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There were six cellophane-wrapped packets in all; each containing the same seven photos.

I swiped one packet, pushing it down the front of my white T-shirt that had a huge pot leaf on the back. Then I closed the drawer and got the hell out of there just as his fax machine started clicking away.

Nearly an hour later, Chesterfield's three hundred pound form draped in a red velour sweat suit waddled towards me in a six-foot frame that carried about two hundred pounds of fat.

“You're late,” he said dryly, reeking of Old Spice. “I waited for you for fifteen minutes before I left.”

“Sorry. Traffic problems.”

“Know why you're here?” he asked, smiling sadistically with little pig eyes and thin lips as soon as we were seated, facing each other across his desk.

“No,” I mumbled.

“Everything confirms that you plagiarized your term paper.”

The lethal chop from the guillotine blade whizzed through my neck instantly.

“School rules call for automatic expulsion,” he continued. “Unless you can prove you wrote it, I'm going to notify the Assistant Dean as soon as you leave.”

My heart was pumping so hard that I didn't dare speak. All I could do was shake my head slightly.

“Untrue,” I squeaked, praying my voice wouldn't crack.

A sick smile, like a horizontal line, was still painted on his sweaty face. His eyes bored into mine before resting his tire-tread soled sandals on the edge of the desk. He checked my file again.

“Your high school grades were the second lowest in a class of 331.”

I stared back at him without speaking, trying to look as innocent as possible.

“Yet your entrance examination score here was in the top two percent of the nearly forty thousand people who took it since this college was founded almost thirty years ago.” He paused before the kill. “It's obvious that somebody else took it for you.”

I couldn't speak. The thought of losing the inheritance over a little plagiarism paralyzed my vocal cords like they were strangled with piano wire.

Chesterfield sweated onward. “I checked with each of your other three professors to see how you're doing in their classes. Two said you're wavering between a C- and a D.”

Shit! Even if this nightmare ended and I survived the fraternity's Rule of Eleven and Hell Week, unless I had a 2.0 average for all four classes I couldn't be sworn in as an active member and I'd still lose the inheritance!

He stared at my forehead, probably happy to see the dripping sweat, and continued. “The other one, the Economics professor, she said if you didn't turn in some missing assignments by five this afternoon you'd get an F in her class.”

Goddamn it! Last night Ali Reza e-mailed me the work and I printed it and put in my book bag and stuck it on the front seat of my truck so I wouldn't forget it. Now the truck's locked in
the tow yard! I checked my watch. It was nearly 2:30. If I didn't get the car back and get the assignment to the Econ teacher by 5:00 I'd lose the five million today!

“What's the matter?” the fat bastard asked, probably happy to finally get a nervous reaction out of me. “You look scared to death.”

I didn't answer.

“Why don't you admit that you copied the term paper off the Internet?” he challenged.

“I didn't.” But I fucking-A well knew the name of the sand nigger who did!

His lips opened a little, showing a few small tan teeth.

“I know you tried to disguise the plagiarism by misconjugating a few verbs here and there. And mixing up the grammatical syntax in some places. But I know it wasn't your work. Cleaning up the intentional errors, it reads like Ivy League work. Way above your ability.”

I shook my head, muttering, “You're wrong.”

His eyes looked downward onto my Rolex Submariner with the silver band, big black face, and luminous numbers.

“Nice watch.”

Half-kiddingly I asked, “Can I trade it for a C?”

He froze! The kiddy-porn lover with all his moral integrity didn't flinch an inch; he kept staring at the watch!

My father's words rang true again: Everybody's got a price.

“Each student must submit an original term paper,” Chesterfield said conversationally, as if he forgot I just offered him a bribe.

I had to think fast. “You can have the watch if you'll give me ten days to write another paper. If it's no good, then fail me. And keep the watch.”

In the few awkward seconds of silence, I quickly took off the watch and handed it to him. “The back's engraved but you can get it buffed off. Or get another back for it.”

