Power & Beauty (14 page)

He answered on the first ring.

“Irv, it’s Power.”

“Glad you called.”

“You okay?”

“As okay as an old man can be. Better that I see you in person. The phone’s no good. Can you come over?”

“Sure. Just tell me where.”

“Palm Beach. You know where Worth Avenue ends at Ocean Boulevard?”

“I can find it.”

“There’s an apartment building. The Kirkwood. Ask for Milton Eisenstock.”

“That was the name of the deli from last night.”

“Owned by my late uncle Milton, may he rest in peace. Don’t come too late. I go to sleep early.”

“How about in a couple of hours?”

“A couple of hours is good. By then I’m up from my nap.”

The huge apartment overlooked the ocean. Irv looked tired. He wore a navy sports shirt and black pants. He walked slower than I remembered. Lumbering, he led me to the living room furnished with overstuffed chairs and an L-shaped couch the color of golden wheat. The sliding glass door was open to let the ocean breeze blow through. In the middle of the floor was an easel that held a painting of an old man with a gray beard who sat alone in a boat in the middle of the sea. The figure of the man was small in comparison to the size of the sea.

“You like art, Power?” was the first thing Irv asked as he sat on the couch. I sat on a chair across from him. We both stared at the painting.

“Don’t know anything about art,” I said.

“Me either. But today I bought a painting. I bought this painting. I can’t tell you why except that when I saw it I knew I had to have it. I saw it at an art gallery down the street. I’d walked by that gallery a hundred times before, but never once did I think about stopping in to buy or even look. But today this picture was in the window. Today I stopped in and looked, and today I had them deliver this painting into my living room, complete with an easel. I bought it for one simple reason.”

“I guess that’s because you liked it.”

“No, Power, it’s not that I like it. Of course I don’t dislike it. But I bought it because I have to look at it. It’s saying something to me that I have to hear. And do you know what it’s saying?”

I didn’t know what to say. I still wasn’t sure about Irv’s mental condition. I figured it was best to let him do the talking.

“What’s it saying, Irv?” I asked.

“It’s saying that I’m alone, Power, that’s what it’s saying. It’s also saying I better get used to it. There’s no way around it. You want a cup of coffee, Power? A cup of tea?”

“Coffee would be great.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Please.”

Irv raised his voice and called, “Maria . . . bring us a tea and coffee . . . both light and sweet.”

Irv kept staring at the painting. “So now you understand why I had to buy this thing,” he said. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing, aren’t you?”

I looked at the painting and then I looked at Irv. “You’re seeing yourself,” I said.

“I’m seeing myself,” Irv confirmed. “I’m out there sitting in a sea of nothing.”

“But you have a lot. You have your health back.”

“My health never went away.”

“The last time I saw you in Chicago, though, you were acting like—”

Irv stopped me and said, “
Acting
is the right word.”

“But why?”

“Well, Power, if you act one way, sometimes people act another.”

“I see,” I said as the tea and coffee arrived on a silver tray with an assortment of chocolate cookies.

“I saw plenty,” said Irv. “I saw things I didn’t want to see but things I needed to see. There were things that made me sick, the same things that put me in the boat and blew me out to sea. So that’s where I am now, drifting. Just drifting.”

“And what about the others?” I asked.

“Which others?”

“The ones who didn’t understand you were acting.”

“Gone.”

“John Mackey?” I asked, remembering the pale-skinned consigliere who smoked those skinny cigars.

“Terrible accident. A truck ran him off the road. His car went up in flames. Nothing left of anything . . . or anyone.”

“And Judy?”

“Gone.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Last I heard, Dubai, but I don’t ask. What’s a Jewish girl doing in Dubai? Pretending she’s not Jewish—that’s what she’s doing. I don’t care. I cut her off. My own blood, but I’m through. Not another cent.”

“And your business?”

“Sold.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Why?”

