Zero History Part 14

"Mere found them in the papers, in Australian city glossies. Even a bit of video."

"No, thanks," Hollis said, the eight brightly suited dress forms feeling suddenly like tomb statuary, power objects, the fetishes of a departed shamaness, occultly c.o.c.ked and ready.

"There are handbags too, purses. Like new. She has them here but decided not to display them. Because they're a bit more affordable, she'd just have to show them repeatedly. Doesn't want them pawed over by the punters."

"Did Clammy tell you what I'm after, George?"

"Not exactly, but now you're here, I'm guessing it's about your jacket."

It felt odd, hearing someone outside of Bigend's circle, other than Clammy, reference Hounds. "How much do you know about that?"

"No more than Clammy, I imagine. She's very closely held, Mere is. Business like this is more about keeping secrets than advertising."

"How's that?"

"There aren't that many serious buyers. Quite a few serious dealers, though."

She'd liked him, when they'd met at Cabinet, and found she liked him now. "Clammy says that Mere knew someone, when she was at that footwear college in London," she said, deciding to trust him. As usual, she surprised herself in this, but once in, you rolled with it. "Someone a.s.sociated with Gabriel Hounds."

"That may be," George said, smiling. The proportions of his skull were oddly reversed, jaw and cheekbones ma.s.sive, brows heavy, forehead scarcely the width of two fingers, between a unibrow and his densely caplike haircut. "But best I don't speak of it."

"How long have you been together?"

"Bit before Clammy met her in Melbourne. Well, that's not true, but I already fancied her. She claims it wasn't mutual at all then, but I have my doubts." He smiled.

"She's living back in London? Here?"

"Melbourne."

"That's seriously long-distance."

"It is." He frowned. "Inchmale," he said, "while I have you."

"Yes?'

"He's certainly hard on Clammy, mixing the bed tracks. I've stayed well out of it."

"Yes?"

"Can you give me any advice? Anything that might make working with him easier?"

"You'll be going to Arizona soon," she said. "Tucson. There's a very small studio there, owner's Inchmale's favorite engineer. They'll do some initially very alarming things to your London bed tracks. Let them. Then you'll basically rerecord the entire alb.u.m. But very quickly, almost painlessly, and I imagine you'll be extremely pleased with the result. I've already told Clammy that, but I'm not sure it got through."

"He didn't do that on the first alb.u.m he produced for us, and we were a lot closer to Tucson then."

"You weren't there yet. In terms of his process. You are now. Or almost, I'd say."

"Thanks," he said, "that's good to know."

"Call me, if you're getting exasperated. You will. Clammy will, in any case. But you've jumped with him, and if you let him, he'll land on his feet, and the alb.u.m with him. He's not very diplomatic at the best of times, and he gets less so, the further into the process you go with him. Any idea when Mere will be back?"

He consulted a very large wrist.w.a.tch, the color of a child's toy fire engine. "Going on an hour now," he said, "but I've really no idea. Wish she'd get back myself. I'm dying for coffee."

"Cafe in the courtyard?"

"Indeed. Large black?"

"You got it," she said.

"You can take the lift," he said, pointing.

"Thanks."

It was German, with a brushed stainless interior, the philosophical opposite of Cabinet's, but not much larger. She pushed 1, but when it pa.s.sed 0, she realized that she'd pushed -1.

The door opened on a dim, blue-lit void, and utter silence.

She stepped out.

Ancient stone groins, receding toward the street, illuminated by concealed disco floodlights, dialed down low. A small impromptu corral of what she took to be spare Salon du Vintage gear, on the bare stone floor, dwarfed by the arches. Folding chrome sample racks, a few dress forms looking Dali-esque in this light.

All quite wonderfully unexpected.

And then, at the far end of the blue arches, descending stairs, a figure. As described by Milgrim. The short-brimmed cap, short black jacket, zipped up tight.

He saw her.

She stepped back into the elevator, pressing 0.

22. FOLEY

Milgrim, with Hollis's laptop clamped firmly under his arm, bag over the other shoulder, walked rapidly along a smaller street, away from the one where her vintage clothing fair was being held.

He needed wifi. He regretted not borrowing the red dongle.

Now he neared a place called Bless, at first mistaking it for a bar. No, a place that sold clothing, he saw. There might be someone in there, he supposed, glancing in the window, who would either know about or pretend to know about Hollis's phantom jeans line.

He kept walking, simultaneously conducting an imaginary exchange with his therapist, one in which they sorted out what he was feeling. Having worked very hard to avoid feeling much of anything, for most of his adult life, recognizing even the simplest of his emotions could require remedial effort.

