FIANCHETTO: Sin Conductor

Earlier in the novel Victor agrees to an interview by a famous online personality, Karasu Nohane. In an era where most actors, hosts, and reporters are AI generated talking heads, Karasu is unusual in being a real person. She's unusual in other ways, as Victor discovers.

Some notes: "vee-vee" is 2055 slang for all visual media, a combination of movie and TV. Your/World is the global audio-visual system, comprising all phone, internet, film, television, and publishing.

 

            Victor was met at LAX by a large, bearish fellow wearing a plaid 'Canada' T-shirt. He carried one of those Nixie tube signs that read V/LEVENTON. Victor approached with his single overnight bag.

            "Cuervo Refugio?" he asked.

            The big guy snatched the bag out of Victor's hand. For a moment he thought this was some heavy-handed robbery, but Canada guy flashed an ID card with Karasu's crow logo on it. His name was Charlie-something.

            "This way," he said. His voice was as bearish as his physique.

            Ranks of self-driving cabs awaited at the curb outside the terminal. Canada waved his PDL at them. One lit up and whirred over to them. Victor was startled to see the label SIN CONDUCTOR in peeling yellow letters on the side of the cab.

            He pointed, puzzled. Charlie said, "Means 'driverless' in Spanish." They got in.

            The cab was a little more than a metal box on four wheels. Two rows of hard, flat seats filled the interior, room for four passengers. The controls up front were mounted in a painted steel housing, looking like an armored safe. The rear of the housing bore numerous scuffs and dents.

            Mr. Canada fell heavily into the left-hand front seat. Victor sat behind, on the right rear bench. The guy from Cuervo Refugio promptly kicked the taxi's console with the knobby sole of one of his black combat boots. The door closed with authority and the taxi lurched away from the curb. Victor hadn't even buckled his seat belt yet.

            With neck-snapping acceleration, the cab injected itself into the artery of traffic passing the airport. Contrary to endless Your/World ads about the smoothness and safety of driverless cars, the Sin Conductor surged forward, braked hard, and changed lanes often while surfing the wave of traffic. The electric powered box darted in and out, playing chicken with enormous land trains, buses, and other anonymous wheeled boxes. Charlie tried to point out landmarks as they whirled past. Victor saw downtown highrises and the Hollywood sign, now in permanent holographic form since the famous metal emblem was lost in the Big Shake of 2036.

            Cuervo Refugio was on the northern edge Hollywood. Every town in southern California seemed to flow into the next, creating an endless stream of strip malls, low rise office complexes, and pastel stucco apartment blocks.

            The taxi hurtled off the highway onto a side street. Here the buildings were plainly older, going as far back as the 1970s. The Sin Conductor slowed as they passed a three-story brick and structure topped with sign projectors touting Your/World channels like Mi Vida Sexy and
Phật Và Cơ Thể Của Bạn.

            "Cuervo Refugio, third floor," Charlie remarked. "We'll be back here tomorrow morning."

            The cab hummed down the side street to a nearby micro hotel, The Hutch. Victor saw the video sign and said, "Isn't a hutch where rabbits live?"

            "If you say so, man. Beats hell out of me.”

            He checked Victor in, and carried his bag upstairs. Charlie left him a nano dot with codes and a link list so he could get it touch with the studio if needed.

            "When do I meet Ms. Karasu?"

            "Tomorrow, at the studio," Charlie said. Then he left.

            The room was standard micro size, twenty-eight square meters. Victor had stayed in a place like this when he went to India to play NAAG. The half blank inside wall was a Your/World screen. A Kumo utility PDL was fixed to the coffee table. Victor tapped it, then continued exploring. It took about twenty seconds to tour the whole place. The king size bed was hinged to the baseboard and folded into a recess. The bathroom fixtures were nestled so closely together he could stand in the shower and easily piss in the pot--or the sink.

            The wall was beaming cheerful scenery and upbeat music at him when he returned to the main room.

            "Welcome to The Hutch! We hope you enjoy your stay! For room service, ask for 'Room Service.' For the latest Your/World programs and films, ask for 'Your/World.'"

            Most of the people who stayed here must be idiots, he decided. Victor muted the wall and took out his personal PDL.

            He input her address. She didn't answer. He switched to text mode and typed In L.A. Where are you? The text flashed off into Your/World's infinite stream of noise and chatter, forever lost. He waited a while for an answer. None came.