Thank God he was still admiring the watch when he turned it over and silently read the inscription with moving lips: EVERYBODY'S GOT A PRICE.

“It'll buff out,” I said quickly.

He twisted the big winding stem. “Why's it bent?”

“Accidentally hit it against a wall. It was fixed once before already. Then I bumped into something else.”

He tried putting the watch on but his thick right wrist was too big for the metal bracelet. “Got any extra links for the band?”

“No,” I said quickly. “But the Rolex repair place is in Hollywood. Take it there and tell them to fix the winding stem again too. And I'll pay for it.”

“Absolutely not,” he said firmly.

I nodded, with obvious relief in my voice. “Anything else?”

His right hand reached for the dirty handkerchief next to him on the desk. He blotted his forehead with it again. “Your new term paper's topic is: PEDOPHILIA IN AMERICA.”

“What's pedo-whatever mean? I can't even pronounce it.”

“Look it up.”

He scribbled something on a pastel rainbow note pad and handed it to me. It was the term paper's title with a phone number written under it.

“Fax me the paper when you've finished it. I don't want to see you here again.” Then, evidently forgetting that he just took a bribe, he said sternly, “This paper better be original. And no extensions. Fax it to me by next Friday or forget it.”

I stood up and looked at Chesterfield. He was still admiring his new treasure that cost my dad about three grand when he bought it for me duty-free in St. Thomas while we stopped there on a Caribbean cruise a few years ago.

“Any other reason you knew I copied that paper?”

He stood up and smiled. “Yeah,” he answered, nodding as all three chins bounced up and down. Then his eyes sparkled for an instant. “Telephone call. Someone told me.”

“Who?”

He shrugged his shoulders and kept smiling. “Didn't leave his name. It was a short conversation. Anyway I had a hard time hearing him since he must've been calling from an airport runway.”

_____

“Marx or Lenin or somebody else stole my watch,” I told the Cossack who answered the phone at the Rolex place.

“Huh?”

I gave the refugee the necessary personal information and offered a five hundred dollar reward for keeping the watch if somebody brought it in.

_____

“I was on the second floor stairway of the CAS parking building when somebody jammed a gun in my back,” I told the Santa Monica Police Detective who had bloodshot eyes and the red, blotchy nose of a boozer.

“When did it happen?”

“Ten minutes ago. I came straight over here.”

“What'd the robber say?”

“To give him my watch and wallet or he'd kill me.”

“Give them to him?”

“Fucking-A.”

“What'd he look like?”

“I don't know, my back was to him.”

“How'd you know he had a gun?”

“Saw the silhouette on the wall.”

“Can you describe him at all?”

“Only that he seemed big and heavy from his shadow. Like three hundred pounds.”

“Anything else you can tell us?”

“No.”

“Any unusual speech pattern?”

“No.”

“Any unusual smells?”

“Oh yeah. He wore Old Spice. I recognized it since I use it sometimes.”

“Good.” He finally smiled, revealing a large gap between his two front teeth like David Letterman. “Remember anything else?”

“Only one other thing. The stairs were wet and when the robber ran off, I noticed shoeprints that looked like tire treads.”

“On the stairs?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “That's what it looked like to me.”

“Don't suppose you've got the serial number of the watch?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” I told him about the Rolex place that repaired the watch.

“I'll call them. You got any insurance on it?”

“Yeah. My father insures everything our family owns except losses from earthquakes and floods.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know anybody who can start an earthquake or flood?”

_____

“Anything illegal about having kiddy-porn?” I asked Nuppi on the phone as Vysell leafed through Chesterfield's photos wide-eyed as he sped along to the tow yard.

“Fuck yes! Just possessing it, it's a federal offense, like robbing a bank or killing the President! Stay away from that shit!”

I
RUSHED AHEAD OF
V
YSELL DOWN A DUSTY ENTRANCEWAY
lined with randomly-parked cars on either side that led to the tow yard's brown job-shack.

