Chapter 18: Dinner with the enemy

I WILL GO TO HELL FOR THIS. If I’m lucky, I’ll be dead first.

Angel told me, back in November when I was trying to get a feel for what her business was all about, the objective was never to sell sex to an old fart. It was to sell the idea that sex wasn’t beyond the realm possibility. And to make him pay for the dream rather than a reality.

It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Selling the dream

I met Mr. Reinholdt in the hotel lobby and he introduced himself as Jon Rentz. Not very imaginative but then, look at the name I’m using. There’s no Riley Finn to complain about me using his name outside the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I chose it because all my aliases have something to do with Riley.

So, there we were, two impostors having a lovely polite but flirtatious dinner together beside the pool in an 80-degree paradise with the most spectacular night sky above I’d ever seen. There are several people I can think of, living and dead, I’d rather share this experience with.

I wasn’t at all hesitant to order the ‘grill marinated lobster tail with rice and sauce vegetables’ at $65, nor to have my fill of single origin dark chocolates with coffee for dessert. Mr. Rentz, however, seemed somewhat disappointed when he offered me a glass of Chenin Blanc ($120 per bottle) from a Northern California vineyard that would have cost $12 at Fred Meyer. Of course, the menu I had didn’t have prices on it, but I looked last night when I ate alone. The Dom here is $750 a bottle. Unbelievable.

“So, Miss Finn,” he said, “from where do you hail.” He’s as pretentious as the menu.

“Chatham, Mass,” I answered. “How about you?”

“Seattle,” he answered. I told you he wasn’t creative. Fake name but he’s living in the same place. I doubt he even used a fake passport to travel.

“Does it really rain there all the time?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “we just tell people that to keep the population down. If everyone knew how beautiful our city is, we’d never keep them out.”

“Ah. Like an exclusive club, huh?” Probe.

“You might say so. Finn. What nationality is that?”

“My father claimed to be full Irish, though it was his grandfather who immigrated to the US in the 1800s. He said that’s where I get my red hair. And my temper,” I laughed.

“And the blue eyes?” Oops! I usually wear green contacts with this wig but I didn’t bring those with me.

“My mother is as Swedish as they come,” I said. “She’s tall and blonde and blue-eyed. I don’t know why I couldn’t have gotten her hair as well as her eyes.”

“You’d look good as a blonde,” he said. “You should try it. They say blondes have more fun.”

“Oh, hair color never stopped me from having fun,” I said. “What do you do in Seattle, Mr. Rentz?” It was time to move the conversation of my fake identity and see what I could get out of him.

“I manage a little pharmaceutical company. Seattle is very big in bio-tech.” Really no imagination. I bet he doesn’t know what other businesses are in Seattle outside those owned by his cohort.

“That sounds very exciting. Are you finding a cure for cancer or AIDS?” ‘Where’s your social conscience?’ is what I was saying.

“That’s a tough problem, better left to people smarter than I am. I just sell what they develop.” What? Was that a hint of false humility I detected? He didn’t add ‘at grossly overpriced profit margins.’

“You must sell a lot of it to vacation down here in Belize. I had to save a year for this little trip. This is a vacation, isn’t it? Or are you selling drugs?” I whispered.

“Mostly ... Let’s say a working vacation. I have a business meeting to attend Monday but other than that, it is a lovely place to spend Christmas.”

“It’s such a shame you are here alone,” I said. “Don’t you have family to spend the holiday with?”

“Well, my wife will be joining me Wednesday after the meetings are over. She doesn’t really like it down here that much.” He dropped his voice conspiratorially. “We have three days to enjoy ourselves before she gets here.” The cheating cad.

“Oh, I can’t enjoy myself too much. I’m here with my boyfriend.” Let’s see how you handle that, lech.

“Where is your boyfriend now that he lets you wander unescorted where any manner of ne’er-do-well could attach to you?”

“He got hit with a stomach bug the minute we landed. He’s absolutely no fun to be with when he’s running to the bathroom every ten minutes. I’m sure you’ll see him around by the time your wife gets here, though,” I said. Will you pay for my company with a little information. “What kind of business meeting gets held on an island in Central America?” I asked. “When you say pharmaceuticals, you don’t mean you’re a drug runner, do you?”

“I sell drugs,” he answered. “But they are all legal drugs. Some with a better profit margin when imported from facilities where labor is cheaper. In the US, there are certain restraints on what people can discuss in a meeting if they are in the same business. We have to discuss these things as we share many of the same suppliers. We’d never get anywhere with our businesses if one manufacturer was selling a product at a significantly reduced rate. It’s a matter of self-regulating the trade, so to speak.” Price fixing.

Okay. He’s a bigger idiot than I thought. Who the hell covers up an illegal meeting by inventing a different kind of illegal meeting? Or maybe he is meeting others in the pharmaceutical industry as well. And maybe he isn’t an idiot but is just flat-out so arrogant that he believes he’s immune to consequences. He might actually be telling me that he’s meeting people to divide up the market or fix the price of aspirin around the world. Why? Because he simply can’t believe anyone in the world could be smart enough to understand what was going on. He’s probably right. Who’d believe little old me if I launched a story about a secret meeting in Belize that would result in a 500 percent increase in the cost of an EpiPen?