The difference between a ten-goal champion and a wretched, unemployable three goaler is essentially in the diet. The best and the brightest on the high-goal circuit eat only the hearts of wild animals, while the three goalers live on horse meat. But none of them will talk about it . . .
And why should they? Many things are known in the sweaty gray world of the polo stables, but the truth is rarely spoken. The rigid code of omertà is what holds the sport together.
II
The magazine sent me an assistant, a tall, jittery young man named Tobias, who picked me up at the airport. “Welcome to New York,” he said. “I have a present for you.” He handed me a large gift-wrapped box containing a hideous blow-up doll named Teri, according to the information on the box—which also said she had a “real-life vibrating vagina” and a “luscious-lipped deep open mouth.” There were other special features and a stern warning not to exceed her maximum 275-pound weight limit, or she might explode and disappear.
“You should see her tits,” Tobias said. “They are bigger than Ginger Baker’s head.” He grinned idiotically and made a spastic jack-off motion, then loaded Teri onto the cart with all my other luggage. She was going to be part of our lives now. I knew she would be with us for a while, for good or ill. “Our car is right out in front,” said Tobias. “I’ll have it brought up. The hotel is not far, and I am a very skilled driver. I like to drive fast.”
Everything he said turned out to be a lie, but I was not surprised. I sensed there was something deeply wrong with him. He had no idea where the car was, and I sat on the curb for an hour and a half while he searched for the Lincoln, roaming alone through the bowels of the huge parking garage.
It was another tortured hour before we got back to the hotel, and we managed to check in without incident.
“You will never drive again,” I said to him. “There is something wrong with you. Don’t ever touch this wheel again. From now on, I’m driving.”
I was introduced to the manager as Dr. Franklin, the famous author and world-renowned polo zealot. I asked him at once for a $2,000 cash advance. “My man Tobias will handle the details,” I said. “Let me know when it’s done. I’ll be over there in the bar.”
“No problem, Doctor,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything.” He nodded across the lobby at the elevated bar. “You just go over there and make yourself at home. I’ll call Hugo and tell him you’re coming.”
He seemed to be snickering at me, but I ignored it.
“You’ll like Hugo,” he added. “He’s one of our local characters. He’s Swiss.”
It was another lie. One look at the ugly brute of a bartender told me that he was something far worse than a Swiss. He looked like a violent hunchback from the mountains of Transylvania.
I greeted him warmly nonetheless; I tried to pretend he was normal. “Welcome home,” he said quietly. “I knew you were coming; now we’ll get to know each other.”
I laughed nervously, assuming he was joking, and avoided his sinister gaze.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ve changed my mind.” I picked up my satchel and left quickly. His eyes followed me all the way to the elevator. I felt a twinge of The Fear.
When I got to the suite, I found Tobias struggling to blow up the sex doll. I quickly slapped it away from him and gave the thing to the bellboy. “This is a four-star hotel,” I told him. “Get this bitch inflated and bring her back immediately.” I smiled and gave him a $100 bill. “Remember me,” I said with a fine smile. “I will need many things.”
I looked forward to spending time at the Garden City Hotel watching football and meeting surreptitiously with emissaries from the Jimmy Carter for President Committee. They would come and go quietly, mingling with the pimps and dancers and the hard-core polo crowd.
The Garden City Hotel had a shady reputation in the old days, but now it’s like a morgue. Frank Sinatra used to hang out here, and so did W. Averell Harriman. The place is full of ghosts, many of them burned alive in a series of disastrous fires that have plagued this hotel since it was built in 1874.
Yet the game went on; they all played polo: William Vanderbilt, John Pierpont Morgan, Lillian Russell, Billy Rose. Garden City was the Aspen of the Twenties, a pastoral outpost of greed, wealth, rudeness, and women who refused to wear panties. Scott Fitzgerald, no doubt, brooded in this bar just as I am today. The place has always reeked of death, from equine fever in the 1920s to human brain death in the Nineties . . . Even today there are wild boys in the elevators, cradling rubber blow-up dolls in their arms, chatting amiably with the night porters. It’s a wonderful place to stay if you’re dead . . . I had the time of my life. The Garden City Hotel is a fiery tomb of magic, mystery, and myth. You want fun, Bubba? This is the place to be.