The Price You Pay

by Aidan Truhen

  I do not have alligators because my money is ghost money. It exists in the First Bank of Nowhere, in the interstices of cryptocurrency and post-Geneva private financial jurisdictions. Places that make Panama and the Vatican look transparent like Sweden which maybe you don’t know has the most transparent central bank in the world. Scores 14.5 out of a possible 15 and frankly they dropped that half point just so New Zealand wouldn’t feel bad. Wall Street money is pirate money, loud and stupid and drunk, gets mugged in an alleyway and wakes up in the navy. My money is ninja money, strikes from the darkness, appears and disappears. Where do you keep your money Jack? Stuxnet baby. I keep my money in a digitally mobile distributed illegal wallet construct part-created by the NSA and stolen by @LuciferousYestergirl who is either a German anarchist or a Japanese-Nordic postdoc. When I want cash I push buttons and there is cash in a briefcase because I pay for it to happen. No one in the chain knows what they’re handling or where it is going, just like my coke. The whole thing happens because water flows downhill. It happens the way an egg comes out of a chicken’s vajayjay.

  Well that image is gonna stay with me.

  The service is called Poltergeist because it doesn’t exist but it moves the world. Based out of Iceland where they really care about discretion in the digital context. Got data centres there under the snow, powered by fucking lava how cool is that? Ice cold and powered by the actual fucking burning core of the world. So Poltergeist is like the oasis, the place in the desert where all the animals come together and don’t no one fight because everyone needs the water. Criminal Switzerland man. In fact it’s absolutely Switzerland because that shit is federal. There’s no one Poltergeist there’s a whole crowd of them all hidden separately and different under the ice. I read where some of them aren’t even on the island they’re up up up in the frozen north like for real the North fucking Pole. Some of them are in other countries in places that don’t even know they are hosting Poltergeist. Some of them are in your house like distributed computing. On your fucking phone. On the screensaver of every box in Dzerzhinsky Square. Poltergeist is everywhere and it is amazing. But Iceland is where it begins and ends. Cryptography is geopolitics is ideology is what you can get away with. Under the ice in a country of laws that say stay the fuck out of here: that’s where you leave your key. And it ties right back to services in the real world. Concierge services. Cab firms. City courier bikes. Takeaway food. All good digital commerce, networked and legit and twenty-first-century cool.

  Happenstance: means you can do what I do. Run crime without criminals.

  Karenina helped me set it up but that doesn’t matter because the service is asymmetrical. You can know how someone does it but you still can’t fuck it up without access and she doesn’t have it. Plus she doesn’t know where she just knows how. She can look for me in the right places but I’m still invisible and there’s no cure for that.

  My money is protected, so I am.

  All the same they’re looking for me now and looking hard. I can hide but not forever because everyone makes mistakes, me and them. Fog of war, fog of crime. Time to go to Sunday school. Time to talk Demonology.

  THEY’RE NOT CALLED THE SEVEN DEMONS just because it sounds killer. That’s not a focus group name. It’s one they earned way back in the day, when their whole thing was new. Back when most likely none of these Demons today were in the crew because you know even Demons get old eventually and step aside. The guys who got that name and began all this—before I was born okay? I mean in prehistoric times when Jane Fonda was the hottest woman in the world—those Demons are likely all gone on now to the giant hellish frying pan in the sky. What you have here is basically indestructible: an idea of a gang of seven that restores its losses and never stops. It is defined by a complete lack of compunction, by being more fucking terrifying than the gold standard of contemporary fucking terrifyingness. The Demons are the way they are because that’s the way they are and when you sign up you take that on. The present roster supposedly includes—apart from Karenina and the recently headcannoned Johnny Cubano—two brothers previously from a Finnish freelance crew specialising in torture and logistical operations; a former private military contractor turned warlord; a doctor with a fondness for unlicensed human experiments; and a public relations executive. No one knows what it is that the PR guy does that makes him evil beyond ordinary PR but it evidently impressed the others so much they recruited him and now he’s in charge.

