Читать книгу Very Mercenary - Rayo Casablanca - Страница 7

1.

Midday and a man in a cheap navy business suit sips soda and takes small bites of a bologna sandwich in the bland cafeteria of Omni ConsumerTronics in Passaic, New Jersey.

The man is young and wears a fake moustache and thick-rimmed glasses. He sits alone. The cafeteria, however, is large and packed with similarly dressed businessmen and business-women.

Somewhere Muzak plays.

The man in the navy suit nods at passersby and when he finishes his sandwich he wipes the crumbs from his lips with a handkerchief. This he folds carefully and places in the right breast pocket of his suit.

An older man in a tight sweater asks if he can share the navy-suited man’s table.

Navy nods.

Sweater says, “I’m Ron Gomez. Receiving.”

“Hi.” Navy half smiles.

Ron says, “These burritos are terrible but I just can’t help myself.”

“I’ve been warned about them.”

Ron laughs. “Mexican and New Jersey go together like bagels and shrimp.”

Navy coughs. “Excuse me.” He pulls an albuterol inhaler from his jacket and takes two puffs.

“I like your ’stash.” Ron smiles and points at his own upper lip.

“Enjoy your lunch,” Navy says and stands.

Ron gives a thumbs-up. “Needs some green chili.”

The navy-suited man walks over to the soda fountain where he refills his drink and looks out over the cafeteria. That’s when a cell phone rings in the left breast pocket of his jacket. He answers, “Where are we?”

A voice cloaked in static says, “T minus five.”

“What’s taken so long?” Navy asks.

“Usual.”

“Fucker. Give me a countdown, I’m moving to the east side.”

Navy makes his way leisurely to the opposite side of the cafeteria, where the walls are mostly glass. Outside it’s raining. A golf cart with two men in baseball caps maneuvers between a copse of elms beside a small pond. Navy says, “Where are the cameras?”

“South by the fire extinguisher, east by the deli counter. T minus three.”

“Picture good?”

“Yes.”

“Feed?”

“Good.”

Navy stands at the windows and nods to the men in the golf cart. One of them waves. Navy says, into the phone, “Tell that moron to keep his hands down.”

“T minus two. You ready?”

“Course.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if the explosive charges we used were too big? I mean, if the place just goes down like when they do demo on skyscrapers. Just poof.”

“Hilarious.”

“T minus one. Do your thing, maestro.”

The navy-suited man with the fake moustache puts the cell back in his jacket and turns to face the cafeteria. He clears his throat and cups his hands around his mouth. “Excuse me! Excuse me! Good employees of Omni ConsumerTronics, I am the chief operations officer for Strategic Art Defense and your corporate mess hall is about to be remodeled. Just sit tight. No one move and this shouldn’t hurt a bit.”

The good employees sit at their tables, look to each other, shrug, screw up their faces. The ones standing sit. Several make for the exit. But before any of them can speak there is a crackling sound and then a rush like a passing car and the walls begin to fall inward; all of them come billowing in like tossed sheets. Someone screams. Plates crash. But the walls don’t thud to the floor and send bits of plaster flying like shrapnel; there is no cloud of dust and particulates. No, it’s not the walls that have fallen but the floral-patterned wallpaper. Within seconds, the walls are bare of flowers and the floors and tables are draped. A number of people struggle out from under the sheaves of paper looking furious, looking confused. Navy suit, still at the window, shouts, “Remain calm! The operation’s almost complete.”

There is silence as the last wallpaper strips curl down. All of the Omni ConsumerTronics employees gaze in wonder at what’s been revealed, at the wall beneath the wall.

Photo collages.

Each wall, all sixteen feet up and eighty-odd feet back, covered in three by fives like tiles. Each wall, the photos are aligned to produce large pictures from a distance. On the north wall the photos all come together in a woman, smiling and smoking a joint. Someone near the espresso machine says, “Isn’t that Allison in human resources?” The south wall, it’s a man holding aloft an inflatable sheep. Someone over by the cash register shouts, “That’s Karl Asaro!” Last wall, west wall, the image is another man, this one in drag. Everyone sees it but no one shouts. Eyes, widened, avert. This is because the man in drag is Omni ConsumerTronic’s CEO Andrew Godwin looking as cheerfully proper in a wig and makeup as he does in the portrait hanging by the clock above the entrance to the cafeteria.

