by Craig Birk
Chapter Sixteen
ZZYZX
8:05 p.m.
“Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.”
– Lou Mannheim, Wall Street
After the events of the previous hour, the BMW was now content to push forward at a more conservative seventy-seven miles per hour. Inside, a complete analysis of the encounter with the police had been concluded and the silence was broken only by the broadcast of the Stanford game, which Roger had lobbied for successfully.
With Stanford, a three-and-a-half-point underdog, now covering the spread by ten and a half points, and a fresh Kodiak resting in his lip, Roger was pleased with the world and his place in it. He could imagine nowhere he would rather be than cruising through the desert with his best friends. He pressed his forehead against the window to get a better look outside and was surprised at how cold the glass was against his skin, but this also was pleasing. In the desert, it was noticeably dark. Night was omnipresent. The view out the window revealed a world of blackness with no visible horizon. In contrast, by craning his neck upwards, Roger could see a sky filled with more stars than he could hope to comprehend. Though it was windy outside, the BMW muted everything from the external environment. The world appeared perfectly still from inside the car, as if frozen in time. Strangely, there were no other vehicles within a quarter of a mile in either direction. As if to take advantage of the clearing, a tumbleweed nearly the size of a small car blew across the freeway just two hundred feet in front of the oncoming BMW, but no one noticed it.
Roger leaned back and used the back of his hand to wipe away the steam his forehead had imparted on the window. When he was done, he saw the iconic street sign for Zzyzx Road fly by.
On their first trips to Vegas, this sign was always pointed out as some kind of important landmark. Once, on a previous trip, they exited the freeway here to see what this mysterious road was all about. Had they researched it, they would have learned that the name was coined in 1944 by Curtis Howe Springer who claimed it to be the last word in the English language. Mr. Springer opened a health spa and sold bottled water from nearby springs to desert travelers, but was eventually arrested for misuse of the land and alleged food and drug violations. As of 2006, the land surrounding Zzyzx was under control of the Bureau of Land Management, who allowed California State University to manage it and conduct desert studies. But as far as the guys in the BMW knew, there was nothing of interest on Zzyzx Road. In fact, the paved portion ended fairly quickly before an unpromising dirt road took its place. It was all kind of a tease unless you were the type of person who wanted to leave the conventional route and venture alone into the unknown vastness of the desert.
On this night, there was no comment made about the strangely named street. It too moved into the past.
Interlude Ten
Roger (26)
In the summer of 2000, Roger worked two jobs. Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, he bartended at Moose Mcgillicutty’s in Pacific Beach, and Thursdays and Sundays he worked as a valet, parking cars for The Chart House in Del Mar. Monday and Tuesday were his days off, used primarily for surfing, golfing, sleeping and going to the Indian casinos. Between the two jobs, he was pulling in about $1,400 a week, very little of which was reported to the Internal Revenue Service. He lived with a roommate in a simple two-bedroom apartment in Pacific Beach and tended to date the kind of girls who were not expensive to date. Therefore, he had plenty of money for whatever he wanted to do. Due to Alex’s relentless prodding, he even opened checking and savings accounts at Wells Fargo and managed to sock away $5,000.
Roger felt relatively wealthy, but he noticed his new friend Wayne, a fellow parking valet, was really rolling in cash. In the last month, Wayne had taken his girlfriend on vacation to Australia, bought a Rolex, and bragged of winning three grand on a single straight bet on a recent Padres game. Wayne also took Roger and one of the other guys to dinner and drinks at Dakota Grill downtown and picked up the tab. It was that night, after several cocktails, that Roger learned where the cash was coming from. Apparently, the trip to Australia was arranged by one of the customers from The Chart House. On the last day of the trip, Wayne was instructed to meet a man at the beach who gave him a stuffed koala bear to take back to San Diego. Inside the cute and fuzzy bear were five kilograms of pure cocaine.
For taking the return trip with the koala, Wayne was paid $15,000 plus his expenses for the trip. Wayne told Roger he could arrange for him to take the same trip next month and would cover his valet shifts. Then Wayne would go again the following month. He pointed out that his boss in the arrangement preferred to have a rotation rather than just one person. Wayne was very convincing about how easy the whole thing was, and about how nice the cash was. Additionally, he pointed out that Roger could probably talk Andrea, one of the bartenders, into taking the trip with him. Roger had a crush on Andrea all summer but couldn’t get past the simple flirting stage. Wayne painted an enticing picture of the two of them enjoying the Sydney beaches, which he assured Roger were even more appealing than those in San Diego.
The whole idea was very tempting. Roger told Wayne he would probably do it but wanted a day to think about it. As fortune would have it, Roger was scheduled to play golf the next day with Gary. He brought up the idea during the sixth hole of the Torrey Pines North course, a downhill par three with an unbeatable view of the Pacific.
Gary, who already had his ball teed up, suddenly lost interest in golf and the beauty of the surroundings. He stepped away from the tee-box and offered his opinion.
Gary: “Roger, no fucking way. Do not do this under any circumstances.”
Roger: “It sounds pretty easy.”
Gary: “It doesn’t matter. You do not want to be a drug dealer. This could fuck up your whole life. Listen to me. Do not do it.”
That was the end of the conversation for the moment. Gary, flustered, duck-hooked his six iron into the brush and ended up with a triple-bogey. Roger stuck the green and made par to take three skins and six dollars.
Roger finished with an eighty-six and Gary, as always it seemed, shot a ninety-two. This earned Roger $18, and he bought beers after the round. Halfway through his Budweiser, Gary once more told Roger to forget all about the Australia idea. Roger took his opinion seriously, but still thought he was more likely than not to carry through with it just one time. That night in the Chart House parking lot, however, he went with his final instinct and told Wayne he wasn’t interested. Wayne said he understood but was sorry Roger was missing out on the opportunity.
Three weeks later, Wayne took a Qantas Airlines flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Sydney. When he got back to LAX, rather than returning to San Diego, he took a six-year detour to the Bay Area where he lodged at San Quentin California State Penitentiary.
