“Call information.”
I stared at James as he concentrated on the road. We were headed down to the Bal Harbor area. I recognized the well-lit streets with high-end shops, perfectly groomed palms planted at regular intervals, and elegant high-rises that looked out over the harbor.
“Dial it.”
411.
“City and state please.”
“Miami, Florida. Bal Harbor-a listing for Rick Fuentes.”
It was a recording. The operator picked up. “Miami?”
“Yeah.”
“Name?”
“Rick Fuentes.”
“Please hold while we dial that number for you.”
Son of a bitch. That charge would show up on my bill. Minutes and information charges, these things kept adding up.
The phone rang. “Shit, James. He’s actually listed. What the hell do I say to him?”
“The truth.”
“What?” I was near panic at this moment. Rick Fuentes could pick up the phone at any second and I’d be left going, “Ah, uh, ah, uh… .”
“Can you just tell him that we have some of his mail and we’d like to deliver it? Would that be so hard?”
“No. I can do that.” Well thought out. I had to hand it to my man.
James pulled over to the side of the street. We were in the area. Neither of us had a clue how to navigate in this well-to-do neighborhood. I’d been here once with Em. We shopped at Saks Fifth Avenue. She shopped at Saks Fifth Avenue. I didn’t spend a penny except for the six bucks for parking and the forty-dollar lunch. Two sandwiches and a shared salad. This was one expensive neighborhood.
“Hello. We can’t come to the phone right now. Please, leave a message and we’ll call you as soon as possible.”
Was there an original message anywhere in the world? One that said. “Hey, taking a crap, but once I’m done, I’d love to talk to you.” Or one I’d almost done at our apartment in Carol City. “We have caller ID. We know who you are. If we wanted to talk to you, we would have picked up, but obviously we didn’t. If you have anything at all that’s important to say, you’ll have to say it on the machine.”
“This is Skip Moore. I have some mail for Mr. Fuentes. If you’d like us to deliver it to you please call me back.” I left the cell number.
“We could sit here till next summer.”
“He’ll call back.”
“Next summer?”
“These rich guys. They need to stay in touch, but they screen their calls.”
“James, you are always sooooo wise.”
The phone rang.
“Hello.”
“This is Rick Fuentes.”
“We have some mail for you.”
“Bring it by. Here’s the address.”
Shit.
No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. That task becomes a nightmare.
CHAPTER TEN
C ARL ICAHN IS A FINANCIER who lives in the Indian Creek Village area. According to what I’ve found on the Internet, this man supposedly has had more financial encounters than most rich people. He proposed a hostile takeover of TWA and tried to take over Marvel Comics. I mean, Spiderman’s home turf? Come on. He owned the Sands in Vegas and a billion other companies. When we were driving by the mansions on the private island, James pointed out a palatial estate that he thought was Icahn’s. I’m not sure how he knew, but I think he’d seen pictures.
I was thinking about Icahn as we drove back into Bal Harbor following Rick Fuentes’ directions. I asked James what these people did for a living. Here were condos. Hundreds, maybe thousands of condos that started at maybe $800,000 and went up to four or five million. What the hell did all these people do?
I knew what Icahn did. He played with other people’s money.
“You want to know what these people do?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“I can tell you, but you won’t like the answer.”
“Humor me, James.”
“They make a lot of money.”
Shit. As usual, James was semiuseless.
“It’s eBay mentality, Skip.”
“What’s that, James?” When he’s being an asshole you have to call him on it. This time it didn’t faze him.
“It’s the mentality of stuff, Skip. It’s the reason we have a Chevy truck.”
“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s the reason we’re going to be able to afford one of these two-million-dollar condos in a couple of years. Listen, bro, people are into stuff. I told you this before. They buy tons and tons of crap on eBay. They collect junk. Books, cars, antiques, memorabilia, stuff they’ll never use. Stuff that has no earthly value to them. Stuff, Skip. Stuff, and more stuff.”
“What does that have to do with the price of a condo?”
“If you have stuff they want to buy, you can get rich. Norman Branon lives in Indian Creek Village. He owns four car dealerships in Florida and three in Colorado. Acura, Audi, Bentley, BMW, Porsche, and,” he drew a deep breath, “Cadillac. People buy his stuff, pardner. Lots and lots and lots of his stuff.”
“And that’s why Norman is living in Indian Creek.”
“And why we live in a one-bedroom piece of crap in Carol City. This guy gets rich off of stuff. Hell, Skip, he used to own the Philadelphia Eagles.”
“And we don’t have this stuff.”
“Never will. Don’t even want it.” He paused. “Well, I still think I’m going to buy a Cadillac. But we can haul all this stuff. We’ll get a bigger truck next time and haul Mr. Branon’s Cadillac wherever he wants.”
“So if you don’t have stuff, you learn how to leverage everyone else’s stuff?”
“I should have the business degree.” He watched the street signs carefully and finally jerked the truck to the right, following a winding road. “Skip, you lack vision. With you it’s all nuts and bolts. I like that, don’t get me wrong. Someone has to sound the alarm once in a while, right or wrong. Someone has to ask about the fiscal responsibility of a certain project. But-” he braked for what looked like a low-riding, racing-yellow Maserati that came popping out of a side street, “but someone has to have the ideas. If we can’t afford stuff that people will buy, we’ll haul and store people’s stuff. The guy who started Waste Management started with one truck, Skip. He hauled people’s stuff. He’s now worth about a gazillion dollars.”
“Body parts, James. Who would have thought that body parts would be part of people’s stuff?”
He didn’t say anything. We’d been avoiding the subject for a while. It was weird enough to have the finger riding in the rear of the truck, but the class ring made it even stranger. And I was feeling a lot of guilt about not calling Em. She had arranged the job and probably should be aware of what had happened.
“It’s through those gates.” James pointed at a guardhouse to the right. There was another side business. The security companies that guard people’s stuff. The problem with my company was that in my assigned territory,
