Zero History Part 5

"Hollis," she'd said.

"Come in, please. I'm a huge fan of The Curfew."

"Thank you."

"Would you like coffee, while you wait?" He'd indicated a sort of guardhouse, diagonally striped in artfully battered yellow and black paint, in which a girl with very short blond hair was polishing an espresso maker that looked set to win at Le Mans. "They sent three men from Turin, to install the machine."

"Shouldn't I be being photographed?" she'd asked him. Inchmale hadn't liked Blue Ant's new security measures at all when they'd last come here, to sign contracts. But then the phone in Jacob's right hand had played the opening chords of "Box 1 of 1," one of her least favorite Curfew songs. She'd pretended not to notice. "In the lobby," he'd said to the phone.

"Have you been with Blue Ant long?" she'd asked.

"Two years now. I actually worked on your commercial. We were gutted when it fell through. Do you know Damien?" She didn't. "The director. Gutted, absolutely." But then Bigend had appeared, in his very blue suit, shoulder-draped in the bivouac-tent yardage of the trench coat, and accompanied by Pamela Mainwaring and a nondescript but unshaven man in a thin cotton sportscoat and wrinkled slacks, a black nylon bag slung over his shoulder. "This is Milgrim," Bigend had said, then "Hollis Henry" to the man, who'd said "h.e.l.lo," but scarcely anything since.

"What kinds of animals?" she asked him now, in a still more naked bid to derail Bigend's narrative.

Milgrim winced. "Dogs," he said, quickly, as though surprised in some guilty pleasure.

"You like dogs?" She was sure that Bigend had been paying whatever lowlife had been wielding that herf gun, though he'd never come right out and tell you that, unless he had some specific reason to.

"I met a very nice dog in Basel," Milgrim said, "at ..." A micro-expression of anxiety. "At a friend's."

"Your friend's dog?"

"Yes," said Milgrim, nodding once, tightly, before taking a sip of his c.o.ke. "You could have used a spark coil generator instead," he said to Bigend, blinking, "made from a VCR tuner. They're smaller."

"Who told you that?" asked Bigend, suddenly differently focused.

"A ... roommate?" Milgrim extended an index finger, to touch his stack of tiny, elongated white china tapas dishes, as if needing to a.s.sure himself that they were there. "He worried about things like that. Out loud. They made him angry." He looked apologetically at Hollis.

"I see," said Bigend, although Hollis certainly didn't.

Now Milgrim took a pharmacist's folded white bubble-pack from an inside jacket pocket, flattened it, and frowned with concentration. All of the pills, Hollis saw, were white as well, white capsules, though of differing sizes. He carefully pushed three of them through the foil backing, put them in his mouth, and washed them down with a swig of c.o.ke.

"You must be exhausted, Milgrim," said Pamela, seated beside Hollis. "You're on east coast time."

"Not too bad," Milgrim said, putting the bubble-pack away. There was a curious lack of definition to his features, Hollis thought, something adolescent, though she guessed he was in his thirties. He struck her as unused to inhabiting his own face, somehow. As amazed to find himself who he was as to find himself here in Frith Street, eating oysters and calamari and dry shaved ham.

"Aldous will take you back to the hotel," Pamela said. Aldous, Hollis guessed, was one of the two black men who'd walked over with them from Blue Ant, carrying long, furled umbrellas with beautifully lacquered cane handles. They were waiting outside now, a few feet apart, silently, keeping an eye on Bigend through the window.

"Where is it?" Milgrim asked.

"Covent Garden," said Pamela.

"I like that one," he said. He folded his napkin, put it beside the white china tower. He looked at Hollis. "Nice meeting you." He nodded, first to Pamela, then to Bigend. "Thanks for dinner." Then he pushed back his chair, bent to pick up his bag, stood up, shouldering the bag, and walked out of the restaurant.

"Where did you find him?" Hollis asked, watching Milgrim, through the window, speak to the one she supposed was Aldous.

"In Vancouver," Bigend said, "a few weeks after you were there."

"What does he do?"

"Translation," Bigend said, "simultaneous and written. Russian. Brilliant with idioms."

"Is he ... well?" She didn't know how else to put it.

"Convalescing," said Bigend.

"Recovering," said Pamela. "He translates for you?"

"Yes. Though we're beginning to see that he may actually be more useful in other areas."

"Other areas?"

"Good eye for detail," said Bigend. "We have him looking at clothing."

"Doesn't look like a fashion plate."

"That's an advantage, actually," said Bigend.

"Did he notice your suit?"

