The Hungry Dreaming

  Craig Schaefer

  Demimonde Books

  Copyright © 2020 by Craig Schaefer.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC.

  Author Photo ©2014 by Karen Forsythe Photography

  Craig Schaefer / The Hungry Dreaming

  ISBN 978-0-9961927-6-7

  Contents

  Cover Page

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  56.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  60.

  61.

  62.

  63.

  64.

  65.

  66.

  67.

  68.

  69.

  70.

  71.

  72.

  73.

  74.

  75.

  76.

  77.

  78.

  79.

  80.

  Afterword

  Also by Craig Schaefer

  The Hungry Dreaming

  by Craig Schaefer

  1.

  Nell Bluth’s pen was a Smith & Wesson tactical model. She didn’t know Smith & Wesson made pens until she got one as a birthday present, but she liked it, and she kept it clean and loaded. It was a hard spike of aircraft-grade aluminum, hot pink, and the business end could break glass or give somebody a bad day.

  She’d never had to do either of those things, but it was nice to have the option.

  “Print media sits in back, Bluth.”

  Harrelson delivered Nell’s eviction notice with the tired resignation of a playground monitor. He dropped into the folding chair to her left while his cameraman, tight-lipped and focused, set up a tripod.

  A spiral notebook balanced on Nell’s knee. The cap of her pen rapped against the tight blue lines, playing hopscotch over the empty space in between. “I’m not blocking your shot.”

  “No, but there’s only so much room up front. Somebody might need it.”

  “Then they should have gotten here early, like me.”

  She craned her neck and looked behind her. The hall was filling up. Press passes dangled from navy-blue lanyards, plastic glistening almost wet under the atrium lights. Interns had pushed a podium out front, a ship with no captain, and now they were propping up easels with visual aids for the slow kids. Neon grids bent along poster board like something out of The Matrix, resolving into a glowing silhouette of the Manhattan skyline. A hard-edged font declared, The Loom: The Future of Emergency Management, Today.

  Nell scratched a note on her pad. Notably absent: any facts, hard figures, or dollar signs. Now the interns were setting up a side table with water bottles and Loom-branded tote bags for the attendees to take home.

  “Feels like a movie junket,” she muttered.

  Harrelson gave her a sidelong glance. “Then why are you here?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  She had his interest now, too. “You’re onto something. What have you got?”

  “Secrets.”

  She pantomimed locking her lips and tossing the key over her shoulder. He played it off with a wave of his hand.

  “You know they’re calling you the Grim Reaper,” he said. “You’re the only reporter in this room with a body count.”

  She took another look behind her. “Nah, Bukowski was in Vietnam. Door gunner on a Huey. I’m pretty sure he’s got me beat there.”

  Rhonda was coming up on her other side. Big hair, attitude to match, camera guy and her own makeup tech following her like baby ducklings trailing their mama. Bangles bounced on her wrist as she jerked a sharp-nailed thumb to one side.

  “Print media sits in back, Bluth.”

  Nell looked left. Then she looked right. Her fingertip drew an invisible tether.

  “It’s a chorus. You two ought to start a band.”

  Rhonda grumbled her way into a chair. Her tech took a knee and opened a case lined with puff brushes.

  “Shouldn’t have you up front,” Rhonda said. “You’re gonna scare these people.”

  “Again with the chorus. How do you do it?”

  Harrelson folded his arms. “This was supposed to start five minutes ago. What are they doing over there?”

  Nell followed his gaze. Three men huddled close near the edge of the atrium, too far to hear but their body language did the talking. One shook his head, lips tight as a clamshell.

  “They’re drawing straws,” Nell said. “Short straw has to step up to that podium and dazzle us with bullshit.”

  Rhonda was getting primped. Harrelson was getting restless, drumming his fingers on his knees. Nervous energy. Nell poured hers into her notepad, scratching out another line.

  Just NYCEM wonks in the house, no reps from the Weaver Group. Afraid of hard questions?

  Harrelson gave her the side-eye. “You went to Columbia, right?”

  “Even graduated,” Nell said. “Got a piece of paper that says so.”

  “You ever take classes with a guy named Ramis?”

  She looked up from her pad.

  “Professor Ramis? Sure, he was my faculty advisor. I minored in history.”

  “You talk to him lately?”

  “Not since I finished, and that was…four years ago.” It was seven, but she stole birthdays where she could. “Why?”

  “Your boy’s making news. Found a cache of old letters hidden in somebody’s antique furniture. Says they were written by Alexander Hamilton.”

  “Huh. Good for him.”

  “Not so good.” Harrelson cracked his knuckles. “They’re fake as all hell. Your old professor tried to peddle some fugazi merchandise and got caught in the act.”

