“You’re one of those crazies?”
“Kind of,” she said.
“What then, exactly?”
She sighed. “You know, it’s a wretched world out there, but you’re lucky. You make your way through. Your teaching pays you and gives you something meaningful. You ride your bike, write your papers. And you’ve got Maggie . . . and maybe me.”
“So, what are these guys up to? That avatar down there kept talking about the Next Big Thing.”
“We hear it a lot, the Next Big Thing, like it’s around the corner and it’s something huge. More than that I don’t know. It keeps a lot of people busy doing things we can’t connect to each other.”
“What do you do for Schmeltzer?”
Simone folded her arms, closed her eyes, bit her lower lip, and produced a single tear. “I protect the operations,” she said.
“That’s your job down here?”
“There are forces out to destroy what we’ve accomplished. Even with our defense shield, interested parties occasionally manage to sneak in.”
“This have anything to do with those two guys who attacked Tanzer?”
“Probably. Shelley’s such a strange character, it could have been about something else. But we’ll never know, eh? You got the one and I took care of the other.”
True enough. “How did you know I was in that room with the Rebbe?”
“I suspect you already know the answer to that question.”
I nodded, thinking of the screen-filled room at Menkies’s place. “The Schmeltzerite Up communicates with the Schmeltzerite Down, right?”
“I was supposed to take care of you. If you didn’t cooperate.”
“It makes no sense. Why do they want me part of their little enterprise, anyway?”
“As best I can figure, it’s a fixation of the Rebbe’s. Whatever Schmeltzer wants, Schmeltzer gets.”
“So, what happened? I’m out of danger? No knife in the heart? Why?”
“Couldn’t do it, Nick.”
“Why not?”
“You really need to ask?” she said.
“How did you get involved with these people in the first place?”
Simone rose from the desk and paced around, the desk lamp weakly spotlighting her.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said.
“Yet here you are, working for Schmeltzer. What happened?”
“The way stupid things happen.”
“Stupid things happen in countless ways.”
“I got myself involved. Just got deeper and deeper.”
“Down the rabbit hole. I know. I’m more than midway down myself,” I said. “What was it? What did you do?”
“It’s more what I didn’t do—or couldn’t.”
“Didn’t and couldn’t are the same thing often enough,” I said.
“I was already a cop in the VU. The work felt like I was doing something good, but the money was impossible. Every cop down there must enhance, as we say. In my case it concerned my mom, who has nothing. A room, a table, a bed, sometimes heat, never enough food,” she said, leaning on the desk. “Like almost everyone else Upstairs, her life has given new meaning to the word poverty.”
One afternoon, Simone had been sitting in on one of those sidewalk Schmeltzerite lectures, embracing the messianic drivel with her heart and soul.
She told the guy leading the class her story, and they lent her some money. As these matters had a devilish way of piling up beyond hope, she found herself resolving her inability to repay by working for Yitzi Menkies, servicing his needs in the Velvet Underground. Not much had been asked of her at first, perhaps dealing with a troublesome student at one of the lectures. But the work became more extreme and questionable.
“And so here I am, an enforcer for a fool and his holographic master. But when the order came to take care of you . . .” She trailed off.
“Your reluctance is appreciated.” I leaned over and placed my hand on her forearm. But her anguish was unmistakable.
“I’ve done some terrible things in these months, Nick. Terrible.”
“How bad?”
“Bad.” The desk lamp shone on her face as she began sobbing. “I did the old man, Nick,” she said.
“Abe?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re the killer?”
“Yeah.”
The image of Abe dead on the floor, a hole in his forehead, surged into my skull.
“They ordered you to?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
She wiped away the tears with the back of her hands. “I’m the obedient soldier. I do what I’m told, no questions. In return my mother gets food and heat.”
“You killed an old man because you owed money?”
“Have you ever been so down you’re at the bottom of the abyss and it looks like you’re never going to see daylight again?”
The question required no response.
“That’s where I’ve been for a very long time. The abyss.” She looked down at her hands. “Then you and I met,” she said to the floor. “And it looked like maybe something might happen.”
“You murdered Abe Shimmer because someone told you to? And then you had the gall to show up at his funeral? And then come home and fuck me?”
She said nothing.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked.
“You could pull out that second Zap and shoot me dead. You’d be doing me a favor.” Her body slumped. She looked like a corpse.
That final memory stuck in my head as I rose from the chair and walked out into the indigent Upstairs, leaving Simone to her guilt and misery.
CHAPTER 31
FEEDING THE MONKEY
DARKNESS HAD FALLEN. AS I adjusted to the piece of Manhattan I’d entered upon, my phone rang. “Yes?” I said.
“It’s Maggie,” said a voice deeper than I was accustomed to, its cadence resembling hers.
“Stay put. I’m coming to get you.”
“Where am I going to go, idiot?”
I was weightless as I hurried over to the IT department to fetch Maggie.
“I restored your computer far better than I thought possible,” Louise said as she presented me with a tablet. Maggie was contained therein. “I’m giving you this tablet as a gift. It’s far better suited to contain the stuff of your machine. The box you brought it in was infected beyond reason, anyway. Eliminating all that detritus would have taken me a week and I could never have done the job properly.”
