SHOOTERS
By
Terrill Lee Lankford
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 1997 by Terrill Lee Lankford
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written consent of the author.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by T. Jefferson Parker
INTRODUCTION
T. Jefferson Parker
Shooters is a noir tour of L.A. that only Terrill Lee Lankford can guide. He's got one finger on the pulse of high fashion and another on the world of hardcore and when they meet – well, it's hard not to look. Although this book was first published in 1997, its roots stretch back to the roaring 80s, as narrator Nick Gardner says in the prologue to Shooters:
"This story is a by-product of the eighties, the Reagan years, when the wrong people made a lot of money the wrong way. I was one of those people. The seventies had been rough. The late-seventies recession made work in my chosen profession – photography – difficult. When the economy opened up a few years later, I didn't stop to ask stupid questions, I started panning up the ore like every other jerk. I never thought about the mine playing out or someone showing up with a huge bill. I felt charmed."
Of course, Shooters is all about paying the huge bill, and the waiter who presents the bill is history itself. Perhaps not oddly, our current republic feels sunk in the same kind of morass that Lankford invokes from decades past— our freewheeling days resoundingly defeated by moral and economic turpitude. We sense parallel hangovers. There is a sense in Shooters that the goodwill of the fates has run thin and all hell is about to break loose. Sound familiar?
It's wonderful to read a crime novel that embraces and reflects a specific time and place. As a longtime L.A. filmmaker, Terrill Lee Lankford knows the city and its decades well. Through Nick, who is part American Gigolo and part American Psycho, Lankford has created a perfect voice of America's Los Angeles in the 1980s. I think it's a tale with legs, one that will continue to resound.
But doubt not that Shooters is built for speed and handling, not for soccer transport or sensible gas mileage. It's thrill a minute sexy and bad to the bone. It's an authentic part of the L.A. canon.
— T. Jefferson Parker
author of Iron River and The Border Lords
To Arch and Babs.
You were right.
Experience is the major textbook.
This story takes place in October, 1993.
Shooters
"The past is always with you."
—Nick Gardner
PROLOGUE
They say history is written by the victors, the winners. Not this time. This bit of history will be chronicled by one of the great losers of all time, namely—me. But trust that you will receive the unfiltered truth, as only a true loser could deliver. Untarnished by the need to appear heroic in any way, shape, or form. I want to explain it all to you. Every last grimy detail. Every evil notion, every weak moment. I feel I owe it to you. And if not to you, then to myself and to the people who got hurt when all this went down. I want to spare no one in my text, not even myself, so my language may be graphic, crude at times, but when I am finished I hope you will have a better understanding of the circumstances that led to my current sorry state of affairs. The ridiculousness of it all, really. The story I'm about to tell you may seem outlandish in detail, but I assure you it is all true. I plan on leaving nothing out. No brutal action will be left unaccounted for, no wicked thought that can be remembered will be censored. This could be considered pandering at its worst, but you must bear with this crude exercise if you are to understand the truth about what happened in the fall of last year.
This story is a by-product of the eighties, the Reagan years, when the wrong people made a lot of money the wrong way. I was one of those people. The seventies had been rough. The late-seventies recession made work in my chosen profession—photography—difficult. When the economy opened up a few years later, I didn't stop to ask stupid questions, I started panning up the ore like every other jerk. I never thought about the mine playing out or someone showing up with a huge bill. I felt charmed. I thought I was some kind of fucking genius.
I was a smart-ass know-it-all living the American dream. From rags to riches, from Volkswagen to Lamborghini, from one-room dive in New York City to sprawling beach house in Malibu, California. I had become a living cliché, the guy you hate as he passes you at ninety on the freeway, but secretly you envy him and his foreign car and the blond sex machine in the passenger seat. Secretly you wish you could be that guy. You wish you could live his life. But you can't. That's his life. The thing I hadn't bargained on as I cruised through the fat eighties into the strange nineties was the simple fact that the past has a memory. The past never goes away. The past does not forget. And the past does not forgive.
The past is always with you.
PART I
"You think you've got it all figured out, don't you, Nick?"
