Disaster Inc

by Caimh McDonnell

  When they’d reached Hunts Point Avenue station, they’d been met by a fresh-faced, cheery guy who had introduced himself as Diller. Amy had kept quiet and Bunny had introduced her as “a friend”. They’d walked. Diller had offered her his umbrella, but she was so soaked through by now, she doubted she’d even notice a difference. Amy had never been to Hunts Point, but she knew it by reputation and had read a special report on the place last year. Half of its residents lived below the poverty line. Drugs and prostitution were rampant. It mostly got talked about at election time, when politicians debated who was to blame for it. But none of this came across from Diller, who was acting as an unasked-for tour guide. He proudly pointed out that it was home to one of the world’s largest food distribution centres. Even as he did so, they crossed back and forth across the street in various locations, following the unspoken rule of avoiding certain spots where figures huddled in doorways or under awnings. In other places they passed women, and a few men, getting what cover they could and then walking out into the rain when cars passed by.

  The rain rat-a-tatted against plywood on several houses where windows had once been. Graffiti tagged the walls and only every third streetlight worked. Still, Diller chatted on happily, like he was showing them around a stately home. They reached a row of tenement houses where Diller excused himself and disappeared down an alleyway. Bunny and Amy stood there for a couple of minutes in silence, neither expressing what they were both thinking: I really hope he’s coming back.

  Bunny stood tense beside her, feeling eyes watching them from the shadows. At the far end of the street, there was a fire in a barrel and several figures standing around it. Amy watched as two of the figures broke off from the group and started making their way towards them. Amy could have sworn that Bunny had been looking in the other direction the whole time, and yet he said, “Them lads come near us, just let me do the talking. Alright?”

  Amy nodded.

  She looked away and counted the time it’d take the men she wasn’t looking at to reach them. She was about to glance again when there was a thunking noise from inside one of the tenement houses. Then a section of the wood over one of the ground-floor windows slid up and Diller stuck his head out, beaming cheerfully.

  “C’mon in, folks.”

  As they walked towards the window, Diller hopped out and pulled over a breeze block to be used as a step up. From the corner of her eye, Amy saw the figures move by, reminding her of the sharks she’d once seen in the New York Aquarium, gliding silently through the waters.

  She climbed through the window and into a room stinking of damp, mould and God knows what else. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling, swaying backwards and forwards, causing the shadows to leap and lurch. Bunny followed her in, with Diller behind him. Diller must’ve caught her facial expression. “Don’t worry, this ain’t it. Nobody uses this room – leaks too bad.”

  He pointed at the sagging ceiling. Amy smiled and nodded, feeling rude and ungrateful.

  Diller walked to the corner and untied a rope, which caused a sheet of metal to descend over the hole. “My little invention. I rigged it up as a security measure.”

  Bunny nodded. “That’s very clever.”

  Diller led them out into the hall.

  “Jackson, that you?” The voice came from upstairs.

  Diller shouted back up, “It’s alright, Mrs James, it’s only me. I got some company.”

  “Ohhh,” said the voice, sounding much happier now. “Finally got yourself a lady friend, huh? You get goin’ now!”

  Diller blushed and glanced back at them. “That’s Mrs James; she lives upstairs. Nice lady.”

  Amy and Bunny nodded, both diplomatically ignoring that Mrs James was now belting out the Marvin Gaye classic “Sexual Healing”. She was getting the words wrong but singing it with gusto nonetheless.

  “The kitchen is through there,” said Diller, nodding at a closed door in front of him. Then he pushed open a door to the back room of the house.

  Amy walked in and then stopped. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but it hadn’t been this. The room was warmly lit from several mismatched lamps dotted around and every last inch of wall was covered with drawings of flowers, birds and animals of all manner and description. It was as overwhelming as it was unexpected. A cornucopia of colour surrounded them.

  “Jesus,” said Bunny. “This is incredible.”

  Diller blushed. “My mom loves nature and animals and stuff so I, y’know, tried to make it special for her.”

