Wet Work

by Christopher Buckley

  I

  1

  "Mr. Robertson to see you," said Miss Farrell.

  "Send him in," said Charley Becker. He had hired Robertson away from Northrop six months ago. He was a balding jock in his mid-forties who rose at 4 A.M. every day to strap on blood-pressure monitors and LED pedometers to run seven miles.

  He strode in, beaming, hand extended, bursting. "CB!" he said.

  Charley nodded. "I've been looking over the log to N forty-nine ninety."

  "N forty-nine ninety… forty-nine ninety."

  "Those are the tail numbers of the G-4 you've been living in the last six months."

  "Right. Hell of a machine. The comparables just can't touch it, in terms of ceiling. I can't stand fighting it out with ATC for a decent vector. You have to plead with those bastards, it's so shoulder-to-shoulder up there."

  "I see you took it to Chicago and back four times last week."

  "We're burning on the PEMCO deal."

  "Uh-huh. Well, only thing I smell burning is paper money, mine. Let me acquaint you with some figures. Costs $4,700 and change to keep that bird aloft per hour. Round trip Dulles-Chicago, that's two hours, that's $9,400, not counting downtime. Times four, that's $37,600. Figuring in downtime, comes to $50,000. Divided by four, that's $12,500 per trip."

  "Right. As I say, we're real close-"

  But Charley was already punching buttons and a voice fresh as bathroom deodorizer was coming in over the speaker box: "Thank you for calling American Airlines, Susan speaking, how may I help you?"

  "Good morning, Susan. Got a fellow here needs to get to Chicago."

  "Would that be first class or coach?"

  "Well, now. He does like his luxury. But let's say coach. I'm sure he's got frequent-flier miles he can upgrade with."

  "Round trip would be… let's see if I can get this computer to tell me… $670. Actually, it goes as low as $2.18."

  "Two-eighteen, you say? Now, Susan, he's a bit touchy what altitude he flies. One thing he hates is going shoulder-to-shoulder with a lot of other aircraft. I was wondering if you could fix it so his plane will be above all those others."

  "Uh-"

  "Oh, and he's particular about what vector he's assigned by Air Traffic Control."

  "Actually, we don't handle that here. You'd probably want to speak with… if you'll hold I could ask my supervisor."

  "No, that's all right. Thank you kindly."

  "Thank you for calling American."

  Robertson left. Miss Farrell's voice came on, sounding surprised. "Natasha's just walked in."

  "Well, send her in-"

  The door blew open. "You son of a bitch."

  "Sugar-" She came straight at him, cheeks ruddy from the October wind, breathing like she'd walked up all ten floors. Snorting, Charley would have said, if it weren't such an unfeminine term, though there was something of the charging bull to her aspect. Her long legs disappeared-finally-into a short black leather miniskirt. The jacket, he imagined, was of indeterminate Middle Eastern origins, with raggedy sheepskin cuffs and irregular bits of mirror stitched in along the sleeves. She looked like a cross between a Vogue model and an Afghan mujahed. She looked gorgeous. She planted her hands knuckle-down on Charley's desk-bad sign-and glowered at him with the full-moon eyes. It was her spring-loaded position; she was cocked and ready to fire. Charley felt his back flattening against the chair.

  "You look a little pale, honey. You getting enough exercise?"

  "Don't patronize me."

  "A fine hello." He was trying to buy time while his brain raced to decipher the cause of the storm.

  "You're a damn liar, Charley."

  More input. Klaxons rang inside his skull, red lights flashed, neurons strapped on flak jackets and ran down corridors shouting and shutting watertight bulkheads against the norepinephrine that was already up to their knees. Aoogah aoogah, dive dive. Something seriously wrong here. More input, damnit! "Uh," he managed lamely, "how do you mean, lie?" She was giving him the microwave stare now, rearranging his molecules, cooking him from the inside out. Don't say a thing, it'll be taken down and used against you. She had a round face, she looked like the ladies painted by whatsisname, the one he could never pronounce. Anger… Inger… Ingres. Those nineteenth-century French ladies with skin soft as butter and their chins resting on a crooked finger, the picture of domesticity-you could almost smell the coq au vin in the oven-except that the eyes always seemed to be undressing the painter. What angst Ingres must have gone through in those quiet parlors-

  "You have the nerve to put me under surveillance."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Like you didn't know what I was talking about when someone bought the building I rent in. My own rent-controlled apartment and suddenly there are cameras all over the place and round-the-clock Arnold Schwarzenegger doormen."

