The Bialy Pimps (45 page)

“I hope so,” said Philip.

Twenty feet away, a tiny fiber-optic camera watched the lobby through the women’s bathroom wall, its owner very eager to record evidence that the Anarchist was right.

If there was a time for action, Squeaky III decided, it would have to be soon.
 

The previously intolerable situation at Bingham’s had only gotten worse. The humans were getting unruly. The upper floors were full of two-leggers until the wee hours of the morning, stomping around like elephants. The increased business meant increasingly frequent deliveries, which were all delivered into the rats’ territory. There had been television crews too, and
those
bastards seemed to go everywhere, restricted areas notwithstanding.
 

And now there was going to be a Made-For-TV Movie? What was a Made-For-TV Movie?

Squeaky III’s powerful rat brain was growing to understand the domain and even the language of the two-leggers. He knew that the chatter between the humans in suits and the native humans meant what they called
business
, which would mean more humans, which would mean further intrusion. There were things called
agents
and
actors
on their way, and those would need to
research their parts.
This last didn’t make sense to Squeaky III, as he’d been researching his own parts for years and had never needed to go anywhere special to do it. But it didn’t matter. Much of human behavior (clothing, only urinating in one room) was senseless.
 

It was time to formulate their plans for the great revolt. It was time to end this injustice, to purge those who sought to take from them what was rightfully theirs.
 

Squeaky III ordered his ranks to assemble.
 

Two days later, they did.

The Great Convention (as it would later be called in the annals of rat history) was held on the main floor of the deli, in the lobby. The first reason for this was that the basement layout was too convoluted to allow the thousand-plus (and rapidly growing) members of the Rat Nation to assemble in one unbroken gathering. The second reason was expressed in what would later become the first great rat parable:
Fuck the humans. Let’s piss on their walls.

When the rats massed in the Bingham’s lobby at 2:45am on the morning of November 26, 1998, they formed a living carpet on the wooden floor. They stood atop the wobbling stools and reclined on the tops of the counters. It looked as if the entire store were draped in gray velvet –
moving
gray velvet.
 

Most of the rats within miles attended. Word travels fast in the sewers, and it was said that a leader with the wiliness of a rat and the intelligence of a human was gathering an army. This great leader promised revenge. Vengeance. He promised a return to the glory that rats had had in the days of the great plague.
 

All were silent as the leader traversed the crowd and began the climb to his elevated podium. None of the rats wanted to miss a moment. This was the stuff of legends.

As Tony’s camera watched through the women’s room wall, Squeaky III, larger in stature than the others, clambered onto one of the cold steamers to address the assembly. The monologue was in the language of the rats, a complicated soliloquy involving squeaking, whisker-twitching, spinning in circles, falling over, and defecating. It was a brilliant and moving speech.

Soon
, he promised.
Tell your friends. Make more kin. Travel. Spread the word. You have a moon cycle to shore up our numbers, to make us invincible. And after the moon returns, we will stand ready. We will choose our time. And we will reclaim what is rightly ours.
 

The Chinese had gotten their calendars wrong.
 

1999 was to begin in just over a month, and it was going to be the Year of the Rat.

What Dicky saw raised gooseflesh on his arms.
 

“They’ve been here for over an hour,” said Paul, standing beside Dicky in a long-sleeved T-shirt, arms clasped across his chest and shivering in the cold night. There were no pedestrians still on High. The clubs down the street had closed over an hour ago, and even the most die-hard partiers were home in bed. The street was quiet around the two interlopers. Only the buzz of the overhead streetlight kept them company.

Two hours ago, Paul had been walking down High with a group of friends, on their way home from a party. He knew what Dicky and Tony had planned for Bingham’s, and as he walked down High, he couldn’t resist a sideways glance at the storefront. But something was strange. Where he’d expected stillness, he could have sworn he’d seen movement. And that was odd for nearly 3am. The Bialy Pimps could party into the wee hours with the best of them, but the deli was always a place of work for them, not leisure. They stayed open no later than 11pm, then moved elsewhere to revel in their debauchery.
 

Paul broke from his pack of friends, told him he’d catch up with them later, and crossed the street.

There was a rigid metal gate in front of the main windows and the front door. Paul tried to squint past it and see through the front windows, but it was no good. The lobby was too dark, and the glare from the street lights was too bright. Whatever was going on would show up on Tony’s camera, of course, but Paul didn’t want to wait to find out. This was all so curious and out of character. What were they up to so late?
 

Then he noticed a side window that abutted the main front windows at an angle. It was around the corner, on the alley, which meant that it wasn’t protected by the gate.
 

Paul cupped his hands and put his face against the glass. Then he flinched back, opened the cell phone Dicky had given him when he’d begun his Bingham’s reconnaissance, and punched Dicky’s number.
 

He’d woken Dicky, of course, and Dicky had been furious, but Paul had guessed correctly. Yes, the camera would be able to see in the dark, thanks to the infrared filter and powerful LEDs that Tony had planted, but Dicky would want to see this for himself.
 

Dicky stood with his forehead against the glass, his hands cupped around his face.

“Oh sweet Jesus,” he said.

The lobby was large, but the rats had filled it to capacity. They were packed as tightly as sardines, moving against each other and creating the illusion of rolling waves. They cavorted atop the tables and chairs and counters, the candy machines, the steamer tops. In the corners, scurrying forms created drifts that ebbed and flowed to three rats deep.
 

They clawed the walls. They scampered across the tabletops.

Some of the rats were smaller and brown. Some were long-haired and gray. A few were huge – the great granddaddies of the sewers, who sat alone on the high tables like gods atop pillars. Every object in the room seemed to vibrate with life. They had even gotten into the ceiling, and cavorted atop the light fixtures. And Dicky could see them in the vents.
 

