Brainquake (6 page)

The Boss waited for Max.

She leaned back tensely in her big red swivel chair and stared at the door that he would be coming through to tell her face to face what he hadn’t been able to tell her on the phone. The red leather chair was not an ordinary red. She had selected a particular orange-red—a color that fascinated her when she spotted it on the underside of the wings of a redwing thrush when she was going through a book of birds. The leather was dyed special to order, and it cost her barely anything because the shop selling the furniture was one of her drops.

Her eyes frozen on the door, her mind clogged with Paul’s brainquake, she caught herself reliving her first meeting with Paul, three years after he began with the organization in a trainee job. She could plainly see the steel door sliding open…
and twenty-year-old Paul walked into her office…he glanced through her tenth-floor penthouse window at the skyscrapers towering over them.

“Paul Page?”

“Where’s the Boss?”

“I’m the Boss.”

His cipher face showed no reaction to learning that the Boss was a woman. She invited him with a gesture to sit on the other orange-red leather chair by the side of her desk. She watched him almost shyly sink into it, deflating his lean body so as not to attract any attention. He clasped both kneecaps
like a child and looked timid. Bagmen often did when they first reported to her.

But she knew that there was nothing timid about any of them, not the ones that made it to her office. Timid meant cowardly. A coward could never pass the three-year test he had passed.

There he sat. Barney’s boy. Trained by nature to have that blank face he wore. Trained for three years by Hoppie to never exhibit stupid bravery, trained to use his head, trained it was healthier to out-drive, out-walk, out-smart a pirate and lose him, trained that the gun was the bagman’s last resort.

Trained not to be a trigger-happy macho or trigger-happy cop or trigger-happy FBI man or trigger-happy CIA man.

She loathed the gun. It was manufactured to kill humans and animals. She had no control of the gun. Her bagmen loathed the gun. They were healthy in mind. That’s what she and her bagmen really had in common. She was sure that Paul also loathed the gun—or Hoppie would have scratched him from the field.

She studied Paul’s armor, the affect of the recluse, and tried to imagine his early withdrawal from life. She saw in him the seed of seclusion so many people dreamed of but couldn’t attain because they weren’t born sick in the head. Only twice had she put on a mentally retarded bagman. Three years of conditioning made them dependable robots in her kennel.

She observed his eyes staring at the exit door on the other side of the office.

“I have no secretary,” she said. “That’s the exit.”

His face remained a cipher.

“What did Barney tell you about mailmen, Paul?”

At the mention of his father’s name, his expression of nothing showed nothing.

“Did you pay the undertaker?” Paul said.

She detected the barest sound of scraping sandpaper when he spoke. She figured that was the closest he would come to showing any kind of emotion.

“I owed Barney track losses.”

He remained blank. No thanks. Nothing. And it didn’t surprise her. She asked her question again:

“What did Barney tell you about mailmen?”

“They got pensions.”

“Did he tell you they carry money in the bag?”

Paul shook his head.

“But you know.”

Paul nodded.

“Did Hoppie ever tell you, over the past three years?”

Paul shook his head.

“You figured it out by yourself?”

Paul nodded.

“How?”

“The gun.”

“You like the gun?”

He shook his head.

“You hate it?”

He nodded.

“Want a Vitamin C?”

He shook his head. She popped one in her mouth, drank water, and said, “At least I’ll die happy.”

She chuckled. No reaction from Paul.

She studied his blank face that was created for nobody to remember. Nice features, but impossible for any caricaturist to find a single quality to draw or emphasize. Eyes, nose, mouth, chin, contours normal like millions of people who have faces easily forgotten. Paul had not a single distinctive quality one could describe. He was twenty and looked like anyone. Nothing stood out.

Not too tall, not too short. T-shirt. Levis like millions of young men. Slim. Father virile, son a clump of clay. She was frustrated because parsing bagmen was like juggling smoke. To separate each part of what it took to make a bagman always baffled her. They all possessed the same psychological barrier of self-created isolation in the biggest crowd in the world.