Angry, he decided. He was angry, though he didn't yet know who or what at. If Winnie Tung Whitaker, Special Agent, had sent the man in the foliage green pants, and hadn't told him, he thought he'd be angry with her. Disappointed, anyway. That wouldn't be getting off on the right foot, in what he thought of as a new professional relationship. Or perhaps, his therapist suggested, he was angry with himself. That would be more complicated, less amenable to self-a.n.a.lysis, but more familiar.

Better to be angry with the man in the foliage green pants, he thought. Mr. Foliage Green. Foley. He didn't feel kindly disposed toward Foley. Though he had absolutely no idea who Foley might be, what he was up to, or whether Foley was following him, Hollis, or the both of them. If Foley wasn't working for or with Winnie, he might be working for Blue Ant, or for Bigend more privately, or, given Bigend's apparent new att.i.tude toward Sleight, for Sleight. Or none of the above. He might be some entirely new part of the equation.

"But is there an equation?" he asked himself, or his therapist. Though she now seemed not to be answering.

Rue du Temple, a wall plaque informed him at the corner, on a building looking as though it had been drawn by Dr. Seuss. A larger street, Temple. He turned right. Past an ornate, Victorian-looking Chinese restaurant. Discovering a smoke shop that also offered coffee, its official, spindle-shaped, red-lit Tabac sign presenting nicotine-lack as a medical emergency. Without slowing, he entered.

"Wifi?"

"Oui."

"Espresso, please." Taking a place at the authentically nonreflective zinc counter. There was a faint but definite smell of cigarette smoke, though no one was smoking. Indeed, he was the only customer here.

His therapist had suspected that his inability with Romance languages was too thorough, too tidily complete, thus somehow emotionally based, but they had been unable get to the bottom of it.

Obtaining the pa.s.sword ("dutemple") from the counterman, he logged on to Twitter, his pa.s.sword there a transliteration of the Russian for "gay dolphin," the Cyrillic loosely rendered in approximation on the Roman keyboard.

Her "Whr R U now?" had been sent "about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck."

"Paris," typed Milgrim, "man following us, seen yesterday in London. Is he yours?" He clicked the update b.u.t.ton. Sipped at his espresso. Refreshed the window.

"Describe," this less than five seconds ago via TweetDeck.

"White, very short hair, sungla.s.ses, twenties, medium height, athletic." He updated. Watched people pa.s.sing, through the window.

Refreshed the window. Nothing but a short URL, sent forty seconds before from TweetDeck, whatever that was. He clicked on it. And there was Foley, wearing what might be the olive-drab version of the black jacket, with a black knit skullcap rather than the forage cap. Oddly, his eyes were concealed by a black Photoshopped rectangle, as in antique p.o.r.n.

Milgrim glanced at the page's header and the image's caption, something about "elite operator's equipment." He concentrated on the photograph, a.s.suring himself that this was in fact his man. "Yes," he wrote, "who is he?" and updated.

When he refreshed, her reply was thirty seconds old. "Never mind & try not 2 let hm no ur on hm," she'd written.

Know, he thought, then typed "Bigend?"

"When U back"

"Hollis thinks we're back tomorrow."

"Ur lucky ur in paris out"

"Over," he wrote, though he wasn't sure that was right. Her telegraphese was infectious. He saved the URL of the elite operator's page to bookmarks, then logged out of Twitter, out of his webmail, and closed the computer. His Neo began to ring, its archaic dial-phone tone filling the tobacco shop. The man behind the counter was frowning.

"Yes?"

"You're lucky to be in Paris." It was Pamela Mainwaring. "Not ours."

His first thought was that she'd somehow been watching his Twitter exchange with Winnie. "Not?"

"She rang us. Definitely not. Be lovely to have a snap from Paris."

Hollis. Pamela's call constrained now by Bigend's suspicion of Sleight and the Neo. "I'll try," Milgrim said.

"Enjoy," she said, and hung up.

Milgrim hoisted his bag to the zinc counter, unzipped it, found his camera. He loaded it with a fresh card, Blue Ant having kept the one he'd used in Myrtle Beach. They always did. He checked the batteries, then put the camera in his jacket pocket. He put Hollis's laptop in his bag and zipped it shut. Leaving a few small coins on the zinc counter, he left the shop and headed back to the Salon du Vintage, walking quickly again.

Was he still angry? he wondered. He was calmer now, he decided. He knew he wouldn't be telling Bigend about Winnie. Not if he could help it, anyway.

It was warmer, the cloud burning away. Paris seemed slightly unreal, the way London always did when he first arrived. How peculiar, that these places had always existed back-to-back, as close together and as separate as the two sides of a coin, yet wormholed now by a fast train and twenty-some miles of tunnel.

