Tom was listening closely now. Like his life depended on it. "Wait, take it back to Martz."
"Fine. I think you're in some kind of trouble, Tom, and you haven't told me about it!"
He was silent.
"And, based on my clinical experience, and a brief interaction, the man you are in trouble with cannot be depended upon to be highly rational! Or kind and decent! I don't care how much money he has! He's an animal under stress! He's got high cortisol levels, increased blood pressure, who knows what. He's also clearly an aggressor, given how much wealth he's accumulated. In fact, extreme wealth accumulation is, according to some people, an indication of pathological obsession, personality disorder, inappropriate aggression syndrome, grandiosity, nice things like that."
"What do you suggest, Dr. Wife?"
"I suggest you get yourself out of whatever goddamn mess you are in! Come on, Tom! What the hell else do you want me to say?"
He was deciding to tell her, she could see. "Tom? What is it? You can't tell me?"
He made a little biting motion. "It's a business thing."
"You won't tell me? You're actually not going to tell me?"
"It's-I just don't want to go into it, okay?"
He looked at her, plaintively, she thought, so far buried in the structures and agendas of Good Pharma that he was more or less inextricable from it. She turned off the light, settled into bed, her mind wide awake now, even after a long day of work. Tom, she knew, was the company, the company was him. He was not the Tom Reilly she'd married. That man had disappeared at least ten years ago. That man used to be good in bed, be fun to spend time with. God help her for even having the thought, but the plain fact was that Tom had become, what, a human information processor inside the information structure that was the company. Good Pharma manufactured pills and other medical goods, but those were the endpoint results. The company didn't even make the pills, actually. They were jobbed out to for-hire pharmaceutical factories, usually in Puerto Rico or India, increasingly with proprietary manufacturing contracts. The company was a huge matrix of human information processors both running and being run by the information technology. The levels of abstraction, from the chemical composition of the pills themselves, to the research protocols, up through the organization of each division, to the management of the company as a whole, to its interaction with the health-care market on the one hand, governmental regulation on the second, and the financial markets on the third, required people like Tom, supersmart human processors who could carry around enormous levels of abstraction, segue among them and choose the proper inputs of information to each and derive the correct output information from each. You had to have a highly compartmentalized mind yet the ability to reach from one compartment to another for a piece of information that was relevant. Tom was like that and had become more so in the years she'd known him, the overall functioning of his brain becoming, arguably, more specialized in the exact manner the company required. Classic nature-nurture feedback. Environment switching on and off genes in real time, which researchers were starting to understand was possible. Her proof? Highly subjective, admittedly. But she was his wife, after all. He'd lost his playfulness. His sense of humor was far less subtle, more brutal and dark. He read faster; she could see it in the morning with the newspaper. Certain of his mental functions were more highly de veloped. He retained numbers well, perhaps because they had deeper significance. He could articulate better in social settings. He was, in fact, very good with the social aspect of the job, glad-handing prospective investors, showing them a good time, negotiating when the time came. She'd heard him on the phone from home, listened to his voice, and been impressed with the instant affability, the somber tones of judgment-whatever the situation demanded. But these were not authentic responses, she'd come to see. They were mannered-no, that was not the right word-they were algorithmic. Most of the people Tom dealt with were coming to him from a position he understood. He knew more or less what they wanted and why they were talking to him. Under these circumstances, an algorithm of interaction was called for. It was conversation, yes, but not exactly spontaneous human contact filled with discovery and intimacy. Ann herself understood this, for it was how she dealt with patients. You tell someone she has high blood pressure a few hundred times, you start to do it the same way. So she understood that. But in Tom's case most of the conversation involved abstractions that were answered with abstractions. The people on the other end of the conversation were working within an algorithm, too. This meant that Tom had very few real conversations. He spoke to dozens of people a day but always within his corporate persona and within the appropriate algorithm. He was trapped. The man he'd been once was either buried under all of this behavior or even, perhaps, gone. Irrecoverably. We change in only one direction. We don't ever change back. She still loved Tom, she supposed, at least out of a kind of habit; her mind was trapped within its own algorithms, too, of course.
