Box Nine

Chapter Nineteen

Lenore would give almost anything to know what Woo is dreaming about. She wishes there were some process she could tap, some gift of science that would allow her to bring in a Sony Trinitron, strap a few cables and electrodes from TV to forehead in the manner of every cheaply made 1950s science-fiction movie she’s ever stumbled upon at 4 A.M., sitting cross-legged in her bed, zapping through the cable channels with the remote control and pumping a ten-pounder with her free hand, her Magnum in her lap.

If she could make the connection, adjust the volume, and hone the contrast, what would she see among the static and sparks of Woo’s synapse pictures? The stale air and dull faces of a college classroom as Woo’s hand draws root words and clever, pointy symbols on a slate blackboard? The milk-white skin of the latest eighteen-year-old co-ed he’s seduced on the couch of his linguistics office? Or just maybe her own face, spitting smug insults his way as his hand slides inside her silk chemise and cradles her breast and his fingers run over a rapidly hardening nipple?

Maybe it’s nothing like that. He’s breathing easily, not making any noise. Maybe it’s some simple pastoral dream from his grand-father’s narrated past. Something about rice paddies or the slow lapping sound of water against the sides of a sturdy junk bobbing near a shore, riding out the mild, endless waves of the family village. Maybe she should wake him suddenly and ask him, demand that he spit out his imagery before it fades. Interrogate him for every detail he can save from the deteriorating land of REM sleep.

Lenore’s own dreams were horrible and she’s grateful to be awake. The first thing she did after opening her eyes and getting a bearing on her surroundings was to pull a hit of crank from her pocket and pop it. There’s no water available, so she had to swallow it dry. It went down hard and her throat still aches.

But she’s happy to be awake and even this filthy basement is better than what she went through in the nightmare: She was the sole passenger on this endless subway ride. The subway car was this broken-down bullet, windowless, graffiti-covered, floors filled, for some reason, with old, yellowed, crumpled-up newspapers. The graffiti was in either code or some new inner-city slang or an obscure foreign language, but there were crudely drawn illustrations next to it that gave her an idea of its meaning. Like some subterranean Rosetta stone. Both the forward and rear doors were jammed shut. Every now and then the lights would go out and she’d sit in the darkness for what seemed like an hour. The car seemed to be gradually but consistently picking up speed. Her feet vibrated on the floor and her hands, gripping the edge of her seat, began to shake. There was an awful and incessant electric-sounding hum in her ear. At one point she panicked and ripped open her coat to look for her gun, but her holster was empty. Cold air began to fill the car. Every now and then she moved to the front and back doors and yelled, first calling out full sentences like Is anyone down there? or Can anyone stop this thing? Then she shortened to calls for Help, and finally, just before giving up, she made guttural, animal noises, howls and barks. She collapsed back onto the cream-colored molded plastic bench and began to imagine the cinematic possibility that some bomb had fallen and decimated the city. That the radiation had seeped into the tunnels and killed the driver, the only other person in the subway, in this terrible strangulating manner. She fell sideways on the bench, curled into a fetal hunch, and wondered which would be worse — to be choked out in the near future by the radiation making its way toward her, car by car, or to be immune to the radiation and live, trapped on this perpetually moving vehicle, circle the city over and over, until dehydration alone turned her car into a mobile grave. She could probably have hurled herself out of one of the shattered windows and under the wheels, but suicide was out of the question for more than one reason. As she crowded in further on her own body, the hum in her ears increased until it became painful. She woke from the dream with her hands at the sides of her head.

She and Woo are in the basement of the Sapir Street Postal Station. Miskewitz, through Mayor Welby, had the postmaster let them in during the night so they could get in position and set up operations before any of the mail carriers, or even the branch supervisor, knew of police presence below their feet.

They brought with them two sleeping bags, a bag of convenience store food — potato chips, candy bars, packaged donuts — a double thermos of coffee, and all the electronics needed to listen to and tape any phone calls coming into or leaving the Bach Room. At 2 A.M., Miskewitz had a lineman setting the tap on the pole behind the bar. Lenore and Woo moved into the basement just before four.