At the Salon du Vintage, after paying five euros admission, he checked his bag, something he never liked doing. He'd stolen enough checked luggage himself to know this arrangement as easy pickings. On the other hand, he'd be more mobile without it. He smiled at the j.a.panese girl, pocketed his bag check, and entered.

He was more at home in the world of objects, his therapist said, than the world of people. The Salon du Vintage, he a.s.sured himself, was about objects. Wishing to become the person the Salon du Vintage would want him to be, hence somehow less visible, he climbed a handsomely renovated stairway to the second floor.

The first thing he saw there was that poster of a younger Hollis, looking at once nervy and naughty. This was not the actual poster, he judged, but an amateurish reproduction, oversized and lacking in detail. He wondered what it would be like for her, seeing that.

He had left relatively few images himself over the past decade or so, and probably Winnie had seen most of those. Had them ready, perhaps, to e-mail to someone she wanted to be able to recognize him. Most of those had been taken by the police, and he wondered whether he'd recognize them himself. He'd certainly recognize the one she'd taken in the Caffe Nero in Seven Dials, and that would be the one she'd use.

The young man in the forage cap and foliage green pants, his black jacket still zipped, emerged from a side aisle of racks, his attention captured by a darting shoal of young j.a.panese girls. He'd removed his mirrored wraparound sungla.s.ses. Milgrim stepped sideways, behind a mannequin in a delirious photo-print dress, keeping his man in sight over its ma.s.sively padded shoulder, and wondered what he should do. If Foley didn't already know he was here, and saw him, he'd be recognized from Selfridges. If not, he supposed, from South Carolina. Winnie had been there, watching him, and someone, he'd a.s.sumed Sleight, had photographed her there. Should he tell her about that? He flagged it for consideration. Foley was walking away now, toward the rear of the building. Milgrim remembered the man with the mullet, in the mothballed restaurant. Foley didn't have that, Milgrim decided, whatever that had been, and it was a very good thing. He stepped from behind the Gaultier and followed, ready to simply keep walking if he was discovered. If Foley didn't notice him, that would be a plus, but the main thing was for Milgrim not to be thought to be following him. His hand in his jacket pocket, on his camera.

Now it was Foley's turn to step sideways, behind a neon-clad mannequin. Milgrim turned, toward a nearby display of costume jewelry, conveniently finding Foley reflected, distantly, in the seller's mirror.

A red-haired girl offered to help him, in French.

"No," said Milgrim, "thank you," seeing Foley, in the mirror, step from behind his mannequin. He turned, pressing the b.u.t.ton that extruded the camera's optics, raised it, and snapped two pictures of Foley's receding back. The red-haired girl was looking at him. He smiled and walked on, pocketing the camera.

23. MEREDITH

Maybe Milgrim was the one who was hallucinating here, she thought, as she climbed the Scandinavian stairway again, a tall paper cup of quadruple-shot Americain held gingerly in either hand. The coffee was steaming hot; if Milgrim's possibly imaginary stalker suddenly manifested, she thought, she could hurl the contents of both cups.

Whatever that had been, down in the deserted blue-lit disco, if it had been anything at all, it now seemed like some random frame-splice from someone else's movie: Milgrim's, Bigend's, anyone but hers. But she'd avoid that elevator, just in case, and she were still on the lookout for vaguely n.a.z.i caps.

Milgrim had issues, clearly. Was in fact deeply peculiar. She scarcely knew him. He might well be seeing things. He looked, pretty much constantly, as though he were were seeing things. seeing things.

She carefully kept the blow-up of the Corbijn portrait out of her field of vision as she reached the second floor and the Salon du Vintage. Keeping her mind off the bas.e.m.e.nt as well, she wondered exactly when coffee had gone walkabout in France. When she'd first been here, drinking coffee hadn't been a pedestrian activity. One either sat to do it, in cafes or restaurants, or stood, at bars or on railway platforms, and drank from st.u.r.dy vessels, china or gla.s.s, themselves made in France. Had Starbucks brought the takeaway cup? she wondered. She doubted it. They hadn't really had the time. More likely McDonald's.

Her antique denim dealer, intense and ponytailed, was busy with a customer, laying out a pair of ancient dungarees that seemed to have more holes than fabric. He looked as though he should have supplemental lenses hinged to the edges of his rimless rectangular spectacles. He didn't see her pa.s.s.

And here, past the inflatable orange furniture, came a funeral, and Olduvai George marching jauntily along beside it, smiling.

Four j.a.panese men in dark suits, unsmiling, a black coffin or body bag slung between them.