Little God Blues

by Jeffrey M Anderson

  CHAPTER 13

  The day after my Sparshott meeting I got a large envelope in the mail. It had JR Enterprises on the return address. I read the complement slip pinned to a folded-over newspaper page. It read: “Good PR move! Let me know if want to keep going!! Kindest Regards, Jack.” I pulled off the paperclip, unfolded the page. There was a picture that took up the entire northeast quadrant, a couple kissing in a doorway, some commercial enterprise. I knew that doorway. Shit, I knew the couple: my NE1 dinner companion and me. It was captioned “Andrea’s Mystery Hunk.” When I say kissing, our heads were close, on the way in or the opposite. I understood how these things worked: both faces had to be recognizable. Like an icy winter seeping through countless layers I felt the chill realization of why I hadn’t seen Sula around for several days.

  I was taken by its paradoxical cruelty. I had failed with this Andrea Reynolds because of that feeling of purity I had toward Sula. The entire NE1 drama was such a contrived meaningless game, all surface, all artifice. NE1 had an emptiness beyond boredom, a forced way of making things interesting when I had my own natural and all-encompassing way of doing that.

  Now this picture. There had been others back in the States. That wasn’t me then; even less me now. It didn’t matter. I knew only too well you cannot fight the power of mass-produced illusion.

  I now had three cases: Kirk, Claudia, and the case of the missing girlfriend. Sula had always met me away from Imperial College. I didn’t have any idea where she lived. I could think of three forward gears, ignoring reverse. I could flatter/grease/muscle a university administrator for that address; I could camp out in front of the Physics Department; or else a deductive enterprise, the outlines of which were at best hazy. While I decided my best course, and reconsidered whether the real best course was reverse, I slipped down the deductive path, the only way forward that could be worked on from the comfort of home.

  I started with a hunch that was a spill-over from that fanciful Shakespeare play I was mentally constructing. In it I starred as the Mediterranean suitor, the chivalrous knight, the would-be lover. The not-so-fair princess was my quest. Insurmountable obstacles, death-defying risks. Pericles might come closest. Toss out the incest, though.

  Three characters. Well, we can eliminate me, that was a known. Our princess was in hiding. That left the king, that looming eminence. He had to be part of the story.

  I spent several hours on the Internet doing a deeper search of “Panos Lamzaki.” Up to 1.3 million hits this time. There were articles, interviews, press releases, deals, purchases, rumors. Newspaper and magazine links to business activities. Visits to Lebanon, Iran, Libya, Italy. There were Greek society items, often with a sleek woman pictured on Lamzaki’s arm. There was corporate finance: purchases, mergers, hostile takeover rumors. His name came up on venture capital websites, investment banks. This was from hitting random pages up to page fifty.

  Moira put me through to Nigel, the IT guy at Iken, who coached me on the basics of refining a search by using a string. Panos Lamzaki (always in quotes) + ships; Panos Lamzaki + corporate finance; Panos Lamzaki + charity. The last gave me nothing. I also got nothing from Panos Lamzaki + knife crime; Panos Lamzaki + murder + Greece. Panos Lamzaki + thug + prison. Was it possible to daydream and search at the same time? Eventually I snapped out of it and got back to more fruitful strings. In one of them I added “London” to his name. The third listing hit my eye, a link to an article in the Daily Telegraph dated 9 May 1999.

  Hotel Slump: Greek Tycoon Bets It’s Over

  “Property experts are scratching their collective heads over the recent purchase of the Mountjoy Hotel, one of Mayfair’s quietest rest stops for old money, by ALP IV Inc., a Special Purpose Vehicle controlled by the vast shipping-to-telecoms empire of Mr. Panos Lamzaki.”

  There followed pro and con quotes about a possible resurgence in the London hotel market. Then a telling line that this was Lamzaki’s first venture in the UK. May 1999 would have been a few months before Sula started at Imperial. A coincidence? It made sense to investigate this hotel.

