David looked at Phyllis, she nodded gesturing David forward.
David’s gaze stayed on Murray, “You mean the head shot hit by Giovanetti? The first shot missed and clipped the ear. The mark tried to run and he got shot in his shoulder. Nineteen shots later, he was down, but not dead. They ran out of bullets. They had to crack open his skull to kill him. The gun is being kept in Tortelli’s house. That I know about. Do you want me to tell you about Roberto’s stomach wound?”
Murray’s mouth opened, he started to reach for something in his waistband. Murray heard a load growl by his ear.
“I wouldn’t Mr. Lacoursi. I can tell my dog to crush your hand or your windpipe. We’re all adults here. Let’s talk. Like civilized people.” David’s voice was steel; his hands were unmoved at his side. David held his gaze locked into Phyllis’ father’s eye.
“Are you a Fed or a cop?”
“Look at me Mr. Lacoursi, do I look like a cop? I’m 17. And why would the cops give a shit about you anymore? You’ve told them everything you ever knew already. I’m the man your daughter is in love with. The man who loves your daughter.”
“You family?”
David laughed, “Not the mob. Let’s get back to our conversation. Like I said, you have secrets. I have secrets. I think we can come to some amicable relationship. If you want to keep your little secrets, that’s fine with me. If you want to walk out of here right now, Debra will stay here with me and you will be out. We’ll never bother you again. If you want to stay, but not say anything more, then you can be Mr. Lacoursi and I can be Mr. Smith. We can write and call. You want more, well maybe my secrets are such that they make yours sound like little girl-talk. Yes, I know about the two hit men after you. They gave up over three years ago. Like little girl-talk. You hear my problems and want out, I trust you – Debra says I should. You want in all the way, you’re Debra’s father. I have to respect you. You’re family. If you want to be Family.”
Phyllis looked at her father and nodded. She squeezed David’s hand.
“Kid, I gotta say this for you. You got cojones, real cojones. If I had half the balls you have at your age, I’d be leading the entire east coast family by now. Okay, I’m in.”
“As a matter of trust, what is your current name?”
Murray looked at his daughter, who gestured him to proceed.
“It’s Michael, Michael …”
David cut him off, “Gesell”. David smiled. “No, she never told me, I never eavesdropped on any conversation. I figured it out. She had zero input.”
“You’re a real Bullshit artist. You’re a liar.”
David leaned forward with a rictus grin, “Murray, if we’re to work with one another, let me tell you once and only once. I never lie. Never. If I say it will rain in 8 minutes, it will rain in 8 minutes, not 7, not 9, but 8. Got it. I never lie.”
Phyllis looked at her dad. “Papa, David has a few character deficiencies, this is one of them; he doesn’t lie. It really makes it hard for me.” She sighed.
Murray almost growled, “Okay. Temporarily, mind you, I believe you when you said that Phyllis had nothing to do with you knowing my name.”
“Stop. Let’s wait a few minutes, we have guests.” David moved his eyes to indicate a corner of the area behind him. “He’s a guy walking his dog, but wait for him to leave.”
Twenty seconds later a very heavy, middle-aged man walked into the clearing with a golden retriever. A few minutes later, he left.
Murray looked at David, “How did you know?”
David smiled, “The dog.” Hilda popped out of the bushes near where the dog-walker had exited, and then disappeared from sight.
Murray said, “That means your protection is gone?” He opened his jacket an inch.
“Murray, you pull that shit one, and I mean, one more time, I walk. Our discussion here is over, and one of us might get hurt. That would be a lose-lose scenario. Capiche?”
David turned to Phyllis, “I thought you said your father was a reasonable man. I’m ready to walk on this two-bit loser.”
Phyllis said in a cold voice, “Papa, you either treat David with respect or we leave. You can change your name again and move to Alaska. If you can’t believe him or me, then the years ruined you beyond recognition.”
“Okay, okay, I apologize, Mr. Smith. I’m not used to dealing with a kid, I mean a man, like you.” Murray turned to Phyllis. “I apologize Deb, this won’t happen again.”
