“A little slow,” Rocky shrugging, “mi gratto la pancia, you know, just scratcha da stomach.”

“We say khuem grushi okolachivat,” beaming at Maxine, “knocking pears out of pear tree with dick.”

“Sounds complicated,” Maxine smiling back.

“But fun.”

Even if this guy looks like he still gets carded at clubs, apparently somewhere inside the smooth suburban packaging, nested matrioshka-deep, is a hulking battle-scarred ex-Spetsnaz toughguy eager to tell war stories from ten years ago. Next thing anybody knows, Igor is flashing back to a clandestine HALO jump over the northern Caucasus.

“Falling through night sky, over mountains, freezing my ass off, I begin to meditate—what is it I really want out of life? Kill more Chechens? Find true love and raise family, someplace warm, like Goa maybe? Almost forget to deploy my parachute. Down on ground again, everything is clear. Totally. Make lots of money.”

Rocky cackles. “Hey, I figured that one out, didn’t have to jump out of no airplane.”

“Maybe if you jump, you decide to give all your money away.”

“You know anybody ever did that?” sez Maxine.

“Strange things happen to men in Spetsnaz,” replies Igor. “Not to mention upper altitudes.”

“Ask her,” Rocky leaning in toward Igor’s ear. “Go ahead, she’s OK.”

“Ask me what?”

“Know anything about these people?” Igor slides a folder in front of her.

“Madoff Securities. Hmm, maybe some industry scuttlebutt. Bernie Madoff, a legend on the street. Said to do quite well, I recall.”

“One to two percent per month.”

“Nice average return, so what’s the problem?”

“Not average. Same every month.”

“Uh-oh.” She flips pages, has a look at the graph. “What the fuck. It’s a perfect straight line, slanting up forever?”

“Seem a little abnormal to you?”

“In this economy? Look at this—even last year, when the tech market went belly-up? No, it’s got to be a Ponzi scheme, and from the scale of these investments he could be front-running also. You have any money with him?”

“Friends of mine. They’ve become concerned.”

“And . . . these are grown-up persons who can deal with unwelcome news?”

“In their special way. But they warmly appreciate wise advice.”

“Well, that’s me, and my advice today is proceed quickly, unemotionally if possible, to the nearest exit strategy. Time is of the essence. Last month would have been good.”

“Rocky says you have gift.”

“Any idiot, nothing personal, could see this. Why isn’t the SEC taking action here? The DA, somebody.”

A shrug, eloquent eyebrows, thumb rubbing fingers.

“Well yes, that’s certainly a thought.”

For a while Maxine has been aware of peripheral armwaving and hand jive, not to mention quiet declamation and deejay sound effects, from the direction of Misha and Grisha, who turn out to be great fans of the semiunderground Russian hip-hop scene, in particular a pint-size Russian Rastafarian rap star named Detsl—having committed to memory his first two albums, Misha doing the music and beatboxing, Grisha the lyric, unless she has them switched around . . .

Igor pointedly consulting a white-gold Rolex Cellini, “Do you think hip-hop is good for them? You have children? What about them, do they . . .”

“The stuff I was listening to at that age, I’m in no position—but this number they’re doing now, it’s kinda catchy.”

“‘Vetcherinka U Detsla,’” Grisha sez.

“‘Party at Detsl’s,’” explains Misha.

“Wait, wait, let’s do ‘Ulitchnyi Boyets’ for her.”

“Next time,” Igor rising to leave, “promise.” He shakes hands with Maxine, kissing her on both cheeks, left-right-left. “I’ll pass your advice on to my friends. We’ll let you know what happens.” Tunefully away and out the door.

“Those two gorillas,” Rocky announces, “just ate two whole chocolate cream pies. Each. And I get stuck with the check.”

“So it was Igor who wanted to see me, not you?”

“Ya disappointed?”

“Nah, my kinda fella. He’s mob, or what?”

“Still tryinna figure it out. People he hangs with in Brighton Beach, some of them were in Yaponchik’s circle before the li’l Jap got popped, definitely a old-school crowd. But just doing a quick eyeball scan, no visible tats, 15 and a half collar size, ehh,” wobbling his hand, “it’s doubtful. He seems to me more like a fixer.”

•   •   •

ONE DAY, headed for The Deseret pool, Maxine finds the service elevator is tied up, perhaps till further notice—more yuppie scum moving in, no doubt. She goes looking for another elevator and eventually finds herself downstairs in the labyrinthine basement about to step, much against her better judgment, into the infamous Back Elevator, a legacy from earlier days, rumored to possess a mind of its own. In fact, Maxine has come to believe it is haunted, that Something Happened in it years ago that never got resolved, and so now whenever it sees a chance to, it tries to steer occupants in directions that might help it find some karmic relief. This time instead of going all the way up to the pool, whose button she has pressed, it takes her to a floor she doesn’t recognize right away, which turns out to be . . .

“Maxi, hey.”

She squints into the somehow greasy dimness. “Reg?”

“It’s like being in some Asian horror movie,” Reg whispers. “Oxide Pang probably. Can you kind of slide over here alongside the wall so we stay clear of that security camera?”

“And why are we keeping out of camera range, again?”

“They don’t want me in the building. By now there’s got to be at least a restraining order.”

“You’re what, you . . . stalk buildings now?”

“That fake toilet at hashslingrz? Just now out in the street, happened to spot one of the guys from there, had enough blank tape with me, so I started following and taping. Zigzagging all over the neighborhood, after a while he picks up a couple-three others I recognize, and next thing I knew, they’re all going into The Deseret here, getting star treatment at the gate. It occurs to me that since Gabriel Ice is one of the owners of this place—”

“Wait a minute, Ice? Since when?”

“Thought you knew. Any case it’s all academic now, we’ve been overtaken by events. Ice fired me off the movie yesterday. My apartment got broken into again, this time trashed, all my footage taken except what I hid.”

Not a promising development. “You better come with me. There might be a service elevator free by now.”

By way of which they manage to escape out the back and over to Riverside, where they just make it onto a bus heading downtown.

“I don’t suppose you’ve mentioned this to the cops or anything.”

“In case they need a good laugh to lighten up their otherwise grim workday, you mean. Sure, how about on my way out of town?”

“Seattle.”

“It’s time, Maxi. Ice did me a favor. I don’t need a hashslingrz movie on my résumé, bad for my image, and you know what, hashslingrz is history. Whatever happens, it’s fuckin doomed.”

“Wouldn’t say they’re on the brink of Chapter Eleven exactly.”

“If a dotcom had an immortal soul,” Reg strangely distant, as if already calling back out the window of some westbound conveyance, “hashslingrz’s’d be lost.”

They get off at 8th Street, find a pizza joint, sit for a while at a sidewalk table. Reg drifts into a patch of philosophical weather.

“Ain’t like I was ever Alfred Hitchcock or somethin. You can watch my stuff till you’re cross-eyed and there’ll never be any deeper meaning. I see something interesting, I shoot it is all. Future of film if you want to know—someday, more bandwidth, more video files up on the Internet, everybody’ll be shootin everything, way too much to look at, nothin will mean shit. Think of me as the prophet of that.”

“You’re fishing for compliments, Reg, what about that unscheduled redecoration on your apartment? Somebody must have thought highly of something you shot.”