Now Lenore is kicking herself for not bringing something to read. Woo brought a small paperback, without any cover illustrations, titled Aztec Tongue in big white block letters. She’d like to ask him if it’s fiction or some difficult textbook but she knows she won’t. She hasn’t given any thought to the question of why she allowed this dorkwhite, whom she doesn’t even like, to unbutton her blouse, control the situation. The fact that she didn’t set an initial, unforgettable example — inflict some physical punishment, draw a little nose blood — bothers her tremendously. Had it been Zarelli, his index finger would be in a splint right now and he’d be explaining to the wife and the lieutenant how he slammed his desk drawer on it.

She’s set things up in a tiny alcove at the back of the basement, away from the sidewalk-level windows covered with black wire grilles. There’s a small semi-room, set off from the rest of the cellar by two brick partitions, housing the old furnace, the water main, and the electrical board that’s updated with a box of circuit breakers. Lenore and Woo pulled an abandoned worktable into the alcove, dusted it off, and placed on it the receiver and tape machine.

Though the alcove is much roomier than the inside of the Barracuda, Lenore would much rather be in her car. She feels slightly claustrophobic in the cellar and she hates the thought of breathing in years of dust and soot. The idea of rodents doesn’t thrill her, but it’s below the cooped-up feeling on the list of things that annoy her. Ike, she thinks, would probably love it here, secluded, forgotten, dim, an extreme version of his side of the duplex. Ike dislikes bright lights, and, she suspects, has some latent agoraphobia brewing in his psyche. They’re exact opposites in this regard and she wonders if anyone has done a study of this in twins. We’re dizygotic, she thinks, two different eggs, and then she envisions herself and Ike as small grey rectangular magnets. Turned one way, they repel away from one another. Ends reversed, they slide together helplessly and mesh. She considers the fact that some days she dwells for hours on Ike’s lack of a girlfriend and considers women that she could introduce him to. Other days, she knows, his singleness pleases her and she wants him to stay forever alone, on the opposite side of her walls.

She’s dressed in her oldest black jeans, a teal cotton turtleneck over a light-thermal undershirt, black Reeboks, and a secondhand leather bomber jacket that she bought off a Cambodian with an eye patch at the refugee flea market one Sunday morning. The market was set up weekly out at the old train lot on Ironhouse Ave. It wasn’t until she got the jacket home that she found a small 3 x 5-inch drugstore notebook in the breast pocket. The notebook contained only three pages, all the others had been torn out. The pages were filled with foreign writing, Oriental-like, and from the way it was set on the page she guessed that it might be poetry. She debated for three weeks whether or not she should return it to the merchant. Her biggest argument against its return was her reasoning that he was just a salesman, just a broker, that he’d gotten it elsewhere and the notebook didn’t belong to him any more than her. She never discussed what to do with anyone. Not Zarelli, not even Ike. After a month, she went back one Sunday morning to the flea market and managed to locate the booth where she’d gotten the jacket. But the Cambodian with the eye patch was gone. In his place was a Nicaraguan selling old eight-track tapes. She purchased Vic Damone’s Greatest Hits for a quarter and gave it to Zarelli at work the next day. Zarelli shrugged and said, “He’s not Tony B, but he’s okay.”

She wishes she’d brought the notebook with her to the cellar. Most likely, Woo could translate it for her. Then she changes her mind and is pleased she didn’t think to bring it. Whatever her imagination has made those obscure symbols into would be wiped out the second Woo opened his mouth and changed them into English.

Woo’s eyes begin to flutter a bit, tiny mutant birds, and then they go into a series of full blinks. He stares up out of his army-green sleeping bag and Lenore thinks he looks like he’s been swallowed up to the neck by a sentient vegetable that’s invaded the planet.

“How long was I out?” he asks.

“Just a couple of hours,” Lenore says. “Sleep well?”

“Strange dreams,” he says through a yawn, and pulls his arms free from the bag to stretch.

“Join the club,” Lenore mumbles.

“What time is it?”

“Little before seven. Want some coffee?”

He nods, shimmies out of the bag, and climbs to his feet. “Yes, please.”

Lenore unscrews the thermos cap and pours a cupful. “It’ll have to be black,” she says.

“I normally drink it black,” he says, taking the cup, sipping, and burning his lips.

“It’s steaming,” Lenore says too late. “Sometimes these thermoses work too well, you know?”