  These things have a rhythm and you have to accept that. Here I am riding high but I know I won’t be forever. There’s no way I get through this without losing some skin. Some stuff I care about. There’s no way. I got a little Lao Tzu back there, like speed is the essence of warfare, or Sun Tzu, appear where the enemy does not expect you. I made a point. Now they’ll make theirs. Some stuff I care about.

  Someone I care about.

  But this isn’t a personal matter it’s professional and you gotta have some integrity in your business. Plus right now I am Al Qaeda.

  You know what Al Qaeda is? Al Qaeda is a business model. It’s not an organisation and that is why it is a motherfucker to eradicate. Ooo but Jack no we bombed those fuckers in their caves and they are all gooooone! Are they dumbass? Are they really? Are they gone when a bunch of pressure cookers blow up in a crowd? Are they gone when there’s a fucking nation in the middle of Syria and Iraq that belongs to armed fuckheadry? Al Qaeda is a concept, a way of working. Instead of saying that you are going to mount an offensive from a specific point under the command of specific generals you just tell people there’s a war on and they should use whatever tools they can if they believe in the cause. You tell them that a section of downpipe stuffed with nails is as good as a tank if you put it in the right place and you tell them that anything is a target and you tell them to go hurt the enemy and the enemy is anyone they want to hurt. That is Al Qaeda. It is permission to be a fucking asshole in the name of god.

  I am a fucking asshole already. I don’t need permission. And I will never be gone.

  Anyway look here’s what it is: the Seven Demons are not really into jobs like this but their rep is so total that they don’t really need to be most of the time and anyway, hey, how much trouble can a dick like me possibly be? Well, grapefruit gun much, fuck you to the maximum but still. This is what the playbook says they have to do: they must control the theatre. Full-spectrum dominance. They must have control of communications infrastructure and they must own the local authorities and the street cops and they must control the press and the landscape. They don’t have to do this personally they just need to hold the city and that is what they have done.

  This is the second thing they will do: they will isolate me. They will use their control to cut me off in so far as possible from my resources, my organisation, my soldiers. I cannot walk into any place I am known without dying. I cannot talk to anyone I know without dying. They will take the oases, the high ground, the castles. They will kill my friends and turn my allies. They will make the world my enemy. And finally they will reduce the area in which I can move until I am forced from cover and then they will kill me and that will be that.

  Except that I don’t have friends or castles. I just have me.

  You’ve got to understand the business you are in, today’s business not yesterday’s. Know what the land looks like under your feet. Know the fucking substrate. I know the substrate, and they do not. Karenina gets some of it, maybe, but Karenina is a monofocus person. She does not do big picture, concept. She’s perfect at seeing the shape of the stones. She’ll never step back far enough to see the mosaic. Pardon me for the poetry.

  So they are coming for me. But they’re not really set up to operate in this kind of war. They think they are but they’re not. They’re great with killing presidents and blackmailing megacorporations and coups in countries and criminal organisations but I’m not one of those. I don’t have to protect anything except myself. I’m a b
usiness plan walking, and this is my century not theirs.

  IN THE BAR ON 3RD THAT USED TO BE a Scottish punk dive I tell them I’m a skip tracer from the west and order a beer. Lots of those types in here: bondsmen, security guards and wannabes, PIs, fraud and even fire investigators, insurance folks. This is where you go if you got a cop job but you’re not a cop so the real ones won’t talk to you. Every fucker has a bar that’s too good for someone or equally a bar someone else is too good for. That’s what this is: low ceiling and low light and enough watered booze that no-crease polyester and bad skin look okay after a couple house specials.

