Page 27 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
Blackwood’s jet might have been bigger than ours, but too much space was taken up by pointless shit—the ice machine in the galley, the closet full of designer clothes, the oversized shower stall in the luxury bathroom. So the space available for cargo was roughly the same.
The airplane was stationary on the tarmac in Sorong, and we were using it as an office while we worked out our final destination. The only certainty right now? Lonnie McDonald wasn’t on Malati.
The authorities had tried getting in touch, but he hadn’t returned their calls. His cell phone was in New York, his wife was rumoured to be in Milan, his mistress was posting Instagram selfies from Paris, and we’d just found his jet in Perth. Perth, Western Australia, not Perth, Scotland. The cell was the obvious clue, but neither of us wanted to go steaming off across continents if he had a second phone we didn’t yet know about. I changed my number like most people changed their underwear. Emmy had three phones, but she’d only brought two of them with her, and one of those was diverted to an assistant.
She hung up her call. “A team from our New York office is going to get us an answer. Lonnie’s a real bellend, by the way.”
“Are you speaking from personal experience?”
“Unfortunately. I only met him once, at some gala, and he wasn’t there for long.”
“Why do you say he’s a bellend? That’s British for ‘douchebag,’ right?”
“Right. He shook Black’s hand—one of those too-tight, my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours efforts—and then he kissed me on both cheeks, French-style. But there was no way his filthy little fingers needed to be that close to my ass, and he spent a good part of the conversation bitching about European democracy. Drink?”
“Non-alcoholic?”
“Of course.”
“Do you have OJ?”
“Sure.” Emmy headed for the galley, and I was surprised she didn’t have a crew member to take care of it for her. “Anyhow, that was when I dropped a laxative into his Scotch. I’m not sure what he’d been eating, but they had to call a cleaning crew after he vacated the bathroom.”
Okay, that was actually pretty funny and definitely something I would have done.
“I hope they got paid well.”
“I left them a tip. Ice?”
“No, thanks. Funny how his wife is in Italy if he hates Europe.”
“He hates fair taxes, not the Corso Venezia. He kept going on about how ‘None of them uppity Europeans understand the free market. Too many rules.’”
“Does he understand that Europe is, like, fifty countries?”
“I don’t think so. Plus it’s more difficult to buy politicians in most of Europe.”
“With your money, I’m surprised you don’t own half of Congress.”
“Bold of you to assume I don’t.”
“So you do?”
Emmy studied me for a long moment. “Off the record?”
“Off the record.”
“You don’t need to own half of Congress to make a difference—a few strategically chosen assholes will do. And blackmail is cheaper than bribery.”
“So the kompromat rumours are true?”
“I couldn’t possibly say.”
“What do you have on McDonald?”
“Not as much as we need, unfortunately. The mistress thing, but I’m reasonably sure his wife knows and doesn’t much care. I mean, if I was married to him, I’d be grateful to have the bed to myself. Plus he’s also well-versed in bribery. How do you think he got permission to build on Malati?”
“Could we go after the officials who took the bribes?”
