Bleeding Edge

40

There is a particular weirdness to be found on weekends in the evening in NYC health and fitness clubs, especially when economic times are sluggish. Unable anymore to bring herself to swim in The Deseret pool, which she believes to be cursed, Maxine has joined her sister Brooke’s state-of-the-art health club Megareps around the corner but isn’t quite used yet to this nightly spectacle of yups on treadmills, plodding to nowhere while watching CNN or the sports channels, laid-off dotcommers who aren’t at strip clubs or absorbed into massively multiplayer online games, all running, rowing, lifting weights, mingling with body-image obsessives, folks recuperating from dating disasters, others desperate enough tonight actually to be looking for company here instead of in bars. Worse, hanging around the snack section, which is where Maxine, coming in out of the strange kind of late-winter rain that you can hear rattling lightly off your umbrella or raincoat but when you look, nothing is getting wet, finds March Kelleher, busy on her laptop, surrounded by muffin debris and a number of paper coffee cups she’s using, much to the annoyance of the rest of the room, for ashtrays.

“Didn’t know you were a member here, March.”

“Walk-in, just using the free Internet, hot spots all over town, haven’t been in this one for a while.”

“Been following your Weblog.”

“I had an interesting tip about your friend Windust. Like he’s dead, for example. Should I post it? Should I be offering condolences?”

“Not to me.”

March puts the screen to sleep and regards Maxine with a level gaze. “You know I never asked.”

“Thanks. You wouldn’t have found it entertaining.”

“Did you?”

“Not sure.”

“Long sad career as a mother-in-law, only thing I ever learned is don’t advise. Anybody needs advice these days, it’s me.”

“Hey, more than happy to, what’s up?”

A sour face. “Worried sick about Tallis.”

“This is news?”

“It’s all getting worse, I can’t just stand by anymore, I have to be the one to take the step, try to get to see her somehow. Fuck the consequences. Tell me it’s a bad idea.”

“It’s a bad idea.”

“If you mean life is too short, OK, but around Gabriel Ice, as you must know, it can get even shorter.”

“What, he’s threatening her?”

“They’ve split. He’s kicked her out.”

Well. “So good riddance.”

“He won’t leave it at that. Something I can feel. She’s my baby.”

All right. The Code of the Mom stipulates you don’t argue back at this kind of talk. “So,” nodding, “can I help?”

“Lend me your handgun.” Beat. “Just kidding.”

“Yet another license pulled, would be the thing…”

“Only a metaphor.”

OK, but if March, already on the fly, living with her own danger levels, sees Tallis in this much trouble… “Can I do some recon first, March?”

“She’s innocent, Maxine. Ah. She’s so fuckin innocent.”

Running with Gulf Coast gangsters, party to international money laundering, any number of Title 18 violations, innocent, well… “How’s that?”

“Everybody thinks they know more than her. The old sad delusion of every insect-free know-it-all in this miserable town. Everybody thinks they live in ‘the real world’ and she doesn’t.”

“So?”

“So that’s what it is, to be an ‘innocent person.’” In the tone of voice you use when you think somebody needs to have it explained.

TALLIS, booted out of the East Side stately home she and Ice were sharing, has found a utility closet converted to residential use in one of the newer high rises on the far Upper West Side. Looks like a machine more than a building. Pale, metallic, highly reflective, someplace up in the mid–two figures with respect to floors high, wraparound balconies that look like cooling fins, no name, only a number hidden so discreetly not one in a hundred locals you ask can even tell you it. Keeping Tallis company this evening are enough bottles to stock an average Chinese-restaurant bar, from one of which she is drinking directly something turquoise called Hypnotiq. Neglecting to offer any to Maxine.

Out here at the far ancient edge of the island, this all used to be trainyard. Deep below, trains still move through tunnels in and out of Penn Station, horns chiming in B-major sixths, deep as dreams, while ghosts of tunnel-wall artists and squatters the civil authorities have no clue what to do about—evict, ignore, re-evict—go drifting past the train-car windows in the semidark, whispering messages of transience, and overhead in this cheaply built apartment complex tenants come and go, relentlessly ephemeral as travelers in a nineteenth-century railroad hotel.