—Jennifer Joyner
1
In the cool darkness of the garage I found a random tape and slapped it into the cassette player. The Doors' "L.A. Woman" drifted out of the speakers as the garage door opened, revealing the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. PCH as its known to the nine million denizens of Los Angeles county. I revved the engine of the black Lamborghini Diablo I had picked up used a few months earlier, trying to warm it to the point that I would feel safe attempting intercourse with noonday traffic. I lived near the south end of a tightly knit strip of six- and seven-figure homes wedged between PCH and the Pacific Ocean. There was barely six feet separating the adjoining houses from each other and PCH was almost as close to our back doors as our neighboring houses were to either side of us. My driveway was a short eight-foot pour of asphalt that connected the garage directly to PCH. Merging with the speeding traffic was usually a tricky maneuver. I waited for my moment, then pulled out into the lane fast and quickly accelerated with the driving beat of "L.A. Woman" blasting our ears.
My name is Nick Gardner, although names at this stage of the game are not as important as you might think. I'm thirty-five years young and have the liver of a fifty-year-old wino. Some people consider me attractive, but these are not necessarily people with good taste. Most think I'm cold. It's something I work hard at. Even if you could have seen behind my jet-black shades you wouldn't have found a trace of emotion in my eyes. On this hot October day my hair was slicked back tight for minimum wind resistance. That's my preferred style. Neat, orderly, immovable. And today was like any other day. I was cool, calm, and detached. Everything was under perfect control. My world was in order.
Jennifer Joyner, however, was a different story. She was sitting in the passenger seat of the Lamborghini. The top was off the car and the wind was trying to tear the scarf away from her three-hundred-dollar perm. Control was not in Jennifer's vocabulary. She was a thrill junkie. One hundred five pounds of raw nerve endings. She loved going fast. She ate road speed like others eat ice cream. Not much could impress her short of spinning out at the Indy 500.
As we sped along PCH we could see smoke hanging over the city far in the distance. The hot Santa Ana winds had hit town and drained all the humidity out of the air. Los Angeles had experienced a massive amount of rainfall a few months earlier, after more than five years of extreme drought. Vegetation had run amuck, and now that vegetation was very dry. These conditions had combined to create a powder keg. An arsonist's sense of humor was all the fuse that was needed. Some asshole had set half of Thousand Oaks on fire with a butane lighter just to see it burn. The spectacular news coverage of houses and trees burning out of control had inspired three other arsonists to join in the fun. Two in Thousand Oaks and one all the way down in Laguna Beach. The fires had already been burning for two days and no end was in sight. Leave it up to the reporters to bring gasoline to a forest fire.
I took a left onto Sunset Boulevard. The road twisted and turned at seventy miles an hour in front of our eyes. I had trimmed ten off the speedometer in deference to the winding nature of Sunset, but it wasn't enough. A slow-moving Audi appeared abruptly in front of us. I downshifted, then in a sudden burst of speed passed the Audi and jumped back into the proper lane a split second before an oncoming black Caddy roared past us, blaring its horn. I saw you, buddy. I saw you.
Jennifer was loving the speed, head back, laughing, thrilling as I weaved in and out of traffic on the twisting snake of a road. There was no fear in her. She had absolute confidence that we could not die.
_____
"Sure, I've slept with other photographers, but I never got involved with them. Nick does something for me that those other guys don't. He's exciting. It's more like being with a rock star than a photographer. He's got such an aloofness. It's a turn-on, but it can be kind of maddening too. For some guys the distant bit is just an act. But not Nick. When he tells you to get out of his hair, he means it."
—Jennifer Joyner
_____
Jennifer reached over and grabbed my crotch, massaging it appreciatively. Finding it responsive, she shifted gears herself. She unzipped my fly and pulled my cock free. She stroked it a few times, then just couldn't help sampling it in her mouth.
The car being open, more than a few fellow travelers noticed Jennifer's head bob up and down as we ripped past them. The ultimate in wealthy arrogance. A slicked-out asshole getting head in his Lamborghini as he weaved in and out of traffic at almost twice the legal speed limit.
I have to admit the sad spectacle of it all gave me some sense of perverse pleasure. We were a sick joke hurtling through space at seventy mph. Unfortunately, great art requires a great audience. I did not notice many people laughing in the cars we were passing.
We were rapidly approaching the Sunset/Sepulveda intersection. The traffic light was red for Sunset, but I didn't slow down. I actually went faster. As Jennifer licked and sucked my cock I just couldn't find it in my heart to apply the brakes. Cars were traveling through the light on Sepulveda in an intermittent pattern. It looked like there was going to be a collision.
