Greenhouse Summer

by Norman Spinrad

  “What’s the problem, Eric?”

  “I not only felt like an idiot turning her down, it made me feel, well . . . impotent. As if I were only some sort of . . . of . . .”

  “Doorman in a fancy monkey suit?” Mom suggested.

  Eric flushed. “I’m sure that’s how I must’ve seemed to her.”

  “So whaddya want me to do, tell her you’re really a tough guy who’s made his bones?”

  “I want you to call Eduardo. I want you to do it now.”

  Eduardo Ramirez was Eric’s official non-official conduit to the Bad Boys board and Eric could just as well have called him himself. But Eduardo was also one of Mom’s lovers and dealing with him through her gave her son a certain twisted leverage.

  “And tell him what?”

  “About Monique Calhoun’s offer.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? So he can authorize me to accept it.”

  “You’ve gotta be thinking with your dick, Eric, because your brain’s gotta know it ain’t gonna happen. La Reine is not for rent period, and you know why. An extra mil over ten days would be nice, but not worth the risk of compromising the real operation.”

  “Call Eduardo, Mom. Tell him the story. Sweet-talk him.”

  “I’ll humor you as far as making the call, Eric,” Mom told him. “But if and when and how I sweet-talk Eduardo is between him and me.”

  She pulled her mobile out of her purse, got up from the outdoor table, and walked a discreet distance away down the street before she used it.

  Eric sat there drumming his fingers on the table for a good five minutes as he watched Mom talking to Eduardo Ramirez. When she finally finished, she turned, took off her sunglasses in a kind of a thoughtful gesture, and sauntered slowly back to the table with a bemused expression.

  “Well?” Eric demanded.

  “Well, Eduardo will meet us on the boat,” Mom told him, shaking her head slightly. “He’s very interested. He wants to have a serious talk about it.”

  Eric regarded her slyly. “Come on, Mom, how did you do it?” he wheedled. “What did you tell him to make it happen?”

  Mom shrugged.

  “Just the facts, ma’am,” she said in a strange flat voice, no doubt another of her obscure gangster pix references.

  Eric didn’t get it.

  And from the look on her face, it seemed that Mom didn’t either.

  La Reine de la Seine provided food, music, drink, drugs, sex, and gambling for her guests above deck, but not any prospect of privacy for Prince Eric Esterhazy, who spent two hours doing the usual—greeting guests as they came aboard, chatting at the bar and the baccarat and poker tables, pressing the flesh and massaging the ego—before he had a chance to slip below deck to more discreet environs.

  Below the waterline, in addition to the engine room and the galley, were the boudoirs of assignation, Eric’s dressing room, and a secure room keyed to his retina-print which housed the receiving end of the surveillance equipment.

  The boudoirs were all occupied by paying guests, and Eric didn’t want to hold a meeting with Eduardo Ramirez and his mother in what amounted to a clothes closet with a bed in it, so the computer room it was.

  This was the heart of the real onboard business, and it was all business, no Lost Louisianne decor here. Plain gray bulkheads. A wall of video screens. A computer rig whose mundane appearance concealed powerful ten-rat meatware supporting a top-of-the-line AI program. Recording devices. Boxes of spare memory chips and cards. And only two swivel chairs, leaving Eric standing as Mom and Eduardo took them.

  They made an odd couple sitting side by side, Mom in her black suit and Bogie fedora, Eduardo casually elegant as usual in blue-and-white seersucker slacks and a fawn-colored jacket sewn from the skin of a real fawn. About the only thing they appeared to have in common was how well they had aged, Mom still trim enough not to look ridiculous in her outfit, Eduardo, with his perfectly coiffed hair still black, his white ascot, and his affectation of gold-rimmed glasses, looking like an eminently successful director of cinema or theater or opera.

  “So Eric, it is your considered opinion that we should make an exception to policy and rent out the boat?” Eduardo Ramirez said.

  “An extra million wu for ten days’ rental of La Reine? Why not? Fools and their money.”