“Ask the man in the boat why he’s alone. If the painting could talk, he’d tell you that’s because there’s no one left to trust. That is the great fact, Power. That is the reason God woke me up in the middle of the night to get a piece of cheesecake at my late uncle’s deli, may he rest in peace. God wanted that I should bump into you. He wanted that I should tell you the Great Fact. Your uncle Slim wanted me to teach you, but I couldn’t teach you until I learned it myself. And what I learned was the people—the very person—I trusted most fucked me the worst. Three words, Power, three little words that took me a lifetime to learn. Don’t trust anyone.”

“But aren’t you trusting me by telling me all this?” I asked.

“I don’t need to trust you. I don’t need to trust anyone anymore. There’s no more operation. No more merchandise. No more Candy Girl and no more interest in the music business. Nothing to buy, nothing to sell, nothing to steal. No businesses, no budgets, no P&L statements. Only a little account in a bank in Switzerland.”

I wanted to ask how “little” that account really was, but of course I didn’t. I could only imagine. I didn’t say anything while Irv nibbled on a chocolate cookie and took a sip of tea, all the while staring at the painting. “Judy was in on it,” he finally said.

I kept silent. I knew I didn’t have to say anything. Irv needed to tell someone—and I just happened to be that someone.

“Judy and her mother both. Judy, her mother, and her mother’s fuckin’ husband, Harvey, the guy with the car dealership. They were in on it with John Mackey. The whole thing had been in the works for months.”

“What made you suspect?”

“I saw a couple of e-mails from Judy to Mackey. Because I never had a computer in the office, and because I never told Mackey I can use a computer, he thought I didn’t know how to use one. But when everyone started using them, I got a teacher who came to my home. I learned how to use a computer. I started smelling shit on Mackey’s computer. That’s when I knew if I wanted to find the truth I had to lose my mind.”

“Or make it seem that way,” I added.

“Sometimes it felt like I wasn’t acting. Like I really was going crazy. To have a daughter do this to you. To have your most trusted man stab you in the back and try to rob you blind. This is something no man can endure. But I endured it. I looked at the situation and said, ‘This is happening to you. This is real. You are not as smart as you thought you were. People fooled you. People used you. People cannot be trusted. So just get in your boat and sit. Get used to being alone.’ ”

“Did you say anything to Judy or her mother?”

“What could I say? It was enough that Harvey, the Cadillac dealer, suffered a great misfortune. A disgruntled employee went crazy, put a gun in Harvey’s ear, and shot him dead. They never caught the employee. But the whole thing scared Judy and her mother. Her mother moved to Bermuda and Judy went off to live with the Arabs.”

I finished my coffee. I didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve called you out here on this beautiful day,” said Irv, “to tell you a sad story. I’d like to sweeten the story. I’d like to make it prettier than it is. But I owe you the truth. Now come, let’s look at the sunset. Looking at the sunset is the highlight of my day.”

I followed him out to the balcony. As the sun slipped behind the horizon, the sky turned purple-pink. “It’s worth living in Florida,” said Irv, “just to see these sunsets.”

After a few minutes we went inside and took our seats. “I haven’t asked you what you’re doing in Miami, Power. I haven’t asked you any questions because I don’t need any answers. I figure you’re here because Slim sent you to keep learning. I figure you’re still following Slim’s lead.”

“And shouldn’t I be?”

Irv offered a half smile. He didn’t answer my question but instead said, “I have a present for you. The painting. I want you to take the painting.”

“But I thought you loved it.”

“I didn’t say I loved it. I didn’t even say I liked it. I said I had to look at it. Now I’ve looked at it enough. I want you to have it. Hang it on your wall. It’s not ugly. It’s well done. The man in the boat looks real. The sea around him looks like a real sea. It tells you a story you can’t forget. It’s my story, Power. It’s my gift to you.”

Irv stood up, signaling that this encounter was over. I thanked him for the coffee, the cookies, and the painting. I lifted it off the easel and carried it out. When I got back to my apartment at Sugar’s Shack, I hung it on the wall across from my bed. Before I fell asleep that night I looked at it for a very long time. It got into my dreams. I got into that boat. The boat started shaking. I looked down to see a killer shark was after me, like in that movie
Jaws,
a killer shark going for my throat. I woke up in a sweat.