  Nell’s brow pinched. The Ramis she knew would have cut off his own hand before telling a lie.

  “Maybe he made a mistake,” she said.

  “No mistake. They’re talking about yanking his tenure for ‘moral turpitude.’ Having a con man on staff is a bad look for the school.”

  “That’s not him.”

  “Time can change people,” Harrelson replied. “Said it yourself, you haven’t talked to the man in seven years.”

  “Four,” she said.

  “I’ve seen your driver’s license.”

  “Remind me again why we broke up?”

  He stretched and stifled a yawn behind his hand. “You couldn’t handle the competition.”

  “That wasn’t it,” she said.

  At the head of the atrium, the short straw had finally been picked. The man approaching the podium wore a button-down short-sleeved shirt with a bow tie. He was a chinless creature with a comb-over, soft-bodied, a life form evolved to fill middle-management positions.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he said to nonexistent applause. “If we could come to order please? If we could, please?”

  The room was already in order. A few last conversations hushed down, nothing but the shuffling of papers and a stray dry-throated cough to stir the listless silence.

  “Thank you. I’m Gilbert Berkeland, with New York City Emergency Management. I’m here today to talk a little about the Loom Initiative Program and field your questions as long as time permits.”

  He clasped his hands together like a kid about to open his Christmas presents. True believer, Nell wrote on her pad.

  “The Loom has seen successful rollouts in Houston, Amarillo, and Wichita Falls, not to mention satellite programs in several small, outlying townships. The technology is tested, proven, and fiscally sound—”

  The front rows exploded. Questions climbing over questions, exclamation points waving to be heard. He gently pushed them down with his open palms. He had a sermon to deliver and wouldn’t be denied.

  “Just last week, an Amber Alert went out in Houston. Within five minutes, the Loom had identified the child’s abductor, cross-referenced his employment data, rent history, tax records, vehicle registration, and their toll-booth transponder logs, and built an instant geographic profile for police to follow. The kidnapper was apprehended without incident one hour later, and the child was returned safe and sound.”

/>   Harrelson was the first to drive an ice pick into his armor. His voice rang out, strident.

  “And all of that data is being handed to a privately owned corporation.”

  The man at the podium smelled a heretic. His nose wrinkled.

  “Is that a question? Yes, the Weaver Group is solely responsible for the administration of the Loom. But absolutely no private data is included in their access package, just the same public databases and municipal records that New York law enforcement uses as part of their day-to-day investigations. Weaver has simply built a better mousetrap. One system, one algorithm, one artificially intelligent agent to oversee the emergency-management needs of an entire city. And let’s not forget the cherry on top: a full, all-expenses-paid rebuild of our telecommunications infrastructure. Fiber-optic cable for everyone.”

  “No such thing as a free lunch,” called out a voice from the back.

  Gilbert tugged at his bow tie, looking personally insulted.

  “This is exactly the sort of municipal project companies like Google have been rolling out for years with great success, in exchange for very reasonable tax accommodations—”

  The room erupted again. Nell sat at the center of the din, a carefully poised statue with her pad balanced on her knee. She didn’t fling her questions into the void; she held them close, composing them, loading her words in precision order like she was chambering bullets in a revolver. Nell was a gunslinger.

  The wave of shouts simmered down. Her instincts told her the right timing, the exact moment to pounce. Her hot-pink pen shot up in her hand, a shiny lure demanding attention from the fish behind the podium, and he acknowledged her with a nod.

  “That ‘free’ fiber-optic upgrade,” she said, “comes thanks to the Weaver Group’s partnership with Barron Equity. Isn’t that correct?”

  “An angel investor, yes. They wanted to keep their involvement private, but now that the cat’s out of the bag—”

  “Barron Equity, the firm at the center of no less than three bid-fixing scandals resulting from Governor Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion program. Is this just more Buffalo-style corruption coming to roost in New York City?”

  “Ab-absolutely not,” he stammered. “For one thing, not a single person employed by Barron Equity was indicted as part of those so-called scandals. They can hardly be blamed if—”

  Harrelson jumped in, riding on Nell’s wave. She figured he would. They had a rhythm, once.

  “Can you explain why DoITT wasn’t involved in the bidding process? The Information Technology and Telecommunications Office is responsible for all infrastructure upgrades, and they were blindsided by the mayor’s decision.”

  “You’d have to ask them about that,” Gilbert shot back.

  “I did. I’m telling you what they told me.”

  His soft fingers hugged the sides of the podium. “The bottom line is, the Loom is an emergency-management system, so the decision came down to the mayor’s office and NYCEM working in close collaboration. All other branches of the city government will be looped in when and where appropriate.”

  Nell faded back into marble-sculpture silence as the press conference dragged on. Most of the questions were softballs, answers unworthy of a stroke from her pen. Others she already knew the answers to.

