The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (33 page)

“Got it.”

Turnstyle proudly raised her right index finger, presented it to the crowd, then carried it to Cellophane’s computer. The wall of restraint collapsed as the dance hall erupted in cheers.

“What’s that noise?”

“They’re cheering. You’re about to cross the goal line. We’re all just wannabe cheerleaders, ya know.”

“Holy hell,” said Petey.

She touched the finger to the space bar and a video played.

General Joe Scaletta, checking on/off switches in a conference room: “We must attack New York before Tuke can have his way. We cannot allow him to take over.”

Turnstyle let Petey stew on that. “As you can see, an attack is imminent. Sunday. Now, you show me yours.”

“Anyone could have made that fake video. How do I know it’s real? Joe Scaletta?”

Turnstyle let loose a patient sigh. “Your tech-weenies are scrambling to verify if it’s fake right this second, aren’t they? Why don’t we just wait for them? And since you don’t seem to know what’s going on, here’s a little sweetener for ya.”

Petey fell silent.

“Let’s watch a little more, while we wait. Think you’ll enjoy this.”

The video lurched into action with crusty old Admiral Bowens Kerins: “I don’t agree with one single thing you have to say, Scaletta. You are totally full of shit. But I believe the country is far too fragile to take a risk on Tuke . . .” Everyone watched in silence until the Admiral raised himself to his feet, and concluded, “Prepare to launch an attack on New York, Sunday morning. Before that awful church show.”

Everybody held their breath on both sides of the phone.

Petey seemed gravely uncertain. “I don’t know who that guy is, but by the looks of him, he’s in charge.”

“Knows how to accessorize,” said Turnstyle.

“But I don’t know who he is,” whined Petey.

“Why is it that you don’t know so many, many things? And yet you want to play.”

The phone crackled with a new voice, a young voice. “Where did this video originate?”

Turnstyle bristled. “Who’s this?”

“Seedees.”

“Seedees, you fucking scumbag.”

“Love you too, Turnstyle. It’s just a payday. I’ll verify your video’s authenticity, and you’ll be on your way,” he said, but it was obvious to those who knew him he was having a hard time playing along.

Turnstyle’s eyes grew happy as she pointed to the phone for the audience’s amusement, mouthing,
Seedees is one of us
. “NPF Barracks, Bedford, Pennsylvania,” she complied dryly.

“What’s the first three tags under the private static void index?”

Turnstyle pointed to the corner of the dance hall, where three sparkling pinball machines sat. She carefully pronounced their titles: “Theatre of Magic. Medieval Madness. Cirqus Voltaire.”

Seedees continued his phony interrogation. “What component of decision theory did you employ to . . .”

Seedees voice was replaced with a sharp bang. “Please, please, please . . . OK. Enough. Stop!” shouted Petey.

His frustration lifted Turnstyle’s confidence. “Hit that button, Petey. Get in the game. Right now. Tick tock tick tock.”

“OK. OK. It’s only money.” The sound of a single keystroke echoed through the dance hall.

Everyone wanted to cheer, but Turnstyle raised a cautious hand into the air between them. She looked back and forth from Cellophane to her loyal followers. Nothing happened, except a few acid green pixilated screen duffs.

Cellophane gave her a puzzled stare. “Something’s wrong.”

Turnstyle put the phone to her lips. “What the fuck, Petey?”

“It’s not on my end. Check yourself!”

Cellophane ran a snap-diagnostic and anxiously combed her fingers through her ponytail, then jumped to her feet. “It’s there. It’s there!”

“I heard that,” said Petey. “We good?”

Turnstyle raise her head triumphantly. “You’re dismissed! Mutha-fucka!” She hung up before Petey could say another word, and shouted, “Now it’s a party.”

The bar opened and the music blared. They danced, even the Ladies Who Lunch. They flailed and sauntered and shimmied and tossed their hair into the air, immersed in an uninhibited victory dance.

