by Ian Rankin
It took him a couple of minutes to reach the bathroom, what with getting dizzy and having to sit on the end of the bed for a moment, screwing shut his eyes against the headache and the white flashes. It was the kind of thing Vietnam vets should get: huge phosphor explosions across the glaze of his eyeballs.
“I’m not cut out for drinking,” he told himself, reaching for the first cigarette, knowing it was a mistake even as he did so, even as he placed it between his lips, even as he lit it and inhaled.
He almost had to pick himself up off the floor after that. God, it hurt, and it tasted foul. But it was necessity. Sheer addiction, like with the drink. Some men were built for alcohol; they had large frames which soaked up the juice, and brains which rejected all thought of a hangover. On the other hand, he was lean and lanky—and by Christ he got hangovers. He guessed by now his liver must be about the size of a sheep’s head. It was a wonder it hadn’t pushed all his other organs aside, knocked them out of the game. He loved drinking but hated getting drunk. But of course by the time he was getting drunk, the defenses were all down, so he kept on drinking. It was a problem. It surely was a problem.
So why did he drink?
“I drink therefore I am,” he reasoned, rising once more from the bed. He smiled through the pain. Maybe his brother would have appreciated the philosophy. Or maybe it was the wrong kind of philosophy. He’d never been able to figure Gordon out, not for a minute. He suspected—no, hell, he knew—Gordon had been in the SAS or one of those other quasisecret branches of armed service. He knew it just as surely as he knew the bathroom was only another three hundred yards away. Maybe if I crawl, he thought, maybe everything would be easier if I resorted to all fours, returning to nature, communing with my fellow beasts. Hell, this is California, the idea might catch on. Every other idea in the world had. You could get Tai Chi with your chili or send your kids to Satanist preschool. Every loony in the world seemed to have landed here with their One Idea, some life-changing thing that might take off. You’d always find at least one sucker, one easy-to-dupe disciple.
I’m a journalist, he thought. I’m a persuader. I could have half of Beverly Hills crawling on all fours and talking to the dogs and cats in no time. What I can’t do, right now, is find my way to the bathroom.
He was sweating when he finally crawled up to the toilet, the sweat cooling his back and brow as he threw up in the bowl. He hauled himself up and sat, resting his head against the cold porcelain sink. He was beginning to feel better, his heart rate slowing, even starting to consider the day ahead, his agenda, things that must be done. Like phone Eddie. Then he’d try to talk to that pharmacist again. But first he had to phone Eddie.
He pulled himself up to standing and stared into the mirror. Most of the glass was covered with dried toothpaste. A woman he’d had back here a few nights before had left a message for him. She’d been gone by the time he got up. He’d stumbled through to the bathroom and leaned against the sink, rubbing his head against the cool mirror. When he’d finally looked up, he saw he’d smeared away whatever the message had been and had red and white stripes of toothpaste clogged in his hair.
When he went back into the bedroom, he saw he’d plugged the laptop in some time the previous night, which showed forethought; the batteries would be charged up by now. He couldn’t live without his laptop. Just as some people had cats, and held them in their laps and stroked them, he had his computer. It was like therapy; when he picked it up and started to work the keys, he felt his worries evaporate. It felt stupid when he said it to people, but it made him feel immortal; he was writing, and that writing would one day be published, and once something was published it became immortal. People would store it, hoard it, keep it for reference, read it, devour it, cross-reference it, transfer it to other media like microfiche or CD-ROM. His laptop was a hangover cure, a panacea. Maybe that was the reason he wasn’t afraid of Co-World Chemicals. Maybe.
He sat on the bedroom floor and went through his recent notes. The thing was shaping up—at least, he hoped it was. There was a lot of speculation in there, stuff that needed, as any editor would tell him, meat on its bones. And by meat they’d mean validation. He needed to get people to talk on the record. Hell, even off the record would do for the moment. He could still let an editor have a listen to off-the-record remarks. Then maybe that editor would have a check made out to him so he could bolster his flagging finances.