Woo nods and dabs at his singed lips with his fingers. He’s dressed in a pair of old pleated chinos with slightly flared legs, a too-thin brown leather belt, a cotton baseball shirt with blue three-quarter-length arms and a picture of Ezra Pound silk-screened on the front, a fraying navy cardigan, and low-cut white sneakers void of a brand name anywhere on them. Lenore thinks he’s an illustration for a men’s magazine on “how not to dress for a date.”

“For breakfast,” she says, unrolling the top of a paper bag on the table, “we’ve got a choice of cream-filled chocolate cupcakes, mini sugar donuts”—she rummages—“chips, licorice, graham crackers …”

“Excuse me for saying so,” Woo says with a guilty smile on his face. He blows on his cup of coffee and continues, “But it surprises me that you eat these things. I mean, you’ve got such a stunning figure—”

She cuts him off. “It’s all metabolism. Don’t listen to any of the experts on this. Trust me. It’s metabolism. I’ve got a digestive system that won’t quit. I burn up food like you read about. It runs overtime. Just really aggressive.”

She pulls out a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips, tears it open, puts one in her mouth, and offers the bag toward Woo. He reaches in, takes a chip, bites into it, and, after a beat, makes an awful frowning and squinty face.

“So sour,” he says, his tongue caked with small pieces of chips. “And this early in the morning.”

“I thought you people loved sour-tasting food.”

Woo makes an exaggerated, gulping swallow and says, “Where did you hear this?”

“Just one of those things you hear.”

Woo makes small, pecking sips at the cup of coffee.

“That book you brought with you,” Lenore says, “that Aztec tongue book? What is that? That’s not a textbook, is it?”

“Not exactly, no,” Woo says. “It’s a very obscure novel from the early 1900s, I believe. Written by an Argentine who chose to remain anonymous. It’s been out of print for years. I picked this edition up, used, last year, and never got to reading it. It’s really a mystery novel, of a sort.”

“My brother loves mysteries. Reads them all the time. Nonstop. Like peanuts, one after another. I can take them or leave them.”

“I have a colleague, a woman in the literature department, she says that the mystery, or, no, I guess, the detective story, that’s it, the detective story, is the most fitting mode for expressing our contemporary situation. What did she call it? Very clever woman. Something about — post-God, post-humanist, post-holocaust, post-literate, numbing void. Something like this—”

“Actually, I was a criminology major.”

“Of course.”

“And that was a hell of a long time ago.”

“Another symptom of our times. We live longer than any humans to walk the planet, yet we start thinking we’re elderly soon after adolescence.”

“I don’t think I’m elderly. Believe me, I know where I stand. I’ve got a good grip on my age. I’m better at thirty, both mentally and physically, than any rookie the department took on this year. I guarantee that.”

“I don’t doubt you, Lenore.”

“But the fact is, I work at it. I mean, there’s an awful lot of effort.”

“Self-evident.”

“I think, you make the effort, your body responds. And the things you can’t change, they’ll follow along. You see one grey hair in my head? Go ahead, look close. Not a one. Now, it’s not like I use any coloring or anything, but my brother, Ike, okay, same exact age, we’re twins, okay, you should see all the grey ones he’s sprouting. Another five years and forget it. That’ll be the whole head. Now, same age, same genes, for Christ sake, and look at the difference.”

“Perhaps it’s stress. Is your brother in a very stressful environment?”

“More stressful than narcotics? Jees, Freddy, c’mon.”

“You have a point.”

“You know where Ike works? You’ll love this. Directly above our heads. I’m not kidding you. He’s a letter carrier. Mailman. Right her at Sapir Street.”

“Such a coincidence.”

“Maybe. I don’t really believe in coincidence.”

“You know, Lenore, for some reason I didn’t think you would. What is it you go for? Fate? The karmic wheel?”

“The thing I hate most with you is I really can’t get a bearing on when you’re making fun of me.”

“I can’t recall one instance since we’ve met when I made fun of you. The mistake you make, Lenore, is to overcomplicate things. You can take me at face value. I’m a very simple man.”

“I’ve heard that said half a dozen times before and it’s never been true.”

“Think about it, Lenore. You see in front of you a man who’s spent nine-tenths of his adult life inside enormous libraries. In terms of theories of language, well, perhaps, maybe, possibly I’m a bit involved. But, I swear to you, in terms of just day-to-day routine, these common dynamics of meeting and speaking with people — Waitress, I’d like a cup of coffee; Bill, good to see you; Ms. Dixon, how’s the new baby? — I’m so ill at ease, I’m constantly second-guessing myself, overpreparing for every minute encounter.”

