CHAPTER 32

IN THE FLESH

“NICK, THE REBBE. HE’S really not particularly advanced. It’s quite something nonetheless—a receptacle for a dead man’s memories turned upside down.” Maggie sniffled. “Sorry. Still working off the poison.” She sniffled again. “What the human mind won’t concoct.”

I’d told her the whole tale over breakfast.

“And Simone. That poor woman. What are you going to do about her?”

Simone had murdered Abe, but was it my responsibility to turn her in? In any event, I saw no reason to act just then on the matter.

“I suppose this means the two of you won’t be buying that house in the suburbs and raising kids anytime soon,” said Maggie.

“That much is nearly certain,” I said with a wave of disappointment covering me like a rubber blanket.

A familiar knock preceded what had become the habitual interruption by the good prophet, who stormed in like a tsunami at high tide. “I am come—” he said breathlessly, likely because he’d dashed up the several flights of stairs. “I am come to remove your heart of stone, Nick.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” asked Maggie.

Turning toward the tablet propped up on my desk, he said, “Ah, the divine Ms. Dietrich hath returned from digital Gehenna. Restored to good health, I trust?”

“Better than ever, buster,” Maggie said. “I’m back and raring for action. We’re going on a search today.”

Turning to me, he asked, “And you are searching for whom?”

But it was Maggie who responded. “Your mother,” she said. “Who do you think? Shmulie Shimmer, asshole.”

Mingus placed a hand on his testicular area. “Shmulie. Shmulie Shimmer,” he said. “You know his whereabouts?”

“Not much better than yesterday,” I said. “Though today I have ideas.”

“Mind sharing?”

I did mind and told him so.

“You trusteth not your prophet? Then thou hast for certain naught but a heart of stone.”

Things had become complicated, I told him. I wasn’t certain I ought to disclose my suspicions yet, not even to God’s elected representative on Earth, not even one so literary.

His knitted brows and eyes turned upward as if appealing to his heavenly Father. Then, he collapsed on the couch, closed his eyes, and traveled off to prophet land.

Which was just as well, as Maggie and I had travel plans, too. I took the remaining Zap and the .38. I packed Maggie in her new case, and we made our way into Manhattan to Track 42.

***

Our entrance into the Velvet Underground proceeded without difficulty. Maggie, muffled within the backpack, attempted to challenge the toll-collecting drone, but nothing came of it. Our business at the border between up and down was conducted smoothly. We made it to the floor of the VU, the VU Cover Band in sight. Today they were playing the Velvet Underground, the short-lived band that launched a thousand imitators. Lou Reed, looking all of twenty-two, singing about the spike of dope going in his vein and how things just weren’t quite the same.

Amen.

In short order, then, I was on my way to my third visit with Shelley Tanzer, Shmulie Shimmer’s illegitimate son. A handcar passed, the drivers engaged in a rousing interpretation of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

“They seem happy in their work,” Maggie remarked.

“Maybe,” I said.

I rounded the corner and arrived at Tanzer’s place. I knocked.

“Who is it?” Tanzer said.

“It’s Nick Friedman.”

“Again! Go the fuck away,” he said.

“That’s not nice,” said Maggie.

“Open up, Shelley. I’ve got business.”

“I’ve got no business with you.”

I knocked again, harder this time. The door opened a crack, and Shelley’s face peeked out. “What do you want?”

“I’m coming in,” I said and pushed the door. Shelley retreated.

“Are you going to destroy any more of my artwork?” he asked.

I told him I wasn’t, that I had something we needed to talk about.

He backed further into his room, near the edge of the light. “Speak, then. I don’t have all day.”

“It’s about your father,” I said, as I removed the backpack and sat on the couch.

Shelley’s face betrayed no emotion. “Big surprise, eh?” he said. “The accountant to the great criminal is his issue. Pretty messy, isn’t it?”

It’s all messy, I thought—this no more than anything else I’d encountered these past days. “So let’s start talking straight.”

Shelley nodded and sat down opposite me.

“Yeah, let’s get all this on the table now, maggot,” came the voice from the backpack.

Shelley sniffed as if there were something in the air.

“That’s Maggie,” I said. “My partner.”

“Where?”

I pointed to the bag. “In here.”

“I’m the new, trimmer me,” she said as if this would make sense to Shelley.

“Get on with it, then. What do you want?” Tanzer asked.

The voice in the bag said, “We’re looking and you’re knowing and showing. Where’s Daddy?”

“All right. All right. I heard he’s in Levittown. They bought him a nice ranch house out there on the Island with trees and shit.”

The image of Shmulie Shimmer mowing the lawn and food shopping, this picture was about as absurd as—

“He’s not there,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Maggie. “Shmulie wouldn’t last a month on the Island.”

“What do you want from me?” Tanzer said.

“Are you a special-needs grown-up? The truth. We came for the goddamned, unvarnished truth,” said Maggie. “Tell us or I’ll unleash Nick on you and things will never be the same.”

