Bleeding Edge

by Pynchon, Thomas

  Back on the Thruway, Grisha replacing Misha behind the wheel now, “They’ve got to have pretty tight security up there,” Maxine as if it’s just occurred to her, “how are you planning to get past it?”

  “Yeah,” Tallis shifting into a cheery tough-moppet voice, “are you gonna go crashing in the gate?”

  Misha pushes up a sleeve, revealing one of his prison tats, Ever-Virgin Mary Mother of God holding her baby, Jesus, on whose forehead at about third-eye position Maxine now can just detect a little bump about the size of a zit, which babies aren’t supposed to have. “Transponder implant,” Misha explains. “We found out from social-engineering cute nyashetchka we met in bar.”

  “Tiffany,” Grisha recalls.

  “Everybody who works for hashslingrz gets one of these, so Security can track them wherever they go.”

  Wait a minute. “My sister’s husband has been walking around with a tracking implant? Since—”

  Shrug, “Couple months. Even Ice Man himself has one. You didn’t know that?”

  “You, Tallis?”

  “Only till I could get my dermatologist back from St. Maarten’s to take it out.”

  “And when you went dark, Hubby never said anything?”

  The cute fingernail. “I guess I wasn’t thinking past Chazz and me, and how to keep it from Gabe.”

  “Once again, Tallis,” Maxine doesn’t want to be the bully here, but the news isn’t penetrating. “Gabe knew, he planned the whole thing, of course he didn’t make an issue.” Stubborn kid. She wonders how March ever dealt with this.

  The interior of the limo has picked up a Gaussian blur from the smoke of inexpensive cigar tobacco and high-priced weed. Things grow merry. Not to mention less cautious. The boys admit, for one thing, that their tattoos aren’t quite legit. Seems that back in Russia, having been popped actually for minor hacker beefs under Article 272, illegal access, they were never inside for long enough to rate real prison tattoos, so later on had to settle drunkenly instead for a Brooklyn ink parlour that does knockoffs for those who wish to appear more dangerous than they are. In a passage of lighthearted back-and-forth, Misha and Grisha discuss who is more of a wannabe badass than whom, during which the Bizons get waved around, Maxine has to hope rhetorically.

  “According to Igor last time we talked,” Maxine schnozzing right ahead, “this beef between you people and Ice isn’t KGB business—”

  “Igor doesn’t know about this thing tonight.”

  “Of course not, Misha. Let’s say he has deniability and you guys are strictly on your own here. I’m still wondering why you aren’t doing it from a little further away, like on the Internet. Overflow exploit, denial of service, whatever.”

  “Too institutional. Hacker-school approach. Grisha and I are close-up type of scumbags. You didn’t notice? More personal this way.”

  “So if it’s personal . . .” She doesn’t quite mention Lester Traipse, but a crinkled, almost-kind look, the sort of expression Stalin liked to beam at you in his publicity shots, has crept into Misha’s eyes.

  “Isn’t only Lester. Please. Ice has this coming, you know it, we all know it. But better you don’t have full history.”

  Deimos-and-Phobos gamer machismo, legitimate avenging angels, what? Maybe it is about more than Lester tonight, but isn’t Lester enough? whatever he saw that he shouldn’t’ve, the visitation that meant his end rising spooky and vaporous above the spreadsheets of secret cash flow, was something that couldn’t be allowed out among civilians. . . .

  “OK, but how about a little history?”

  The fellows exchange a mischievous look. Anasha can do funny things to a man. Even to two men.

  “You heard about HALO jump.” Misha sez. “Igor tells story to everybody.”

  “Especially cute women.” sez Grisha.

  “Was not HALO jump, however. Was HAHO jump.”

  “That’s . . . laughing all the way down, no wait, High Altitude . . .”

  “High Opening. Chutes open, maybe 27,000 feet, you and your unit can fly 30, 40 miles, all stacked up in sky, lowest guy carries GLONASS receiver—”

  “Like Russian GPS. One night Igor is on insertion job, everything gets fucked up, praporschik freaks out from no oxygen, wind spreads everybody over half Caucasus, GLONASS quits working. Igor gets down OK, but now he’s all by himself. No idea where or if base camp is set up. Uses compass and map to try and find rest of his unit. Days later, smells something. Little village, totally like massacred. Young, old, dogs, everybody.”