David leaned back. “My name is not Smith, the name I use at college, it’s actually Klein. David Klein. No, I’m not on the lam, and my family has never been in trouble, nor am I a wise-guy. I was trying to keep myself anonymous, that’s all. Why? Because I know so much. Now, for a small part of my secret, a VERY small part. I would like you to imagine something. Think of all the electrical bills on the east coast. Think of all the heating bills on the east coast and all the machines in all the factories. Let’s say that I was able to cut energy costs by a factor of ten, after the state pays me for all capital expenses. Power cheaper by a factor of ten! Now let us say that except for security, bookkeeping, and one engineer per plant, all that money would be pure profit. The entire east coast, then the rest of the US and finally the world. Can you imagine that?”
“You have a good imagination kid.”
“Murray, you are beginning to dishonor me again. I’ll let it slide this time. But it is the last time. Tomorrow, I recommend you go to any library and look up Larchmont New York and C H Electricity on the Web or the newspapers. You’ll see a dozen articles. I’m at the ground floor of that dream right now. The people, they will love me, the politicians they will love me. Murray, can you tell me who will not love me?”
Murray laughed, “That’s a no-brainer, the energy companies: oil, gas, coal.”
“Bingo. Now what do you imagine that they will do about it.”
Murray turned serious. “Knock you off.”
David continued looking serious, “Bingo. And who else?” David slowly turned to face Phyllis.
Murray slowly realized where the conversation was going to, “Everyone who knows your secret.” He turned white.
Phyllis moved closer to David.
David looked into Murray’s eyes. “Now you see my problem. I, we, need protection.”
Murray started to look scared, “Whatcha telling me about all this for? I’m on the run from the mob myself. A contract is on my head. I’m already a dead man.”
David smiled, “What if ‘the Hammer’ was cut into the biggest deal of his life. Totally legit. I’ll let you do the math, think of his cut as 0.1% of my take from the energy costs of the east coast. Pure profit for protection. Now if Matt thinks that he would be better having a grudge against you, than the hundreds of millions in honest profit from me, we can get him busted by the Feds with real dirt or I can pay for an ‘accident’. He keeps a lot of blackmail stuff on everyone. I can dump it to the New York Times and the Phili Inquirer faster than it takes you to stand up. Then we could deal with someone more reasonable. And in case you’re thinking of alternate scenarios, Debra doesn’t know my secrets, nobody knows them. They’re all here.” David patted his head, “They try to get it, and everyone loses. Their personal information will be dumped before my body stops flowing blood. I have a PERFECT dead man’s switch. The information is hidden so well that no one could ever find it. Think of a thousand random computers on the web, each with a very small part of the Hammer’s secrets. If I die, computers all over the world will transmit this information. Remember I don’t lie. And no one could ever find the dead man switch. EVER.”
Murray started to rub his chin, “Mr. Smith, I mean Klein, I like your style. You sure you’re not Family.”
David smiled, “Sorry, I’m Jewish. You can call me David.”
Murray shook David’s hand, “They say that Jews treat their women well, with respect. You
’ll protect my Debra?”
David looked into his eyes, “With my life sir, with my life.”
Murray smiled. He then looked at David, “David, you never said how you can get all the power for free.” He threw up his hands, “Not that I don’t believe you or nothing.”
David smiled, “I tell everyone it’s a working perpetual motion machine, but let me let you in on another secret. This secret is between the father of Debra and me, Okay? It’s actually powered by gravity reflection. Think of a large wheel.”
David put both his hands out, and then moved the left side down, the right side see-sawed up. “With normal gravity, it pulls down both sides.” David let the left hand go up, the right hand moved down. “The forces are the same, the wheel doesn’t move. I reflect the gravity ‘up’ on one side. It goes up and the other side goes down. It turns.” David moved one up and the other down, and made a windmill motion.