What did it take to be the most trusted men in the most dangerous business in New York City? What gave them that incredible, dependable virtue of loyalty and trust? What made them so impervious to money? To all that cash they carried every day and every night?

Bank tellers steal. Bank directors embezzle. Cashiers steal. Bartenders steal. Politicians steal. Government officials embezzle. But when one of them was caught, he didn’t face a bullet in the brain.

That bullet in the brain didn’t keep a bagman honest.

Their honesty was something that she could never figure out, no matter how often she tried. A bagman made good money but never in the class of other jobs; never a fortune. Brokerage houses paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to their young executives before filing for bankruptcy. That was out-and-out stealing and many young men wanted to work in brokerage houses for that reason.

Bagmen carried hundreds of millions without opening the bag to borrow a few thousand. Rarely had a bagman that vanished with his bag got away with it. The ones that tried it were caught. Only when a pirate hijacked and killed a bagman was the bagman absolved. The pirate was eventually caught and killed. Whatever was left of the hijacked money was returned to her.

Looking at Paul she finally suspected how Barney had learned about the job, and about the qualifications for it. Some retired bagman who played the horses, placed bets with Barney, must’ve got drunk, run off at the mouth, told Barney that she was the Boss of all the bagmen in Manhattan. That son of yours, he must have said. What a bagman that boy would make.

She watched Paul’s eyes gliding past the things on her desk, past the monitors, past the battery of multicolored phones, past her Maltese cat rubbing its nose against the big glass bowl illuminating goldfish in a desert landscape, and then his eyes stopped and remained rooted on the black and brown leather bags that were under the table against the wall.

“There are rules, Paul. Break one, you’re dead.”

His eyes glided back to hers.

“No girls. No wife. Not now, not ever. No friends. No ambition. No hobbies. No alcohol. No dope. No gambling. No debts. No talk when delivering the mail. No borrowing from the bag. No quitting. No selling your experiences after you retire. Never tell anyone you’re a bagman.”

He remained silent.

“You understand the rules?”

Paul nodded.

“You want to carry the bag?”

Paul nodded.

“Five hundred a week as a starter. Raises every six months. Bonuses. Sick benefits. Medical care. Hospital expenses. You’ll have a small van, taxi and motorcycle. The taxi’ll be your work umbrella. You’ll open a savings account near where you live and deposit the average weekly take of a New York City taxi driver. Your home in the Battery is fine. That will be your only address. Our accountant will file your tax returns. You will never meet him. In another bank at the other end of the city you will open a safe deposit box under the name of Patrick McManus. In that box you will keep all the excess cash you earn as a bagman.

You’ll inherit route 116 from a mailman who just retired. Hoppie will introduce you to the drops on route 116. Pick out a bag over there.”

Paul picked an old black leather one. No combination. Cracks. The bag was as faceless as Paul.

Blinking crimson reflected on the Boss’ face. The ringing of trouble snapped her back to the present. She seized the red phone. As she picked it up, the blinking stopped and she heard:

“Farnsworth! Hijacked!”

“Are you hurt?”

His motorcycle was twisted around a busted hydrant. Empty green wooden box drenched by geysers of water attacking window of public phone booth. Nowhere in sight was Farnsworth’s bag. Blood covered, phone pressed to his mouth, barely breathing.

Spitting blood, he said, “He got the bag! I’m dead.” And he was, dropping the phone a second after he spoke his final word.

The Boss controlled the panic exploding inside her like a grenade. She had to think calmly, act calmly, speak calmly as she glanced at Mr. Yoshimura and his crew on the monitor, dialed, watched him pick up the phone on the desk. He was in a very good mood.

“Yes, Boss?” was his cheerful greeting.

“There’s a mole in Receiving.”

His crew could not hear her voice. But Mr. Yoshimura heard it like the blast of an A-bomb. Having been reared by proud parents in Tokyo, he controlled his voice, but although sounding reserved, panic sneaked in with every word.