“God, that’s terrible.”

“I don’t sleep well.”

“Oh, c’mon. You were deep into dreamtime the past two hours.”

“Well, pardon me, but, again, that just shows how comfortable I am in your presence.”

“Now, that’s something I don’t hear very often.”

“You’re out to confuse me, Lenore. One compliment will bring me an insult and an obscenity, the next you let pass.”

“You just don’t get it. We’re a little out of sync here. I don’t think you always pick up on sarcasm or irony or, I don’t know.”

“Yes, this is true. I know what you’re saying. There’s sort of an urban hipness — self-deprecation, detached absurdism, mock horror set next to a bored complacency.”

“Whatever. Now you’re the one thinking too much. I had this nun in grammar school used to try to teach us French. She’d always say, ‘Let the words wash over you.’ I always took that as — don’t think so much, get the flavor, get the rhythm. You think too much, you miss the forest for the trees.”

“You speak French?”

“No way.”

“Too bad. I always enjoy a little practice.”

“Practice?”

“I speak six languages. I’m working toward eight.”

“Ambitious guy. You’ve impressed me.”

“I didn’t mean. I was simply …”

“Take it easy, Freddy. I’m serious. I’m pretty serious. That’s an achievement. I’m not running you down here. Ease up.”

“Both my parents were fluent in a variety of languages. I was somewhat destined for my field.”

“Are you saying there was a lot of pressure? You were pushed—”

“Not at all. I had an extremely happy childhood. A very happy family life.”

“I feel that way too. I look back and just can’t remember any bad times, which is ridiculous. All I can see is my parents in their living room chairs and Ike and me on the floor. All of us staring at Ed Sullivan or something.”

“I’m saying that due to both genetic and environmental influences, I was predisposed to language.”

“Yeah, well, that has its advantages. A lot of people flounder around looking for something to do. Most people fall into something.”

“But I get the impression this is not the case with Lenore. You knew what you wanted, yes?”

“Not from birth, but yeah, I knew pretty much what I wanted. Let’s say I knew exactly what I didn’t want.”

“Tell me.”

Lenore pauses, looks up toward the lines of piping near the ceiling, then says, “This will be strange to you, a word guy like you, but sometimes, a lot of times, I hate putting words to feelings you’ve known for a long time, feelings you’ve known forever. It’s always so inexact. It’s worse than that.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I didn’t want to be controlled. I didn’t want to be dominated. I didn’t want to be restricted, directed. I didn’t want to be dominated. Forget it.”

“No, that’s good. That has to be close.”

“That’s like ten miles from home. And then some.”

“It’s a starting point.”

“It’s like pretending you have a starting point.”

“Not meaning to be rude, Lenore, but this is my specialty.”

“Then you give me the word.”

“It’s your feeling.”

“Bingo.”

“I just can’t help but wonder, though—”

“Think about what you’re about to say here. Ask yourself, Would a normal person take what I’m about to say as insulting?’”

“You’re saying censor myself, think before I speak.”

“I just feel something bad coming.”

“I was simply going to ask if you’d ever considered the fact that many would call police work the most restrictive job of all. The policeman becomes a tightrope walker and all. Dominated by her ostracism from the masses. Controlled by ever-increasing rules and regulations.”

“That’s good, Freddy. That’s what I would want you to believe.”

“This is not the case.”

“Not for me. It’s a state of mind. It involves the imagination. If you’re stupid, forget it. You’re exactly right. Take Zarelli. A genuinely stupid man, okay? He’s a walking definition of constipation. He’s an absolutely controlled man. He’s totally dominated from all directions. Family, job, the general population, Lenore. But Zarelli’s an idiot. He’s the cause of his own condition.”

“You’re saying you can outwit your condition?”

“I think I manage.”

“It’s an idea with promise. Imagination as the key to freedom.”

“Okay, let’s not take it too far. You’ll deplete the whole thing. I’m just wondering, at the dinner table growing up, you’re sitting there with the folks, you ask someone to pass the rice, right? What do you say? What language do you use?”

“Usually, English. English would be the norm.”

“Boring.”

“I’m not saying this is hard-and-fast. This was the norm. You might hear French. You might hear Spanish.”

“Keep going.”

