“Just step careful. Send me some footage sometime. Oh, and Reg?”

“Anything, my sister.”

“Think I ought to short Microsoft?”

•   •   •

NEXT TIME MAXINE AND CORNELIA do lunch, they agree to meet down at Streetlight People. Maxine brings Rocky a Xerox of the hashslingrz file Windust gave her.

“Here, the latest on how hashslingrz is spending your money.”

Rocky scans a page or two with a quizzical face. “Who generated this thing?”

“No-name agency down in D.C., obviously with some ax to grind, but I can’t figure out what it is. Hiding behind some jive-ass think tank.”

“Comes at a good time anyway, we’ve been looking at our exit options from hashslingrz, it’s OK I show this to Spud and the board?”

“If they can follow it, sure, what are you guys thinking these days, recapitalize?”

“Probably, there’s no IPO in the works, no M&A, they got plenty of government work, frankly it’s just time to get out. The cash, naturally, but there’s something else about them over there, like . . . can I say evil?”

“This is what, Mister Rogers’s neighborhood? I assume you mean IBM- or Microsoft-type evil.”

“You ever had eye contact with this guy? It’s like he knows you know how bad it could be and he don’ give a shit?”

“Thought it was only me.”

“None of us know how complicated this is gonna get, who they’re really workin for, but if even people in D.C. are gettin worried now,” tapping the dossier, “it’s cash-for-equity time.”

“So I take it I’m off the case.”

“But on my Rolodex forever.”

“Spare her,” Cornelia breezing in. “He’s always telling me the same thing, don’t listen.”

“Git outta here, ya ditzy broads, I got woik ta do.”

Owing to Cornelia’s impression that Maxine somehow observes kosher eating guidelines, they end up at another “Jewish” deli, Mrs. Pincus’s Chicken Soup Emporium. A chain, yet. Everybody seems to be from out of town. Fortunately, the appetites Maxine and Cornelia have brought with them are more for schmoozing than for authenticity-challenged gefilte fish.

Presently Cornelia, with the skill of an accomplished close-up card artist, has out of what seems a randomly shuffled deck of lunch conversation lightly brought them to the topic of families and the eccentrics to be found lurking therein.

“My policy,” Maxine sez, “is don’t get me started, all too soon we’re back in the shtetl with some dark magic in progress.”

“Oh, tell me. My family, well . . . ‘Talk about dysfunctional!’ pretty much sums it up. We’ve even got one in the CIA.”

“One? I thought all you people worked for the CIA.”

“Only Cousin Lloyd. Well, that I know of.”

“He’s allowed to talk about what he does?”

“Perhaps not. We’re never sure. It’s . . . it’s Lloyd, you see.”

“Y— Well, not exactly.”

“You must understand these are Long Island Thrubwells, not at all to be confused with the Manhattan branch of the family, and though we have never embraced eugenics or anything of that sort, it is often difficult not to entertain some DNA-based explanation for what, after all, does present rather a pattern.”

“High percentage of . . .”

“Idiots, basically, mm-hmm . . . Don’t mistake my meaning, Cousin Lloyd was always an agreeable child, he and I got along well, at family gatherings none of the food he threw would actually ever strike me personally . . . But beyond mealtime assault, his true gift, one might say compulsion, was for tattling. He was always creeping about, observing the less supervised activities of his peers, taking detailed notes, and when these weren’t convincing enough, I’m embarrassed to say, making things up.”

“So, perfect CIA material.”

“Ever so long on their wait list, till last year a position in the Inspector General’s office fell vacant.”

“And this is like Internal Affairs, he actually snitches on the CIA? that’s not dangerous for him?”

“It’s mostly inventory theft, they’re forever stealing bullets to use in their own private weapons? that seems to be one of Cousin Lloyd’s pet peeves.”

“So he’s working in ‘D.C. now,’ as Martha and the Vandellas might say. Does he ever do any moonlighting? Like, consultation?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. Idiots have expenses, after all, the medications, the frequent blackmail payments and police bribes, the pointed hats, which of course have to be custom-fitted . . . but I do hope, Maxi, that you aren’t in any sort of difficulty with the Agency?”

Why are disingenuousness alarms suddenly going off here? “Some agency, maybe not that one, but coming from down in that direction at least, yes indeed, and you know, come to think of it, suppose there was something I might like to talk over with your cousin . . .”

“Shall I ask him to get in touch?”

“Thanks, Cornelia, I owe you one . . . or, without having met Lloyd yet, say at least half of one.”

“No, thank you, Maxi, this has all been so wonderful. So . . .” gesturing around Mrs. Pincus’s as if at a loss for words.

Maxine, lips closed and eyes narrowed, one more than the other, smiles. “Ethnic.”

•   •   •

COUSIN LLOYD, luckily not into the NYC dating scene, where haste like this would earn him instant rejection, calls Maxine early the next day. He sounds so nervous that Maxine decides to lull him with generic accounting-fraud talk. “Right now it’s all converging on a think tank down there called TANGO? You’ve heard of them?”

“Oh. Very much the hot property in town right now. Quite popular with Double-U and his crowd.”

“One of their people, an operative named Windust, is proving a little problematic, I can’t seem to find anything about him, not even an official bio, he’s password-protected to the max, firewalls behind firewalls, I don’t have the resources to get past any of that.” Little me. “And if it turns out he was involved in, oh, let’s say . . . embezzling . . .”

“And, not wishing to presume . . . you two are . . . chums?” managing to surround the word with guttural slime.

“Hmm. Once again, whoever’s listening, I am not numbered among Mr. Windust’s fan base and know next to nothing about him, except he’s some kind of Friedmanite hit man, working 24/7 to keep the world convenient for people perhaps much like yourself, Mr. Thrubwell.”

“Oh, dear, no offense I hope . . . I will try to see what I can do from this end. Our databases—they’re world-famous, you know. I’m cleared pretty much all the way to Eyes Only, it shouldn’t be a bother.”

“I so look forward.”

Thanks to the thumb drive Marvin delivered, of course, Maxine has most of Windust’s résumé already, so putting Lloyd on his case is not for informational purposes, especially . . . In fact, Maxine, why are you harassing the man? Some honorable obsession about nailing the likely murderer of Lester Traipse, or just feeling neglected, missing the old pantyhose ripper’s curious notions about foreplay? Talk about ambivalent!

At least, if Lloyd is half the idiot his cousin Cornelia thinks he is, Windust should become aware of CIA interest in a fairly short time. No reason he shouldn’t start watching his back like everybody else. Right now petty molestation is about all that’s available to Maxine, down here in the small time, without anything you could call a moral sight line, no way to know how to compete at that elite level, that planetary pyramid scheme Windust’s employers have always bet everything on, with its smoothly delivered myths of the limitless. No idea of how to step outside her own history of safe choices and dowse her way across the desert of this precarious hour, hoping to find what? some refuge, some American DeepArcher . . .

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