A shrug, eloquent eyebrows, thumb rubbing fingers.
“Well yes, that’s certainly a thought.”
For a while Maxine has been aware of peripheral armwaving and hand jive, not to mention quiet declamation and deejay sound effects, from the direction of Misha and Grisha, who turn out to be great fans of the semiunderground Russian hip-hop scene, in particular a pint-size Russian Rastafarian rap star named Detsl—having committed to memory his first two albums, Misha doing the music and beatboxing, Grisha the lyric, unless she has them switched around…
Igor pointedly consulting a white-gold Rolex Cellini, “Do you think hip-hop is good for them? You have children? What about them, do they…”
“The stuff I was listening to at that age, I’m in no position—but this number they’re doing now, it’s kinda catchy.”
“‘Vetcherinka U Detsla,’” Grisha sez.
“‘Party at Detsl’s,’” explains Misha.
“Wait, wait, let’s do ‘Ulitchnyi Boyets’ for her.”
“Next time,” Igor rising to leave, “promise.” He shakes hands with Maxine, kissing her on both cheeks, left-right-left. “I’ll pass your advice on to my friends. We’ll let you know what happens.” Tunefully away and out the door.
“Those two gorillas,” Rocky announces, “just ate two whole chocolate cream pies. Each. And I get stuck with the check.”
“So it was Igor who wanted to see me, not you?”
“Ya disappointed?”
“Nah, my kinda fella. He’s mob, or what?”
“Still tryinna figure it out. People he hangs with in Brighton Beach, some of them were in Yaponchik’s circle before the li’l Jap got popped, definitely a old-school crowd. But just doing a quick eyeball scan, no visible tats, 15 and a half collar size, ehh,” wobbling his hand, “it’s doubtful. He seems to me more like a fixer.”
ONE DAY, headed for The Deseret pool, Maxine finds the service elevator is tied up, perhaps till further notice—more yuppie scum moving in, no doubt. She goes looking for another elevator and eventually finds herself downstairs in the labyrinthine basement about to step, much against her better judgment, into the infamous Back Elevator, a legacy from earlier days, rumored to possess a mind of its own. In fact, Maxine has come to believe it is haunted, that Something Happened in it years ago that never got resolved, and so now whenever it sees a chance to, it tries to steer occupants in directions that might help it find some karmic relief. This time instead of going all the way up to the pool, whose button she has pressed, it takes her to a floor she doesn’t recognize right away, which turns out to be…
“Maxi, hey.”
She squints into the somehow greasy dimness. “Reg?”
“It’s like being in some Asian horror movie,” Reg whispers. “Oxide Pang probably. Can you kind of slide over here alongside the wall so we stay clear of that security camera?”
“And why are we keeping out of camera range, again?”
“They don’t want me in the building. By now there’s got to be at least a restraining order.”
“You’re what, you… stalk buildings now?”
“That fake toilet at hashslingrz? Just now out in the street, happened to spot one of the guys from there, had enough blank tape with me, so I started following and taping. Zigzagging all over the neighborhood, after a while he picks up a couple-three others I recognize, and next thing I knew, they’re all going into The Deseret here, getting star treatment at the gate. It occurs to me that since Gabriel Ice is one of the owners of this place—”
“Wait a minute, Ice? Since when?”
“Thought you knew. Any case it’s all academic now, we’ve been overtaken by events. Ice fired me off the movie yesterday. My apartment got broken into again, this time trashed, all my footage taken except what I hid.”
Not a promising development. “You better come with me. There might be a service elevator free by now.”
By way of which they manage to escape out the back and over to Riverside, where they just make it onto a bus heading downtown.
“I don’t suppose you’ve mentioned this to the cops or anything.”
“In case they need a good laugh to lighten up their otherwise grim workday, you mean. Sure, how about on my way out of town?”
“Seattle.”
“It’s time, Maxi. Ice did me a favor. I don’t need a hashslingrz movie on my résumé, bad for my image, and you know what, hashslingrz is history. Whatever happens, it’s fuckin doomed.”
“Wouldn’t say they’re on the brink of Chapter Eleven exactly.”
“If a dotcom had an immortal soul,” Reg strangely distant, as if already calling back out the window of some westbound conveyance, “hashslingrz’s’d be lost.”
They get off at 8th Street, find a pizza joint, sit for a while at a sidewalk table. Reg drifts into a patch of philosophical weather.
“Ain’t like I was ever Alfred Hitchcock or somethin. You can watch my stuff till you’re cross-eyed and there’ll never be any deeper meaning. I see something interesting, I shoot it is all. Future of film if you want to know—someday, more bandwidth, more video files up on the Internet, everybody’ll be shootin everything, way too much to look at, nothin will mean shit. Think of me as the prophet of that.”
“You’re fishing for compliments, Reg, what about that unscheduled redecoration on your apartment? Somebody must have thought highly of something you shot.”
“Ice,” he shrugs. “Tryin to repo what he thinks is his.”
No, Maxine thinks with a sudden flulike ache in her fingers, Ice would be best-case. And if it’s anybody else, Seattle might not be far enough. “Listen, if you need me to hold on to anything for you—”
“Don’t worry, you’re on my list.”
“And you’ll let me know when you leave town?”
“I’ll try.”
“Please. Oh, and Reg.”
“Yeah, I know, I used to watch the old Bionic Woman myself. Sooner or later Oscar Goldman says, ‘Jaime—be careful.’”
“He was a strong Jewish-mother role model for me. Just remember even Jaime Sommers needs to step cautious once in a while.”
“Don’t worry. I used to think that as long as I could see it through the viewfinder, it couldn’t hurt me. So it took a while, but now I know different. You happy?” Disillusioned child written all over him.
“I guess I could take that as the good news.”
14
Among the mystery vendors discovered by the resourceful Eric Outfield down in the encrypted files of hashslingrz is a fiber brokerage called Darklinear Solutions.
Who in their right mind, you wonder, would go into fiber these days, given the huge decline in new installation since last year? Well, back during the tech bubble, it seems so much cabling was put in that now miles of existing fiber are just sitting there what they call “dark,” and the result is that outfits like Darklinear have come swooping down on the carcass of the business, scouting out overinstalled, unused fiber in otherwise “lit” buildings, mapping it, helping clients put together customized private networks.
What’s puzzling Maxine is why hashslingrz’s payments to Darklinear are being kept hidden when they don’t have to be. Fiber’s a legitimate company expense, bandwidth needs at hashslingrz more than justify it, even the IRS seems to be happy. And yet, just as with hwgaahwgh.com, the dollar amounts are way too big, and somebody’s putting up password protection out of all proportion.
Sometimes, better than letting things fester, it is perverse fun to give in to annoyance. Maxine calls up Tallis Ice and gets lucky. Or doesn’t get the machine, put it that way. “I had a call from your charming husband. Somehow he knew about our visit the other day.”