“German, Russian, possibly Yiddish, and, of course, Cantonese.”

“Get out of here. What’s with this Yiddish?”

“My father studied the Kabbalah. Taught himself. A hobby.”

“Get out. Say something in Yiddish.”

“Voorshtlekh mit gehbahkehnch beblekh.”

“Translate.”

“Franks and beans.”

“Great. You’ll never starve.”

Woo takes a deck of cards from his coat pocket and Lenore is about to say, “I don’t play pinochle,” when she sees a skeleton figure pictured on the box and realizes it’s a tarot deck.

“Wouldn’t have picked you for a guy who’d have much use for occult crap,” she says.

“Strictly for amusement purposes,” Woo says, again with the put-on smile that makes him look like an annoyed maître d’ in Chinatown. She watches his hands and is surprised by his skill and comfort with the cards. She wouldn’t have expected it. If she’d been giving Zarelli a rundown on Woo she’d have mentioned an awkwardness, a clumsiness that’s clearly not the case.

“Have you ever used a tarot deck?” he asks.

“High school, I guess,” she says. “Sleeping over friends’ houses.”

“It’s a system like any other. For me, it’s not a question of whether I give credence to its occult history, whether or not I believe in prophecy through the cards. It’s just a system to me, and fascinating within that realm. I don’t have to be as affronted as my colleagues in the hard sciences. I can confront the cards on different terms.”

“So you’re going to tell my fortune?”

“Let’s have a look.”

He hands Lenore the cards and she starts to shuffle. They stare at each other as her hands move, then he nods and she hands the cards back. Woo pulls the top card up and lays it down.

“This is Lenore,” he says. “Interesting. The High Priestess. Learned and practical. A challenge to many men. But she has difficulty forming lasting relationships.”

“Real deep. You couldn’t get hired by a carnival.”

He smiles and turns over several cards, laying them down in a definite pattern. He seems to be concentrating. On the turn of the fifth card, he stops.

“The Moon,” he says in a hushed voice.

“What’s wrong with that?” Lenore asks.

“The Moon is a card of warning. It falls here to show what has occurred in your recent past. It shows danger. The chance of having made an error is great.”

He goes on spreading cards without looking up at her. She wants to laugh, but can’t force it, and instead stares down at Woo’s hands. They hesitate and he looks up at her and says, “I think we should stop with this next one.”

“Which is?”

He flips it over. There’s a picture of an angel blowing a horn, possibly Gabriel, and a naked person emerging from an open coffin.

“It’s the card of Judgment,” Woo says. “This is the future. The future shows a time of judgment will come. A great deal of sorrow. And a calling to atonement for a wrong committed. Something hideous and uncalled-for.”

Lenore’s upper lip begins to quiver and the motion shocks her. It’s a tugging, nervous twitch that she once felt while trying to move a refrigerator, a signal, located randomly in the lip, that the weight of the appliance was much more than her body should be handling. It’s as if a dentist had given her a weird, double injection of both novocaine and some untested muscle stimulant. The tiny nerves in her upper lip first seem to go dead-numb and then tear away, out of control, spastic, and shoot north toward her right ear. She starts to tell herself that she’s having a stroke, a seizure of some kind, but she knows this is a lie. What’s happening to her lip is the result of an overstimulated nervous system, a psyche bullied into a cold, fear-ignoring willfulness, a diet of coffee and screeching music, a year without a normal night’s sleep, and, most of all, the issuance from her gun of two aluminum and lead bullets that tore down a Canal Zone alley at four hundred feet per second and entered the hysterical heart of a redheaded teenage hooker named Vicky.

Woo just stares at her. It’s clear he can see what’s happening to the lip, but he makes no comment, offers no assistance.

Her right hand comes up to her face. She attempts to push the lip physically into place and hold it there, but it’s a useless effort. The lip is locked into its numb then spastic routine and no amount of force from the hand can stop it.

She feels that ceaseless burning pressure behind the eyes, and tears start to come. Immediately, she descends into the breathing pattern of a child half woken from a horrifying nightmare, that choking, irregular, suck-and-heave pattern. Within seconds she’s hysterical. She’s sobbing, choking, keening, moaning, her head slightly flailing around her neck in a jagged circle, a fist pounding into her thigh, her dull fingernails managing to break the skin around her ankle through her socks.

