Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

He took a step toward the bed. Yank those panties down and fuck her like a dog. A set of heavy thumping steps sounded behind him, and then a sound, like some machinery starting up, a low growl. He spun around, his heart pounding, and tripped over his pants. From the floor the dog looked as large as a grizzly bear. It growled again and came a step closer, moving to put itself between Solotoff and the bed.

"Easy, boy, good boy." Solotoff looked wildly around for a leash or something. How did the goddamn thing get in here? He got slowly to his feet. Lock it in the bathroom, that was a plan. The thing looked stupid as shit. Holding his pants up with one hand, he made shooing motions. The dog didn't budge. He went to the bathroom, opened the door.

"C'mon, boy," he crooned, walking slowly around to get behind the monster. The dog held its ground, the great head swiveling to follow him. A little nudge with the toe to give the fucking animal the idea…

Thirty seconds later, Shelly Solotoff found himself in the hallway outside Marlene's room, shaking and sans shoes, sans jacket, sans tie, sans cummerbund, sans the seat and half of one leg of his trousers (these remains well-soaked with urine) and now divesting himself of an expensive meal and a good deal of slightly used Chambertin. Yet another thing to blame Karp for.

The morning after, one of a series: actually, it was early afternoon before Marlene awakened from a hideous dream of being smothered by jellyfish, to find her dog licking her face with a tongue the size of a washcloth. The usual raging thirst, pounding head, disorientation in time and space. The usual panicked thoughts: What did I do drunk now? Then a really awful thought, as the events of the evening just past surfaced like corpses rising from a shipwreck. No, I couldn't have, not even drunk, I absolutely refuse to believe that I took that jerk back here and… But now she registered that she was fully dressed, and that her luxurious underpants were intact, bone-dry and in place. What now, false memories? He had been here-there was his jacket on the chair. She rose slowly from the bed and looked around the room. Trained detective that she was, it took her hardly any time to cop to what had happened; the torn strips of tuxedo trousers stiff with dog drool told all. It made her feel better than she had in ages, and she hooted and hugged the dog and immediately called her good friend the concierge and ordered a large pepperoni pizza and a bottle of merlot.

So they brunched together, Marlene sucking abstemiously on the wine and slipping warm, greasy, spicy triangles down the animal's maw; schlup, schlup, they vanished like dollar bills into a change machine. Her career as a drunk seemed to be entering a new phase. The first shock was over; the deep, embarrassing scenes would not happen again, she told herself-that was like the shaky, wobbling start of a kid on a new two-wheeler. There would be rules now: a little pick-me-up in the morning to get her through lunch, when she would deserve a couple or three for being good, and then cold turkey for the P.M. while doing useful work, and then the evening when she would keep a comfortable level until it was time for oblivion, the nightcap, as they called it. Plenty of people, she knew, even famous and successful people, did it for years, and so would she. This way she could go back to work, face them all down, go back to her family, discharge her responsibilities, for as long as her liver held up. Not quite ready to go back home yet, though, wait a while for the routine to kick in, not quite ready to face Butch, definitely not ready for the daughter. But soon.

So she went to work, in her new outfit, a neat little black suit with a cream silk blouse sporting a demure black ribbon at the throat. So she was welcomed back: by Lou Osborne, who looked nervous now, having sold his baby. He had to worry about becoming a takeover target, about the stockholders, about the latest Nasdaq quotes (453/4, down a quarter for the week), about growth targets-message, pull your load, Marlene; by Harry Bellow, who looked at her with a sad eye, from his own dryness, and tried clumsily to talk to her about it, but she put him off with a barrage of funny one-liners; by her staff, who were happy to cover for her. Which she needed. She did not go out anymore, no poking around with the clients. She sat in her office and moved paper while the expensive watch counted off the hours until lunch, until quitting time. They wrote her speeches, which she gave to frightened women. They made sure she did not interview new clients in the afternoon. Good old staff. Oleg was out of town, she learned, which was a pity. Oleg was always willing to go out for a quick one. He did not have the new American attitude toward drink. Good old Oleg. But in the long afternoons she had plenty of time to think. Her thoughts were not particularly clear, but they were vivid and disturbing. The money, root of all evil. The money came from the stock. Why had the stock gone through the roof? The publicity about the Richard Perry rescue. How convenient for Osborne! Still, that was life-good luck, bad luck. What had Oleg said that day, before the kidnapping? Something about events make market. And hadn't Oleg been a little evasive that day, some meeting or other that she hadn't heard about. Of course, evasive was Oleg's middle name. She turned to her computer and brought up Osborne's intranet. Every call that came into the phone system was logged and digitally recorded in compressed form. Everyone's call file was protected by a twelve-digit password known only to the user and to the system administrator and his staff. That's why she couldn't find out what Oleg had been up to on the phone in the weeks before the kidnapping. She typed out a message for Wayne Segovia, encrypted it, and sent it out. Wayne couldn't work in the field anymore, at least not for a long time, but he was a bright kid. They had put him in the computer department.

Then she called her husband. She spoke with Butch every day. He told her how the boys were doing, and she talked to them, too, sad little conversations with long pauses. When Karp asked her when she was coming home, she said, "Soon, a week." She said, "Pretend I'm in Chicago." She said, "I miss you," which was all true. And he said, "I miss you," too, but he did not mean the same thing by it.

For Lucy, the days started at five. Her tutor lived not, as Lucy had supposed, in a godfather-type mansion with an iron gate and extensive grounds, but in an ordinary, if large, brick, five-bedroom house in an old neighborhood in north Bridgeport. The neighbors were local bourgeoisie, people who owned insurance agencies and car dealerships, and Tran seemed to fit in well. His lawn was immaculately mown and tended, and the shrubbery was minimal, low, and perfectly shaped, affording, as Lucy was not slow to notice, excellent fields of fire in all directions. Four people lived in the house besides Tran. Dong drove the Mercedes, Vo kept up the house and grounds, Dinh seemed to be some kind of accountant or business manager, and Mrs. Diem was the cook and housekeeper. All three of the men had the quiet, hooded look of soldiers, and Lucy knew that they were not just domestic workers.

When Mrs. Diem knocked at her door at dawn, Lucy arose with alacrity because if she did not, Tran would arrive and deliver a blistering lecture, with quotations from The Analects, The Tale of Kieu, and Chuang Tzu, about the vital importance of duty. She would wash herself and dress in pajamas and go down to breakfast, which was tea and congee or noodles and fish. Then she and Tran would go out into the back garden and do tai chi. Lifting Water. Flying Diagonally. White Crane Flaps Wings. All the twenty-four patterns of the simple set, for an hour, rain or shine. Lucy had done some of this in Chinatown, but never as seriously as she did now; she had not known Tran was an adept. His strong, scarred hands moved her body through the evolutions. The chi started to flow again in its secret channels; it settled in its proper home below the navel. She breathed more easily; the impacted garbage began to drain from her head.