Authors: Jeffrey Robinson
“Why do you want to own the world?” Couric asked.
“That's what Trump wanted to know when I mentioned the deal to him. You know what I told him?”
“What?”
“I said, âDonald, when you own the world, you get laid a lot.'”
Couric looked at him askance.
“And you know what he said to me?” Zeke nodded several times, “He said that when he was single and running around with some of the most beautiful women on the planet, absolutely gorgeous girls, he used to get laid all the time. He said, âZeke, I didn't have to own the world.' And I said to him, âDonald, of course not, because you already owned the air rights.'”
Couric smiled politely.
Not far away, Carson Haynes asked David Cove, “Need a ride home?”
“Nah,” David, dressed all in black and wearing his square black sunglasses, grinned proudly, “I got us Trump's Phantom.”
“Trump's Phantom?”
“Big white mother.”
He had to know, “How'd you arrange that?”
“Out-putted him yesterday at Pebble Beach. That's why he's not here tonight. He's playing a charity thing with Tiger.”
“You beat him out of his Rolls Royce?”
“For the night. But y'all gotta know I'll have it forever as long as he's willing to give me four strokes.”
“What?”
“Damn right.”
“You have the nerve to take four strokes from him?” Carson reminded David, “You play scratch . . . Trump's a two.”
“Y'all have a problem with that?”
Carson mimicked David's accent, “Y'all got any friends left?”
David laughed, “At four, only Trump. At five? Not a one.”
Carson shook his head in amazement, patted David on the shoulder, and went to find Alicia, who was suddenly standing too close to the French soccer star Thierry Henry.
Before long, David motioned to Tina, and the two of them made their exit. Just as they did, the white Rolls pulled up to the curb. David signaled to Harold, the driver, to stay put and opened the back door himself for Tina. She got in, and he got in, and Harold asked, “Home?”
“Home,” David said, then sat all the way back and smiled at Tina. “Y'all gotta say that was a reasonable evening.”
Harold pulled into traffic.
“Alicia is such a bitch,” she said, taking her iPhone out of her bag. “Did you see the way she was looking at that polo player from Argentina?”
“You mean that Figeras kid?”
“Not him. The other polo player from Argentina.”
“What other polo player from Argentina?” He pulled his own iPhone out of his pocket and turned it on.
“The one screwing Felipa.”
“Who's Felipa?”
“Felipa Guillermo? The one who inherited her mother's estate? Two billion bucks worth? She's forty-one, and her polo player is twenty-two.”
He shook his head, as if to say he didn't know who she was talking about.
She looked at him. “Red Chanel dress with those plastic things hanging out?”
“Oh. They're from Argentina?”
“No, they're from Dr. Howard Rosenberg of Hartsdale.” Tina's e-mails clicked in and began downloading. “Marlboros?”
Now his e-mails also clicked in. “Nah.” He scrolled down. “Felipa what?” Then he asked, “Copper wire?”
“Guillermo,” she said. “No copper. How about iPads?”
“iPads?” He looked down his list of e-mails. “Ah . . . Malaysia? They're fake.”
“Just like Felipa's.”
“How âbout some Chianti?”
She continued scrawling through her e-mails. “Italy or Chile?”
“Doesn't say.” He read through the note. “Looks like a thousand pallets,
forty-eight cases to a pallet.” It only took him a few seconds to do the calculations in his head. “Two-point-three million and change. Four and a quarter a bottle. Four-twenty. Something like that.”
“The Turk?”
“Himself. So it must be Chile. Distressed in Gib.”
She checked her watch. “The sun's already up over the Bosphorus.”
David nodded and speed-dialed a number in Istanbul.
On the other end a phone rang three times before a man with a gruff voice asked, in Turkish, “Who is it?”
“Asil?” David said, putting his phone on speaker. “Tina and I have decided we're thirsty.”
He answered in good English, “How thirsty?”
“What can we do at . . . say, three-ninety a bottle?”
“Get thirstier. I'm looking for four-twenty-two.”
“It's Chile, right?”
“It's Chile, right . . . except that everything is labeled product of Italy.”
David looked at Tina. “Three-ninety-two.”
Asil said, “Four-twenty-five.”
“Y'all just said four-twenty-two.”
“So now you have to come up to four-twenty-five.”
“How about you come down to three-ninety-two?”
“For the beautiful Tina? All right, my friend, for her I'll come down to four-twenty-two.”
Tina leaned toward the phone. “The beautiful Tina used to love you.”
He answered, “If the beautiful Tina will leave cowboy David for Asil, a man of infinite intrigue, I will come down to four-fifteen. But that's my best best.”
“Intrigue means what, in Turkish,” David wanted to know, “bullshit?”
“I will disregard him,” Asil said. “But tell me this, how much does good Italian Chianti sell for in New York? Fifteen dollars a bottle? Maybe twenty?”
“Good Italian Chianti that isn't from Italy?” David said, “That's why I'm thinking three-ninety-three.”
“I'll go down to four-eleven, but the offer is only open for fifteen minutes.”
“I'm in a car.”
“I'm in the bath.”
“Give me thirty.”
“Ten.”
“Okay, fifteen.”
“Drive carefully.”
“Y'all don't forget to use soap.”
As soon as David opened the door to their forty-fifth-floor duplex, Tina kicked off her three-inch spike Louboutin heelsâ“My feet are numb”âand let
her black lamé dress fall to the floor. David took off his dinner jacket, dropped it on top of Tina's dress, then kicked off his shoes and took off his pants too.
