Party Time_Raving Arizona

by Shaun Attwood

  ‘Something like that.’

  My crew laughs. Moonlight glimmers off their guns.

  ‘You’re wasting your time out here. This records’ business is such a pity. I tried to show you guys a good time and now you’re trying to hold me accountable for something I didn’t even do.’

  ‘You did show us a good time,’ Leon says meekly. ‘We go all over the country and people give Keoki drugs everywhere – a line here, an eight ball there – but we’ve never seen anyone hand out drugs like you. He loves your after-parties. That’s why we always stay for days on end.’

  Mari steps forward, holding an Uzi, and points it at Leon. ‘Look, motherfucker, Shaun, Skinner, none of us have Keoki’s fucking records.’

  ‘I know but—’

  ‘Just give me an excuse to shoot you, bitch!’ Mari says, jerking the gun in his face. ‘If it wasn’t for Hotwheelz, I woulda put a hole in your sorry ass last time you was out here.’ Mari pauses for a few seconds as if deciding whether to shoot.

  Jaxson emits the type of husky laugh only possible after years of smoking drugs. We all laugh, except for Leon.

  Mari puts the Uzi to her side. ‘I’m sick of you and Keoki calling my house and leaving messages. It’s got to the point where I’ve had to turn my answering machine off. And Shaun’s receiving a lotta threatening phone calls from you guys. Now you show up in Phoenix, what’re we supposed to think? Do you realise what I could do to you right now?’

  ‘I realise.’ Leon’s voice says he is close to breaking point. ‘It was a fucked-up idea of Keoki’s sending me out here in the first place. This is your town. I just gave Keoki my word I’d come, so I did. I’m not looking for any trouble.’

  ‘Get your ass back to LA,’ I say, feeling sorry for him, ‘and tell Keoki what’s happened.’

  ‘And tell Keoki we’re not gonna be so polite to the next person he sends,’ Mari says.

  The threatening phone calls stop. Months later, a raver employed by a hotel reports that his manager found records in a room and gave them to Scottsdale police. We investigate the lead. They were found in a room registered to Keoki. He was so high that day, he’d forgotten where he’d left them. I arrange for their return and he apologises.

  Chapter 38

  By 1998, I’ve mediated disputes between various factions in the rave scene and incorporated them into my organisation. I host a crime-family dinner at a steakhouse each month, attended by the heads of each faction. Each head has a separate sales force – mostly people with no previous convictions, all covered by legal benefits and briefed on how to deal with the cops.

  But as 1998 progresses, a new breed of Ecstasy dealer disrupts my monopoly. They’re mostly jocks with tanned bodies bulked-up on steroids, their hair buzzed at the sides and slicked back or spiked on top, the type of people more associated with Gold’s Gym or Venice Beach than the rave scene. They penetrate my parties and proliferate. They invade Scottsdale nightclubs such as Axis/Radius and use them as strongholds for their operations.

  Despite my extensive contacts, I have no success finding out who they’re working for. My only clue is their pills, not the beige or white presses from Amsterdam but coloured pills manufactured domestically and peddled in major US cities, often cut with other ingredients. With so many locals working for me, I’m confident of getting to the bottom of things.

  Amy is asked by a girlfriend to introduce me to the girl’s boyfriend, Spaniard. Because he sounds like one of the new breed of Ecstasy dealers, I agree. I take one of my bouncers, Rossetti, a tall, strong local with a moustache, always stomping around with too much energy.

  In the parking lot at Heart 5, a bar in Tucson, I drink a cap of GHB to become fearless. ‘Rossetti, while I talk to Spaniard, make sure you’re always somewhere you can pull your gun in case they try to kidnap me. I’m not going to start any shit, but who knows how big a crew he’s with or what might happen.’

  ‘No problem. If they try anything, I’ll open up on the motherfuckers.’

  Inside, I kiss Amy at the bar. ‘Can I have some G, too?’ she asks.

  I take her to the car to sip GHB, go back inside and order drinks.

  Minutes later, a 6 1/2-foot man with dark spiky hair and biceps as broad as my neck taps my shoulder. ‘I’m Mark, Spaniard’s partner. He wants to see you in the VIP area.’

  Intimidated, I look at Amy as if to say, What the hell have you got me into?