“Not in my department, Boss.”

“A mailman’s dead, a half-million gone!”

Mr. Yoshimura lost control. His voice shook with anger.

“
I vouch for every man here!
”

His men stopped working, glanced at each other.

“Who vouches for
you
, Mr. Yoshimura?”

“
You
, Boss!
You
hired me!”

“Tonight every man gets another lie-detector test.
I’ll
ask the questions. You’ll be the first one in the line!”

She hung up, turned to the Laundry monitor. With growing rage she dialed once. Mr. Grigor left the table and hurried to his desk, picking up the phone.

“Yes, Boss?”

“A pirate just got one of our men, Mr. Grigor. And he wasn’t followed from the building.”

“
There’s no mole in my crew, Boss!
”

His men held their breath. Young Moe’s hands froze on a stack of bills. Mr. Hendrix winced.

“We lost a bagman and a half-million!” said the Boss. “Tonight every man gets another lie-detector test.”

“I run the cleanest laundry in Manhattan!”

“That’s where you’ll find dirt!”

On the TV replay, people were going wild running after the ambulance. The trouble phone rang again. Christ! Another hijack? She swept up the red phone at the speed of light.

“This is Zookie,” a voice said, faster than the speed of light. “I told my wife to say I’m dead, I didn’t relay the last drop. I spent the fifty grand on my kid. She’s got cancer!”

“You think I’ll buy it because your kid got cancer?”

“I’ll work it out!”

“How?”

“I gotta stay alive.”

“Why?”

“I gotta break my ass for a miracle to save my kid.”

The alley door blinked. On the monitor Williams was waiting with his bag. She pushed the button. He entered the building.

“Got a receipt for that fifty grand, Zookie?”

“In my hand, Boss. I owed for a year. The doc said no full payment, no more treatments.”

“Send it to me.”

“Right away, Boss. Am I chopped?”

“Next twenty months you get zero from me—nothing. I don’t care how you eat, don’t care how you live. You pay the rest the day the twenty months are up, or you’re not only chopped, you’re dead.”

“God bless—”

She hung up on him and furiously crossed to the dumbwaiter to shut off the chimes. Jesus Christ! Her whole life was one big boomerang. She took on Barney’s son. Now it was Zookie’s kid. She pushed the button. The panel opened. The dumbwaiter ascended to a stop. She didn’t want to think what Zookie was going through. She picked up the basket and brought it to her desk, took out the stacks of cash. She normally paid him $2,000 a month for his toy-shop drop. Twenty months, that would be forty thousand. He’d have to raise the last ten on his own. He could do it. She’d cover it in the meantime. Nobody would lose.

Except his kid. Jesus Christ! What a boomerang for that bastard. His kid may leave the world before he made his last payment.

She watched Williams enter and put his bag on her desk and open it. Paul’s age. Between them they had said about fifty words to her in the last ten years. She saw her fingers trembling as she picked up stacks and placed them on the desk. Forced herself to calm down.

“Still get your headaches, Williams?”

He nodded.

“Ever hear a flute?”

He shook his head.

“See any crazy colors?”

He shook his head. When she finished emptying the basket, she closed the bag. He put a slip of paper on the desk. She saw an address and phone number on it.

“My new address,” Williams said.

“Trouble?”

Williams nodded.

“A sniffer?”

Williams nodded. “Black. Nosy.”

“Same apartment building?”

Williams nodded.

“What wheels last week to the art gallery?”

“Taxi.”

“Use the van. A pirate scored. Mailman dead.”

Williams showed no reaction as he left. On monitors she watched him walk into a different small garage near Police HQ and she waited until he drove the van out of the garage and down the street and no vehicle followed the van. Though if there was a mole, what did it matter that no one followed? Looking at the name and address on the slip of paper, she made a phone call and ordered a check on the sniffer.

“
I gotta break my ass for a miracle to save my kid
,” Zookie had said.

So did the Boss.