God's Favorite Read Online Free Page A

later, the limo came to a halt in front of BCCI’s imposing Geneva headquarters, and Tony darted out, carrying a weighty valise.
    â€œFour o’clock!”
    Tony periscoped his head toward the sound of that stonyhearted voice. There she was, sitting on a divan, surrounded by shopping bags and stroking the head of the dead fox attached to the fur around her shoulders: Felicidad, his formidable wife, staring at him with the eyes of an assassin.
    â€œYou said to meet you here at four o’clock and you show up at ten to five!” Her voice echoed in the oddly rapt lobby.
    â€œSweetness, the traffic—”
    Felicidad made a clucking, dismissive sound that caused Tony’s knees to go weak. “But I have arranged a surprise for you,” he pleaded. “This is something I am sure you will appreciate.”
    â€œI’ve got a massage at six.”
    â€œPlease, dearest, this is most important to our future, I swear it.”
    â€œThis had better be worth it.”
    A few minutes later Tony and Felicidad were seated in a small but luxurious conference room in the high-security subbasement, decorated with investment-quality folk art and hand-painted Haitian furniture.
    â€œVery tasteful,” Felicidad decreed as she surveyed the room. “We should do this, Tony. We should do this in the den.” She seemed to be mollified by the prospect of extensive redecoration.
    Tony nodded agreeably, although the thought of turning his den into a replica of a Swiss bank office filled him with—well, mixed feelings. On the one hand, how pathetic, how derivative, how frankly weird to come upon Caribbean handicrafts in this chilled subterranean Swiss vault; on the other hand, he had to admit, it looked better here, it looked like real art. A ghoulish frieze of skeletons tangoed on the painted tabletop. Life in death: it was so primitive, so unreconstructed, so strangely powerful now that Tony saw it out of context. Perhaps something in the cold Swiss soul longed for chaotic tropical vitality. Tony considered himself an expert on the Swiss, since he had been coming here annually for a decade now, both to do his banking and for the spa where Felicidad got massages and Tony received Dr.Spracht’s savage facial treatments–and also fetal-tissue injections that gave Tony a more or less continual erection. Of course, the Swiss claim they don’t deal in voodoo, but Tony recognized magic when he saw it. He would have to get the recipe for those injections.
    It occurred to him that there was a correspondence between his own radical Latin soul and the mountain-bound conservatism of these magical, cheese-eating blonds. Perhaps he should stay here after all, he reflected; life would not be so bad. Here, in frumpy Geneva, Tony could experience his own Swissness. He, too, had a longing for neutrality. He, too, yearned to step out of the arena of conflict, to achieve the spiritual contentment that seemed so native to the curtained horizons of Europe’s dairyland. He supposed it was mere cultural difference that allowed this bank, which had been established for the sole purpose of hiding drug profits from Colombia and stashing away large portions of the Third World GNP in numbered accounts, to appear so respectable, so within the bounds, so spiritually untroubled. “Pecunia non olet,” the bankers liked to say: money doesn’t smell.
    Presently the door opened and a nervous young teller appeared. Behind her was a bulky man in shirtsleeves and an apron who was pushing a heavy metal cart. The man in the apron took a quick glance at the General, then cast his eyes into middle space as he pushed the cart into the conference room. Tony waited until the bankers were gone, then he opened the valise and dumped $13 million on the table.
    Felicidad looked at him with scorn. “Tony, did you think you could buy me off?”
    That, of course, was exactly what he had thought. He took a key from his