“First thing I noticed,” not complaining to Maxine so much as to anybody who’ll listen, “is I was getting systematically cut off from the Web sites I usually visit. Couldn’t shop online, or chat in chat rooms, or after a while even do normal company business. Finally, wherever I tried to go, I ran into some kind of wall. Dialogue boxes, pop-up messages, mostly threatening, some apologizing. Click by click, forcing me away into exile.”

“You discussed this with CEO-and-hubby?”

“Sure, while he was screaming, throwing my stuff out the window, reminding me how badly I’m expected to come out of this. A nice adult discussion.”

Matrimonials. What is there ever to say? “Just don’t forget about the loss carry-forwards and all that, OK?” Running a quick EHA or Eyeball-Humidity Assessment, Maxine thinks for a minute Tallis is about to go all mushy, but instead she’s relieved to see, as if jump-cut to, the reliably annoying Fingernail, cycling toward and away from her lips,

“You’ve been discovering secrets about my husband… any you’d like to share?”

“There’s no proof of anything yet.”

An unsurprised nod. “But he is, I don’t know, a suspect in something?” Gazing toward a neutral corner, voice softening to edgelessness, “The Geek That Couldn’t Sleep. A make-believe horror movie we used to pretend we were in. Gabe was really such a sweet kid, a long time ago.”

Off she goes goes on the time machine, while Maxine investigates the liquor inventory. Presently Tallis is recalling one of several memorial services after 11 September she was at representing hashslingrz, standing there among a delegation of dry-eyed wisefolk who looked like they were waiting for it to be over so they could get back to which stock to short next, when she observed one of the bagpipe players, improvising grace notes on “Candle in the Wind,” who seemed to her dimly familiar. It turned out to be Gabriel’s old college roommate Dieter, now in business as a professional bagpiper. There were catered eats afterward, over which she and Dieter got into conversation, trying to avoid kilt jokes, though whatever he’d grown into, it wasn’t Sean Connery.

Demand for bagpipers was brisk. Dieter, filing as an S-corporation these days, teamed up with a couple of other classmates from CMU, had been swamped since 11 September with more gigs than he knew what to do with, weddings, bar mitzvahs, furniture-store openings…

“Weddings?” sez Maxine.

“He sez you’d be surprised, a funeral lament at a wedding, gets a laugh every time.”

“I can imagine.”

“They don’t do cop funerals so much, the cops apparently have their own resources, most of it’s private functions like this one we were at. Dieter grew philosophical, said it got stressful from time to time, he felt like a branch of emergency services, being held in readiness, waiting for the call to come in.”

“Waiting for the next…”

“Yeah.”

“You think he might be some kind of a leading indicator?”

“Dieter? Like bagpipe players would get a heads-up before the next one happens? That would be so weird?”

“Well, after that—did you and your husband get together socially with Dieter?”

“Uh-huh? He and Gabe might have even done some business.”

“Natch. What are ex-roomies for?”

“It looked like they were planning some project together, but they never shared it with me, and whatever it was, it didn’t show up on the books.”

A joint project, Gabriel Ice and somebody whose career depends on widespread public bereavement. Hmmm. “Did you ever invite him out to Montauk?”

“As a matter of fact…”

Cue the theremin music, and you, Maxine, get a grip. “This split could all turn out to be a blessing in disguise for you, Tallis, and meantime, you… have called your mother.”

“Do you think I should?”

“I think you’re overdue.” Plus a related thought, “Listen, it’s none of my business, but…”

“Is there a fella. Of course. Can he help, good question.” Reaching for the Hypnotiq bottle.

“Tallis,” trying to keep as much weariness as she can out of it, “I know there’s a boyfriend, and he’s nobody’s ‘fella’ except maybe your husband’s, and frankly none of this is as cute as you’re hoping…” Giving her the abridged version of Chazz Larday’s rap sheet including his wife-sitting arrangements with Ice. “It’s a setup. So far you’re doing exactly everything hubby wants you to.”

“No. Chazz…” Is the next part of this going to be “… loves me?” Maxine’s thoughts wander to the Beretta in her purse, but Tallis surprises her. “Chazz is a dick with an East Texan attached to it, one being the price of the other, you could say.”