Murray looked with disbelief, “That’s bull …” He stopped in mid-sentence. “But no one can do that, and if they could wouldn’t it take even more energy to do that then what you’re making? It’s something I once read about in a magazine. Ya can’t make energy outta nuthin’.”
“What you’re talking about is the law of conservation of energy. Yeah, they say it can’t be done. Sorry, I did it. The earth always produces gravity. Murray, think of a mirror. The light energy is bounced back, you can bounce it any which way: up, down, the side. The mirror needs no energy to work. Think of a simple pulley. You pull down but the weight goes up. The mirror or the pulley can be very small things. They both reflect the flow of energy, but neither use up any energy. The pulley and mirror alter the direction of the energy. That’s what I did, but with gravity.”
Murray looked at Phyllis, “And you believe him?”
“Papa, I believe everything he ever says to me. I actually saw the generator. I saw a penny float up; my hand was pulled up. David has harnessed the power of gravity. When I said he’s the most brilliant man I ever met or will meet, you can believe that. But papa, realize that this is the beginning. The bare beginning. Think of a floating Martini Airlines or spaceship fleet. Think of cars that fly, with no pollution, and free to run. No moving parts except for the wheels and I’m not even sure about them. And this gravity reflector, he came up with this idea and completed it in 2 weeks. Four weeks later the first generator came on line. He did this all in his first term in college.”
“Mr. Klein, David, my Debra believes you. She was the smartest one in the family. She believes you, in you. Let me first appease my own curiosity. I’ll look into Larchmont New York. Then I’ll call Matt up. I’m risking my life with you David. But I’m not sure I could even get through to ‘the Hammer’ anymore. He stopped sending me his cell phone number. I’m not even on his Christmas card list.”
David waited a second while Phyllis took out a sheet of paper; he sent some numbers to her. “The first is his cell phone, then his house, the club, and the cell phone of his second in-command, Dominic. I think it would be a bad idea to tell him how you got his phone numbers. Just say you got it from a mutual friend who thought it would be a win-win business proposition.”
Murray looked at David, then at Debra. He had a puzzled look in his eye as she handed him the paper with all the numbers. Murray looked at his daughter and silently asked ‘How?’ She just smiled.
David asked, “How about we now go out to dinner. My treat. Do you know of any good Italian restaurant in this part on New Hampshire?”
“New Hampshire, near here? No, but I can take you to the least awful, Vicente y Giovanni’s. Ever hear of it?”
“Of course.” David grinned, “Let’s meet you there.”
***
Phyllis started driving; her computer piped the directions into her earplug. “David, you were fantastic. I never saw my dad back down like that. You were strong, sure, confident. I mean when he went for his gun, you never broke your gaze into his eyes.”
“Yeah, I ran my Persona 35A. When I was 12, I ran a character analysis of so-called tough men. It examined their word frequencies, ratios of nouns to verbs and adjectives. It looked at the ways they said their words, what syllables they put their accent on, their rate of speed, their vocal pitches and loudness. Out came Persona 35A. Neat huh?”
“It was all an act?” Phyllis glanced at David.
“Well Persona 35A is more than an act. If you wear a blue dress, you’re not pretending you’re wearing a blue dress. You are wearing a blue dress, as I am Persona 35A. Think of it like a blue filter on a stage light.”
Phyllis asked, “David, why did you tell him about gravity reflection? I thought you were keeping it a secret? Didn’t your Superego program tell you not to tell secrets?”
David shrugged, “I needed to establish trust. I shared a minor secret. In a few months, everyone will know I’ve harnessed gravity reflection. Barnes and Haines will be household names. Barnes will be on Oprah. On the other hand, the dynamic solving of those twelve dimensional highly non-linear equations is something that no one will be able to do for a number of years, a very, very large number of years. I had to invent two and a half new fields of mathematics to formulate the problem. The Barnes and Haines equations are a gross simplification of three dimensions of the true solution. It’s like trying to explain Einsteinean physics with Pythagorean geometry, with no algebra or calculus.”
A few miles down the road Phyllis asked, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you think we can trust him? He’s my father and all, but can you trust him?”