  ‘They’re not going to start any trouble,’ Amy says confidently. ‘It’s OK. I know them. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK, Mark.’ I shake his hand and follow him.

  ‘Glad you came, English Shaun,’ says Spaniard, a well-groomed Hispanic. ‘Mark, clear that sofa so we can all sit down.’

  ‘You need to move so we can sit down!’ Mark yells.

  The people on the sofa jump up. To the side of us, Rossetti slips into the VIP area.

  As I sit down between the two of them, the GHB jolts my brain, making me playful and crazy. Just like my grandfather Fred used to do to me, I squeeze their legs above the knee. ‘So, what’s this all about?’

  They’re taken aback for a few seconds, until Spaniard laughs and says in a friendly voice, ‘Look, we know you’re doing your own thing. You’ve got a lotta people working for you. As do we. It would be best if we worked together rather than be enemies.’

  ‘What’re you proposing?’ I ask, nearly always capable of negotiating business, no matter how high I am.

  ‘We’re getting a lotta pills, and we figure we can give you a better price than what you’re paying.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m paying. I’m familiar with your pill, and I don’t think the quality is there. I’m getting European pills. None of the coloured pills you guys are getting.’

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, talking shit about our pills?!’ Mark yells.

  Because of the GHB, Mark seems like a dinosaur with a little brain and doesn’t scare me.

  ‘Hey, Mark, calm down,’ Spaniard says.

  ‘Do you have any idea who Jimmy Moran is?’ Mark asks, fuming.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Sammy “the Bull” Gravano,’ Mark says. ‘That’s who we work for. One call to him and we can have you taken out to the desert.’

  I know about Sammy the Bull from the news. He had been the underboss of the Gambino crime family, run by John Gotti, aka ‘the Teflon Don’, so-called because no charges ever stuck to him. In 1991, Sammy the Bull became the highest-ranking member of the Mafia to turn FBI informant. He confessed to murdering nineteen people and helped put the Teflon Don in prison for life. The Feds dropped the murder charges and gave Gravano a five-year sentence for racketeering. Time served, he ended up with a new identity, living in Tempe under the Witness Protection Program. He was soon recognised and even gave media interviews. He told Howard Blum, who interviewed him for Vanity Fair:

  They send a hit team down, I’ll kill them. They better not miss, because even if they get me, there will still be a lot of body bags going back to New York. I’m not afraid. I don’t have it in me. I’m too detached maybe. If it happens, fuck it. A bullet in the head is pretty quick. You go like that! It’s better than cancer. I’m not meeting you in Montana on some fuckin’ farm. I’m not sitting here like some jerk-off with a phony beard. I’ll tell you something else: I’m a fuckin’ pro. If someone comes to my house, I got a few little surprises for them. Even if they win, there might be surprises.

  Jesus! My life’s turning into a mobster movie. That’s a heavyweight name – but still, looking at these guys in their shiny leopard-print shirts, I bet they don’t have as much power in Arizona as my associates in the New Mexican Mafia. I glance at Rossetti. The look on his face says, Should I shoot that lunkhead or what? Almost imperceptibly, I shake my head.

  ‘There’s no need to say all that,’ Spaniard says. ‘Forgive Mark, Shaun. He gets upset real easy. He’s a bit of a hothead.’

  ‘I have no problems with you guys, but I really don’t car
e who you work for. You just moved in. Over the years, I’ve made friends with a lot of locals,’ I say, insinuating my connection with the New Mexican Mafia.

  ‘I hear you,’ Spaniard says, implying he knows of the relationship. ‘But what if we can get you a better price on pills, would you be interested?’

  ‘I appreciate the offer, guys, but no thanks. And here’s why: before you guys moved into Ecstasy, the police pretty much ignored us. Now your runners are going around bragging they’re the biggest Ecstasy barons in the world. That’s brought considerable heat to the scene. And I’m not saying this to put you guys down, but to give you a heads-up on what’s happening. Every weekend at the raves, we’ve got undercover cops and vehicles hanging around. We’ve got undercover vehicles taping who’s going in and out of the raves, driving through the parking lots taping licence plates. It’s no coincidence that the police moved in shortly after you guys. It’s not each other’s crews we need to beware of, it’s the cops.’

