One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [155]
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.
Mindy Gooch, who still had smudges of mascara under her eyes from the night before, tried to push her way in. “The Internet service is out. We think the problem is coming from your apartment.”
“We don’t have Internet service, either,” Annalisa snapped.
“May we come in?” Enid asked.
“Absolutely not,” Annalisa said. “The police are on their way. No one is to touch anything.”
“The police?” Mindy shrieked.
“That’s right,” Annalisa said. “We’ve been sabotaged. Go back to your apartments to wait.” She closed the door.
Enid turned to Sam. “Sam?” she asked. Sam then looked at his mother, who put her arm around his head protectively. “Sam doesn’t know anything about this,” Mindy said firmly. “Everyone knows the Rices are paranoid.”
“What is happening in this building?” Enid asked.
Then everyone went back to their respective apartments.
Back in the living room, Annalisa folded her arms, shook her head, and continued to pace. If no one in the building had Internet service, then perhaps Paul was wrong. He’d called her at five-thirty