"He didn't say," said Bigend, glancing down at an International Klein Blue lapel of Early Carnaby proportions. He looked up, pointedly, at her Hounds jacket. "Have you learned anything?" He rolled a piece of the dry, translucent Spanish ham, waiting for her answer. His hand fed the ham to his mouth carefully, as if afraid of being bitten. He chewed.

"It's what the j.a.panese call a secret brand," Hollis said. "Only more so. This may or may not have been made in j.a.pan. No regular retail outlets, no catalog, no web presence aside from a few cryptic mentions on fashion blogs. And eBay. Chinese pirates have started to fake it, but only badly, the minimal gesture. If a genuine piece turns up on eBay, someone will make an offer that induces the seller to stop the auction." Turning to Pamela. "Where did you get this jacket?"

"We advertised. On fashion fora, mainly. Eventually we found a dealer, in Amsterdam, and met his price. He ordinarily deals in unworn examples of anonymously designed mid-twentieth-century workwear."

"He does?"

"Not unlike rare stamps, apparently, except that you can wear them. A segment of his clientele appreciates Gabriel Hounds, though they're a minority among what we take to be the brand's demographic. We're guessing active global brand-awareness, meaning people who'll go to very considerable trouble to find it, tops out at no more than a few thousand."

"Where did the dealer in Amsterdam get his?"

"He claimed to have bought it as part of a lot of vintage new old stock, from a picker, without having known what it was. Said he'd a.s.sumed they were otaku-grade j.a.panese reproductions of vintage, and that he could probably resell them easily enough."

"A picker?"

"Someone who looks for things to sell to dealers. He said that the picker was German, and a stranger. A cash transaction. Claimed not to recall a name."

"It can't be that big a secret," Hollis said. "I've found two people since breakfast who knew at least as much about it as I've told you."

"And they are?" Bigend leaned forward.

"The j.a.panese woman at a very pricey specialist shop not far from Blue Ant."

"Ah," he said, his disappointment obvious. "And?"

"A young man, who bought a pair of jeans in Melbourne."

"Really," said Bigend, brightening. "And did he tell you who he bought them from?"

Hollis picked up a slice of the gla.s.sine ham, rolled it, dipped it in olive oil. "No. But I think he will."

8. CURETTAGE

Milgrim, cleaning his teeth in the brightly but flatteringly lit bath room of his small but determinedly upscale hotel room, thought about Hollis Henry, the woman Bigend had brought along to the restaurant. She hadn't seemed to be part of Blue Ant, and she'd also seemed somehow familiar. Milgrim's memory of the past decade or so was porous, unreliable as to sequence, but he didn't think they'd met before. But still, somehow familiar. He switched tips on the mini-brush he was using between his upper rear molars, opting for a conical configuration. He would let Hollis Henry settle down into the mix. In the morning he might find he knew who she was. If not, there was the lobby's complimentary MacBook, in every way preferable to trying to Google on the Neo. Pleasant enough, Hollis Henry, at least if you weren't Bigend. She wasn't entirely pleased with Bigend. He'd gotten that much on the walk to Frith Street.

He switched to a different tool, one that held taut, half-inch lengths of floss between disposable U-shaped bits of plastic. They'd fixed his teeth, in Basel, and had sent him several times to a periodontal specialist. Curettage. Nasty, but now he felt like he had a new mouth, if a very high-maintenance one. The best thing about having had all that done, aside from getting a new mouth, was that he'd gotten to see a little bit of Basel, going out for the treatments. Otherwise, he'd stayed in the clinic, per his agreement.

Finishing with the floss, he brushed his teeth with the battery-powered brush, then rinsed with water from a bottle whose deep-blue gla.s.s reminded him of Bigend's suit. Pantone 286, he'd told Milgrim, but not quite. The thing Bigend most seemed to enjoy about the shade, other than the fact that it annoyed people, was that it couldn't quite be re-created on most computer monitors.

He was out of his mouthwash, which contained something they used in tap water on airplanes. You were only allowed to take a little bit of liquid with you on the plane, and he didn't check luggage. He'd been rationing the last of that mouthwash, in Myrtle Beach. He'd ask someone at Blue Ant. They had people who seemed able to find anything, who had doing that as a job description.

He put out the bathroom lights, and stood beside the bed, undressing. The room had slightly too much furniture, including a dressmaker's dummy that had been re-covered with the same brown and tan material as the armchair. He considered putting his pants in the trouser press, but decided against it. He'd shop tomorrow. A chain called Hackett. Like an upscale Banana Republic but with pretensions he knew he didn't understand. He was turning down the bed when the Neo rang, emulating the mechanical bell on an old telephone. That would be Sleight.

