“You’re being followed but maybe you can accelerate the story a bit.”
“I’ll cut to the chase. Man has created these new wide-field telescopes. We are going to look through these, both from the ground and in space, and we are going to figure out once and for all what this Dark Energy shit is. We cannot be expected to master that which we do not fully comprehend so once we know, with the help of these scopes, what Dark Energy and Dark Matter truly are then we will be ready to master the universe. There’s no question this is going to happen, it’s just a question of when. Don’t you see? The universe is going to keep on expanding forever and expansion is just another word for progress. When a chain of stores expands for example that’s good, that’s progress. Like the universe, Man is expanding at an accelerating rate and he’s doing this through technology. Do you doubt this? Because no one of the slightest mental competence does. The growth of technology and knowledge has not recently been steady, it’s been exponential. If you magically transported a man from 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D. he would eventually adjust to the intervening changes. But take a man from as recent as 1800 and put him in our world with handheld computers and planes and particle accelerators and satellites and space exploration and ATMs and cell phones and nuclear power plants and he would lose his limited mind in about five hours! The same is true of us if we could travel into the future. After all the guy in 1800 didn’t think there was a lot left to invent and discover did he? He couldn’t have conceived of this right? So obviously things are going to happen in the next centuries that we cannot now even conceive of. The future world will be more unrecognizable to us than our present one would be to the 1800 guy. I used to say that in five hundred years we will not recognize human beings or society because of things like the Human Genome Project but now I see that it’s going to come a lot sooner than that. And that, my friend, is why Dark Energy is all that matters right now. Because we are going to solve the ultimate riddles of the universe and ensure that this remarkable force that ensures universal progress and immortality is bent to our will. Men and women don’t matter, only Man does. Man right now, armed with his technology, just feels like such an unstoppable force. Man is on the precipice of conquering the universe and at a time like that men like Kingg are sadly irrelevant.”
“Take it easy. Just two days ago Man, that near-deity that wields technology like an irresistible sword, forgot to pay the electric bill and the lights were turned off.”
“Hmm.”
“I’m taking this cab.”
“Take.”
. . .
“Brooklyn Heights. Columbia Heights and Orange.”
“I can leave you on Orange and Columbia Heights, is that okay?”
“Orange and Columbia Heights?”
“Right.”
“As opposed to Columbia Heights and Orange?”
“Indeed.”
“Fine.”
. . .
“Some blackout huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was here for the last one. Now that was a real blackout. Makes this one look like a brownout really. I even told my wife, this should’ve been classified a brownout. And I really saw no need for Times Square to have been placed on the TITS either. Not for nothing but it’s very hard to drive, let me tell you, when it’s that bright. It’s like drifting towards the sun or something. Like when a ship comes off its orbit in those science fiction movies, ha ha!”
“Yeah.”
. . .
“Here we go.”
“Thanks, keep the change.”
“Consider it kept pal.”
chapter 27
Humana, humana aya . . .
—Portly fellow standing outside Angus’s door.
Step on a crack break your mother’s back. That is, if you step on a crack on the sidewalk, either the planned ones that result from those cement squares they create or the ones that stem from elemental corrosion, then your mother will, as a result, sustain that rather severe back injury. So not wanting that to happen I walked in the stilted manner required, my steps sometimes long, sometimes short, without pattern, and my head always down and looking; so that I was incidentally able to spot immediately the half-globe paperweight that contained a miniature Manhattan island, which island one could create snow on through mere inversion. The thing lay unattended on the sidewalk, which allowed me to invoke a further adage: the one that states that finders may keep while losers only weep. I snatched it up and continued walking home. Only I then decided that I should instead strive to step on every crack and the achievement of that slowed me down considerably.
The storm door to my apartment building had this compulsively effective spring that resisted with all its might any effort to open said door so when I absentmindedly let go of the knob while standing in the doorway the door came flying back to slam me in the shoulder, spinning me towards the street and freeing the globe of my hand’s grip that I may watch it land on the edge of the top step, triggering the globe’s sudden explosion, its protective dome of glass instantly dividing into countless dull diamonds that accelerated away from each other, the flakes of synthetic snow dropping without life onto the cement, the water expanding in thin waves to mark the step in astral-shaped black, and the now exposed plastic skyline limply descending the three steps aboard its solid base until hitting bottom. I didn’t clean up or anything, I just went in.