“Wait a minute.” Out at the edge of Maxine’s visual field, something’s been blinking for a while. It turns out to be an indicator light on a little CCTV camera up in one dim corner of the ceiling. “This is a motel, Tallis? Who put this thing in here?”

“It wasn’t in here before.”

“Do you think…?”

“It would figure.”

“You got a stepladder?” No. “A broom?” A sponge mop. They take turns banging at it, like an evil high-tech piñata, till it comes crashing to the floor.

“You know what, you should be someplace safer.”

“Where? With my mom? One step away from a bag lady, never mind me, she can’t help herself.”

“We’ll figure out where, but they just lost their picture, they’ll be coming here, we need to be gone.”

Tallis throws a couple of things in an oversize shoulder bag and they proceed to the elevator, down twenty floors, out through the gold-accented Grand Central–size lobby, with its four-figures-per-day floral arrangements—

“Mrs. Ice?” The doorman, regarding Tallis with something between apprehension and respect.

“Not for long,” Tallis sez. “Dragoslav. What.”

“These two guys showed up, said they’ll ‘be seeing you soon.’”

“That’s it?” A puzzled frown.

Maxine gets a brain wave. “Doing Russian rap lyrics, by any chance?”

“That’s them. Please be sure and tell them I gave you the message? Like, I promised?”

“They’re nice guys,” sez Maxine, “really, no need to worry.”

“Worry, excuse me, does not begin to describe.”

“Tallis, you haven’t been…”

“I don’t know these guys. You however seem to. Anything you’d like to share?”

They have wandered out onto the sidewalk. Light draining away over Jersey, no cabs around and miles to the subway. Next thing they know, around the corner on apparently new hydraulics and up the block comes, yes, it’s Igor’s ZiL-41047, gussied up tonight into a full-scale shmaravozka, gold custom spinner rims with blinking red LEDs, high-tech antennas and lowrider striping—screeches to a pause next to Tallis and Maxine and out leap Misha and Grisha, wearing matching Oakley OvertheTop shades and packing PP-19 Bizons, with which they gesture Tallis and Maxine into the back of the limo. Maxine gets a professional if not exactly courtly patdown, and the Tomcat in her purse goes on the unavailable list.

“Misha! Grisha! And here I thought you were such gentlemen!”

“You’ll get your pushka back,” Misha with a friendly stainless grin, sliding behind the wheel and pimpmobiling away from the curb.

“Reducing complications,” Grisha adds. “Remember Good, Bad and Ugly, three-way standoff? Remember how much trouble even to watch?”

“You don’t mind my asking, guys, what’s going on?”

“Up till five minutes ago,” sez Grisha, “simple plan, put snatch and grab on cute Pamela Anderson here.”

“Who,” inquires Tallis, “me?”

“Tallis, please, just— And now the plan’s not so simple?”

“We weren’t expecting you too,” Misha sez.

“Aw. You were gonna kidnap her and ask Gabriel Ice for ransom money? Let me just roll on the floor here a minute, you guys. You want to tell them, Tallis, or should I?”

“Uh-oh,” go the gorillas in unison.

“You didn’t hear, I guess. Gabe and I are about to get into a really horrible divorce. At the moment my ex-to-be is trying to delete me, my existence, from the Internet. I don’t think he’ll even spring for gas money, guys, sorry.”

“Govno,” in harmony.

“Unless he’s really the one who hired you, to get me out of the way.”

“Fucking Gabriel Ice,” Grisha indignant, “is oligarch scum, thief, murderer.”

“So far, nichego,” Misha cheerfully, “but he’s also working for U.S. secret police, which makes us sworn enemies forever—we have oath, older than vory, older than gulag, never help cops.”

“Penalty for violation,” Misha adds, “is death. Not just what they’ll do to you. Death in spirit, you understand.”

“She’s nervous,” Maxine hastily, “she means no disrespect.”

“How much did you think he was gonna pay?” Tallis still wants to know.

An amused exchange in Russian that Maxine imagines going something like “Fucking American women only care about price they bring on market? Nation of whores.”