  "Aw, we been through all that, sug."

  But clearly they were going to go through it all again. "Doormen," she muttered, "in a five-story walk-up."

  "I told you, the real estate division buys a lot of buildings. It's, a small world."

  "Bullshit."

  "You know I don't like it when you speak like that. They don't inform me about every little… rathole they're going to buy."

  "Rathole. That's my home."

  "Nonsense."

  "What about that show I was auditioning for that suddenly you become a major backer of?"

  "Coincidence."

  "You're just like Nixon. You look straight into the camera and lie."

  "I don't see the shame in supporting the arts."

  "I was humiliated. Then you start having Felix hire people to spy on me."

  "That's a terrible thing to say. I am not spying on you."

  "Your righteous indignation needs a tune-up, Charley."

  "Now look here, girl, you want to go live in a neighborhood looks like Bey-root"-his accent tended to deepen in periods of stress-"I don't see the harm in providing a little peace of mind."

  "Your peace of mind, you mean."

  "Have you seen the rape statistics for that neighborhood? 'Cause I have." He pressed a button. "Jeannie, bring the rape statistics for Natasha's new"-he said it sarcastically-"neighborhood."

  They glared at each other. He said, "If you won't take my money, I've got a perfectly good apartment there that I can't hardly use anyway 'cause of my tax situation. I told you a hundred times you're welcome to it."

  "Sutton Place? Are you serious?"

  "The hell's wrong with Sutton Place? Not enough violent crime for you? Okay, I'll have Felix truck in some muggers. How many you want?"

  "God," she said. "You just don't get it, do you?" It wasn't a surrender exactly, but she went over and sat on the edge of a sofa and lit a cigarette, staring out across Roosevelt Island toward the Mall and the Capitol.

  Charley watched her. It disturbed him that she smoked. He'd offered her a significant sum of money when she was thirteen if she wouldn't smoke until she was twenty-one, which she dismissed at the time as an "obvious bribe." Well, this wasn't hardly the time to get on her about smoking. He tried, "Where'd they screw up this time?"

  "They were good. I'll give them that."

  I?

  "Not that good."

  She laughed. "He used women this time. As if you didn't know."

  "That so?" he said disingenuously.

  "Uh-huh." She blew a thin stream of smoke toward the Lincoln Memorial. A 727 flew past with its wheels down for landing at National. "They're kind of butch. Where does Felix find these people anyway?"

  "Oh I don't know. Around, I guess."

  "Do you pay them the same as men?"

  "I'm sure of it." She stared. "I'll check on it."

  "They followed me down here on the shuttle." She looked at her watch. "What time do you have?"

  "Past noon. Twelve-oh-six. How about some lunch?"

  "They're a little slow. Either that or Tim was a little late."

  "How's that?"<
br />
  "Friend of mine is calling Building Security at noon to say there are two armed women outside the building waiting to kill you."

  "Sweet Jesus, girl." Charley grabbed the phone. "Security, this is Charley Becker-"

  "They're both sort of dark, so my friend is saying they're Libyan. I thought that would cut the reaction time, but"-she looked at her watch-"I'm not too impressed, frankly."

  "-you took a call a few minutes ago, it's false alarm-"

  "Aren't the Libyans pissed off at you for not selling them something? High explosives, chemical weapons-"

  The door banged open. Three of Felix's people pushed through, pistols drawn, followed by Miss Farrell.

  "You all right, sir?"

  "Fine."

  "We found two women outside the building, they're armed. They claim-"

  "It's all right, just, it's fine, let them go."

  They left. Charley said, "That was a damn fool thing. Someone could have got hurt."

  "That's right," she said, a study in imperturbability. "Maybe now it won't happen again." She slung her bag over her shoulder and stubbed out the cigarette.

  "Leaving?"

  "Gotta get back."

  "Stay over, honey. We'll chopper out to the farm and have dinner. I'll fly you back to New York on the G-4. If Robertson isn't using it."

  She kissed him on the top of his head. "Got a rehearsal."

  "You got a show?" He brightened. "Why didn't you say? That's just fine!"

