Rivers of Gold Read online

  Don’t ask why, she said when she told me she was leaving. Less than a year after the crash, she was gone.

  I keep this photo here at my mother’s, where it’s safe. I destroyed all the others.

  I’ve shown Ma my apartment, of course. I come out and check on her on a regular basis—say, once a month, or when I feel some sudden irrational need to visit Queens, like now. I still can’t believe Eyad’s dead.

  After extricating myself from the family homestead, I flag down the first hack I see. It’s a big roomy Toyota Shorthorn—you’d call it a Sienna. One thing about Queens: There’s no shortage of fucking cabdrivers.

  Afternoons are for Acceleration. The recovery from the previous night’s excesses, the anticipation of more come evening—this is my Prep Time.

  First, break up the shipment. I never carry the whole load, because if you get nailed, it’s better to be below the minimum for a distribution charge. I keep several extra disk cases for transport on hand at all times. I check in with Reza via a coded message and await his response. This will be the location of my pickup driver, in whose cab I’ll stash the Specials. This driver hangs around the speak I’m working, to be summoned by me when I’ve made contact with a client and secured payment. I send a text message to the driver (easier to code and therefore harder to trace than an actual call), who arrives with a presorted amount of product ready to go to the customer, and they go for a short ride. The client gets his purchase, the driver makes a few bucks, and I’m nowhere near the switch. A clean deal for me, and even cleaner for Reza. The only one at risk is the cabbie, and no one thinks about the cabbies. Since Reza started operating, we’ve never lost a shipment or a cabbie to the TLC or NYPD. It’s a sound system for these unsound times.

  I whack up the shipment three ways: one half, two quarters. Half goes into my stash box upstairs. One quarter goes into a DVD box to give to the driver once I call him. The remainder I stash in the suit hanging on my inside closet door, the one I wore the previous night. Then I mix myself a perfect Manhattan, fire up a fresh Davidoff, and start calling my clients. I don’t want to think about what happened to Eyad.

  It’s only about half an hour before I have the first quarter accounted for (you don’t actually offer Product over the phone, you just ask if someone will be where you are later, nothing illegal about that). Then I start to lay out my route. The first stops of the evening are in Williamsburg, of course, making the rounds of the legit bars near the busy corner of Manhattan and Driggs avenues, along with a couple of tonight’s adjacent speaks. Since the speaks are rarely in the same place twice, and are always a minimalist affair (the less to leave behind in case of a raid), they’re generally set up near legitimate bars, in order to draw off their clientele. I send Reza a Google Maps snapshot of the area so he can arrange for a driver and a password, which I will have in my phone before arriving on site. If I need to resupply, this driver will be on hand for a quick trip to my crib, just long enough for me to tank up on Specials and get back to the action. Reza can switch out the cabdrivers at any time, though, so it pays to keep an eye on my phone.

  It may not seem like the best system to you, but it’s been goddamn effective. My record is two whole Fast Forties in one marathon night that began at the close of one wild stock market session (one of my clients called it Triple Witch or something) on a Friday afternoon and continued until noon the next day. I was on nicotine, alcohol, and adrenaline for a full twenty-four, and I gave Reza every dollar before I crashed. A breakthrough moment in our relationship: He gave me my Jaquet Droz watch on top of my commission as a reward. I went home and slept for sixteen hours.

  Since then I’ve enjoyed a much better rapport with Reza, if not the rest of his crew. I don’t really know how many people Reza has working for him. I try not to ask too many questions, or spend more time socializing with his other employees than necessary for appearances. Some, like Arun, are easy enough to get along with. But there’s something about the guys Reza keeps around his office that makes me uneasy. I made the mistake of drinking with them once, and it took me two days to straighten out afterward. They speak something Slavic-sounding, Polish or Russian, and they smoke like chimneys.

  The office heavies and the cabbies—all these people are labor. Guys like the Prince and I, we’re management. We cultivate the clientele and maintain the supply chain. We look the part, we dress and speak well enough to put the appropriate window dressing on Reza’s operation. It’s a living. It’s also a hell of a lot more streamlined than fashion photography. You get an assignment, you have your quota, you meet your numbers. There’s little room for complaint and no margin for error; either you bring Reza the money or you don’t.

