“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.”
“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.”
Bleeding Edge Page 45