  "Yeah." She grinned.

  "Well, that's just, that's great. What is it?"

  "Oh no."

  "I'm not going to do anything, I promise."

  "I'll save you and Felix tickets for the opening."

  "Oh, come on, Tasha, tell me. All right, just tell me what it's about."

  She said, "It's a very contemporary piece."

  "Contemporary," he said suspiciously. "Contemporary about what?"

  She considered. "It's about redemption."

  "Redemption. It's religious?"

  "No." She laughed. "Not exactly."

  "This isn't one of those deals where you don't wear clothes. Now Tasha-"

  "No. It's an adaptation of Jimmy Podesta's book."

  "Who?"

  "Gotta run. No more bullshit, okay?" She kissed him again, threw in a hug.

  "The way you talk. Your grandmother would die."

  "'I should sin to think but nobly of my grandmother.'"

  "How's that?"

  "The Tempest. Shakespeare."

  "The outdoors one." Miranda's speech ends: "Good wombs have borne bad sons." The night he came to see it, she left the line out, earning herself a note from the director.

  "I'll see you, okay?"

  The moment she was gone Charley was on the phone. "Felix? Those women you got, they're no good… Well, I don't care who recommended them. We need to try something different. Meantime get someone over to the twelve-thirty shuttle."

  2

  It was one of those spaces on the lower Lower West Side, maybe a hundred seats and cold enough so that most people kept their coats on. Charley and Felix sat in their front-row seats, Charley staring glumly at the Xeroxed sheet of paper that served as the program, Felix adjusting the squelch on his radio.

  "'Wired,'" said Charley. "What's that mean?"

  "Drugs," said Felix.

  "She said it was about redemption. She didn't mention drugs."

  "Maybe it's about giving up drugs." Charley grunted. Felix massaged his disability, the torn cruciate ligaments in his right knee. One month away from his gold shield and he steps into a pothole chasing a perp down a dark street. He did a casual scan of the audience behind them.

  There was a paragraph of bio on Tasha on the sheet. Nothing about the Lycee or the Virginia prep school with a name like expensive dessert wine. He'd been going to her plays since she was, what, five? He wasn't sure about the arc from the Virgin Mary in the school Christmas pageant to Alison in The Young and the Wired, but he'd given her standing ovations at all of them, except the outdoors Shakespeare one where she played the daughter of the sorcerer: eighteen, blossomed, floating out onto the grass, barefoot, her long hair laced with jasmine and baby's breath, in a body stocking glimmery with what looked like ground diamond dust in the spotlights. He had to close his eyes, finally, it was too much, he started to feel like the hunchback, Caliban. She noticed that he didn't stand at the end. It was days before he could look her straight in the eye, and when he did… The lights were coming up. There she was, saying,

  "I don't believe this shit!" He felt Charley tensing next to him.

  She and another actor were down on all fours on a shag carpet, desperate over having just dropped an "eighth" into it.

  "Eighth of what?" Charley hissed at Felix.

  "Cocaine," Felix whispered. Charley sat in his seat for the next two hours with his cigar clamped between his teeth like the pin of a hand grenade.

  Backstage after it was over, he refused to shake Jimmy Podesta's hand. It might have developed into a scene but for the arrival of a photographer from The TriBeCa Times. They went back to the apartment, Charley, Tasha and the director, a young hotshot out of Carnegie-Mellon named Tim Tamarino.

  Charley studied the young man. He was presentable, intelligent and articulate, though Charley wondered about the eyes; they were a tad soulful for his taste.

  "Maybe your difficulty with the piece," Tim was explaining, "is that you're taking it too literally. For instance, when Alison goes into rehab, it's not just a drying-out place for cocaine addicts. There's a recontexturalizing going on. By rehab we mean that Alison is reinhabiting herself."

  "You want some more meat?"

  "Charley," Tasha sighed.

  They had coffee afterward in the indoor patio with the columns from the Alhambra and the large mosaic pool. Charley tossed croutons to Confucius, the old carp, a gift of the Chinese government. He said, "I'm like the Arabs. I love water because I grew up in dry country." Confucius shoved croutons about noncommittally in the water. Tasha sat on the edge and dangled her fingers in the water. "I'm from Texas."

  "So Tasha said."

