“You’d think Ice would show more confidence, wouldn’t you?” with a look both faraway and fearful, as if seeing something approach from a close-enough perimeter. “Him with his high-level connections. Instead here he is insecure, anxious, angry, like some loan shark or pimp who’s just learned he can’t depend for help on the cops he’s paying off, or even on the higher levels he has to report to—no SEC to hear his sad complaint, no Fraud Unit, he’s alone.”

“So what you guys were really arguing about in there was somebody leaking information?”

“I should be so lucky. When information wants to be free, blabbing never counts as worse than a misdemeanor.”

With something else then in the next sentence, just about to drop, which is when Felix shows up, just short of suspicious, as if he and Lester might have their own nondisclosure arrangements.

Lester has been trying to compose his face into an innocent blank, but some tell must’ve slipped through, because Felix now throws Maxine one of those “You better not be fucking anything up, here, eh?” sorts of look, grabs Lester, and hustles him off.

She is once again, as with the make-believe nerd in the men’s toilet, visited by a strong hint of secret intention. As if customizing cash registers may all along have been a cover story for what Felix is really up to.

While for some the night is growing blurry, for Maxine it’s turning staccato, breaking up into small microepisodes separated by pulses of forgetting. She remembers looking at the sign-up sheet and seeing she has apparently, not fully knowing why, called Steely Dan’s up-tempo ballad of memory and regret, “Are You with Me Dr. Wu.” Next thing she knows she’s up at the mike, with Lester unexpectedly stepping in to sing harmony on the hook. During the saxophone break while Koreans holler “Pass the mike,” they find themselves doing disco moves. “Paradise Garage,” Maxine sez. “You?”

“Danceteria mostly.” She risks a quick look at his face. He carries a furtive fantasizing gaze she’s seen too many times before, an awareness of living not only on borrowed money but on borrowed time also.

Then she’s out in the street and everybody is scattering, the Korean tour bus has shown up and the driver and hostesses are in a lively screamfest with their haewoned passengers, Rocky and Cornelia are waving and air-kissing their way into the back of a rented Town Car, Felix is talking earnestly into a mobile phone, and the disguised heavy from the men’s toilet removes his thick plastic frames, puts on a ball cap, adjusts an invisible cloak, and vanishes halfway down the block.

Leaving behind them in the Lucky 18 an empty orchestra playing to an empty room.

15

Around 11:30 in the morning, Maxine spots a substantial black vehicle which reminds her of a vintage Packard only longer, parked near her office, disregarding the signs that say no parking for an hour and a half on that side to allow for street sweeping. Usual practice is for everybody to double-park on the other side and wait for the sweeper to come through, then move back in in its wake and park legally again. Maxine notices that nobody is waiting anywhere near the mystery limo and that, even more curiously, parking enforcement, usually found in this neighborhood like cheetahs at the fringes of antelope herds, is mysteriously absent. Here, in fact, even as she watches, comes the sweeper, wheezing noisily around the corner, then, catching sight of the limo, pausing as if to consider its options. Procedure would be for the sweeper to pull up behind the offending vehicle and wait for it to move. Instead, creeping nervously on up the block, it swerves apologetically around the lengthy ride and hastens to the corner.

Maxine notices a Cyrillic bumper sticker, which as she is shortly to learn reads MY OTHER LIMO IS A MAYBACH, for this vehicle here turns out, actually, to be a ZiL-41047, brought over piece by piece from Russia, reassembled in Brooklyn, and belonging to Igor Dashkov. Maxine, peering through the tinted glass, is interested to find March Kelleher inside, deep in confabulation with Igor. The window cranks down, and Igor puts his head out, along with a Fairway bag which appears to be stuffed with money.

“Maxi, kagdila. Madoff Securities advice was excellent! Just in time! My associates are so happy! Over moon! They took steps, assets are safe, and this is for you.”

Maxine recoils, only partly out of the classic accountant’s allergy to real folding money. “You fuckin insane?”

“Amount you saved them was considerable.”

“I can’t accept this.”

“Suppose we call it retainer.”

“And who’d be hiring me exactly?”

Shrug, smile, nothing more specific.

“March, what’s with this guy? And what are you doing in there?”

“Hop in.” As she does so, Maxine notices that March is sitting there counting a lapful of greenbacks of her own. “No and I’m not the GF either.”

“Let’s see, that leaves what . . . dope dealer?”

“Shh-shh!” grabbing her arm. For as it turns out, March’s ex-husband Sid has in fact been running substances in and out of the little marina up at Tubby Hook, at the river end of Dyckman Street, and Igor here it seems is one of his clients. “I emphasize ‘running,’ March explains. “Sid, whatever the package might be, he’s just the deliveryperson, never likes to look inside.”

“Because inside this package he doesn’t look in . . . ?”

Well, for Igor it’s methcathinone, also known as bathtub speed, “The bathtub in this case being, my guess is it’s over in Jersey.”

“Sid always has good product,” Igor nods, “not this cheap kitchen-stove Latvian shnyaga which is pink from permanganate they don’t get rid of, before long you are deeply fucked up, like you don’t walk right, you shake? Latvian dzhef, do me a favor, Maxine! don’t go near it, it ain’t dzhef! it’s govno!”

“I’ll try and remember.”

“You had breakfast? We got ice cream here, what kind you like?”

Maxine notices a sizable freezer under the bar. “Thanks, little early in the day.”

“No, no, it’s real ice cream,” Igor explains. “Russian ice cream. Not this Euromarket food-police shit.”

“High butterfat content,” March translates. “Soviet-era nostalgia, basically.”

“Fucking Nestlé,” Igor rooting through the freezer. “Fucking unsaturated vegetable oils. Hippie shit. Corrupting entire generation. I have arrangements, fly this in once a month on refrigerator plane to Kennedy. OK, so we got Ice-Fili here, Ramzai, also Inmarko, from Novosibirsk, very awesome morozhenoye, Metelitsa, Talosto . . . today, for you, on special, hazelnut, chocolate chips, vishnya, which is sour cherry . . .”

“Can I maybe just take some for later?”

She ends up with a number of half-kilo Family Packs in an assortment of flavors.

“Thanks, Igor, this all seems to be here,” March stashing the currency in her purse. She’s planning to go uptown tonight to meet Sid and pick up his delivery for Igor. “You ought to come along, Maxi. Just a simple pickup, come on, it’ll be fun.”

“My grasp of the drug laws is a little shaky, March, but last time I checked, this is Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance.”

“Yes, but it’s also Sid. A complex situation.”

“A B felony. You and your ex—I gather you’re still . . . close?”

“Don’t leer, Maxi, it causes wrinkles,” climbing out of the ZiL, waiting for Maxine. “Remember to count what’s in your Fairway bag, there.”

“Why, when I don’t even know how much it’s supposed to be to begin with, see what I’m saying.”

There’s a cart with coffee and bagels on the corner. It’s warm today, they find a stoop to sit on and take a coffee break.