Woo grabs her by the wrists, pulls her hands away from herself. He’s even-voiced, moving moderately, deliberate.

“Lenore,” he says, then he repeats her name, over and over until it takes on the ring and rhythm of a chant.

After a minute he pulls her forward so that her body awkwardly falls, then leans into his. She lets her face, her eyes and the bridge of her nose, find a mount at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and she collects herself up into a more regular, consistent sobbing.

He moves his fingers slowly through her hair, strokes the back of her neck, whispers into her ear, “Lenore, there are people upstairs now. They’ll hear us, Lenore. They’ll know we’re down here.”

She’s surprised at how much this quiets her. They stay in a rigid and uncomfortable position for several minutes. Lenore thinks of an old movie version of The Diary of Anne Frank that she saw as a child. She and Ike watched it together. She thinks of herself now as Anne Frank, holding herself motionless, waiting, perpetually breathless, for Nazis to kick in the attic door.

Finally, she pulls away from Woo, positions herself back on the floor, cross-legged. She begins to rub at her eyes and says, “I’m sorry.”

Woo simply reaches forward, touches then lightly squeezes her leg.

“Vicky,” she says, as if the name were a word without any assigned meaning, as if she’d read it off the wall of a cave.

Woo nods.

A small red light begins to flash on the receiver on the table. Woo stays silent but starts to point rapidly at the table. Lenore stares at him for a second, then jumps up and moves to the table, grabs the headphones, and brings them to her ear. She hears the traditional phone-ringing sound, reaches out, and turns on the reel-to-reel recorder. The two large wheels of tape begin to turn and the needle in the sound meter box jumps up into view, shocked alive. The phone rings a few times, then there’s a click of a pickup and she hears:

VOICE: Yeah, I’m here.

VOICE: Very good. I hope I didn’t wake you.

Lenore’s heart bucks. She’d bet all her memories of her parents that the second voice, with its accent and confidence, belongs to Cortez.

VOICE: I don’t live here. I’ve got a life besides this shit, okay?

CORTEZ: Relax, Mr. Rourke. There’s no reason we can’t be civil with one another.

ROURKE: I’m not so sure about that.

CORTEZ: Were you offended by my package, Mr. Rourke?

ROURKE: What package? What?

CORTEZ: You’ll find, in this business, Mr. Rourke, there’s a line of demarcation, a pivot of sorts—

ROURKE: I hate it when people talk like this. Too many fucking words—

CORTEZ: There’s a certain savvy needed in these endeavors, a definite, innate self-discipline, belief in standards. There’s an instinct that’s needed, Mr. Rourke, and I’m not entirely sure it’s the type of thing that can be learned. In this, it’s like a very useful form of grace.

ROURKE: Jesus. Just talk to me like a human for once.

CORTEZ: For instance, regarding my little package—

ROURKE: I said — didn’t you hear me? — I said, what package?

CORTEZ: —you have to know how serious to take such a thing. You have to innately know from the very moment that you smell the stink, that you see the dismembered remains, the tiny parasites moving in and out of the host, you must be hit with understanding in that instant. You must know that this is very simply a symbol, a literal suggestion, a method of effective and concise communication, that it delivers a very important message in the most dramatic and instantaneous and lasting of ways. It’s a work of art, Mr. Rourke. A thousand words, as the saying goes.

[Whistling noise from Rourke]

CORTEZ: And your reaction must be astute. You must know how to gauge your response. To take the message seriously enough to correct any aberrant behavior, but not so seriously that you rupture the whole relationship.

ROURKE: You can be an infuriating guy. Has this ever been said to you? Has anyone, maybe in passing, made this remark? You get a person’s juices going, you know? You bring me to the edge of saying shit, I don’t want to … like “talk normal, you fucking beaner.” You see, there you go. I said it. It’s out. Can’t suck the words back in. They’re out there and you heard them.

CORTEZ: Racial slurs have very little meaning to me, Mr. Rourke. Meaningless. No meaning. In this instance, it doesn’t even apply. My understanding is that “beaner” refers to a Mexican, or more likely, a Mexican-American. I’m an Argentine. Born in Brussels, to be honest.

ROURKE: Oh, for Christ sake …

CORTEZ: You say you didn’t receive my package. I’m left with a choice as to whether to believe you or not.

ROURKE: What was in the package?

CORTEZ: It’s no longer pertinent. You weren’t sorting yesterday?