  "I was raised by nuns. Mexicans. They came over the Rio Grande when-"

  "Pops," said Tasha, "Not with the How-I-started-from-scratch. It's kind of late."

  "Well, I-"

  "I'd be fascinated," said Tim.

  "Some other time maybe," said Charley, reinserting his cigar.

  Tasha came over and put her arms around him from behind.

  "This is a very beautiful home, Mr. Becker," said Tim.

  "Oh, this isn't home. Virginia is home. I can only spend so many days a year in New York or the IRS-"

  Tasha kissed him on the top of his head. "Maybe you could tell Tim your life story and your IRS war stories next time."

  Tim looked at his watch and said, "I better be off."

  "Drop me?" she said.

  "Sure."

  "Don't you want to spend the night here?" said Charley. "We got your bed made up."

  Charley had antennae like the National Security Agency and they picked up the microburst transmission that passed between Tasha and Tim.

  "I want to go over some notes with Tim while they're fresh."

  "Notes?"

  "On the performance." She kissed him. "Thanks for coming, Pops."

  "Pleasure," said Charley.

  "How you lie." She smiled. Tim shook his hand, a good firm shake, the kind Charley liked.

  "You'll let me know if you decide to sublet," he smiled.

  "All right." Charley laughed. "I will."

  On the way to the door he said, "I told her she could live here, it's hers anyway, but she likes it down there in Bey-root."

  "Why don't you feed yourself to Confucius," she said.

  "He'd choke, most likely."

  "I don't doubt he would," she said, sounding so like her grandmother.

  Natasha was ten months old when on one otherwise beautiful spring evening her father-Cha
rley's only child-drove the Mercedes into an oncoming car, killing himself, the waitress he had just picked up and the four occupants of the oncoming car. The Maryland State Police lab fixed his blood/alcohol content at 0.43. At the service in the private chapel, the priest clung manfully to the theme: "It is not for us to judge Charley Junior." After the ceremony Charley locked himself in his study with a bottle of bourbon and his checkbook and sat down to write out the final payoffs incidental to his son's short life.

  Charley Junior's wife did not attend the funeral owing to a headache. Charley thought of that as he wrote out zeros for the families of the waitress and the people in the other car. She was a coldhearted stunner from hunt country-long on breeding and short on cash-who'd married Charley Junior for his daddy's money, pure and simple. She moved with the baby to New York a few days after the funeral without bothering to inform Charley and his wife. Charley flew into a rage.

  "Charley," said Margaret, "you'll do yourself no good if you turn the baby's mother against you."

  He had no leverage. He'd given Charley Junior a large sum when he reached twenty-one-unwise, unwise-and now she had that. He went up to New York and saw her and did what he did well, he made a deal with her: she'd receive large monthly trustee fees in return for-letting Charley have the baby on weekends.

  One weekend she arrived with bruises. Charley grilled the Mexican nanny. The nanny said she fell. She arrived with bruises another weekend and this time Charley put the nanny through a grilling that wouldn't have been out of place in Nuremberg. In tears the old woman told him: the mother was never there, and when she was she was drunk and when she was drunk she hit the child. Charley called Tasha's mother and told her he was keeping the child.

  The FBI showed up at the farm two hours later and it was an ugly scene, the baby screaming and clutching at Charley, Margaret in tears, the Mexican nanny in tears, the FBI-mindful that they were dealing with a friend of the President's-straining to settle the matter without recourse to handcuffs.

  A few weeks later the phone rang in the middle of the night, the Mexican nanny. Come quickly, she said. He made it in less than two hours, remarkable, given the distance, the hour and the FAA violations involved. He got past the doorman and pounded on the door. He and the mother screamed at each other through the door until the nanny let him in the service entrance. The baby was bleeding from swollen lips. He picked her up and started for the door. The police, summoned by the doorman, arrested him in the lobby and she charged him with kidnapping. Charley decided he would do his case more good by refusing bail while his lawyers negotiated with his daughter-in-law's lawyers. She dropped the charges. On his release, Charley went to the Yellow Pages and looked under "Investigators-Private" and the first entry he came to was A Security (followed by AA Security and AAA Security-they were hopscotching each other backwards to get the first listing) and the man who answered was Felix Velez, recently forced off the New York police force on a Disability. They met at a coffee shop around the corner.