  Then again, there was an underrated art to asking questions when you already knew the answer. She bided her time, waited for a lull, and her pen swiped the air when she was ready to strike.

  “Just checking my facts,” she said. “I understand the final bid was approved by the mayor’s office on the first of May. Is that right?”

  “That’s correct,” said the man in the bow tie. She made a note.

  The heat from Harrelson’s eyes was giving her cheek a suntan. She asked him a question with hers.

  “You’ve got something,” he whispered.

  “Just checking my facts,” she whispered back.

  “Bull. I know you, Bluth. That was a perjury trap. You wanted this guy to lie on the public record.” He paused. “You’ve got someone, don’t you? You’ve got an inside line at the Weaver Group.”

  “Nope,” she said.

  Technically true.

  “Just saying, we could team up on this,” he told her. “I run the story, give you full collaborator credit—”

  “And you bring what to the table, exactly?”

  “Television. C’mon, Bluth. This could be your way in. You know you want to be on TV.”

  Gilbert was giving his closing arguments from the podium. They sounded just like his opening. Journalists were slipping away, gravitating to the table and the free swag. Nell closed her spiral notebook with a flip of her wrist and screwed the aluminum cap onto her pen.

  “I don’t want to be on TV.”

  “Everybody wants to be on TV,” he said. “You’re too pretty for newspapers.”

  She pushed herself up. “I want people to pay attention to my words, not my face.”

  Harrelson’s gaze dropped a few inches. “I wasn’t just talking about your face.”

  “Still a pig. I respect that. You found what works for you, and you stick with it.”

  He followed her halfway to the door.

  “Nobody reads anymore, Bluth. You’re reporting to shut-ins and grandmothers. You know who reads newspapers? NPR listeners. Get with the program and get on the air. With me.”

  She tossed up a hand, wriggled her fingers in a goodbye wave, and laughed.

  “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

  2.

  The city wore a thousand masks. Masks of marble, and granite, and old red brick, shuffling from hand to invisible hand in an endless masquerade. Yesterday’s Asian fusion restaurant became a dry cleaner became a coffee shop became a French bistro. Next month that bistro would earn a Michelin star and the month after that it would shut down overnight, and then maybe it’d be Asian fusion again.

  The offices of the Brooklyn Standard had started as a warehouse back in the 1800s, a two-floor barn of crumbling brick and pebbled glass. At some point in the fifties it became a garment factory. The mint linoleum floors wore the deep groove scars of the rolling racks and divots from the rows of sewing machines where Chinese immigrants bled their fingers for fifty cents an hour. One long wall on the second floor still bore the faded paint of the old company logo, a tangerine circular seal, cursive script too flecked and worn to read.

  Now the great brick barn was a newspaper, clinging to life and trying to keep its foothold as the neighborhood shifted all around it. The pay was slightly better.

  Nell’s perch sat on the second floor, in the back, what would have been a coveted spot if the windows could open. The builders weren’t keen on the concept of ventilation, and none of the owners since had felt like paying for an upgrade. Every desk in the bullpen had a standing fan, cheap plastic whirring as keyboards rattled and phones rang through the day. There were overheads, too, big paddle fans dangling from the exposed metal rafters, but they didn’t do much besides shove the muggy summer air around and threaten to fall on somebody.

  Tyler Graham, slim and dark, held the spot to Nell’s right. He leaned dangerously far back in a swivel chair, taking half a twirl until the coiled tether of his desk phone pulled him the other way. Tyler had roguish ocean-wave curls, unruly on his best day, and a stubble shadow on his cheeks.

  “—yes, but we filed our FOIA request over a month ago,” he said into the receiver. “I sent it by certified mail. Would you like me to read you the receipt number, so you can verify?”

  His voice was all sweetness and reason, but his eyes were about to roll out of his head. Nell gave him a questioning eyebrow. He responded by curling his fingers and making a slow tugging motion just above his lap. She flashed two thumbs-up and went back to her own work. She had an open laptop, a scattering of manila folders—without labels, arranged more by feng shui than logic—and half a cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. Most people kept a picture of their spouse and kids close at hand, a reminder of what all their hard work was for. The small brass frame on Nell’s desk, just left of her bulky office phone, cradled a restored photograph from 1889 capturing a young woman in her prime. Chin up, eyes bright but made of steel.

  She couldn’t claim blood relations with Nellie Bly—even Nell’s name was a happy accident of birth—but the pioneering muckraker and around-the-world traveler was her patron saint. Nell had been raised Catholic but gave up on religion by her early teens and hadn’t darkened a church’s doorstep since. She wouldn’t pray to heaven but she might, in a pinch, pray to Nellie Bly. She figured the odds of getting an answer had to be about even.

 

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