Bleeding Edge

35

As things turn out, Thanksgiving is not so horrible after all. Probably 11 September has something to do with it. There is an empty space set seder fashion at the table, not for the prophet Elijah but for one or any of the unknown souls whom prophecy failed that day. The sound ambience is subdued, edgeless. Ernie and the boys settle in in front of the annual Star Wars marathon, Horst and Avi talk sports, smells of cooking fill the rooms, Elaine glides in and out of dining room, pantry, and kitchen, a one-woman army of woodwork-dwelling elves, Maxine and Brooke by the end of the afternoon have reached zinger parity with no lethal weapons appearing, the food is, as so often with Elaine, a form of time travel, the turkey mercifully unjinxed despite its Crumirazzi origins, the pastries somehow escaping Brooke’s fatality for the overelaborate and even including what Otis in a rave review calls a normal pumpkin pie. Ernie spares everybody a speech and only gestures at the empty chair with a glass of apple cider. “Everybody who should’ve been celebrating today but isn’t.”

As they’re leaving, Avi draws Maxine aside. “Your office—is there some kind of a back entrance?”

“You want to drop by without anybody seeing you. Maybe… should we do breakfast someplace?”

“Um…”

“Too public, OK, here’s what you do, go around the corner, there’s a delivery gate that’s usually open, go in the courtyard, bear to the right, you’ll see a door painted with red lead, the service elevator’s right inside, I’m on three. Call first.”

AVI COMES CREEPING up to the office in disguise, jeans way too skinny for him, T-shirt reading ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US, a fuzzy white Kangol 504 at which Daytona does a triple take, pretending to adjust her glasses. “Thought it was Sam the King of Cool in here, walkin amongst us. Clients is gettin way too hip for my ass, Miz Maxine!”

“You never met my brother-in-law?” Avi takes off his hat, and there’s his yarmulke. The two shake hands warily.

“I’ll just whup up a mess of coffee, then, shall I.”

“Good timing, Avi, the danish guy was just here a minute ago.”

“Been meaning to ask, where in this neighborhood anymore? We come back to the city, now the Royale on 72nd is gone.”

“Tell me. We have to get these schlepped up from 23rd Street. Sit, please, here, coffee, thanks, Daytona.”

“Only got a minute, have to go punch in. I’m supposed to pass on a message to you.”

“From the Ice Man himself, I bet. Neither of you could just phone?”

“Well, it’s not only that. Something weird I need to ask you about, also.”

“If your boss’s message is stop looking into the audit trails at hashslingrz, consider it done, that ticket’s been dormant really since September 11th.”

“I think he has a job for you.”

“Respectfully decline.”

“Just like that?”

“Everybody’s different, Avi, maybe I’ve worked for a lowlife or two over the years, but this Ice specimen, I hope you guys haven’t become dear friends, he’s how shall I put it—”

“He speaks highly of you also.”

“So what kind of a gig could he be offering me—get run over by a truck?”

“He thinks he’s being ripped off by persons unknown, inside the company.”

“Oh, please. And needs an ex-CFE to make that story look legit? Let you in on a big secret, Avi, these persons unknown happen to be Ice himself, along with the missus possibly duked in, being you’ll recall company comptroller? Sorry to be the bearer, but Ice for months, maybe years, has been robbing his own shop blind.”

“Gabriel Ice is… embezzling?”

“Yes contemptible enough, but now he’s whining about Dishonest Employees? oldest con in the book, he wants to pin it on some poor zhlub who can’t afford a good enough lawyer. My diagnosis? Classic fraud, your employer is a fraudster. That’s ten billable seconds, I’ll send an invoice.”

“He’s under investigation? He’ll be charged?” So plaintive that Maxine finally reaches over and pats her brother-in-law on the shoulder.

“Nobody’s about to go forensic with it, maybe some curiosity at federal level, but Ice has his own friends down there, likely at some point they’ll all be dealing in secret and nothing’ll ever get as far as the courts or outside the Beltway. You and me, the taxpayer, will of course end up a tiny percent more impoverished, but who gives a shit about us. Your job is safe, don’t worry.”

“My job. Well, that’s the other thing.”

“Ooh, somebody’s not happy?” in a voice she likes to use in the street with screaming toddlers she hasn’t necessarily been introduced to.

“No, and I’m not Dopey or Doc either. If this city was a nuthouse, hashslingrz would be the paranoid ward—help, help, the enemy, look, they’re out there, they’re all around us! Like being back in Israel on a bad day.”

“And as seen from inside your workplace, this business-world analogy to being surrounded on all sides by criminally insane Arabs would be…”

An uncoordinated, slightly desperate shrug. “Whoever it is, it’s no delusion, somebody’s actively engaged, mystery stalkers, hacking into our networks, social-engineering us at bars.”