The catch was, he was in hock to Giles Gulliver in London, and the bugger was refusing to front him any more cash until he’d seen a story he could run with. Catch-22. He needed more money if he was going to be able to give Giles that story. So now he was looking for a spin-off, something he could sell elsewhere. Jesus, he’d already pitched at a couple of travel editors, pieces about San Diego, the border, Tijuana, La Jolla. He’d do the zoo or Sea World if they wanted it! But they didn’t want anything from him. They knew his reputation. Knew several of his reputations. They knew he was bad with deadlines, and didn’t write nice little travel articles to be read over the Sunday cornflakes and coffee. That wasn’t journalism anyway—it was filler, an excuse for a cramming of ads, and he’d told three travel editors exactly that. Also that they could go bugger themselves.
Which left him running out of money fast, and reduced to cheap motels where they cleaned the rooms once a week and skimped on the towels. He had to work faster. Either that or take CWC’s money, use it to placate Giles, and buy a holiday with whatever was left. Everyone would be happier that way. Maybe even he’d be happier. But it didn’t work like that. There was a story out there, and if he didn’t get it, it would nag him for months, years even. Like the time he had to give up on the Faslane story. He’d been working for a London paper then, and the proprietor had told the editor to rein him in. He’d fumed, then resigned, then decided he didn’t want to resign—so they fired him. He’d gone back to the story, working freelance, but couldn’t get any further with it, and no one wanted to publish what he had except Private Eye, who’d given it half a page at the back of the mag.
God bless the Fourth Estate!
He had another cigarette, then pulled the phone off the bedside cabinet.
Once, he would have been living in a Hyatt or Holiday Inn, maybe even a Marriott. But times had changed, and James Reeve with them. He was meaner now; meaner in both senses. He left smaller tips (when he tipped at all: that guy in Reservoir Dogs had a point), and he was less pleasant. Poor people can’t afford to be pleasant; they’re too busy barely getting by.
Eddie’s phone kept ringing and ringing, and Reeve let it ring until it was answered.
“What? What?”
“Good morning, sir,” Reeve said sweetly, smoke pouring down his nose, “this is your requested alarm call.”
There were groans and hacking coughs at the other end of the line. It was good to feel you weren’t alone in your afflictions.
“You scumbag, you loathsome string of shit, you complete and utter douchehead.”
“What is this?” said Reeve. “Dial-a-Foulmouth?”
Eddie Cantona wheezed, trying to speak and laugh and light a cigarette all at the same time. “So what’s our schedule?” he finally said.
“Just get over here and pick me up. I’ll think of something.”
“Thirty minutes, okay?”
“Make it half an hour.” James Reeve hung up the phone. He liked Eddie, liked him a lot. They’d met in a bar in the Gaslamp Quarter. The bar had a western theme and sold ribs and steaks. You ate at a long, hewn wooden bench, or at hewn wooden tables, and at the bar they served the tap beer in Mason jars. It was an affectation, yes, and it meant you didn’t get a lot of beer for your money—but it was good beer, almost good enough and dark enough to be English.
Reeve had come into the dark, cool bar after a hot, unprofitable walk in the sunshine; and he’d drunk too many beers too quickly. And he’d got talking to the man on the stool beside him, who introduced himself as Eddie Cantona. Reeve started off by saying ther
e was a football player called Cantona, then had to explain that he meant soccer, and that the player himself was French.
“It’s a Spanish name,” Eddie persisted. And it was, too, the way he said it, turning the middle syllable into toe and dragging the whole name out—whereas in England the commentators would try to abbreviate it to two syllables at most.
The conversation could only improve from there, and it did, especially when Eddie announced that he was “between appointments” and owned a car. Reeve had been spending a fortune on cabs and other modes of transport. Here was a driver looking for short-term employment. And a big man at that—someone who just might double as bodyguard should the need arise. By that point, Reeve had figured on the need arising.
Since then he’d been offered money to quit the story. And when he’d turned the offer down, there had been a silent beating in a back alley. They’d caught him while Eddie was off somewhere. They hadn’t said a word, which was the clearest message they could have given.
