F. Paul Wilson - All the Rage

Cino barely dented the cushion as she alighted next to him.

"Share what?" she said, showing perfect teeth that appeared to glow amid the smooth olive tones of her face. "A secret?"

He glanced at her. You want secrets, my dear Cino? I could tell you secrets that would send you stumbling and screaming from the room.

"No… no secrets." He gestured to the wide-based crystal decanter on the glass coffee table before them. "Just some wine."

"I don't really like red wine. Champagne's my thing. You know that."

"Of course. Your other lover. Dampierre."

"Not just Dampierre—Dampierre Cuvee de Prestige."

"Of course. And only the 1990 vintage."

"Mais oui. That's the best."

Milos wondered if it was truly the taste of her Dampierre Cuvee de Prestige 1990 she preferred or the fact that it was harder to find and twice as expensive as Dom Perignon. If it was price and rarity that turned her on, then she'd go absolutely wild for the Petrus.

"I have something even better here." He lifted the decanter and held it up to the light. "A very special red wine, a Bordeaux whose grapes were harvested long before you were born. In nineteen forty-seven."

"Nineteen forty-seven!" she said, laughing. "That's before my father was born! Is it still any good?"

"It's marvelous," Milos said. "I've been letting it breathe."

Actually, he hadn't tasted it, but anything this expensive had to be good. He hadn't poured it into the decanter either. Kim had done that.

Kim was further proof of the Milos maxim: you don't have to know shit—you simply have to hire people who do.

And Kim Soong knew damn near everything—about food, about wine, about clothes, about all sorts of important things. How a gook got to know so much was beyond Milos, but Kim had become indispensable. He had done a little dance when Milos showed him the half-case of Petrus 1947. Milos had figured it had to be pretty good stuff if Monnet had wanted it; Kim's reaction had confirmed that. Kim really knew red wines.

But Kim had said to pour this Petrus—he'd pronounced it "pet-troos" and Milos had made a note of that—directly from the bottle to a glass would be an insult to the wine. Imagine… a wine with tender feelings. It had to be candled and decanted. Milos hadn't the foggiest what the hell that meant, but he'd gone along, and soon he was watching, fascinated, as Kim slowly poured the wine into the crystal decanter while staring through the neck of the bottle at a candle flame on the other side.

And now Milos did the pouring, from the decanter into the pair of wide-mouthed tulip-shaped glasses Kim had set out. Half a glass each. He handed one to Cino, then raised his own.

'To a weekend full of surprises," he said, locking eyes with her.

"I'll drink to that," she said.

Milos took a sip and swallowed. It tasted… awful. But he let nothing show on his face. He looked at his glass.

I spent two and a half grand a bottle for this shit?

He took another sip. Not quite as bad as the first, but still awful.

He glanced at Cino who looked as if she'd just spotted a maggot in the bottom of her glass.

"Eeeeuw! This tastes like cigarette ashes!"

"Don't be silly," Milos said. "It's delicious."

Actually, she wasn't far off. It did taste like ashes.

"Blech!" Another face as she returned the offending glass to the table and pushed it as far away as she could reach. "Like sneaker soles."

"Just try a little bit more." Milos forced a third sip. Ugh. How was he going to drink the rest of this? "It's really excellent."

"Tastes like dust bunnies. Where's my Dampierre? I want my Dampierre."

"Very well."

He pressed a button built into the coffee table, sending a signal to the kitchen. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and a black vest, Kim whispered into the room a moment later and did one of his little bows.

"Yes, sir?"

"It appears the lady does not find the Petrus to her liking."

Another little bow. "Most unfortunate."

"Old holy water," Cino said.

Milos wanted to clock her. "Perhaps you would taste it, Kim, and give her your expert opinion."

Kim smiled. "Of course, sir. I would be honored."

He whisked this oversize silver spoon from his vest pocket and poured maybe half an ounce of the Petrus into it. He sniffed it, then slurped it up like hot soup—Milos never would have believed Kim could be such a slob—and rolled it around in his mouth. Finally he swallowed. His eyes rolled up in his head before he closed them. They stayed closed for a moment. When he opened them he looked like someone who'd just seen God.

"Oh, sir, it's wonderful! Absolutely magnificent!" He looked damn near ready to cry. "Nectar of the gods! Mere words cannot do it justice!"

"See," Milos said, turning to Cino. "I told you it was good."

"Laundromat lint," she said.

"Perhaps the miss's palate is not so educated as Mr. Dragovic's. It takes a certain seasoning of the tongue to fully appreciate a well-aged Bordeaux."

You just earned yourself a bonus, Kim, Milos thought. But Cino wasn't the least bit impressed.

"I appreciate Dampierre, aged all the way from 1990. When can I have some?"

"Right away, miss," Kim said, bowing and backing away. "I shall return in an instant."

Furious, Milos rose with his glass and moved away before he throttled her. Cino liked it rough? Cino might get more than she could handle tonight.

He pretended to study one of the paintings his decorators had stuck on the walls. A swirling mass of creamy pastels. What the hell did it mean? All he knew was that it was expensive.

He sipped the wine again. Did Monnet and people like him really enjoy this stuff? Or did they just pretend to?

"You really should give the wine another chance," he said. "At twenty-five hundred dollars a bottle you—"

"Twenty-five hundred dollars a bottle!" she cried. "For stuff that tastes like wet cedar shakes? I can't believe it!"

"Believe it," he said. "And worth every penny." Even if she hated the wine, she'd talk about the price tag.

"Say, who's this?" she said. "He looks like you."

Milos turned and saw her by the bookshelves, holding a framed photo—Milos's sole contribution to the room.

"He should. He was my older brother."

"Was?"

"Yes. He died a few years ago."

"Oh, I'm so sorry." She sounded as if she meant it. "Were you close?"

"Very."

Milos felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of Petar. They had done so well running guns to the HVO in Bosnia, but they fell out during the Kosovar meltdown. Peter hadn't wanted to sell to the KLA. He'd wanted to supply only the Serbs. Oh, how they fought, like only brothers can fight. He remembered Petar screaming that he would die before he supplied the KLA with the means to kill Serbs.

How prophetic.

To this day Milos could not understand his brother's idiotic posturing. They'd always sold to both sides when they could. And the KLA had had a blank check from the Arabs to buy anything they could get then-hands on—they'd been willing to pay multiples of the going rate. How could he turn his back on such an opportunity?

But somehow, somewhere Petar had got it into his head that he was a Serb first and a businessman second. Fine. Milos would do the deal on his own. That was when Petar stepped over the line. Bad enough that he would have nothing to do with the KLA, but when he tried to sabotage Milos's deal…

Milos still regretted shooting his brother. His only consolation was that Petar never knew what hit him and did not suffer an instant. The point-blank shotgun blast literally took his head off.

Milos had killed before and since—Emil Corvo being the most recent. He'd been careless with Corvo and might have been sent up had he not iced one witness to chill the rest. Who was the one he'd ordered the hit-and-run on? Artie something… he couldn't even remember his name.