He rested his head on my shoulder. My fingers splayed across his chest so I could feel his heart thumping beneath them.
“Hey,” I said. But he was already asleep.
Chapter 17
I dozed fitfully for an hour or two before I gave up. Wink’s train-wreck soundtrack had gone silent. I watched Quinn’s chest rise and fall, and thought of my lost camera. Until the last few months, I’d gone for decades without shooting anything. Picking up my camera after so long had been like the first line of coke during a lost weekend, an arrow right into my visual cortex. Losing it was as close to withdrawal as I’d ever been.
I forced myself not to think about it, pulled on a T-shirt, and retrieved Gryffin’s mobile. I opened the camera app and stared at the dim rectangle that framed Quinn’s sleeping face, the tip of one eyetooth where his lips parted, the frozen grimace carved into his cheeks. I saw all these things, and tasted the sour aftermath of all the damage he’d sustained over the decades, a damage inextricable from my own.
Yet gazing at the thumbnail of Quinn on the mobile’s screen, I sensed nothing. Tindra might practice alchemy with silicon sensors and electrical pulses, millions of pixels and photons and electrons. For me, the mobile held as much magic as a chunk of Styrofoam.
I shot a dozen photos anyway, Quinn’s broken face no more peaceful asleep than awake; then deleted them all.
“What are you doing?” His eyes opened and he sat up, rubbing his jaw.
“Taking pictures.”
“With that?” He frowned. “Where’s your camera? The one your dad gave you?”
“I gave it away.”
“What?”
I turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I knew he was still watching me. After a moment he swung from the bunk, tugged on his jeans, and lit up. While he smoked, I got my bag from the upper bunk.
Quinn shook his head. “New hair, new bag. What else new you got, girlfriend?”
“I dunno. Some drugs.”
“Goddamn it, Cass! I’m trying to lay low, and you should be, too. You spend thirty-something years hiding in a downtown bunker, and now that you’re out, you can’t stop pulling shit that’s gonna bring the cops down on you. And me.”
“Fuck off. What the hell did you expect?”
He glared at me, but then his expression softened. “When’s the last time you got some sleep? Or ate?”
“I can’t sleep. And you don’t eat when you live too long.”
He slid a hand under my T-shirt, tracing my rib cage. “Christ. You’re nothing but bones, Cassie.”
“You said I looked hot.”
“Yeah—a hot skeleton. You need to quit that speed. You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack.”
I pulled away and picked up Gryffin’s mobile again, scrolling through his contacts.
“Whose phone is that?”
“Gryffin’s.”
“Is he the one you fucked?”
“I told you back in Reykjavík, he’s a rare-book dealer. His mother was a famous photographer, that’s how I ended up in Maine. His father was a serial killer. As it turns out.”
He peered over my shoulder. “Whose numbers are those?”
“People Gryffin knows. Bookdealers, runners—people who scout books to sell to dealers. This guy Ballingstead, he’s a runner, lives in Wapping. That’s close to here, right?”
“Close enough.”
He began to pace. I had a flashback to when we were kids and did a handful of black beauties, and Quinn thought that knocking off the local drugstore would be a really good idea. He halted beneath the fluorescent bulb, his face the same sickly green as his eyes.
“Why do you have that guy’s phone? You steal it?”
“No. But this book—if we find it, we can sell it ourselves and keep the money.”
Quinn laughed. “That’s insane. There’s no way we could sell it. It’d be like unloading a Picasso. Like unloading the world’s only Picasso.”
“There’s no way to sell it legally. You know people, and any guy you don’t know, you know the guy who does. People like that, they have more money than they know what to do with, and they hire people to acquire stuff for them. If we can find the book, you can pass it on to someone. We take our cut and disappear.”
“What about this guy Gryffin?”
“If he goes to the cops—and he will go to the cops as soon as he can—I’m fucked. If we’re going to do this, we need to move now, before Tindra decides to call the police. Or we could just bail,” I added. “Leave now and start over someplace else. Can’t we just bail?”
