Bleeding Edge - Pynchon Thomas - Страница 49
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Good luck to him with the cop-show talk, but more important, what’s up with Tallis, how innocent a party can she be in any of this? If she’s in on something, how far in? And is that innocent pure or innocent stupid?
Given the likely level of corruption around here, Gabriel Ice may know all about that li’l lovebirds’ nidito up in East Harlem, maybe even be springing for the rent. What else? Has he also been using Tallis as a mule to move money secretly to Darklinear Solutions? Why so secretly, for goodness’ sakes? Too many questions, no theories. Maxine catches sight of herself in a mirror. Her mouth is not at the moment hanging open, but it might as well be. As Henny Youngman might diagnose it, ESP bypass.
• • •
VYRVA MEANWHILE IS BACK from Las Vegas and Defcon, not as poolside tan as expected, in fact striking Maxine as, what’s the word, reserved? distraught? weird? As if something happened in Vegas that didn’t all stay there, some ominous overflow, like alien DNA hitching a ride unnoticed back here to planet Earth, to perform its mischief in its own good time.
Fiona’s still away at camp, working on a Quake-movie adaptation of The Sound of Music (1965). Fiona and her team are doing the Nazis.
“You must miss her.”
“Of course I miss her,” a little too quick.
Maxine puts her eyebrows into an I-said-something? asymmetry.
“Just as well she’s not here, ’cause right now, it’s starting to get crazy, everybody’s after DeepArcher, the guys got seriously hit on in Vegas, one after another, the NSA, the Mossad, terrorist go-betweens, Microsoft, Apple, start-ups that’ll be gone in a year, old money, new money, you name it.”
Since it’s been on her mind, Maxine names it. “Hashslingrz too, I suppose.”
“Natch. There we are, Justin and me, an innocent tourist couple strolling through Caesars, suddenly here’s Gabriel Ice lurking by a buffet table with an attache case full of lobbying material.”
“Ice was at Defcon?”
“At a Black Hat Briefing, some kind of security conference they hold every year the week before Defcon, a casino hotel full of guys who’d hack a lightbulb, corporate cops, crypto geniuses, sniffers and spoofers, designers, reverse engineers, TV network suits, everybody with something to sell.”
They’re down in Tribeca, a chance encounter at a street corner. “Come on, we’ll grab an ice coffee.”
Vyrva starts to look at her watch, suppresses the gesture. “For sure.”
They find a place and duck into the blessed A/C. Something astrological going on, Jupiter, the money planet, in Pisces, the sign of all things fishy. “See—” Vyrva sighs. “There’s a chance of some money.”
Aww. “There wasn’t before?”
“Honestly, should it matter who gets to own the damned old source code? Not as if it has a conscience, DeepArcher, it’s just there, users can be anybody, no moral questionnaire ‘r netheen? it’s rilly only about the money. Who ends up with how much?”
“Except that in my business,” Maxine gently, “what I see a lot of is innocent people making these deals with the satanic forces, for money way out of scale to anything they’re used to, and there’s a point where it all rolls in on them and they go under, and sometimes they don’t come back up.”
But Vyrva is far away now, the summer street outside, the cumulus piling up over Jersey, the rush hour bearing down, it’s all country miles from wherever she is, rambling some DeepArcher of the unshared interior, her click history vanishing behind her like footprints in the air, like free advice unheard, so Maxine supposes it’ll have to keep, whatever it is, whatever’s finally on the term sheet.
20
With the gracious assistance as always of Detective Nozzoli, Maxine has obtained a license ID photo of Eric Jeffrey Outfield, and this, along with a brief list from Reg of places Eric is most likely to be found, sends her through a steamy August evening out to Queens to a strip club called Joie de Beavre. The place is located along a stretch of frontage road next to the LIE, its neon sign depicting a lewdly humanized beaver wearing a beret and winking its eyes alternately at a wiggling stripper.
“Hi, I was told to see Stu Gotz?”
“In back.”
She was expecting a dressing room out of some movie musical? What she finds is a sort of casually upgraded ladies’ toilet, stall partitions and so forth—some, to be sure, with glittery stars taped on the doors—a litter of pint liquor bottles, roaches both smokable and crawling, used Kleenex, not recognizably a Vincente Minnelli set.
Stu Gotz is sitting in his office, with a cigarette in one hand and a paper cup of something ambiguous in the other. Soon the cigarette will be in the cup. He runs a lengthy O-O. “You want to audition, MILF night is Tuesdays, come back then.”
“Tuesday’s my Tupperware party.”
Drawing a thoughtful leer. “Then again, if you want to give it a shot right now . . .”
“This is more like an investigation I’m on? I need to locate one of your regular customers.”
“Wait, you’re a cop?”
“Not exactly, more like an accountant?”
“Well, don’t let this family-type atmosphere fool you into thinking I know every one of them out there by name. Which I do, but it’s like all the same name? Loser?”
“Wow. Some way to talk about your client base.”
“Laid-off geeks who are more comfortable, hope I don’t offend, jerking off in front of a screen than anything more real-life? Sorry if I don’t get too sympathetic. Please, go on ahead, see for yourself, find a outfit, you’re a what? a 2, maybe? Don’ worry, some’n’ll fit yiz.”
Now, Maxine hasn’t been a size 2 since back when a 2 was really a 2, instead of the current definition, which, for purposes of commerce, can run up to what used to be known as a 16. And beyond. To her credit, she does not blurt thanks for the pleasantry but shrugging begins to look through the contents of a beat-up armoire against the wall, full of somebody’s notion of glamorous lingerie, outfits of subcultural interest—nun, schoolgirl, warrior princess—and spike heels, each pair more, you would have to say, alluring, than the last, not designer footwear exactly, maybe more in the Payless range, the sort of shoes that get podiatrists to daydreaming of Ferraris and personal golf lessons from Tiger Woods.
She settles on platform heels in neon aqua, plus matching sequined thong leotard and thigh-high stockings. Just the ticket, except . . . “Oh, Mr. Gotz?”
“Dry-cleaned and disinfected, my darling, my personal guarantee.” Somehow not reassured, leaving her pantyhose on, she slides into the alluring getup, and after a few contemplative breaths, sashays out through a curtain of faux Swarovski crystals into the massively air-conditioned, high-decibel dimness of the Joie de Beavre. Two or three girls are spaced along the bar, massaging their pussies, staring semi-stoned into the distance. There appears to be a pole free, and Maxine heads for it, since oddly enough she does happen to know a couple of moves, thanks to a gym she works out at now and then, Body and Pole, far below 14th Street, down in cutting-edge country where pole dancing is already part of the exercise vernacular, though back on the Upper West Side it’s still considered by many—well, by Heidi—to be fatally disreputable.
“Pitiful, thwarted Maxi, why not invest in a vibrator, I’m told there are several on the market that might do the trick even for you.”
“Uptight, judgmental Heidi, why not come down some night yourself, give that pole a try, maybe rediscover your inner good-time girl.”
Maxine’s plan is to improvise a MILF-night routine while scanning faces and hoping for a match with Eric’s license photo. According to Reg, owing to various Eric-conspiracy issues—some geek thing—the young computer whiz has shaved off the mustache in his official mug shot, but so far kept the same hair color.
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