Point of Impact (7 page)

"Yeah?"

"So with the net and cheap home computers or access through cable TV or whatever, you don't even have to take the bus ride. You log onto a site, order what you need, maybe answer a couple of questions over the wire to keep things more or less legal in Canada or Mexico, and your prescription shows up in your mailbox in a day or two, assuming you are dealing with a reputable outfit."

"All the way down," she said. "And keep your knees straight."

He chuckled. "Being pregnant has made you mean, woman."

"Oh, you think so? Just wait. So the DEA didn't leap all over these folks for importing medicine illegally?"

"Ha! Think about that for a second. Here's somebody's little old granny on a pension who's got a bad heart after working forty years teaching grammar school kids. Would
you
want to be the DEA guy in charge of arresting her for buying her nitroglycerin or whatever across the border to save enough money so she doesn't have to eat dog food? Imagine how many federal prosecutors would want to hop on
that
career bandwagon. The press would swarm you like a cloud of starving locusts. Can't you just see the headlines? 'Grandma Busted for Heart Meds!' "

"It could be a political problem," she said.

"Oh, yeah, it could. Then there are the drugs that are legal in other countries but not approved by the FDA, which, according to Jay, is another whole can of worms. Let's say you want to take Memoril, one of the new smart drugs that improves your short-term memory something like seventy percent. The FDA is still out on that one, but it's been legal in most of Europe for a couple of years. So, you log onto a web page in Spain, give them your credit card number, and order a hundred tabs. A few days later, you get a package from Scotland that looks like a birthday gift from your Uncle Angus, and inside is your drug, made by a pharmaceutical company in Germany. And all of this is perfectly legal in Spain, Scotland, and Germany, and it's not their concern about laws in the U.S.

"If Customs happens to guess what's in the package, they'll confiscate it, because technically it is illegal, but it's a gray area. If you went to Spain and got the stuff from a doctor there, you could bring it home for your own personal use. What's the difference if it comes by mail or you carried it home in your pocket? It's
malum prohibitum--
bad because it's illegal--not
malum in se--
bad in itself."

"When did
you
start speaking Latin?"

"Since I asked our lawyers about all this."

"Watch your shoulder."

"And then we get to the illegal stuff, which is easier to prosecute, assuming you know what it is and know for sure that it is illegal, which is the problem here. Big purple caps aren't illegal in themselves."

"Ipso facto," she said.

"Talk to me about Latin," he said. "So, there you have it. It's really the FDA's problem, only the boss made it mine. She probably owes somebody over there a favor, and this is it. And the NSA listens to everything on the air or over the wire, so I can understand how they know about it, but I don't see why it should interest them. Fortunately, I have plenty of time to think about it, things being slow. I wish you were still working there. It would be more interesting. We all miss you at the office. Me most of all."

"You're loose enough. Up. Do your
djurus.
You'll feel better after you work out."

He came to his feet. That was true. He almost always did feel better afterward. It was the damned inertia that was so hard to overcome sometimes. Good that he had Toni here to prod him. Among her many other virtues.

Chapter
7.

Malibu, California

Naked, Drayne padded into the kitchen to get the rest of the bottle of champagne from the freezer. He really ought to get a little fridge for the bedroom, save him a walk.

Life was so hard.

Not that the girl would miss him. What was her name? Misty? Bunny? Buffy? Something like that. He'd say, "Honey," and call it good. She was out, and she ought to sleep pretty hard, too, given the athletic encounters and the first bottle of bubbly they'd just split. She was an actress--all of them around here were actresses--early twenty-something, tight, fit, perky. A natural redhead, he had discovered to his delight, once the itty-bitty black silk bikini undies had come off.

Ah, youth, nothing like it.

He'd picked her up at the gym, which is where he found most of the girls he brought home. Jocks tended to be fitter, had less risk of disease, and were able to play longer before they wore out. He didn't like his women with too much muscle, so he stayed away from the hardcore lifters, but there was always a Misty-Bunny-Buffy working the aerobic bikes and the light weights, and it never took long for him to make a connection with one. He wasn't bad-looking, and the twenty-thousand-dollar diamond ring and drop-top Mercedes two-seater usually impressed them. He even had some business cards that said he was an independent movie producer--Bobby Dee Productions--and that would usually be enough to clinch the contact if they were about to walk away. "Oh, sorry we couldn't get together. Here's my card. If you are in Malibu, give me a call sometime."

Sex was always available, and not just to movie guys in this town. And Mama Drayne's little boy Bobby had more than a little endurance in that area, and without any chemical assistance, either--well, unless you counted good champagne. He didn't use the drugs he made, never had. Maybe someday when he got old and couldn't get it up anymore, he'd whip together a batch of some custom-made dick hardener, but frankly, he didn't think that was ever gonna happen. He'd never once had a failure in that particular arena, thank you very much, and four or five times a night was nooo problem. Then again, he was not thirty-five yet. Maybe when you hit sixty or seventy it was different.

As he turned from the hallway toward the kitchen, he saw Tad standing on the beach, staring at the ocean.

Drayne shook his head. Tad rode the Hammer, crazy fucker that he was. It was gonna kill him someday, no question. He was in such crappy shape, it was a miracle it hadn't killed him already, should have long since blown a blood vessel in the man's brain, stroked him blind, crippled, and stupid, not necessarily in that order. A night running with Thor was worth a week's recovery for somebody in pretty good physical condition, maybe more. Tad ought not to be able to recover at all, and yet he had swung the Hammer more than anybody alive and somehow managed to keep breathing. Of course, Tad had a portable pharmacy he gobbled, snorted, or shot up after he came off a Hammer trip. Probably more drugs than blood circulating in him at any given time. Somehow, he had managed to stay a step ahead of the reaper. Pretty damned amazing.

