Always

by Nicola Griffith

  “Much of this is tied together,” I said. “For example, one, having the right to wear what you want, even just a thong and stilettos, and go wherever you want, whenever you want, such as a roadside bar at one in the morning, and, two, having the right to make mistakes.”

  Half the class laughed.

  “Think of it this way,” I said to the other half. “If a richly dressed man walks through a high-crime area late at night with his wallet sticking out of his pocket, is he to blame if he is mugged?”

  “Oh,” said Jennifer, “I get it, I get it.”

  “The woman in the thong and the man with the wallet would be stupid, making a grave error in judgment, but still the ultimate wrongdoer would be the perpetrator. If you make a mistake—with the clothes or the wallet— it doesn’t mean you asked for it. Or deserve it. You have the right to make the perpetrator stop if they attempt to abuse you.”

  Sandra was sitting very still, very erect. “But sometimes the other person is bigger and faster and stronger.”

  “Yes.”

  “So sometimes we don’t have a choice.”

  “No. We always have a choice of some kind, just not always the choices we would like.”

  Her smile was light, whipped cream over old and bitter coffee. “The ‘die whimpering or with your head held high’ kind of choice?”

  “Usually there are lots of branches on the decision tree before you get to that point.”

  “But not always.”

  I studied her. This was the Sandra who wanted to break from her cage and run wild and free across the moonlit meadow—but knew, as she knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west, that a hunter would rise from the brush and shoot her.

  “No,” I said, “not always.”

  TEN

  AT EIGHT-THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING I WAS SITTING AT THE BEVELED-GLASS dining table in my suite, before a brand-new laptop. It was downloading Corning’s entire desktop. I’d gone online with the brand-new, empty machine and input her user name and password at the Carbonite website, and answered her security question. It had taken me five minutes on the Web to find out she had attended Lincoln High School.

  Once I’d downloaded the software, I hit restore files, and now the hard drive was chattering. The download-in-progress bar read 73 percent. By the time I finished my breakfast, I’d be able to peruse the whole at my leisure.

  I finished the last of my grapefruit and started on the spicy sausage, leaning back as I chewed, staring at the dirty grey sky—like foam on boiling lentils, rent here and there by the wind and gaping bright blue. The download bar read 89 percent complete. I poured myself tea.

  As I was sipping, wondering what Kick’s early appointment was, Anton Finkel called.

  “Not too early?” he said. His voice was thin with speakerphone echo.

  “Yes,” I said. Ninety percent complete.

  “What? Hello? Did you hear what she said, Stan?”

  “I’m here,” I said. I closed the laptop. “What can I do for you?”

  “First of all I’d like to apologize for getting distracted yesterday—”

  “Not a problem.”

  “I was—”

  “Not a problem.” The window flickered on the edge of my vision. Rain. “Did you get your safety-equipment issues sorted?”

  “We did, indeed,” said Finkel, sounding jovial and beefy, utterly unlike his personal physical presence. This was how he wanted to be regarded, I realized: one of the boys, worldly, in charge. He was still talking, “. . . matter, easily resolved. But you don’t want to involve yourself in our petty details. I am calling”—I wondered what had happened to we—“to assure you that from now on there will be no interruptions in our lease-payment schedule.”

  “I see.”

  “Excellent,” Finkel said. “Though I did want to raise the matter of your . . . generosity so far.”

  “Go on.”

  “It was most kind of you to step in on the medical payments front. I’m sure all the crew appreciate it.”

  “I sincerely hope the crew knows nothing of it.”

  “Of course, of course. Confidentiality. I understand. However, I was wondering how you’d feel about putting things on a more formal footing.”

  I didn’t say anything. Rusen cleared his throat.

  “It’s a worthwhile project,” he said. “You’ve seen the script.”

  “I haven’t read it.”

  “Oh. Well, you’ve seen how hard everyone is working.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you understand, Ms. Torvingen,” Finkel again, “when I say this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a real difference.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Anton, let me talk. Ms. Torvingen, Aud, you’ve been a great help. As much in the giving advice and just listening and being patient as anything, and we really appreciate that. But we’ve come to a . . . to a fork in the road, a time of decision, which . . . Boy, I don’t know how to say this but to just say it. We’ve burned through our cash. We’ve taken every measure imaginable, and some I couldn’t have imagined four weeks ago, and we still have a few crucial scenes and a boatload of post-production. I believe in this project. I think you understand what we’re trying to do. I believe we can do it, if we have fresh investment. I’ve heard that you might be in a position to help us out. Now, I wouldn’t want to lie to you, investment in the movie business is risky, but, well, this could be a good thing for everybody. ”

  “So you’re saying you would like me to write you a check so that you can be sure to pay me my rent on time.”

  Silence. “Yes, I guess. It sure sounds silly when you put it that way. I’m so sorry if we offended you in any way, and of course—”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “. . . top priority as our landlord. You’ll what?”