  ‘What about your security team?’ Spaniard asks.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Will our runners have problems with your security guys jacking their pills?’

  ‘I don’t want to start a war with you guys. If my security grab someone and we find out they’re part of your crew, we’ll let them go. Ecstasy’s so hard to get and the demand so high, there’s enough of a market for us to coexist. But if I tell my security not to jack your runners, I don’t expect any problems from you guys for my runners in the Scottsdale scene.’

  ‘Sounds like a good agreement.’ Spaniard shakes my hand.

  Back in the bar, I’m shocked to find Amy unconscious on a sofa from drinking too much GHB. Rossetti and I carry her out like a dead body.

  Resting Amy on the passenger seat, Rossetti asks, ‘What went down?’

  ‘Finally found out who they work for,’ I say.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sammy “the Bull” Gravano.’

  ‘Holy shit!’ Rossetti frowns. ‘Those Italian Mafia dudes don’t fuck around!’

  ‘They tried to sell me pills. I don’t trust them or their pills, so I said no.’

  ‘Do you think that’ll start a war?’ Rossetti asks, his eyes wide.

  ‘Maybe not right away, but sooner or later it very well could, yes.’

  Chapter 39

  ‘I wanna throw the biggest rave ever seen in Arizona,’ says Josh – a short student with pimples whose brow and features are set too close together, as if his face was slightly crushed at birth. He’s sitting next to Acid Joey in the Blue Room.

  ‘What’re you proposing, Josh?’ I ask, studying his body language.

  ‘I threw a party on Halloween,’ Josh says, his eyes lighting up. ‘Look how many people showed up! Imagine how many people will show up on New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘I agree. New Year’s Eve makes good business sense. But just ’cause you’ve had one success, doesn’t guarantee another. Ravers here are fickle. How much are you looking for?’

  ‘A hundred gees.’

  My laughter rips the confidence off his face. ‘I admire your big goals, Josh, but if you spend that much on an Arizona party, there’s no way any of us will make any money. You’ll get two or three thousand to show up. This isn’t LA. You need to downscale your business plan.’ Either his expectations are unrealistic or he’s highballing me, hoping for a lesser sum.

  ‘It won’t just be an Arizona party,’ Josh says, regaining his enthusiasm. ‘We’ll advertise it in LA and the neighbouring states. It’ll be like a rave festival. We’ll have a campsite. There’s gonna be five stages and over a hundred DJs. The headliners are gonna be Chris Liberator and Dave The Drummer, and they cost ten grand to come out.’

  ‘How much are tickets going to be?’

  ‘Thirty dollars, plus five to park, plus water sales.’

  30 x 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 … = $30,000, $60,000, $90,000 … ‘What’s the location?’

  ‘A cowboy ranch an hour or so north of Phoenix.’

  ‘What police jurisdiction?’

  ‘Just some bumpkin local cops. We make a donation, they leave us alone.’

  ‘I like the sound of that, too. You understand for me to invest in this you’ll be obligated to use my security team?’

  ‘I’ve explained all that to him,’ Acid Joey says. ‘It’s the first requirement of the Bank of England.’

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘If 2,000 show up at thirty a head, that’s sixty grand, so the most I’m willing to invest is fifty thou. The gate money should cover that.’

  ‘What if you invest that and I find some other investors to put in the balance?’

  ‘I have a problem with that,’ I say, furrowing my brow. ‘In the stock market that’s called diluting someone’s investment. If you run the bills up to a hundred grand, how will I get my investment back if only a few thousand ravers pay to get in? There’ll be nothing left over. My advice to you is to halve the party in size. You don’t need a hundred DJs. Take my money and make the most of it.’

  ‘But I’m convinced I can get five to ten thousand people if I get all these DJs booked.’

  ‘You saw how many people showed up for his last party,’ Acid Joey says.

  ‘If you want to get other investors, then I’m going to have to add some conditions to protect my capital. As people come into the party, I want half of the door money as it comes in. That means you can only use half the door money to pay debts that you owe on the night, DJs and stuff. The other half goes to me. Then if you go over budget and there’s not enough money to pay everyone on the night, that’s your problem, not mine.’

  ‘That’s fine. I just don’t see that happening,’ Josh says.

