aggressor, given how much wealth he's accumulated. In fact, extreme wealth accumulation is, according to some people, an indication of pathological obsession, personality disorder, inappropriate aggression syndrome, grandiosity, nice things like that.'
'What do you suggest, Dr. Wife?'
'I suggest you get yourself out of whatever goddamn mess you are in! Come on, Tom! What the hell else do you want me to say?'
He was deciding to tell her, she could see. 'Tom? What is it? You can't tell me?'
He made a little biting motion. 'It's a business thing.'
'You won't tell me? You're actually not going to tell me?'
'It's-I just don't want to go into it, okay?'
He looked at her, plaintively, she thought, so far buried in the structures and agendas of Good Pharma that he was more or less inextricable from it. She turned off the light, settled into bed, her mind wide awake now, even after a long day of work. Tom, she knew, was the company, the company was him. He was not the Tom Reilly she'd married. That man had disappeared at least ten years ago. That man used to be good in bed, be fun to spend time with. God help her for even having the thought, but the plain fact was that Tom had become, what, a human information processor inside the information structure that was the company. Good Pharma manufactured pills and other medical goods, but those were the endpoint results. The company didn't even make the pills, actually. They were jobbed out to for-hire pharmaceutical factories, usually in Puerto Rico or India, increasingly with proprietary manufacturing contracts. The company was a huge matrix of human information processors both running and being run by the information technology. The levels of abstraction, from the chemical composition of the pills themselves, to the research protocols, up through the organization of each division, to the management of the company as a whole, to its interaction with the health-care market on the one hand, governmental regulation on the second, and the financial markets on the third, required people like Tom, supersmart human processors who could carry around enormous levels of abstraction, segue among them and choose the proper inputs of information to each and derive the correct output information from each. You had to have a highly compartmentalized mind yet the ability to reach from one compartment to another for a piece of information that was relevant. Tom was like that and had become more so in the years she'd known him, the overall functioning of his brain becoming, arguably, more specialized in the exact manner the company required. Classic nature-nurture feedback. Environment switching on and off genes in real time, which researchers were starting to understand was possible. Her proof? Highly subjective, admittedly. But she was his wife, after all. He'd lost his playfulness. His sense of humor was far less subtle, more brutal and dark. He read faster; she could see it in the morning with the newspaper. Certain of his mental functions were more highly de veloped. He retained numbers well, perhaps because they had deeper significance. He could articulate better in social settings. He was, in fact, very good with the social aspect of the job, glad-handing prospective investors, showing them a good time, negotiating when the time came. She'd heard him on the phone from home, listened to his voice, and been impressed with the instant affability, the somber tones of judgment-whatever the situation demanded. But these were not authentic responses, she'd come to see. They were mannered-no, that was not the right word-they were algorithmic. Most of the people Tom dealt with were coming to him from a position he understood. He knew more or less what they wanted and why they were talking to him. Under these circumstances, an algorithm of interaction was called for. It was conversation, yes, but not exactly spontaneous human contact filled with discovery and intimacy. Ann herself understood this, for it was how she dealt with patients. You tell someone she has high blood pressure a few hundred times, you start to do it the same way. So she understood that. But in Tom's case most of the conversation involved abstractions that were answered with abstractions. The people on the other end of the conversation were working within an algorithm, too. This meant that Tom had very few real conversations. He spoke to dozens of people a day but always within his corporate persona and within the appropriate algorithm. He was trapped. The man he'd been once was either buried under all of this behavior or even, perhaps, gone. Irrecoverably. We change in only one direction. We don't ever change back. She still loved Tom, she supposed, at least out of a kind of habit; her mind was trapped within its own algorithms, too, of course.
But in this overall perception about her husband, who was now brushing his teeth in their bathroom, came another one. Tom had made an error. A big human error. He had misjudged a human being. Maybe it was Martz, maybe it was someone else. The misjudgment was a serious one, full of huge personal and professional risk. This led her to another thought.
Tom was stalling because he didn't have an algorithm.
He'd never seen the problem before.
He didn't know what to do.
23
Big wad in the pocket. Victor fingered the flash roll of hundreds as he and Ears walked into the midtown place on Broadway, his favorite, better than the ones in Queens, Brooklyn, Jersey, Long Island, all skanky compared to the Manhattan clubs, which had to cater to an international crowd with bigger money. He nodded at the bouncers, wide men in suits with their hands crossed in front of them, feet spread, as they inspected every patron and made sure he felt inspected. They didn't scare Vic. He'd been a bouncer in a club when he was younger. Back in the eighties. Most of these guys were fucking one of the girls, maybe trading them some speed or crystal meth. Ears led the way, the music booming around them. In front was the live stage, where three girls were on the poles. The place had about a hundred tables, most of them full, and perhaps seventy-five girls either sitting next to customers, dancing for them, or walking around looking for the next job. Most were dressed in only a thong bottom and heels. Every one was beautiful, of course, this being New York City, girls from all over the world, black, white, Latino, Asian, tall, short, stacked, skinny, even a few fleshy ones for the guys who liked that.
He and Ears sat down. The waitress came over. She wasn't bad looking herself but nothing like the dancers.
'What you'll have?'
'Vodka on the rocks,' said Ears.
'Make it two.'
'So, listen, Vic, I had a little talk this afternoon,' said Ears. 'About you and your gas station problem. The guys, they understand, suggest, you know, we do a sit-down, talk it out.'
Victor nodded. 'Good, good, I appreciate that,' he said. He didn't believe any of it. Best case, Ears had talked to nobody. Worst case, they knew there was a problem now and wanted to get Vic away somewhere, get rid of him. What was he, stupid? No. He was ahead of them, had a plan. And now he saw her, the one he needed, the kind Ears liked, and beckoned her over, a tiny blonde with big eyes and even bigger chest. Great nipples, too-small and firm, gumdrops. She looked about nineteen, under the makeup. She smiled at him, but he pointed at Ears. The timing was crucial here. She swung her hips as she advanced.
'Hi, fellas.' She put her hand on Victor's neck, began a casual massage like she was his regular girlfriend and had done it a hundred times. He could smell her perfume.
Victor pulled out his roll, let her see it, let her think he was going to be stupid with it. 'Miss,' he said, 'I'm buying my friend here a couple of dances.' He pulled off two Benjamins and handed them to her. 'Three dances, just to warm up the night.'
'Well, that's a very nice thing to do for your friend.'
The girl flipped back her blonde hair, sort of like a mental reset button, and took Ears by the hand and led him into the back, where the girls preferred to dance, with the guy sitting up against the wall. That way they could get down and dirty, work the guy for the big bills, get him into one of the private rooms and flip a couple of $900 bottles of champagne.
Victor watched. A good start, he thought. He knew Ears had the $20,000 in his pocket and, much as it pained Vic, he was going to have to let that go. Give it to the universe. A little life insurance policy. He saw the waitress bringing over the two vodkas on the rocks. 'Hey, great. Thanks, babe.' He gave her a twenty for her trouble. He sipped his drink, but not too much, and went over the plan. In a place like this there were security cameras all over, at least a dozen. Anything he did right there at the table on the dance floor was captured on tape. But he had that