  “Torched. That’s when Igor has soul crisis.”

  “He doesn’t only get out of Spetsnaz—when he has enough money, he sets up his own private reparation plan.”

  “Sending money to the Chechens?” wonders Maxine, “this isn’t considered treason?”

  “It’s a lot of money, and by then Igor is well protected. He even thinks abut converting to Islam, but there’s too many problems. War ends, second war starts, some of people he’s been helping are now guerrillas. Situation has grown complicated. There are Chechens and there are Chechens.”

  “Some good guys, some not so good.”

  Names of resistance organizations that Maxine can’t keep straight. But now, well, not exactly a lightbulb—more like the glowing end of an El Producto—goes on over her head.

  “So the money Lester was diverting from Ice—”

  “Was going to bad guys, by way of Wahhabist bullshit front. Igor knew how to reach money before it would get all mixed up in Emirates account. He expedites matters for Lester, takes little commission. Everything dzhef, till somebody finds out.”

  “Ice?”

  “Whoever is running Ice? You tell us.”

  “And Lester . . .” Maxine realizes she has blurted.

  “Lester was like little hedgehog in fog. Only trying to find his friends.”

  “Poor Lester.”

  What, now it’s all gonna go saline, here?

  “Exit 18,” Misha announces instead, exhaling smoke, eyes gleaming, “Poughkeepsie.” And not a moment too soon.

  The train station’s just over the bridge. Waiting in the parking lot is Yuri, a cheerful athletic type leaning against a Hummer bearing stigmata from a long history of hard road, behind it a sizable trailer with a generator for the pulse weapon. From RV generators she’s seen, Maxine estimates 10, 15,000 watts. “Ten-percent power” may be a figure of speech.

  They’re in time to catch the 10:59 to New York. “So long, boys,” Maxine waves, “go safe, can’t say I really approve, I know if my own kids ever got hold of a vircator . . .”

  “Here, don’t forget this,” discreetly handing her back the Beretta.

  “You realize you’ve just made Tallis and me accessories to some criminal, probably even terrorist, act.”

  The padonki exchange a hopeful glance. “You think so?”

  “First of all, it’s federal, hashslingrz is an arm of U.S. security—”

  “They don’t want to hear about this right now,” Tallis dragging her down the platform. “Fuckin dweebs.”

  The boys wave out the windows as they pull away. “Do svidanya Maksi! Poka, byelokurva!”

  41

  In the train on the way back, Maxine must’ve fallen asleep. She dreams she’s still in the ZiL. The landscape out the windows has frozen to deep Russian midwinter, snowfields under a piece of moon, illumination from the olden days of sleigh travel. A snow-inundated village, a church spire, a gas station shut for the night. Crossfade to Brothers Karamazov, Doctor Zhivago and others, covering their winter distances like this, frictionless, faster than anything else, suddenly you can get more than one errand done per trip, a breakthrough in romantic technology. Somewhere between Lake Heatsink and Albany, across the dark wilderness, a fleet of black SUVs now with only their fog lights lit, on the way to intercept. Maxine falls into an exitless loop, the dream as she surfaces turning into a spreadsheet she can’t follow. She wakes up around Spuyten Duyvil to Tallis’s sleeping face, closer to he
r own than you’d expect, as if sometime in sleep their faces had been even closer.

  They roll into Grand Central about 1:00 A.M., hungry. “Guess the Oyster Bar is closed.”

  “Maybe the apartment is safe by now,” Tallis offers, not believing it herself, “come on back, we’ll find something.”

  What they find, actually, is a good reason to leave again. Soon as they step out of the elevator they can hear Elvis-movie music. “Uh-oh,” Tallis looking for her keys. Before she can find them, the door is flung open and a less-than-towering presence starts in with the emotions. Behind him on a screen Shelley Fabares is dancing around holding a sign announcing I’M EVIL.

  “What’s this?” Maxine knows what it is, she chased him across half Manhattan not so long ago.

  “This is Chazz, who isn’t even supposed to know about this place.”

  “Love will find a way,” Chazz replies, jive-assingly.

  “You’re here because we broke the spy camera.”

  “You kiddin, I hate them things, darlin, if I’d known, I would’ve broke it myself.”

  “Go back, Chazz, tell your pimp it’s no sale.”

