The Bialy Pimps (17 page)

The Anarchist looked at Beckie, then back at Army Ted. Ted was giggling.

“What?” said the Anarchist.

“Russians.”
 

As Army Ted settled into his usual chair opposite the counter (the one Bricker had weakened and made cry the other day with his massiveness), Philip walked in from the back and called to Tracy, the Anarchist, and Beckie.
 

“Look at this,” he said, handing the Anarchist a piece of paper. It said:

Philip,

Good effort over the past few months, but I’m afraid it hasn’t been enough. Bingham saw the P&L from last month and didn’t like it at all. Apparently he’s tired of the restaurant business anyway... his real estate investments are his real interest, and restaurants are tough to own and manage. He’s pretty much looking for an excuse to close the place down. I convinced him to give you a little more time, but the conditions of that agreement are kind of tough.

So here’s what needs to happen. I know it’s not pretty.
 

1. All food is increasing in price by 30%. You’ll need to calculate it yourself, and change the menu accordingly.

2. Extra meats and cheeses are doubling in price, from $1.55 to $3.10 for meats, and from 50 cents to a dollar for cheese.
 

3. We no longer give cups of water free. Those are now 50 cents.
 

4. If a customer complains that their order is wrong, try to talk them into taking it anyway. I know, I know. Just try it, within reason.

5. No more loud music. Bingham says it drives people off. I’ve attached an approved music list. Play only these CDs.

And yeah, I know this is ridiculous, but these are ridiculous times. We’ll talk soon.

Thanks,

Wally

“Um...” said the Anarchist.
 

Beckie was looking over the approved music list, which had been in Philip’s other hand. “This,” she said, “is all musicals.”
 

“Like... musical music?” said Tracy.

“No, like
musicals
.
West Side Story. Cats. Rent.”

The Anarchist craned over her shoulder to read the list himself, disbelieving. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he said. “The other stuff, fine. But how are musicals going to help business?”
 

“I guess he thinks Rage Against the Machine is driving people off,” said Philip. He shrugged. “You haven’t heard the Bingham stories I’ve heard. He’s a recluse. He’s almost ninety and the people who work for him think he’s going a bit Howard Hughes. So let’s not pretend this all has to be logical.”
 

“Are we going to
do
this illogical crazy-old-man stuff?”
 

Philip shrugged.
 

“This is insane,” said the Anarchist. “Increasing prices this much isn’t going to make us profitable. It’s going to sink us. Nobody will pay it.”

“The wrong sandwiches thing has potential, though,” said Tracy. He was thinking that he could finally make a pickles-and-peanut-butter sandwich and someone might have to take it.

Philip pulled the spare calculator from beneath the bagel shelves and began typing in prices, making a list of the new ones on the back of the email printout. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “When the boss says do it, you do it. Maybe he knows something we don’t. He
is
a bazillionaire, after all.”
 

“Or he just doesn’t care anymore and wants his restaurant venture to be over with already,” said the Anarchist.
 

“Or that.”
 

“Tracy,” said Philip. “Take ten bucks out of the register and go see if the CD exchange has the
Guys and Dolls
soundtrack.”

“Hey!” shouted Army Ted from his perch. “
Guys and Dolls.
I played the lead in that on Broadway. Just for one night, though. See, there was this East German agent in one of the VIP boxes...”

Fortunately for Dicky Kulane, Philip’s predecessor was an early adopter.
 

At the time when William was managing Bingham’s, Hotmail, the first decent web-based email service, was growing in popularity. For the first time, email users could get their messages anywhere, from any computer, just by visiting Hotmail’s web site. This was revolutionary for anyone who traveled – a group that did not include William, whose idea of an exciting cross-country trip was playing Risk and conquering the far east. But William liked gadgets. He liked to try things when they were new, while he could still claim cooler-than-thou bragging rights.
 

Had William been content to be less cool than the other nerds he knew, he would have run Bingham’s email through an on-computer program like Eudora. It would have been simpler and less cutting-edge. It also would have made Bingham’s email much, much harder to hijack.

After Captain Dipshit’s encounter with Johnny Rocker, Dicky had decided that all bets were off.
He
was just poking them, but
they
were the ones who had gotten violent.
They
were the ones who had gone too far. And never mind that he didn’t entirely believe anything that Captain Dipshit said, including the story about being attacked by a yelling man in hood clothing. This was war, and if someone was going to assume secondhand hearsay that might in some way circumstantially indicate possible things that Bingham’s maybe had done wrong, then Dicky felt that it was only fair to retaliate. In force, if necessary.

So he’d gone into his old files, and looked at his old emails from back when he worked at Green Leaf. Not many customers were as email-happy as Bingham’s; Dicky distinctly remembered that. Prior to the turn of the millennium, email was still a relative novelty. You couldn’t assume that any particular person had an email account or, if they had one, that they checked it. Almost all of Dicky’s old customers called their orders in, but not Philip. Philip had always emailed them.
 

And what else had he said, about his own boss?
 

Dicky was good at trivia, and he easily remembered that boss’s name. He searched for messages from Philip with “Wally” in the body, and at last found one throwaway line from the emails that came up:

yeah we do everything on email because wally hates the phone.

And at the bottom of that email:

Powered by Hotmail at Hotmail.com

Yeah, he thought he remembered that, too. His brother’s kid used Hotmail because he was spending a semester in Europe and had to check it from libraries and schools whenever he could find them. He said it was a lifesaver, and much better than toting around a laptop and trying to find a local ISP. He’d suggested it to Dicky, because Dicky used a home computer and, at the time, a work computer. He frequently needed something out of a work email for home use, or vice-versa. Hotmail put it all in one place, accessible from anywhere.
 

