years. .? This was never anything but a straight business deal. How'd you get so far off the fucking road?'
Paul tried to grunt an answer muffled through his sock-stuffed mouth. Mickey ignored him and turned to Tony. 'Turn on that spotlight and throw this chum in the water.'
Tony flipped on the night fishing lights. Fifty feet down in the ocean's green water, they could see colored fish swimming on the reef. Then Tony threw the bucket of chopped fish, blood, and guts into the water.
'Puss, move the boat around while Tony spreads it out.' Paul's eyes were bulging and he started to choke. Mickey reached over and pulled the spit-wet socks out of both men's mouths.
'Look, Mickey, I'm sorry. I didn't think it through. You're right. I'll tell the DNC no. We'll put it back the way it was.' Arquette was frantic.
'Yeah, but Paul, that still leaves me with a problem. Once a guy rats me out, I can't ever trust him again. What if we get you in the White House and I ask you to do me a favor and you tell me to fuck off, like this afternoon? What'm I gonna do to you once you're the President?… See the problem?'
Paul swallowed, sweat formed on his forehead.
'You don't get a second chance,' Mickey continued. 'This was a one-chance kinda deal. Now we gotta get you changed.' He picked up the trunks and flipped them at Warren and Paul. The trunks hit their legs and fell to the deck. 'Untie 'em, Tony.'
'Why do we need trunks?' Paul whimpered.
' 'Cause I said so, okay?'
'I'm not gonna do it,' Paul said.
Tony jerked Paul up onto his feet and hit him lightly in the stomach. 'Okay, okay,' Paul gasped, and Tony untaped his wrists so Paul could unzip his pants and get into the swimming trunks.
Warren was pleading in a singsong voice. Mickey couldn't even tell what he was saying.
'Shut the fuck up,' New York Tony yelled at Warren.
In a few minutes, both were wearing swim trunks.
'Bring me some ropes,' Mickey ordered. Little Pussy scrambled to find them. Mickey looped rope under Paul's armpits and knotted it under his breastbone, stuffing towels underneath so there would be no rope burn.
Then Mickey shoved Paul hard in the chest and Senator Arquette jackknifed off the transom of the boat into the bloody water. Mickey looped the end of the line over the stern cleat. New York Tony fastened another towel- padded rope around Warren, threw him overboard, and cleated him off on the port side.
Paul was yelling. 'Let us in!. . Why are you doing this to me?'
'Let's drag 'em around a little,' Mickey said. Pussy hit the throttle and started to pull Paul and Warren through the bloody chum.
'Stop!' Warren screamed. 'This blood will draw sharks!'
'Now you're on my wave length,' Mickey said to himself as he scooped out more fish and chopped them up. 'Come on, boys. . Dinner's on,' Mickey said to the empty sea.
They didn't see the first dorsal fin for almost twenty minutes, but once it came, several more were there within seconds. Tiger sharks with strangely beautiful yellow markings on their backs.
At first, the sharks made slow passes while Warren and Paul screamed in terror. The sharks brushed up against them, not quite sure what they were, making tighter and tighter circles. Then a nine-foot monster turned and came hard at Warren. It hit him in the kidneys, ripping and tearing with its razor teeth. Warren screamed in pain as th e t iger shark arched its back and slashed its tail, tearing a huge piece of Warren loose.
Blood spilled into the water.
'For the love of God! For the love of God!' Paul screamed, seconds before a shark slammed into him. The shark rolled on its back and threw its head, tearing half of Paul's shoulder away. The sea boiled red with the feeding frenzy as dorsal fins and teeth flashed in the floodlit water.
'We got the right bait on now,' Mickey said.
Unexpectedly, Little Pussy vomited, spewing up half a bag of M amp;M's and two peanut brittle bars he'd eaten on the plane.
The sharks were feeding with abandon, ripping and tearing. Within seconds, half of Warren Sacks was gone. Paul was missing one leg along with his right arm and shoulder to the chest
'I don't wanna lose 'em completely. Let's get outta here,' Mickey said.
Puss, with peanut-chocolate vomit still on his shirt, hit the throttle, and they roared away from the sharks. The lifeless torsos were skipping and turning at the end of the ropes, doing a macabre dance in the churning wake.
They cut the bodies loose twenty yards from shore and watched until they washed up on the beach.
They hosed down the boat, retied it to the wharf, and returned to the airfield.
'Everything work out?' Milo asked.
'Went fishing but we lost our bait,' Mickey said Minutes later, they were headed back to New Jersey. Everything had taken less than an hour.
Chapter 4
Ryan stood outside the Century city high-rise, shaking. He had just spent fifty minutes in therapy and he was a wreck.
Ten minutes later, Elizabeth finally pulled up in her Karmazin Ghia with the top down and beeped her horn. He moved quickly across the sun-cooked sidewalk and got into the car.
Elizabeth had been his secretary for almost ten years. She was a good worker with a sense of humor, in her mid-forties. She must have been a striking-looking woman once but took no pains with herself now, tying her long brown hair back with yarn, wearing sack dresses without style. She was divorced with no children. Lately things between them had changed-a shift in power more than friendship. She sensed his weakness and had been taking advantage of it. He was no longer in charge.
She made a turn on Pico and headed up on the 405 freeway.
'Elizabeth, I can't take the freeway. I told you. Go through Culver City, will ya?'
'This is nuts, Ryan. People use the freeway every day. My mother's coming over for dinner. I have a gazillion things to do. If I go on surface streets, I'm nevergonna get home.'
She stayed on the 405 to Santa Monica as he held the armrest and battled a panic attack. He didn't know why the freeways had started scaring him. For the last two months, he had been incapable of driving his own car. The minute he got into his Mercedes and turned on the engine, he was filled with such bone-numbing fear that he couldn't get out fast enough.
Just a year ago, he'd been in control not only of his life but most of his relationships. He'd won Writers Guild awards and two Emmys. He'd been lionized by the press.
Then Matt died and everything went wrong.
They were scooting off the end of the Santa Monica Freeway and heading up the Coast Highway. As a kid, he had surfed this whole coast in the summer, cruising the black ribbon in his VW convertible.
In college he'd been an all-conference wide receiver at Stanford University. He'd been too small for the pros, but football and his blond surfer good looks made him a king on campus. He'd won the school lit contest in his senior year. Against his father's advice, he began writing TV scripts on spec instead of taking an entry-level job flipping Happy Burgers at one of his father's Happy Boy restaurants.
Two years later he sold his first script and moved into a small office at Universal Studios. Nobody could chum out work faster or better, and he'd gotten a big reputation. He'd made enough to marry Linda, his college sweetheart. She was as beautiful and blond as he was handsome and popular, and it took them a long time to find out that they weren't in love with each other as much as they were in love with the image they could create together. It was cool being half of somebody else's fantasy. But the envy of others failed to sustain them. And after Matt died, the lights went out for Ryan.
They roared out of Santa Monica. Elizabeth hadn't asked about the fiasco at NBC. She had to know. Probably