I pulled the tablet from the bag and rested it on the couch beside me. “Inside voice, Maggie,” I said in a professorial tone. “I am not joking.”

Tanzer looked at the tablet, then at me. “What do you want?” he repeated.

“Shmulie Shimmer,” I said. “I want your father.”

There was a moment of surrender as if exhaustion had set in. Tanzer’s shoulders sagged, and his chin sank toward his chest. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “All right.”

He walked to the door. Pulling it open, he said, “Follow me.”

I returned Maggie to her home in the bag and yet again trailed Tanzer into the bowels of the Velvet Underground. Our walk concluded in front of the same blue door as yesterday. Room 42. Shelley produced a key. After fumbling a bit, he pushed open the door wide enough to accommodate us.

Producing a small flashlight from his pocket, Tanzer ushered me over the shards of my work from yesterday, through the black room, and led us to the rear. He pulled back the door to a small panel and punched in some numbers. A mechanical voice said, “Enter, Sheldon Tanzer.”

“Damned thing calls me Sheldon. Always Sheldon,” he said. Pushing the door, he looked at me as it gave way. “You’re on your own, bunky,” he said. On his way out, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Sometimes you get what you wish for, but suddenly you don’t want it no more, you know? Then you can’t remember why the hell you wanted it in the first goddamned place.”

***

I entered upon a cavernous room, weakly lit, a couch, chairs, a dining table. On the walls hung copious paintings by Peter Max and Marc Chagall, whether originals or prints I could not tell in the dimness, though I had my suspicions. In the back corner sat a recognizable mahogany desk piled high with volumes of the Talmud, one of which sat in the center of the desk open to around the middle. Behind the Rebbe’s desk sat a familiar figure, who, upon seeing me, leapt up.

“Nicky, Nicky,” he said. “My God, you’re looking good. Welcome to my subterranean lair.” He pointed around the room. “Brought to you by Lerbs, the drug that makes everyone want to kill me.”

He strode over to me, his right hand extended like an arrow. We shook, he with enthusiasm, grasping both of my hands with both of his, I because I needed to hold on to someone or something to keep from keeling over.

“What’s going on?” Maggie shouted from within her case.

I withdrew Maggie from her container and pointed her toward Shmulie.

“Maggie,” I said, “I’d like to introduce you to Shmulie Shimmer.”

“OMG! We have found the most high and missing Shmulie Shimmer,” she said.

“Been a while,” Shmulie said, slapping me on the back as if our friendship hadn’t died fifty years ago. “Welcome to my home.”

Shmulie’d lost weight, maybe a hundred pounds. His cheeks, once bloated, were now sunken. His neck featured thick, reddish wattles. His hair, gray and thin, was tied back in a ponytail. His pencil mustache had blossomed into a thick patch that fed into a bushy salt-and-pepper beard. He wore a yarmulke—if memory served, the very same large, blue beanie with a Star of David in the middle that had graced his head the day we first met back in eighth grade, now a bit tattered. His clothes did not fit well. His pants were capacious, held up by red suspenders. He wore a flannel shirt that might have fit him well enough a hundred pounds ago. He looked like a sallow circus clown, no longer funny, old, well past retirement age. Shmulie observed me gawking at his clothing.

“I don’t get out much, you know? Can’t buy clothes.” He pulled at his suspenders with his thumbs. “Drink?”

“Anything eighty proof or above, several ounces of it,” I said, this being what I judged necessary to achieve anything approaching stasis.

From a decanter he poured at least three ounces of an amber liquid into a cracked teacup and handed it to me. “The cup’s Mother’s,” he said. “All I’ve got left of her.” He placed the decanter on the coffee table. “Eighty-five-year-old Macallan Scotch whiskey,” he said, pushing in my face, like the Telford’s, his financial prowess. Old habits. He sat on a rocking chair.

I swigged half of it down, an appalling insult to such liquor. The alcohol, at God knows how many hundreds of dollars an ounce, spread throughout my limbs and ascended into my brain, conveying a minute measure of clarity and balance.

Shmulie walked over to a Peter Max painting hanging slightly off center and straightened it. He turned to me and asked, “What’s the voice in the tablet?”

“That’s Maggie,” I said.

“That is I,” she said.

Shmulie looked at the image on the screen of Marlene dressed in a fur running halfway up her right cheek and a fur hat. A mysterious smile completed the ensemble.

“So, this is Shmulie Shimmer in the flesh,” she said. “Much less flesh, if I judge correctly. And I always judge correctly.” Pausing a few beats, she added, “So what’s it like as a prisoner deep in the Underground? Ever wish you were in Levittown?”

Shmulie sat back down, poured himself a drink, sipped and said, “It’s a far, far better life than the alternative.”

“Meaning?” she asked.

Shmulie sighed, “I’ve made lots of enemies. I didn’t think I’d survive in the real world no matter how well they disguised me. Even if they relocated me a thousand miles outside Fairbanks, someone’d find me. So this is where I live, and this is where I shall stay.”

“How can this place be safe?” I asked.