And although I heard nothing as I walked up the stairs to the second floor I distinctly felt that some one or thing was in the area. What I in fact saw on the second floor was, I gathered, a man. A portly fellow standing outside Angus’s door. He stayed in the shadow of the corner, a corner I would have to pass to go up to my apartment. He spoke:
“Hey pal,” he said in a way that made me think he knew me and I was supposed to know him, making more than a terse greeting expected. I said something in return and he took a step forward and out of the dark. He was big. He had short black hair and white clean-shaven skin. He passed his hand by his mouth and raised his cheek up and down with the corner of his mouth. He wore what looked like a uniform—dark gray or blue or even faded black, I couldn’t tell—with a white shirt and a dark tie held in by a zipper that ended chest high at two significant lapels. He was absolutely familiar and I’m using that word in its strict sense, meaning he was like family, but I also knew I had never seen him before. That or I had seen him so many times that the sight of him had lost all meaning. I struggled to speak, which I wouldn’t have even tried to do but for the fact that he seemed to expect me to.
“Do I? Do we know each other? I’m sorry.”
“C’mon pal, you know that I know that you know that we don’t know each other.”
“Oh.” I looked away and went to knock on the door.
“Never mind that,” he said. “Angus isn’t home. And I don’t know the names of those other two nuts but they ain’t home neither.”
“Oh, you know Angus?”
“Sure I know him. How else would he know me?”
“Makes sense.”
“Humana humana aya uh, would you do me a favor there pal?”
“What’s that?”
“Do you have a kern?”
“A what?”
“A kern. I understand you can make a phone call if you have a kern, I’m not from here.”
“Oh a coin? Where you from?”
“Bensonhoist, 328 Chauncey Street. Or 728 I’m not sure.”
“Yeah, Bensonhurst’s Brooklyn. Pretty much the same rules apply throughout here with regards to pay phones and the like.”
“I had a phone once but I got rid of it, you married kid?”
“No.”
“Good thinking, keep it that way ho! Now what about that kern? Don’t think of it as a loan, think of it as an investment in the corporation of me. I have big ideas.”
“I might have one,” I said. “Let me see.” I started digging into my many pockets but found nothing. I took my time and felt my fat companion losing patience
until:
“Come on!!” he said shooting his open hands out from his body and bending his knees slightly.
“Take it easy,” I said. “I don’t have one.”
“Sorry,” he said and did that cheek thing.
“All right . . . but I have to go.” I started up the stairs then turned back. “I didn’t catch your name,” I said.
“I didn’t throw it wo ho!”
I laughed.
“Just kidding,” he said.
“So?” I said surprised at my apprehension.
“Herbert. Herbert John.”
Thank God I thought. “Well nice to meet you Herbert,” I said. “I’m Casi.”
“Oh you’re Casi huh? I have a message for you.”
“What is it?” I said.
“A detective came by looking for you.”
“I’m sorry, a what-tective?”
“A detective, NYPD I suppose. He said your name pal, wanted to talk to you.”
“Said my name? You sure?”
“Yup, said Casi, remember it clear as a bell.”
“What was his name?”
“Detective ass? Andro? Something with an A I think.”
“D’Alessio?”
“Yes! No. It’s either that or it isn’t, I’m not sure. But if I was you I would definitely maybe be uhscared.”
“Thanks Herb.”
“Call me Jackie,” he said.
Fuck I thought.
Inside my apartment, sitting on my couch, his feet on my stool, reading my newspaper, was Dane.
“What the?”
“You should lock your door,” he said.
“I did.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“You implied it.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“I didn’t, now you’re putting some in mine.”
“Maybe.”
“I thought you were gone.”
“Gone? From where? How?”
“Gone. You know as in took the money and ran, as in haven’t heard from you in a couple of days when I would certainly have expected to.”
“That gone? You think that little of me? How beneath my dignity would such a move be? No, your well-gotten gains are safe. Come with me now and we’ll get it.”
“Get what exactly?”
“Eleven million dollars for now.”
“For now?”
“It changes every time I count, it goes up.”
“Eleven total.”
“Eleven each, but you can have mine if you wish. Let’s go.”
“No, there’s a problem.”
“A what? I’m sorry I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“A problem.”
“There’s no problem. I told you, over and over I told you, that we would, at a minimum, get that money and if you come with me now I’ll show it to you, you can smell it then start spending it. The only question, not a problem, is what our next project should be.”
“Another question might be what to do about the NYPD detective currently looking for me.”
“Detective?”
“Yes.”
“Ha ha, that’s the problem? Please.”
“That’s the one.”
“Detective who?”
“Not sure but I’m thinking D’Alessio who was at the meeting.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t, I said I think it’s D’Alessio.”
“No, how do you know any detective is looking for you at all?”
“Some guy just told me downstairs.”
“Some guy? Downstairs? Fuck him, what does he know?”
“I trust him, he’s a good man.”
“How long you known him?”
“Seconds.”
“I see,” he said. He turned the newspaper he was reading so I could see the front. “You saving this for a reason?”
“Yeah that’s another problem.”
“What, the press? Now you’re worried about them? Law enforcement and the press. Could you pick more feeble entities to be spooked by?”