Seconds later I demanded my truck from the guy with blue-black skin behind the counter who was punching a computer keyboard.

“Sorry. Can't release it,” he said in a high-pitched, Mike Tyson voice after checking the computer. “You owe $1,374 in unpaid parking tickets. And you need a RELEASE FORM from the Parking Bureau showing the tickets are paid.”

“Not because of my warrant?”

This Kunta Kinte look-alike shook his bullet-shaped, shaved head and lit a cigarette, holding it between his teeth in the corner of his mouth. “Nope.”

Was my rightful inheritance now coming down to not paying a few chickenshit parking tickets?

I fished out a C-note and laid it on the counter, smugly ready to prove again that my father's motto always worked.

“I'll be back with the RELEASE but right now I need my schoolwork out of my truck. Got to turn it in by five tonight or I'll get an F in the class.”

The whites of his dark eyes got bigger looking down at the money.

“Sorry, mister,” he said in a voice that sounded more British with each word. “Can't. Got to follow the rules. And you should too.” He picked up a photocopy of a printed map from a pile on the counter and handed it to me. “Parking Bureau is on Pico and you better hurry. They close at five. Us at seven.” He checked his watch. “It's nearly 3:30 now.” As I scooped up the hundred, he added, “Something else. They take checks, we don't.”

_____

The dashboard clock read 3:44 when Vysell's front tires bounced against the curb in front of the gray Citibank Building where the Parking Bureau was located on the ground floor. A Washington Mutual Bank was across the street.

I rushed out of the car, jaywalked across the street and some fucking motorcycle cop hiding between two parked cars revved his siren a little causing me to twist around and look at him. He coasted up to me at the curb.

“You jaywalked,” he grumbled, pulling out his ticket book.

“Shit,” I muttered. “Well, hurry up and write it. I got to get to the bank.”

Younger than me, he smiled and intentionally took three times as long to print the information from my drivers license on the ticket before he handed it to me for my signature. I scribbled the illegible words FUCK YOU and hurried to the bank.

Then I almost choked, counting twenty-seven people ahead of me in line with only three teller windows open. Fuck that shit! I'd be here for an hour and never make the fucking deadline! The hands on the big wall clock over the door read 3:50. My stomach started acting up again, with piercing, stabbing pains that were shooting in every direction. I had to do something else to get cash. And goddamn fast!

Trying not to look like a fleeing bank robber, I rushed as fast as possible out of there and spotted pay dirt on the next block: a purple neon sign that said MO'S CHECK CASHING and tore-ass over there.

Probably designed by a blind architect, it was nothing but a gray, stone cinderblock fortress, with a silver crown of barbed
wire covered by razor wire around the roof.

I hurried inside. The black-faced clock stating OZZIE'S BAIL BONDS read 3:53. Time was close; but I still had a shot at making the deadline. I chewed six Rolaids at once, hoping they would relax my gurgling stomach. But instead, they made me retch and gag.

One employee was behind each of the two open windows with the mostly immigrant crowd patiently standing in two lines in front of each window. I was the third person in my line.

To speed things along while standing there, I wrote out my check to Mo's for two thousand which should more than cover the tow, the tickets and Mo's check cashing fee, whatever that was.

At 3:58, still holding the check, I was in front of Window #1.

A razor-thin, walnut-skinned guy with cornrows and a big smile like Chris Rock said, “Hi. What can I do for you?”

I slipped the check, my drivers license and a Visa Card into the curved, silver tray under the thick, bulletproof glass.

Before I could say a word, some fucker who stunk of liquor grabbed me from behind in a headlock and slammed the barrel of a gun against my lips! Blood spurt out immediately!

“Suck it!” he ordered in a surprisingly clear voice.

I was shocked he had no accent like most criminals. Terrified, I opened my mouth slowly before he rammed the gun barrel between my barely-open lips with the front sight slicing the roof of my mouth. I started spitting out more blood. Then I literally shit in my pants!