“I don’t think he has anything to lose by sticking with us. I think that he really does value family above all else and that means you. If anything happens to me, it would happen to you second. Plus, even if he believes only a millionth of what we said, it means a comfy retirement plan on his own personal island. I think he’s thinking of Manhattan Island. But then, he may surprise me and choose Australia.”
Phyllis laughed.
After a few more minutes of driving Phyllis said, “David, in that conversation with my father, I realized that you came up with the gravity reflector in two weeks. That will totally revolutionize humanity. What other ideas are you working on?”
“Well, in freshman physics they discussed the electron shell. How the electrons are so very small and so far from the nucleus. They said that if a proton were the size of a marble, the electron would be a football stadium away. The electron is two thousand times smaller than the proton. These electrons are whirring around so very far away, from each other. Yet when we pick up a pen, it is solid, very solid. It’s all due to the repelling nature of the electrons in our fingers and the pen. Imagine that you could get the electrons to be not a football field apart, but every six inches apart.”
“A force field.”
“Bingo”
Phyllis glanced at David, “Can you do it?”
David shrugged then said, “Try it. Ask your computer. Tell it 100% brilliance; it will make it a deep scan of information. You could speed things up by mentioning string theory. Personally, I think a transporter would be more fun. How about a warp drive or a holideck? But then again, right now, I’d settle on a working phaser.”
She knew David was playing around again, but then again … “Computer 100% brilliance. Can a force shield based on free electrons in close proximity be built?” She noticed David smiling and closing his eyes.
When she glanced at him again, he was awake and there was something about his eyes. “David, what’s wrong?”
He looked at her, “I lied today. I told Murray that you didn’t know anything about the equations, but I gave you a copy. And I said my memories are here.” David touched his head.
Phyllis laughed, “I see I’m finally having a positive influence on you. You’re able to lie.” She paused, “Wait a second, wait a fucking second. You told me that this necklace is gold and these
baubles were diamonds.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You mean these, these monstrosities are diamonds? That would make it … Priceless!”
“Of course not. Everything has a price, but it would cost more than even Bill Gates could afford. Slightly more, when you included the price of the diamonds.”
Phyllis took her eyes off the road and glanced at him. His smile had a self-congratulatory look as he looked back at her. She thought, ‘he has to be pulling my leg, him and his dry sense-of-humor.’ Subvocally she said, “Computer, what is my necklace worth?” When she heard the answer she was successful in keeping the car on the road.
***
Three days later, Phyllis got a phone call from her father. He sounded excited. “Deb this is Murray, good news.”
Phyllis called out, “Stop dad, let me call you back.”
Phyllis: David, are you there?
David: Of course, I’m checking things out now.
Twenty seconds elapsed.
David: It seems to be kosher. The capo pulled the hit men off, there was no other contracts made on your dad, and Tortelli checked C H Electricity out and called some engineers too. Okay, call Murray back up. You might want to ask the computer to guide you with Persona 35A.
Phyllis called. “Papa, David says that the capo seems to be leveling with you. I take it he’s interested.”
“I’ve been out of the Tri-State area too long. Rumors about this cheap generator have been all over the news. Even the librarian knew about it. Everything David said was true. The capo was drooling. Legitimate protection work, 0.1% of sales. I became his best friend. He was talking about your departed mother like she was a saint.”
“David says that they’re going to be expected to work for that that money. This won’t be a snatch and grab, its real security work, protection from the oil sheiks, natural gas and coal tycoons. Does he understand about the dead-man’s switch? They’ll also need to completely divest themselves from their illegal enterprises. Completely.”
Murray said, “I think he did Deb, you can never be sure with Tortelli. He also said that he’d be able to grease the wheels for New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He’s also lining up the contractors. In New Jersey, the governor will give you part of the Three Mile Island enclave rent-free. He said the governor already had inspectors at Larchmont, and there was no radiation, or pollution, nothing. They’re good to go.”
The Infinite when it was Two Digits Old Page 13