Page 53 of The Session

“What other rumors?” Mark asked.

“Maybe another time. So, you figured out what you want to do? I was thinking about that. Did you meet Cody, the former NFL player doing wealth management for athletes?” Blaise asked.

Cody, a hulking former NFL lineman who barely fit into his designer suit, had given him a fifteen-minute presentation on the wealth management group he ran. In Mark’s opinion, the presentation felt lukewarm, almost as if performed under duress.

“Nice guy, interesting area,” Mark lied.

“Super nice guy and also terrible at his job. That business should be twenty times the size it is. Not only is he bad at recruiting, he’s absolutely horrendous at add-on services. Our game is word of mouth. You get a couple ballplayers on board, help them throw some wild parties, show them how we get rid of friction, and you could have half the NFL signed up. That area is ripe for the taking.”

“I don’t know if that’s my kind of thing, and I also don’t want to step on any toes just yet,” Mark demurred.

“I would figure it out quick if I were you. And we’re toe-stompers around here. The sooner you learn that, the better.”

“How did you end up doing what you’re doing?” Mark asked.

Blaise stared at Mark for a moment, as if weighing what to tell him. “I kind of learned from my father, not directly. In the 1980s, when Miami was filled with drug dealers, he noticed something. These guys all had cars, they had houses, they had expensive security systems. At first he thought, sell them security cameras, security stuff, things like that. Some had been doing a little bit of private security, but nothing big. But every time you would go talk to these guys, they’d hand you a business card and tell you to go talk to this guy. It was always a lawyer. He realized how some guy shows up from Colombia with a suitcase full of cocaine, makes a deal with a crooked bank president, walks out with a few million dollars, and manages to buy a house, a car, and all that.”

“Lawyers?” Mark asked.

“You have to think about it this way. What’s the worst kind of repeat client? It’s the one that goes broke and goes to jail,” Blaise explained. “And the ones that make it into the courtrooms are still high risk. The best client is the one that never goes to jail. And not just because they pay you to keep them out of jail, but because they’re going to pay you for other things. They need to buy a house. They need to buy that fifth fucking Porsche, whatever. They need somebody to arrange the paperwork, somebody to set them up, somebody to do all that for them. Half the major law firms down here made their money through drugs—not in the courtroom, but in facilitating all of that bullshit.”

“And Summit did that?” Mark asked.

“My dad did. There were divisions here that did that kind of thing. All legal, of course—understand that providing those kinds of services isn’t a crime, mostly. I grew up with stories about that and missed those cocaine-cowboy days. Fast-forward to one night I’m at a club down in South Beach and see some kid with a gold chain struggling to get the bartender’s attention so he can buy a drink. I’d only seen this kid on YouTube and knew he was a crypto millionaire. The problem was that online, that world was very different from here. He had no pull here; he’d be lucky if he could tip enough to get a waitress to look at him twice. And I realized: There is my Tony Montana. The best part is it’s completely legal. These are superrich nerds with zero charisma, dying to live like kings. And that was my angle.”

“That’s a good angle,” Mark admitted.

“But it’s my angle, so fuck off,” Blaise said, then hesitated, thinking something over. “Although your social scores are through the roof right now . . . If you promise not to fuck me over, and I let you help me land a couple of whales, I’ll see to it that it goes toward your earning.”

“Thanks,” Mark replied, noncommittal.

“It’s easy work,” Blaise explained. “You show up, I tell them you’re my friend, we let them take some selfies, they post them, they look cool, and I get them on board for one of our social media strategy companies. Normally I pay some rapper or hot actress to show up at an event and make sure these guys get to take their photos with them. My return on that is like fifty-x. It’s crazy. For the celebrities, it’s a great deal. It literally takes four minutes, and I can set up five or six of these in a night. They’re in and out of the club in forty minutes. You know that’s a thing, right? That’s why you should never believe anything you see on Instagram. It’s all fake—or faked by guys like me.”

“You’re a very complicated guy.”

“Thanks, I think,” Blaise replied. “Tru will probably tell you, but uh . . . I stepped on my own dick once. It was a lot cheaper to hire porn stars. These guys loved having their photos taken with them. Problem was, some of them were pretty open to solicitation, which put me in a bad spot because I looked like a pimp. And here’s the thing you need to know: The organization knew that was happening before I did, and I got a stern frickin’ lecture about it.”

“I’m glad to see there are some limits,” Mark said.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a limit as much as a risk-tolerance issue. The real takeaway for me was the fact that they were watching. I mean, I knew they watched, but I had no idea how much they knew,” Blaise said, glancing around the bar. There were scattered groups of people at the tables and playing pool. “One of them could be in here, I don’t know, but I guarantee you somebody’s not very far away—and I’m not talking about the driver waiting for us in the parking lot.”

Mark nodded and resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. “That’s helpful. Maybe a little unsettling too.”

“Another thing. Tru gave you a phone number, right? The magic number. Everybody in the organization has a number they can call, ’cept they don’t get the same shit you get. But they can ask for things. What you can get depends on how much magic you have right now. That’s the whole point. But it’s also two-way. People can call a number and tell them things. It’s not just the guy working for Nichols or DeepSec you’ve got to worry about. It’s the cute receptionist you just flirted with, or the driver you’re a dick to. This place can be like living inside a Yelp review. China’s social credit system’s got nothing on this.”

Mark couldn’t tell if Blaise was trying to warn him or scare him off.

“Don’t worry. People like you? I think you’re going to be fine. The upside more than makes up for it. When Kevin was in the good graces of Max, he had unlimited magic. We were once stuck in a parking garage coming out of a Dolphins game, and for the heck of it he decided to call in a helicopter. It landed on the roof of the garage thirty minutes later. Blew away my sixteenth birthday, that’s for sure. The easiest way to know if you’re in good standing is to call that number and ask for the craziest, most outlandish shit you can imagine. If you ask for a car and an Uber shows up instead of one of our private cars, you fucked up,” Blaise explained.

After Mark finished his curly fries and Blaise finished pretending to drink his whiskey sour, Blaise paid with a Black Amex card and they walked out into the parking lot.

A brand-new yellow-orange Lamborghini Revuelto was parked across two spaces with the driver’s-side door wide open.

“What prick leaves this sitting here like that?” Blaise asked as he looked around the lot.

Mark was staring at his phone. He glanced up at Blaise, then at the car. “Holy shit, it worked,” he said as he walked over to the vehicle and slipped behind the wheel. “I was gonna try for a helicopter, but I couldn’t think of a place for it to land near here.”

“You son of a bitch . . .” Blaise shook his head. “Just remember, magic’s not unlimited.”