“But,” eyes wide as fairground lollipops, “it worked for Crazy Eddie.”

“Crazy Eddie went to jail, Diz. You’re headed for another indictment to add to your collection.”

“Hey, no worries, it’s New York, grand juries here will indict a salami.”

“So . . . right now, what do we do? I should be calling in the SWAT team?”

Dizzy smiled and shrugged. They stood in the cardboard-and-plastic-smelling shadows, and Maxine, whistling “Help Me Rhonda” through her teeth, resisted the urge to run him down with a forklift.

She glares now at Dizzy’s file for as long as she can without opening it. Spiritual exercise. The intercom buzzes. “There’s some Reg somebody here don’t have an appointment?”

Saved. She puts aside the folder, which like a good koan will have failed to make sense anyway. “Well, Reg. Do get your ass on in here. Long time.”

2

Couple years in fact. Reg Despard looks considerably hammered at by the interval. He’s a documentary guy who began as a movie pirate back in the nineties, going into matinees with a borrowed camcorder to tape first-run features off the screen, from which he then duped cassettes that he sold on the street for a dollar, two sometimes if he thought he could get it, often turning a profit before the movie was through its opening weekend. Professional quality tended to suffer around the edges, noisy filmgoers bringing their lunch in loud paper bags or getting up in the middle of the movie to block the view, often for minutes of running time. Reg’s grip on the camcorder not always being that steady, the screen would also wander around in the frame, sometimes slow and dreamy though other times with stunning abruptness. When Reg discovered the zoom feature on his camcorder, there was a lot of zooming in and out for what you’d have to call its own sake, details of human anatomy, extras in crowd scenes, hip-looking cars in the background traffic, so forth. One fateful day in Washington Square, Reg happened to sell one of his cassettes to a professor at NYU who taught film, who next day came running down the street after Reg to ask, out of breath, if Reg knew how far ahead of the leading edge of this post-postmodern art form he was working, “with your neo-Brechtian subversion of the diegesis.”

Because this somehow sounded like a pitch for a Christian weight-loss program, Reg’s attention began to drift, but the eager academic persisted, and soon Reg was showing his tapes to doctoral seminars, from which it was only a step to shooting his own pictures. Industrials, music videos for unsigned bands, late-night infomercials for all Maxi knows. Work is work.

“Looks like I’m catching you at a busy time.”

“Seasonal. Passover, Easter week, NCAA playoffs, St. Patrick’s on a Saturday, da yoozh, not a problem, Reg—so what have we got here, a matrimonial?” Some call this brusque, and it has lost Maxine some business. On the other hand, it weeds out the day-trippers.

A wistful head angle, “Not an issue since ’98 . . . wait, ’99?”

“Ah. Down the hall, Yenta Expresso, check it out, coffee dates are their specialty, first latte grosso’s free if you remember to ask Edith for the coupon— OK, Reg, so if it’s nothing domestic . . .”

“It’s this company I’ve been shooting a documentary about? I keep running into . . .” One of those funny looks Maxine by now knows better than to ignore.

“Attitude.”

“Access issues. Too much I’m not being told.”

“And are we talking recent here, or will this mean going back into history, unreadable legacy software, statutes about to run?”

“Nah, this is one of the dotcoms that didn’t go under last year in the tech crash. No old software,” half a decibel too quiet, “and maybe no statute of limitations either.”

Uh-oh. “’Cause see, if all you want’s an asset search, you don’t need a forensic person really, just go on the Internet, LexisNexis, HotBot, AltaVista, if you can keep a trade secret, don’t rule out the Yellow Pages—”

“What I’m really looking for,” solemn more than impatient, “probably won’t be anyplace any search engine can get to.”

“Because . . . what you’re looking for . . .”

“Just normal company records—daybooks, ledgers, logs, tax sheets. But try to have a look, and that’s when it gets weird, everything stashed away far far beyond the reach of LexisNexis.”

“How’s that?”

“Deep Web? No way for surface crawlers to get there, not to mention the encryption and the strange redirects—”

Oh. “Maybe you need more of an IT type to look at this? ’cause I’m not really—”

“Already have one on the case. Eric Outfield, Stuyvesant genius, certified badass, popped at a tender age for computer tampering, trust him totally.”

“Who are these people, then?”

“A computer-security firm downtown called hashslingrz.”

“Heard of them around, yes doing quite well indeed, p/e ratio approaching the science-fictional, hiring all over the place.”

“Which is the angle I want to take. Survive and prosper. Upbeat, right?”

“But . . . wait . . . a movie about hashslingrz? Footage of what, nerds staring at screens?”

“Original script had a lot of car chases, explosions, but somehow the budget . . . I have this tiny advance the company’s kicking in, plus I’m allowed total access, or so I thought till yesterday, which is when I figured I’d better see you.”

“Something in the accounting.”

“Just like to know who I’m working for. I haven’t sold my soul yet—well, maybe a couple bars of rhythm and blues here and there, but I figured I’d better have Eric do some looking around. You know anything about their CEO, Gabriel Ice?”

“Dimly.” Cover stories in the trades. One of the boy billionaires who walked away in one piece when the dotcom fever broke. She can recall photos, off-white Armani suit, tailor-made beaver fedora, not actually bestowing papal blessings right and left but prepared to should the need arise . . . permission note from his parents instead of a pocket square. “I read as far as I could, I’m not, like, gripped. He makes Bill Gates look charismatic.”

“That’s only his party mask. He has deep resources.”

“You’re suggesting what, mob, covert ops?”

“According to Eric, a purpose on earth written in code none of us can read. Except maybe for 666, which tends to recur. Reminds me, you still have that concealed-carry permit?”

“Licensed to pack, ready to roll, uh-huh . . . why?”

A little evasive, “These people are not . . . what you usually find in the tech world.”

“Like . . .”

“Nowhere near geeky enough, for one thing.”

“That’s . . . it? Reg, in my vast experience, embezzlers don’t need shooting at very often. Some public humiliation usually does the trick.”

“Yeah,” almost apologetic, “but suppose this isn’t embezzlement. Or not only. Suppose there’s something else.”

“Deep. Sinister. And they’re all in on it together.”

“Too paranoid for you?”

“Not me, paranoia’s the garlic in life’s kitchen, right, you can never have too much.”

“So then there shouldn’t be any problem . . .”

“I hate when people say that. But sure, I’ll have a look and let you know.”

“Ah-right! Makes a man feel like Erin Brockovich!”

“Hm. Well, we do come to an awkward question. I guess you aren’t here to hire me or anything, right? Not that I mind working on spec, it’s just that there are ethical angles here, such as ambulance chasing?”

“Don’t you people have an oath? Like if you see fraud in progress—?”

“That was Fraudbusters, they had to cancel it, gave people too many ideas. Rachel Weisz wasn’t bad, though.”

“Just sayin that ’cause you’re lookalikes.” Smiling, hands and thumbs up as if framing a shot.