  “Bread & Circuses is your idea of a ship of fools?” Mom drawled.

  “The UN is and it’s their money.”

  “Or so you assume,” said Eduardo.

  “Or so I assume?”

  “The United Nations has been indigent to the point of chronic mendicancy for decades. Aren’t you curious as to the source of their sudden major budget enhancement?”

  “Loot first and ask questions later, as Mom would say. Who cares where it came from as long as we know it’s coming to us?”

  Eduardo affected the sinister leer of some godfather out of one of Mom’s old gangster pix. This was hardly his style, but around Mom, he occasionally put it on to please her.

  “I care,” he said. “Because we know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Where the money’s coming from. It could be interesting to know why.”

  “And your little Miss Calhoun?” Mom chimed in. “Looks like her Bread & Circuses VIP services job may be a cover.”

  “Cover for what?”

  “That is another question it might be in our interest to have answered,” said Eduardo. “Which is why you are right about renting her La Reine after a fashion, if not for the right reason.”

  Eric regarded him in total confusion. “I am? It isn’t? Would you mind telling me what I need to know?”

  “What you need to know is that Monique Calhoun seemed to be merely one of Bread & Circuses’ media mercenaries,” Eduardo told him. “She first came to our attention when she went to Libya and appeared to come up with a brilliant ploy that sealed a deal to the mutual benefit of Advanced Projects Associates acting as agent for the Big Blue Machine, an Israeli construction syndic, and ourselves. Soon thereafter, she surfaced in Paris seemingly to run Bread & Circuses’ VIP services at UNACOCS, interfacing with the principal via Mossad. What does that suggest to you, Eric?”

  Eric stared at him blankly.

  “Use the old noodle!” Mom told him. “Little Miss Nobody supposedly pulls off a sweet deal in Libya for the Big Blue Machine and an Israeli syndic, and pow, bam, shows up here running B&C’s VIP operation for Big Blue via their Mossad controller—”

  “Wait a minute!” Eric exclaimed. “The Big Blue Machine is backing the conference?”

  “No,” said Mom, “the UN is getting its financing via flying saucers from Alpha Centauri.”

  “Duh . . .” said Eric.

  “Exactly,” said Eduardo.

  It all fell into place. Both Mossad and the Israeli construction syndic might be semi-autonomous pieces of the former full sovereignty of Israel, but Israeli syndics tended to hire each other and scratch each other’s backs.

  So Occam’s straight razor would indeed have it that a clever move in Libya to the benefit of an Israeli construction syndic and Big Blue would be more likely to have been designed in a wily Mossad think tank than by some low-level B&C operative.

  Especially when she shows up soon thereafter way off her usual turf reporting to a Mossad controller in the employ of the Big Blue Machine.

  But . . .

  “But why is Big Blue financing a United Nations climate conference in a Green town like Paris? And who is Monique Calhoun working for? Bread & Circuses? Big Blue? Mossad? And why is whoever it is so willing to spend two million wu to rent out La Reine for the duration?”

  Eduardo Ramirez smiled at Eric in the manner of a teacher pleased that a not-unintelligent student a bit slow on the uptake had finally gotten it.

  “That,” he said, “is what we need to know.”

  “So?”

  “So, gallant gentleman that you are, you relent. Up to a point. For two million wu, she may indeed rent La Reine d
e la Seine for the duration of the conference, but on a nonexclusive basis. She controls half the guest list, but you retain control of the other half.”

  “For two million wu? She’ll never do it. She’ll cut the offer in half.”

  “Bargain the difference in ten percent intervals down to a million and a half.”

  “What makes you think they . . . whoever they are . . . will go even that high?” Eric asked.

  “Because they would not have been willing to spend two million wu simply to wine and dine their favored guests in style,” Eduardo told him. “Because in the waters in which both Bad Boys and Mossad swim, it would be assumed that we are running La Reine as an intelligence-gathering operation. Which is why they want to rent it in the first place. And why they will be willing to pay a million and a half, when, after much hard bargaining, you reluctantly allow Ms. Calhoun to use these surveillance facilities.”