  The Mountjoy was located in Mayfair, an area so affluent and centrally located that even Middle Eastern princes owned flats rather than houses. It was an old, comfortable hotel down a dead-end street. You didn’t happen by it; it needed to be your destination. It had oriental carpets over well-polished hardwood. Antique furniture, old hunting lithographs and a subdued atmosphere. The kind of place that had you lowering your voice to a muted whisper, as if doing the commentary on a key golf putt. I had arrived at that saddle time, tea over, too early for gin and tonics in the clubby lounge bar.

  “I’m supposed to be meeting Sula Lamzaki here,” I announced breezily to the young man behind the teak reception counter. His badge announced him as Werner. I waited while he sized me up in that clinical disapproving way some Germans have about all non-Germans.

  “At what time is your appointment?”

  “She said to phone up to her room when I got here.”

  “Her room?”

  I gave him what I hoped was my I-don’t-make-this-stuff-up look. “Well, she said to call when I got here. Maybe she meant on her mobile. I just assumed…”

  “One moment, please.” He picked up the phone, asking for my name as he punched the buttons.

  “Jim Heisenberg.”

  He glinted sourly, as if pained at our shared Teutonic heritage. I couldn’t help overhear Werner say, “Yes, American.”

  Werner chopped at the bell, giving me a warmed-over professional smile as if remembering that customer relations was part of his job. The bell brought the doorman. He looked like a spruced-up butcher, heavyset, with swarthy, meaty, pocked-marked face. He wore a well-cut overcoat over hotel livery, some understated Beefeater thing. “The Darwin Room please, Harry.”

  I followed his bulky frame up eight stairs to a half-landing, through a door, twenty paces down a narrow, windowless corridor. A wooden plaque on the door announced in gold letters, Darwin. I noticed Newton across the hall. I fought down a brief “who’s on first” fantasy over Watt. Which room? Watt. I said which room! Watt. I was still smiling a little as Harry opened the door after one perfunctory rap, not unlike the token decorum of a knock at Sunnydown Hills.

  It was a small room, set up for meetings. An old mahogany table with ten chairs, four to a side, with two end ones. Drawing room windows gave on to a back garden, the perfect green lawn fuzzed over with frost, low spotlights on it. Sula sat with her back to the windows, a vast spread of books, notepads, crumpled up balls of paper, a gin and tonic glass full of pencils. To her right, a coffee service on a silver tray.

  I put off that first moment when I went to her eyes, something about savoring the tension, much more about not knowing what to say or how to start.

  “Mr. Detective,” she said.

  “More like Mr. Defective.” I held that for a moment. “Apparently.”

  Her smile took in the room, acknowledging this awkward Oz-behind-the-curtain moment. “Shall we be English and have tea?” Apparently this was an instruction. Harry, who had been waiting at the door for just that, went away. He left the door ajar. So he could hear any screams, I decided.

  I struggle to try to describe my feelings here. It was as if I had walked up to a safe, bluffed my way to a combination and presto, the jewels. Sula seemed a different person, more closed off, cloistered. Before there had been a limitless quality to her. Now she was just a hardworking privileged girl who had been avoiding me.

  “I have tried to keep you away from here.”

  “Are the bad guys going to take me to the dungeon?”

  She paved that over with a dubious smile.

  “If it’s over between us, what does it matter?” I tried not to sound bitter. Nope. “What you’ve done…” I stopped before I got even angrier.

  “I am sorry I have hurt you. If it helps you to know, it has not been easy for me, either.”

  “Does that mean it has
hurt you, too?”

  Sula was so foreign now. She gave me a wistful shrug of a smile, one I had seen from any number of American women: if you only knew. She notched that up with a warmer smile, more on my side. It was like a sharp yank on my leash. A small, third-party part of me marveled at this power she had over me.

  “It’s normally good etiquette to say good-bye in person,” I said.

  “You must understand that I have much less experience in finishing such things.” Her quick look at me showed the “more”’ side of her “less.” “In any case, I am not saying good-bye. I have a difficulty with my father. You have helped him very much with your newspaper picture.”

  “That dumb picture! It was a meaningless good night smooch. A nothing kiss.”