“OK, setting aside what could be a, forgive me, deliberate company policy of keeping all the employees paranoid… How about Brooke, any reports there of stalking, molestation, lapses of taste above and beyond the usual in this town?”

“There’s these two guys.”

“Uh-oh.” Hoping this time her intuition circuit board really is on the fritz, “A sort of Russian hip-hop act?”

“Funny you should mention.”

Pizdets. “Listen, if it’s who I think, they’re probably not into inflicting harm.”

“‘Probably.’”

“Can’t give you a figure, but I can make a phone call. Let me see what’s going on, meantime tell Brooke not to worry.”

“Actually, I haven’t been sharing any of this with her.”

“Such a mensch, Avi, always thinking of her stress level, lucky her.”

“Well, not exactly… the nondisclosure agreement says no wives?”

As he’s going out, Daytona flashes her nails. “Loved you in Pulp Fiction, baby. That Bible quote? Mm-hmmm!”

ABOUT 5:00 A.M. MAXINE WAKES from one of those annoying recursive subnightmares, this time something about Igor and an oversize bottle of vodka, named after a Lithuanian basketball player, which he keeps trying to introduce her to as if it’s a person. She slips out of bed and goes into the kitchen, where she finds Driscoll and Eric sharing their usual breakfast, a bottle of Mountain Dew with two straws in it. “Been meaning to mention this,” Driscoll begins, and gazing at each other like two country singers at a benefit, she and Eric start to sing the old Jeffersons sitcom theme, “Movin on out.”

“Wait. Not ‘to the East Side.’”

“Williamsburg,” Eric sez, “actually.”

“It’s all goin over to Brooklyn. Feels like we’re the last of the old-time Alley folks.”

“Hope it’s nothing we’ve done.”

“Isn’t you guys, it’s Manhattan in general,” Driscoll explains. “Not like it used to be, maybe you’ve noticed.”

“Greed situation,” Eric amplifies. “You’d think when the towers came down it would’ve been a reset button for the city, the real-estate business, Wall Street, a chance for it all to start over clean. Instead lookit them, worse than before.”

Around them, the City That Doesn’t Sleep is beginning to not sleep even more. Lights come on in windows across the street. Drunks out too long after closing time scream in discontent. Down the block a car alarm starts in with a medley of attention signals. Over in the flanking avenues, heavy machinery roars into standby mode, preparing to move into position beneath the windows of citizens incautious enough to still be in bed. Birds too clueless or stubborn to get out of town before the winter now creeping upon the city begin discussing why they’re not in avian therapy yet.

Maxine, busy with the coffee routine, observes her own migratory birds with regret. “So in Brooklyn will you guys be living together or separately?”

“True,” reply Eric and Driscoll in unison.

Maxine regards the ceiling briefly.

“Sorry. Nonexclusive ‘or.’”

“Geek thing,” Driscoll explains.

THERE HAVE ALREADY BEEN a number of panicked, not to mention abusive, calls from Windust by the time Maxine shows up at work. Daytona is strangely amused.

“Sorry you had to deal with that… he didn’t get racial, I hope.”

“Maybe not him, but…”

“Oh, Daytona.” Maxine takes the next one. Windust certainly seems perturbed. “Calm down, you’re blowing out my speakerphone here.”

“That fucking destructive irresponsibile bitch, what does she think she’s doing? Does she know how many people she’s just put at risk?”

“‘She’ being…”

“You know what I’m talking about, goddamn it, Maxine, did you have anything to do with this?”

“With…” She can’t help it, it does her spirit good to see him this way. Eventually she gets him to splutter it out. Seems March Kelleher has finally gotten around to posting Reg’s footage from The Deseret roof on the Internet. Well, thanks for the heads-up, March, though it is about time.

“Let me just look, here.”

March—Maxine can imagine with what kind of a mischievous glint—trying to maintain a class-act approach, “Many of us need the comfort of a simple story line with Islamic villains, and co-enablers like the Newspaper of Record are delighted to help. Poor, poor America, why do these evil foreigners hate us, must be all this freedom of ours, and how twisted is that, to hate freedom? Really thinking about all those buildable lots where the demolition’s already been done. If you’re interested in counternarratives, however, click on this link to the video of a Stinger crew on a Manhattan rooftop. Check out theories and countertheories. Contribute your own.”

No invitation needed, really. The Internet has erupted into a Mardi Gras for paranoids and trolls, a pandemonium of commentary there may not be time in the projected age of the universe to read all the way through, even with deletions for violating protocol, plus home videos and audio tracks including a lilting sound bite from Deseret spokesman Seamus O’Vowtey, “Our buildin security’s the best in the city. This has to be an inside job, likely somethin to do with certain o’ these tenants.”