  “Please just give me a minute, Sugar, I confess at first it was all strictly business, but—”

  “Don’t call me ‘Sugar’.”

  “Nutrasweet! I’m pleading here.”

  Ah, the big, or actually midsize, lug. Tallis stalks on headshaking into the kitchen.

  “Chazz, hi,” Maxine waving as if from a distance, “nice to meet you finally, read your rap sheet, fascinating stuff, tell me, how’d a Title 18 Hall of Famer end up in the fiber business?”

  “All ’at old misbehavior, ma’am? try and rise above it ’stead of judgin me, maybe you’ll notice a pattern?”

  “Let’s see, strong background in sales.”

  Nodding amiably, “You try and hit ’em when they’re too disoriented to think. Last year when the tech bubble popped? Darklinear started hirin big time. Made a man feel like some kind of a draft pick.”

  “At the same time, Chazz,” Tallis, switched briefly to her Doormat setting, fetching beers, dips, snacks in bags, “my ex-husband-to-be wasn’t paying your employer that much just to keep little me busy.”

  “He really is just buyin fiber’s all it is, totally a fatpipe person, payin top dollar, tryin to nail down as many miles of cable as he can get, outside plant, premises, first it was just in the Northeast, now it’s anywhere out in the U.S.—”

  “Tidy consultation fees,” Maxine imagines.

  “There you go. And it’s legal too, maybe even more than some of the stuff . . .” pausing to downshift.

  “Oh, go ahead, Chazz, you were never shy about the contempt you felt for me, Gabe, the business we’re in.”

  “Real and make-believe’s all I ever meant, my artificial sweetener, I’m just a logistics- and infrastructure-type fella. Fiber’s real, you pull it through conduit, you hang it, you bury it and splice it. It weighs somethin. Your husband’s rich, maybe even smart, but he’s like all you people, livin in this dream, up in the clouds, floatin in the bubble, think ’at’s real, think again. It’s only gonna be there long as the power’s on. What happens when the grid goes dark? Generator fuel runs out and they shoot down the satellites, bomb the operation centers, and you’re all back down on planet Earth again. All that jabberin about nothin, all ’at shit music, all ’em links, down, down and gone.”

  Maxine has a moment’s image of Misha and Grisha, surfers from some strange Atlantic coast, waiting with their boards far out on the winter ocean, in the dark, waiting for the wave no one else besides Chazz and maybe a couple others will see coming.

  Chazz reaches again for the jalapeño chips, and Tallis snatches the bag away. “No more for you. Just good night already, and go tell Gabe whatever you’re going to tell him.”

  “Can’t, ’cause I quit working for him. Ain’t about to be the clown in his rodeo no more.”

  “Sounds good, Chazz. You’re here on your own, then, all because of me, how sweet is that?”

  “Because of you, and because of what it was doing to me. Guy was beginnin to feel like a drain on my spirits.”

  “Funny, that’s what my mother always said about him.”

  “I know you and your mama have been on the outs, but you should really find some way to fix ’at, Tallis.”

  “Excuse me, it’s two A.M. here, daytime TV doesn’t start for a while yet.”

  “Your mama is the most important person in your life. The only one who can get the potatoes mashed exactly the way you need ’em to be. Only one who understood when you started hangin with people she couldn’t stand. Lied about your age down to the multiplex so’s you could go watch ’em teen slasher movies together. She’ll be gone soon enough, appreciate her while you can.”

  And he’s out the door. Maxine and Tallis stand looking at each other. The King croons on. “I was going to advise ‘Dump him,’” Maxine pensive, “while shaking you back and forth . . . but now I think I’ll just settle for the shaking part.”

  • • •

  HORST IS NODDED OUT on the couch in front of The Anton Chekhov Story, starring Edward Norton, with Peter Sarsgaard as Stanislavski. Maxine tries to tiptoe on into the kitchen, but Horst, not being domestic, tuned to motel rhythms even in his sleep, flounders awake. “Maxi, what the heck.”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to—”

  “Where’ve you been all night?”

  Not yet having slid far enough into delusion to answer this literally, “I was hanging out with Tallis, she and the schmuck just parted ways, she’s got a new place, she was happy to have some company.”

  “Right. And she hasn’t had a telephone put in yet. So what about your mobile? Oh—the battery ran down, I bet.”

  “Horst, what’s the matter?”