  Amy glanced at the two far corners, noticing the mattress that sat in each. “Where is she?”

  “Oh, erm… She’s not going to be here for a while.”

  Amy nodded and avoided further questions.

  “Did you do all this, Diller?” asked Bunny.

  He nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. I, erm, I used to go up to the Bronx Zoo and one of the custodial staff would sneak me in. I’d sketch the animals and then come home and… y’know.” He shrugged. “It’s something to do.”

  “Ye got talent.”

  Diller shrugged again, clearly uncomfortable with praise.

  Once Amy had taken in the four walls of smiling animals and bountiful nature, she was able to process the rest of the room. There wasn’t much else. The mattresses, complete with sleeping bags, were positioned in each corner. Paperback books with cracked spines lined two of the walls, piled ten or so high all around, so as not to block the view of the Bronx Zoo collage. There was a table of sorts, coffee-table sized, although it was really a piece of wood, painted with yet more smiling animal faces, and balanced on four stacks of paperbacks for legs. On it sat a laptop. A thick cable ran in from a hole high up in the wall, the plugs that ran from it held together with a worrying amount of electrical tape.

  “Can I ask,” said Bunny, looking awkward. “When you said you couldn’t make your rent…?”

  “Well,” said Diller, “not rent as such. Gotta pay to be left alone. Plus, I get to piggyback off the electricity the Roberts next door got. We got Wi-Fi too. Wi-Fi!”

  Bunny nodded. “Right. That’s great, yeah.”

  “So,” Diller said, pointing at the two mattresses, “the two of you can sleep here and I’ll go upstairs and sleep on the landing.”

  “Diller,” said Bunny, “this is really good of you.”

  Diller shook his head emphatically. “No, it isn’t. Least I could do after my… y’know. And sorry again about that.”

  It was Bunny’s turn to shake his head. “Listen, if you’re helping, you deserve to know what you’re getting into.” He nodded at Amy, who took down her hood. “This lady is called Amy Daniels. She’s currently wanted for murder.”

  “For a murder,” interrupted Amy, “that I very definitely did not commit.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Bunny. “But I’ve got to be honest with you, Diller, there’s a lot of police after us – and people who are a whole lot worse. She’s the main story on the news so, y’know, you need to be aware of the risk you’re taking.”

  Diller shrugged and smiled. “Hey, if you didn’t do it, you didn’t do it. And I owe Bunny a big favour, so…”

  “It might be dangerous, though. Us being here,” said Bunny. “We’ll stay tonight and then we’ll try and figure out our next move.”

  “Well,” said Diller, “I don’t know if you noticed the neighbourhood I live in. I mean, I took you here by the nice route, but still. Point is, it wasn’t exactly that safe to begin with – the paper called us New York’s war zone last year.”

  “OK,” said Bunny. “I just didn’t want to leave you in the dark. Didn’t seem fair.”

  “And I appreciate it. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news though, but you ain’t the big story on the news no more.”

  “Oh,” said Amy, “that’s a relief.”

  “Yeah,” said Diller. He pointed to the laptop. “I was watching just before I came to fetch you. There’s been another terrorist attack.”

  “On New York?” as
ked Bunny.

  Diller nodded. “Well, on the outskirts. Some big data warehouse or something. I didn’t really get it, but apparently it’s a big deal. Some massive building, blown to smithereens with the poor janitors inside. They said the company’s called Millennium something or other.”

  Bunny and Amy looked at each other.

  “Millennium Falcon,” they said together.

  Diller looked back and forth between the two of them. “Is everything OK?”