  “Of course it was meaningless. If that is the worst he can bring to me…” Her eyes went to the door. A few seconds later I could hear the tinkling of the tea service being borne towards us.

  We waited while Thierry—Sula knew them all—set out the tea. Silver service with strainers and dishes to hold them. A silver jug of cream, another pot for hot water with white linen around it. Scones, jams, clotted cream. It took an age for Thierry to transfer all the items, like slowly setting up a chess game. We were silent, watching him.

  When Thierry had left, I started. “I don’t understand. How can you agree to a set-up like this? How can you allow your father to push me out of your life? It’s not the Sula I thought I knew.”

  “You are familiar with bullfighting? Always safer to work near to the bull. Believe it, my father has that much power. Yes, I fight him. I must choose such battles carefully. I am only child. My mother is gone. I cannot break with him.”

  “If he knows that, he’ll use it and you will be lost.”

  “Yes, you are right. He wins as businessman; I lose as his daughter.” She stopped there, and smiled. It was a sad smile, closed off, trapped—a side of her I’d never seen before. She notched it up, warmer, more reflective, fond. “His excuse for this hotel is kidnap. He is worried to pay such high freedom money.”

  Sula was looking down at the table, possibly for inspiration from her equations. I looked out at the cold, frosted lawn beyond her. The bare trees, the lights on in the building diagonally across the garden. I could see a secretary at a Xerox machine.

  “Let’s meet away from here. I don’t like this place; maybe because of what it’s doing to you. One more time, away from here, okay? If you look me in the eye, if you tell me then to get lost, fine, I’ll accept that.”

  “I will not say such things.” She held that for a long moment. “Jim, I am happy you have come to me. I am not happy that you are seen here. Now all is on the table. I will have to fight.”

  She was a different person, fully formal, whereas before formal was one of several attitudes she’d adopted. I needed to get out. She read all this, giving me a tired, knowing smile. She said, “You remember we talked about how we look away? How can you believe when you know that you are only pretending to believe? You are fooled but not fooled.”

  “I remember it very well.” It brought back our few frustrating yet enlivening times together, the fresh discussions, a certain out-of-time aspect to being together as if we could talk for days.

  “Can we pretend this has never happened?” She scanned the room to emphasize “this.”

  I went over to her, looked into her eyes, and kissed her. It wasn’t the kiss itself; that was a side benefit, but its location—here, in enemy territory. She wasn’t happy about it. She had kept her two personae separate. Now they had been fused, a short circuit that would blow the lights out. But only if she surrendered. She did.

  CHAPTER 14

  At last all was finalized. A raft of papers, spread out impressively in the Iken boardroom were signed by various parties, including me. I instructed the transfer of £500,000 to Iken’s bank account—a smile at this severe testing of my MDR karma, where invested money comes back in ever greater amounts. Our interim CEO made a speech thanking me, motivating the troops, of which I was now one. Jim Shalabon, Non-Executive Director. I kept repeating this, shaking my head. Any company with me in that position must be doomed. That wasn’t the feeling in that conference room. The good ship Iken had had its engine overhauled. It was now thrumming with renewed vigor, and all could feel this, no one more than Trevor Caspian, who handed me Francine McLain’s file with a lop-sided, ironic smirk.

  Moira too was in helpful mode. There had been no official meeting with Francine McLain any time in October, she explained, then she escorted me into the empty shrine. Claudia’s office. (The new CEO was sticking to the conference room until a suitable period of decorum passed.) Claudia had one of those desk blotters that showed the month by day in large blocks—stuck forever on October 2001. It was filled with pound amounts and random words, more doodling than recordkeeping. Her formal planner was on the Iken server. Moira pointed to October eighth. There, at the bottom of that block, meaning evening, was a penciled “FM?”

  Moira stood there while I contemplated this scrawled symbol by a woman who had disappeared, possibly relating to a meeting with a woman who had died. Ever touchy Moira had known both of them.

  “How’s your play coming along?”

  “Oh, I hate it. Hate it.” The second time was as if to reassure herself. “You work so hard. So hard! You fight to overcome all this, this organized madness.” Her eyes made a tour of Iken’s offices, a sour look on her face. “And it turns out it’s all about money, after all.”

