The Blue Place

by Nicola Griffith

  “Beatriz del Gato to see Anthony Perrin,” she said, like one of those old-fashioned porcelain marionettes.

  The Taloned One ran her finger down a screen, then favoured us with another artificial smile. “If you would take a seat, Mr. Perrin will be with you shortly. How do you like your coffee?”

  I answered for both of us. The waiting room was frigid and the three chairs built more for looks than comfort. They were arranged under a horrible painting that looked like a television test card. Beatriz sat, portfolio on her lap; I didn’t bother. Even if the chairs were worth it, the painting hung so low I wouldn’t be able to lean back.

  A moment later, the secretary came in carrying two cups of coffee on a tray.

  I took one. She turned to offer the second, just as Beatriz stood up to take it. With a flap and squawk they collided. The secretary leapt back to avoid the cascade of scalding coffee. Beatriz didn’t manage as well. She hopped into the chairs, knocked her open portfolio onto the now-sodden floor, then overbalanced and toppled into the painting, which slid down the wall and landed on the polished wooden floor with an emphatic crack. Glass fell out of the frame.

  “Goodness,” the secretary said.

  Beatriz stared at her. Her eyes were like black holes burnt in stiff paper and the hand wrapped around the back of one chair was white at the knuckles. The mask had finally slipped.

  The secretary took a step towards the chair. “Let me he’p you with that.”

  Beatriz trembled like a deer. I stepped smoothly between them. “Perhaps you could direct us to the bathroom so we can see what we can do about Ms. del Gato’s clothes.” I gestured at the dark splash down Beatriz’s skirt.

  “Oh, goodness. Of course. Two doors down on the right.”

  I took Beatriz unobtrusively by the elbow. “Let go of the chair,” I said into her ear. “It’s all right. Everything will be all right. Let go of the chair.”

  “Yes, fine,” she said, inanely, brightly. I led her through the reception area, through the door, down the corridor, to the bathroom.

  “Here we go.” I parked her between the sinks and paper towel dispenser. It would have been a waste of time trying to get her to sit. Her body felt like wood. “I don’t think you need to take the skirt off. Let’s try blotting it first, and soap if that doesn’t work.”

  Her trembling turned into shaking. “I understand,” I said, as I dabbed and blotted. “You’re in a strange country. You have jet lag and probably didn’t get any sleep at all in your hotel. Everyone is talking in a foreign language. Even the light switches seem upside down. They expect you to know what to do and you don’t. But that’s why I’m here. I can show you how things work and tell you where to go, and when.” I talked on and on, wondering how long she had been this afraid, so afraid that she had closed herself up like a fan: nothing in, nothing out; running around inside her head frantically plugging chinks in her armour, closing openings through which she might have to reach out and the world might reach in.

  “There. That should do it for now.” The shaking had become long, rolling shudders and I thought she might shake herself to pieces. I took one of her cold hands. “Let it out, Beatriz, you’re safe here.”

  An indrawn, juddering breath.

  “No one will see you. No one will know. Just let it go.”

  And she did, in a torrent that was equal parts rage, fear, and despair. She wept bent over, gasping and whooping, then stood straight and howled, face to the ceiling. When the gate was wide open, she leaned both fists against the mirrors and coughed up great chunks of grief and disappointment and broken dreams. She wept on and on until her face was swollen, and shiny with mucus and tears. After a while she settled down to an exhausted drone. I handed her yet another paper towel, stuffed six or seven in my pocket, and picked her up like a child.

  I tucked her face into my shoulder so she wouldn’t see the stares, and carried her to the elevator, down fourteen floors, through the lobby, into the street, and across to the parking lot. I lifted her into the front seat, got a blanket from the trunk, tucked her up and fastened her seat belt.

  “Warm,” she said.

  “Yes, I know, but you need to be warm and I’m going to put the air-conditioning on high.” She needed the comfort more than the warmth, but I didn’t tell her that. “Sleep if you like. I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”

  “No.” It was a drowsy whisper. “I hate my hotel. Hate it.”