  Bunny puffed out his cheeks. “Yeah. That sound you just heard was the other shoe dropping – hard.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Douglas Randall sat in the chair in his office and looked up at the ceiling. He was supposed to be on air in seventy-four minutes and he really needed to clear his head. He was wishing he’d actually paid attention in those meditation classes his wife had made him go to. Instead, he just kept running it around in his head, again and again and again. Maybe it was just a big coincidence. The piece of paper Amy Daniels had handed him had said “Millennium Falcon” on it, but how was he to know that had anything to do with Millennium Faction Data? After all, lots and lots of things were called Millennium. He was pretty sure some British pop star had a song called that. And there was a TV show, wasn’t there? At the turn of the century, lots of things had been called that. It had been quite the buzzword. No, his mind was made up: there were a thousand very good reasons why this was just a big coincidence.

  Then the phone rang. “Hi, Douglas, I’ve got a Miss Bates on the phone. She says you asked her to give you a call about some investments.”

  “I don’t think— Oh, wait…” It had taken him a moment to realise. They’d only used that name a couple of times, when they’d been doing certain scenarios. “Sorry, yes, I think I know her. Put her through.”

  “Douglas,” said the woman he’d feared it would be.

  “Hi, Miss Bates. OK, I’ve got it from here, Sally.”

  He waited until he heard the click. He had long had the suspicion that Sally listened into his calls, the nosy old busybody.

  Amy sounded tense on the phone. “Well, Douglas?”

  “Well what?”

  “Oh, come on. Millennium Faction Data – that’s got to be it. The thing Lanark Lane Investments are into.”

  Douglas watched as Kristy walked by his office, all bright smiles and false warmth. She waved at him happily. She’d brought cakes in that morning for one of the camera guy’s birthdays. What a devious bitch. Douglas gave her a cheery wave back and pulled the blinds down.

  “Goddamn it, Amy, do you have any idea how many things are called Millennium something or other? I just Googled it – thirty-eight and a half million.”

  “Yes, and how many of them got blown to smithereens last night?”

  “It’s just…”

  “Have you looked into it? See if Lanark Lane Investments has anything to gain from what happened. Jesus, Douglas!”

  Douglas sat on the edge of his desk and looked at the pictures on the wall opposite. The one of George Foreman pretending to punch him was a real favourite. He took a deep breath and then spoke with a calmness he didn’t feel. “Look, Amy, you’ve been through a lot. Maybe you should just go to the police and explain—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Douglas, people are trying to kill me and you can’t be bothered to investigate it? That’s all I’m asking. You’re supposed to be a journalist.”

  Douglas worked the stress ball furiously in his left hand. “No, I’m not. I’m a newsman. I read the goddamn news – that’s it! I can’t be who you want me to be. Alright? I’m sorry.”

  “No, Douglas, it’s not alright. You’re all I’ve got, and I need you to do your fucking job!”

  There was a knock on Douglas’s office door.

  “Hold on a sec.” He put his hand over the receiver. “Who is it?”

  “Hey, buddy, it’s Tony. You asked to see me.”

  “Sure, c’mon in.” Douglas spoke into the receiver again as Tony Fracero entered his office. “OK, honey, I gotta go. Go with whatever colour you prefer. Bye.”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  Douglas hung up the phone and gave Tony the patented Randall smile. “Tony, my paesano, how you doing?”

  “Great, I—”

  Douglas pointed at the visitor’s chair and moved around to sit behind his desk. “The missus is redecorating again.” Eye roll. “Like I care about the colours. I couldn’t tell you what they are now.” He gave a hearty fake laugh; Tony followed suit. He was almost exactly the same age as Douglas, although his hairline had retreated and waistline advanced more than Douglas’s. That was OK for him. As the station’s security correspondent, actually knowing things made the look less crucial.

  “Doug,” said Tony, “you know I’d love to catch up, but this bombing at the Millennium data centre has got us all running around like headless chickens, so…” Tony looked at the door, an unsubtle manoeuvre which Douglas studiously ignored.

  “Yeah, I know. Just crazy. I mean, terrorism these days, Jesus! Right?”

  Tony nodded. “Insane.”

  “So,” said Douglas, “fill me in a little. I feel like I’m not really getting this.”