“All kinds of security measures surround this place.”

“It seemed easy enough to get in here,” I said.

“Appearances deceive. This place is under constant surveillance.” He took a delicate sip more appropriate to the quality of the booze. “You know,” he said. “I made enough money selling Lerbs to bankroll a European country for a very long time. And here I sit in my underground home spending my money paying for electric eyes to keep me safe yet contained.”

Apparently, my presence made him contemplative.

He rubbed his eyes and exhaled deeply. “Esther is locked away for life because of me. Esther won’t see any of our money. She earned her share. She’s gone forever. We’ll never see each other again. I get a package to her now and again through a third party, but that’s it.”

Another sip.

“Everybody bought the stuff when it was legal. From the man in the street to the prince in the palace. The Lerbs experience was remarkable, high and low at the same time, in perfect harmony. On Lerbs you traveled from Lerbsite to Lerbsite, playing. Well, no better toy ever existed. If you wanted a genuine mystical experience, a union with the totality of the universe, you had it. Or a bacchanal otherwise unimaginable, if you wanted that.”

“Until one became forever comatose, like my daughter, for example,” I said.

“Yes. There is that,” Shmulie said, without emotion. “I’m here and not on some island in the South Pacific enjoying the fruits of my labors under the sun with Esther at my side because of that.”

I looked around the large room. “You live alone?”

“Who’d live with me?” he asked. “Shelley visits, but not often. Not safe for either of us. Besides, I don’t think he likes me very much.”

“No surprise. Who does?” said Maggie.

I finished my drink, picked up the decanter, refilled the teacup, and took another hefty sip. A drink could smooth over a wealth of sins. I was beginning to feel sin-free.

“You never called Abe, your father,” I said.

Shmulie winced as if stabbed. “I couldn’t,” he said.

“You couldn’t? In the end of his life, he wanted only to hear from you. That’s what got me involved looking for you.”

“And man alive is he involved,” said Maggie.

“I couldn’t call or anything. I’d’ve been found out . . . and the old man might have been in jeopardy too.”

“It was that much of a risk?”

“Yes, Nicky. Like I said, I have lots of enemies.”

“You can add me to the top of that list,” Maggie piped. “Now spill it, you bag of bones.”

“Who the hell is she? Your portable enforcer?” Shmulie huffed.

“She’s my computer and a lot more. She’s making a good point. Tell us the real reason you never spoke to Abe.”

Maggie and I waited while Shmulie, brow furrowed, constructed his response. He stretched his suspenders.

“Well, it’s like this, Nicky. True, I once told my father I’d contact him. But I couldn’t. You’re not going to believe this, but whenever I thought about my father I’d become so overwhelmed with a devastating sense of shame I’d break down. No. I couldn’t face him. I tried. Next week, I said to myself. But next week came and went, and the week after that.” Shmulie wiped his eyes. “Now it’s beside the point. He’s dead.” He sniffed. “I tried. Every time, I froze.”

He walked over to the desk and sat. “I’m back to studying Talmud, Nicky. I sit here for hours poring over this material.”

“He called me right before he died, your father,” I said. “Told me he’d heard from you. You told him you were okay.”

“Not me,” Shmulie said. “No idea who.”

“Didn’t think so,” I said. I sipped the Scotch at a more civilized pace. I leaned over, picked up the decanter and topped off the cup.

Shmulie paced about the room, hands locked behind his back, head down, like a Brooklyn Hasid. After some moments he stopped in front of me.

“I live here in near solitary confinement with the persistent memory of what Esther and I created.” He closed his eyes and shook his head in a powerful motion. “No. What I created. People in hospital beds all over the world are never going to open their eyes again because of me. Your daughter—”

Shmulie once again took to walking about the perimeter of the room, eying a painting or two, pausing at his desk. He hunched over the open Talmud, put his finger on the text, finished the last few lines it seemed, turned the page, and walked to the small island that divided the living room from the kitchen. He turned around.

Opening a door I hadn’t noticed, he said, “Come with me.”

***

Maggie under my arm, I walked through the door into another room to behold another large space, this one filled with laboratory equipment that made Shmulie’s windowless childhood basement hideaway look like an eight-year-old’s chemistry set.

“My lab,” Shmulie said. “When I’m not studying Torah, I work in here. I’m looking for the cure.”

No explanation needed.

“Don’t you think there are others out there trying to do the same thing with better equipment? With partners?”

“Fact is,” he said, “we live in a terrible time for research money. Most of the money for Lerbs research comes from me.” He picked up a beaker filled with green liquid and gave it a careful look. “I know just about every lab working on the problem. We share the results of our research, though none of them knows they’re feeding me or that I’m feeding them data and money.”

“How do you communicate?” I asked.

“Contact with anyone out there can be hazardous. I have my safeguards.” Shmulie gestured to the interior of the room. “Come in. I’ll make tea. Unless you’d prefer something stronger.”

Maggie said, “You’ve had sufficient alcohol, Nicholas. Remember your heart and all of the biking you lately have not been doing.” Not to mention that after three drinks I was sufficiently buzzed.