And still James Reeve wanted the story. He wanted it more than ever.
They drove out to La Jolla first to visit the retired pharmacist unannounced.
It was a white-painted clapboard house (Eddie pronounced the word “clabbard”), a bungalow with not much land around it. It had a green picket fence, which was being freshly redecorated by a whistling workman in overalls. His van was parked with two wheels on the curb, its back doors open to show a range of paint cans, ladders, and brushes. He smiled and said, “Good morning to you” as James Reeve pushed open the stubborn gate. There were bells hanging from the latch, and they chimed as he closed it behind him.
He’d been here before, and the old man hadn’t answered any of his questions. But persistence was a journalist’s main line of attack. He rang the doorbell and took one pace back onto the path. The street wasn’t close to La Jolla’s seafront, but he guessed the houses would still be worth at least a hundred and fifty thou apiece. It was that kind of town. Eddie’d told him that Raymond Chandler used to live in La Jolla. To James’s eye, there didn’t seem much worth writing about in La Jolla.
He stepped up to the door again, tried the bell, then squatted to peer through the mail slot. But there was no mail slot. Instead, Dr. Killin had one of those mailboxes on a post near the gate, with a red flag beside it for when there was mail. The flag was down. James went to the only window fronting the bungalow and looked in at a comfortable living room, lots of old photographs on the walls, a three-seat sofa with floral covers taking up way too much room. He remembered Dr. Killin from their first, only, and very brief meeting. Killin had reminded him physically of Giles Gulliver, a knotted strength beneath an apparently frail exterior. He had a shiny domed bald head, the skull out of proportion to the frame supporting it, and thick-lensed glasses behind which the eyes were magnified, the eyelashes thick and curling.
The old fart wasn’t home.
He walked back down the path and wrestled with the gate again. The painter stopped whistling and smiled up at him from his half-kneeling position.
“Ain’t in,” he informed James Reeve, like this was news.
“You might have said before I went three rounds with that damned gate.”
The painter chuckled, wiping his green fingers on a rag. “Might’ve,” he agreed.
“Do you know where he is?”
The man shook his head, then scratched his ear. “I was told something about a vacation. But how do you take a vacation when you live in paradise?” And he laughed, turning back to his task.
James Reeve took a step towards him. “When did he leave?”
“That I don’t know, sir.”
“Any idea when he’ll be back?”
The painter shrugged.
The journalist cursed under his breath and leaned over the fence to open the mailbox, looking for something, anything.
“Shouldn’t do that,” the painter said.
“I know,” said Reeve, “tampering with the U.S. Mail.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. But see, you got green paint on your shirt.”
And so he had.
Dismissing the offer of mineral spirits, in need of another kind of spirit altogether, he stomped back to the car where Eddie was waiting for him. He got into the passenger seat.
“I heard,” said Eddie.
“He’s been scared off,” Reeve declared. “I know he has.”
“You could leave a business card or something, ask him to get back to you.” Eddie started the engine.
“I did that last time. He didn’t get back to me. He never let me past the front door.”
“Well—old folks, they do get suspicious. Lot of muggings around.”
James Reeve turned as best he could in the seat, so he was facing Eddie Cantona. “Eddie, do I look like a mugger?”
Eddie smiled and shook his head, pressing the accelerator. “But then you don’t look like the Good Humor man either.”
The painter watched them go, waved even, though they’d already forgotten about him. Then, still grinning, he wiped his hands as he walked to his van. He reached into the passenger side and took out a cell phone, holding it to his face. He stopped smiling only when the connection was made.
“They were just here,” he said.
That afternoon, Eddie dropped his employer off downtown, on the corner of Eighth and E. James Reeve had some work to do at the public library. He sometimes typed his notes into the laptop there, too—it was better than his motel room, a hundred times better. Surrounded by busy people, people with projects and ideas, people with goals, he found his own work, his own goal, became more focused.
Plus, the library was only four blocks from Gaslamp, which meant he could get a beer afterwards. Eddie had a couple of things to do, but said he might be in their regular haunt by six. If he still hadn’t arrived by the time James felt like going home, the bar would call him a cab. It was an eight-dollar ride, including tip.