I came just as we hit the intersection. Jennifer sat up, saw what was happening, screamed, and squeezed my spurting cock hard with both hands, splattering my Hugo Boss suit. I shot through the space between two cars and slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop on the side of the road. Cars screeched and tires smoked as everyone attempted to avoid a chain reaction. People skidded to a halt, narrowly avoiding the bumper of the vehicle in front of them.
I was shaken. I didn't know what had come over me. Did I want to kill us? Did I want to kill others? Or was I just trying to get a reaction out of Jennifer? A hint of some true emotion other than animal passion? I don't know if I did it on purpose or just blanked out. The whole scene felt like a dream. Someone else's dream that I had somehow entered. Maybe it wasn't Jennifer's humanity I was testing. Maybe it was mine.
2
We were an hour late to the studio where we were supposed to be shooting a perfume ad. The perfume, ironically enough, was called Collision, and there were two full-size sports cars on the set, bumper to bumper, in front of a backdrop of a desolate city scape. A building in the center of the backdrop was shaped like a giant perfume bottle with the name Collision written across the front in office lights.
Salvatore, my art director, had done another brilliant job. Of course when the ad saw print everyone would assume I was the genius.
Hey, I hired him.
I had an espresso while Jennifer got dressed and had her makeup done. Everyone else was there, waiting on us. I gave no apology. They were being paid well whether they worked or not. Lou Collins, my partner, walked by and pointed at his watch with a wry smile. I smiled back and shrugged. Partner up with a horny photographer, be ready to pay some OT.
After an hour or so, Jennifer came out of the dressing room.
"I'm ready, stud," she said jokingly, but also loudly enough for everybody in a three-mile radius to hear her.
She knew how much something like that would perturb me and it worked. I was pissed off before the first shot clicked over. She was going to fuck with me to make up for almost killing her on the drive over. She also wanted to lay a not-so-subtle claim down so that the other models we had in for the day wouldn't try to jostle her out of pole position.
I always tried not to get involved with the models, but I'm weak and they're beautiful and usually calloused enough to deal with the apathy that comes with seeing me on anything other than professional terms. Some of them just want what I want—a good clean fuck. No hassles. No involvements. No intrigues. Jennifer started out like that, but lately she was showing signs of moral disintegration. She was beginning to get possessive, to act like we were developing into "a couple." This called for a readjustment. She was setting herself up for "the talk." And that would be the end of that.
Too bad. I enjoyed the sex. Occasionally even enjoyed her company, which surprised me. Models usually had little of interest to say. They were too concerned with diets and hairstyles and who's fucking who and how you blow your way onto the cover of Cosmo.
But Jennifer was a little different. She watched the six o'clock news faithfully, rooted for the Phoenix Suns after they picked up Charles Barkley, and even read a book on occasion. She knew exactly who she was. Her ambitions were limited to modeling. None of that acting shit that so many of the girls tried to segue into. She was happy to pose without words, collect the checks, and pay for her condo on the west side. When she got older she planned on starting her own modeling agency.
I had been sleeping with Jennifer for about five months, on and off, ever since the first day we worked together. We did a suntan oil piece down on Venice Beach and I knew from the moment we locked eyes that we were going to tangle. She was just my type, long and leggy with curly dark hair down past her shoulders. She had sparkling green eyes, high cheekbones—standard on this model—and full lips that didn't need any collagen injections to give them depth. Her bottom lip gave her the look of a continuous pout unless she was smiling, which was most of the time; then she looked like a walking, talking magazine cover. I could take her once or twice a week, four or five hours at a time, but we'd been seeing each other a little too much lately. Fault lines were beginning to show in the structure.
We had met at the Rose Cafe the night before the Collision shoot, ostensibly to discuss the layout, but Jennifer Joyner doesn't take no for an answer once she begins a seduction, and the night led to an early morning full of carnal bliss capped off with the blow job that almost killed us on Sunset Boulevard. I was already exhausted and a bit full of Jennifer by the time we began shooting, but she was doing everything in her power to keep me riled up and interested in her. She knew her limitations and could sense mine.
