![]() When events turn deadly, Rowe will have no choice but to take on the entire cult to save the boy and himself. It should be simple-find the kid and leave-but Fischer and his followers are anything but simple. Unable to do anything for the infant son who died years ago, Rowe agrees to infiltrate the Children of Fire cult and rescue the boy. Rowe’s ex-wife has fled with her new son to a religious cult in western New York where a charismatic and dangerous zealot, Eamon Fischer, preaches not baptism by water but by flames. He’s a man without purpose, but he’s always believed in doing what’s right, even helping his ex’s husband. Always happens.Former detective Landon Rowe has lost everything-his child, his wife, his career. I’ll talk to them at the Bergen County DA, maybe they’ve heard something-” “Wait, wait, somebody’s coming, now they saw me, oh! maybe I better-” The line goes dead. “Why would the FBI-” “Duh-uh? Krispy Kreme? On behalf of their brothers in law enforcement at all levels?” “All right. “I’m beginning to think something’s funny about this deal,” her contact’s voice trembling a little, “maybe not even legit.” “Maybe, Trevor, because it’s a criminal act under Title 18?” “It’s an FBI sting operation!” Trevor screams. After some triage on the playback, Maxine returns an anxious call from a whistle-blower at a snack-food company over in Jersey which has been secretly negotiating with ex-employees of Krispy Kreme for the illegal purchase of top-secret temperature and humidity settings on the donut purveyor’s “proof box,” along with equally classified photos of the donut extruder, which however now seem to be Polaroids of auto parts taken years ago in Queens, Photoshopped and whimsically at that. A number of phone messages have piled up on the answering machine, breathers, telemarketers, even a few calls to do with tickets currently active. “Some days it seems like every lowlife in town has Tail ’Em and Nail ’Em on their grease-stained Rolodex. ![]() But wait! There’s more! Somebody needs this nation of starers believing they’re all wised up at last, hardened and hip to the human condition, freed from the fictions that led them so astray, as if paying attention to made-up lives was some form of evil drug abuse that the collapse of the towers cured by scaring everybody straight again.” “You notice,” Heidi continues, “how ‘reality’ programming is suddenly all over the cable, like dog shit? Of course, it’s so producers shouldn’t have to pay real actors scale. ![]() Maxine will walk in on them watching Rugrats or reruns of Rocko’s Modern Life, and they holler by reflex, “Don’t tell Ms. Cheung, an English teacher who if Kugelblitz were a town would be the neighborhood scold, has announced that there shall be no more fictional reading assignments. “Yeah, the kids are even getting it at school.” Ms. “As if somehow irony,” she recaps for Maxine, “as practiced by a giggling mincing fifth column, actually brought on the events of 11 September, by keeping the country insufficiently serious - weakening its grip on ‘reality.’ So all kinds of make-believe-forget the delusional state the country’s in already-must suffer as well. Which in New York even stepping out onto the street is, technically.” Maybe what she saw in those women wasn’t entitlement, maybe all it is really is an act of faith. She imagines herself solidifying into not exactly a pillar of salt, something between that and a commemorative statue, iron and gaunt, of all the women in New York who used to annoy her standing by the curbsides “hailing a taxi,” though no taxis might be visible for ten miles in any direction-nevertheless holding their hand out toward the empty street and the oncoming traffic that isn’t there, not beseechingly but in a strangely entitled way, a secret gesture that will trigger an all-cabbie alert, “Bitch standing at corner with hand up in air! Go! Go!” Yet here, turning into some version of herself she doesn’t recognize, without deliberation she watches her own hand drift out into the wind off the river, and tries from the absence of hope, the failure of redemption, to summon a magical escape. “It might be useful, she reminds herself, not to panic here.
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