She walked down the hall, wearing only a black lace half-bra, a black silk thong and her mother's pearls.
He followed her in his black dress shirt, black underpants and black socks.
In the corner room that looked toward Central Park and Fifth Avenueâthe one they used as an officeâTina snapped on one of their four laptops, lit up the ninety-six-inch flat-screen hanging on the far wall, but left the rest of the lights off.
New York beyond the windows was still wide awake.
Somewhere not far away, an ambulance raced by with its siren blazing.
She logged on to three of the intranet sites they used, saw several bulletin boards come up in various sections of the huge screen, sat down and started sending e-mails.
David checked his watch and was about to dial Istanbul when Tina announced, “Three-ninety.”
He said. “Keep fishing.”
She highlighted every bulletin board. “There's nothing . . . he's the only one . . .”
Going over the various sections of the screens, David hoped to find someone who would be interested in taking this distressed cargo from them for a few cents more per bottle than they had to pay Asil for it. But no one seemed to be out there.
“Where's Shithead in LA?” He asked.
She reminded him, “He's never around after eight or nine at night.”
“No one in Italy? Look for France. Spain? Try Germany.”
“No one.” She kept typing messages and sending them to all of their contacts around the world.
“Where's Boris, or whatever his name is, in the Ukraine who took the cigarettes last time?”
She typed a few lines on her keyboard, looked up at the big screen, waited for a moment, then said, “No one's home.”
David shook his head, “Well . . . it was worth a shot,” and put the call through to Istanbul.
The line rang once before Asil answered it. “You're late.”
“We're trying to off-load this paint thinner for y'all, but even at four . . .”
Suddenly Tina grabbed his shoulder and pointed to the screen. Someone in Brazil was willing to pay $3.94.
David told Asil, “I mean . . . three-ninety is really where the market is,” and motioned to Tina to get the Brazilian to bid higher.
“Four-ten,” Asil said. “No way I can go lower.”
Tina sent the message to Brazil, then grabbed David's shoulder again. Someone in France was coming in at $3.95.
“I got no room,” David said to Asil, then pointed to the big screen where a new player, this one in Venezuela, was now bidding $3.97.
Asil sighed, “No problem, my friend, I will find someone else. . . .”
David poked Tina to get all the bidders up fast, and as she messaged them, he said to Asil, “I'm taking on your risk. If I can't unload this stuff . . .”
“You can unload anything,” Asil assured him. “Four-seven.”
Tina signaled that the Frenchman was up to $3.98, that the Venezuelan had gone away, but that there was somebody in Denmark offering $3.99.
“Best I can do . . .” he said, . . . “y'all call it three-ninety-three. Honestly, there's nothing out there. Nobody wants this stuff. I'm telling you straight. Nobody.” And with that he motioned to Tina, higher.
“And I'm telling you straight, at four-six I'm a dead man.”
All of a sudden Tina grabbed a phone, dialed a numberâDavid saw a phone number in Seoul, South Korea, come up on the screenâand started talking in a whisper. She motioned to David to stall Asil.
“How long have y'all been shopping this stuff?”
Asil assured him, “You got it first.”
“Because absolutely no one's interested . . .” David motioned to Tina to do something.
She mouthed the words, “Keep talking.”
“. . . not even at three-ninety-four . . .”
Now Tina tugged at his hand and signaled with her fingers, four-two.
“I mean . . . there's zero . . . nobody . . . but because it's you . . . the very best . . . I mean, this is all I've got and believe me . . .”
“Of course I believe you,” Asil cut in.
“Believe me . . .” David looked at Tina and then up at the screen where the Frenchman now offered four-four. “Believe me . . . three-ninety-six . . .”
Then the Brazilian came back with four-five and Tina motioned that South Korea was in with four-six.
“. . . and even that's kinda high âcause I'm thinking that . . .” David lied again to Asil . . . “maybe I would just buy ten cases for myself and if y'all want four-two . . .”
“Since when do I do split loads?”
“Since the last time, when y'all were flogging microchips.”
“That was technology,” Asil insisted, “these are perishables.”
David reminded him, “Good Chianti is supposed to get better with age.”
“Like I said, these are perishables.”
Tina indicated that South Korea was up to four-seven but was stopping
there and that both Brazil and France had dropped out and that Denmark was no longer anywhere to be seen.
“Final offer,” David said, “three-ninety-eight. Honestly, there isn't another penny in it.”
“Honestly, final offer,” Asil mimicked him. “Four-four.”
David looked at Tina, as if to ask, is there anyone else out thereâanywhere. She shook her head no.
“Y'all killing me pal. Three-ninety-nine. Final, final.”
“Four-three,” Asil said.
Tina nodded.
David said, “Sold.”
Tina typed a message to Seoul and the deal was done.
There was still paperwork to arrange, but after David hung up with Asil, and after Tina hung up with Seoul, he reached for her bra and unhooked it. “Dr. Rosenberg, eat your heart out.”
In the course of twenty minutes, they'd bought and sold 576,000 bottles of Chilean plunk disguised as Italian Chianti, squeezing out four cents per bottle in the middle for themselves, to make around $23,000.
“How much for the panties?”
“Twenty-five grand.” She crossed her arms, hiding her breasts, “Sorry GI, maybe next time.”