by Diane Duane
“Well,” Ahrens leaned back in his chair and looked at Peter, “Brooklyn and the Bronx, parts of Staten Island and Nassau County, are all awash in that sort of legal outlet, all busily invoicing for less than they’ve delivered, and all laundering money like it’s going out of style. But that’s just one of the things the Russian mobs are getting involved with. They do the usual organized crime stuff: protection, numbers, gambling, all the rest. But in the past few months, for some reason the volume of money laundering has skyrocketed. At least, so my sources tell me, and I’ve no reason to doubt the accuracy of their information. But nobody knows why—or if they do know, they’re not telling.”
Ahrens reached into the drawer again for more Tootsie Rolls. “Sure you don’t want one? Fine. Anyway, something else has been happening. A lot of the big bosses made themselves very comfortable in New York. They bought themselves big apartments, they brought their families over, they settled right into the city. Like it or not, Russian organized crime was becoming just one more community—very clubby. But now all of a sudden several of them are getting ready to leave town. One of them bought himself a little private island down in the Caymans. Another bought some place in the Bahamas that Tony Stark didn’t need anymore. A third now owns a chunk of rock in the British Virgin Islands, and he’s having it covered with a beautiful—and heavily fortified—holiday mansion.”
“Why all this sudden interest in the Caribbean?” said Peter. “More money laundering? I remember hearing that the Cayman Islands are almost as good as Switzerland for private banking.”
“Could be,” said Ahrens. “Certainly the BVI is a tax haven, and the status of several other islands is still under negotiation. They might be owned by the Dutch, or they might be owned by the French, or they might be completely independent—or they might be open for sale to the right buyer. One with enough money. But the coincidence struck me as odd. It can’t just be conspicuous consumption for its own sake. That’s not these people’s style, or they’d have been doing it a long time ago.”
“Are they afraid that things might be getting too legally hot for them in the States?”
“I don’t think so. They’ve been flouting various tax laws here, almost like they’re testing to see how far they can push. And so far, they’ve been getting away with it thanks to expert legal help. Locally sourced, of course. As for the money laundering, their trails have been professionally concealed. So far there’s no evidence stronger than suspicion.”
Ahrens shifted his legs, touched the gleaming typewriter slightly with the edge of one shoe, and leaned forward at once to polish away a mark Peter couldn’t even see.
“Something is going on. I don’t know what it is, and that’s what’s making me crazy. Call it just basic nosiness, but there’s a connection somewhere, and I can’t find out what.”
That would drive him crazy, thought Peter. And as for this man being just “basically nosy,” then water was just “basically wet.” “Even if trying to find out might get you killed?” he said.
“I don’t think it’ll do that. I’ve got a fairly good rapport with some of these people, and enough college Russian to get by—though they seem to prefer practicing English on me. It’s the usual thing.” Ahrens chuckled dryly. “They want to become experts in the local language, since it’ll make exploiting the locals so much easier. And as for the others, the real hard men, I’ve been able to stay out of their way.”
Peter looked thoughtfully at the casual jacket Ahrens was wearing. The cut was loose enough that a fairly big handgun could be concealed beneath it. Ahrens caught the look and nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Heckler and Koch VP-70Z, if you’re interested. The civilian version, not the full-auto. With a full concealed-carry permit, of course. I’ve done the police department a few good turns in the past—strictly on the Q.T.—and they’ve been more than happy to return the favor. But that’s not the point at the moment. Would you be willing to work with me on this for the next couple or few weeks? As I said, things are heating up for some reason, and I—we—need to know why. I can’t call it any more than a gut feeling, but that feeling tells me that something profoundly threatening to this entire city is getting ready to happen. If there’s something I can find out, then maybe it won’t come as a complete surprise.”
“Maybe it can even be stopped dead,” said Peter.
“Maybe.” Then Ahrens grinned at him. “But like I said before, I’m just nosy. I want to know what these people are doing.”
Peter smiled back. That kind of nosiness he was entirely familiar with. It was probably what prompted his next question. “How good a shot are you?”
“I’m okay. I shoot twice a week at the range, and I can usually hit what I’m aiming at. The rest of the time, I try not to think about it. The whole point of a Veep-70 is that it’s got lots of bullets; that helps keep heads down while you vacate the premises. But don’t forget that among these people, guns are a badge of rank as much as a weapon. So I wear the badge. Without it, you might not even get past the front door of some places. That’s not to say they aren’t something to be used. At least it doesn’t happen as often as with—other import organizations.”
“That sounds good enough for me,” Peter said. “When do you think you’ll need me?”
“Tomorrow night. I’ve got an interview under slightly unusual circumstances. One of the local, I guess mafiosi is the best word for them—”
“Or mafioski, maybe?”
“Very nice,” said Ahrens, grinning again as he scribbled the word onto a pad. “I like it. Anyway, this character seems to have an ax to grind regarding some of the competition. If I’m reading him properly, he might be willing to shed some light on the sudden increase in local ‘business’; and what’s going on with these kingpins who’ve suddenly all decided to go ex-pat together. So far as I can make out, they’re all rivals rather than allies; in a couple of cases it goes as far as hatred. So it’s not a linkup or a business deal. That could be done as easily on-site. Something else is going on.”
