“You talkin’ wisdom now,” Aleem says. “Fly fishin’。 We got no more chance than a junkie he wants to quit but goes right on loadin’ his kit with China white. I been long addicted.”
Not for the first time, Kuba misunderstands. “Addicted? Shit you are. I never seen you do a line or even take a toke.”
“Addicted to pussy,” Aleem clarifies. “My name is Aleem, and I’m a pussyholic.”
“Man loses his judgment in the presence of it,” Kuba agrees.
Aleem sighs. “Loses all common sense. Iffen you don’t have it, you can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t do business with a clear head. So you do her, she’s never been so satisfied, callin’ you baby, callin’ you Superman. Then thirteen years later, she’s dissin’ you, runnin’ away with your child, knockin’ your whole life off the rails, playin’ you for a fool.”
The subject vexes Kuba. “It’s a tragedy is what it is.”
“It’s more than a tragedy.”
“A tragedy and a crime.”
Aleem says, “It’s all that. Worse, it’s an affront.”
“The front of what?”
“An affront. An insult, man. Spittin’ in my face.”
“A woman so much as talks smack at a man, he got to teach her regret. Spittin’ in your face got to have consequences.”
“Pains me how she must be breakin’ my boy’s spirit.”
“She has her way,” Kuba says, “he’ll be dancin’ ballet and wearin’ makeup.”
“That won’t never happen.”
“You take him from her, she won’t just stop. Not her.”
Aleem is silent, staring at the blinking signifier, while Kuba pilots them through the thrashing rain. After a minute or two, he says, “Okay, here’s how it is. Our crew gets her blocked, the bitch got nowhere she can go. Hakeem and Carlisle they take the boy to my crib, settle him down. Other four homeys get back to their business. You and me, we make damn sure Nina can’t get her hook in no one never again.”
“What’s Antoine gonna say?”
“Antoine he ain’t relevant no more. We don’t tell Antoine. I keep the boy out of sight. Day after tomorrow, it won’t matter what Antoine wants. He won’t be givin’ orders to no one, nowhere, about nothin’ no more.”
Kuba likes the plan so much, he’s nodding like a bobblehead doll. When he stops nodding, he says, “How you see it goin’ down with Nina?”
“How you see it?” Aleem asks.
“I don’t mean no affront.”
“You my brother, Kuba. Talk free.”
“I mean, she was your woman.”
“She’s nothin’ to me now. ’Cept a pain in the ass.”
“I’m thinkin’ it’s a wasted opportunity iffen it’s a quick trey eight in the head.”
“What opportunity?”
“She weren’t your woman once, I woulda been on her long ago.”
“You want to tear off a piece ’fore we pop her?”
“Sure would be somethin’ to remember in my old age.”
Aleem is aware of Kuba’s preference for heavy action. Whenever some fresh who’s being pimped gets out of line to an extent that she can’t be rehabilitated for the market, Kuba sets aside a full day to break her down so much that nobody wants to look at her again, let alone touch her. Aleem has never been present for one of those sessions, but he’s seen the aftermath. He is intrigued. Nina has been such a threat to his reputation and so smug in her churchified ways that she deserves whatever she gets.
“I wouldn’t mind storin’ up a memory myself,” Aleem says.
Kuba has such a sweet smile that few people could ever imagine what lies behind it.
“Let’s catch up with her again,” Aleem says.
Kuba accelerates into the wind, the rain, the night, and the promise of a passion for which there is no Valentine’s Day card.
IN THE TWILIGHT KINGDOM
At a corner table with a panoramic view of the elegant room, Durand Calaphas orders a four-hundred-dollar bottle of wine, which he might or might not finish. He is in no hurry. Later, he will have the filet mignon, which lists on the menu for seventy-six dollars, side dishes additional, and will probably cost eighty-two in another month. His job comes with such a generous expense account that no purchase of his has ever been questioned, and his credit card, issued by the agency, has no charge limit as far as he is aware. This is the bold new age of Modern Monetary Theory, which holds that excess has no consequence because the government can tax the economy into prosperity and the treasury is bottomless, or something like that.
The restaurant is around the corner from the street of streets, in this neighborhood where millionaires and billionaires have for decades come to shop for outrageously priced merchandise, which is where they will continue shopping as long as there is both vanity and social order. The former is never in danger of being exhausted, but the latter seems less certain in a country where many of those in the higher echelons of power seem to yearn for anarchy in the style of Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, for anarchy and the brute authoritarianism that will follow. Calaphas heartily approves of this managed descent from democracy to anarchy to soft tyranny.
The tablecloths are of fine cotton so meticulously processed and tailored that they drape like heavy silk, with the soft curves that remind him of thick, powdery snow that has sifted down in the utter absence of wind. The lighting is soft, the shadows sculpted and strategic, the candle glow glittering off polished glassware, stainless-steel flatware, architectural elements leafed in white gold, and the jewelry of dazzling women who believe that ostentation is a virtue.
Calaphas is savoring his first glass of wine and contemplating the appetizers listed on the menu when Julian Grantworth appears and takes a chair at the table, uninvited. Julian is the deputy director of the ISA, currently on this coast because of the catastrophe at Beautification Research. Fortysomething, tall, as lean as a greyhound, with blue eyes and a social-register nose and otherwise the pinched features of one who suffers from chronic constipation, he’s a fortunate son of the Philadelphia Main Line, the product of prep schools and Princeton. If he doesn’t travel to London twice a year and spend two days with a team of tailors on Savile Row, then those tailors come to him each spring and autumn.
Although Julian is Calaphas’s superior, he’s always deferential because he’s afraid of his underling. “I’m sorry to interrupt you at your dinner, Durand, but I’m afraid there’s been a wrinkle in the case.”
“Wrinkle,” Calaphas says, doing his best to pronounce the word in a way that expresses subtle amusement and subtler contempt that will keep Grantworth off balance. The power of Calaphas, a one-man department within the ISA, is a result of his willingness to perform the dirtiest of dirty work while making no effort to protect himself from the legal consequences of his actions. He knows they monitor his phone and internet activities, assess everything he does, to determine if he’s salting away evidence that might implicate them, which he is not. None of the others in the ISA would risk their freedom and privileges with such nonchalance. Some call him—as Julian Grantworth has done, but never to his face—a monstre sans souci, a monster without cares. Calaphas is not only invaluable to the agency, but he has also acquired the status of a foundational myth, as if he were fundamental to the founding of the ISA and will always be the soul of that lethal machine. Lesser men regard him with something like superstitious awe, which is some insurance against anyone attempting to displace him. “What’s the wrinkle?”