Ken Bruen - Pimp

He kicked Sage in the face and left the bathroom.

Max told the bar manager there was an emergency, left his shift early, went to his apartment and, as that kid book says, “Let the wild rumpus start!”

And, man, did it get wild! The next two weeks were a blur, reminded him of that time in Texas when on a drinking binge he’d gotten, um, a little too close to some Chinese dude. Thankfully there were no Chinese dudes this time, but there was lots of fucking. Max was with the best-looking chickitas he’d ever seen — yep, better looking than the girls at Hooters — and they were in exotic locations — London, Paris, Venice, Attica. Max was in jungles, swinging naked from vines, and fighting in wars. He was partying with the ancient Greeks and he even hung out with Jesus.

PIMP wasn’t all sex and fun, though. Before the drug took hold there was usually a short intense feeling of impotence, Max called it the Bieber effect. Also, once in a while, there was some incontinence, Max called it the Betty White effect. But these periods were always short-lived — or at least in Max’s mind they were — and then the shits ended and raging hard-ons took over. Max had the best sex of his life in his mind, banging everybody from Cleopatra to Britney Spears to Judi Dench. Dench was a dynamo and loved it from behind with Max yanking on her hair, glaring back at him over her shoulder, shouting, “Gimme dat big boy! Gimme dat big boy!”

Yeah, this PIMP was some seriously good shit.

The best part was the feeling of power it brought Max. It brought him back to the days when he was the CEO of NetWorld, the computer networking company in Manhattan, and his major way to get off was by firing his employees. Sometimes, just for a rush, he’d fire some technician, usually some Russian, for no reason at all. He’d call Slav or Vlad or whoever the fuck into his office and go, “You’re terminated, go home,” and feel the rush, like Trump and Schwarzenegger rolled into one. This was like that, but better, because he didn’t have to fire anybody, or do anything , to feel like he was the baddest motherfucker in the world. He just knew it and that was enough. Was it enlightenment in powder form? Not bad, he could use that. See, Max’s mind was already churning, working OT, planning his next move.

Oh, another thing about PIMP — it was addicting as hell. When the contents of the Baggie ran out it was a sad, desperate day. He went back to O’Hennessy’s and was told he’d been fired, but he didn’t care about that, he just cared about PIMP. He had to find Sage.

It took about a week of searching around, but he finally tracked Sage down, in some rundown off-campus apartment, the back unit of a house.

When Sage opened the door he saw the rage in Max, thought he’d get his ass whooped again, and when Max forced his way inside, Sage pulled a blade on him. Max judged things by the size of his cock and this blade was cock-size, about three and half, okay, three inches.

“Stay back,” Sage said, arm with the blade extended in front of him, shaking. “Just stay the fuck back.”

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Max said. “I’m just here for your PIMP.”

Knowing how ridiculous this sounded, but seeing no humor in it because he was crashing from his high and desperate for his next fix. He was damn serious — he’d kill the grungy drug addict, rip the punk’s fuckin’ head off if he didn’t cough up the shit.

But Sage was going, “I’m not giving you shit, bruh. I’ve been doing some research on you on Google. That’s right, I googled your fat, saggy ass and I know who you are. Your name’s Fisher, Max Fisher. I know everything about you, bruh. I know about the people you killed, about your drug dealing, and I know about Attica. You’re fuckin’ homicidal, you’re fuckin’ crazy.”

If he’d still been soaring on PIMP, Max would’ve taken all of this as a major compliment. Down, he liked being called homicidal, but fat, saggy ass?

“You callin’ me fat, saggy ass?” Max asked, glaring empty and psycho like DeNiro at the mirror in Taxi Driver . For full effect he repeated, “You callin’ me fat, saggy ass?” Let it hang there, then added, “FYI, where I come from, back east, all the players carry some extra baggage. Why do you think Tony Soprano had all that street cred? Why did Phil Hoffman get all the great roles? And why was I the CEO of a drug empire? When you’ve got meat you’ve got power. It’s called being large and in charge.”

“Come another inch toward me, I’ll waste you.” Nerdy white guy trying to be all Menace 2 Society .

Half wishing he’d taken out this asshole on that bathroom floor when he’d had the chance — but not really, ’cause then where would he get more PIMP? — Max said, “Okay, let’s say I am who you say I am, though I’m not saying that. But if you really think I’m Max Fisher why aren’t you turning me in? I mean, I’m on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. You get a reward, what, hundred grand if you turn me in? You gonna tell me you’re allergic to the green and white?”

Sage didn’t say anything, but it clicked for Max.

“It’s the PIMP, isn’t it? If you rat on me, then I rat on you.” Max smiled. “Well, looks like we have a situation here now, doesn’t it?”

The ol’ businessman Max Fisher was back in play, and he did what he did best — negotiated a deal. A seventy-thirty split in his favor. Sage would produce the shit and Max would market it. Powder form or pill, user’s choice. And as far as ratting on each other went — well, they’d make that risk work for them. Like the U.S. and Russia in the Cold War, they’d each hold something over the other’s head. Sage would write down the formula for PIMP and the history of how he’d invented it and sold it to barflies and businessmen all summer, and put this in a sealed envelope; Max would do the same with a confession detailing his crimes; and they’d send the two envelopes to a neutral lawyer, Nathan Schneermesser, Esq., Counselor-at-Law. For a fee, Mr. Schneermesser, Esq., would sit on the envelopes, with instructions to release one or the other in the event something happened — Max’s confession if something happened to Sage, Sage’s if something happened to Max. A perfect stalemate. Business relationships had been based on less.

With that out of the way, it was time for marketing.

Max had seen The Social Network , and knew if you wanted to start a trend, you had to get college kids hooked first. If it worked for Facebook, it would work for PIMP.

He distributed freebies at dorms, bars, off-campus parties, clubs. The kids called Max “Red” ’cause of his beard. The name helped hugely — not Max’s, the drug’s. Walking past the juice bars of Portland, Max heard, “Gotta get me with some PIMP, yo.” Kids were fucking Facebooking and Tweeting about it; PIMP was going viral!

Max, at his core, was a marketing guru, and he knew it didn’t matter what you sold, it mattered how you sold it — fuck, look at Amazon. Bezos started with books, cockamamie books, and now people were buying toilet paper from him in bulk — there was a lesson in there somewhere, and your last name had to be Bezos, Trump or Fisher to understand what that lesson was. It was that it all came down to the sell. Max had been watching lots of Mad Men and he saw himself as the Don Draper of the new millennium. He knew if PIMP was going to take off, if it was going to rock the nation as the new super drug, he needed a pitch, a tagline, and Max, like Donny D, had one ready to roll.

PIMP: It knows how to take care of you.

Boom, gotchya, slam dunk. Can you say homerun? Winnah winnah, chicken dinnah! He could see the jumbotron flashing, the crowd going wild. In the boardroom inside Max’s head, his employees were congratulating him for coming up with that little gem. Then he was on stage, bowing, enjoying the standing O.