But in this overall perception about her husband, who was now brushing his teeth in their bathroom, came another one. Tom had made an error. A big human error. He had misjudged a human being. Maybe it was Martz, maybe it was someone else. The misjudgment was a serious one, full of huge personal and professional risk. This led her to another thought.
Tom was stalling because he didn't have an algorithm.
He'd never seen the problem before.
He didn't know what to do.
23
Big wad in the pocket. Victor fingered the flash roll of hundreds as he and Ears walked into the midtown place on Broadway, his favorite, better than the ones in Queens, Brooklyn, Jersey, Long Island, all skanky compared to the Manhattan clubs, which had to cater to an international crowd with bigger money. He nodded at the bouncers, wide men in suits with their hands crossed in front of them, feet spread, as they inspected every patron and made sure he felt inspected. They didn't scare Vic. He'd been a bouncer in a club when he was younger. Back in the eighties. Most of these guys were fucking one of the girls, maybe trading them some speed or crystal meth. Ears led the way, the music booming around them. In front was the live stage, where three girls were on the poles. The place had about a hundred tables, most of them full, and perhaps seventy-five girls either sitting next to customers, dancing for them, or walking around looking for the next job. Most were dressed in only a thong bottom and heels. Every one was beautiful, of course, this being New York City, girls from all over the world, black, white, Latino, Asian, tall, short, stacked, skinny, even a few fleshy ones for the guys who liked that.
He and Ears sat down. The waitress came over. She wasn't bad looking herself but nothing like the dancers.
"What you'll have?"
"Vodka on the rocks," said Ears.
"Make it two."
"So, listen, Vic, I had a little talk this afternoon," said Ears. "About you and your gas station problem. The guys, they understand, suggest, you know, we do a sit-down, talk it out."
Victor nodded. "Good, good, I appreciate that," he said. He didn't believe any of it. Best case, Ears had talked to nobody. Worst case, they knew there was a problem now and wanted to get Vic away somewhere, get rid of him. What was he, stupid? No. He was ahead of them, had a plan. And now he saw her, the one he needed, the kind Ears liked, and beckoned her over, a tiny blonde with big eyes and even bigger chest. Great nipples, too-small and firm, gumdrops. She looked about nineteen, under the makeup. She smiled at him, but he pointed at Ears. The timing was crucial here. She swung her hips as she advanced.
"Hi, fellas." She put her hand on Victor's neck, began a casual massage like she was his regular girlfriend and had done it a hundred times. He could smell her perfume.
Victor pulled out his roll, let her see it, let her think he was going to be stupid with it. "Miss," he said, "I'm buying my friend here a couple of dances." He pulled off two Benjamins and handed them to her. "Three dances, just to warm up the night."
"Well, that's a very nice thing to do for your friend."
T
he girl flipped back her blonde hair, sort of like a mental reset button, and took Ears by the hand and led him into the back, where the girls preferred to dance, with the guy sitting up against the wall. That way they could get down and dirty, work the guy for the big bills, get him into one of the private rooms and flip a couple of $900 bottles of champagne.