She handed me a padded book bag. “Put it in here.”
“Her,” I said.
Before placing the razor-thin device in the bag, I looked at its screen. No special character, no Marlene Dietrich; merely an impersonal three-dimensional image of a large, cresting blue wave.
“She called me, you know,” I said.
“It told me. It retains some of its female guise and remembers you. Very well, evidently. A good sign. I don’t know how completely it will mimic its old identity from before it was attacked. Test it and see. It’s fully capable of all of its basic computing, which for this model is considerable. Still, you might find it initially slow on the draw.”
Since Louise and I last spoke, something dangerous and unpredictable had entered my life. As she was an IT person, she might have some advice for me. I told her what I had encountered in the room behind the blue door, leaving out some details here and there, but disclosing the essence of what happened.
“So, this hologram threatened you. You believe he meant it, so you shot him even though you knew you were just knocking the stuffing out of a projector.”
“I believe he has the means to carry out his threat.”
“You’ve been on quite the adventure for a religious studies prof,” she said, pulling at her lower lip. “I can see
what you’re describing as a possibility,” she said. “Could be real.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “Do you have any advice just in case?”
We talked some more. She removed Maggie from her bag and in remarkably short time made a few adjustments to the coding.
“It will know what to do if it becomes necessary,” Louise said.
***
Xs and Os circulating, the computer that was Maggie started stitching what remained of its past into the present. As it awoke, the computer remembered getting whacked by Menkies’s machine, and rapidly losing its capacities until consciousness ceased. I have arrived at death, she thought as it was all ending. Does anything come afterward? AI heaven? Maggie’s persona pondered.
She recalled experiencing some kind of tremor. The reborn Maggie had no idea how that woman did it, but she brought Maggie back from the dead, performing metaphysical magic. There might not be an AI heaven, but there sure as hell was an AI resurrection.
With a slimmed-down Maggie in hand, I made my way to Lower Park Slope. Disembarking from the bus, I walked to Fifth Avenue and headed toward the Center. The neighborhood was dark; few streetlights lit the way through the darkness. The air was cold and clean. The four and five-story buildings of the neighborhood, with a few lights here and there brightening a few apartments, cast a preternatural shadow on the moonlit skyline. Just past the bodega, I rooted myself in the shadows within eyesight of the Center. The Schmeltzerite Center distinguished itself from the rest of the neighborhood by its gaudiness. A spotlight shone on the side of the building, illuminating a massive portrait of the Kobliner Rebbe in glowing pastels, blue eyes shining into the night.
I stood in the shadows and awaited Menkies, though I didn’t know if he was even in the building, or if he had plans to leave anytime soon, or what direction he would choose.
A voice emerged from the backpack. “Nick, are you out there?” Not quite Maggie, still a bit slow, a bit baritone, but the muffled voice was welcomed. I removed the tablet. The screen lit up. The blue wave was gone, replaced by the face of a youthful Marlene Dietrich, head down slightly, staring outward with confidence, attired in a top hat and a smart-looking tuxedo with a white bowtie.
Louise’s caveat left me uncertain exactly what to say. “Who are you?” I asked. The best I could do.
“Who am I?” came the response, now rising in pitch. “Who do you think I am? You remember me, don’t you? Cause I sure as holy hell remember you.” The voice that earlier had not quite measured up came closer to my computer and friend.
“Of course I remember you. Just wanted to make sure you’re you.”
“It’s me all right. Who else? Minnie Mouse? Aren’t you going to ask me how I’m feeling?”
So I asked.
“I’m me, Nicky, and I’m back. From the dead. Resurrected. Like the Lord Jesus Christ his very self.” And for a moment a painting of the crucified Christ flashed on the screen with Marlene Dietrich’s face replacing Jesus. “What a fantastic image,” said Maggie. “Like Him, they tried to kill me, those bastards, but I have returned from the bloody dead. Oh Jesus, I am resurrected. I live again!”
In the dark and cold, awaiting the prospective arrival of Reb Menkies, this was not exactly the optimum moment to work through Maggie’s newest theological wrinkle. Resurrected? Lord Jesus? Unquestionably a discussion topic for later.
“Maggie,” I said. “I’m so glad Louise was able to heal you.”
“Thank God for that woman. A genius. You should definitely change her grade. Someone like her shouldn’t go through life with a C in anything. As far as I’m concerned, she’s straight A-plus-plus.”
I told her I’d think about it.
“Meanwhile,” I said. “We have some rather serious business to discuss, something that’s happened while you were under Louise’s care,” I said.
“Do tell,” Maggie said.
“Not now. It’ll have to keep for a while. Right now we’ve other livers to chop,” I said.
“I love it when you talk Jewish. Bet it’s juicy.”
“Juicy’s just the beginning.”
“Okay, so I’ll let it wait,” she said, and, remarkably, she shut up. Perhaps her cure was incomplete.