“Tea’s fine. Nothing mint.”

Shmulie boiled a beaker of water over a Bunsen burner and brewed jasmine green tea in a Japanese teapot. He motioned toward a group of chairs in a corner of the room. I went over and set Maggie on the coffee table.

Shmulie brought the tea with two cups. As he poured, I eyeballed my new surroundings. Photographs of past Kobliner rebbes filled the walls. Alone on one wall hung an enormous photograph of the late Dovid Schmeltzer.

“Pretty large picture of Schmeltzer,” I said. “The eyes alone could contain half of Lake Superior.”

Shmulie looked up at the photograph. “I admire the man,” he said—a bit too loudly, I thought.

“The man he was or the thing he became?”

Shmulie’s brows drew together. At that moment I realized something.

“You overheard my encounter with him the other day,” I said.

He nodded toward a television screen on one of the walls. “Every word. Saw it, too.” said Shmulie. “Good shooting,” he added, though in a whisper.

Maggie emitted a loud guttural noise. An unusual image of Marlene dressed as an American soldier from WWII, a rifle slung across her shoulder, filled the screen, her eyes moving left and right.

“Something’s not right here,” Maggie said. “Something’s not making sense.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I have the sense we’re being watched,” she said.

Shmulie wore the kind of smile one put on when pushed into the corner with nowhere else to go. “That would be correct,” he said.

I looked about the room for any device. “Who’s doing the spying?” I asked.

From Reb Schmeltzer’s eyes, a bright orange light shot out. An ugly noise much like fingernails scraping across a blackboard rained over our little coffee klatch. In the midst of the light and noise, the Rebbe floated down from the ceiling still attired in his West Coast gear, surfboard beneath one arm, his shirt and swim trunks filled with air. He landed with grace, hobbled over to one of the empty chairs, and sort of sat down.

“Oy,” he groaned. “My back could use a little lubrication.”

He pulled a pack of Camels from one pocket, an ashtray from another, and lit up. His space filled with enough smoke to bury him in a cloud. As the smoke cleared, he placed the cigarette in the ashtray, which he balanced on one knee. “The first one of the day, always a joy,” he said, coughing a bit.

“So we meet again, sweetie,” said Maggie.

“Yes, madam, so we do,” he responded. From the air he produced a cup of steaming coffee. After a sip, he placed it on the other knee. He smiled crookedly at Shmulie.

“Shimmer,” he said. “See that you have a chat with Ratsy to do what he can about adjusting an algorithm or two to make this latte taste more like a latte and less like warm foaming piss.”

Shmulie sat frozen.

“How in the bloody hell do you get out of your box?” asked Maggie.

Schmeltzer looked at Maggie. “My dear,” he said in his accented English, “I am a mystery, even to myself sometimes. Like you, I am in a box, yes, yet here I am out of it. The duality of my existence.”

“What are you doing here?” Maggie asked.

Another deep exhalation of virtual smoke covered him completely. As his bearded face emerged slowly from the smoke, he aimed his attention at me.

“This one I need to chat with, especially after our last most unsatisfactory encounters.”

“Because he blew you up in the afternoon and smashed you on the street at night?” Maggie asked.

“He did not exactly blow me up or smash me, now did he? I am here, am I not?” he said, the coffee cup teetering, threatening to fall, but righting itself of its own accord. “I must presume you are here and not on some electronic scrapheap because of the wonders of modern science.”

“I’m here to take your surfboard and smack you upside your head,” she said.

“What do you want?” I asked, not wanting this intra-computer exchange to descend into a virtual fistfight.

“You know what I want,” he said.

I didn’t, and said so.

Shmulie said, “He wants us to partner, you and I. He thinks I need a playmate.”

“Yes,” said the Rebbe. “Nick and Shmulie together again, their old high school days renewed.”

“Martin and Lewis reunited? Never happen,” Maggie said. “They call them the old days for a reason, asshole.”

The Rebbe started, and both the coffee and ashtray fell from his knees. But before hitting floor, they floated up and righted themselves, the ashes and liquid returning to their containers, and returning to the Rebbe’s knees.

“That one’s got a mouth on her,” said Shmulie.

I nodded. “I turned you down once,” I said. “For a being claiming sentience, one refusal ought to suffice.”

“You did refuse. As my corporeal predecessor would have loved you to join us, I am compelled to persist.”

“You’re following the desire of the real live Schmeltzer?” asked Maggie. “Why?”

An exploration of the new Rebbe’s psychological baggage seemed inappropriate. Other concerns took priority.

“Tell me,” I said. “What is the Next Big Thing?”

“Not your concern at the moment,” said the hologram.

“If you want me to join up, it is.”

Looking toward Shmulie, the Rebbe said, “Then ask Doctor Shimmer. It’s his project.”

Shmulie reddened.

“Well?” I said.

Shmulie hesitated. He removed the blue yarmulke and gave it a thorough examination. “It’s complicated,” he said.