Victor watched. A good start, he thought. He knew Ears had the $20,000 in his pocket and, much as it pained Vic, he was going to have to let that go. Give it to the universe. A little life insurance policy. He saw the waitress bringing over the two vodkas on the rocks. "Hey, great. Thanks, babe." He gave her a twenty for her trouble. He sipped his drink, but not too much, and went over the plan. In a place like this there were security cameras all over, at least a dozen. Anything he did right there at the table on the dance floor was captured on tape. But he had that figured, too. Yessir. We're talking about the Big Vic here, folks, not some grab-nuts jerk from nowhere. He stood up with his drink, eased his way to the men's room, the bouncers not very interested. The men's room attendant, a tiny Indian man in a tuxedo so cheap it looked sewn out of rubber, smiled and arranged his display of candies, gum, breath mints, and the like. Victor went to the urinal. The rule was you didn't watch guys take a piss. Especially in a strip club. And it was the one place that the security cameras wouldn't be looking at, because if it ever came out that there was a camera looking at hundreds of guys unzipping their dicks, some big corporate guys, some famous sports stars, TV people, whatever, then people would get whacked, simple as that. As they should. As for the stalls, he assumed the cameras looked in there, too, in case of guys fucking each other, shooting up, drug deals, whatever.
But inside the urinals? That was good. He set his drink on top of the urinal and unzipped with his left hand. He slipped his right hand into his pants pocket and found the four-ounce glass vial he'd put there earlier. The mixture was perfect, he was sure, the recipe handed down and improved by certain practitioners of the art over the last twenty, thirty years. Ten of Violet's chloral hydrates, six Tylenol PM, two Xanax, all mixed with dimethylformamide, carbolic acid jelly, and methyl ethyl ketone. One ounce of this hot shot was enough to kill a horse. Dissolved in alcohol, virtually odorless. The Tylenol PM kept the pain down and the chloral hydrate knocked the guy out before he could tell anyone what he was feeling.
Concentrating on not spilling the vial, not spilling even the tiniest drop, Vic thumbed up the glass stopper. The Indian guy had his back turned, as was the protocol. Vic palmed the vial over the drink, emptying its contents into the glass, and set the drink on the top of the urinal. Now the glass looked like it had a full drink. He stoppered the vial and dropped it back into his pocket. Then he zipped and flushed, the sound of which triggered the Indian attendant to turn on the water in the basin.
"You got a mint?" Vic said to the attendant, who was now holding out a towel.
"Yezzuh."
Victor washed his hands, took the towel, dried, grabbed a mint, and said, "Oh, wait," and retrieved the glass from the top of the urinal. He handed the man a five.
Back on the floor he returned to the table, where Ears's drink stood, and set his own down right next to it. He saw Ears finishing up with the girl. She was leaning into him, her breasts an inch from his nose. A little chitchat would follow, then Ears would return. Victor picked up Ears's drink, slid his own over a few inches, and casually drank a good half of Ear's drink in one long slow gulp and put the glass close to him, making it look like he'd been steadily working through his drink. Vic's original drink, now laced with the contents from the glass vial, appeared to be Ears's untouched drink. Vic pulled out his cell phone, turned it on, listened to nothing, nodded a few times, then clapped it shut just as Ears and the girl arrived.
"What's up?" Ears said.
"Violet was looking out across her window, saw somebody in the yard," said Victor. "Guy inside the gate."
Ears sat down, glanced hungrily at the girl.
"You were born paranoid."
"Gotta check it out. Don't want the cops coming around, either. Fucking sucks."
Ears nodded. He'd already hinted to the girl how rich he was, Victor knew, not that the girls here didn't start trying to figure that out right away. Victor rose, tapped his fist to Ears's. "I know you think I'm crazy."
"I do, yes. Came out of the womb freakin' paranoid."
"We'll do that money thing later-"
"Got it right here, man," said Ears, tapping his breast pocket.
"Ahh, you got a good thing going here with this nice young lady," Vic said magnanimously. "No need to do business here. We'll do it tomorrow, what do you say?"
"Whatever you want, Vic. You better hope I don't spend it tonight. Could end up in Atlantic City, who knows what could happen."
"But I'm not forgetting my side of the deal." Vic turned to the girl. "He's a good man," he told her. "Guy's an old pal of mine, okay?" He tossed off the rest of what had originally been Ears's drink, drained it, ice and all. Then he pulled out his roll of hundreds, gave her ten. "So, listen, I'm buying him a really nice evening, okay?"
"Oh, wow," she murmured.