“More like Austin Powers,” Misha explains— “telling Ice, ‘Oh, behave!’”

“‘Shagadelic!’” cries Grisha. They high-five.

“We have something to do tonight,” Misha continues, “and holding Mrs. Ice was only supposed to be for insurance, in case somebody gets cute.”

“Looks like it ain’t gonna work,” sez Maxine.

“Sorry,” sez Tallis. “Can we get out now?”

By this point they are off the Cross County and onto the Thruway, just passing the fake barn and silo of Stew Leonard, a legendary figure in the history of point-of-sale fraud, heading for what Otis used to call the Chimpan Zee Bridge.

“What’s the hurry? Pleasant social evening. Some conversation. Chillax, ladies.” There’s champagne in the fridge. Grisha breaks out El Productos stuffed with weed and lights up, and soon secondhand effects begin to occur. On the sound system, the boys have arranged a hip-hop- plus-Russian eighties nostalgia mix, including DDT’s road anthem “Ty Nye Odin” (You Are Not Alone) and the soulful ballad “Veter.”

“Where are we going, then?” Tallis sullenly flirtatious, as if hoping this will develop into an orgy.

“Upstate. Hashslingrz has secret server farm up in mountains, right?”

“Adirondack Mountains, Lake Heatsink—are you really planning to take us all the way up there?”

“Yeah,” sez Maxine, “something of a drive, ain’t it?”

“Maybe you won’t have to go all the way there,” Grisha fondling his Bizon menacingly.

“He’s being dickhead,” Misha explains. “Years in Vladimirski Tsentral, learned nothing. We have to meet this guy Yuri in Poughkeepsie, we can let you off there at train station.”

“You want to get to the server,” Tallis bringing out her Filofax and finding a blank page, “I can draw you boys a map.”

Grisha narrowing his eyes, “We don’t need to shoot you or nothing?”

“Oh you wouldn’t really shoot me with that big, mean gun?” Withholding eye contact till around “big.”

“Map would be nice,” Misha trying to sound like the good torpedo.

“Gabe took me up there once. Deep underground caves near the lake. Very like vertical, many levels, floor numbers on the elevator all had minus signs. The property itself used to be a summer camp, Camp… some Indian name, Ten Watts, Iroquois, something…”

“Camp Tewattsirokwas,” Maxine just refrains from screaming in recognition.

“That’s it.”

“Mohawk for ‘firefly.’ At least that’s what they told us.”

“You went to camp there, oh my God?”

“Oh your God what, Tallis, somebody had to.” Camp Tewattsirokwas was the brainchild of a Trotskyite couple, the Gimelmans from Cedarhurst, begun back at the time of the Schachtman unpleasantness amid epical all-night screaming matches and not much quieter by the time Maxine got there, the standard poison-ivy facility you found back then all through the mountains of New York State. Cafeteria food, color wars, canoes on the lake, singing “Marching to Astoria,” “Zum Gali Gali,” dance parties—aaahhh! Wesley Epstein!

Counselors at Camp Tewattsirokwas delighted in creeeping kids out with local legends about Lake Heatsink—how from ancient times the Indians avoided the place, in terror of what lived in its depths, cloak-shaped rays of glowing ultraviolet, giant albino eels that could get around on land as well as through water, with demonic faces that spoke to you in Iroquois of the horrors that awaited you should you dip so much as a toe…

“Make her stop,” Grisha shivering, “she’s scaring me.”

“No wonder Gabe seemed to fit right in,” figures Tallis. Ice apparently chose Lake Heatsink because it’s deeper and colder than anything else in the Adirondacks. Maxine flashes back to his spiel at the Geeks’ Cotillion, northward migration to fjordsides, to subarctic lakes, where the unnatural flows of heat generated by server equipment can begin to corrupt the last patches of innocence on the planet.

Onto the sound system comes Nelly singing “Ride Wit Me.” As the Thruway unreels toward and around the speeding ZiL a sorrowful winterscape of little farms, frozen fields, trees that look like they’ll never bear leaves again, Misha and Grisha start bouncing up and down and chiming in on “Hey! Must be the money!”

“Don’t mean to seem nosy,” of course not Maxine, “but I gather you’re not going up there just to drop in and hang out by the snack machine.”