“Everything’s complicated,” said Maggie.

“I’ll handle this,” I said to Maggie.

Shmulie returned the yarmulke to his head. He said, “We’re engaged in a project.”

“The cure,” I said.

“Besides the cure.”

“Oh?” Maggie said. “You’re going to cure the Lerbs disease and you’re going to do something else? Take my breath away, honey.”

“I’m working on a little something here to help out the Schmeltzerites,” said Shmulie, sounding sad.

“What might that be? A better barbecue sauce for a Schmeltzerite pig roast?” asked Maggie.

Out of thin air, the Rebbe produced a photograph, a bare arm sporting the Rebbe tattoo on its bicep. “Imagine a million of these all over the world. Half a million. Even just a quarter million.”

Maggie said, “A great fundraiser for the cause of the unsullied stupid.”

The Rebbe added, “What if every Rebbe tattoo contained a tiny bit more than black ink?”

“Like what?” asked Maggie.

“What if with a couple of nanobots in their bodies, the Rebbe’s followers could help the rest of this unhappy planet become a better place?” Shmulie said.

“What do you have in mind?” I asked.

“We’re still in the beta phase,” said Shmulie.

The Rebbe stood up, and coffee and ashtray crashed to the ground. “You need to finish this thing, man,” he said. “That cretin announced the frickin’ tattoo before we were ready with the juice.”

Shmulie looked at me with an indiscernible expression. “We’re close,” he said.

“You’ve been close since Tisha B’av,” said the Rebbe.

Shmulie glowered at him. “We have the technology, but the process keeps getting hung up. We’re experimenting with tiny, nanosized radio frequency transmitters and RFID tags to receive the signal, just enough for information to pass from tattoo to tattoo—and the juice to power it.”

“Juice? What are you shooting people up with, electric apple cider?” Maggie said.

The hologram pointed a finger toward Shmulie’s chest. “Tell Nicky and this odious machine what’s about to happen to Ratsy’s international gang of nincompoops.”

Shmulie showed no inclination to disclose the secret. He slithered over to the refrigerator and removed a beaker containing something yellow. He eyed it, swirled it around for several seconds, closed his eyes, and drank. I looked on aghast at what I imagined he’d just done. Shmulie smiled.

“Lemonade,” he said. “I needed something cold.”

The Rebbe was furious. “Tell him.”

Shmulie looked at me, still grinning. “Remember the monkey, Nicky?”

I remembered. “Yeah, poor bastard.”

“Monkey? What monkey? Who’s a monkey?” said Maggie

The monkey at Penn Station, I told her.

***

On a warm Sunday morning senior year right before the incident with Arlene, Shmulie and I were standing at Penn Station to catch the train to Long Island to visit my cousin, who’d take us to the beach. A couple standing beside us on the platform had brought their pet monkey, locked in a cage sitting on the platform.

The oddest thing happened. The monkey somehow managed to unlock the crate. The animal flung open the door of the cage, scampered out, and darted all over the station, making ooh-eee-aah monkey noises. The couple chased after it in vain. The monkey wouldn’t return to its cage.

It scrambled up a pole and onto a small platform eight or ten feet up, surveying the world. Its head looked this way and that. The electrical wire that provided power to the trains caught its attention. The agile beast flexed its rear legs, leapt, and flew toward the wire, and seized it. The air filled with a dreadful crackling noise. For an instant the poor thing froze in midair, lit up like a firecracker, then fell dead onto the track with a miserable thud. The woman began weeping. The damned thing lay on the track until a railroad official clambered down, and, with thick gloves on, wrapped the dead monkey in a blanket, and removed it from the track bed.

“You know what I learned from that poor monkey?” Shmulie asked.

No idea, I told him.

Shmulie sat down again. He said, “That monkey taught me a crucial life lesson. You unlock the cage door, you get blown up. ‘Don’t leave the cage’—that’s my mantra here in underground prison. Stay inside and live. I’m safer here than wherever the FBI would’ve placed me. Money does wonders.”

“You’ve said,” I replied.

“Turns out money’s not enough. A large checkbook only buys so much. A lot depends on good will, which, I admit, I don’t deserve a great deal of.”

“You can say that again, sugar,” said Maggie.

Shmulie looked at her with sad eyes. “I’m boxed in. Life was good enough at first. My work began showing some promise. Shelley would come by on occasion. I had enough to eat, music to listen to, and the Talmud. Studying Talmud brings me back to better times”

The Rebbe said, “At least study with me. I have a lot to teach.”

Shmulie grimaced. “My hosts, who have made quite a penny off my wealth, have become my masters. My well-being depends on dancing the Tarantella to their tune.” He nodded toward the Rebbe.

“The Next Big Thing?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“What did you expect?” asked Maggie. “They’d house you down here and bring chocolates every day?” Her eyes shifted toward the Rebbe. “That this monstrosity would ignore his greatest asset?”

“Now I work here for myself and for them. The monkey story’s a useful reminder.”