  She was much further along than I imagined. Her group, something like the North Camden Women’s Advocacy was staging it, but the fascists at the council wouldn’t give them a grant. All they needed was £15,000. She gave me a dramatic sigh.

  “Advocating women? Isn’t that like advocating, I don’t know, oxygen?”

  Her chin crumpled; I thought she was about to cry.

  “I do wish Francine could read the final version. She’d know whether…” she stopped for a long moment, distracted by something internal, “…whether I’m good enough.”

  Francine’s comment about her play came back to me. “Do the men still need work?”

  “She was being ironic.”

  We were now standing in the door to Claudia’s office, leaving, not left, something keeping Moira there.

  “Someone at Iken can always—”

  “Trevor’s read it,” she interrupted, picking up on my thoughts. “He likes it. He likes the men, if you will allow me more irony. It’s the all-female cast he’s not so sure about.”

  “An all-female cast,” I couldn’t help repeating, trying it on for size. As I said that our consultant came up, looking for me. He had heard that phrase, and stood there with a purposely bemused look as if to say, don’t let me interrupt.

  “Look, if you need £15k, I’ll back it,” I said.

  “There’s a catch. There always is.” Hadn’t I just offered her fifteen grand? Instead of gratitude I get skepticism about men and our motives.

  “Only one.” Her lack of gratitude was a tad galling. Also, this was life, and we all know how that works. Nothing comes easy. There needed to be a suitable hurdle.

  She gave me an interested yet miserable look. Our consultant stood there, smiling, observing this play about a play.

  I said, “The powerful, wealthy mother has to be played by a man.” I thought I was playing with her, prepared to back off, then, why not? Teach her a lesson about money, strings, patronage.

  “You’re kidding! That’s…‌not a bad idea. Except they’d never—”

  “Tell them it’s the money that makes the rules.” Well, it sounded good.

  Perfect! I would push my MDR karma to the limit. Surely this was an even surer failure than Springtime for Hitler. Fringe plays never made any money for the investor. I mean, since the beginning of time.

  “No. I think Iken should sponsor it,” our consultant said. We had been sparring over money. I was entitled
to £12,000 a year as an NED, Non-Executive Director. I didn’t want it. It was downright spooky getting a stipend from a company, dirty money, like selling your soul, and for what, really? I was still commercially pure. I intended to stay that way. He found this charmingly naive. So the £12k that I was entitled to but didn’t take I got anyway, as a donation to a play about a king who was role reversed into a woman, but is now played by a man. Life can be so simple.

  “It had better be good,” our consultant said to Moira. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined a smirk for out-maneuvering me. Iken—big in women’s romance, other women’s issues, in a PR muscle flex, probably tax deductible.

  Moira hung back, looking at me. Negotiation, agreement, the spending of money, thousands, all about her. The poor girl stood there in a post-coital transactional flush. The same “this has happened too fast” buzz. The same my-world-will-never-be-the-same-again bewilderment.

  “Moira, what you said last time…‌about murder.” All this time, going into Claudia’s office, consulting the diary, sparring with the volatile Moira, I had been holding Francine McLain’s file, like having her with me.

  “I can’t believe I wanted to protect you. You!” Was it possible that, against all evidence, this girl liked me a little?

  “Protect me from what, exactly?”

  She went quiet for a short moment. She turned and left Claudia’s office, then whirled at me outside that door.

  “I didn’t want you to think it was your fault. I was the one who told her.” She paused. “Her machine at least.”

  “How can it be your fault? I’m the one who said it.”

  “If. If. If. If you. If I…” she trailed away now, but came back yelling, “Don’t you see? She’s dead! We are, are, are…” she was sputtering now. “Involved,” she said, voice lower now, trying to sound reasonable. With that she ran (ran!) down the corridor, out through the reception area.

  A middle-aged woman looked up from her workstation, focused on me. Didn’t say anything, didn’t have to. Jim Shalabon, guilty again—of nothing.