“Wow, bummer,” Maxine somewhat insincerely.

“That doesn’t begin to—”

“No I mean The Deseret, it took me years to get in their front gate, and here’s a whole missile crew just moseys on in and up to the roof.”

“No use telling her to take the video down, I imagine?”

“There’s already a million copies out there.”

“Shit’s hit the fan down here. I’ve come in for an episode of inconvenience myself, effectively I’m a fugitive now, need to sneak in and out of my own house, last I heard from Dotty was back in the middle of the night, reporting unmarked vans out in front, now she’s gone totally offline and who knows when I’ll see her—”

“Where are you calling from, I keep hearing Chinese in the background?”

“Chinatown.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t suppose you could meet me down here.”

“No?” Whatdafuck. “I mean, what for?”

“None of my ATM cards seem to be working anymore.”

“And, excuse me, you want to borrow money? From me?”

“I wouldn’t say borrow, because that assumes a future in which I might pay it back.”

“You’re beginning to scare me a little.”

“Good. Can you bring enough just to get me down to D.C. again?”

“Yeah I saw that movie, I think Elizabeth Taylor was playing you?”

“I knew this would come up.”

Today, she reminds herself heading downtown, all the fortune cookies are screaming, “Err on the side of no schmucks!” This man deserves no mercy, Maxine, your best course here is to just let him go fuck himself. He’s short of cash, boo hoo, given his skill sets, knocking over a convenience store shouldn’t be such a stretch for him, preferably one in New Jersey, he’d already be halfway to D.C. So of course here she is, hurrying to him with a valise full of greenbacks. The apparent cause and effect in this may be worth a look, however. March posts the footage, Windust is forced into flight and his money supply frozen. The links between are hard to resist—Windust, if not ramrodding the whole Deseret roof operation, must’ve been at least in charge of security, and he fucked up. Anybody plugged into the Internet, any bleating sheep of a civilian, can now see what it was Windust’s job to keep hidden. So, big surprise any sanctions should turn out to be serious, maybe extreme?

She sits watching on the backseat video display their snail’s progress through the streets of Manhattan, as tracked by GPS, drifting into unprofitable thoughts. Is it that American Indian curse about, if you save somebody’s life you’re responsible for what happens to them from then on? Setting aside fringe theories about Indians being lost tribes of Israel and so forth, did she save Windust’s life once long ago without knowing it and now invisible karmic bureaucracy is passing her these messages—he wants you, so go!

She finds Windust under an awning with a number of Chinese people, waiting for the bus, the Manhattan Bridge looming nearby. After watching from across the street for a minute, Maxine realizes that the people on either side of Windust aren’t talking to each other directly, but through him. Smart-assed as ever, he seems to be translating back and forth from one kind of Chinese to another. He spots her looking at him, nods, gestures, Stay where you are, threads his way across to her. Not looking that great. In fact, a man on the edge.

“Good timing. Just spent my last U.S. dollars on the bus to D.C.”

“There’s a bus terminal around here?”

“Street pickup, savings passed on to the customer, bargain of the century, you’re Jewish, I’m amazed you haven’t heard of this.”

“Your envelope.”

Instead of counting the bills like a normal person, Windust with a small practiced hand move hefts the envelope, the sort of thing that over time, for a career bagman, gets to be automatic.

“Thanks, angel. Don’t know when—”

“Reimburse when you can, something I don’t have to declare as income. Maybe from the street floor at Tiffany’s— no, wait, what’s her name, Dotty? Nah, you wouldn’t want her finding out.”

He’s examining her face. “Earrings. Simple diamond studs. With your hair up… .”

“Actually, I’m a Eurowire type gal.” She has barely time to think about adding, “How squalid is this?” when the round comes in, invisible, silent till it hits a piece of wall, whereupon it finds its voice and ricochets droning brightly off into Chinatown, by which time Windust has grabbed Maxine and pulled her down behind a skip full of construction debris.

“Holy shit. Are you—”

“Wait,” he advises, “just give it a minute, I’m not sure about the angle, it could’ve come from anyplace. Up in any of those,” gesturing with his head at the upper stories surrounding them. They watch the pavement fragment further into what will later be taken for only a few more city potholes. The people across the street don’t seem to notice. On the incoming breeze, a distant slow stammering. “Somehow I’ve been expecting three-round bursts. This sounds more like an AK. Hold steady.”

“I knew I should’ve worn the Kevlar outfit today.”

“Among your friends in the Russian mob, distance equals respect, so we should consider assassination by AK-47 an honor.”

“Gee, you must be some hot shit.”