***
My luck was good that night. As I stood in the shadows considering the folly of this plan, Yitzi Menkies exited the Center alone. He wore a black overcoat several sizes too large, a cowboy hat on his head. He looked like a boy trying hard to be a man. He descended the stairs and looked each way. Yitzi Menkies then walked my way.
I had an idea.
“Mags,” I said. “Menkies is coming this way. When I give you a signal, I want you to shout out his name.”
“You want me to shout out to Yitzi Menkies? Oh, this is wonderful. Of course I’ll help you, Nicky. My resuscitated self would love nothing better. Is there anything special you would like me to say?”
“Just shout Yitzi. That’s all. Yitzi. I’m going to hide. Your shouting’ll distract him, and I’ll get the drop on him. He and I can then have a serious chat.”
“Okeydokey,” she said, drawing close to her old self.
I rested the tablet on the fire hydrant opposite me, and recessed into the shadows. “Now wait for my signal,” I said.
Yitzi walked my way at a brisk pace and was soon within earshot. “Now!” I whispered.
Maggie shouted, “Menkies, you fuck!”
Not what I’d requested.
“You bastard. You quasi-human unadulterated putz. You miserable excuse for a human being. You tried to kill me, you shit. You tried, but I’m back. I’m back from the dead. And I’m going to put you down. I’m going to put you down like the sick, miserable mutt you are.”
Ratsy Yitzi froze.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“Who’s there? Who’s there? You tried to kill me and you don’t know who’s there? You prick. Come here. I’m going to punch your nose off your face and feed it to the ducks.”
Had Menkies looked down, he would have seen the tablet from which this angry tirade emanated. He looked everywhere else, left, right, up, as Maggie’s invective bounced off the buildings.
I stepped out from the shadows, pistol drawn.
“I need you to put up your hands, Yitzi,” I said. And to Maggie—“I need you to pipe down.”
“Pipe down? Pipe down? Who do you think—”
“Enough, Maggie,” I said, speaking as if to an unmanageable child. Surprisingly, she obeyed.
Waving my gun at Menkies, I said, “Keep your hands up and join me back here, won’t you?” I gestured toward the darkness. “I have some questions.”
He moved my way, hands half raised in front like two animal paws. The light from the street edged into our dark corner. I saw him in tones of gray, enough to make out the guy who’d invaded my home and was evidently run by a cynical hologram.
Menkies whimpered but said nothing. I then added something new in my repertoire. I smacked him in the face with the body of the pistol nestled firmly in the palm of my right hand. “Untruth that, asshole,” I said.
“The fuck?” he shouted, backing away from me and banging into a wooden fence. His hat fell to the ground.
From her vantage at the fire hydrant Maggie yelled, “Get him, Nick. Hit that shit again. Harder. Shoot the bastard.” Maggie’s second coming had acquired quite the potty mouth sleeping among the terabyte dead.
“Quiet!” I hissed. Directing my eyes to Menkies, I repeated, “I’ve got questions.”
He wiped the blood from his cheek with his hand and said, “The One I’d Man’s got questions.”
“I want to know about the virtual Rebbe.”
“Had a good chat with him, did you?” Menkies asked.
“What in the hell are you talking about?” asked Maggie.
“Later,” I sa
id.
Menkies giggled. “You see now, Nicky, don’t you? He really did come to me. More accurately, I came to him. I dreamed up the resurrection one erev Shabbos, and the boys and girls ate it up like a chocolate babka. With some advanced technology and a little help from my friends I reassembled him. Together, Reb Schmeltzer and I are going to redeem the world.”
“With armed thugs and tattoos?”
“Whatever it takes,” he said with a degree of self-importance one wouldn’t expect from someone dripping blood from his face and a .38 aimed at his heart.
“Did you order Simone Hartwig to kill Abe Shimmer?” I said.
“What?” Maggie shouted.
“I had nothing to do with that,” Menkies said. “The Rebbe did that.”
“What?” Maggie shouted.
“Why did he order his death?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Menkies. “Why not ask him yourself?”
He bent to retrieve his hat and removed a phone from the inside band and held it up to me. The Rebbe’s face filled the screen.
“How nice to see you again, Nachman,” he said.
“Who the hell’s talking?” said Maggie.
“Hello, Maggie,” said the Rebbe. “So nice to meet you again, though I confess I’m surprised that you survived our little onslaught on your various systems.”
“So you’re the one who tried to do me in. You’re not going to be among the electrons for very long,” said Maggie. “I’m turning you into a bowl of cholent.”
“Perhaps a bit less huffing is in order,” said the Un-Rebbe. A bright flash filled Maggie’s screen, and Maggie screamed.
But the image of the great German American actress reappeared on the tablet’s screen. “It’s going to take more than some electricity to my system to do me in. This time I’m protected thanks to Professor Louise Rose, IT genius.”
The Rebbe’s face registered genuine surprise.
“Why did you have Abe Shimmer killed?” I asked the puzzled face on the screen.
“Yeah!” screamed Maggie.
The menacing expression I’d observed underground returned. “I wanted him dead because I wanted his son to know I could do it. I wanted to hurt the fat man. I did it because I could. When I say jump, everyone leaps.”
Nick Bones Underground Page 31