                                                                        #

            Victor awoke at sunrise as he often did. Ever since he was a child, he relished the solitude of dawn. It was his personal time in the world. In college, when most guys his age turned into night crawlers, Victor was often in bed by eleven PM in order to greet the sun.

            He went to the window and threw back the lightproof curtains. The view faced north, and the horizon there was still deep gray with night. The earth rotates at approximately 1,600 kilometers an hour, so as Victor stood there, he was hurtling through space too. He calculated it. Every minute was another 26.66 kilometers, or 444 meters per second.

            A delivery van, marked 'Sin Conductor' on its roof, turned onto the access road behind The Hutch. It glided up to a loading dock and disgorged four pallets of--what? Food for the kitchen? New carpet for the foyer? From the second floor the containers were just big tan boxes.

            "Your/World on," he said. Behind him the wall burst into operation. He muted the sound. It was a chirpy local morning show in Spanish. Farmers in the valley were tenderly harvesting hydroponic strawberries.

            "Your/World Secret Door."

            This was his porn portal. A hundred thumbnails popped up, though at this scale each thumbnail was the size of a dinner plate. Turning away from the window he scanned the images. There were new vee-vees by some of his favorites, but this morning they meant nothing, felt like nothing.

            "Your/World Games, chess."

            Overnight video stream from a match for International Masters in Perth. Two grandmasters, one South African, one Finnish, were giving commentary in an inset window. Victor closed the commentary. The players were too slow.

            "Playback 2X."

            The images moved at two times speed. The match ended after fifty-nine moves. The others dragged on.

            "Playback 4X."

            Table after table concluded in a blur of hands and moving chess pieces. The day's matches ended in less than five minutes at this speed. The last game, between an elderly Australian and a young Ukrainian went on the longest.

            "Replay. 6X."

            Now the separate inset frame of video strobed so fast it was hard to detect individual movements. The entire game went by in eighty seconds.

            "Give me tight view, table 11." That was where the Ukrainian was playing. The caption below read KURLENKO, Y. His Australian opponent was BATTERLSEY, B.

            "Play table 11, 6X."

            There it was. He caught a glimpse of it at 4X, but at six times speed the crux of the game stood out like the bullet impact in the Zapruder film. That's where Kurlenko killed Battersley, at that fragment of time and play.

            "Playback stop."

            In his mind Victor played out hundreds of variations of how the game could have gone from that point forward. In the two hundred third branch of possibilities he found how Battersley could have drawn the game.

            "There!" he muttered. "Stupid shit, why didn't you shift that pawn to f6?"

            The door chimed behind him. In his mind Victor ran the game backward. Battersley, playing Black, was holding his own until the twenty-eighth move. Kurlenko slyly pushed a knight to e6. That was the beginning of the end.

            The door chimed. Victor ordered the PDL to open the door.

            It was Charlie. This morning his shirt read "Espaňa." His clothes got around.

            "Mr. Leventon? Time to go."

            Victor was standing before the wall screen in his underwear. He hadn't bathed or dressed. When he inquired "Time?" the screen flashed 8:19. He'd been absorbed in the tournament video almost two hours.

            "Oh hell, give me a minute!" He ran to the tiny puzzle box bathroom and tore back the shower curtain.

            Charlie wandered over to the mini bar. He put two 400 ml Heineken paks in his jacket pockets and cleaned out the packets of smoked almonds. Backing away, he frowned at the chess tournament video, looping over and over again at six times normal speed.

            "Some weird shit," he said. He stopped the playback. Closing the chess screen, he found Secret Door still open behind. Before he could focus on any particular thumbnail, the sound of the shower ceased. Charlie killed the screen.

            Victor emerged, towelling his hair. He dressed rapidly in his charcoal Knyphausen suit. The strobe tie he brought suddenly seemed gawdy and out of place. He asked Charlie what Karasu's other male guests wore.

            "Some wear ties. Some don't."

            He left the strober on the bed. Better to look too informal than reek of geek.

            "Let's roll!"

            Victor grabbed his PDL and shoved it in his coat pocket. Charlie, wearing dirty jeans, lace up b-ball shoes, and his Espaňa shirt, shrugged and held the door for him.

            Saturday mornings at this hour the streets were quiet. Charlie had come in a hand-driven van, and he drove with easy swings of the steering wheel through the empty streets. In short order they arrived at the nondescript office building that held Cuervo Refugio.

