TOXIC CABAL

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE 

The thing is to be able to outlast the trends. -- Paul Anka

It was the summer of two zero zero zero, a time Ansell Rogers had come to think of as the year of the triple aught naught. Moderately self-medicated, he was trying to avoid thinking as he steered a Mercedes of the largest numerical designation northeasterly along Southampton's Flying Point Road. Looking a bit like an overfed 49-year-old William Shatner, the President and CEO of Total Toxins, Limited was currently operating under a cocktail of amphetamines and muscle relaxants. Ansell had dubbed this combination a "speed-fall", a nod to the more stimulative speedballs of yore. As the car drifted erratically between imposing hedgerows, he pushed aside a random thought about fellow drug enthusiast Hunter S. Thompson and tried to figure out where he was.

Ansell may have been lost, but at least he had company. Beside him sat Heather Stoh, a gorgeous petite bombshell of a blonde. Nattering away at her further along the front seat was Dawn, a girl who could pass for her twin. Or maybe it was the other way around, as far as Ansell could recall. He couldn't wait to examine the evidence again and get on top of the issue.

At the moment, however, Ansell was oblivious to his passengers. As the car drifted along between tall hedgerows his mind fixed again on the three things he ought not have recently done; continued to hold onto a dwindling portfolio of Internet stocks, bet on those stocks with money not wholly his and gotten politically involved with Ronald Rumpf. Until late March, he had been able to embrace the philosophy behind French chanteuse Edith Piaf's famous 1960 song "Non, je regrette rien." Three months later, present company excluded, he had a great deal to regret.

Coming back to the present, Ansell experienced a moment of doubt about the evening ahead. The mock Texan and his two girls were slated to be weekend guests at the Winston's nearby beachfront home. He was concerned that their hostess would find none of the same pleasure that he had in his girls. Not that he cared all that much about Stevie Winston's happiness, but he did have a pressing need for some more of the B-list author's cash. Resigning himself to the unknown, he knew he would just have to wing it.

As for Heather and Dawn, he figured they had no qualms about spending a weekend with complete strangers. In fact, he supposed they had done so before. Ansell actually knew little about the young ladies' pasts, while they knew a surprising amount about his. That the girls were mere utility players in the semi-pro league seemed obvious enough for him. It explained why they had so easily allowed him to pick them up at an Alzheimer's charity ball at the Waldorf two weeks earlier. It also explained their frequent need for a bit of 'walking around' money.

He assumed they were keeping assorted sordid details of their pasts from him, never suspecting their rather vapid posturing and sometimes mind-numbing digressions might cloak a deeper purpose. Then again, his interest in them had not yet extended much beyond its physical ramifications. Still, he did cherish their rather transcendental mediations in that regard.

Impulsively turning onto a thin asphalt lane that had revealed itself through a gap in the thick hedgerow to his left, Ansell took stock of his surroundings. It was another sultry early-summer day in the Hamptons, poster child of a society so leery of emotional buy-ins that money had become an accepted form of lust. When spouses lost respect for one another, well, that was life. But here, at the back end of years of surprisingly strong economic growth, a platinum charge card was like money in the bank. Still, it also helped if one knew where one was going.

Playing a hunch, Ansell decided to turn around. He drove on for another few yards before swinging the nose of his car into a chained-off drive and braking abruptly. His quick stop tossed Heather and Dawn rudely forward. Ansell backed the big Mercedes toward the nearest ditch as his associates pushed themselves off of the beautifully detailed leather dashboard.