  Which is why I can’t stop thinking of Eyad. No one’s ever stolen from Reza, I don’t know why they’d even bother. There’s plenty of money in his operation to go around, and you get out of it exactly what you put into it. That’s why I’m at this level, and haven’t risen up to where Prince William is. The difference between him and me is, he knows he wants to do this for a living. I don’t see this as a long-term career. There’s other things I’d like to be doing, and none of them involves cabbies being tortured and murdered. Of course, they don’t involve Fast Forties, either, and they don’t pay what Reza does. And I need the money, it’s as simple as that. The fashion gigs pay well, but that’s a high-bullshit-factor business, and the more time goes by, the more magazines, designers, and stores go under. It’s just too choppy to stake my whole life on. Reza’s brand of product, however, always seems to be in demand.

  I know I could do more for him. He could use an organizer, someone who’s come up through the ranks and knows his system, someone he can trust. Someone whose services command more than the ten percent he pays me now. I’m just not sure it should be me.

  Another half hour sees the second quarter of the shipment accounted for, this time with the Downward Spiral crowd on the LES. I’m not as big a fan of this scene as perhaps I should be, it being full of colleagues from the photo trade, but the scene is too druggy, too much coke and smack. Does that sound strange coming from me? It shouldn’t. I don’t use drugs, period. Why take the risk? Hard-core drug abusers are notoriously unstable, lack judgment, and call attention to themselves in the stupidest of ways. This crowd is too jaded, too numbed, too burnt and therefore always Looking For More. What’s more, the fortunes of this crowd are as unstable as their personalities. My clientele (carefully built up over time) consists of more Level Heads (which, if they desire expansion, do so in a discreet manner and controlled atmosphere; I’m not tossing out handfuls of pills to the concert crowd at the McCarren Park Pool) and the Financially Secure (no arguing with broke junkies for me, thank you). This is how I can shift Fast Forties as quickly and smoothly as I do. This is why Reza likes me.

  That and the fact that I’ve never stolen from him. (Eyad, you didn’t, did you?)

  The final half is arranged while I’m drying off from the shower, my second (or is it third?) Manhattan sweating in its crystal prison, the first butt of the second half of the pack smoldering in my Jensen ashtray. This is the Capitale crowd, which will be out in force tonight at Le Yef as I suspected. This being the richest crowd, it is my favorite, at least for business.

  Clean, dressed, and properly primed for the evening, I call Reza’s driver. I never know who it is until they show up. I almost wish it were Arun. A bad day’s turned out for the best after all.

  —Brooklyn Heights has too many Russians now, Dagmara replies to someone’s suggestion.

  We’re in Punch & Judy’s on the LES (one of the few remaining legitimate bars whose owner lucked out with a good long lease, and who wisely invested his profits in security when the city began its tailspin), a welcome break from the gritter bars and speaks I’ve had to trammel through lo these past few hours. It was a great relief to connect with this bunch while I was making my rounds, even if it means I have to endure Dagmara’s eternal whining about Where To Move.

  Dagmar
a is Polish, and carries her history like a sea anchor around her neck. She’s from some region that’s changed hands innumerable times between Poland, Russia, Prussia, the fucking Austro-Hungarian Empire, the fucking Nazis … honestly, she can go on all night about it (and does). It’s completely out of place in New York, and in America, for Christ’s sake. People come here to leave behind the prejudices of their dismal home countries, not carry them around like some diseased badge of pride. America in general and New York in particular provide an escape from history, a refuge from all the bad blood of a thousand faceless generations that have nothing at all to do with who you are and what you’re doing here now. I never understood why people at NYU wasted their time taking history, packing into the Erich Maria Remarque Center on Fridays for wacky old Professor Judt’s lectures. Why study history when you can live it?

  —What’s wrong with Russians? somebody says.

  —You obviously don’t know about the history between Poles and Russians, Dagmara says with that half-smile, half-sneer so common to Slavic women that makes her (despite her golden tresses, ice-blue eyes, and lithe figure) a cold fish to me.

  —What about near Park Slope? You know, out by Green-Wood Cemetery by the highway? It’s cheaper there, someone else says.

  Dagmara shakes her head with exaggerated sadness.

  —Too many Serbs, she says.