            Cuervo's building looked more suited to dentists' offices or realtors, which were exactly the businesses on the floors below Karasu's West Coast studio. Victor knew nothing about Your/World facilities or recording studios. He'd never seen Your/World until he went to college. Since then, his imperfect knowledge came from ancient vee-vees. Mounting the outside staircase, Victor spotted a matte black door with a stylized chrome crow silhouette inset in it.

            Charlie's PDL unlocked the door. He went in, calling out in his back country accent, "Comin' in!"

            A petite black-haired woman appeared, dressed in a test pattern skirt and top. The moiré pattern blinked as she moved.

            "I'm Teresa," she said, extending a slim hand. Victor introduced himself as Charlie thumped past, disappearing down a hallway.

            The outer office resembled a dentist's office too: cubic furniture, small Your/World screens on pivots by each chair. On the wall facing the entrance was a life-size video marker of Karasu Nohane, which slowly alternated with the logo of Kirin Studios. It was a unicorn-like creature with a goaty face and chin beard. Victor knew Kirin as a brand of Japanese beer, but 'chi-rin' was also the name of a one-horned creature from Asian mythology.

            Without being called, Charlie emerged from the back with two demitasse of blistering hot coffee. Handing them over, the big guy retreated again.

            "My apologies for interrupting you this morning," Teresa said pleasantly. Blowing on his coffee, Victor asked what she meant. "You were playing chess."

            How did she know? He asked as much.

            She smiled. "Charlie wears a Your/World micro-cam, 24/7. It's the coming thing. Before long we'll all have one." Micros were no larger than shirt buttons, and were often disguised that way. Lapel cams were even smaller.

            Victor stared. Everything Charlie saw went out on the network? Even his underwear-clad catharsis?

            "Don't worry, we don't necessarily feed live to Your/World," Teresa said. He noted the important word 'necessarily.' Silently Victor resolved to be more careful.

            A third Cuervo Refugio staffer joined them, Ramón, Karasu's stylist. He and Teresa made casual conversation for a few minutes, then the woman set down her cup and said, "Would you like to see the studio?"

            He followed them down a hall. The actual studio set was an old office layout modified into a large, open space. The ceiling wasn't high, and there was no obvious special lighting. On the ceiling there were four interlaced curving metal tracks whose purpose Victor did not recognize. Along the room's long axis were two mid-century modern swivel chairs. The carpet was dead black. Behind the chairs the converging walls were covered completely by two of the largest Your/World screens Victor had ever seen.

            "You'll sit here," Teresa said, indicating the farther chair. "Karasu-san will sit there. Be sure to look at her when she speaks."

            "Where are the cameras?"

            "They'll be on those tracks above you," Ramón said.

            The long screen came to life. It showed not the blue screen of an empty signal, but settled in as black as the carpet. Faintly lighter vertical bars marched slowly along its length. A hundred point digital clock readout appeared: 09:22:07 PDST 04/24/55. The seconds readout climbed steadily.

             Ramón had Victor sit in his designated chair. He took a white leather case from his coat pocket and snapped it open. Wielding an aerosol tube no bigger than Victor's finger, Ramón spritzed some kind of preparation on his forehead, nose, and cheeks. The stylist stood back and pointed his own PDL at Victor, whose eyes were still shut.

            Four steps away, in the center of the long room, Teresa said, "Get his chin."

            Victor opened his eyes. Twisting in the cup-shaped fiberglass chair, he saw himself projected on the huge screen behind him. At this size he looked like Big Brother in a revival of 1984. Ramón's spray prep had rendered his face smooth and pore-less, except for his chin.

            Ramón turned his face toward him again. "Close your eyes." Victor felt a slight warming sensation below his lips. Teresa pronounced herself satisfied.

            Victor wanted to see what he looked like now, but Ramón shut off his PDL feed and the wall returned to black bands and the clock display. 09:37:41 PDST.

            Charlie came in with three contraptions resting in the crook of his left arm. They resembled jointed rods of black plastic, each tipped with a clear 10 mm bead.

            "What's the setup?"

            Teresa indicated the second, third, and fourth metal tracks in the ceiling. Charlie raised one of the spidery devices, and it clicked into the second track. He did the same at the remaining two metal arcs.

            "Are those the cameras?" asked Victor.