Ride Wit Me

M
y encounter with Irv took place toward the beginning of winter. I’d been in Miami for slightly over a year. Two weeks after Irv had given me the painting, I called him, just to see how he was. The number was out of service. I waited awhile but decided to visit him again. But when I went to the Kirkwood in Palm Beach, the building manager said that no one was living in the apartment of Milton Eisenstock. It had been sold and was presently being renovated for its new owners, a family from Melbourne, Australia. When I asked if he had forwarding information for the man who had been living there, I was told that the gentleman specifically did
not
leave a new address or phone number.

“Did he say whether he was staying in Florida?” I asked.

“He didn’t say anything. One day he was here, the next day he wasn’t.” I wanted to talk to Irv because our last meeting left me unsatisfied. I understood how being betrayed turns your world upside down. I understood how it can make you do things that you wouldn’t normally do. You wanna strike back the way you were struck. You wanna get even. You get crazy and violent and you’ll stop at nothing to see that justice is done—whatever it is you consider justice to be. I understood all that.

What I didn’t understand, though—and what I desperately wanted to know—were the details of the betrayals. I wanted to know more about the relationship between Irv and John Mackey. How long had Mackey worked for him? As I remembered, it was decades. During those years when things were going well, didn’t Irv have at least some suspicion that Mackey might be plotting against him? I kept hearing those three words he had left me with—“Don’t trust anyone.” But there had to be exceptions.

Okay, his ex-wife and his daughter and his consigliere had been out to get him, but when he was a kid he trusted his mother, just like I had trusted my mother. Or did he? Was that a mistake? “Don’t trust anyone” sounded smart, but was it practical in the real world? You have to trust the elevator repairman at Sugar’s Shack to fix the thing so the cables don’t snap. Driving down I-95, you have to trust that the drivers going in the opposite direction aren’t going to switch sides and hit you head-on. Without some trust, you lose your mind. Without some trust, you never leave your apartment. You become a recluse.

Maybe Irv had become a recluse. If so, I wanted to find him and learn more about him and this latest change in his life. I felt like he had more to teach me than “Don’t trust anyone.” I guess I was feeling that, strange as it seems, I trusted Irv to teach me about trust. But most important of all, I wanted to ask why, when I asked him if I could trust Slim, he didn’t answer me. He just gave me this half smile. Maybe I was making it up, but I thought there was something behind that half smile—and I had to know what it was.

My last weeks in Miami went by with the speed of high-powered blow. I could see that the drug, even though I thought I wasn’t overdoing it, was creeping up on me. It sure as hell was creeping up on Sugar.

I had learned to like cocaine. If I had the cheap stuff, maybe I’d have had negative associations, but I didn’t. I had the best. I liked the way the best stuff lightly burned my nose; I liked the drip that came after the first few snorts; I liked the rush to my heart and the heady excitement to my brain. With just a single line, all the red lights turned green. I’d take off from that first line and run through an evening of good vibes with clients and good sex with one of a half-dozen women waiting for me to call. I got into threesomes. I got into X. I went way to the other side of wildness. I drew the line when it came to men though. If it was a scene of more than two players, I’d have to be the only man. I got no complaints. Fact is, I got rave reviews.

“You’re a fuckin’ star,” said Sugar, who was able to work with his high-end clients less because I was working with them more. “You’re so good at this shit,” he added, “I’m giving you a raise.”

The raise was minimal, but I didn’t care. I knew it made Sugar feel secure to keep me on a short leash. I never hit his suppliers. Within an hour of getting paid by a customer, I’d have the money in Sugar’s hand. That’s how he wanted it. And I was happy to accommodate. I was happy to ignore the remark of the wife of one of our best clients when she saw me leaving their palatial Coral Gables estate.

“That crap he’s selling separates you from your soul!” she screamed to her husband, president of the local yacht club. “Keep sniffing it up your nose and you won’t remember what it’s like to have a soul.”

I ignored the remark at the time but remembered it the night Sugar told me he was buying a state-of-the-art greyhound racetrack complex that included a club with a bar, a dance floor, and a dozen poker rooms. He snorted up a line and began describing the place. “Man,” he said, “you’ve never seen anything like it. It’s all silk and steel. I mean, the place is laid out cold. You wanna see it?”