The employees wander to the collages. They look, point, mumbling all the while. Each photo is a photo of an employee. And even though the faces are blacked out, they still recognize their coworkers. Some of them are just smiling and waving. Others are sleeping with their heads on their desks or smoking in the break room or making photocopies of their cleavage. The good employees of Omni ConsumerTronics see themselves in the collages. They see their coworkers going to the bathroom, their bosses fucking trannies on desktops. They turn away from the walls blushing or giggling or screaming or, in the case of one blond man, fainting.

The chief operations officer for Strategic Art Defense surveys the crowd and then bows his head and says, “Gentle employees of this multinational monstrosity, I bid you good evening. Enjoy the art!” And with a running leap he crashes through the large east wall windows, rolls on the rain-slicked lawn, and dashes out into the settling fog.

There is a loud crowd at Motor Town in the East Village and tables are scarce.

The jukebox is down again but one of the bar backs has set up a ghetto blaster, cranked up all the way, and while the sound is terrible and tinny the music competes amiably with the raucousness of the drinkers. Sitting on wobbly stools at the front near the Jesus icons that cover the walls, the chief operations officer for Strategic Art Defense, still wearing his navy suit, sips a Little King with the two men from the golf cart. One of them, black with smooth features, a menacing goatee, and a cowboy hat, says, “Any word from Uncle Al?”

“Yeah. All clear.” The chief operations officer for Strategic Art Defense nods. He says, “Cops moved in half an hour later but not before the Net was blowing up with reviews, critiques. All brilliant, of course.”

“And?”

“And the bids came rolling in about twenty minutes ago. Omni ConsumerTronics said they’re willing to split any proceeds down the middle. Love to support the arts, they say.”

“Naturally.”

The third man, narrow eyed and gangly, asks, “We moving on the apartment cull?”

Navy suit says, “Tonight. Recon. The tour is wrapping up better than expected and I’m feeling good about the prospects in Newark.”

“The stars are aligned.” Gangly nods sagely.

Goatee asks, “When’s Richter coming in?”

“The twenty-third. I’ll give him love but bet he’ll be drooling to help. I get why it’s me who has to be the face of this thing and interact with Richter but I’m dying inside because of it. Cody, I’d love to see you try and suck up to him.”

Goateed Cody says, “That’s not my bag, boss. You’re the one with the superhuman abilities.” He looks over to the gangly guy and says, “Let’s put Rufus on Richter detail.”

“Hell no,” Rufus says. “Supremely bad karma.”

Cody scoffs.

“How do you see all this going down, Laser?” asks Rufus.

“We need experts,” Laser, the chief operations officer for Strategic Art Defense, says. “Botanists. Engineers. People with solar backgrounds. We need entomologists too.”

Laser says, “We start scouting here, one, maybe two jobs, and then, when we’ve honed it, we hit the big fish.”

Rufus asks, “Send out the memo?”

“Sure. So who’s coming with me?”

Cody says, “I’ll drive.”

From: Strategic Art Defense

To: All media outlets

We are your coworkers.

Your lovers. Your children. We are the people you sit next to on the bus. On the plane. The people you manage and think you know. The people behind you in line at the supermarket. The people bagging the groceries. The people ringing up your purchases.

We’re here to tell you that your life is no longer safe from art.

You push it away. You enclose it in museums. Trap it in books.

But art is alive and it is real.

And you are not safe from it.

We, the multitudinous members of the Strategic Art Defense, have operatives throughout the United States ready and waiting for the clarion call of art. Our operatives are working dead-end jobs. They are sipping coffee and writing in notebooks. They are pushing baby strollers and buying socks. They are laughing out loud in movie theatres at terrible jokes and singing along with the latest recycled pop music. They are waiting.

Waiting for the call.

And, ladies and gentlemen of the unsuspecting world, the call will come sooner than you think. When it does, your neighbors, the kid who cuts your lawn, the woman who does your nails, the man who drives the bus you ride to work on, all of us will rise up and recreate America in the name of art.

God took six days.

We’ll do it in five.

Your humble servants,

The members of Strategic Art Defense

Cody and Laser are sitting in Laser’s 1989 Chevy Caprice on Seventh in Newark eating burgers from a fast-food joint. Cody is laughing, saying, “Because that’s how I roll.”