            "Uh-huh.” Teresa used her PDL to test them. Though the hanging rods had no obvious optical device on them, when she tested the first one, a red LED glowed on the tip, and Victor's profile appeared on the wall behind him. She activated each one in turn.

            "Good." She left the camera on Victor's far left on and made some notations on a scripter.

            Their devices chimed in unison. Unconsciously Ramón, Teresa, and Charlie stood up straighter.

            "She's here," said Ramón.

            "How do I address her?" Victor asked. "Ms. Karasu? Karasu-san?"

            "Anything but Nohane," Teresa said.

            There were voices in the outer office. The door had opened. Ramón and Teresa hurried out. Charlie checked some things on his PDL.

            "Is she that scary?" Victor asked quietly.

            "She's the boss."

            "Any advice?"

            He looked up from his device. "Don't be a dick."

            A stir in the outer office presaged Karasu's entrance. Ramón bustled in, hands in motion as he described another project they were working on. Then Karasu Nohane entered.

            She was very tall, as common gossip said. Her glossy black hair was cut chin length and free of any colored highlights. She wore a Cossack smock of mustard-colored silk over ballooning black capris. As was the style, her legs were bare, and she wore pleekays: stick-on leather foot pads. Her legs were smooth and rather pale. From four meters away, aside from her height, Victor saw nothing else unusual about her appearance. He stood and slowly approached.

            Teresa said, "Ma'am, this is Victor Leventon."

            Karasu extended a long hand. "Yes, I recognize him from his videos."

            Lauren Bacall, he mused. A certain contralto, her voice was not as deep as her size led him to imagine. She was at least twenty cm. taller than Victor.

            "It's an honor," he said, shaking her hand. Karasu's nails were enameled blue steel.

            "I am 198 centimeters tall," she said, gazing directly into Victor's eyes. Hers were as black as onyx.

            He didn't how to reply. She laughed lightly. "That's what everyone wants to know the first time they meet me! Not two full meters, as the gossips say. One hundred ninety-eight centimeters! Remember that!"

            She was smiling, but Victor had the distinct impression he had better remember.

            Karasu extended a hand, bidding Victor take his seat. The wall read 09:51:33.

The famous Your/World personality sat opposite him. Teresa discreetly adjusted her chair so that she did not tower too much over her guest. Ramón had his spray out, but he professed the boss didn't need it. Karasu checked herself with the stylist's PDL. Tersely she ordered him to tidy up the backs of her hands and the base of her throat. While this happened, Victor noted the faint tracing of an IR tattoo on her upper left arm. Under white light it was almost invisible. Kata-kana, he thought. Karasu? Crow.

            "Mr. Leventon," she began as Ramón backed out of the cameras' line of sight.

            "You can call me Victor."

            She smiled fleetingly. "It's better I not. Now, Mr. Leventon, when did you start playing chess?"

            Had the interview started? Victor looked left and right. Teresa, Ramón, and Charlie were present, off camera, silent as statues.

            Karasu patted his hand on the arm of his chair.

            "I'm over here, Mr. Leventon." Her face was a friendly mask, but her manner was imperious.

            "I first played chess when I was six."

            "Was that at Fysikós Farm?"

            The name pierced him like a hypodermic. "Yes."

            "What was it like on the farm?"

            He flexed his fingers. "Quiet. We had no Your/World there, not even recorded vee-vees."

            "Sounds lonely and dull."

            "It wasn't so bad. There were other kids to play with--"

            "Play chess with, you mean?"

            He shrugged. "Sometimes."

            "You mother, Frances Clarke, ran the place, didn't she?"

            Where was she going with this? He shifted from star-struck mode to analyzing the possibilities.

            "My mother was one of several people on the council that guided the operation of Fysikós Farm."

            "But she was in charge, wasn't she?"

            He met Karasu's hard jet eyes. "Not as much as she thought."

            Karasu sat back, folding her long hands in her lap.

            "To what do you attribute your remarkable abilities, Mr. Leventon? Was it the deprived atmosphere of Fysikós Farm, or something else?"

            Have you stopped beating your wife?

            "I wouldn't call life at the farm deprived. Insulated, maybe, but it was not a lab for creating chess prodigies--or prodigies of any kind, for that matter."

            "Do you have any contact with people from Fysikós now?"

            That question hung unanswered for a long time. In the background Teresa stirred nervously, hand to her mouth.