  —So forget Brooklyn. Try the Bronx. Arthur Avenue, somebody else says.

  Dagmara gives that contributor a withering, jaw-agape-beneath-the-eyebrows stare.

  —And live with a bunch of Albanians? Don’t be ridiculous, she scoffs, obviously Above It All. (Playing haughty, while a favorite pastime of her and scores of women like her, only underscores the extent of her hypocrisy. Her fallen-aristocrat posturing isn’t even ridiculous enough to be pathetic. Like she’s never traded blow jobs for blow in the men’s-room stalls at the Oberon. Kiss my crown jewels, principessa.)

  I’d be paying more attention to the details of this group and its other members, but I’ve got a nice easy buzz going by this point, and I’ve become quite fixated on Dagmara’s new friend N. Now this is a woman I can handle. She has the tawny pelt and leonine features of the best Boricua beauties, while her full, slightly pouting lips and silky smooth brown hide belie a hint of African blood. She wears a simple, almost Grecian-style tunic of a shade complementary to her skin, and which drapes itself in succulently Baroque formations around her perfectly proportioned promontories. Hispanicus Afro-Caribbeanensis divinae. The rest of the crowd is lost on me. We are in our own room, sharing our own language, she and I, now. When she taps a fresh Dunhill on the box I’m ready with my Peretti, and we slide outside. When Dagmara first introduced us, she said she’d picked N up on the Brooklyn supper club circuit. She can’t mean they’re together, surely. N is a cool, masterfully composed facade banking fires I sense emanating from within. Dagmara is all coldness and complaint. Never happen. Most likely they just shared a cab from one of the supper clubs, which started springing up a couple years ago as the great wave of restaurant failures that began in ’10 started to surge. Since no one other than a handful of chefs with the richest backers could afford to rent spaces anymore, the chefs just started up illegal supper clubs, held wherever they could bribe the landlord for a night. If you know someone who can get you on a list, you get a number the morning of, you call that night for the location, then show up and pay at the door, cash only.

  Actually, the speaks operate on basically the same principle, only with a cash bar, and with entrepreneurs like me plying the currents of the chemical trade in innocent yellow taxis. The chef calculates his fees based on his operating costs for the night (including bribes). A savvy landlord might host several different clubs (or speaks) per week, and will keep at least one gas or water line working for that purpose. Everybody wins. Since the brick-and-mortar economy priced itself clear out of reach, the floating economy’s grown at breakneck speed. No need for corporations and contracts and codes and leases loaded with legalese. That’s the old economy. Ours is a young economy, and it has plenty of room to grow. That’s what worries me.

  But here, now, with N, thoughts of the macro get very much micro. N’s dress follows every curve, plane, and peak of her body, her smooth, muscled legs encased in saddle-colored harness-style boots (my god, this girl). Getting her to come with me to Le Yef is a small matter. So sorry, Dagmara dear, it’s plus-one only, I’ll get you in next time, promise.

  —That was artfully done, N says in a low-timbred, slightly husky voice that makes my cock thicken and roll around in my pants like some large animal waking up from a nap. Once we’re outside, I spot a Toyota Jersey slowing for a trio of loud out-of-towners too drunk to score and grab N’s hand (that first touch, the first physical contact of the evening, there’s nothing like it, no chemical can duplicate it, no photograph can convey the jolt and rush) and pull open the door on the opposite side from the drunken porkers, who realize too late what’s happening as I give orders to the driver in my best Level-and-Decisive. We’re lucky; the legless muffin-tops only hurl curses as we take off (well, one of them’s throwing up on another one now, anyway). A quick check of the driver and his hack license to make sure he’s not one of Reza’s. (It’s always awkward to run into one socially. You don’t want too much recognition, it might shed light on the business—or so Reza says.) All’s well, and I can turn my full attention to the goddess sitting next to me with the wryest of smiles, leaning her head on one index finger, the overheads along Houston Street giving her an otherworldly halo (my god, this girl).

  —Is this sort of thing typical for you? she says.

  Is it her voice, or her self-assurance, that are sounding an echo of X in me?

  —Only on Mondays, I reply, trying to edge just a little bit closer. This is the tricky bit: trying to convey maximum interest while still appearing aloof. Our game is all about appearances. Did you really meet Dagmara at a supper club?