“I’m sorry I can’t share your confidence but things seem pretty messed up to me right now. The plan certainly wasn’t for what happened back there to happen. The plan wasn’t for that picture to be splashed, as they say, all over the front page of the next day’s paper and the plan most definitely didn’t involve a detective coming to my home, my home, where I do my most sacred breathing, to question me. None of that was part of the plan and none of that is good in any conceivable way.”
“You jest, surely, this is a time for exultation not concern. This newspaper and its relatives have the attention span of a six-month-old. Where’s my thanks for the blackout that effectively ended what little fascination the public would’ve had for our events? This detective? He sounds like he couldn’t detect a frog if it landed on his head and took a shit. He keeps nosing around and the only thing he’s going to detect is my foot up his ass.”
“What about that picture? What about what it depicts? Can you change that? Because that was fucked up and fucked up because of us.”
“Because of us? Did we tell those fuckers to come in there and start shooting up the place? Because I don’t remember doing that.”
“True. You’re right right? That was going to happen whether we were there or not.”
“Now you’re thinking.”
“Fuck Escalera for trying to avoid paying too. He’s the one fucked up the whole thing if you think about it.”
“Even if you don’t.”
“Fuck that, I’m the one that went back for the girl. She would’ve been killed right?”
“Who knows?”
“But she wasn’t. DeLeon just wasn’t supposed to be there, DeLeon.”
“Escalera.”
“That piece of . . .”
“He’ll get his, everyone does.”
“I can see it so vividly though. Whenever I want and at times I don’t.”
“And that, as they say, as you say, is that.”
“Except you in no way addressed this detective other than to disparage his abilities without any possible basis in fact and in contravention of the available evidence, which shows that he is at least competent enough to have appeared at my doorstep, a move you and I know is entirely warranted.”
“He knows what then?”
“I don’t know but he knows something, otherwise why look for me?”
“He knows you’re DeLeon’s attorney and he knows DeLeon was one of the bodies, that’s all he knows. He knows how to read a notice of appearance, hooray for him.”
“I don’t think so. Are you slipping, is that the problem?”
“More like I find this scenario wholly uninteresting but go ahead. What makes you think it’s more than that?”
“Two things. First, it’s only been a little over two days since the investigation presumably began and already this detective has found his way to interview me? That would seem to belie your claim that interviewing the attorney of one of the victims is just a pro forma charade without any specific basis. Second, as I believe I’ve mentioned, this prick came to my home! He didn’t seek me out at the office or at court or through the DA. This was an act of aggression. He wants to unsettle me, show me he knows things about me and there’s no safe haven. And so I’m unsettled.”
“You surprise me. You allow this maggoty louse to do that? This lousy maggot? If you’re right and this was an act of aggression, then there’s only one response to things of that nature. You meet even the slightest aggression with a disproportionately evil response. Look at you. A double-digit millionaire cowering at the implied sight of a civil servant. How tacky, and worse, how boring. Who cares what this cop thinks or even knows? And it’s not a failure of empathy on my part either. I wouldn’t care if I found that fuck sitting on my couch when I got home. The whole thing simply holds no interest for me, intellectual or otherwise.”
“The prospect of a new involuntary addre
ss in upstate New York doesn’t get your attention?”
“Please, now you’re invoking the truly impossible but fine I’ll humor you. Let’s go through the situation. Who saw us at 410 or better yet to save time who saw us that is still alive?”
“Saw us?”
“Yeah saw, as in with their own two eyes.”
“Still alive I guess just The Whale since the paper says Landro was shot dead.”
“And who, if anyone, knows we were there through other means, again, limiting ourselves to the living.”
“Just Escalera I guess, who DeLeon could have told of my presence before being shot.”
“And who was probably shot for that very reason in fact.”
“No. What? No.”
“You don’t see that happening?”
“I don’t—”
“DeLeon says, in that chaos, something like I just saw my lawyer and Escalera takes his frustration out on him because he consequently blames him for things getting fucked up.”
“I don’t . . . who cares? Does it matter? The point is Escalera could know I was there.”
“So Escalera and The Whale. You think they’ll be visiting their local precinct any time soon or offering to pick us out of a lineup? Of course not. All the factors that made the involvement of law enforcement so unlikely before Wednesday still exist as far as I can see.”
“Except we now know a detective is involved. A fact that seems to strongly suggest that somewhere, somehow, things got fucked up with respect to avoiding detection.”
“Nonsense, no way. You got the mask right.”
“What do you mean I got the mask? You burned it didn’t you?”
“I burned everything you gave me.”
“So you burned the mask.”
“And we certainly left no prints.”
“No but the struggle with Whale. What if I left blood or hair?”
“Now who’s not thinking? Analysis of something like that would take weeks, it’s been hours.”
“True. So what then? Give me a plausible explanation for the detective at my door.”
“Could be a PBA fund raiser for all you know. You’ll know soon enough I suppose, so what’s the point in expending any more mental activity on it?”
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 69