“And you think this could have links to CCRC as well?”
“It might. I’m putting out feelers in that direction, but it’ll take a couple of weeks before I get any feedback.”
“Okay. But in the meanwhile, you’ve got a photographer.” He stood up. “Thanks for the background detail.”
“The free lecture, you mean,” said Ahrens, also rising. “I charge for the college-level one.” He put out his hand again, and they shook. “Where shall we meet?”
“Here’s good enough.”
“Five o’clock Thursday, then.”
“Five it is.”
Peter flicked one hand to his brow in a casual hail-and-farewell and turned away. As he did, the phone rang, and an expression of loathing crossed Ahrens’s face as various of its lights began to flash. “This thing has too many buttons,” he said, jabbing one at random as he picked up the handset. “Hello?” There was no reply from the evidently wrong line, so there was a quick sequence of more buttons being punched and a steadily more irritable repetition of “Hellos” before he finally got it right.
Peter walked away, smiling at the performance. Then his smile went a little sour. If that display of technophobia was anything to go by, then Ahrens would never have a cell phone—or a four-thousand-dollar bill generated by someone else.
He shot a final glance over his shoulder as he made for the stairwell rather than the elevator. Ahrens had reluctantly moved his beloved Smith-Corona aside and switched on his monitor, but as the screen came up he could see a saver program that was plainly one of Ahrens’s own devising. The words crawled slowly across the screen, black on white, as close to type on paper as the phosphors could create.
I Will Be Obsolete Some Day.
Peter went downstairs. “CCRC,” he muttered to himself. That corporation had been involved in so much recently that he half expected to find them under every stone. First they had stored toxic waste in New York City. Then they ha
d transported it covertly both crosscountry and overseas for illegal reprocessing, theft and money laundering of their own, counterfeiting…
It was a big, tangled web, and now here was another strand of it, while he remained the same small spider in the middle, trying to make sense of the weave, trying to unravel it, and at the same time doing his best not to be strangled by it in the process.
He almost wished he could get in touch with Venom, to ask him some very pointed questions about his own research into CCRC. That research had brought Venom clear across the country, from—Peter assumed—somewhere near San Francisco straight to the center of the CCRC-financed and -managed smuggling operation in the Florida Everglades. Toxic waste again, for reprocessing.
But even if he knew where Venom had gone after suddenly removing himself from the scene in Florida, Peter couldn’t really bring himself to make the first move. After all, Venom and Spider-Man still had some unfinished business.
Spider-Man was still alive.
No, he told himself. Even if you knew his phone number, calling for advice would not be a good idea. And anyway, you might be finding out a few things all by yourself in the next few days. Wait and see.
Peter headed home.
THREE
ABOUT 9:30 the next morning, Peter was sitting at the kitchen table with the phone more or less glued to his ear. That ear was beginning to hurt, less from the pressure of the phone than from the sound of a slightly deranged computer at the other end playing “Für Elise” in a horrible electronic harpsichord-tinkle. And playing it, moreover, for the eighteenth time.
A voice said, “Are you holding for someone?”
Peter looked at the sketch pad on the table in front of him. It was covered with curly lines and little arrows, scrawled in a helpless sort of way while listening to the hold music ritually slaughtering Ludwig van Beethoven. In amongst the squiggles were several names, each one crossed out by increasingly heavy layers of scribble. “I’m waiting for, uh, Mr. Jaeger.”
“He’s on another line. Will you hold?”
The temptation to shriek, Do I have a choice, since it took me the best part of an hour to get past your voicemail system? was very strong, but he restrained himself with a massive effort. “Yes, I’ll hold. Thank you.” The hold music, as remorseless as a Chinese water torture, started playing “Für Elise” again.
Peter tuned out its tinkly mutilation of melody—he’d had plenty of practice so far this morning—and stared out of the window, into the bright day and the smog. A butterfly went by. It was a big monarch, and it wasn’t moving with the usual aimless flutter. This particular butterfly not only had places to go and people, or at least other butterflies, to see, it was flying with the sort of purpose that suggested a flight plan logged with La Guardia Control.
Peter desperately wished he could be out there with it instead of trapped in the Seventh Circle of Hold Hell. I brought this on myself, he thought. Earlier that morning, when MJ had gotten up still thoroughly depressed about the phone bill, he had foolishly offered to give them a call.
She had looked at him wistfully, then after a moment said, “I guess it couldn’t hurt, really. The world isn’t entirely liberated yet. Maybe the sound of a guy’s voice….”
“All right,” he had said. “You go and get your hands ready for work, and I’ll give them a try.”
With a sunny dawn ahead, and a satisfying night behind him in which he had not only pounded some bad guys, but possibly also gained a lead that might help with the phone bill, there had seemed no harm in trying. After all, if it could be resolved this way, then he wouldn’t have to bother Sergeant Drew’s contact. And so he had innocently called CellTech, and asked to speak to someone in customer service.
