Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"You mean the market?"

"I mean events. Events make market."

"What kind of events? By the way, do you want to get lunch?"

"No, I can't, I have big meeting with Lou and… some others. Another time? Tomorrow, maybe?"

"Sure. What kind of events?"

"Events in world. Is dangerous place, like the man said. And how is your charming daughter? We have not seen her so much as before."

"Still charming," said Marlene shortly, somewhat thrown by the abrupt change of subject.

"Good! You should bring her around more often. I enjoy to speak Russian with her. She has for some reason a Petersburg accent. I tell you, that is a remarkable girl. Please say I send regards." Another golden smile and he slipped away down a side corridor.

Marlene went back to her office. This was four times the size of the one she had occupied as a minor bureau chief in the DA and approximated the scale and luxury of those given to assistant DAs in television dramas. It was really the best office in the place next to Lou's, which caused no little resentment among some of the other VPs. But Osborne had reasoned that the VIPs who made up Marlene's clientele deserved nothing less. She had furnished the office in institutional teak, simple and uncluttered, the Architectural Digest effect of which was quite undone by the clutter that Marlene spread around her-papers, books, CDs, magazines, clippings, and in the corner, on a dog bed, an immense, black, wheezing Neapolitan mastiff. There were three windows along one wall, from which she could look down thirty-two floors to Third Avenue. On another wall she had hung a big Red Grooms lithograph of a street scene in lower Manhattan, Lafayette and Spring to be precise, and a framed length of tan silk, upon which her daughter had calligraphed a Chinese poem, "Quiet Night Thoughts," by Li Po. Or so she said. It was supposed to be calming to contemplate. Marlene sat in her chair and contemplated it-and was not calmed. The other two walls exhibited material that Marlene would not have hung had she been in charge, but Lou had insisted, more or less in return for the nice office and the suppression of any bitching about the dog. This material comprised her diplomas, framed photographs of Marlene with famous clients, and laminated newspaper articles about some of her more legal exploits-shootings, rescues, notable cases. Most clients thought it was impressive and a little scary. Marlene thought the wall a souvenir of a ridiculous and somewhat disgraceful life.

She ordered a tuna sandwich and a Coke and began work. VIP operations had something over 150 clients, scattered around the world, nearly all people with famous faces and subject to the less attractive aspects of fame. Several hundred employees were occupied in advising these people about their security, and in some cases actually guarding them. Marlene had discovered that the skills she had learned in parochial school were just those needed in big business: neatness, punctuality, disciplined focus, Christian forbearance, a good memory for small facts, a pleasant mien, and a willingness to punish transgressions instantly and nearly without thought. She was good at the work. VIP ran like a clock. Marlene took no shit at all from the clientele, who seemed actually to enjoy being mildly abused; Marlene supposed that it was something of a relief from the interminable adulation that was their ordinary lot.

The morning passed into afternoon. Marlene read reports and project estimates, took and made calls, held meetings. She told her staff about the IPO meeting, as it touched on blabbing, and resisted with some irritation their attempts to wheedle more details out of her. In fact, she didn't have the details, having drawn roses instead of writing them down. There came a moment just before four when she was alone. She told her secretary to hold calls and to order a company car and driver, locked the office door, and opened a closet. She slipped out of her skirt and heels and into a baggy orange coverall that had CIAMPI amp; SONS PLUMBING printed on the back in square white letters. Over that she donned a yellow slicker with traffic glo-strips on the back. She put her feet into rubber knee boots, tied her hair into a red bandanna, and slapped a white hard hat on her head. From the closet shelf she took a clipboard heavy with greasy forms and a four-cell flashlight.

"I'll be at Kelsie Solette's apartment," she told her secretary.

"Are you going to be in her show?" said the young woman, eyeing the outfit. "I thought that was beads and fringes and piercing."

"No, but after I get done there, I figured I would hang around a construction site and talk trash at guys walking by."

"A lot of body insults, I hope," said the secretary, a plump woman. Marlene walked out, making a disgusting noise with her mouth in reply.

The rock star Kelsie Solette lived in the Daumier, a Fifth Avenue hotel that had recently been turned into condos buyable for something like a million dollars a room. Marlene had the driver drop her off a block away from the entrance, to get some rain on her outfit. She entered through the service entrance on Fifty-eighth and rode the service elevator to the seventeenth floor. No one stopped her or asked what she was doing there. At the door marked 1702, she knocked, waited. The door clicked and opened wide; a pretty young man with long hair, a scruffy beard, ragged jeans, and a black Tainted Patties T-shirt stood in the doorway. Tainted Patties was the name of Ms. Solette's band, Marlene recalled. She waved her clipboard. "Gas company." The young man registered Marlene, assessed her as a nonentity, and turned away, leaving the door open. Marlene entered the apartment and followed the youth into the living room.

It was decorated in the bland but heavy style that newly rich people buy from fashionable decorators: huge, cold, promo paintings, oversize furniture done in expensive fabrics, large, complex Italianate floor lamps, "collector" pieces-a Shaker sideboard, a Louis XIV breakfront in antique white. The living room was dominated by a huge entertainment center consisting of a TV half the size of a highway billboard, a high, black rack of stereo equipment with speakers as tall as a man and thin as a deck of cards. The Tainted Patty sat on a couch in front of the TV and began thumbing the remote.

"Where's Ms. Solette?" Marlene asked.

A jerk of the head. "Bedroom."

"Peter Filson around?"

"Somewhere, I guess. I don't know." Flick. Flick.

Marlene went through a dining room, where the remains of a takeout feast from the previous evening stood congealing on a long mahogany table, and into the kitchen.

There she found a large man fussing with a coffeemaker. He had a low brow, from which arose a profusion of oily black curls that descended aft to his neckline. He had on a black silk shirt, which was open, showing a well-cut bodybuilder's chest and abdomen, black slacks, and black Nike sneakers.

"You Peter Filson?"

"Yo. Hey, you know how to work this thing?"

"You're missing a part. The thing that holds the filter."

"Maid didn't come in today. I don't know what the hell I'm doing here." He abandoned the project. "I'll call out."

"Mr. Filson, do you know who I am?"

The man looked at her dimly. "Power company?"

"I'm Marlene Ciampi." Nothing. "Osborne International? Security? We've been trying to get in touch with you."

Light, though flickering. "Oh! Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry. She wanted you to, you know, check out the system, like because of that guy, and she's been getting more of these letters."

"Uh-huh. Mr. Filson…"

"Hey, call me Pete. Listen, can I just call up for coffee? We got in at like five this morning."

"Be my guest, Pete."

After the call Filson said, "So, like, what do you guys do? I mean Kelsie's already got me, so…"