Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

“Congratulations. Always a plus to find a moral dimension. Maybe it’ll help you appreciate some funny numbers I found.”

She fills him in on the Benford-curve and other discrepancies at hashslingrz. “Prominent among payees of these fishy expenditures is hwgaahwgh.com. What’s strange is that after the company is liquidated, the amounts paid to it grow dramatically even more lavish and it all seems to be disappearing someplace offshore.”

“Fuckin Gabriel Ice.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“The book on this guy is he takes a position, typically less than five percent, in each of a whole portfolio of start-ups he knows from running Altman-Z’s on them are gonna fail within a short-term horizon. Uses them as shells for funds he wants to move around inconspicuously. Hwgaahwgh seems to be one of these. Where to and what for, ya got to wonder, huh?”

“Working on that.”

“Mind if I ask, who got you onto this?”

“Somebody who’d rather not be involved. Meantime, I see from your client list you also do some business with Gabriel Ice.”

“Not me directly, not for a while.”

“No schmoozing with Ice in any social way? you and maybe even…” head-gesturing at a framed photo on Rocky’s desk.

“That would be Cornelia,” nods Rocky.

Maxine waves at the picture. “How do you do, I’m sure.”

“Not only a looker as you can see, but a elegant hostess from the old school. Equal to any social challenge.”

“Gabriel Ice, he’s… challenging?”

“OK, we been out to dinner, once. Twice maybe. Places on the East Side a guy comes by with a grater and a truffle, grates it all over your food till you say stop? Vintage dates on the Champagne, so forth—with ol’ Gabe it’s always about the price… Ain’t seen either of them since maybe last summer out in the Hamptons.”

“The Hamptons. It figures.” Glittering rat hole and summertime home to America’s rich, famous, and a vast seasonal inflow of yup wannabes. Half Maxine’s business sooner or later tracks back to somebody’s need for the diseased Hamptons fantasy, which is way past its sell-by date by now, in case nobody’s noticed.

“More like Montauk. Not even on the beach, back in the woods.”

“So your paths…”

“Cross now and then, sure, couple times in the IGA, enchiladas at the Blue Parrot, but the Ices are running in way different circles these days.”

“Had them figured for Further Lane at least.”

Shrug. “Even out on the South Fork, my wife tells me, there’s still resistance to money like Ice’s. One thing to build a house with its foundation in the sand, right, somethin else to pay for it with money not everybody believes is real.”

“I Ching talk.”

“She noticed.” The semimischievous look again.

Uh, huh, “A boat, how about a boat, they own a boat?”

“Lease one maybe.”

“Oceangoing?”

“What am I, Moby Dick? You’re that curious, go out there and see.”

“Yeah, right, who springs for the jitney, where’s the per diem, see what I’m saying.”

“What. You doin this on spec?”

“So far it’s a buck and a half for the subway down here, that I can probably absorb. Beyond that…”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Picking up the phone, “Yes Lupita mi amor, could you cut us a check, please, for… uh,” raising his eyebrows at Maxine, who shrugs and holds up five fingers, “five thousand U.S., payable to—”

“Hundred,” sighs Maxine, “Five hundred, jeez all right I’m impressed, but it’s only enough so I can start a ticket. Next invoice you can be Donald Trump or whatever, OK?”

“Just tryin to help, not my fault I’m a giving generous type of guy, is it? Lemme at least buy yiz lunch?”

She risks a look at his face, and sure enough—the Cary Grant beam, the Interested Smile. Aahh! What would Ingrid Bergman do, Grace Kelly? “I don’t know…” Actually, she does know, because she has this built-in fast-forward feature in her brain that can locate herself, a day or two from now, glaring into the mirror going, “What, in the fuck, were you thinking?” and right at the moment it’s coming up No Signal. Hmm. Maybe it’s just that she can do with some lunch.

They go around the corner to Enrico’s Italian Kitchen, which she recalls getting raves in Zagat, and find a table. Maxine heads for the ladies’ toilet, and on the way back, in fact while she’s still in there, she can hear Rocky and the waiter arguing. “No,” Rocky with a sort of evil glee Maxine has noticed also in certain children, “not ‘pas-ta e fa-gio-li,’ I think what I said was pastafazool.”

“Sir, if you’ll look on the menu, it’s clearly spelled,” pointing helpfully at each word, “‘pasta, e, fagioli’?”

Rocky gazes at the waiter’s finger, deciding on how best to remove it from its hand. “But ain’t I a reasonable person? of course I am, so let’s go to the classical source here, tell me, kid, does Dean Martin sing ‘When the stars make-a you droli / Just-a like-a pasta e fagioli’? no. No, what he sings is—”

Maxine sits quietly, attending to her eyeblink rate, as Rocky, far from sotto voce but on pitch, makes with his Dean Martin impression. Marco the owner sticks his head out of the kitchen. “Oh, it’s you. Che si dice? ”

“Would you explain to the new guy?”

“He bothering you? five minutes, he’s in the dumpster with the scungilli shells.”

“Maybe just change the spelling on the menu for him?”

“You sure? Got to go in the computer for that. Be easier to just whack him.”

The waiter, whose credits include a couple of Sopranos episodes, recognizing this for what it is, stands by, trying not to roll his eyes too much.

Maxine ends up having the homemade strozzapreti with chicken livers, and Rocky goes for the osso buco. “Hey, what kinda wine?”

“How about a ’71 Tignanello?— but then again with all the wiseguy dialogue, maybe just, uh, li’1 Nero d’Avola? small glass?”

“Readin my mind.” Not exactly doing a double take at the pricey supertuscan, but a certain gleam has entered his eye, which is what she may have been looking to provoke. And why would that be, again?

Rocky’s mobile phone goes off, Maxine recognizing the ringtone as “Una furtiva lagrima.” “Listen my darling, here’s the situation— Wait… Un gazz, I’m talkin to a robot here, right? Again. So! uh-huh! how you doing? how long you been a robot… You wouldn’t be Jewish, by any chance? Yeah, like when you were thirteen, did your parents give you a bot mitzvah?”

Maxine scrolls the ceiling, “Mr. Slagiatt. Mind if I ask you something? Just professional interest—the seed money for hashslingrz, do you happen to know who put it up originally?”

“Speculation at the time was lively,” Rocky remembers, “usual suspects, Greylock, Flatiron, Union Square, but nobody really knew. Big dark secret. Could’ve been anybody with the resources to keep it quiet. Even one of the banks. Why?”

“Trying to narrow it down. Angel money, some eccentric right-winger out in a Sunbelt mansion with central air? Or a more institutional type of evil?”

“Wait—what are you attempting to imply, as my wife might say?”

“What with you folks,” Maxine deadpan, “and your longtime GOP connections…”

“Us folks, ancient stuff, Lucky Luciano, the OSS, please. Forget it.”

“No ethnic slurs intended of course.”

“Should I bring up Longy Zwillman? Welcome to Streetlight People,” raising his glass and tapping hers lightly.

She can hear from inside her purse the as-yet-undeposited check laughing at her, as if she has been the butt of a great practical joke.