  She wasn’t in a fit state to be seen in public and wouldn’t go back to her hotel. While I waited to pull into traffic I called Happy Herman’s and ordered enough food for a picnic.

  The remains of the meal lay on the blanket in the middle of my back lawn and the woman who sat like the Copenhagen mermaid in the too-big shorts and cut-off tee, peering at the base of the pecan tree trying to catch a glimpse of the turtle I’d seen, looked nothing like the Beatriz of that morning. Her eyes were alive, if shy, and the two smiles she had essayed had been quick, but not crippled. I had carried her and the blanket out to the back, fed her, and talked to her about nothing in particular, simply pointing out different birds, squirrels, naming the trees, explaining what all the different condiments on the sandwiches were made of. She’d eaten mechanically at first, then with real attention, and then fallen asleep as I was telling her quietly in my rusty Spanish about the bluebells I used to look for in the Yorkshire woods. She slept for nearly an hour, and when she woke up I showed her the bathroom and found her my smallest tank top and shorts, and now she was all clean and freshly scrubbed and watching the leaves under the pecan tree.

  “You’ll have to go back to the hotel barefoot.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sure they’ve seen worse. There, there’s the turtle.” I pointed at the blunt leathery head poking cautiously from under a pile of nature’s debris.

  “I see it.”

  I told her about shrews, about the constant war going on between the various squirrels, the chipmunks who could leap three feet straight into the air when cornered by the cat that lived next door. Sometimes I had to mime the animal with bushy tail or pointy ears because I didn’t know the Spanish for all that flew and scurried in the Southeast. I’m still not sure she got “chipmunk.” It’s hard mimicking a tiny rodent with big cheek pouches when you’re six feet tall.

  “And you have no pets?”

  “No. I can watch things in my garden and I don’t have to feed them or take them for checkups, or worry about looking after them when I go away.”

  “And they don’t worry about you.”

  A bird burst into song among the jasmine. A plane droned in the distance. After a while I said, “Do you want that job at Perrin & Norrander?”

  She blinked, then turned away and mumbled something.

  “What was that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you really mean it?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then we need to get you another appointment.”

  “They won’t—”

  “I’ll talk to them. Blame the secretary. After all, she spilled coffee all over you. How could you be expected to continue with a scalded leg?”

  “But I don’t—”

  “You do now.” I was implacable. “Your flight to Madrid leaves on Monday afternoon. If we get you a ten o’clock appointment, I can have you at the airport just after midday.”

  “They won’t give me the job.”

  “No, they might not. But at least you will have tried.”

  “What about my clothes?”

  “We’ll go shopping.”

  I discovered that under her plain exterior beat a flamboyant heart. She wanted to buy dresses and blouses with puffed sleeves and high waists that would be more suitable for a teenager. Fortunately she also wanted them in blood red and flaming orange instead of the available pastels. I steered her towards more practical clothes, made the occasional suggestion. We ended up with flax-coloured linen suit, shorts and T-shirts and sandals, and one stunning sleeveless
dress in brain-bursting colours. Whatever made her happy. Then it was her turn to make suggestions. Under her direction, we bought dozens of flats of just-budding impatiens, petunia, and marigold, as well as two long troughs, and sacks of potting compost. “You’ll need seeds and cuttings for later-blooming flowers. These won’t last much beyond June.” She gave them a professional look. “We’ll transplant them tomorrow.”

  It was a quite different woman I took back to the Nikko at seven o’clock that evening: smiling, competent, almost pretty.

  At midnight I was cruising Cheshire Bridge Road, checking the parking lots of the nude bars. I spotted the primer-coloured 1972 Corvette in the lot of a low-slung building with bricked-up windows, but drove another quarter of a mile until I reached the well-lit Cheshire Strip. I parked in front of the Science Fiction and Mystery Book Shop where odd but harmless customers were happily choosing fat paperbacks, and walked back.