  “I’d love to, but…”

  “C’mon. For old times’ sake.”

  A look passed between the two men. What wasn’t being mentioned was Tony’s blissfully happy home life with Martha and the three kids. One of the main reasons said home life was so blissful was that when Tony had got an intern pregnant, Uncle Douglas had been her shoulder to cry on. He’d got her a well-paid job in a friend’s ad agency and the number of a doctor. Tony owed Douglas.

  “OK, well you know the general stuff already. The company was formed back in 2002, Millennium Solutions having made a ton of money from the Y2K nonsense and then taking over Faction Data, who were a big disaster recovery firm. They really hit the big time a few years ago when they moved into comprehensive storage solutions, hence the enormous data centres, one of which went boom last night. Homeland has their suspect, but they’re not officially releasing the name yet. What we officially know is that at 11:14pm last night, a bomb went off at the Millennium Faction Data building out in Queens, pretty much taking it out and killing a security guard, three technicians and two janitors in the process, plus several more injuries. It would’ve been a lot more, except it was at their quietest time. Homeland’s suspect is believed to be one of the dead too.”

  “Thank God. I mean, that there weren’t more people there. What is the place though?”

  “Well,” said Tony, “it’s basically an enormous data storage facility. No company stores their own data anymore; they rent space in enormous data farms like this one. Billions of gigabytes all securely stored and then instantly backed up to two different locations – y’know, for redundancy. A large chunk of the Fortune 500 have their data there.”

  “Right. It’s not your normal ISIS target, is it?”

  Tony shook his head. “Well, no, but what we’re hearing is that the suspect, a member of staff, left a detailed online journal full of anti-American hate. And you’ve got to remember, these guys don’t have what you’d call a conventional hierarchy. The suspect had the opportunity through what he did for a living and he took advantage. Initially, what we couldn’t figure out was the why – I mean, what he’d thought it would accomplish, but we just got a tip on that.” Tony leaned forward and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “So, we don’t have this confirmed yet, and Millennium have flat-out denied it, but we’re hearing that the redundancy may’ve been messed with. We’re hearing that they might have lost data.”

  “Oh,” said Douglas, frankly unimpressed. “That’ll be a big hassle, I guess.”

  “Hassle?” said Tony, sounding incredulous. “Dougie, you ain’t getting this. Today’s economy doesn’t run on oil or steel or even money. It runs on data. This is Wall Street. This is online retailers. This is credit card companies. All of them might have lost a couple
of days of data. If this is real, this is a fucking digital Pearl Harbor. Companies will fold; confidence will take a serious hit. Right now, the authorities are talking about loss of life and saying the data situation is fine. But if the whispers are even a little bit true, you’re going to have companies having to come out tonight and tell the world that they’ve just taken enormous hits to their businesses. It’s going to be chaos. Wall Street will be running red with blood in the morning. Your 401(k) is going to take a pounding, I’m afraid.”

  “Right,” said Douglas. “I see. So, if you knew about this beforehand, before it was public knowledge, you could make a killing?”

  Tony turned white. “Shit, Doug. Don’t go calling your broker. That’s insider dealing, we’ll both be—”

  “No, no, nothing like that.” Douglas leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling again. He stayed that way for nearly a full minute.

  “Erm, Dougie?”

  Douglas leaned forward again and looked Tony in the eye. “Tony, I need you to trust me. What I’m about to say goes no further than this room. OK?”

  “Sure.”

  “I had a… let’s call it a source, come to me yesterday and give me a garbled tip. It made no sense at the time but…”

  “OK,” said Tony, looking really unsure as to where this was heading.

  “It was, like, a snippet of overheard conversation. She – I mean, they, the source – wrote it down. I think it’s just a coincidence, but…” Douglas took a folded piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket and held it up between two fingers. “This is probably bullshit and we’ll be laughing about it tomorrow, but… what is the name of the suspected bomber?”

  Tony stared at the folded piece of paper in Douglas’s hand for a long moment.