Chapter Twenty-One: Half A Loaf
Anybody who was anybody was in Aspen the week between Christmas and New Year and that included Bruckman. Coincidence? I think not. I flattered myself to think that Diana O’Kell Campobello had picked up her walkie-talkie and summoned him to the Rockies to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse. But maybe Bruckman was just part of the mindless sludge who came to Aspen when the snow fell with more money than they knew what to do with.
He was waiting for me in the dead of night at the Hotel Jerome in a little room off the lobby they call The Library for reasons entirely unknown to me. The Library was where you went when you wanted to smoke in Aspen, and Bruckman was rolling a big fat stogie, probably from Cuba, around and around in his mouth like an imitation of a fat cat at a strip joint in Jersey. He was in a one-piece black ski suit that made him look like a kielbasa even though he had trimmed down. I had Ozzie with me for protection, and he started to sniff so hard I thought he might be hoping for a whiff of Marsalis.
“Cuban,” Bruckman said. “I’ve got a guy in Montreal gets them right off the plane. He FedExes them to me.”
“Let me guess,” I said.
“It’s a month’s rent per for somebody,” Bruckman said.
“And lung cancer for somebody else,” Ozzie said.
“Do we need him?” Bruckman pointed the cigar at Ozzie.
“Absotively,” I said.
“Bad things happen to good people,” Ozzie said.
“I never thought either one of you was funny,” Bruckman said.
“I always thought you were,” I said.
“Fuck you, Bagdikian,” Bruckman said.
It took all of Ozzie to hold me back. We had reached the point where now he had to protect me from myself. Bruckman didn’t move.
“Take a swing, councilor, and you’ll be paying for it the rest of your born days.”
Ozzie pushed me down into one of the big, fat, smoke-sodden chairs in The Library, and then he went to stand behind me, the way Albert does with Bruce Wayne. Smoke was in the air – smoke was everywhere – and even this close Bruckman seemed hazy.
“That’s it,” Bruckman said. “Maybe you need a rest. A long rest. The kind you never come back from.”
“You’re going to have to kill me to get me to stop,” I said. “And you already tried that.”
“The wrath of an O’Kell,” Bruckman said. “You have no idea.”
“I’m waiting,” I said.
Bruckman allowed himself long enough to blow a perfect circle into the air.
“Bull’s-eye,” Ozzie said.
“Half a billion,” Bruckman said.
“Half a loaf,” I said.
“Two hundred fifty million for you, Bagdikian. Two hundred fifty for the O’Kells.”
Now we really were talking real money – not quite Forbes 400, but not a bad nest egg, either. We were talking private jets and never having to worry about anything green ever again.
“Not a chance,” I said.
“This is it. The final offer.”
“Why so much? Why now?”
“That’s the part I don’t get,” Bruckman said. “She likes your skinny white ass. You remind her of something, maybe of something better, something she used to be when she was in the Convent.”
“Holy Ghost,” Ozzie said. “She looks at you she maybe feels there’s something more to life.”
“Thank you, Oprah,” Bruckman said.
“No,” I said.
“We’re not negotiating,” Bruckman said. “This is it. And it’s a shitload of money.”
“It’s only half of what they deserve,” I said.
“Then give them your half.”
He had a point.
“Maybe I will,” I said. “But to do that I need the whole loaf.”
“You have to bring this to your clients,” Bruckman said.
“Yes we do. And we will.”
“Half a billion dollars,” Bruckman said. “That’s more money than God.”