Turnstyle watched from the bandstand, still shaking from the tightrope she’d just walked. She’d conned the most influential man in America with a simple time-shift maneuver, as easy as queen takes king — checkmate.

“Turnstyle. Look here,” whispered Cellophane.

She leaned over and looked carefully at a user log from Cellophane’s snap-diagnostic. She couldn’t see the anomaly at first. “What is it?”

“There. See that? That one stupid character. You can barely find it in this one line of cut-and-paste code, unless you search for it manually, right down to its font size. It means this whole transaction has been tracked by someone outside of Petey’s bank.”

Turnstyle traced the line with the tip of her little finger.

Cellophane said nervously, “Someone else was in there. Right along with us. They were already in our account — and Petey’s account, too.”

“Who? I don’t see it. Who?”

Cellophane moused over a tiny character buried in a snippet of code, and increased its size tenfold.

“See it now? The upside down martini glass with dangling swizzle stick. You see it? It means — the party’s over.”

Turnstyle stammered, “Tuke!”

* * *

M
ax and Lily
followed Catrina Enders into the heart of the cavernous mountain. MacIan had been spirited away but they hoped to find him in good hands. Their journey from the Quaker Meeting House had drained them, but their spirits lifted as they entered a new world.

Max had never seen the slightest hint of life up here. It was inconceivable, but here he was. “Is MacIan going to be all right?”

“If he can be fixed,” said Catrina, “he will be. Some of the best doctors in the world are here. And we certainly have the very best facility. He was breathing when he came in, so his chances are good.”

They walked through an area filled with unusual devices that would normally have caught Max’s eye, but he was consumed by MacIan’s potential death. “Is there anything we can do?”

“Sorry, no. Not right now. All you can do is wait.”

Max slowed to a halt. “Wait? If that’s the case, there’s something I should do. Can I take the Peregrine?”

“Of course. It might as well be yours,” said Catrina, regretting the morbid implication. “We have others.”

“Can I come back here?”

“Yes. It’s in >Destinations.”

“Let’s go,” said Max, waving furiously to Lily. “I gotta show you something.”

He and Lily jumped into the Peregrine. Max tapped >Main Menu >Destinations. The list appeared, and he jabbed his thumb onto >Guttenberg NJ.

They roared off in a blur.

B
ishop Virginia McWilliams Hendrix
stormed through her palatial private chambers, eyes dark and resentful. Petey had declared, most vehemently, that he was not to be disturbed while working on his floating greenhouses. But this was different. A lowly neighborhood watch had just crushed the mighty Leprechaun Nation. She stormed off across the sculpture garden and down to the paved dock.

She was struck by how long the flotilla of barges had become. There were now seven strung along the dock, front to back; she couldn’t tell how many side by side, and huge tugboats were attached to each end. The kind of tugboats that bring oil tankers through the Verrazano Strait and park them in New York Harbor. As she got closer, she could see that not all the barges were greenhouses. Several that must have arrived recently were extremely fancy houseboats with sundecks and hot tubs.

Along the dock, a swarm of workmen were fortifying the flotilla with hundreds of small stainless steel coolers. They tipped their hats and went about their business as she passed, each puzzled by the look of disbelief on her face. This was certainly excessive, but she was used to Petey’s eccentricities; he could afford them. She spotted him and waved. He waved back and quickly jumped ashore.

“What is all this?” she said.

He took her by the shoulders and steered her back toward the sculpture garden. “Oh, ya know . . . just another hobby gone wild.”

“Well, that’s not the only thing that’s gone wild. The NPF has attacked and destroyed those Leprechauns who were tracking down your friend, Tuke, in Pittsburgh.”

“Holy Hell. So they are willing to attack,” he said, smiling inwardly. “I knew Murthy would screw this up.”

“Thomka usually keeps him in line. I don’t know what happened.”

“Where is Murthy?”

“Don’t know.”

“Where’s Thomka?”

“No one’s heard from him since last night.”