  “What? Compromise the whole operation!”

  “Better inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in, in the immortal words of Lyndon Johnson,” Mom said cryptically. “Especially when it’s your tent, and you’re in control.”

  “Ms. Calhoun is not to be granted independent retina-print access to this control room,” Eduardo elucidated. “She is not allowed in here alone. She is not allowed to bring anyone in with her. She most certainly is not allowed to know that Ignatz exists. All she is permitted to purchase is the raw data in realtime and the means to record it.”

  “A disney,” said Eric, beginning to be amused.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Eduardo.

  “With you at her side the whole time to lead her by the clit through it,” said Mom. “Get to her. Find out what’s going on.”

  “Why . . . Mother, you’re not suggesting that I . . . seduce the lady, are you?”

  “It’s a dirty job, Eric, but somehow I think you can . . . rise to the occasion, kiddo.”

  Avi Posner had cut Monique off after she told him that Eric Esterhazy had called to offer a rather unanticipated form of deal.

  “Never assume that a phone is secure,” Posner had told her. “But you can generally assume that the rooms in a hotel on the level of the Ritz are clean, because if anyone found a bug, the occupancy rate would swiftly approach zero as a limit. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  While she waited, Monique passed the time wondering whether Posner had ever been inside a suite at the Ritz, and if not, whether that, more than the security issue, had been his major motivation.

  It took him only about fifteen minutes to arrive. She opened the door, ushered him in with a little ironic bow, observed his reaction as he surveyed the huge salon, running his eyes quickly and measuringly over the blue and gold flocking, the antique furniture, the rugs, the mahogany and silver-filigree media console, the mirrors, the chandelier, the paintings, like an insurance syndic appraiser.

  “Bordel, as the French would say,” he said. He finally cracked a small smile. “Or more accurately, perhaps, bordello.”

  So much for the pleasantries. Posner seated himself not very comfortably on the edge of a yellow and silver striped armchair.

  “Well?” he said.

  Monique sat down on a matching couch across a curvaceous marble coffee table.

  “Well Esterhazy called late last night to tell me that I had charmed him into a change of heart and he was now willing to accept our offer to rent La Reine for two million work units.”

  “That was easy,” Posner said suspiciously.

  “There’s a catch,” Monique told him. “A rather large one.”

  “That’s a relief,” Posner said, and his body language seemed to tell Monique that he meant it.

  “For two million wu, we get half the boat.”

  “Half the boat? How is that possible?”

  “We get to control half the nightly guest list, but Esterhazy keeps control of the other half.”

  “Interesting . . .” Posner muttered. “Maybe better than anticipated . . .” Then more sharply: “What did you tell him?”

  “Half the guest list, half the money.”

  “And he said . . . ?”

  “A million eight.”

  “And you said?”

  “A million two. And he said, let’s continue the haggling over lunch on La Reine. And I was mightily relieved to say okay.” Monique shrugged. “Because I had no idea of whether you even want me to continue bargaining on this basis.”

  “Excellent!” Posner told her. “You’ve done very well.”

  “I have?”

  Avi Posner bounced to his feet, began wearing a circle in an expensive rug as he spoke. “We now know that the amount of the rental fee is not a serious issue, and the policy level of Bad Boys have their own reasons to want our guests on their boat—”

  “Bad Boys!” Monique exclaimed. “You never told me that La Reine de la Seine was a Bad Boys enterprise!”

  Posner froze in his tracks, regarded her blankly. “This I had to tell you?” he said. “Esterhazy works as a front man for a series of casinos and whorehouses and then does likewise for La Reine and you imagine he is what, a citizen-shareholder in Moonlight & Roses?”

  When it was pointed out to her in such a gentle manner, Monique did feel like a bit of a naif for not having seen the obvious. Indeed, the machinations of Avi Posner and whatever it was that he really represented were beginning to make her feel a good deal less the worldly sophisticate she had imagined herself to be in New York.

