One Fifth Avenue

“Holy fuck!” he screamed.

In the master bedroom next door, Annalisa stirred in her sleep. At the celebration dinner the night before, the Rices and Brewers had consumed over five thousand dollars’ worth of rare wines before helicoptering back to the city at two A. M. She turned over, her head heavy, hoping Paul’s voice had come from a dream. But there it was again: “Holy fuck!”

Now Paul was in the room, pulling on his pants from the night before. Annalisa sat up. “Paul?”

“There’s no fucking Internet service.”

“But I thought…” Annalisa mumbled, gesturing uselessly.

“Where’s the car? I need the fucking car.”

She leaned over the bed, picking up the handset on the landline. “It’s in the garage. But the garage is probably closed.”

In a frenzy, Paul buttoned his shirt while trying to hop into his shoes. “This is exactly why I wanted that parking spot in the Mews,” he snapped. “For just this kind of emergency.”

“What emergency?” Annalisa said, getting out of bed.

“There’s no fucking Internet service. Which means I am fucked. The whole fucking China deal is fucked.” He ran out of the room.

“Paul?” she said, following him and leaning over the banister. “Paul? What can I do?” But he was already in the hallway, punching the button for the elevator. It was all the way down in the lobby. Glancing at his watch, Paul decided he didn’t have time to wait and began clattering down the steps. He burst into the lobby, waking the night doorman, who was dozing in a chair. “I need a taxi,” Paul shouted breathlessly. “A fucking taxi!” He ran into the empty street, waving his arms.

When no taxis appeared, he started jogging up Fifth Avenue. At Twelfth Street, he finally saw a cab and fell into the backseat. “Park Avenue and Fifty-third Street,” he screamed. Pounding on the divider, he shouted, “Go, go. Go!”

“I cannot run a red light, sir,” the driver said, turning around.

“Shut up and drive,” Paul screamed.

The journey to midtown was agony. Who would have thought there would be traffic before five A. M.? Paul rolled down his window and stuck his head out, waving and shouting at the other drivers. By the time the taxi pulled up in front of his office building, it was four-fifty-three A. M.

The building was locked, so it took another minute of kicking and screaming to arouse the night watchman. It was another couple of minutes to get upstairs and use his pass to unlock the glass doors of Brewer Securities, and a few more seconds to run down the hall to his office. When he got to his computer, it was five-oh-one and forty-three seconds. His fingers flew over the keyboard. When he was finished, it was five-oh-one and fifty-six seconds. He collapsed on his chair and leaned back, putting his hands over his face. In the two-minute delay, he had lost twenty-six million dollars.

Back at One Fifth, Mindy Gooch poked her head out the door. “Roberto,” she said to the doorman, “there’s no Internet service.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “Ask your son, Sam.”

At six-thirty, she woke Sam up. “There’s no Internet service.”

Sam smiled and yawned. “It’s probably Paul Rice’s fault. He’s got all that equipment up there. It probably knocked out the service in the entire building.”

“I hate that man,” Mindy said.

“Me, too,” Sam agreed.

Several floors above, Enid Merle was also trying to get online. She needed to read the column composed by her staff writer in the wee hours of the morning, to which she would add her trademark flourishes. But there was something wrong with her computer, and desperate to approve the column before eight A. M., when it would be syndicated online and then appear in the afternoon edition of the paper, she called Sam. In a few minutes, Sam and Mindy appeared at her door. Mindy had pulled on a pair of jeans below her flannel pajama top. “No one’s computer is working,” she informed Enid. “Sam says it has something to do with Paul Rice.”

“Why would he be involved?” Enid asked.

“Apparently,” Mindy said, glancing at Sam, “he’s got all kinds of powerful and probably illegal computer equipment up there. In Mrs. Houghton’s old ballroom.”

When Enid looked doubtful, Mindy said, “Sam has seen it. When he went up to help Annalisa Rice with her computer.”

Annalisa herself was nervously pacing the living room with her cell phone in hand when Maria came in. “Some people are here,” Maria said.

“The police?”

“No. Some people from downstairs,” Maria said.

Annalisa opened the front door a few inches. “Yes?” she asked impatiently.