Quinn ran a hand across his grizzled scalp. “We could try. But with all this new border-control shit, one of us might get detained at the airport. In which case we’d be screwed.”
“We’re kinda screwed now.”
“Yeah, I know. What’re you thinking?”
“Gryffin says he didn’t tell anyone about this book, or the deal with Harold. He’s either lying or stupid. I’m thinking he’s just stupid. Someone got wind of it, either through him or Harold.”
“That chick Tindra?”
“I don’t think so. She’s too isolated. I don’t think she has any friends, except her dog. And her bodyguards.”
“Why does she need bodyguards?”
“I don’t know. They have—I don’t know what they have. Some kind of weird ménage à trois or something. She’s definitely emotionally fragile. But she wouldn’t have told anyone else about the book—she’s obsessed with getting it for her app. She wants to, I dunno, scan or photograph the pages. She says the book is like an ancient form of computer code.”
“Weird with a beard.” Quinn lit another cigarette. “But the app might be a little moneymaker.”
“No,” I said. “She tried it on me. It’s horrible. Like mainlining angel dust. I had a flashback to when I was raped—it was like I was actually there again. It causes PTSD instead of curing it. Trust me, we’ll be doing the world a favor if we find the book before she does.”
“How’re we gonna do that?” Quinn resumed pacing. “She’s got her bodyguards and your guy Gryffin, who knows all about this book shit. What do we got?”
I held up Gryffin’s mobile. “His contact list.”
“What if he’s already called them?”
“I’ll risk it. I’ll see if I can find Ballingstead, he’s closest. You see if you can find out who put a hit on Harold. Someone nailed him right in the eye; how many people can do that?”
“You’d be surprised.”
I went to the galley, splashed water on my face, and raked my fingers through my hair. Quinn was right: I looked like I’d crawled out of a car wreck. I gingerly touched the scar beside my eye, still an angry red. I wasn’t sure if Boots had enough concealer to hide that, but I got out the overpriced makeup I’d nicked and tried to make myself look less like my own ghost.
When I returned to the bunk, Quinn looked me up and down, then shot me a vulpine grin. “That’s an improvement. I thought you were taking off.”
“I’m gone.” I picked up my bag. “What time is it?”
“A little after seven. You’re not gonna roll this Ballingstead guy out of bed, are you?”
“No. But I have to figure out where he lives. And I want to check the news to see if Harold’s there.”
“You can do that later. Stay, baby.” He pushed me onto the bunk. “Thirty-seven years, we got a lot to make up for.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Chapter 18
Afterward, I dressed quickly. Quinn watched me, smoking a joint.
“You look good, Cass. I kinda miss the blonde, though.”
“Well, now you get two for the price of one.”
“Yeah, and I’m the only guy on the planet who could handle that.”
He held the joint out to me. I shook my head. “I need fast drugs. You got a line on something?”
“I gotta do my best to stay clean. I thought you had some crank?”<
br />
“I used it up in Iceland.” I pulled on my boots. “Come on, you have to know someone.”
Quinn scowled. “You’re out of your fucking mind. Want me back in prison? Plus I keep telling you, that shit’ll give you a heart attack. You’re too old for this, Cassie.”
I turned and grabbed his leather jacket, dug into the pockets until my fingers closed around a pill bottle. Quinn wrenched it from me, but not before I saw the label.
“Cialis?” I said. “Seriously?”
“Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Here.” He reached into the sleeping bag for a small object and tossed it to me. Another mobile.
I tossed it back. “How many of these do I need?”
He put the mobile in my hand, folded my fingers over it. “This is a TracFone, a burner. Use it to call me and anyone else you need to talk to. Do not use your little friend’s mobile to make any calls. Once he goes to the cops, you’ll be traced and it’ll be game over.”
“Can I go online with it?”
“Bad idea. Which guarantees you’ll do it.” He sighed. “Look, if anything happens, ditch the phones in the river.”