  This bar is for these people so that is what I say I am. I say I’m looking for Jack Price and I flash my geological teeth. Got a hat. Hat makes me look painfully fucking white like white from somewhere that’s something people are unreasonably shitkicking proud of. The clientele here decides I am a lowlife, one fractional gradation closer to criminality than they are and they won’t talk to me. That’s fine. That’s okay. I’m Bob Simons I’m looking for Jack Price he’s got outstanding warrants in Filamore Bay. I show them a picture of Jack Price from five years ago, hipster-phase Jack with facial hair arrangements we will not discuss.

  Anyone run across this guy?

  Any reason we would?

  Guy makes like he’s upstanding like straight, sells cocaine is what I hear, got no organisation to speak of so maybe is what I’m saying. Maybe he uses people in our line to find other people in his line for reasons other than warrants.

  (I have done that in the past. Then I realised these guys were fucking d-bags and I stopped but okay surely surely someone has to remember that?)

  No one does. Fucking d-bags got no sense of professional opportunity.

  I leave a card in case anyone heard anything about Jack Price: Call me there’s a finder’s fee okay?

  Three more bars to cover. D-bag bars. Drink about a mouthful of beer in each one, bad beer you can feel in your pores.

  A few hours later: phone call. Cell number to VoIP. Hard to track is the point.

  Man who sounds like a sommelier says: Is that Bob Simons?

  Phone’s got what they call a confounder, fucks up your voice some. I switch it on.

  Yeah, probably. Probably I’m Simons cos this is his phone and his dick is in my pants so I guess either I’m Simons or I know the guy reasonably fucking well. Who’s this?

  Call me Frederick.

  Okay, Fred.

  I understand you’re looking for Jack Price.

  You found him?

  Not at all. I am also looking for him.

  Well that’s nice Fred I hope I find him first. No offence.

  Mr. Simons I will pay you eight million one hundred and four thousand nine hundred twenty eight and change for Jack Price if you bring him to me instead of to your present employer.

  That’s pretty fucking specific that amount you want to call it an even ten mill?

  Acceptable.

  You’re gonna give me ten million dollars. An extra one and one half million dollars just because I asked?

  I believe that is what I said.

  Then why the crazy numbers?

  If I had offered you ten million would you have said twelve?

  Yeah.

  If I had offered you twelve would you have said fifteen?

  Yeah sure.

  I find an ugly number concentrates the mind. There is ten million for you Mr. Simons, not twelve, and you understand that now on an instinctive level. Do not ask me why that is a deeper mystery than I can answer.

  Okay. I got conditions.

  Name them.

  I don’t work with dogs.

  Acceptable.

  I don’t work with dogs, Irish, or fucking crazy Sicilians. You work with any a those kinds of people then I ain’t in it.

  Noted.

  Payment in bearer bonds. No crypto no cash no wire transfers and no fucking krugerrands.

  You have very specific tastes.

  This is not my first ride on the fuck you bus mister and the reason I am riding it again speaks to how I was insufficiently fucking particular last time around. If I’da been then I would be doing belly shots with Miss Nude Caracas right now insteada talking to you.

  An evocative image, Mr. Simons.

  And no fucking women neither. This kinda thing is between men, women ain’t cut out for it.

  Indeed.

  Yeah indeed is right. Okay if I find him I’ll call you. This number okay?

  Ten million. Bearer bonds. No women, no dogs, Irish, crazy Sicilians. You will call on this number. That is fine.

  Fine.

  Fine.

  Bye.

  In the general run of things I don’t like to perpetuate negative attitudes towards women in the criminal professions because those attitudes are batshit ridiculous but as a practical matter there is one woman I really don’t want to bump into. Coming face-to-face with Karenina would fatally cramp my style.

  YOU HAVE TO ASK WHY. Why are the Seven Demons here at all and what kind of asshole puts out that kind of money for just me? There’s two dozen regular footpads between here and the waffle stand outside Baptist ministry who would have killed me for less than fifty thousand and a hundred more basic urban fuckheads woulda been grateful for the chance to make a name and pick up the keys to an inexpensive saloon. The crazy thing is that I would probably be dead now because I would’ve waited out that midnight moment and maybe gone for eggs in the morning and splat. Bye Jack.