            "I haven't been back to the farm since 2048."

            Karasu crossed her legs. Composing herself to look sensitive and concerned, she asked, "Did you attend your mother's funeral?"

            Queen's Gambit.

            Unblinking, he replied, "No. No one could. Her body was lethally contaminated with plutonium. She and the others who died at the Washington Monument are housed in a government nuclear waste facility in Utah."

            The wall read 10:00:00. There was a blare of music from Holst's The Planets, the 'Jupiter' movement.

            "We're recording in five--four--three--" Charlie held up two fingers, then one.

            A masculine recorded voice declared in rapid Japanese, "Karasu Nohane! Now she is here!"

            The wall image behind them hardened into a stylized arrangement of Staunton chess pieces. The LED on camera three glittered. Karasu looked directly at the light and spoke in quick, breathy Japanese. Off camera, Ramón held up a scripter for Victor that displayed a translation of what the host was saying.

            Victor read: "Good morning, good day, good night! I am Karasu Nohane. It's an honor to be watched at this time.

            "At this moment I am here with Mr. Victor Leventon, an American engineer who has set the world of chess and artificial intelligence into great turmoil! He has not invented a new chess playing machine, oh no. Mr. Leventon is a chess playing machine! He has beaten several previously invincible AIs in China, India, and Turkey. At this moment, he is poised to challenge the great Russian device ARAKHNA. If he can defeat it, only one thing stands between him and the world chess championship—the awesome Swiss machine FORT!"

            Karasu turned to Victor, dropping into English.

            "Mr. Leventon, it is very interesting to have you here!"

            "Thank you."

            "The world chess championship has been held by artificial intelligences for more than thirty years. Why is that?"

            Gambit accepted.

            Victor crossed his legs and folded his hands in exact imitation of his host. "They play better than most people."

            "Is that the only reason?"

            "Of course. Beginning in the late twentieth century, computer engineers increased the calculating power of their machine exponentially every few years. By 1997, when former world champion Garry Kasparov lost a game to the IBM computer Deep Blue, the growth of computing power was great enough to challenge the analytic power of any human player."

            "Those old computers were just high-speed adding machines, weren't they? Their power came from brute force computation?"

            "True . . . "

            "Whereas AIs," Karasu went on, leaning forward, "actually think?"

            He leaned forward as well. She noticed this, a thin line appearing on her brow as she tried not to frown.

            "Artificial Intelligences use synaptic architecture that mimics the functions of the human brain. It's not computation, like Deep Blue used sixty years ago. It has more to do with pattern mapping and pattern recognition. Old style computers only knew what they were programmed to know."

            "Is it possible to beat ARAKHNA and FORT?"

            Another long interval of silence. It unnerved Karasu's staff, but not her.

            Victor smiled. "Yes. I wouldn't play, otherwise."

            She put a hand to her chin. "Does one have to be eccentric to be good at chess? Or insane?"

            He mimicked her again. Now the furrow in her brow deepened.

            "The eccentricity of chess masters is exaggerated."

            "Is it? Wilhelm Steinitz thought he could talk to anyone in the world by telephone—even without a line connecting them. He played chess with God, giving himself a pawn handicap to make it more fair. Bobby Fischer saw Communist or Jewish conspiracies behind every reverse in his life. Alexander Alekhine urinated on himself during matches--"

            "He was a Nazi collaborator, too," Victor said. "And Carlos Torre used to run around naked in public and lived on pineapple sundaes. These are old stories. I doubt being an advanced chess player means you're any more eccentric than other champion athletes or celebrities."

            "Sherschansky, the last human to hold the title, was convicted of murder."

            "It was self-defense."

            "He killed his doctor at dinner with a table knife. How was that self-defense?"

            "The doctor had been injecting him with cortisone, with the result that Sherschansky suffered from steroid psychosis."

            "That sounds like malpractice, not attempted murder."

            "A Russian judge agreed with you. I don't."

            She bit her lower lip slightly. So did Victor.

            "What would you have done in Sherschansky's place?"

            "Playing chess, I would have beaten MEFISTO. As for being drugged, I haven't killed anyone yet," he said.

            Karasu relaxed. She seemed pleased by the reaction she had provoked. Signaling a cut, the recording was stopped. Teresa brought her a glass of mineral water. Victor asked for orange juice.

            She did not speak to him during the break. Ramón touched them up with his sprayer. Charlie counted down and the number 4 LED glowed.