  ‘Well, if it does, just bear in mind, reneging on what we’ve agreed to today is going to carry some serious consequences.’

  ‘He knows,’ Acid Joey says.

  I ask Marcello and Primo, the club-kid couple, to help promote the party, keep an eye on Josh, keep the costs down and, on the night, secure half of the take. A few months before the party, the headliners complain they haven’t received their deposits or flight tickets. I FedEx them cash, but concerns remain about Josh.

  The day of the party, ravers from all over the American Southwest pitch tents at the ranch. Hotwheelz flies to Phoenix with 4,000 hits of Ecstasy with Teletubbies stamped on them. Hoping to offset any loss on the party with profit from Ecstasy, I send my sales force early to solicit the campers.

  I no longer risk going to parties when they start. My workers – dealers, bouncers, scouts – operate as my eyes and detect any threats: undercover cops, drug rivals, loose cannons such as Gangsta Dan. The reports from the party are positive. Attendance is high. Everyone’s having a great time. Cash is building up fast from Ecstasy sales. Although pleased, I hear nothing from Josh, Marcello or Primo, which is worrying. They’re probably way too busy to touch base. Everything’s running smoothly. It’ll be an easy night.

  Around 11 p.m. and in high spirits, Hotwheelz and I set off from a Scottsdale Hilton villa in a limo full of glitter girls. The limo shoots up the freeway and wobbles over a dirt road to the ranch. Near the entrance, I spot Primo amid a swarm of ravers, and thousands more in bright clothes spread across the ranch. Yes! Excitement charges through me.

  I lower the window. ‘Primo!’

  He turns to me, his expression haggard, defeated.

  Oh no!

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Primo asks, his face twitching, eyes darting. ‘We’ve been fighting people off all night who’ve been trying to get your money. As soon as you get the money off Marcello, we’re out of here. It’s fucking chaos. It’s Josh’s fault.’

  ‘How so? Look at all these people! I’ve never seen so many at an Arizona rave.’

  ‘There’s probably over 5,000, but somehow Josh still owes a bunch.’

  My excitement collapses. It’s not going to be an easy night. My mind speeds up to take charge. ‘That’s crazy.’ I tell the limo driver to keep going. We bob and
jerk over the desert like a boat in a storm until he refuses to go any further.

  Hotwheelz picks up a crate of records and sets off for a stage. I follow, eager to find Cody. Hotwheelz puts his records down and starts dancing. A raver whirls towards Hotwheelz and cracks him in the jaw – thwack! – knocking him onto the dirt. The raver pulses on his feet like a boxer, his eyes going in and out of focus, shrieking, cackling. Hotwheelz leaps up and kicks, but the raver runs away.

  I hurry to Hotwheelz. ‘You all right?’

  ‘What a wanker!’ Hotwheelz says.

  ‘There’s never any violence at raves,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. That guy looked mental.’

  Hotwheelz strokes his jaw, checking for damage.

  Acid Joey and more bouncers circle Hotwheelz. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Some wanker just came up behind me and whacked me here.’ Hotwheelz taps his chin.

  ‘What did he look like?’ Acid Joey asks.

  ‘A fucking curly-haired bloke cackling like a hyena. I don’t know what the fuck that was all about.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find him,’ Acid Joey says.

  Unfortunately, the raver punches a girl in view of the ranchers who own the land, patrolling on horseback, packing shotguns.

  ‘You don’t treat gurls like that round here,’ a rancher drawls.

  Another swings a rope. ‘We’ll hand him over to the sheriff.’

  They lasso and hogtie the raver and drag him out of sight. Acid Joey checks on the girl.

  Cody appears with Marcello and a sports bag full of cash: half the gate money.

  ‘You don’t know what we went through to hold onto that money. Me and Primo are leaving you to deal with Josh’s mess.’ Marcello disappears.

  ‘What’s going on, Cody?’ I ask.

  ‘Josh’s people are all camped out at the ranch house. They used the other half of the gate money to pay down their debts, but they still owe a bunch of people. DJs and their managers are complaining. Josh’s people are telling them that we’re holding onto all the money. He’s blaming you.’

  Anger burns my face. ‘Josh agreed to give me half the money. If we’ve secured that money, that’s our money. How’s Ecstasy sales?’