“Sure,” I said.

He laid out another line and, before offering me a hit, had it all up his nose. His old adage of “one line is enough” had flown out the window.

“Two lines means I ain’t driving,” he said, throwing me the keys to his Benz.

On the way over, I saw him opening up a small vial and doing even more coke. This time he asked me if I wanted some. I’m not sure why I said no—something told me it was a good idea to stay sober—and I politely turned him down. He didn’t think twice about it. “More for me,” he said, smiling and snorting up the vial.

When we got to the track, he was flying. The greyhounds were flying as well, and it was exciting to see the animals in action. They were graceful and beautiful to watch. He placed a bet. He lost. He went into the men’s room and came out even more loaded. Another bet, another loss.

“Doesn’t make a shit, Power,” he told me. “I’m buying this whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel.”

In the club, he introduced me to the manager, a man named Horatio, who took me and Sugar to a booth in the back of the dance floor. Several ladies came our way. Sugar felt compelled to tell every single one that he was buying the place—and doing it soon. We took a tour of the poker rooms. He sat down at one of the tables and within twenty minutes lost $30,000.

“What difference does it make?” he asked me as we walked outside so he could dip into another vial. “All that money’s coming back to me anyway.”

Back inside we bumped into a gorgeous young woman who had been signed to Sugar’s modeling agency before it fell apart. She asked me to dance. Speaking for me, Sugar said, “No, he doesn’t dance. Besides, you’re my date tonight. He’s my driver.”

The three of us left together. They got into the backseat while I drove. He demanded that she give him head. She was hesitant. He started forcing her. I started to say something. “Shut the fuck up!” he screamed. “Your fuckin’ job is to drive.”

After she did him, he said, “That’s the worst fuckin’ blow job I’ve ever had. Who taught you how to suck dick, your mother? Get the fuck outta my car.” In the rearview mirror, I saw him opening the door and trying to push her out. I stopped the car.

“Can’t do that, Sugar,” I said.

“Fuck you!” he screamed in my face.

We were on a busy street. The girl was scared. I got out of the car, reached in my pocket, and handed her a wad of twenties. “Take a cab home,” I told her. “He’s not himself tonight.”

By then Sugar was out of the car standing next to us. He went for the girl’s face with his fist. I blocked his arm before he reached her. He knew he was in no shape to fight me. He backed off. Back in the car, he reached in his pocket for another vial. The shit was up his nose before I pulled away. I was relieved when I saw the girl get into a cab.

All the way back to the Shack, Sugar didn’t say a word. When we arrived, I figured I’d leave him on his own. He didn’t want that though.

“Come on up,” he said. “I wanna show you how business is done in this town.”

Once in the penthouse he went to his safe, dialed the combination, opened the door, and pulled out a fresh quantity of coke. There was no stopping him now.

“I’m calling my broker,” he said. “This scumbag owes me fuckin’ everything. He built his business on me. If I say, ‘Jump,’ he’s gonna say, ‘How high?’ ”

Sugar put his desk phone on speaker and punched out the number. A man answered. He had obviously been asleep.

“Is this Craig, my scumbag real estate broker?” asked Sugar.

“Hey, Sug, everything okay?” asked the man in a daze.

“You sleeping?”

“I was.”

“Well, get the fuck up. I want that deal for the dog track done by ten tomorrow morning.”

“Let me remember the details,” said the broker.

“It’s your fuckin’ job to know the details.”

“I’m thinking, Sugar, I’m thinking. I’m remembering now . . . you guys were some three million dollars apart.”

“Bridge the gap. Make it happen. I’ll up it by a mil.”

“That might not work.”

“I pay you to make it work, scumbag. Make the fuckin’ deal or I’ll find someone who will.”

Sugar slammed down the phone. “That’s how you deal with pricks like Craig. You put the fear of God in him. How ’bout a toot?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m tired. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Where the fuck you going?”

“To sleep.”

“The hell you are. This party is just getting started. Get the bitches up here.”

“Which ones?”