The Rebbe settled into a chair and reconstituted his smoke and drink. “We’re delighted to have Dr. Shimmer as our permanent guest, but security comes at a cost.”

“Isn’t there always?” said Maggie.

“You work on preparing nanobots to do what?” I asked, trying to guide Shmulie to his point.

“Mind control. A worldwide army of tattooed Schmeltzerites doing his bidding, commanded from this very room,” Shmulie said, nodding toward the old surfer dude again huffing on another cigarette.

If I had just heard correctly, my erstwhile high school buddy was at labor on a project to inject microscopic things into Schmeltzerite biceps via official Schmeltzerite tattoo parlors, to control them. And then what? The world? Control the bicep, control humanity?

Looking at the cigarette held between his thumb and forefinger, the Rebbe said, “We’ll start slowly, some job we ask them to do, nothing serious; maybe I ask all my followers to become Uber drivers committed to taking their passengers to the wrong address. That should discombobulate things. A fine beginning. A very fine beginning, indeed.”

“Nick, we’ve entered into a zombie movie. Night of the Living Schmeltzer,” Maggie said.

“You want me to join up for that?” I asked Shmulie. “What do I get?”

“That we can negotiate at a future moment,” said the Rebbe. He stood. The old man with the white beard stared down at me, his knobby knees at the level of my nose, ashtray floating by one knee, coffee at the other. From this asymmetrical vantage point, the Rebbe said, “I must point to an important benefit of joining us. You will earn the opportunity to walk out of here, life and limb intact. Your departure otherwise is in doubt.”

Odd. I found myself unafraid of the thing threatening me. Perhaps it could harm me. At the moment, I cared not.

I needed time to think.

“Shmulie,” I whispered. “Can we speak without him?”

Shmulie moved to a corner of the room and gestured for the Rebbe to follow. They exchanged a few words, and the hologram vanished.

Shmulie waved his arm toward the apartment and we returned, Maggie under my arm. Then he gestured toward the front door. We walked all the way through and onto the sidewalk. He looked in both directions. No one was visible; he leaned into me.

“It’s all a crock,” he said softly.

“What is?”

“Nanobots in the ink, an army of zombots.”

“Meaning?”

Shmulie found the moment hilarious. He let go with a deafening guffaw that echoed up and down the pathway. He grabbed my shoulders, straightened up, and said, “There is no project to infest tattoo ink with microscopic robots and conquer the world with an army of tattooed hypnotized Schmeltzerites. It’s bullshit.”

“How—”

“It’s like this.” In his self-assigned prison, he said, he spent time daily faking the work. Other than his medical research on the cure, there was no other project underway. He couldn’t do it if he wanted to. He didn’t know a fucking thing about nanotechnology, he said, beyond Science Magazine. Shmulie engaged in procrastination; he’d elevated dilly-dallying to a fine art. The sum of it was that he’d lead the Rebbe on as long as possible. Somehow, he’d been able to continue the deception for a long time and had little reason to believe his time was nearing its end.

“This thing isn’t quite as smart as it thinks it is,” he said. “True, it’s the collected embodiment of the Rebbe’s total immense output, and sometimes his words genuinely surprise me—when they’re about religion. But even then, it’s mechanical, regurgitating stuff, nothing new. What the original knew about contemporary science, beyond what he studied in Europe as a kid, could fill a thimble with room left over for a vodka gimlet. This thing thinks a chemist knows nanotechnology. One scientist’s the same as another.”

“Holy shit,” exclaimed Maggie. “This monstrosity’s a closed system with limited AI capacity. It can’t go beyond what’s already in there. It thinks it’s smart, maybe it’s been programmed to believe so, but it’s really not. It’s nothing more than a high-class upchuck machine.”

***

We returned to the apartment. I set Maggie down on a table, and the three of us sat in a close circle and spoke quietly.

“Does the Rebbe really have power over people?” I asked.

“That he does, yet in the most peculiar way,” said Shmulie. “They made him to control them, and so he does.”

“A contract. They made a social contract,” I said. “Everyone believes and so it’s true. They could just as easily not obey him.”

“But obey they do,” said Shmulie. “The whole pack of them obeys the new orders as they come rolling in every Tuesday afternoon, including the leaders. Ratsy Menkies would be lost without him.”

“Harsh times call for a hard leader,” said Maggie.

“A ludicrous one,” I said.

This state of affairs, it became clear, brilliantly embodied the totalitarian mind from both ends of the equation. People longed to be led; led they were, by an old, cruel ersatz man in swim trunks, Birkenstocks, and a flowered Hawaiian shirt, who thought he was more than he really was. But it didn’t matter because everyone believed he was more than he really was.

“The mind,” I said, “wants to be led by the nose, even when Der Fuhrer or Il Duce is an incorporeal monstrosity acting through Menkies.”

There we sat, underground. Happily, a flood of zombie Schmeltzerites was not about to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Even so, great power lay in the virtual hands of the electronic rebbe. Living out a severe self-imposed punishment, Shmulie suffered the additional task of holding the Rebbe at bay as long as possible. Me, I could get up and go, I believed—ignore the Rebbe’s threat, leave the Velvet Underground behind and Shmulie with it.