Within a half hour we had the setup ready to be photographed. A man in a three-piece suit and a woman in a slinky evening gown argued seductively in front of the automobiles. Jennifer was dressed in a super short and skimpy black leather cop uniform complete with storm trooper boots and hooker garters. She mimed writing a "love ticket" while standing above the two models with one foot on the trunk of the front car and one foot on the hood of the rear car. I had Whitney, my main camera assistant, slap some early eighties Bauhaus on the sound system to get the juices flowing. The place was rocking with black death and hot sex. The mood was just right.
I worked the set, shooting from a very deliberate series of angles and giving brief suggestions to the models. They performed like the living mannequins they were and gave me just what I wanted. Total ego, total greedy sexuality. But it wasn't enough. It felt wrong. It was all rote. Bloodless.
By the time the session was over, I was beat. I couldn't focus anymore and I had lost all notion of what the campaign was about. We had done everything required by the ad agency that had commissioned the job, but something was missing. Some spark. No one on this set was horny yet and if you can't get a hard-on when you're doing the setup, the buyer ain't gonna get one when he looks at the ad, and that means you're not going to move your product to the consumer either.
I decided to think about it overnight and ordered everyone back in the morning, much to Lou's consternation. He thought we could get it all in one day. We were being paid a flat rate. Whatever we spent on the shoot came out of our end. Being the greedy little businessman he was, he didn't want to spend the extra money.
Lou made a few sad noises about it all, but he knew better than to push it. The artist rules at this stage of the game. He was hell on wheels when it came to negotiating the deals, but when it came to the space between me, the camera, and my subjects, he didn't fuck around. That was our deal from the beginning of our three-year partnership and he had remained faithful to that aspect of our relationship, no matter how much it cost the company. We always came out ahead in the long run. Just not as far ahead as Lou wanted.
As I was wrapping my equipment I could see the two "driver" models talking in the background, setting up a dinner date. A few camera assistants and stagehands were milling around, doing various jobs at a leisurely pace. It had been an easy day for them. The kind of day that usually doesn't produce the desired results. It hadn't.
Jennifer approached me. She was now dressed in tights. She wiped sweat off her neck with a black towel and purred, "What's on for tonight, Nick?" in a way that told me she had something very specific in mind.
"No plans," I responded before I had a chance to think about it. I did not usually make a habit of seeing the same woman two nights in a row. It was a bad policy that could lead to trouble.
"There's a Halloween party at Mark Pecchia's," Jennifer said.
"Who's Mark Pecchia?"
"You know, the rock video director."
"Never heard of him." I had heard of Pecchia, but I wasn't about to let her know it. I didn't want to go to any party at some hipper-than-thou video director's sleaze pit.
"C'mon, it'll be fun," she chimed.
"I'm not much of a partier."
"Unless it's your party."
"Right."
"I want to go." She played with my tie, trying to minx it up a bit. The manipulation was in full swing and I wasn't going to put up with it. It was time to start lowering the boom. I looked at her with my blankest stare and said, "Who's stopping you?"
Jennifer's face dropped.
"You are such a cold fuck."
I turned and walked away from her. I began removing a lens from one of my cameras and realized she was right behind me. The stoic shoulder hadn't worked.
"You think you've got it all figured out, don't you, Nick? I'm not just another one of your disposable models. I'm a real person! You can't just use me when you want me, then throw me on the trash heap!"
This was starting to draw attention. It was the kind of publicity that I didn't welcome. I took a step closer to Jennifer so no one else could hear what I had to say. I had to come up with something to cool her off before she really went ballistic. Jennifer had a temper, but that's what made her special in front of the camera and in bed as well. This "special" quality had a tendency to backfire at times. I decided to exercise a rare bit of diplomacy.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean it the way it sounded. I'm just stressed out over this job. I don't think I've got a hold on it yet and it's pissing me off."
It was as close to the truth as I could come without increasing her anger. I was pissed off at the job, but she was pissing me off even more.
Jennifer was suddenly concerned about her performance. All thoughts of personal feelings were gone, tucked away behind the brick wall of career. She was a seasoned pro, through and through.
"You think it's us?" She meant the other models, of course, not her, but she was showing a rare bit of diplomacy herself.
"No, no, no. You guys are doing great. It's me. This campaign needs something more. Something special. Something I'm not seeing."
"You should come to the party, then. The crowd'll be wild. Could be good inspiration."
