Chapter 1

"Hey, check out the senator's ‘personal assistant’". Maury Del Vecchio, my broker,

financial consultant and walking proof that it pays to hire the best and make them work on

commission, poked me in the ribs and jerked his thumb toward the door. We were at a presidential

fundraiser in Orange County. I organized it, Maury handled the offshore money end. Swarms of

gowned and tuxed donors were milling around the ballroom of San Diego’s finest hotel, just waiting

for a chance to shake the candidate’s hand before they drew checkbooks. Maury fired, "See? The

redhead, legs and all."

"Cute," I said. And she was. But cute is a relative term with this crowd. Cute in this room

would be Miss Canada further north or Her Excellency, the Duchess of...and then fill in the blank in

any number of decadent little European monarchies. But Maury had an eye for talent, so I paid

attention. She was dressed like a porn star -- latex microskirt with no panty line, Chantilly lace tube

top and a fur collared motorcycle jacket -- but she did all the right things so her training had

obviously been very good. For instance, when defense contractors mobbed the senator the second
he walked through the door, she stood demurely to one side of the group, sucking a tendril of

luxuriant sorrel hair with bee-sting lips. At some imperceptible signal from the fat little politician,

something that they had worked out beforehand, she touched one of the defense contractors lightly

on the arm and breathed into his ear that she might enjoy a drink, if he had just a minute to go fetch

her something. Her husky request sent the whole knot of arms-length death merchants racing

toward the champagne buckets, faster than if they'd heard a rumor of a GAO audit. "Cute," I said

again, "but..."

"Not the babe," Maury hissed, "the jacket, the collar."

"So...?"

"That's an A-fur collar, Cowboy. Aristito". Maury stood on tiptoes and whispered. "Seven

hundred fifty K, if a penny." I excused myself from the candidate and his finance manager, and told

Maury that we needed to talk outside. I backed him up against the wall out on the patio and made

him tell me about a three-quarter million-dollar collar on a motorcycle jacket.

"They're like a fuckin' little weasel or ferret, I don't know..." Maury shrugged. "All I know

is the street value of their pelts is an even million a square foot.” He crossed himself as if to say, ‘I

know its sounds weird as hell, but I swear to God.’ “Illegal as hell. The coke guys even discount

product if you pay in A-fur, easier to pack around than a suitcase full of hundreds." Then, like he

was reviewing the balance sheet and P&L projections for an Internet startup for me, Maury taught

me about the ecological niche filled by Mustela pudenda Aristito.

Where to begin? I suppose in this instance, it is best to heed the Cheshire Cat's

advice to Alice and "Begin at the beginning and, when you get to the end, stop". With that, here is a

passage from Blythe's Taxonomy of Fauna of the Southern Hemisphere, 1961 edition:

“Mustela pudenda, ssp. Aristito - a small, elongated ermine-like mammal, native to the

Andean piedmont. Nocturnal and secretive, no live specimens are currently extant in

captivity. The only complete skeletal remains are housed in the Museum of Natural History,
 Sofia, Bulgaria. Field notes from Cassady and Burroughs, 1953, constitute the only

investigative record of Aristito. An excerpt: "Observed specimens in the wild appear to

weigh one kilo or less, length is observed at approximately 80 cm. Voracious predators, the

indigenous people of the region claim that Aristito will feed on human flesh. The animal

seems to have religious significance to the Ayahuascero cult, as the fur is an important

component of their ceremonial objects. The fur is exceedingly fine.”

Understatement? Grind the Hope Diamond into powder as fine as a baby's first breath,

gently dissolve it in a tulip glass of Dom Perignon '36 and sip the mixture while making love in the

ambrosia sun on the sugar-sand beach of Sardegna's Emerald Coast, then your afterglow would give

you a rough approximation -- and rough is the operative word here -- of the delicate texture of

Aristito's coat. But then Cassady and Burroughs have always tended toward understatement.

And, since the above was written well before the passage of the Endangered Species Act or

the first meeting of the International Convention on Endangered Species, there is no mention of the

fact that this little rascal was first to make the Purple List, i.e. "...possession of specimens or parts of

specimens is a violation of Article 3, ss.IV of the Act. Taking, harassment or placing in jeopardy

any individual or population of the listed species is a violation of blah, blah..." and then it goes on

about penalties under law, international cooperation, Interpol, Turkish prisons and Medieval trials

by ordeal, you get the drift. Apparently, the root-chewing psychedelic preachers in loincloth are not

the only folks who get excited about these hungry little furballs.

But, if that were the case, if only the eco-snobs and the Indian dopers were involved, then I

would still be comfortably ensconced in my once-lucrative Caddy dealership in San Diego. You

see, the shamans enjoy a special dispensation to use Aristito in their "...aboriginal rituals with

overtly religious content"; their skinny little butts were covered. Alas -- and here sexual vanity, the

first of many venalities that raised their ugly heads initiated a chain reaction of complications.

Heiresses, trophy wives, distaff nobility, lesbian tennis stars and film goddesses (and, for all I know,
pampered transvestites of immense political clout) craved, like a drug, the caress of Aristito fur

under their professionally sculptured jawlines, on their bare shoulders or, for the more adventurous,

lining their custom made restraints. My kind of people. Enter the profit motive.

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