Drayne opened the freezer, pulled the second bottle of champagne out. He lifted it to his lips, thought better about that, and grabbed one of the chilled glasses on the freezer rack. Drinking it from the bottle was for barbarians. The bubbles didn't get released.

Had to be civilized about this, didn't we?

He poured the icy wine into the icy glass, watched the liquid turn to foam and fountain up, then slowly begin to settle down.

Time waiting for champagne bubbles to settle didn't count.

Out on the beach, near the water line, three hulking big jocks ran past, working on their aerobic fitness. Drayne glanced at Tad, worried. If Tad decided he didn't like the way the guys looked, he'd go for them, and big and strong as they were, they wouldn't have a prayer, Tad would twist them up like soft pretzels, if that's what he felt like.

But the trio jogged past, and if Tad even saw them, Drayne couldn't tell it from here. Watching Tad when something like this happened was like watching a Roman emperor. Thumb up or thumb down, and nobody knew which it'd be.

He shook his head. Sooner or later, Tad was going to step wrong and draw the law's attention. It had been a while since he'd done it last, and fortunately, it hadn't led back to Drayne that time. Plus, the house was clean, that wasn't a problem, he never kept anything illegal on hand for longer than it took to mix it and get it out again, but he didn't need the local deputies knocking on his door and asking about the crazy asshole dressed in black who suddenly turned into the Incredible Hulk and laid waste to the beach. Low profile was the way to go. If they didn't know about you, they wouldn't be able to bother you.

He finished filling up the glass, topped it off, and put the bottle back into the freezer. He walked to the deck, sipping at the cold champagne. Yeasty, with a hint of apple, good finish, no bitter aftertaste. Not the best, but after five or six glasses, there was no point in wasting the best; you couldn't taste the really exotic flavors and subtle stuff anyhow. As long as it was good enough not to irritate your stomach, that was all you needed for the second bottle.

There was a guy they called the Wine Nazi, up just north of San Francisco, way out a winding road in Lucas Valley, who made the best champagne on earth. Grand Brut, dry as the Sahara, and he sold
futures
in it, you bought what you could afford, he would call you when it was damned well ready, and if you didn't like it, too fucking bad. Worked out to about five hundred bucks a bottle--if you bought a case--and you couldn't buy more than one case a year. Six thousand bucks a case, and that was the nonvintage stuff. Sometimes it took eighteen months for the last batch to ripen to his satisfaction. The
really
good stuff ran two grand a bottle, and you had to get on a waiting list for that, too. Drayne's name hadn't gotten to the top of that list yet, but next year, he was pretty sure it would.

Drayne had done a tour there once. The winery was tiny, a hole-in-the-wall place, and before he was done, the Wine Nazi had him climbing up on barrels to taste the whites and reds right out of the casks, sucked it out with a long rubber tube and dribbled into a glass. And after a few sips of that, the guy had him helping hand-riddle the champagne bottles. They had to be turned so much every day, so the silt would settle and all.

Drayne was an appreciative audience. The guy was a certified genius when it came to wine, no question, and the champagne was the best of the lot. Of course, the Wine Nazi wouldn't let him call it champagne, since technically that meant it had to come from that particular region of France, so he called it sparkling wine. Even though it made the average good vintage of the French stuff taste like stale ginger ale.

That
was the stuff you saved for special occasions, definitely first-bottle, and not something you shared with Misty-Bunny-Buffy just to get laid. He had six bottles left, and six months left before he could buy another case. If he was lucky. So he had to ration it, one bottle a month, no more, and even then, he might have to wait. Terrible situation.

He grinned. He sure had a lot to complain about, didn't he? Living in a big house on the beach in Malibu, good-looking naked woman in his bed, a shitload of money, six bottles of the best champagne anybody in
this
town had. Hell, it really didn't get much better than that, did it?

Since it didn't look like Tad was going to go ballistic and destroy the neighborhood, maybe he should go back to bed and nudge Honey awake. He was sure he could think up something new for them to try.

Yep. That seemed like an
excellent
idea. He lifted his glass in a toast to his own cleverness.
Hi, ho, Bobby. Away!

He headed back toward the bedroom.

Tad felt the power.

It coursed through him like an electric current, filling him with pulsing flashes of juice, set him humming like a dynamo at full spin.

He was a god out here, deciding the fate of all who passed. At his whim, he could strike them down, become Shiva the destroyer, changing the very configuration of the planet with a mere wave of his hand. At his whim, which was how gods operated, far as he could tell.

He took a breath, and the sensation made orgasm seem pale in comparison. The thrills ran through his entire body, he could feel it everywhere at once, in his hands, his body, even his toes.
Man. What a rush!

He was a god. Able to do anything he wished.

And what he wished to do right now was ... walk. To stride down the beach, to pass among his people, disguised as a reedy, tubercular man all dressed in black, but beyond comprehension to mere mortals.

As far above them as a man was above an ant.

They couldn't know. He felt sorry for them, being so weak, so stupid. So pitiful.

He started to walk, feeling the sand like a living thing under his boots, hearing the soft
chee-chee-chee
squeaks it made with each step. He was aware of the evening breeze touching his skin, the smell of salt and iodine from the sea, the taste of the very air. He was aware of
everything,
not just on this beach, but radiating out to galaxies a billion light-years from where he walked. It was all his territory, all of it. If he reached up his arms, he could encompass it all in his grasp.

He laughed.

Ahead, somebody finished up a Frisbee game and headed for their towels. A beach volleyball game wound down. Traffic roared past on the highway, the cars and trucks taking on the aspect of dragons: fearsome creatures in their element, but creatures who knew better than to cross his path. He was Tad the Bershaw, and any being with enough sense to see him would know he was to be feared.