Dicky had thought that sounded risky, having all of your personal details and orders and business information out there on some website. What if someone hacked in? And the kid assured him that it wasn’t that simple. There were encryption standards. Secure Socket Layers. Whatever else.
 

But the strongest door in the world opens easily if you have the key. All the Secure Sockets and encryption in the world didn’t mean anything if you got the password, and it just so happened that Dicky employed a hacker who could do things like breaking passwords. He knew this because Plato was always bragging about his hacking prowess. Plato was a William Gibson cyberpunk fan and kept saying how some day he’d be able to take his hacker extraordinaire brain online, hard-wiring his cerebrum to the net by jacking in directly.

3B’s other shift worker, Paul, had overheard this comment. Paul was fat, dumb, and resented Plato because he was pompous. Paul suggested that Plato shouldn’t wait, that he could get started by jacking in the other direction. You know: off.

Plato had some piece of hacker magic that made short work of Bingham’s password (Dicky laughed when he saw what it was: BAGELS) and had another piece of hacker magic that redirected mail sent from the Bingham’s Hotmail account to Dicky instead of to its intended recipient. He set a filter that forwarded Bingham’s new email to Dicky’s account and deleted the original, ensured that the filters could be overridden when desired, logged out, and clapped his hands together as if to declare,
Veni, vidi, vici.

And just in time, too. Mere hours after Plato had shoved himself in the middle of Bingham’s email business, a message arrived from Wally.
 

You done good, yada yada yada, Bingham pleased, yada yada yada, you’ve got six more months to make it profitable so keep it up, yada yada barf.

Ten minutes after the encouraging message had bounced into and out of Bingham’s Hotmail account without leaving any footprints, Dicky had logged in, spoofed a new “from Wally” message in its place, and begun cackling in spite of the seriousness of the situation.
 

Captain Dipshit had been reading over his shoulder. After Dicky had written four mandates that would drive customers away in droves, Captain Dipshit suggested a fifth. “Tell them they have to play musicals over the stereo,” he said.
 

Dicky was confused, but for once wasn’t annoyed. It was probably all of the blood in the water that was making him feel so chipper and cheery. “Why?” he said.

“To see if they’ll do it.”
 

“But why? It won’t drive customers away.”
 

“It might.”
 

“And it won’t increase expenses, or decrease profits.”

“But it’ll piss them off,” said Captain Dipshit.
 

And at that, a realization popped into Dicky’s head. If he’d been in a cartoon, a light bulb would have appeared over his head.
 

This could be fun.
 

It didn’t have to just be about getting the upper hand. It didn’t have to just be about retaliating for their below-the-belt assault on the smelly dumb kid. It didn’t have to be just numbers and profits, and making sure 3B’s loan payments got made while Bingham’s slowly drained out of the campus foodservice equation. Some of it could be just... just screwing with them.
 

Would they go along with it? Well, why wouldn’t they? The email came from the boss, and nothing contradictory came from the boss. If Philip emailed the boss, he’d hear more of the same in reply. The only thing that could upset the system would be if Wally dropped in (which seemed unlikely) or if one of them picked up the phone. Would that happen? Probably not from Wally’s end, because Wally hated the phone. Philip had told Dicky that himself.
 

Would
Philip
pick up the phone?
 

Well, why would he? Wally hadn’t gone dark; he kept sending email. And email never really got hacked in quite this elaborate of a way, so nobody would suspect that it wasn’t Wally who was sending the messages.
 

So Dicky let himself have fun. Prices crept up, but employees also had to start wearing nametags. New unpopular service policies were enacted, but hairnets also became mandatory. Food quality was lowered, but the male crewmembers were also asked to start wearing makeup.

“Makeup?” said Plato, watching Dicky at work.
 

“Well, foundation, anyway,” he said. And when Philip replied in protest, Dicky spelled it out:

Just trust me on this, Philip. We’ve been getting complaints here at corporate that you guys look like greaseballs. Nobody wants greaseballs touching their food. Bingham isn’t asking you to wear lipstick here. Just a light foundation to reduce the oiliness of your problematic T-zones.
 

A few days later, after Paul returned from a trip to Bingham’s and reported that they had actually done it, Dicky sent:

Actually, we are going to need you to wear lipstick after all. No less than ten people have called our main number on the menu and complained that with the foundation only, you guys look like the ghosts of cheap whores.
 

He tried to stay reasonable in his demands, but it was hard because Bingham’s just kept complying with them. The kids either wanted to keep their jobs or wanted to keep the deli alive more than he’d anticipated, and “Wally” painted a pretty clear picture: The place was weeks or even days from closing; the financial crisis was very bad; Bingham had an itchy trigger finger and didn’t really even want the place anymore, anyway. Hell, you could get people to do all sorts of stupid, embarrassing things for a Klondike bar. What was a little bit of humiliation if it might save your favorite place in the world from the axe of its uncaring and senile owner?

Besides, Dicky told himself, there was a business reason for all of this. He couldn’t order Philip to cut employee pay because most of them worked at minimum wage already, so he needed some other way to make them disgruntled. The angrier the employees were, the more they’d start to quit (leaving Bingham’s short-handed) or the more they’d turn on Bingham’s itself. No love from management would lead to sabotage, theft, and backlash against the customers. Minimum-wage foodservice workers were notoriously petty and disloyal.
Cut my free meals?
they’d say.
Okay, then I’m stealing chairs for my apartment.
 

So far, according to Paul, no chairs had been stolen. And although Bingham’s had implemented everything that Dicky had demanded, the flow of customers didn’t seem to be decreasing. Employees didn’t seem to be quitting – at least not the main ones, who Paul saw regularly. One thing seemed to be happening, though. They seemed to be surlier with customers. But it was hard to be sure about that, given the background level of surliness that always existed at Bingham’s.