  So why?

  There’s a woman named Martine who works in the Probate Office. That’s probate like wills and testaments not probation like crooks or prostate like the erection golfball in a guy’s ass. The public waiting room is mint green like the inside of a sport sock and full of people who are not only grieving for somebody but now also pissed off because they are waiting for the government to admit that that person is dead.

  Hi Martine how you doing? Beanie Paul says you’re a lady does business o’ the informational variety.

  Go fuck yourself.

  Martine that is no way to greet a member of the public in a government office plus also I am a friend to all mankind.

  I ain’t doing it whatever it is.

  For the commonality and love of all mankind.

  No.

  For friendship Martine.

  If I got friendship and peanut butter—

  Yes you could have peanut butter sandwiches—if you also had some bread.

  I was gonna say I could rub it all over myself and get off and you could keep the other part. Plus also I don’t even know your name.

  Simons. Bob Simons. I’m a skip tracer I guess.

  Well guess this I ain’t gonna.

  I will give you cash money Martine.

  Nope. Nuh uh.

  Jewellery.

  Nopety nope nope.

  I can arrange complimentary manscaping for a partner or friend.

  Fuck you say? Manscaping? What even is that?

  The trimming or removal by waxing looping laser or other methods known and unknown of intimate hair from the male body in such manner as to produce visually attractive contours and more amenable tactile surfaces during intercourse and also as a hygienic measure to reduce unwanted odour.

  You can make that happen? Even involuntarily maybe if I was to supply a name?

  Martine I believe we can come to an arrangement.

  Never underestimate the variety of human motivations: we do come to an arrangement and Martine copies all papers pertaining to Didi Fraser and puts them in a bag for me. It is white and made of biodegradable plastic and it has large black letters like moveable type printed on the outside. On the crosstown I skim through it. In an earlier life Didi worked in a school two hundred miles from here. Before that she failed
to be either a singer or a garden designer. She was legally blind but too proud to have a support animal which also makes it very unlikely that she saw something she shouldn’t have.

  She was not the beneficiary of a trust fund or an unknown uncle with a diamond mine. She had some money—like middle class money not like exciting money—which was enough to cover her costs because she basically lived on air and water and she never went out or bought anything. No one particularly wanted her apartment—no real estate scheme relied on her death like in a bad TV show. The Probate Office does not have an official view on whether she killed Kennedy or Oswald or Ruby but I’m going out on a limb and say not.

  In other words there’s just no reason anyone would kill Didi Fraser and hire the Seven Demons to cover it up.

  Didi Fraser was a boring, nice, nasty old dame. It makes no sense.

  Sitting in my crosstown seat I realise I’ve made a mistake somewhere. Yes. Yes, I used Simons’ name at the Probate Office as well as at the skip trace bars. Mistake.

  The train car is almost empty but I’m pretty sure that’s the doctor sitting on my left. Pretty sure because there’s that weird cold like a breaking wave, like touching a live wire, like falling into space. Pretty sure that’s nightfall.

  She has lovely eyes, the doctor. Deep and full of fire like polished calcite. Mouth like roses covered in honey.

  Count backwards from I’m dead.

  WAKING UP IS NICE IN THAT I didn’t think I would. It’s not nice because I doubt it’s permanent. Open one eye expecting to be in a bathtub full of ice. Not a bathroom. Big expensive modernist living room, corner views. If not a penthouse then near enough. I could jump.

  Memory: my asshole friend should have taken the elevator. Don’t think about it now. Can’t afford a fugue now. Think about the pale wood floor with the imported silk rugs, I’m saying Chinese not Persian but still. Tribal masks from South America. And then there’s one other thing. I smell zagara flowers and Swedish-Haitian-Lebanese hair.