Good As Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t fully rise to the surface and cloud my thinking. I couldn’t allow them to affect my judgment if I had any hope at all of finding Lindsay Sorkin.
    Late that night, I went clubbing. And looking to score. By eleven, I had tried most of the trendy clubs—MadaM, Batofar, Le Gibus, Elysée Montmartre—but was unsuccessful in procuring any 007s. Pink Supermans seemed to be the “in” thing; mixed with a bit of ketamine and GHB, the combined effect was fittingly called an EKG. One dealer I found suggested I try one of Paris’s most infamous after-parties, an underground late-night rave held nightly at an abandoned cathedral. Still, I hoped to draw a bead on James Bond well before four in the morning.
    So next I visited some of Paris’s more exclusive clubs: Le VIP, Showcase, L’Etoile, Le World Place, and Le Cab. Fortunately, I’d dressed the part, looked like money. I’d spent a chunk of the afternoon at Francesco Smalto’s, getting fitted for a sharp black suit that hung meticulously on my lean, muscular frame. Speaking English to bouncers at the door didn’t hurt my chances of gaining entry. Neither did the few hundred euros I slipped those doormen who were staring down longer lines.
    It was in the ultramodern club Le Cab, also known as Cabaret, where I met a slender, attractive man who immediately came on to me. Said I didn’t give off the vibe but that I was hot enough that he had to give it a shot. I thanked him for the compliment but didn’t hint either way about my sexual orientation. I let him buy me a diva martini and we talked.
    “Know where I can get some E?” I said over the deafening house music. The club was packed. Not a face or a body in sight that couldn’t pass for a model’s.
    “Of course,” he said, his English nearly as good as his French.
    He dipped into his pocket, pulled out a tab, and told me to stick out my tongue.
    “What kind is it?” I said.
    “Baby, you’re in Paris. What does it matter?”
    “I scored some 007s last night,” I said, taking a pull off my martini, “and I was tripping balls till eleven this morning. Tonight, it’s James Bond or nothing.”
    “Oh, I see,” he said, popping the tab onto his tongue. “You’re a drug snob.” He put his index finger to his lips. “Don’t tell anyone, but I am, too. Tell you what. I’ll take you out for some 007s later, but how about some tina while we enjoy our drinks?”
    “Crystal?” I said. “Never touch the stuff.”
    “Bad experience?”
    “You could say that.”
    I didn’t tell him about the meth-head father I’d recently tracked down in San Salvador. Bastard put a gun to his teenage boy’s head. Better dead than with his puta mother in New Mexico, he told me. When I dropped my gun, he turned his .22 on me and fired. The gun jammed. The kid ran. Then I beat the father to within an inch of his life. Told him if he ever went near the boy or his mother again, I’d finish the job. I’d never made a more truthful statement in my life. And the father believed me.
    “Let’s finish these martinis and get out of here,” my new friend said. “By the way, what’s your name?”
    “Simon. Yours?”
    “Claude.” He polished off his drink and shot up off the cushy fuchsia seat. “Now let’s go find ourselves a little Daniel Craig in pill form.” He stared into my eyes as a pair of A-list celebrities brushed past us. “Or do you prefer Pierce Brosnan?”
    “Actually, I prefer Sean Connery.”
    “Oh, he’s like eightysomething,” Claude said, making a face. “Well, to each his own, I guess.”
    *
    Claude brought me to Le Queen on Champs-Elysées, a once-hot gay nightclub, he advised me, that had been shanghaied in recent years by heteros. We didn’t go inside but rather loitered around the premises, Claude surreptitiously eyeing the crowd for someone he recognized. The air was as crisp as a new five-hundred-euro banknote, the City of Light lit well enough to live up to its name. I glanced at my new