            "The American writer Edgar Allan Poe once wrote, in regards to chess, 'What is only complex is mistaken for what is profound.' Do you think that's true, Mr. Leventon?"

            She was all grace again. Victor looked at her steel-colored nails and razor cut hair. Despite the perfection of her look—or maybe because of it—Karasu struck him as totally artificial, as inhuman as any AI.

            "It's a game," he said. "It's also a test."

            "What does it test?"

            He spread his hands. "The power of the players' minds."

            "Bobby Fischer once compared defeating a chess opponent to getting his hands around their neck and throttling them. Do you agree?"

            "No."

            "Another world champion, Magnus Carlsen, once said 'I enjoy it when I see my opponent really suffering.'"

            "Frankly, I don't pay that much attention to my opponent."

            She rested her finely molded chin on the back of one hand. Victor adopted the same pose. This time she didn't betray any annoyance.

            "What's it like for you when you win?"

            "It's very satisfying."

            "Because you've crushed your enemy?"

            "Victory isn't always a violent sensation. Sometimes it’s amusing, even funny. It can also be . . . tender."

            Karasu leaned back as if startled. "An act of love?"

            Victor reclined too. "More like a moment of enlightenment, or the resolution of great tension."

            "A sudden release?" He nodded. "So for you, the feeling of victory is closer to an orgasm than to murder?"

            Slowly: "Depends on the opponent."

            "Not many women make it to the highest ranks of chess mastery. Do you ever feel this tenderness with male opponents?"

            "I haven't played a serious game against a human being in ten years." He forced a smile. "When you're a teenager, all sorts of reactions are possible."

            One etched eyebrow slightly arched, Karasu said, "As you describe it, playing chess sounds rather perverse."

            "I've no experience with perversity, ma'am."

            "None at all?"

            "Practically none."

            Karasu smiled, not showing any teeth at all. "An interesting qualification. Would you care to elaborate?"

            "I came here to talk about chess, not play true confessions."

            "Ah, but they say confession is good for the soul."

            "We can play if you like. You first. Your task seems more complicated than mine."

            With great precision she said, "In what way?"

            "At least I have a soul."

            Teresa silently gasped. Over Karasu's shoulder Victor caught the ghost of a smirk on Charlie's bearded face. Karasu regarded Victor with utter, unblinking ferocity.

            “And I do not?”

            “From where I sit, I can’t tell.”

            “Are you that perceptive?”

            “It doesn’t take a genius to sense a void.”

            Karasu turned to camera 2, which did not cover Victor.

            "There is another exciting angle to this story I am pursuing," Karasu announced. "What is the real secret of the AI FORT’s power? For several months I have been personally researching the Swiss AI and its operation. Soon I will expose its innermost workings!" She looked into the active camera and spoke in Japanese. Ramón's scripter translated for Victor: "Follow Kirin Studios' Karasu Nohane show for more on this exciting topic!"

            Smiling, she said, “And cut." Her smile vanished.

            Karasu stood abruptly. She gave the seated Victor a withering stare from her height, turned and strode from the room. Hands working, Teresa hurried closely on her heels. Ramón closed his spray case with a snap and slowly followed them.

            Charlie shut down the cameras. Still seated, Victor asked, "Did I fuck up? She was baiting me."

            The big guy shook his head. "She does that. Makes good vee-vee. The ones who love Karasu-san will be pissed off at you. The ones that hate her will cheer. We call that a win. But she ain’t happy right now. Nobody mocks her.”

            From his baggy pants pocket Charlie dug out one of the half-paks of Heineken he'd scored from Victor's room at the Hutch. He tore off the cap and held it out to Victor. He popped the top on the second one for himself. It was only 11:00 in the morning, but Victor's mouth was surprisingly dry.

            "You did okay," Charlie said.

            Victor drank, swallowed. "Will it be on tonight?"

            "Ten PM Pacific Daylight Savings Time."

            He didn't see Karasu or her team again. Charlie called a taxi for him. A Sin Conductor arrived to take him back to the Hutch. His flight back to the East Coast was in the cattle car class on a red-eye softjet, fleeing LAX at midnight.

            Victor was surprised when Karasu aired the interview exactly as it went down. He

imagined she'd cut out his impudent posing and remarks, but she didn't. As Charlie said, it made 

good vee-vee.