture of the agent in my head, he’s got that distracted Columbo look on his face as he wanders around in circles in his office muttering to himself like Elmer Fudd hunting for Bugs Bunny: Which way did he go? Which way did he go?
Hubris rears its ugly head. Why should I give a fuck? This is Texas, land of the outlaw. Slap my mind. The Heat has got not-so-Fearless Fred Barnswallow sequestered in their interrogation cage. Barnswallow may not know details, but he is aware we have something going on in Texas. I search my depleted memory banks to recall if I ever used the Quinlan ID in his presence. No… of course, he knows Val and her partner, Judy, but not their real names or where they currently live. Maria and the Colombians. Shit, I’ve got to call her and let her know Fred most likely flipped. The Captain, I’m sure, gave Fred no information. Maybe I should have let him terminate Freddy when we had the chance. If you are going to play this game, better play it all the way. It’s like Wolfshein said, all that hippie-dippy peace, love, and brotherhood crap won’t fly when you mix it up with real crooks and cops.
Soon a new concern occupies my mind: I am spending money at an alarming rate. If I don’t get this load out of Guerrero and back to New York to market soon, I could come up short on the Lebanese trip, which I estimate will require somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million to finance. Toranaga would take up the slack, but I don’t want to have to lean on him. Recently, I purchased a fifty-eight-foot power yacht I’ve never even seen that is berthed at a marina in Galveston. I tell myself it’s an investment that we’ll use to smuggle pot by sea from Jamaica and the east coast of Mexico into the Texas Gulf Coast. And the new Aero Commander cost a bundle, I don’t even know how much; the florist shop; the money I’m spending out at the new ranch building an airstrip, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and more barns; horses, I bought a stud named Texas Gold for fifty grand; this car; a tractor… The list of properties, new toys, and projects goes on and on. To say nothing of the thousands I drop in restaurants and bars and hotels on a daily basis.
It’s madness, I know, but I don’t seem to be able to stop. The truth is, I am addicted to spending money. This compulsion to buy things must come from some deep-seated childhood insecurity, trauma caused by hearing my parents’ fights over money—even th
ough, by most standards, we were well off. And from growing up in the land of TV commercials, billboards, magazine ads, radio jingles drumming the notion that happiness in America means material things: cars, homes, clothes, jewelry, toys, and more crap we don’t need. The sense I got as a child was that my father was a failure because there was never enough money to keep up with the neighbors and satisfy my mother’s desires. We lived above our means. At a time when most American moms stayed at home with the kids, Mary went to work.
My grandmother, Ba Ba, moved into the third-floor apartment in the rambling Colonial house in the Cliff Estates and became my guardian. She would be at home, my only authoritarian presence, when I came in from school. I loved her but I feared her and resented her strict discipline. Even now, thinking of her, I miss her and wonder if I might have turned out differently if I had obeyed her. Before we moved to the big house in Wellesley, we lived in a housing development in neighboring Natick. I remember once when I couldn’t have been much more than seven or eight, I was out front trying to cut the grass, struggling to push a hand mower. A couple of the local housewives passed by taking their babies for a stroll. When they saw me wrestling with the lawn mower, they laughed and said that was something my father should be doing. Wasn’t I a little young to be trying to mow the lawn by myself? No one had told me to do it. I just thought I’d give it a try to impress my dad. Their laughter and comments hurt. I gave up and went inside to sulk. The old man was probably off playing a round of golf. A pattern was established: me trying to do what I thought the man of the house was supposed to do, be tough and strong. Do the man’s work and provide and provide and over-provide, which amounts to spoiling. In Texas when we go shopping, we rent a U-Haul truck to bring all the stuff back to the ranch.
The road out of Austin is straight and deserted this time of night. Jonathan Livingston Seagull is uncommonly quiet. Something is on his mind. His boot is heavy on the pedal. The speedometer climbs past eighty, ninety, ninety-five. Small towns shuttered for the night flash past. The radio is on, low rock music on the Austin stations and country once we get out toward Lampasas. This is the land of Willie and Waylon. The dashboard glows red and green. Minimal amount of contraband in the car. Ten, twelve grand in cash. The profile solid once the Seagull removes his cowboy hat. As the rush subsides and my mind comes back from chasing down the THC runaway trains of thought, I’m pleasantly high and able to relax for the first time in weeks.
Short-lived. There is definitely something troubling the Seagull. It’s not like him to be so still and meditative. “How’d you make out?” I ask him.
He loses it, suddenly chokes up, teary-eyed. The car swerves to avoid hitting a whitetail deer bounding across the road. “Whoa!” I shout. “Slow down! What the fuck’s the matter with you?”
He’s shaking his head. Slobbering. “I don’t know… I don’t know what to do.”
Not another one. After Biff’s meltdown, I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never seen Jonathan show emotion like this before. He’s one of those apparently supremely confident men who doesn’t walk, he strides. Chest puffed out to diminish the girth of his waistline, arms swinging at his side, leaning into the next challenge. Always in control—or so he would have the world believe. Lives for the flash. He’s maybe five or six years older than me, paunchy, with thick, dark hair and sharp, Semitic features. His beaklike nose in part contributed to the nickname. I’m sure it rankles that he’s been reduced to working for me even if he’s making more tax-free money than he ever did with a straight job.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s all so fucked up.”
“What?” My first thought is that he’s been busted and ratted me out. A massive attack of fear and paranoia grips me. The Feds know everything. They got to Jonathan and he gave me up. “What the fuck is wrong? Tell me.”
“That key you gave me, to the stash house…”
“Slow down. You’re all over the road. You want me to drive?”