ROURKE: Bitch put me on a route. I’m telling you, luck is not with us.

There’s a pause and Lenore starts to wonder if the tap’s been discovered.

CORTEZ: My assistant said you were a bit uncooperative during his visit.

ROURKE: Guy’s a freaking comedian.

CORTEZ: You continue to dispute our claim?

ROURKE: Look, mister, the sample I gave to your man had three units—

CORTEZ: Unfortunately, only two units arrived in the Park. I paid for three sample units.

ROURKE: I sent three. There were three. Think about this, why would I screw you before the main buy? Think about this. I got my neck so far out now. Think about my position for just one freaking second, okay? I’m in midair here. No one wants to be visible. I’ve got a producer whose name I don’t know, won’t show his face. I’ve got a purchaser who wants me to do all my talking to his goddamn funny-guy driver, for Christ sake.

CORTEZ: This is pointless. We’ve all got problems, Mr. Rourke.

ROURKE: I’ve fronted money. I’ve taken some risks here. You know, my own people don’t have some banker friend in the Caribbean they can tap with a WATS line, okay? These people sold their cars, mortgaged houses—

CORTEZ: You saying I should be sympathetic because the broker in this transaction is an ill-equipped amateur. This is what you’re saying. I should show mercy and patience and ignore my instinct because you’re still trying to learn a new trade. I think you’ve made a huge mistake, Mr. Rourke—

ROURKE: All right, listen, forget it, we’ll kick back on the missing unit, even though for all I know your driver Bozo—

CORTEZ: Bouza.

ROURKE: Bouza, Bouza, for all we know he lifted a Q. Okay, forget it. Everything’s still on. Everything’s perfect. It’s all set to go.

CORTEZ: My confidence is shaken, Mr. Rourke …

ROURKE: You’ve got to be kidding me here. You’re pulling my chain here, right? I talked to the Paraclete this morning. This A.M. He’s ready. Everything is packaged. The whole wad. Your final offer is still A-OK. We just need a time and a place.

CORTEZ: You spoke to him?

ROURKE: I swear to you he called this morning. At my place. Like four A.M.

CORTEZ: The Paraclete? Himself?

ROURKE: Yeah … Well, his people. You got people. I’ve got people. Of course, he’s got people. His main guy called. Guy with authority. Speaks for the Paraclete. You got Bozo—

CORTEZ: Bouza.

ROURKE: Right, right.

CORTEZ: He’s agreed that I name the spot?

ROURKE: He could be happier. But he’ll live with it.

CORTEZ: Fine. We’ll go with his original location.

ROURKE: Okay. I know right where you mean.

CORTEZ: Is two A.M. agreeable?

ROURKE: Couldn’t be better. Could not be any better.

CORTEZ: I’ll be deducting the cost of the third sample from the payout. There won’t be a problem with this?

ROURKE: I’ll cover it. It’ll come out of my commission. Off the top. Everyone’ll be happy.

CORTEZ: Then I’ll see you, Mr. Rourke.

ROURKE: Done.

There’s one hang-up click, a pause, then a second click. Lenore waits a beat, then shuts off the recorder and removes the head-phones.

Woo stares at her and she holds the headphones out to him, indicating that he can listen to a replay if he wants. He shrugs, but takes the headphones, puts them on, and spends several seconds adjusting their placement on his head. Lenore rewinds the tape for him and when the counter numbers fall back to zero, she hits the Play button.

Then she steps back and leans up against one of the brick walls and watches Woo’s face closely as he listens. She’s not sure what she’s looking for, but she knows it’s important that she watch. Possibly, some look will kick in at the eyes, or the whole head will shake upon hearing something significant. She knows she’s being ridiculously greedy. She’s gotten every piece of information she needs in one call. She’s gotten Cortez as a buyer. She’s gotten someone named Mr. Rourke as a broker. She’s gotten someone named the Paraclete as the producer. She’s gotten the time of the transaction. But she wants more. This doesn’t surprise her. She knows, no matter what she came away with from the tap, no matter how wise and prepared she emerged from the cellar, she would want more.

Woo’s face gives her nothing. He sits in a rigid schoolboy position, eyes straight ahead, focused on brick and mortar, lips primly together. He’s even got his hands folded on the table in front of him. He’s a blank sheet.

There’s nothing to read.