  “So Bad Boys, or an entity employing Bad Boys, has an interest in our client’s interest in UNACOCS,” Posner continued in his previous mode as he resumed his pacing. “Else they would not propose sharing their data sponge with our operation—”

  “Data sponge?”

  Again Posner froze. Again he gave Monique a look that made her feel born yesterday. “Why do you imagine we were willing to overpay for the boat in the first place?”

  “Uh . . . because it’s the current ultimate in Parisian chic?”

  Avi Posner rolled his eyes toward the rococo ceiling.

  It would have been nice to have found something intelligent to say, but Monique’s wits had failed her, for once again she found herself abruptly realizing that she was out of her depth.

  “Bad Boys would never have missed the opportunity to thoroughly wire the boat, no inside information required to deduce that, one must merely assume that one is not dealing with morons,” Posner said.

  He sat down. He frowned.

  “I had assumed in the end they would’ve simply agreed to give us access to the surveillance equipment if we made it a deal-breaker—”

  “And tempted them with a big enough overpayment!”

  Instead of the broad expression of approval she had hoped for, Monique got a mere nod of the head, which, she decided, she might as well take as a sign of professional acceptance.

  “But now it appears that there’s a player who wishes us to do just that,” Posner muttered to himself. “Almost enough to have a rational man pondering Third Force dialectics . . .”

  “Bad Boys themselves?” Monique suggested brightly.

  “Maybe . . . maybe not . . .”

  “But why?”

  Avi Posner seemed to snap back into focus. “Those are indeed the operative questions,” he said sharply. The smile he gave her was entirely mirthless.

  “And it would be considered an act of friendship if you found out,” he added, in a manner that indicated that what it would be considered an act of if she didn’t was something she felt no current need to know.

  “So, huh, how do you want me to deal with Esterhazy . . . ?” Monique asked nervously. “Do I make the deal? How high should I be prepared to go?”

  “Oh, you make the deal all right,” Posner said immediately, “and you go as high as you have to to do it.”

  He seemed to ponder some inner landscape for long moments.

  “But you don’t make it easy,” he finally said. “And when you final
ly agree on a number, you tell him that access to the surveillance data is a deal-breaker.”

  “You think Esterhazy will really go for it?”

  “Esterhazy would not have the authority to either accept it or turn it down,” Posner told her.

  “Therefore if he does either, it means that our move was anticipated in advance . . .”

  Now Avi Posner finally did favor her with a genuine smile of approval, a virtual pat on the head. “Very good, Monique,” he told her. “You’re learning fast.”

  Monique’s bask in Posner’s approval was fleeting, however.

  Oh, she was learning fast, all right.

  The unsettling question was, learning what?

  In order to reach La Reine de la Seine’s anchorage at the Quai Branly, Monique had to skirt the sorry sight of a low-end tourist pier crafted as a nineteenth-century New Orleans levee, the perfect tastelessness marred only by the fact that the strolling banjo-playing minstrels were real blacks, rather than whites in blackface.

  Once she had passed through the fence surrounding La Reine’s private dock, this sleazy carnival was hidden from sight by a hedge, but while the embarkation pavilion, done up as an outsized, plantation house gazebo, might be a high-budget version, it still impressed her as yet another disney.

  Tied up at the dock shorn of its light shows and holoed smokestacks, the great white riverboat itself seemed a shadow of the grande dame she had beheld from the dining room of La Cuisine Humaine promenading down the river under full son et lumière and virtual steam.

  Prince Eric Esterhazy himself met her at the gangway, wearing what was probably his notion of informal attire, a brightly patterned red, yellow, and brown short-sleeved African leisure suit, which in some perverse manner made him a figure inversely reminiscent of the minstrels in straw hats and peppermint-stick suits she had just seen on the tourist pier.

  “Welcome aboard The Queen of the River, oh Queen of my Heart,” he oozed, kissing her hand, but with a sardonic edge that cut the goose-grease and made it almost charming.