“Somehow… I followed your directions, but I got messed up and ended up at another house.” He begins a story that at first I find hard to believe. “When I put the key in the lock, the door opened. Maybe it was unlocked, I don’t know. Anyway… I went in. I figured it had to be the right place even though there were kid’s toys around, and… things… stuff I couldn’t… I didn’t understand why it would be in a house you rented. I figured maybe you were doing it for show, so the neighbors wouldn’t be suspicious. Anyway, I sat down and turned on the TV. Ate some leftovers in the fridge—which also seemed weird, meat, ribs, not the kind of food you usually eat. I thought maybe JD or Father Flaherty had been staying there. I was asleep on the sofa when the real owner came home from work.”
I almost laugh. This is beginning to sound like something out of “Little Red Riding Hood”: Who’s been eating my food? Who’s that sleeping on my couch?
“You’re kidding.”
“No, honest. I know—it’s crazy. It gets… crazier. The owner, she’s… ah…” He mumbles something about tits.“… great tits. Well, I…”
“Come on, out with it.”
I’m enjoying the story until he blurts out, “I moved in with her.”
“Hold it. Run that by me again.”
“I moved in. I’m living with her.”
“Get the fuck out of here!”
“She’s divorced. Got two little kids. Wait’ll you see her. She looks like a Playboy centerfold. Fucking incredible. A body like… you can’t imagine. Great tits,” he repeats as if that will somehow make it okay.
The woman comes home from work, she finds the Seagull perched on her sofa sound asleep, having chowed down on the leftovers in her fridge. Does she throw him out? Call the cops? No, once they both get over the initial shock, she invites him to stay for dinner. After putting the kids to bed, they end up fucking on the living room floor. And the next day, instead of moving into the stash house, he moves in with her.
This has got to be Texas.
All that would be fine if he weren’t married. And to my wife’s sister. After I hear the whole story, two thoughts immediately present themselves: Does his wife, Avril, know? And: Does the divorcée he is infatuated with know what business we are in?
“I found an airstrip,” he tells me as if to mollify my growing apprehension.
“Does Avril know?”
The mention of his wife’s name brings on more grief. But he prevaricates. “She took me to dinner at her golf club. And there I am eating, meeting her friends. I look out the window at this paved, forty-five-hundred-foot strip.”
“Does your wife know?”
He starts to blather again. I know, he doesn’t need to answer. He’s a compulsive confessor. This would be bad enough even without the fact that Avril and my wife, Anaïs, own two homes and a business together in Toronto. They have been laundering millions of dollars in Canadian money and both have intimate knowledge of years of illegal activity. Anaïs and I split up when I proved incapable of giving up the outlaw life. We never had kids, which was a big part of our disconnect. She refused to get pregnant as long as I was still in the game. The love-making became a kind of unspoken negotiation: You want to get righteously fucked, throw out the condoms and the diaphragm, you want to feel my cunt like a silken glove clutching your cock and massaging it all the way up the uterus into the seat of creation? You want little Rickys and little Rickettes bouncing on your knee? Ain’t gonna happen, son, not in the visiting room at some godforsaken prison.
Things came to a head after I nearly got busted and lost a load of pot in a disastrous smuggle. We were living on Cape Cod. I had successfully off-loaded three thousand pounds of Jamaican ganja from a private yacht and put it on the road in a rented box truck. The driver and his friend had detailed instructions and a hand-drawn map showing them the exact route to take from the off-load site to the stash house. Along the way they had a run-in with a local cop on patrol. It was never made clear to me exactly what happened. The driver ran a s
top sign, panicked, and took off. They made a couple of wrong turns with the cop’s cruiser in pursuit, lights flashing, siren wailing, the truck speeding up a street the driver had been told specifically not to use for the good reason that there is an arched stone underpass along that road, an old-time granite bridge that was a good six to ten inches too low for the truck to pass beneath. The roof of the truck hit the granite arch of the bridge and peeled back like the lid on a tin of sardines. Bales of pot ripped open and spewed buds all over the road. The truck hit with such force the guy riding shotgun was knocked unconscious when his head struck the windshield. The truck wrenched to a stop in the mouth of the bridge so abruptly the cop nearly crashed into the rear. His cruiser skidded to a stop as buds of ganja rained down on him from the hole ripped in the top of the box like ticker tape, blossoms of evidentiary manna from the great arbiter in the sky.
Lose your cool, lose your load. Leave your mind behind. Probable cause? Why, yes, Your Honor. Contraband, vegetable matter suspected Schedule One controlled substance, i.e. marijuana, exploded from the rear of the truck when it hit the bridge. I immediately radioed for backup and proceeded to arrest the individual lying unconscious in the cab of the vehicle.
The driver fled. He darted out the other side of the bridge, ran all the way to the stash house where I was waiting with my friend, the cousin of my childhood buddy from back in Pink Rats days, who had sold the first kilos I smuggled as a college kid. Trouble was, in his haste to beat feet, the driver left the map to the stash house, and the phone number with the notation, “Rick,” in the truck. Everyone split. When the cops showed up, the stash house was empty. The guy who got caught in the crashed truck held his mud. We paid for an attorney, my friend Hef, who negotiated a plea down to two years; the guy was in a halfway house in six months. I lost most of my money and picked up some Heat. Anaïs insisted I quit the business. It became her mantra: “It’s me or smuggling dope.” We bought a three-family home in Provincetown, way out on the tip of Cape Cod. She was ready to settle down, get legally married and have a family. I could make a decent living as a carpenter, she reasoned, maybe start our own small construction company, and we would have income from renting the two apartments, save some dough and buy another place, fix it up, flip it. It sounded like a plan.
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