“I don’t think so,” she said darkly. “I don’t know if I want to use up any of our compensation that way. A room is a room, and we have space heaters and blankets out there.”
Charlotte shrugged, imitating Idelba, Vlade saw. “You can let us know.”
“Meanwhile you’ll work on turning that stuff? Or give us some to turn?”
“Yes. Of course. We’ll have something figured out within a week.”
Vlade escorted Idelba back down to the boathouse. “You should join us while it’s winter,” he ventured. “It’s nice.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Back in his boathouse office he offered her a shot of vodka, and she sat down and sipped it. She had never been a big drinker. They sat drinking by the light of the various screens and instruments, and the boathouse’s few night lights. Sharing the dimness and quiet. No huge need to keep a conversation going; they had already not said all the things they weren’t going to say. It was painful to Vlade.
“Here,” he said, “I’ll show you what I’m doing with the gold.”
“Have you shown the boys?”
“Sure, but that’s a good idea. It doesn’t get old.” He wristed the boys as he got out the equipment from boxes under his worktable, and in a few minutes they ran in, goldbug madness lighting them like gas lantern mantles.
“This is so cool,” Stefan promised Idelba.
“Even though we shouldn’t be doing it,” Roberto added.
Vlade had had to look it up, but it turned out to be fairly simple. The melting point of gold was just under two thousand degrees. He had borrowed a graphite crucible and an ingot mold, both standard salvager’s equipment, from Rosario, and he already had an oxyacetylene torch in his shop. After that it was just a matter of sprinkling some baking soda over ten of the darkened coins when they were stacked in the crucible, putting on a welder’s mask and heavy gloves, firing up the torch, and slowly cooking the gold under direct heat, until the coins turned red and slumped into a single bumpy red mass, sizzling or bubbling very slightly at the edges; then the mass melted further and became a fiery red puddle in the crucible. Always interesting to do and to see. Then while it was liquid, he seized the crucible in tongs and poured the gold redly out into the ingot mold.
Idelba and the boys watched with keen interest. Idelba even said “Aha” when the coins turned red. When they deformed and melted together, leaving a scum of the sodium carbonate and dirt on the top, the boys squealed “I’m meltingggg…” which Charlotte had taught them was appropriate.
Vlade turned off the torch and flipped up the mask. “Pretty neat.”
“Did you let the boys here do it?” Idelba asked.
“Oh yeah.”
“It was fantastic! You see how hot it is. You feel it.”
Then Idelba got pinged and she looked at her wrist. “Are your systems showing anything outside?”
He glanced at his screens, shook his head. “Yours are?”
“Yep. I think your radar must be baffled on this shit.”
“I was wondering about that.”
“Let’s see if we can suck something up for you.” She spoke to Thabo, who was still out on the tug. Vlade went out and untied the building’s runabout from the boathouse dock, and they got in and hummed out the door into the bacino. Idelba indicated the north side, between the Met and North, under her tug. When they came around from the bacino into the Twenty-fourth canal, Vlade saw that the tug was about half as wide as the canal. Thabo and a couple other men were standing in the bow wrangling one of their dredging hoses, and suddenly the big vacuum pump motor revved up to its highest banshee scream. With the pale slabs of the buildings walling them in, it was very loud.
All of a sudden the vacuum was shut off and things went quiet again. Vlade pulled up to the tug and Thabo caught the rope Idelba threw up to him and tied them off.
“Whatcha got?” Idelba called.
“Drone.”
“Oh my,” Vlade said. “Hey, have you got a strongbox on board there?”
“You think it might explode?”
“I don’t want it to with your guys exposed to it, right?”
Idelba called sharply to Thabo and the other man in Berber, and Vlade glimpsed the whites of their eyes before they scrambled belowdecks on the tug. A tense minute later they returned with a box and one held it while the other tossed an object from the screen end of the vacuum tube into it. They worked fast.
“Okay, locked up,” they called down.
“Strong one?” Vlade inquired hopefully.
“That’s why they call them strongboxes,” Idelba said.
“I know, but you know.”
“I don’t know! Who do you think you’re dealing with here, the military?”
“Or someone with military stuff.”
“Shit.” Even in the dark, Idelba could do a very good slow burn. Whites of her eyes. “Well our strongbox is military too. So quit paranoiding and tell me what to do with it.”
“Let’s put your strongbox in a bigger strongbox,” Vlade suggested. “I’ve got one in the office.”
“What will you do with it then?”
“Give it to the police. We got a police inspector lives here, she’ll be interested I think. We can do that tomorrow.”
“Doubt you’ll get much from the drone.”
“You never know. At least I can prove we’re being attacked.”
“Sort of. Any idea who’s doing it?”
“No. But there’s been an offer on the building, so it could be them. And even if we can’t prove it, the fact we’re getting attacked might make some residents mad and convince them to vote against the offer. There was a vote that went against it, but it was close, and the offer might get upped.”
“I guess I better figure out whether I want to winter here while you still own the place.”
Vlade tried to think of a snappy reply but failed. He sighed, and Idelba heard it, and quit her needling. Which surprised him. Truce in the Vlade-Idelba cold war? He would find out later. Right now he was just happy to have her around giving him shit. Mostly happy. Well, happy wasn’t the right word for it. He wanted her around in a tense, apprehensive, unhappy, even miserable way. But he wanted it.
The largest apartment of which we found record was sold to John Markell—forty-one rooms and seventeen baths at 1060 Fifth Avenue for $375,000. The story goes that shortly after Mr. Markell moved in, a servant unlocked a door that nobody had noticed and discovered ten rooms they didn’t know they had.
Labor, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
e) Inspector Gen
After a sudden February thaw Inspector Gen had to take to the skybridges again, having been enjoying her walks on the frozen canals, and she was headed for the one that ran over to One Madison, intending to proceed east from there to the station, when Vlade stopped her at the doors to the skyway.
“Hey there Gen, I got something I want to give you.”
He explained that he and his friend Idelba had sucked a submarine drone out of the canal next to the Met, and that they had put it in a strongbox in case it exploded, because he suspected it was there to drill a hole in the building. “I know you can’t carry it to the station, but can you send some of your people over to pick it up? I’ve got it in my safe in the office, but I’m not happy taking it over to the station myself.”