"Yo, Vic, this is above and beyond the call of duty," Ears said excitedly, hitting what he thought was his own drink hard.
"Not a problem." He touched knuckles with Ears and left.
At the door he beckoned one of the bouncers, who lurched over.
"I came in with my friend," said Victor, pulling out a hundred-dollar bill. "But now I got to go."
He handed the bill to the man, who accepted it as if it was his due even as he inspected its authenticity. "What's the problem?"
"My friend is taking that-he drinks too much, liver is bad, and he's taking that medicine that makes you throw up if you drink too much alcohol, makes you sick very fast."
"He's gonna get sick?"
"Maybe, maybe not," said Victor. "But if he does, I want you to drag him out of here and put him in a cab and send him downtown to the SoHo Grand Hotel."
"For a hundred?"
"No. That was just to have the conversation." Victor smiled and pulled out another hundred and slipped it to the man, who snapped it away. "What hotel?"
"SoHo Grand. Very cool hotel, man. Big time there."
"That's right."
"Cool."
Outside, Victor turned the corner, pulled the vial from his pocket and flipped it into the street, where it popped. The pieces would be crushed by thousands of cars into powder by the next morning. He'd seen Ears drink at least an ounce of his drink, which meant half an ounce of the mixture. All he needed to do was take one more good pull, and then he'd have an ounce in his system. The methyl ethyl ke-tone went straight into the bloodstream. The sauce killed you about three different ways. Maybe he should have popped Richie that way. But he hadn't because there would have been a chance that Sharon would screw it up and kill herself instead of Richie. Though it would have saved Vic a lot of trouble, the cleanup job, moving Richie's body. But no, that had been a piece of luck, he told himself, because it was while he was cleaning up that he discovered that someone had been there. Gotten the tip-off from the smell of Clorox and the light off in the bedroom. He kept walking. The night felt good, and he was going to go sit at the bar of the Plaza Hotel, talk to the bartender, and any lonely woman who might be there, be seen on about five different security cameras, proving his whereabouts if anyone wanted to know later, and, most important, think of a way to trap the guy who was hunting him.
When I get that guy, Vic thought, I'm done.
Inside the strip club, Ears took another big slug from his drink, finished it. He felt better than he had in a long time, relaxed, glad Victor and his freakin' paranoia were gone. Not that Vic was wrong to be paranoid, because the guys with the big shoes had noticed how strangely he'd been acting and were definitely not happy about it. They'd already decided to string him along on the gas station thing then make a move when he'd calmed down. Pop him when he wasn't expecting it. That way James Ton
elli could move in on the pharmaceutical company exec, Tom somebody, who had requested the hit on the cleaning company. That guy was going to pay big for silence about the Mexican girls. Big. They'd stumbled onto a gold mine! No way were the big shoes going to let Vic screw this up, either. You could put a fork into Vic, because he was done.
Meanwhile, Ears planned to have some fun. He liked this girl and her hard little nipples and he was definitely going to get her into one of the private lounges and get Victor's money's worth out of her.
"Having a great time here," Ears said, nodding in self-confirmation. "And you are a hell of a classy babe."
"We could go in the back to the Champagne Lounge," suggested the girl, who had introduced herself as Barbi, a fake name of course, making sure her hand rested on his thigh, her pink fingernail scratching through the fabric atop his penis. "Get a bottle, and we can play show-and-tell."
"Show-and-tell?" said Ears.
"Yes," the girl said flirtatiously. "I show, and you tell me how good I look."
"Hey, hey, that does sound-"
Ears was looking at her strangely, misunderstandingly.
"You okay, mister?"
"Yeah, yeah, I just got this-" He fell to the floor on one knee, gurgling. His glass toppled to the carpeting. Barbi realized he was no longer good for any money, so she stood up and turned on her heel, retreating to the ladies' room. This was what the girls tipped the bouncers for, right? To deal with the pass-outs?
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