The five-and-a-half million-dollar nineteenth floor penthouse overlooked Marina del Ray. For the money the property was modest and was where Sane preferred to stay during the cooler winter months. Plus, it kept him closer to his business, which was primarily in the heart of L.A.’s middle and lower class neighborhoods. Sane took great pleasure in being a hands-on entrepreneur, so, more often than not, his other home in Malibu remained unoccupied.
Sane’s taste in art was eclectic, at worst, and the walls of all of his residences were elegantly decorated with works from the greatest Dutch painters. Rembrandt, Hooch, Kalf and Ostade shared walls with Van Gogh and a particularly hideous Piet Mondrian abstract. Sane had always regretted stealing that Mondrian because of its’ “inaccessibility” but the street value of the painting was now more than a million bucks. And his philosophy was that “any thing valued at a million dollars will eventually appreciate to two.” So the painting hung.
Worth more than a hundred million in cash, Sane had the money that good taste could afford. He was a man steeped in the knowledge of all things “pleasant,” from the vehicles that he drove (an Aston-Martin), or was chauffeured about in (an armored and blacked-out Chevrolet Suburban), right down to the cushiness of the bathroom tissue he preferred to wipe his ass with. Two Azimut yachts – a 116’ in Marina del Ray and its’ smaller 62’ sister in Greece were utilized perhaps three or four weeks a year. Sane owned a quantity of niceties and was well educated in all things that made his life worth living. Sane personified the Arbiter of Good Taste.
And this success from a high school educated man now forty-two years old. Naturally, he was handsome – not man-boy handsome. Sane would embody the persona of what a real man should strive to be. If there were a God and he did create the perfect man named Adam, then he’d be reincarnated as Sane – that’s how perfect he was – right down to his flaws.
That he peddled drugs, well… everyone has flaws, don’t they?


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