  “Who is it, Maxi, I’d rather hear now than later.”

  Aahhh! Maybe last night the vircator in the trunk of the ZiL came on by accident? and she got zapped around by some secondary lobe from it, which hasn’t worn off yet? Because she finds herself now declaring, with every reason to believe it’s true, “There is nobody but you, Horst. Emotionally challenged fuckin ox. Never will be.”

  One tiny unblocked Horstical receptor is able to pick up this message for what it is, so he doesn’t lapse totally into Midwest Ricky Ricardo after all, only grabs his head in that familiar free-throw way and begins to unfocus the complaining a little. “Well, I called hospitals. I called cops, TV news stations, bail-bond companies, then I started in on your Rolodex. What are you doing with Uncle Dizzy’s home number?”

  “We check in from time to time, he thinks I’m his parole officer.”

  “A-and what about that Italian guy you go to karaoke joints with?”

  “One time, Horst, one group booking, nothing I’m about to repeat anytime soon.”

  “Hah! Not ‘soon,’ but sometime, right? I’ll be sitting at home, overeating to compensate, you’ll be out on that happy scene, red dress, ‘Can’t Smile Without You,’ showcase duets, gym instructors from the other side of some bridge or tunnel—”

  Maxine takes off her coat and scarf and decides to stay a couple of minutes. “Horst. Baby. We’ll go down to K-Town some night and do that, OK? I’ll find a red dress someplace. Can you sing harmony?”

  “Huh?” Puzzled, as if everybody knows. “Sure. Since I was a kid. They wouldn’t let me in the church till I learned.” Prompt to Maxine—add one more item to list of things you don’t know about this guy . . .

  They may have dozed off on the couch for a second. Suddenly it’s daybreak. The Newspaper of Record splats on the floor outside the back door. The Newfoundland puppy up on 12 starts in with the separation-anxiety blues. The boys commence their daily excursions in and out of the fridge. Catching sight of their parents on the couch, they start in with some hip-hop version of the Peaches & Herb oldie “Reunited and It Feels So Good,” Ziggy declaiming the lovey-dovey lyrics in the angriest black voice he can locate at thi
s hour, while Otis does the beatboxing.

  • • •

  THE LESTER TRAIPSE MEMORIAL PULSE, as Maxine will come to think of it, barely gets onto the local news upstate, forget Canadian coverage or the national wire, before being dropped into media oblivion. No tapes will survive, no logs. Misha and Grisha are likewise edited from the record of current events. Igor tosses hints that they might’ve been reassigned back home, even once again inside the zona, some numbered facility out in the Far East. Like UFO sightings, the night’s events enter the realm of faith. Hill-country tavern regulars will testify that out to some unknown radius into the Adirondacks that night, all television screens went apocalyptically dark—third-act movie crises, semifamous girls in tiny outfits and spike heels schlepping somebody’s latest showbiz project, sports highlights, infomercials for miracle appliances and herbal restorers of youth, sitcom reruns from more hopeful days, all forms of reality in which the basic unit is the pixel, all of it gone down without a sigh into the frozen midwatch hour. Maybe it was only the failure of one repeater up on a ridgeline, but it might as well have been the world that got reset, for that brief cycle, to the slow drumbeat of Iroquois prehistory.

  • • •

  AVI DESCHLER IS COMING HOME from work in a cheerier frame of mind. “The upstate server? No worries, we switched over to the one in Lapland. But the even better news,” hopefully, “is I think I’m gonna get bounced.”

  Brooke gazes at her stomach like a geographer with a globe of the world. “But . . .”

  “Nah—wait’ll you hear about the compensation package.”

  “Look out for ‘enhanced severance’ language,” Maxine advises, “it means you can’t sue.”

  Gabriel Ice, not too mysteriously, has gone silent. Distracted at least, Maxine hopes.

  “Tallis ought to be a little safer,” she tries to reassure March. “She’s a good kid, your daughter, not the nitwit she initially comes across as.”

  “Better than I ever gave her credit for,” which does come as a surprise, Maxine having assumed that March doesn’t even know how to do remorseful. “Too good for the shitty parent I’ve been. Remember when they were little and still held your hand in the street? I used to pull them along at my speed so they had to skip to keep up, where was I going in such a hurry I couldn’t even walk with my kids?” About to go off into some act of contrition.