Laser shakes his head like a parent after his son has just told him something embarrassing, something crude. Cody looks down at his burger and says, “Bet there’s cancer all over this thing.”

“There’s cancer all over life, Cody.”

“You are one morose motherfucker,” Cody scoffs. “I’m hoping we can bust out the uniforms sometime soon. Itching to try those out.”

“I’m not sure how they’d fit in exactly.”

“Liven it up a bit. I don’t know, give us some flare.”

“Flare?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you think we really need flare?”

“Couldn’t hurt.”

“Did Anton Nilson or Huey Newton or Benny Levy need flare?”

“Okay. Okay. It’s just that we’re also artists, that this is a revolution for art.”

“And those uniforms help make that clearer?”

Cody huffs, “At least it makes it a bit more interesting. Hell, Laser, you should just quit now and start your own militia in Bolivia or Uganda. You want it all dour and disciplined like we’re in the army. Revolutions don’t have to look boring, you know.”

“I just want us taken seriously.”

Cody shrugs. “I need coffee. I’m heading over to the shop on Sixth. Want anything?”

“Hostess fruit pie.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I eat one maybe twice a year.”

“Shit, Laser, what flavor?”

“Lemon. If they don’t have that, then cherry.”

“I let you subject yourself to that and you promise me we’ll bust out the uniforms at one of these apartment jobs. I don’t need an audience like in Detroit, just let me wear the damned thing.”

“Fine.”

Cody shoots Laser a quick smile and then hops out of the car. Before he closes the door he leans in and says, “I won’t tell the other guys about this. It’ll be our little secret, okay?”

With Cody gone, Laser flips through a tattered copy of Fighting Stars Ninja before scanning the Abako Apartments building across the street. It’s maybe midcentury and in serious decline. He’s noticing the way the sodium light from a high-rise a block down reflects off the penthouse windows when he sees her. She’s naked. He can’t see her face, but he can make out the shape of her naked body and he can see her palms against the glass.

She’s there long enough for Laser to get out his night vision binoculars. Takes him twenty-six seconds to realize he’s looking at Leigh Tiller, kidnapped heiress. But it takes him thirty to breathe again. Laser stares at her face. She looks asleep. Her eyes are half closed. He notices her eyelashes, how long and dark they are. For a second he thinks back to the women he’s dated and realizes that he’s never noticed anyone’s eyelashes like this before. Until now it was like eyelashes didn’t exist.

He notices her body as well. He doesn’t linger on her breasts or the tight curls of pubic hair. He feels dirty just passing his gaze over them. It’s like she’s modeling. Like she’s on display. He wishes he had a camera. He thinks of taking a snapshot with his cell phone but knows that it wouldn’t turn out right. For the first time in a very long time he wishes he had a sketchpad. There is something ethereal about Leigh in the window. She’s as remote as ever but stripped bare and only Laser can see her. Though she’s naked for the entire city to see, this show is Laser’s alone. Her there in the window, it’s art. The finest art Laser’s seen.

She is a mirage there.

And yet her beauty only steels Laser’s nerves. Seeing the way her hair ripples over the surface of her features, he stifles the urge to sigh. To sit back, mouth agape, and ogle her. He does this because he knows that she is more than just a kidnapped heiress, more than an attractive woman. He does this because he knows she’s the ultimate commodity. If he plays his cards right he can use Leigh to bring Strategic Art Defense to the masses. She can be the winning hand.

He’s startled when Cody gets back into the car. “Only had chocolate, my friend. I’ve never had one of these tasty treats but the guy at the register informed me that most people prefer the fruit fillings. Sorry.”

Laser says nothing. He hands Cody the bulky binoculars and points to the apartment building. Cody takes a few bites of his beef jerky before raising the binoculars to his eyes. “What? You like that building?”

Laser says, “Penthouse windows.”

Cody moves the binoculars up and then chokes. “Is that…?”

“Yup.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“You’re looking at her.”

Cody turns to Laser. “You called the cops?”

“No.”

“Good. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“This is going to be very tricky. We need surveillance night and day. We can’t be seen. We need everything documented. All I’ve seen is her. No clue how many kidnappers.”

“How much you think we can get?”

“Not about money.”

“Taking it higher, huh?”

“As high as it goes.”