“He had your father killed, you know,” I said.

“He told me,” Shmulie said, looking crushed as the act emerged into open air. “He told me why and he told me who did it. As if he didn’t already have me sitting in his back pocket. And Simone Hartwig, poor girl. A prisoner, too.” Tears freely rolled down his face, which rested mournfully in his hands.

At that moment, the Rebbe appeared.

He looked at Shmulie and said, “I just got off the phone with Shmulie.” He said those words in a perfect imitation of Abe Shimmer’s voice, the very words he spoke to me right before Simone murdered him.

I could see the chill running through Shmulie as he absorbed what he’d just heard. The Rebbe lit a cigarette and once again disappeared into a cloud.

“You told me you needed only a few minutes,” he said as he reappeared, sitting down among us in the living room, cigarette and coffee in hand. “You’re well past a few and into several. How’s it going?”

I looked at Shmulie and then at the Rebbe. “Decided I’d give it a shot,” I said.

Shmulie’s eyebrows jumped. Maggie, on the other hand, had a different reaction.

“The fuck?” she said with her newfound tongue. “I’m damned if I’m staying down in this hole. What about what we were just talking about?”

“And what were you just talking about, my dear?” asked the Rebbe in the manner Snake spoke to Eve in the Garden.

“Mmmm—” Maggie said.

I gave her my sharpest look of disapproval.

“I figured I’d spend some time here with the both of you and see what develops on this side of the terrain. I’m tired of living the professorial life, the life of genteel poverty, and the detective thing never really worked out.”

Schmeltzer blinked slowly. As if digesting what I’d just said, he sat silently, sipping and puffing. “Then you’ve avoided an encounter with some of my fiercer minions. Good news for you. It would not have gone well. We’ll make good use of your little doggie, too.”

A gagging sound came from the tablet, but otherwise Maggie remained mum. Unlike the Rebbe, she was a machine capable of great learning. I looked at Shmulie, who nodded.

He looked at the Rebbe, his eyes steady and inexpressive. “I can take over from here,” he said. “I suppose I need to orient Nicky to his new life.”

Schmeltzer took another contemplative puff, looking at me, imitating perhaps his predecessor’s genuinely penetrating gaze. “We’ll see, Nachman. We’ll see.” He exhaled a cloud and vanished into it.

Again Shmulie gestured for us to go outside. “We need to walk,” he said.

“You can do that?” Maggie asked.

“He’s back in his black box. I don’t go out often. As long as I’m back in a half an hour, it’s okay.”

“Then get us the hell out of here,” said Maggie. “I’m choking to death in this shithouse.”

I made a mental note to have a serious chat with Maggie about her language, which had gotten quite out of hand.

***

Shmulie led us to a space with a blackboard and chairs that had been set up as a school. He turned one chair around facing another and sat down, motioning for me to follow suit. No Garden of Eden, but tolerable and safe. He continued his story.

He had his lab and the Talmud. But around the time the new rebbe came into existence, they started in with the pressure to produce nanobots.

“Anyone had half a brain would know I was clueless. But I couldn’t tell them that. Quid pro quo, it became clear. I build world-ruling microscopic robots, I get the privilege of providing them millions every year, and I preserve the capacity to breathe. That’s it. I wake up, fill the day with study, a little research, and a lot of pretend. Then bedtime. An existence that would nauseate Sisyphus.”

From the tablet came the loud noise of a throat clearing. “So what are doing about your life?”

“I’ve got nothing,” he bawled. “Not saying I don’t deserve where I ended up, not saying it should be any other way. It’s what I’ve got. And nothing’s everything it’s cracked up to be.”

Were this blubbering man any other human on planet Earth, I’d have made considerable effort to console him. But this was Shmulie Shimmer; this lamentation would never fill the large hole in my heart bored by him. I sat unmoved and watched him cry.

Finally, he wiped his eyes and stood, signaling it was time to return to his jailhouse. His step was sluggish, hopeless, living in the world he created.

“Esther,” Shmulie said.

“What?” said Maggie. “What about Esther?”

“We really did have something,” said Shmulie. “Right before the Lerbs law passed, we were going to run away.” He sobbed for a moment. “But it wasn’t going to be. She went to prison for the both of us, and I landed here—also, in a way, for both of us. It was a moronic plan, anyway.”

We returned to room 42 and walked through the two doors to Shmulie’s apartment. He collapsed onto the couch, a man sapped of all energy. He held the yarmulke in his hands, twisting it like worry beads.

“There were moments I think back on,” he said. “You, my father, and I grappling with a sugya, a talmudic argument. He almost always got it. Didn’t know the language or the text, but he had a fine mind.”

“He did,” I said. “And he had a heart.”

“Even I saw that when he came to our apartment,” said Maggie. “I was at his funeral, you know.”