Another exchange in jailhouse Russian. Suspicious glances. In some neglected area of her brain, Maxine understands how easily yenta activities can turn dangerous, but this doesn’t keep her from a little lobe probe here. “Is it true what I hear,” adopting Elaine’s murderous perkiness, “that server farms, no matter how carefully hidden, are all sitting ducks, because they put out an infrared signature that a heat-seeking missile can read?”

“Missiles? Sorry.”

“No missiles tonight. Small-scale experiment only.”

They stop for gas, Misha and Grisha take Maxine around to the back of the ZiL, open the trunk. Something long, cylindrical, flanges with bolts, projections that look electrical… “Nice, which end are you supposed to inhale out of— Oh, shit, wait, I know what this is! I saw this in Reg’s movie! it’s one of those vircators, isn’t it, what are you guys—let me guess, you’re gonna hit that server farm with an EM pulse?”

“Shh-shh,” cautions Misha.

“Only ten-percent power,” Grisha assures her.

“Twenty maybe.”

“Experiment.”

“You shouldn’t be showing me this,” Maxine thinking, on the one hand nonnuclear means minor league, while on the other, don’t rule out that they’re insane also.

“Igor says trust you.”

“Anybody asks, I didn’t see this, good with whatever fellas, nichego, hashslingrz in my opinion, they’re way overdue for a little inconvenience.”

“Po khuy,” Grisha beams, “Ice’s server is toast.”

Of course Maxine sees attitude like this all the time, blind confidence, sure disaster for the other guy, somehow it never works out. Oh, this trip does not bode well. No orgies tonight, no hostage situation, God help them all, it’s a nerd exploit, a journey far from the comforts of screenside, out into the middle of an increasingly arctic night right up in the enemy’s face.

Back on the Thruway, Grisha replacing Misha behind the wheel now, “They’ve got to have pretty tight security up there,” Maxine as if it’s just occurred to her, “how are you planning to get past it?”

“Yeah,” Tallis shifting into a cheery tough-moppet voice, “are you gonna go crashing in the gate?”

Misha pushes up a sleeve, revealing one of his prison tats, Ever-Virgin Mary Mother of God holding her baby, Jesus, on whose forehead at about third-eye position Maxine now can just detect a little bump about the size of a zit, which babies aren’t supposed to have. “Transponder implant,” Misha explains. “We found out from social-engineering cute nyashetchka we met in bar.”

“Tiffany,” Grisha recalls.

“Everybody who works for hashslingrz gets one of these, so Security can track them wherever they go.”

Wait a minute. “My sister’s husband has been walking around with a tracking implant? Since—”

Shrug, “Couple months. Even Ice Man himself has one. You didn’t know that?”

“You, Tallis?”

“Only till I could get my dermatologist back from St. Maarten’s to take it out.”

“And when you went dark, Hubby never said anything?”

The cute fingernail. “I guess I wasn’t thinking past Chazz and me, and how to keep it from Gabe.”

“Once again, Tallis,” Maxine doesn’t want to be the bully here, but the news isn’t penetrating. “Gabe knew, he planned the whole thing, of course he didn’t make an issue.” Stubborn kid. She wonders how March ever dealt with this.

The interior of the limo has picked up a Gaussian blur from the smoke of inexpensive cigar tobacco and high-priced weed. Things grow merry. Not to mention less cautious. The boys admit, for one thing, that their tattoos aren’t quite legit. Seems that back in Russia, having been popped actually for minor hacker beefs under Article 272, illegal access, they were never inside for long enough to rate real prison tattoos, so later on had to settle drunkenly instead for a Brooklyn ink parlour that does knockoffs for those who wish to appear more dangerous than they are. In a passage of lighthearted back-and-forth, Misha and Grisha discuss who is more of a wannabe badass than whom, during which the Bizons get waved around, Maxine has to hope rhetorically.

“According to Igor last time we talked,” Maxine schnozzing right ahead, “this beef between you people and Ice isn’t KGB business—”

“Igor doesn’t know about this thing tonight.”