Or rather, he had tried to ask. CellTech prided itself on the sound quality of its system, and several times Peter had started talking to what he had thought was a genuine human being, only to find that the voice was human only at one remove: a recorded voice linked to a voicemail computer possessed of all the literalness of the species.
Its courteous little voice kept telling him that “if you have a question about routine billing, please press one. If you are interested in new services, please press two. For all other inquiries, please press three.”
He had pressed three and had continued to press three, early and often, as each time the system made a polite electronic hiccup and said, “Please enter your account number, followed by the number sign.”
When he did so, there had been another hiccup. “Please spell your name using the alphabet keys on your phone and ending with the number sign. Please enter your last name first. For Q or Z, please use the number one.”
If they already have my account number, why do they need my name as well? Peter had wondered as he started tapping at the keys. And that was when the problems began. The phone’s keypad was quite small, and his fingers were quite large, and every time he hit the wrong key that dulcet voice would say, “I’m sorry, the name you have entered does not match any in our records. Please try again.”
By the fourth or fifth time, he simply wanted to punch the voice in whatever passed for its face. So he hung up, took a few deep breaths, then dialed again and this time tried for a routine billing inquiry.
“If you want to verify your account balance, please press one. If you wish to add another user to your account, please press two. If you want…” It then went on at some length, detailing a number of options which he most definitely did not want, then finally said, “For all other account inquiries, please press six.”
Peter had mashed his index finger down on six with all the pent-up fury of an exasperated world leader starting World War III. The phone hiccuped, and the voice told him what he should have been expecting all along.
“I’m sorry, all our accounts personnel are busy. Your call will be answered by the next available operator. Please hold.” And that was when they began playing “Für Elise” at him.
The first real person he had spoken to had sounded seriously hungover, and a veneer of businesslike briskness hadn’t done much to conceal that fact. “CellTech-Customer-Services-Brian-here-how-may-I-help-you?” was all run together like the health warning at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial and uttered in a hoarse growl.
“I have a question about a very large bill,” Peter began.
There was a pause at the other end that suggested more clearly than any words that the very large bill was Peter’s problem, and nobody else’s. “Your account number, please?”
Peter rattled off the number, deciding that he preferred speaking it to typing it out on the keypad.
Another pause. “I’m sorry, but I’m not authorized to give you any information on that account.”
“What? Oh, because it’s in a girl’s name and I’m a boy. That’s all right. I’m her husband. Peter Parker. She’s Mary Jane Watson-Parker.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not authorized to give you any information on that account.” The repetition was so exact that for a second Peter thought he was back with the voicemail system again. This guy, he had thought, has been spending too much time around his firm’s computers. “Ms. Watson-Parker will have to call us herself and ask for an authorization number. If she gives that to you and you give it to us, then we can give you the account information you require.”
Peter raised his eyebrows a little, but the intention behind the request was honest enough: protecting the customer. “Okay, will do. Thanks.”
He called MJ on her cell phone, and the first sound he heard was a yawn. At that point it was only about 8:30, and what with fretting about the bill, MJ hadn’t slept well.
“Hello?”
“Hi, hon, it’s me. Listen, the CellTech people won’t talk to me until you talk to them and tell them that it’s all right for them to talk to me.”
“Uh, yeah. I got that. I think. A pity they wouldn’t let anyone else use my phone number without asking me if it was all right.”
“I know. Look,
can you call them? Otherwise I’m not going to be able to get anywhere with them.” He read her the number quickly. “Just beware of the demon voicemail. Hit one for routine billing, then go for other options; that’s, uh, six.”
“Okay, Tiger. I’m on it.”
About ten minutes later the phone rang again, and he picked it up. “Wow,” said MJ’s voice, “bureaucracy is not dead, is it?”
“Yeah, I get that sense. But did they give you a number?”
“Eventually. Here, write it down.” She rattled off a number that had no obvious connection to the account number. “Got that?”
“Yeah.” He read it back, twice, to be sure.
“Great. See what you can do with them.”
“And how are you doing?”
“Oh, fine.”
“Still doing the suds?”
“Yeah.” There was a snicker at the other end of the line. “Petey, I am never going to use this stuff.”
“Why? Do they give you tons of freebies after the commercial? Does it bother you?”
“No—and if they did give me any, I’d chuck it out. They’ve put a sort of tea-rose scent in it, and, well…” She chuckled again, very softly, and the sound of her voice on the phone changed slightly as if she had cupped her hand around her mouth to muffle what she was about to say. “Remember the roach powder we had to get one time? It’s exactly like that.…”
Peter made a face. It had taken weeks to get the smell of the stuff out of the kitchen; the stalest, most oversweet rose perfume that anyone could ever have conceived. It had smelled, well, pink. “As bad as that, huh?”
“Worse. This is their new ‘flower-fresh’ fragrance”—she smothered a nasty laugh—“and if this is what they think flowers smell like…. Anyway, look, they’re about to start. I’ll call you back. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Peter dialed again, fought his way through the gauntlet of the voicemail system to where the live people had been hiding, and waited until finally a familiar, still-hungover voice said, “CellTech-Customer-Services-Brian-here-how-may-I-help-you?”