“In fifteen seconds,” glancing at his watch, “I plan to disappear and get on with my day. You might want to wait here for a bit before resuming your own.”

“Class act, I figured you’d grab my arm and we’d run someplace, like in movies? Chinese people jumping out of the way? Or was I supposed to be blond?” Scanning upper windows meantime, reaching into her purse, bringing out the Beretta, thumbing off the safety.

“Good,” Windust nodding like it’s about time. “You can cover me.”

“That one there, the one that’s open, that look good to you?” No reply. Already, as the Eagles say, gone. She crab-steps out from behind the skip anyway and lets go a couple of double taps at the window, screaming, “Motherfuckers!”

Goodness, Maxine, where’d that come from? Nobody’s returning fire. The people waiting for the bus begin to point and pass remarks. Keeping an eye on the street traffic, she waits for a vehicle tall enough to take cover behind, which turns out to be a moving van with MITZVAH MOVERS in mock-Hebrew lettering and a cartoon of what appears to be an insane rabbi with a piano on his back, and vacates the area.

Well, as Winston Churchill always sez, there is nothing more exhilarating than getting shot at without result, though for Maxine there is also a flip side or payback, which arrives a few hours later, on the after-school stoop at Kugelblitz, in front of an assortment of Upper West Side moms whose life skills include an eye for the slightest uptick in the distress of others, not that Maxine quite collapses in tears, though her knees feel unreliable and she may be experiencing a certain lightness of head…

“Everything all right, Maxine? you look so… inexplicable.”

“One of those having-it-all moments, Robyn, and yourself?”

“Going crazy with Scott’s bar mitzvah, you have no idea, the work, caterers, deejay, invitations. And Scott, his aliyah, he’s still struggling to memorize it, with the Hebrew running the other way we’re worried now it’s making him dyslexic?”

“Well,” in the most rational voice available to her at the moment, “why not go off-Torah and choose a passage from, I don’t know, Tom Clancy? not really that traditional, true, not even I guess Jewish, but something with, you know, maybe Ding Chavez in it?” noticing after a short time lag that Robyn is looking at her funny and people are beginning to edge away. Providentially at this point, the kids all come charging out of the lobby and onto the stoop, and parental subroutines kick in, carrying her and Ziggy and Otis down the steps and into the street, where she notices Nigel Shapiro busy poking with a little stylus at the tiny keyboard of a wavy-shaped pocket-size green-and-purple unit. Doesn’t look like a Game Boy. “Nigel, what is that?”

Looking up after a while, “This? it’s a Cybiko, my sister gave itta me, everybody at La Guardia has em, the big selling point is the silence. It’s wireless, see, you can send text messages back and forth in class and nobody hears you.”

“So if Ziggy and I each had one, we could message back and forth?”

“If you’re in range, which is only like a block and a half. But trust me, Mizzus Loeffler, it’s da wave o’ da fyootch.”

“You’ll be wanting one, I imagine, Ziggy.”

“Already got one, Mom.” And who knows who else. Maxine has a moment of eyebrow oscillation. Talk about private networks.

THE OFFICE PHONE LETS LOOSE with some robotic theme, and Maxine picks up. It’s Lloyd Thrubwell, in some agitation. “The subject you inquired after? I’m so sorry. There’s not much further I can take this.”

Yeah let me look in my Beltway-to-English phrasebook here… “You’re being ordered to back off of it, right?”

“This person has been the topic of an internal memo, several actually. I can’t say any more than that.”

“You probably heard already, but Windust and I got shot at yesterday.”

“His wife,” only having a spot of fun, “or your husband?”

“I’ll take that as WASP for ‘Thank God you’re both all right.’”

Muffled mouthpiece passage. “Wait, I’m sorry, it’s a serious event, of course. We’re already looking into it.” A beat of silence, which on Avi’s stress analyzer is clearly registering far over in the Lying Through Ass range. “Do either of you have any theories as to the shooter’s identity?”

“Out of all the enemies Windust has made during a long career doing his country’s shitwork, jeepers Lloyd, personally, any thoughts on that would so be a chore.”

More muffled yakking. “No problem. If you have any contact with the subject, however indirect, we would strongly advise against continuing it.” The display on Avi’s gizmo has now turned a vivid cadmium red and begun to blink.

“Because they don’t want me meddling in Agency business, or something else?”

“Something else,” Lloyd whispers.

The sound background changes as an extension is picked up, and another voice, one she has never heard, at least not in the waking world, advises, “He means your personal safety, Ms. Loeffler. The assessment here on Brother Windust is that he’s a highly educated asset, but doesn’t know everything. Lloyd, that’s all, you can get off the line now.” The connection goes dead.