“Call Murthy and tell him to straighten this shit out.” He shooed her away. “I told you there’d be a spark that’d set things off. This Leprechaun thing could be it.”

Virginia rushed back to her bedroom and dialed Murthy. He answered as he always did. “Hello, my darling. How are you?”

“Not good!”

“Oh?” He was in the middle of his weekly haircut.

“There’s trouble with the Leprechauns.”

“Always is.”

“Not anymore. They’re all dead.”

“Dead?!” He waved off the barber.

“Yeah. And you’ll never guess who killed them.”

“Who?”

“The NPF. The Peregrine Fleet. And that pick-up team of neighborhood yokels from that broken-down brewery.”

“Damn it. Thomka was right. I hate that.”

“You gotta get in touch with him, right now. This is heading down the crapper and I’m not going with it. Call Thomka and call me right back.”

“OK. I’m on it.”

Murthy hung up and dialed Thomka. He let it ring until the call went to voice mail. He clicked off and began to get out of the barber’s chair, but paused to study his coif.

“A little more off right here, please.”

* * *

C
amille sat
at her kitchen island watching the Battle of the 22nd Street Bridge a second time, replaying the blast furnace door crushing Boyne’s transporter several times in slow motion. A deep sense of satisfaction drew her to her living room windows to gawk at Manhattan and imagine the whole hell-scape smoldering. How delicious. She went back to her computer, framed herself, and said, “Cassandra?”

Cassandra’s face filled the screen. “Yes, dear.”

“Where’s Max and MacIan?”

Cassandra looked lost. “I don’t know. Last I heard they were on their way to the Quaker Meeting House.”

They stared at each other for a painful second. “I’m sure they’re all right,” said Cassandra, but her cheerfulness seemed strained.

“The Quaker Meeting House has been destroyed,” someone shouted.

Camille’s eyes bulged as her screen filled with a video of it in flames.

“That doesn’t mean a thing,” said Cassandra. “That MacIan’s tough as a two-dollar steak.”

“You don’t know the half . . .” Camille mumbled, staring at her screen.

Max’s smudged face filled her screen. “Miss Camille?” he yelled.

“Max!”

“I’m on my way to pick you up. MacIan’s been hurt.”

She cringed.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Please be downstairs.”

“I’m there.” She breathed a sigh.

Max blinked off; Cassandra blinked on and leaned close. “It’s all gonna work out.” She gave a reaffirming smile, and said in a motherly voice, “Wear something nice.”

L
evi Tuke stood
in a swarm of young people watching the video of General Joe Scaletta in the NPF conference room: “We must attack New York before Tuke can have his . . .”

“Who is that?” asked a young man. The video paused, hanging on an unappealing frame of Joe Scaletta.

“General Joe,” yelled Tuke’s research assistant, Nuxplaza. “He’s one of those return-to-feudalism gasbags. Trust fund baby. Great-grandfather’s money — plastic acetates. No one pays attention to him.”

The video ended with Admiral Kerins: “I can no longer live with my shame. Prepare to launch an attack on New York City, Sunday morning, early. Before that awful church show.”

“Who’s that?” asked several others.

“Bowen Kerins,” said Tuke. “An honorable man caught in a terminal shame spiral.”

“They have to be stopped,” said a woman from the back.

“Maybe Turnstyle can help,” said another.

“I love Manhatmazon,” shouted another.

”Turnstyle! Brava! Brava!” filled the room

“Big Brass!” echoed many more. “Big Brass!”

Tuke joined in the applause. “That was one of the most elegant constructs I’ve seen. Petey asked for a game, and she gamed him. Brava, Turnstyle. I want her on our side.”

“Never,” yelled all the women in chorus.

“Why?” Tuke cried, more hurt than disappointed.

“She sees things like a woman,” said an older woman. “She’s the mother of many mothers. Keep your nose out of it.”

Tuke accepted that with a pouty lip and moved on. “I never thought Petey would take sides with Scaletta. How’d the NPF get involved?”