With that, Shmulie again began crying, wiping his eyes with that ancient blue beanie. “I’ve got nothing but this labyrinth to nowhere. I’m the puppet of an artificial man who doesn’t exist.”

He stood, and before I could move away, he embraced me. I could not reciprocate. I stood limp.

“Nick,” he said, looking me in the eye. “It’s the end of the road for me. I’m boxed in. Nowhere to go and I don’t know what to do.”

Maggie said, “You’ve got your little Shangri-La down here, all for a price.”

“I killed him,” Shmulie said. “I didn’t give the order. Never would. But I may as well have taken the blade and stuck it in myself.”

Following the chain of causality that led to Abe’s murder by Simone, Shmulie was right. Without his money, the Schmeltzerites wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, wouldn’t have built the Rebbe, and without the Rebbe there wouldn’t have been the order to murder the old man.

“You fabricated for yourself a quite nasty world, didn’t you?” I said.

“Hell on earth,” said Maggie with all the sanctimony a computer could muster.

Once again Shmulie fell onto the couch, his back to us.

“I know. I know,” came his muffled voice.

His tone was desolate. He drew his legs toward his chest, wrapped his arms around his knees, and buried his head in a pillow. In the stillness, I came to a resolution.

“Can you hear me?” I said to the man lying before me like an old sideways tortoise.

He nodded into the pillow.

“Here’s what you’re going to do.”

“What?” came a muffled whimper.

“You, Maggie, and I are going to visit Shelley, and you’re going tell him to turn off the spigot. He’s going to do it in a way where all of that money’s just going to dissolve. It’ll be irrecoverable. Then, you’re going to return to this room and live with the consequences of everything.”

“Not going,” came the voice from the pillow.

“Yes, you are,” I said decisively.

Maggie tried to tip the balance. “Nick and I, we’ve gone through hell and beyond looking for your sorry ass. Get your sorry self off that couch.”

Shmulie lay motionless.

“Do it,” she said. “Now!”

Evincing enormous lethargy, Shmulie rolled over and pulled himself up.

“All right,” he said and staggered to the door. I put Maggie in her home and followed behind. As he reached the door, he turned around, pushed me aside, and returned to the couch, falling back on it.

“No,” he said in a faraway tone.

“We’ll do it ourselves then,” I said, and went to the door. With my hand on the doorknob, a curious notion took hold of me.

“Shmulie.”

“Yeah?”

“Turn around.”

He craned his neck. I removed the .38 from my pocket and hefted the pistol for Shmulie to see. I cocked it and laid it on the table beside the bottle of liquor. We left and began walking toward Tanzer’s place. We weren’t far from room 42 when a loud report echoed up and down the VU like a shockwave.

“Should we go back and check?” Maggie asked.

“You want to see Shmulie with a hole in his head?” I asked.

We decided not. I did not want such a pictured tattooed on my brain beside the image of Abe, father and son both dead. No doubt Shmulie’d done himself; that knowledge would keep me warm at night.

“Baruch dayan emet, blessed is the true judge,” said Maggie.

“God gives, God takes away,” I responded.

In unison we said, “Amen.”

***

An icy feeling crawled up my back. Things had moved quickly. Shmulie was dead. We were about to put the Schmeltzerites out of business. Is the end in sight? We reached Tanzer’s place. Before I knocked, I asked, “Maggie, do you think you can hack the Schmeltzerite system?”

“Fear not,” she said. “Louise not only restored me, she improved me. I can get in and I can wreck them if I choose.”

Tanzer opened the door.

“What do you want?” he said with about as much enthusiasm as I would have expected.

“Tell him, Maggie.” I said, pulling her out of the backpack and aiming her toward Tanzer.

“Shelley,” she said, “we’re going to hack the Schmeltzerites and cut off their financial aid from Shmulie. As of today, they get not one more dime of Shmulie Shimmer’s largesse. Their day at the trough is over.”

He looked at us incredulously. “Whaddaya mean? What’re you talking about, the goddamned Schmeltzerites?”

I sat on Tanzer’s couch, again inspiring the unfriendly cloud of dust that rose to greet me. Meanwhile, Maggie made clear, as only she could, in full—and I mean full numerical detail—exactly what we knew about Shmulie’s business dealings with Menkies and company, which was, as far as I could tell, pretty much everything knowable. Bombarded with this surfeit of information, Tanzer fessed up. He folded like wet cardboard.

“I can’t do what you want,” he whined. “I wouldn’t know how.”

“You’re bullshitting,” said Maggie. “But never mind. I’ll help. I can do just about anything IT. Take me to your computer and together we’ll change history.”

He pointed to the rear of the apartment. “My stuff’s all behind that curtain.”

“Nick,” Maggie said, “I think Shelley and I can handle things ourselves. We won’t be long. You rest, dear.”

I handed Shelley the tablet-cum-Maggie.

“Let’s go, buddy. Take us there,” she said, and the two retired into the back while I sat for the first time in a long stretch with nothing to do.

I closed my eyes and traveled down a river, Huck Finn on the raft nearing the Mississippi Delta shining like a national guitar.