"I get all the inspiration I need driving home at night."
"C'mon, Nick. Don't be such a recluse."
"I really can't, Jenn. I'm wasted. Burnt to a crisp."
I turned away and continued wrapping out my equipment. Jennifer pouted more sullenly than usual, like a six-year-old trying to get her way. I looked at her and thought about it for a moment. She was pretty funny at times. I involuntarily snorted a little laugh.
"You know how I like to see you pout."
"I'm not asking you to marry me or anything. I just thought you might like to go to a party. As friends. No strings attached."
I did something stupid and unusual. I gave in.
"What time do you want me to pick you up?"
Jennifer brightened. "Eightish."
She kissed me on the cheek and said, "Thanks".
I felt awkward. I was not accustomed to displays of emotion, no matter how simple. I'd much rather have sex with a complete stranger than kiss a friend with meaning. I mumbled, "Uh-huh," and went back to packing up as Jennifer scurried off to change.
3
I fought the rush-hour traffic and got back home by six-thirty. My house on PCH was high-tech, yet minimally furnished. I was never much for collecting possessions. I think it gives one a false sense of permanence. I've always lived spartanly, almost Japanese in style and simplicity. I had no more than was needed to make things comfortable, but what I did have was the very best. The best couches and chairs from Italy, the best bedroom furnishings from Denmark, the best dining room layout from Japan, and the best kitchenware from France. My decorator had taken the simplest styles from each of these countries and designed an interior that had symmetry and class. It sounds like it would be schizophrenic, a tour through the United Nations, but it wasn't. She found just the right pieces to complement the whole and make it all work, as if a new race of people had been discovered using the finest these countries had to offer and discarding the rest.
The setting sun cast an amber glow throughout my house as I entered and dropped my satchel by the door. The beach side of the house was all glass, floor-to-ceiling windows throughout. The PCH side was thick concrete block and various soundproofing materials to muffle the traffic noise. It worked wonders. The sound of waves cascading on the beach easily drowned out the stream of traffic flowing eight feet outside the front door.
I collapsed into a chair and stared through the blinds at the ocean. A dark orange fireball reflected off the Malibu surf. Smoke from the fires to the north gave it an even bloodier tint than usual. Another day was shot. I'd never get it back. And how had I spent my lost day? The same way I spent the last three thousand days. Taking pictures. Burning film for some advertising house trying to sell the public twenty cents of stink for thirty dollars an ounce. Somewhere on the planet people were doing something worthwhile. I did not know these people.
I watched the ocean devour the sun and wondered what the night would bring. I was so fed up with "the scene." L.A. was growing stuffy for me. I was feeling the itch. I had a touch of wanderlust. Or maybe it was nerves. Things had been going smoothly for too long. I could feel something coming, waiting around the corner to pounce. For months I had had the uneasy feeling of a gambler who had stayed at the same blackjack table for too long. The smart operators know when it's time to make a move. I had my eye on the door, I just couldn't seem to be able to get out of my own way.
PART II
"Risk increases exponentially with beauty."
—Nick Gardner
1
I picked Jennifer Joyner up at a little after eight. We drove slowly into Beverly Hills. I was in no hurry to get to this party. Jennifer's eyes were red and I could tell that she'd been crying. I asked her what was wrong.
"I took a nap when I got home," she said flatly. "I had a dream and when I woke up I was crying."
"What was the dream about?"
"It was nonsense. You don't want to hear it. It's boring."
"We've got time."
"You won't believe it."
"Shock me."
"In the dream I'm living with someone in a tiny house out in the country. It's beautiful. The house is like a dollhouse, white picket fence and everything. The countryside is spectacular and there are no houses anywhere except for ours."
"Ours?"
"Mine and the guy I live with in the dream. Don't worry, Nick, it's not you. It's not anyone. I can never see his face clearly, but he's got a gorgeous body. So I guess he's the perfect man. Great body, no face, no mouth. And he loves me. We're happy. Incredibly happy, living out in the country in our little dollhouse, ready to raise kids, protected by our little white picket fence. Corny, huh?"
"What happened next?" I asked. "Why did you cry?"
"I woke up."