“Will I see you later?”
“Yeah, but not here. I don’t want Wink dragged into this.”
“Then where?”
He thought for a moment. “If you don’t hear from me, meet me at Victoria Embankment Park. Get off at Embankment or Waterloo or Charing Cross Underground. There’s a big statue of some guy in the park, I’ll meet you there around three.”
“What if something bad happens?”
“Like you said, something bad already did happen. Nothing we can do if it happens again.” He pulled up his shirt to display the brand of the Gripping Beast. “Hver er sinnar gæfu smiður.”
“Meaning?”
“‘We forge our own fate.’”
He pulled out his mobile and turned away. “Do what you can, baby. I gotta get to work.”
I picked up my bag and split. Not until I reached the Overground station did I realize I hadn’t mentioned the loose page I’d taken from Harold’s library.
Chapter 19
Wapping was one stop north, on the other side of the river. Overnight, the cold front had blown itself out. News crawls warned of the poisonous air as a blanket of smog descended upon the city. The Overground platform resembled a scene from a zombie flick, crowded with people wearing face masks.
My eyes watered as I stumbled onto the sidewalk, the inside of my nostrils stinging as though I’d just snorted low-grade crank. Pus-colored haze obscured the tops of cranes and high-rises. The air smelled like burning tires and hand sanitizer. I put on my shades and found a newsstand. In front of it, a plastic sign with the headlines shuddered in the breeze:
NAZIS ON THE MOVE: WHERE WILL THEY GO NEXT?
MAYOR WARNS OF DEADLY FOG
VIRUS DEATHS MOUNT
I bought a couple of papers and wandered aimlessly till I found an American-style diner that was open. I barricaded myself at a table in the far corner, ordered rare steak with a side of bacon and a pot of coffee. The bacon was English bacon, fatty and more like ham. The steak was well done and mostly gristle. In New York, a place like this would last about a week. Here it was packed. Still, I finished everything off, ordered more coffee, and took my last Vyvanse as an eye-opener.
The carbon-based media had nothing about Harold Vertigan’s murder. Either his body hadn’t been discovered yet or the neo-Nazis and toxic fog, the Chinese virus and the most recent terrorist attacks in the U.S., had kept him out of the news, for now.
After the waiter brought more coffee, I furtively poured a slug of whiskey into my mug, set aside the papers, and began scrolling through the online news on Gryffin’s mobile. Within minutes I hit pay dirt—not only news of Harold’s death, but a guy named Nathan Ballingstead.
Harold’s murder had just been made public on a Hampstead news site. His body had been discovered by his cleaning lady around seven that morning. Neighbors claimed to have heard nothing, and police were scrutinizing surveillance video in the area. The police suspected robbery—a year earlier, a man had murdered a bookseller for a first edition of The Wind in the Willows, valued at fifty thousand pounds.
But until someone did an inventory of Harold’s stock and library, there’d be no way of determining if anything had been stolen from the shelves. There was no sign of forced entry, and no mention of the symbol scrawled in blood on his forehead, a detail I assumed the police would keep to themselves as long as they could. The thought of being captured on CCTV footage made my skin crawl, but there was nothing I could do about that now. Another good reason Gryffin and I had parted, anyway.
On the upside, the London book-collecting world was small enough that at least one reporter had already spoken to the guy I’d targeted:
“The world has lost a prince among booksellers,” said Nathan Ballingstead, himself a noted figure in the rarefied sphere of antiquarian book collectors. “This isn’t just a heinous crime directed against a single human being: this is the wanton slaughter of an entire world of literary wisdom and insight.” When asked as to the ultimate disposition of Vertigan’s library, Mr. Ballingstead said that would “depend on how the investigation unfolds, of course. But myself and several others close to Harold are in discussions with his solicitor.”
Based on what I’d seen of high-end dealers at the Strand, Harold’s cronies would be swarming around his shop like great whites butting a shark cage. I found several other articles on the murder. Nathan Ballingstead was quoted in every single one. The guy was a news whore.