  It was good to feel muscle bunch and stretch in my thighs, good to thump my boots on the cement, feel its imperviousness and my strength. I checked the cars. The hood of the Corvette was cold. I looked around the back of the building. One door, unlocked. I went around to the front. The turbine in my chest began to hum. The night air felt greasy and electric on my tongue. The weather was about to change.

  The front bar was shadowy. A pool table was pushed up against one wall, underneath a labouring air-conditioning unit that did not quite drown out the thump of music from the more private back room. The bartender polished glasses and concentrated hard on not seeing the three men in the far booth. I leaned against the bar near him, shook my head when he lifted his eyebrows.

  Buddy Collins was the kind of man who looked as though his neck was too thin for his shirt collar, though it and the expensive jacket fit perfectly. An untrained witness would probably not be able to describe him as other than a slimeball. Buddy Collins had fooled even trained witnesses—of which he had been one, once.

  Right now, Buddy Collins was swallowing a great deal. He was pressed up against the wall on the inside of the booth by a man who had his back towards me. That man had his hand resting on Collins’s forearm. It was a very big hand. Equally big legs were jammed under the booth table; he wouldn’t be able to move out fast. He was leaning forward, talking at Collins. The one on the other side of the booth was mean and whippy-looking. He was trying to clip the end off a cheap cigar, and listened with only half an ear to the big man. He had heard it all a thousand times before.

  “I can’t,” Collins said. “Not all of it. Not tonight.” The big man said nothing. “If you could just give me—”

  The big man hit him, just a slap, but it was loud, and a bead of blood formed in the corner of Collins’s mouth.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, moving in. They all swung around, astonished. “Don’t damage Mr. Collins too severely. He has some information I need.”

  “You some kind of weirdo?” the big man asked, and turned back to his conversation with Collins without waiting for an answer.

  The whippy one, who seemed to have clipped the end of his cigar to his satisfaction, pulled out a book of matches. “Butt out, lady.” He put the cigar in his mouth and struck the match. His eyes crossed in concentration. I hit him, twice, on the left temple, right hand left hand, and without pause stepped backwards and put all my weight behind an elbow strike to the big man’s nose. It burst like a piñata and spilled brightly, and he screamed, so I let my arm follow its automatic one-two training and hit him again, this time a knife-hand chop to the forehead. He sighed and slumped over the table.

  The cigar was still hanging from Whippy’s mouth. “Do I need to hit you again?”

  He did not seem to hear. I looked at Collins and gestured at the big man, draped all unconscious across the bench and table. “Can you squeeze past or should I pull him out?”

  “I’ll manage.” He climbed up onto the table.

  I turned to the bartender. He backed up a step. “There’s nothing much wrong with them, but you might like to have an ambulance here soon, get them taken off your hands. They won’t be very happy when they wake up.”

  “You—” He cleared his throat, then thought better of it and just nodded.

  Collins jumped down from the table. “Time to get out of here.”

  In the parking lot, he looked around. “Which is your car?”

  “We’re taking yours. I’ll drive.”

  “Look, Torvingen. That car’s my pride and joy—”

  I held out my hand. He stared at me then yanked keys from his pocket, slammed them into my hand, and went round to the passenger side. The car smelt of dirty leather and coffee. He watched me sideways as we pulled onto Cheshire Bridge.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just wondering why you suddenly appeared, where you’re taking me, things like that.”

  “We’re going to have a nice talk. You’re going to tell me a few things I want to know.”

  “Jesus, Torvingen, you’ve screwed up everything. Those two guys won’t take kindly to you—”

  I pulled into the Cheshire Strip lot and killed the engine. “You owe them money. You’ve defaulted. They seemed about to get very unhappy. I’ve just accelerated the process a little. I’m sure you’ll think of something.” Collins had been a Vice cop until his spending had led to such excessive graft that even the APD could no longer turn a blind eye. He had been turned out when I was a rookie. Now he earned his money selling information from one street interest to another, and sometimes to law enforcement.

