بخش 02 - فصل 23

23

At three o’clock that Friday afternoon, Morris comes within a whisker of trashing twelve million dollars’ worth of modern art.

Well, no, not really, but he does come close to erasing the records of that art, which include the provenance and the background info on a dozen rich MAC donors. He’s spent weeks creating a new search protocol that covers all of the Arts Center’s acquisitions since the beginning of the twenty-first century. That protocol is a work of art in itself, and this afternoon, instead of sliding the biggest of the subfiles into the master file, he has moused it into the trash along with a lot of other dreck he needs to get rid of. The MAC’s lumbering, outdated computer system is overloaded with useless shit, including a ton of stuff that’s no longer even in the building. Said ton got moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York back in ’05. Morris is on the verge of emptying the trash to make room for more dreck, his finger is actually on the trigger, when he realizes he’s about to send a very valuable live file to data heaven.

For a moment he’s back in Waynesville, trying to hide contraband before a rumored cell inspection, maybe nothing more dangerous than a snack-pack of Keebler cookies but enough to get him marked down if the screw is in a pissy mood. He looks at his finger, hovering less than an eighth of an inch over that damned delete button, and pulls his hand back to his chest, where he can feel his heart thumping fast and hard. What in God’s name was he thinking?

His fat fuck of a boss chooses that moment to poke his head into Morris’s closet-sized workspace. The cubicles where the other office drones spend their days are papered with pictures of boyfriends, girlfriends, families, even the fucking family dog, but Morris has put up nothing but a postcard of Paris, which he has always wanted to visit. Like that’s ever going to happen.

‘Everything all right, Morris?’ the fat fuck asks.

‘Fine,’ Morris says, praying that his boss won’t come in and look at his screen. Although he probably wouldn’t know what he was looking at. The obese bastard can send emails, he even seems to have a vague grasp of what Google is for, but beyond that he’s lost. Yet he’s living out in the suburbs with the wife and kiddies instead of in Bugshit Manor, where the crazies yell at invisible enemies in the middle of the night.

‘Good to hear. Carry on.’

Morris thinks, Carry your fat ass on out of here.

The fat fuck does, probably headed down to the canteen to feed his fat fuck face. When he’s gone, Morris clicks on the trash icon, grabs what he almost deleted, and moves it back into the master file. This isn’t much of an operation, but when it’s finished he blows out his breath like a man who has just defused a bomb.

Where was your head? he scolds himself. What were you thinking?

Rhetorical questions. He was thinking about the Rothstein notebooks, now so close. Also about the little panel truck, and how scary it’s going to feel, driving again after all those years inside. All he needs is one fender-bender … one cop who thinks he looks suspicious …

I have to keep it together a little longer, Morris thinks. I have to.

But his brain feels overloaded, running in the red zone. He thinks he’ll be all right once the notebooks are actually in his possession (also the money, although that’s far less important). Get those puppies hidden away at the back of the closet in his room on the ninth floor of Bugshit Manor and he can relax, but right now the stress is killing him. It’s also being in a changed world and working an actual job and having a boss who doesn’t wear a gray uniform but still has to be kowtowed to. On top of all that, there’s the stress of having to drive an unregistered vehicle without a license tonight.

He thinks, By ten P.M. things will be better. In the meantime, strap down and tighten up. Shit don’t mean shit.

‘Right,’ Morris whispers, and wipes a prickle of sweat from the skin between his mouth and nose.