“He didn’t take sides with Scaletta, and certainly not with the NPF,” interrupted ReplayAJ, Non-Zero Sum Game Coordinator, a sturdy woman with warm but wispy white hair sitting on the edge of a large table. “Scaletta’s a holier-than-thou loudmouth. He’s been tricking him for years.” AJ slipped from the table and gathered some papers from it as though preparing to leave. “Scaletta is a non-thinker. He defers to ideology, lashing out at anything that might sully its purity.” ReplayAJ was second only to Tuke in their casual hierarchy, but number one amongst the women. “He’s praying for a miracle.”

Tuke stretched out his arms in admiration. “We need a counter-game. Please? Something that’ll carry us to Sunday morning, ‘before that awful Church show.’ We’ve got to slow them down.”

“Constantinople!” ReplayAJ interrupted.

“Constantinople? Hmmm.” Tuke bowed his head and smiled broadly. “Constantinople it is.”

* * *

“
L
et that maniac go
,” said Admiral Carson, as the one Leprechaun transporter that’d escaped the 10th Street Tunnel careened up 5th Avenue. “Pull back before he kills somebody. We know where he’s going.”

“Break off,” said Squadron Leader Kolojejchick. “Orders, Admiral?”

“Let’s put a nice big door in that wall of theirs.”

In a matter of minutes, the Peregrines were doing a close fly-over of Gatekeeper Square to warn non-combatants. Sheer pandemonium sent the tourists swirling as the Peregrines menaced the area from the Square to the administration building. Squadron Leader Kolojejchick had to wait until the civilians got clear of what was certain to be a big blast with a deadly shower of rubble. He looked over toward the river. “Get rid of those mine layers.”

Two Peregrines broke off and strafed the utility dock. The stored ordnance detonated, sending a concussion wave up from the banks of the Allegheny like an earthquake. Six spectacular river yachts in mid-stream were buried in burning shrapnel and burst into flame. Panic broke out in the adjoining neighborhood as metal and fiberglass rained down upon tourists and Wall workers alike.

Freddy Cochran and his secretary/cousin hoisted a window and calmly stared straight out and into Kolojejchick’s wind dome. Freddy knew this day was coming, but never thought it would be — this day. He just shook his head and laughed ironically.

Kolojejchick drifted toward the square enough to see the last of the tourists running away. But now he could see the residents of the Burbclave rushing toward the Wall. They wanted to be there when it came down, assuming it would fall onto the Good Side. He flew low over the Burbclave, dipping to within a few meters of their heads. They got the message and ran for cover.

Gatekeeper Square seemed quite lonely, awash in festive lighting and funereal stillness. A sad Irish ballad echoed off its pilfered stones from an empty ale house.

Kolojejchick formed the squad into a line facing the Wall, and backed them to the optimum striking distance. “Hit it right where it meets the street, at the foundations. Keep the damage to a minimum. Do not hit the bridge.”

The squadron stood off at about a hundred yards, parallel to the Wall. They could still see a few people running through the streets and hear that sad melody. It sounded so familiar.

The squadron waited, checking the target area with their sensors. In a few seconds it was all clear. Except for Freddy and his secretary/cousin who stood defiantly in the window singing that sad song at the top of their lungs.

“Fire!”

A fusillade struck the base of the Wall. For what seemed an eternity it hovered above its foundations, then fell forward, on top of the posh buildings across the high street, crushing the Leprechaun nation in one fell swoop.

“Mission accomplished, Admiral,” said Kolojejchick.

“Return to base.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

They saddled up and headed east, as hundreds of Burbclave Preppers rushed into the land they had been for so long denied to toast the Leprechauns’ demise with their own whiskey.

“What were they singing?” asked Kolojejchick.

A younger pilot chuckled. “Danny Boy, I’m sure.”

Lieutenant DeFeo chimed in, “It wasn’t Danny Boy. I could read their lips.”

“What was it?” asked a chorus of pilots.

“We’ll meet again.”