2
Mark Pecchia lived in Benedict Canyon, up where old money nestled side by side with the nouveaux riches. It was an impressive neighborhood. You had to be some breed of shark to buy into that pond. I pulled up in front of a very large house that used to belong to Errol Flynn. A long line of expensive vehicles were parked along the side of the street, stretching far up the hill in front of us. A young white guy in a Jack Pick's Parking uniform opened the door for me. I recognized the kid from a half dozen parties I'd been to in the last year. His name tag read Daniel, but I knew him as Clyde Vogel. He had changed his name recently at the suggestion of his talent agent.
"Take it easy on her, Clyde," I warned.
"I treat this car like it's my own," Clyde sang, like he was auditioning for an opera.
"That's what I'm afraid of."
A similarly dressed Latino attendant opened Jennifer's door and helped her out, copping a little feel as he made his move. She lived with it.
Clyde gave me a ticket stub, got into the Lamborghini and burned rubber up the hill. I looked at the other attendant and handed him a ten. I had seen this guy parking cars at parties for the last three years, but I still didn't know his name. He never wore a name tag and never offered to reveal his identity. He was friendly enough, but he seemed to want to remain anonymous. Probably another failed actor thinking he should protect his name for the big time. Not spread it around so everybody remembers him as what's-his-name, the parking attendant. I respect a person's privacy, so I never pushed him on his identity. He folded the ten and smiled at me appreciatively.
"Tell your buddy not to race anything faster than a Porsche in my car tonight," I said. "It needs a tune-up."
"Will do."
Jennifer and I walked toward the house. A big, beefy fucker was standing at the door to make sure only the elite entered. He gave Jennifer a kiss on the neck, which I took as a good sign, then he ushered us in without a word.
The place was a sparse, half-decorated mini-mansion packed with every type of Hollywood fiend in the catalog. Many of them were dressed in outlandish Halloween costumes, many had just come as they were in real life. It was a minor difference.
Either Mark Pecchia and I had similar tastes in decorating or he had bought into something he couldn't quite pay for. The town is full of people who buy or rent big houses for show, then don't have enough money left to buy a chair to squat on. There are people driving sixty-thousand-dollar automobiles who can't pay the rent on their five-hundred-dollar-a-month apartments. It's all show. It's flash and front. Runners going long, hoping for the miracle pass and a winning touchdown. In these neighborhoods you didn't have to keep up with the Joneses if you were going to stay in business, you had to keep up with the Rockefellers and Bill Cosby.
Pecchia had about half the furniture one would expect in a place this size. I couldn't tell if it was on purpose or out of poverty. The stuff he had was nice, what could be seen of it. The place was filled with wall-to-wall bodies. What decor that could be seen appeared to be Santa Fe stuff trying to blend with the classic Spanish design of the house. Pecchia probably picked the furniture up cheap at a Beverly Hills yard sale in the late eighties as the style slipped out of vogue.
The lighting was low in the auditorium-sized living room, the average moral attitude even lower. They had rounded up the usual suspects, plus half of Santa Monica Boulevard. The room was a steaming sea of tattoos and pierced flesh, black leather and torn lace. Jennifer and I moved through the crowd and mingled. It was frightening how easily we blended.
Jennifer pulled me toward a tall man with long hair, beard, mustache, blue jeans, pink shirt, red tie, and hipster sunglasses. He had an imported beer in one hand, a joint in the other. It had to be the host.
"Mark!" Jennifer exclaimed as she kissed him on the cheek.
"Hey, JJ," the man responded with utter cool. JJ was not something I had ever heard anyone call Jennifer Joyner. I hoped I wouldn't hear it again.
"Mark, I want you to meet a friend of mine . . . Nick Gardner."
Pecchia put the joint in his mouth and shook my hand vigorously.
"Glad you could make it, Nick. I really like your stuff."
I was a little taken aback by that statement, but I mumbled "Thanks," and nodded like an idiot.
Pecchia offered me the joint. "Hit?"
"No thanks."
Pecchia grabbed the arm of an overweight guy who was breezing past and stopped him in his tracks. "Morrie, get Nick and Jennifer something from the bar," Pecchia commanded.
"Sure thing," the chunky guy bubbled. He seemed accustomed to kissing ass. He appeared to enjoy it.
"What are you drinking, Nick?" Pecchia asked.
"Jack Daniel's straight up will be fine."
"JJ?"
"I'll just have a diet Coke."