I settled up and went back outside, found a quiet side street where I made the call on the burner Quinn had given me. Ballingstead answered after one ring.
“Hello, who’s this?”
“Hi—my name is Shelley Wilson, I’m a journalist with the Tribune.” I tried to smooth the rough edges from my New York accent, which might be recognizable if anyone questioned Ballingstead later. “I wanted to know if you had a few minutes to talk about Harold Vertigan’s death, and maybe a bit about the antiquarian book business in general?”
“Yeah, I thought so—my mobile’s been going all night.” An orotund voice, like a self-satisfied Stephen Fry’s. “What would you like to know?”
“Actually, I wondered if you might be able to meet with me. I’m in London covering another story. I could come by your flat, or we could meet somewhere else if you’d like.”
“Sure, come on by.” He gave me the address and directions. “Ring when you get here, and I’ll buzz you in.”
It took me a while to find his place. I crossed paths with countless dog walkers, then a group of uniformed children, all wearing too-big surgical masks that revealed only their eyes. After a few blocks I realized I’d gone the wrong way. I retraced my steps, brooding.
I knew several runners when I worked at the Strand. All men, they were a vital element of the book trade back when it was part of the city’s creative and sociocultural DNA. They served the same function that a lobster does: bottom-feeders who sucked up dross and repurposed it for folks higher up the food chain as something highly desirable, and more expensive.
Runners spent their days scouring used bookstores, flea markets, estate sales, tag sales, church bazaars, and dumpsters, looking for something to sell. Ace doubles and old paperbacks with lurid cover art; Famous Monsters of Filmland and Black Mask magazines; volumes bound in morocco or vellum or gilt-lettered cloth that were worthless as literature but looked nice on people’s shelves.
The guys I knew were extraordinarily knowledgeable. No one buys crap, no matter how cheap it is. More than once I saw some junkie or wino get the bum’s rush for toting a shopping bag full of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. The best runners could spot a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15—better known as Spider-Man #1—or Poe’s Grotesque and Arabesque on a white-elephant table at a distance of thirty feet, then talk a church volunteer into selling it to them for fifty cents instead of a buck. At th
e end of a week or month, they’d gather bags full of books and vintage pulps and make the rounds of dealers.
That’s a lost world. Everyone does business online now, and there’s only a handful of runners left. I was about to meet one of them.
Chapter 20
Ballingstead lived in an unmemorable five-story building, drab red brick and concrete, with scraggly plane trees planted out front. Every runner I’d known lived on the first or basement floor—easier to lug books in and out—and Ballingstead was no exception. He buzzed me in, opening the door to greet me.
“My god, I’ve been up all night with you lot! Never tire of it, do you? Blood and circuses, all those hungry ghouls online craving meat. How can you live with yourselves? Come in, come in.”
Ballingstead resembled an Arthur Rackham gnome who’d gotten lost at the Glastonbury Festival years ago and never found his way home. He barely came up to my chin, a wizened, spidery-limbed man whose round face seemed to have been plopped atop the wrong body. He had a shoulder-length fringe of lank gray hair; flushed, bulbous cheeks; a receding chin; and protuberant blue eyes. He wore faded jeans and a windowpane-check shirt, open at the neck to display a red plastic rosary worn as a necklace.
We walked down a short hallway devoid of any furnishings save shelves crammed with books. The place smelled like a teenage boy’s room, of sweat and weed and unwashed sheets. “Tell me again who you are?” he asked.
“Shelley Wilson. I write for the Tribune. I just happened to be in London when this story broke and—”
“Yes, everyone’s very excited about it. Well, I shouldn’t say excited,” he added, though he obviously was. “We are heartsick, just heartsick, every one of us who knew Harold. The Tribune, that’s online, isn’t it? Or is that the other one? So far I’ve talked to the Metro Morning News, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian. News Six just now, I told them they could send someone over, but they won’t. Who else?”
The Book of Lamps and Banners Page 10