“The crazy ones. The ones hanging in VIP. Just bring bitches, the wilder the better. You and me are gonna be the only swinging dicks up here.”

“Hey, man, I’m really exhausted . . .”

“I don’t give two shits if you’re about to fall out. Take a hit and get started, boy.”

Against my better judgment, I took a short hit. A wave of energy surged through me. I went down to the club and, a half hour later, came back up with a half-dozen ladies, wild and willing to get wilder.

I did a little bit more blow that night—just enough to stay awake. I just watched. The party was all about Sugar degrading these women. It wasn’t a turn-on for me. It was disgusting. At one point, I tried to stop it, but neither Sugar nor the women wanted to stop. They had consumed enormous amounts of cocaine. The cocaine had separated them from their souls. I wondered what the hell was happening to my soul. At that moment, I realized that I didn’t simply dislike the drug, I fuckin’ hated it. I wanted my brain to stop spinning. I wanted Sugar to stop howling with delight as the women violated themselves and each other with oversized sex toys.

Dawn arrived. Light began streaming into the penthouse. The girls had passed out while Sugar, more than half-crazed, was telling me how he was going to redo the greyhound complex. His eyes were beet red, and his talk was a nonstop stream of ego-inflated bullshit. I didn’t see how he could keep it up much longer, but he did. He called Craig, the broker, and by midmorning the deal seemed to be going down. Then it hit a snag. To secure the loan, the banker wanted more collateral than Sugar was willing to provide. That’s when Sugar lost it. On a conference call with the broker and banker, he called them both dick-sucking scumbags and threw the phone across the room. It struck one of the girls, asleep on the couch, in the forehead. She began bleeding profusely. I ran over to her. She was crying hysterically; the wound was deep. I got my phone and called 911.

“What the fuck you doing?” Sugar shouted.

“Getting help.”

“Let the bitch bleed!”

“I’ll carry her downstairs to my place.”

“I said let her bleed!”

“Are you crazy? She’ll die.”

“Who gives a shit?”

I ignored Sugar. I picked up the girl and began carrying her out. Sugar came after me. It didn’t take much to stop him, just a quick kick to his nuts. He went down.

Two days later I was back in Atlanta, sitting across from Slim at Junior’s Barbershop, where he got his weekly trim. Christmas was around the corner.

“And the girl?” Slim asked me when I told him about the incident.

“Wasn’t hurt as bad as I thought. She’s okay.”

“And you paid the hospital?”

“In cash,” I said.

“No police report. Nothing to trace it back to Sugar.”

“Nothing.”

“And the bitch is cool? She’s not going to the law?”

“I took care of her. Ten G’s.”

“So you did good. You protected your man.”

“I don’t ever want to see that asshole again.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not sure what you had in mind when you sent me over there,” I said.

“Are you kidding, boy? You learned a lot.”

“I learned what
not
to do.”

“Son,” said Slim, “that’s more important than learning what
to
do. You see what happens when you start dipping into your own stuff. The fools get fucked up on the primo goods. They can’t keep their hands off it. The smart ones, like me, stay straight as an arrow. You learn that lesson, Power, and you good for life.”

“I ain’t going near no blow,” I said. “That shit is evil.”

“Does my heart good to hear you talking that way. Makes me feel like I’m raising you right.”

By hooking me up with a guy like Sugar? By leaving me in Miami for over a year?
These were silent thoughts. But I didn’t say anything about that. Instead I told him about the high school equivalency program that I had completed through the mail.

“And here I thought you were getting nearly as much pussy as me,” said Slim, “and meanwhile you got your head stuck in books.”

“It kept me sane,” I said. “All that partying was turning my brain into scrambled eggs.”

I spoke the truth. I had never completely turned away from everything that Sugar offered, but those last months were getting to me. The night at the dog track was the last straw. Before that I’d been studying during the days and actually enjoying reading books on history and psychology. I was always good at math. The truth was that this correspondence school was almost too easy. It made me want to go to college. I wanted to study business and economics. I had the urge to hang out with people who were interested in something other than sex. Wasn’t that I didn’t like sex or even getting a little high now and then. But, man, for someone still not twenty-one, I’d had more than my fair share.