"You okay there?" Rich Borchers asked.
"Yeah," Donald Wenk replied. He lifted his head back into the passenger seat. He'd left a small puddle of sick on the driveway. His stomach still felt greasy.
"Nerves?" Rich asked with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
"Yeah," Donald replied. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. "Are you really sure this is a good idea?"
"We'll be fine," Rich replied. "Nothing to worry about."
Nothing to worry about, Donald thought. They were about to enter the house of one of the most notorious crime lords in the city. His stomach flipped again and Donald struggled to keep hold of his breakfast. Come on. He had to get on top of this. What kind of impression would it give if he threw up on the gangster's shoes?
"Nice pad," Rich commented as they left the car and looked up at the house.
It was a mansion. An extremely posh mansion on the outskirts of city. It could have featured on MTV Cribs.
What were they doing here? They were a pair of college dope dealers. This was so out of their depth.
"Whoever said crime doesn't pay should come down here and take a tour," Rich said.
He pushed his fancy white-framed sunglasses up until they rested on his forehead. He looked a little like a noughties DJ and shared a lot of the same self belief.
They walked up a flight of steps to the entrance. The front door was already open and an attractive brunette in a secretary's outfit greeted them.
"Come in," she said, her voice rich like chocolate. "Mr Koontz is expecting you."
She wore a pair of narrow spectacles that looked more suited to an old school matron than a smoking hot woman with the face and figure of a glamour model. Donald thought she might be deliberately dressing down in the way extremely beautiful women sometimes do in order to be taken more seriously, but that didn't seem to be borne out in the lascivious little glances she gave them, or the licentious way her hips swayed as she led them through the mansion.
The outfit was a tease. A porn film costume. He doubted she was required to fulfil any actual secretarial duties.
"They say he likes to surround himself with beautiful women," Rich said. "Like he'd rather be Hugh Hefnor with his own Playboy mansion."
They entered a more private part of the mansion. The artwork on the walls changed from tasteful pieces of erotica to darker, more explicit, even pornographic scenes. This wasn't vanilla porn either; the pictures were sadomasochistic in nature and featured demonic women with horns, wings, tails and cloven hooves consorting with their victims. All very twisted, Donald thought.
They paused to look at one large painting. It depicted Christ on the cross being tortured by three feverishly rendered demon girls. Somehow the artist had managed to do the impossible and make the girls seem at once both enticing and abhorrent.
"Fruity," Rich commented.
"They also say Koontz is nuttier than a bag of Planters you know," Donald said. The dΓ©cor in this section of the mansion was certainly... eclectic.
"Well, we'll find out soon enough," Rich said.
The secretary led them into an intimate little waiting room. Seating was provided by a series of plush black leather benches. The walls were hidden behind thick velvet drapes. The only other exit was an opening in the far wall, also obscured behind thick drapes.
"We'll be okay," Rich said, more to pump himself up as he looked at the curtained-off entrance. "We've got a good proposition. He's going to go for it. How else would he be able to get near those preppy faggots?"
"Take your clothes off," the secretary said. "Mr Koontz will see you in the main chamber."
"Huh?" Rich said. "Did you just ask us to take our clothes off?"
The secretary smiled, showing a row of flawless white teeth.
"Yes," she answered. "Mr Koontz insists all business negotiations be carried out naked."
She said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
The effect on Rich was immediate. He was knocked right off his stride, like a marathon runner hit in the guts by a baseball bat with the finishing line in sight. The progression from surprise to then doubt was clear on his face as he realised the secretary wasn't joking.
Perhaps that was the intention.
It was clear to Donald what Rich was thinking. All those stories about Koontz, the ones that painted him as lost it, crazy, the hippy godfather and all the rest, maybe they were true. Maybe it was more than just an act to throw off the authorities. Maybe it was more than harmless eccentricity.
Maybe he was actually... you know... really crazy.
All those doubts bubbled to the surface and floated across Rich's face.
"Not so fucking sure about this," Rich said after the secretary had left them. "What do we do?"
Donald unbuckled his belt and dropped his trousers.
"I think we do what she says," he said, moving on to unbutton his shirt.
Donald wasn't so convinced on the rumours. Koontz ran the west side and had done so for years. A crazy person, or even just a soft eccentric, would not be able to do that. Donald could also think of plenty of sensible reasons why a man in Koontz's position would want strangers to take their clothes off before negotiating with him and most of them had nothing to do with eccentricity.
"This could just be caution on Koontz's part rather than lunacy," Donald said.
Rich paused to think about it. "Yeah, you could be right. This way no one's going to sneak a gun in on him unless they hide it up their ass."
"It could also be a psychological ploy," Donald said. "Get people naked so they feel vulnerable and exposed."