“Of course not, Misha. Let’s say he has deniability and you guys are strictly on your own here. I’m still wondering why you aren’t doing it from a little further away, like on the Internet. Overflow exploit, denial of service, whatever.”

“Too institutional. Hacker-school approach. Grisha and I are close-up type of scumbags. You didn’t notice? More personal this way.”

“So if it’s personal…” She doesn’t quite mention Lester Traipse, but a crinkled, almost-kind look, the sort of expression Stalin liked to beam at you in his publicity shots, has crept into Misha’s eyes.

“Isn’t only Lester. Please. Ice has this coming, you know it, we all know it. But better you don’t have full history.”

Deimos-and-Phobos gamer machismo, legitimate avenging angels, what? Maybe it is about more than Lester tonight, but isn’t Lester enough? whatever he saw that he shouldn’t’ve, the visitation that meant his end rising spooky and vaporous above the spreadsheets of secret cash flow, was something that couldn’t be allowed out among civilians….

“OK, but how about a little history?”

The fellows exchange a mischievous look. Anasha can do funny things to a man. Even to two men.

“You heard about HALO jump.” Misha sez. “Igor tells story to everybody.”

“Especially cute women.” sez Grisha.

“Was not HALO jump, however. Was HAHO jump.”

“That’s… laughing all the way down, no wait, High Altitude…”

“High Opening. Chutes open, maybe 27,000 feet, you and your unit can fly 30, 40 miles, all stacked up in sky, lowest guy carries GLONASS receiver—”

“Like Russian GPS. One night Igor is on insertion job, everything gets fucked up, praporschik freaks out from no oxygen, wind spreads everybody over half Caucasus, GLONASS quits working. Igor gets down OK, but now he’s all by himself. No idea where or if base camp is set up. Uses compass and map to try and find rest of his unit. Days later, smells something. Little village, totally like massacred. Young, old, dogs, everybody.”

“Torched. That’s when Igor has soul crisis.”

“He doesn’t only get out of Spetsnaz—when he has enough money, he sets up his own private reparation plan.”

“Sending money to the Chechens?” wonders Maxine, “this isn’t considered treason?”

“It’s a lot of money, and by then Igor is well protected. He even thinks abut converting to Islam, but there’s too many problems. War ends, second war starts, some of people he’s been helping are now guerrillas. Situation has grown complicated. There are Chechens and there are Chechens.”

“Some good guys, some not so good.”

Names of resistance organizations that Maxine can’t keep straight. But now, well, not exactly a lightbulb—more like the glowing end of an El Producto—goes on over her head.

“So the money Lester was diverting from Ice—”

“Was going to bad guys, by way of Wahhabist bullshit front. Igor knew how to reach money before it would get all mixed up in Emirates account. He expedites matters for Lester, takes little commission. Everything dzhef, till somebody finds out.”

“Ice?”

“Whoever is running Ice? You tell us.”

“And Lester…” Maxine realizes she has blurted.

“Lester was like little hedgehog in fog. Only trying to find his friends.”

“Poor Lester.”

What, now it’s all gonna go saline, here?

“Exit 18,” Misha announces instead, exhaling smoke, eyes gleaming, “Poughkeepsie.” And not a moment too soon.

The train station’s just over the bridge. Waiting in the parking lot is Yuri, a cheerful athletic type leaning against a Hummer bearing stigmata from a long history of hard road, behind it a sizable trailer with a generator for the pulse weapon. From RV generators she’s seen, Maxine estimates 10, 15,000 watts. “Ten-percent power” may be a figure of speech.

They’re in time to catch the 10:59 to New York. “So long, boys,” Maxine waves, “go safe, can’t say I really approve, I know if my own kids ever got hold of a vircator…”

“Here, don’t forget this,” discreetly handing her back the Beretta.

“You realize you’ve just made Tallis and me accessories to some criminal, probably even terrorist, act.”

The padonki exchange a hopeful glance. “You think so?”

“First of all, it’s federal, hashslingrz is an arm of U.S. security—”

“They don’t want to hear about this right now,” Tallis dragging her down the platform. “Fuckin dweebs.”

The boys wave out the windows as they pull away. “Do svidanya Maksi! Poka, byelokurva!”