The story was slowing down, he decided. Here he was in San Diego, which should have been the heart of it, and he wasn’t getting anywhere. He had Preece and the pesticide research, but that was years back. He had a rape, also ancient history. He had stories from two retired investigators. He had Korngold . . . but Korngold was dead.
He had Agrippa and the bank accounts. Maybe if he went back to England, concentrated on that particular corner of the puzzle, talked to Josh Vincent again; the union man’s story was almost enough in itself. But he’d already pitched that at Giles Gulliver, who’d pooh-poohed it, saying the Guardian had run a similar story the year before. He’d checked, and the Guardian hadn’t been following the same tack at all—but there’d been no persuading Giles, the stubborn old bastard.
So there was little enough for him to add to his files. He had other names, and had tried telephone calls, but no one wanted to meet him, or even talk on the phone. This was a shame, as he’d had his little recorder beside him, the microphone attached to the telephone earpiece. All his recordings showed so far was evasiveness on a grand scale, which didn’t mean anything. Americans were wary of callers at the best of times. Blame all the cold-callers out there, interrupting lunch or dinner or a postprandial snooze to drum up money for everything from the Republican Party to Tupperware parties. He’d even had someone call him in his motel room, trying to sell him language courses. Language courses! Maybe they tried every room in every motel. Barrel-scraping was what it was.
Barrel-scraping.
He sighed, turned off the laptop, folded it away, and decided he could use a beer, Mason jar or no Mason jar. As he pushed through the library’s main door the heat hit him again. It was very pleasant; almost too pleasant. You could go crazy in a place like this, with only slight fluctuations in temperature all year. Almost no rain, and the streets clean, and everyone so polite to you; it could get to you.
He found himself in the dimly lit air-conditioned bar, sliding onto what had become his favorite stool. The barmaid was new and wore cutoff denims and a
tight white T-shirt. Her hair was tied back with a red bandanna, another one loose around her throat. Her legs, arms, and face were tanned and smooth. You just didn’t get girls like that in England—not with that all-over even tan and that unsullied complexion—yet here they were thick on the ground. Then he looked in the long mirror behind the bar, seeing not only his own reflection, but those of his fellow drinkers. Who was he kidding? Imperfections were staring him in the face. Men—men in love with beer—pasty-faced and thick-paunched, with greasy thinning hair and little stamina. Here’s to the lot of us, he thought, draining his first jar.
The drinker on the stool next to him didn’t look in the mood for conversation, and the barmaid needed everything repeated twice, unable to comprehend his accent. “I haven’t got an accent,” he told her, then had to repeat that, too. So when Eddie hadn’t turned up by 6:30, he thought about calling him. After all, he was Eddie’s employer, and Eddie’s job was to ferry him around. But that wasn’t exactly fair, he decided, after a moment’s thought. He was paying Eddie peanuts, and the guy was with him most of the day as it was—though he got the feeling Eddie hung around so he could pick up some free drinks and maybe even a free dinner.
He decided he wasn’t hungry. He’d had enough. He just wanted to go back to his lousy motel and sleep for twelve or so hours. He asked if the barmaid could call him a cab, remembering to shorten the a in cab so she’d understand the word.
“Sure,” she said.
Then the silent drinker next to him decided it was time to bow out, too. He walked out of the bar without saying a word, though he did nod in James’s general direction, and he left a couple of dollars on the bar for the server, which was pretty generous. While she had her back to him, making the call, James slipped one of the dollars along to his own section of bar and left it there. Times were hard.
A minute later, the driver stuck his head into the bar.
“Mr. Reeve!” he called, then went back outside again. James Reeve slid off his stool and said so long to the assembly. He’d only had the four beers, and felt fine—maybe a little depressed as he picked up his laptop, but he’d been worse. He would do something with the story, something lasting, something immortal. He just needed a little more money and a lot more time. He couldn’t just let it go, not when it affected the whole damned planet.