  “You’re not on the force anymore,” he said.

  “No. So now I can afford to pay more.”

  “I don’t like you.”

  “You don’t have to like me. Just tell me about the burn in Inman Park five days ago. Who ordered the job? Was the victim, an art appraiser called Lusk, known? And where does the big money go these days?” The Big Money, the money raised from the wholesale dealers who sold to midlevel hustlers.

  He reached up and turned on the dome light. “You don’t have the money for that last answer. And if you did, and I told you, I’d never live to enjoy it.”

  His eyes were still shifting, but he wasn’t swallowing. A quick cost-benefit analysis of forcing him was not promising: he probably didn’t know. “Fine. Then tell me who would be capable of this burn. Bertolucci didn’t recognize it. How do I find them, and who have they worked for in the past?”

  “How much?”

  “How much do you think it’s worth?”

  “Two thousand.”

  “I’ll give you five hundred.” I pulled the money out of my pocket and counted off five hundreds but didn’t hand it over.

  “Guy from Boston. You don’t know him.”

  “Name.”

  “I don’t know his name! He’s just some technician hired in, like you’d pay someone to check your brake fluid.” He was getting agitated.

  “Then tell me who he worked for.”

  “Arellano.” He practically spat it out.

  Arellano. The Big Money man of two years ago, the representative of the Tijuana drug cartel here in the South. Only no one had been able to prove it. “He’s been dead for two years.”

  “This technician worked for him two years ago.”

  “I don’t know what you’re telling me here, Buddy. Did the technician work this time for Arellano’s replacement?”

  “Maybe.”

  “‘Maybe’ doesn’t cut it.”

  “This time he worked for a guy who might work for the guy who took over from Arellano. Okay?”

  “What do you mean by ‘might work for’?”

  “The guy washes money. He washes a lot of money. He hired the technician.”

  “Give me his name.”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  I was pretty sure I did. “Another hundred if you tell me why he paid the technician.”

  He hesitated, craned his neck to try to look up the road. “Another two hundred.”

  “One hundred.�
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  He touched the blood at the corner of his mouth with a fingertip and sighed. “The fire was to clean up some evidence.”

  “And did the evidence get cleaned?”

  “A guy died.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  His eyes shifted.

  “The truth, Buddy. If you don’t know, just say so and you get to keep fifty.”

  “I heard some of the evidence is still walking around. But the technician got paid, okay? And no one is pissed off, and no one is talking about trying again. So it doesn’t make sense, okay?”

  It made perfect sense to me, or part of it did. Julia was no longer important: she had no evidence and, after lying to the insurance investigator, no one would even begin to believe her without it. With the painting gone, Honeycutt thought he was safe. The question is, what was a money launderer doing dabbling with fake art? It was a stupid extra risk. That made no sense. Nor did the drugs on the scene.

  Buddy could not make up his mind which was more interesting: the road or the money I still held. “Those sharks’ll be awake now, Torvingen. Just give me the money. Look, here’s a freebie for you. That evidence that got burned? Two old friends of yours know where it came from.”

  “Tell me.”

  He held out his hand. “An extra hundred.”

  “Free.”

  He shook his head and got stubborn. It wasn’t worth pushing. My job was to work out who had tried to have Julia killed, and now I knew. I handed over the money. “Get out of the car.” I climbed out after him and tossed him the keys. He was screeching out of the parking lot before I was halfway to the book shop.

  Taeko Jay has worked for the DEA for as long as I’ve lived in Atlanta. Longer. Her coarse black hair is streaked with grey and she wears it long, with no apology. She came over to America twenty years ago—fell in love with a member of the CIA in Tokyo, got married, and had her citizenship papers two days later. The rules are different for some people. Her husband died ten years ago and now she lives with a skinny game designer half her age. She smiles a lot. Her teeth are white and pointed. A Japanese vixen.