"Leave the phone in your room tomorrow," Sleight said. "Turned on, on the charger." He sounded annoyed.

"How are you, Oliver?"

"The company that makes these things has gone out of business," Sleight said. "So we need to do some reprogramming tomorrow." He hung up.

"Good night," Milgrim said, looking at the Neo in his hand. He put it on the bedside table, climbed into bed in his underwear, and pulled the covers to his chin. He turned out the light. Lay there running his tongue over the backs of his teeth. The room was slightly too warm, and he was aware, somehow, of the dressmaker's dummy.

And listened to, or at any rate sensed, the background frequency that was London. A different white noise.

9. f.u.c.kSTICK

When she opened Cabinet's front door, pinstriped Robert was not there to help her with it.

Due, she saw immediately, to the jackbooted advent of Heidi Hyde, once the Curfew's drummer, in whose a.s.sorted luggage Robert was now draped, clearly terrified, back in the lift-grotto, next to the vitrine housing Inchmale's magic ferret. Heidi, beside him, was fully as tall and possibly as broad at the shoulders. Unmistakably hers, that direly magnificent raptorial profile, and just as unmistakably furious.

"Was she expected?" Hollis quietly asked whichever tortoise-framed boy was on the desk.

"No," he said, just as quietly, pa.s.sing her the key to her room. "Mr. Inchmale phoned, minutes ago, to alert us." Eyes wide behind the brown frames. He had something of the affect, beneath his hotelman's game-face, of a tornado survivor.

"It'll be okay," Hollis a.s.sured him.

"What's wrong with this f.u.c.king thing?" Heidi demanded, loudly.

"It gets confused," Hollis said, walking up to them, with a nod and rea.s.suring smile for Robert.

"Miss Henry." Robert looked pale.

"You mustn't press it more than once," Hollis said to Heidi. "Takes it longer to make up its mind."

"f.u.c.k," said Heidi, from some bottomless pit of frustration, causing Robert to wince. Her hair was dyed goth black, signaling the warpath, and Hollis guessed she'd done it herself.

"I didn't know you were coming," Hollis said.

"Neither did I," said Heidi, grimly. Then: "It's f.u.c.kstick."

At which Hollis understood that Heidi's unlikely sub-Hollywood marriage was over. Heidi's exes lost their names, at termination, to be known henceforth only by this blanket designation.

"Sorry to hear that," Hollis said.

"Running a pyramid scheme," Heidi said as the lift arrived. "What the f.u.c.k is this this?"

"The elevator." Hollis opened the articulated gate, gesturing Heidi in.

"Please, go ahead," Robert said. "I'll bring your bags."

"Get in the f.u.c.king elevator," commanded Heidi. "Get. In." She backed him into the lift with sheer enraged presence. Hollis nipped in after him, raising the bra.s.s-hinged mahogany bench against the back wall for more room.

Heidi, up close, smelled of sweat, airport rage, and musty leather. She was wearing a jacket that Hollis remembered from their touring days. Once black, its seams were worn the color of dirty parchment.

Robert managed to push a b.u.t.ton. They started up, the lift complaining audibly at the weight.

"f.u.c.king thing's going to kill us all," said Heidi, as if finding the idea not entirely unattractive.

"What room is Heidi in?" Hollis asked him.

"Next to yours."

"Good," said Hollis, with more enthusiasm than she felt. That would be the one with the yellow silk chaise longue. She'd never understood the theme. Not that she understood the theme of her own, but she sensed it had one. The room with the yellow chaise longue seemed to be about spies, sad ones, in some very British sense, and seedy political scandal. And reflexology.

Hollis opened the gate, when the lift finally reached their floor, then held the various fire doors for Heidi and the heavily burdened Robert. Heidi seethed her way through the windowless green mini-hallways, body language conveying a universal dissatisfaction. Hollis saw that Robert had Heidi's room key tucked for safekeeping between two fingers. She took it from him, its ta.s.sels moss green.

"You're right next to me," she said to Heidi, unlocking and opening the door. She shooed Heidi in, thinking of bulls, china shops. "Just put everything down," she said to Robert, quietly. "I'll take care of the rest." She relieved him of two amazingly heavy cardboard cartons, each about the size required to contain a human head. He began immediately to unsling Heidi's various luggage. She slipped him a five-pound note.

"Thank you, Miss Henry."

"Thank you, Robert." She closed the door in his relieved face.