  —Are you really just a photographer?

  —I really am. But then I’m so much more, too.

  She laughs, a pearly peal of fine teeth draped in shades of coral velvet. I feel a flush of relief up the sides of my ribcage. Laughter is the fulcrum on which the lever of seduction turns.

  There’s a deliciously full silence as her laughter dies down and we gaze into each others’ eyes. Very slowly, gently, and deliberately, I place my left hand over her right one.

  I’m counting the seconds in my mind, feeling each one pound through my ears and gums, when I feel her fingers (strong, supple fingers that promise many tactile talents) lace themselves to mine. She does The Drop, that utterly feminine gesture of dropping her head, releasing a stifled laugh as a puff of air caught in a smile, and looking away, running her free hand through her hair.

  Traci, Dagmara.

  Tonight’s incarnation of Le Yef is at the top of the old Toy Building on Madison Square on the western edge of the axial mess where Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and Twenty-third Street skewer each other. At the southern end is the Flatiron Building, indomitable even in its coat of soot and grime, defiantly proclaiming its survival in this as in other Bad Times. Along its eastern edge running north is Madison Square, once home to open-air U.S. Open broadcasts, Pakistani parades, absurd lines for designer hot dogs, Tagalog death-metal concerts, and a dog run that was once one of the most pedigreed puppy pens in town. Now that the corporations bordering its rim have collapsed, as have the attempts to turn their shells into luxury housing, all that is left are cracked hexagonal paving stones and weed-choked flowerbeds in which vagrants (driven mad by the communal bottles of paint thinner passed around the benches by the bus stops at the north end of the park) pretend to swim. The best time to be here is toward sunset on a very late afternoon (at rooftop level, of course; you wouldn’t want to be near the park after dark), when the western facade of the former New York Life Insurance building (since taken over by the same Arab company that bought the one that bought Barneys) turns the exact shade
of chewable baby aspirin.

  I love the view from up high, overlooking Madison Square—pure Steichen. N would be a natural for this setting. I could construct a whole series around her, and I just know Marcus fucking Chalk would eat it up.

  The entry to Le Yef is routine: Make the call, give the password to the security goons just inside the door by the freight entrance down an alley, and step inside. The lobby’s dark to save power, but the elevators still work (because the owner gets paid by promoters of Le Yef, or by dispossessed ronin chefs like Matt Hamilton or Akhtar Nawab, or, perhaps, by someone like Reza). I’m pleased to see the number of heads N is turning as we make our way to the elevators, and even more pleased by the fact that either excitement or the air-conditioning has brought N’s nipples up through the thin fabric of her dress.

  And of course we have the elevator car all to ourselves.

  This Is How It Happens.

  Can softness have a taste? Her lips are cumulus clouds wrapped in rose petals, but her jaw is firm, her tongue well-toned and animate. There is strength in her shoulders, the web of her back, the brace of her pectorals as they cantilever her breasts outward toward my shaking fingers. This woman has power, and poise; that was evident in her carriage as we strolled across the alley arm in arm past throngs of jealous onlookers. I could lose myself in a woman like this, a mouth like hers.

  The door opens, and after we peel ourselves wetly apart we step outward into paradise. What was once a showroom for meaningless wares has been converted into a vast arena for the serious business of hedonism. The bar ( jerry-built, collapsible, but still backlit and equipped with portable refrigerators and dishwashers tapped into the building mains) dominates the field of vision. No fewer than three bartenders are on station at all times, with barbacks running resupply up the freight elevator from the liquor stash in a panel truck in a lot next door. Tonight’s line-up appears to be: Chris, a black Adonis with a magazine visage, NFL physique, and ruined knees (now artificial); Song-hee, an androgynous Korean girl with a bleached hairdo straight out of animé and two railroads’ worth of healed track marks up both arms which she always covers with long sleeves (I saw them when I photographed her naked for Zyklon B magazine—had to use one of my pseudonyms to avoid messiness between the mags. If you ever see a photo credit for Gianni Giovanni Frangipanni, that’s me.); and V, willowy and raven-haired, an eye-patched lesbian with whom I once passed a dark and stormy night (she’s never told, and neither have I).