The rats along the front lunch counter, just beyond the glass, had turned to watch Dicky when he’d peeked in. Now, disinterested and beyond caring, these spectators in the cheap seats grew bored and turned back around to watch the melee in the lobby, twitching their pink tails against the window.

Dicky pried himself away from the window, a look of mixed shock and venom on his face.

“We hoped we’d see rats,” he said, “but...”
 

But there were no words.
 

Both Dicky and Tony had seen The Rat at Bingham’s during their time working for the deli, but each of the men gave the camera gambit a thirty-seventy chance at best of capturing proof of an infestation. With Tony’s motion-activated camera watching the lobby every night (and, with Plato’s help, locked out from recording hours of useless footage during the day), it was entirely possible that it could watch for weeks without capturing anything usable.
 

The angle was wrong, for one. The camera couldn’t see behind the counter, where the food was made, and that was probably the most likely place to spot a rat. It could see almost none of the floor, either, meaning that a rat would have to climb onto a table, a chair, the counter, or the two end steamers to be seen. And even if, against those odds, a rat
did
cross the camera’s field of vision, it would probably be too far away to make for a decent shot. Unless the rats walked onto something reasonably close and then lingered, the health department would probably dismiss the footage as “inconclusive.”
 

But this... this....
 

This was intolerable.

This was beyond belief.
 

This was
criminal
.

But even as the front part of Dicky’s mind cheered that this was more than he’d hoped for – that there would be no escaping for Bingham’s once the authorities saw this footage – a dark black corner argued that reporting them wouldn’t be enough. The place didn’t need to be reported. It needed to be
sterilized
.
 

“Holy shit,” said Paul, taking another peek inside. “I guess you hit the jackpot.”
 

“Thanks, Paul,” said Dicky. But there was a strange note in his voice. Dicky never expressed thanks. Dicky had the temperament of a viper. If a disposition like Dicky’s was kind, it meant that his prey should watch its back.
 

“I’m going to go home now,” said Paul. “Tony goes in to get the camera on Friday, right?”
 

“Yes, Paul.”
 

“And then you’ll be able to call the health department?”

“Maybe even the police, Paul.”
 

“How long do you think it’ll be before they’re shut down?”
 

“Depends on the inspector, Paul. And depends on their schedules.”
 

“So, I’m going to go home now,” Paul repeated, shivering, grinning, but knowing that he’d done well.
 

“Good night, Paul.”
 

In the darkness, with nobody to see it, Dicky’s eyes flashed briefly red. Then the red was gone, and what was left in the dim of the quiet night seemed to be jet black.

Roger felt his insides rumble with disquiet. The girls –
his
girls – were being exploited. It made him sick.

Back at the unpleasant dry cleaning deli on Chittenden, Roger had overheard the man with the killer’s eyes telling the boy who looked like a girl about the man who cleaned Bingham’s toilets. He had a camera in the women’s restroom that watched the girls as they used the facilities, the man had said. The toilet man used the videos he took for sexual gratification. The man at the deli had several depraved ideas about how exactly this last might transpire, and told these ideas to the kid with a mix of disgust and dark humor.

And then the deli man said more – something about rats and a plan and evidence and the health department – but Roger had heard enough once he’d heard about the camera. It was disgusting. These girls were his friends, and he was supposed to keep them safe and protected. How long had this spy camera thing been going on? And how could Roger, now that he knew, allow it to continue?

Bingham’s had been a zoo lately. Roger kept meaning to do... to do
something
about the intolerable situation, but every time he went by Bingham’s lately it seemed so uninviting, and something always stopped him from going inside. Sometimes there were crowds outside. Usually there were crowds inside. And last week, he’d finally made it through the doors and found that the big man had blocked off the restrooms with his table and chair.
 

But enough was enough. Every day he allowed the disgusting man to keep doing what he was doing was another day of exploitation. It was another day of invaded privacy. It was another day in which he, Roger, the friend and (let’s be honest) white knight of the Bingham’s girls, had failed. He was done failing them. The time had come for action.

He had woken this morning determined to end it in the cool, smooth, hero style the Bingham’s girls had come to expect of him. And he’d do it secretly. He couldn’t let anyone know what he’d learned or what he was about to do to solve the problem. The situation was incredibly embarrassing. The girls could never know what the dirty old man had done to them.

He donned his clothes: first the brown slacks, then the brown plaid shirt. He cinched the ensemble together with a brown leather belt and sat down for a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and coffee. Then he donned his coat and hat and walked out the door, ignoring all distractions. He had a job to do.

He walked into the deli and asked the young men behind the counter for his usual drink, using his soothing, cool, deep voice to pacify them. He smiled suavely at Beckie, who he could have sworn tipped him a wink and blushed. He couldn’t blame her. He’d always been the cool black guy. He’d always been loved by the ladies.

Then he set down his coat and hat at his chair, grabbed the women’s restroom key, and sneaked stealthily into the bathroom. His work would not take long. The sinister man had mentioned the location of the camera.

Roger made sure the door had closed behind him. Then, smoothly and dexterously, he began to open the air freshener cage.

“What the fuck is
that?”
Philip asked, raising an eyebrow at the violent cacophony emanating from the bathrooms. It sounded like someone was trying to yank something off the wall. Something very, very stubborn.

“I think that black guy’s in there,” said Mike, stoic and totally disinterested.
 

Philip turned his ear toward the racket. “That sounds like it’s coming from the
women’s
room.”

Mike adjusted his baseball cap. “Whatever.”

Philip shrugged. It was still early. He was tired.

“Hey,” said Mike over the sounds of splintering plastic, “remember when you told that fat whore from the undergraduate library to fuck off?”