  “I’ll think about it.” The sun slid out again, making the rain-spattered window glitter and sparkle. I began to see a fairground: painted horses and Ferris wheels . . . I blinked it away. “Meanwhile, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about security for the set. That security guard. You should fire him.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “I’ll find someone more suitable.” Sticking a pin in the yellow pages would probably yield a better candidate. I thought of the man who had followed me the other day. “Fire him. I’ll have someone there this afternoon. And, Rusen.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your lease depends on talking to OSHA. So talk to them. Before you do, ensure that the paperwork of the young employee we discussed the other day is in order.” I didn’t want to remind Finkel of his dead son through discussion of the living one. “Four o’clock is good for me.” And maybe Kick would be there. I thought about calling her, but decided to wait. She’d said she’d call me.

  I put the phone down and reopened the laptop. Download complete. I now had a mirror of Corning’s desktop.

  Follow the money. I opened her password file in one window, and then scanned her browser bookmarks. There it was, Capital One Visa. I smiled, and scrolled through her passwords. Under COVisa was Richbitch and covisaword001. I entered the information and logged in to her account.

  It was a platinum card linked to frequent-flyer miles. She used it for everything, from buying lattes to paying for dry cleaning to her parking. And there, front and center, was a payment, dated yesterday, to Hilton Hotels. I opened a search box. There were Hiltons in Bellevue and by the airport. Immediately following the hotel payment was one for Tiffany’s, in Bell Square. Easy. Corning was at the Bellevue Hilton.

  In another day or so she would be nicely fear-marinated.

  I minimized the Visa account window, then searched for and opened her correspondence files. I found myself humming. This was a rich vein: offers to owners of property adjacent to mine. Letters to and from her attorney about loans and collateral and some complicated tax maneuver. Nothing to or from Bingley. With luck, that wouldn’t matter.

  There was to
o much here to absorb in one session.

  I leaned back in my chair again and pondered the question of security for the warehouse.

  I had spotted the man trailing me on the seventeenth. I maximized the Visa account window and searched debits between the fourteenth and twentieth. Most of them were easy enough to identify: QFC, a wine merchant, a drugstore, an M.D., Chevron . . . There were three I couldn’t initially place: Leith, Bankersen, and Heshowitz; Turtledove; and Sandewski’s. Then I recognized the first as the law office I had called when looking for the identities of JB and ETH. Turtledove sounded like a place that sold flowers and chocolates.

  I dragged out the white pages and leafed through the end section, found Sandewski’s. Dialed.

  “Erotic Bakery,” a pleasant female voice said.

  After a moment I said, “Is this Sandewski’s?”

  “Yes. Sandewski’s Erotic Bakery. Do you want to place an order?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  An erotic bakery? I had an unpleasant image of Corning opening wide to bite a pink, phallus-shaped cake. The imagination is like a plasma screen: pictures burn in too easily.

  I tried to think of pink elephants, which led to worse pictures.

  I leafed forward a few pages. Turtledove, D. H. and P. T., Discreet. Direct. Determined. Est. 1991. They were in Fremont, less than a mile from Hardy’s offices.

  IT WAS a storefront place. Tasteful grey carpet; comfy chairs; potted plant; Formica countertop, which, not coincidentally, was chest height: too high for most people to vault over easily.

  A lean, relaxed-looking man in his early forties looked up when I walked in. He knew me instantly. He stood, then carefully, consciously shrugged the tension from his shoulders.

  “Turtledove,” I said. “D. H. or P. T.?”

  “D. H.,” he said. “Deverell. Philippa is my wife.”

  “You know who I am.”

  “Yes.”

  His hair was very dark brown, trimmed in a close, stylish cut and stippled with grey around the temples. I couldn’t see his hands but from his stance he was simply waiting. His shirt was a deep plum linen. “I have a job for you. If you’re available. May I step into your office to discuss it?”

  “You understand I can’t divulge information about a former client?”

  Former. “I understand.”

  “Okay.” He stepped to the counter, unlatched something, lifted the top, and motioned me through. The inner face of the partition was quilted. I nodded at it. “Personal protection?”

  “Kevlar. Enough to stop anything that leaves the muzzle under a thousand feet per second. Not proof against gas, earthquakes, biological agents, or anything more than a handgun.”

  “Every little bit,” I said. We nodded approvingly at each other.

  GARY WAS once again hovering by the door. His shirt shone distractingly white and stiff. Obviously I was getting too used to the Seattle Eddie Bauer/REI dress code. His lips were bright red from biting at them. He ushered me into Corning’s office, where he had coffee waiting, with a bottle of iced water for good measure, a brand-new yellow legal pad, and three different pens laid out carefully in the middle of the desk. He hesitated, unsure at which side to sit.

  I took the customer side. Looking scared but determined, he took the other.

  “I need you to negotiate some deals for me.”

  Now he looked terrified, but he gamely picked up a pen, the red one, and nodded.

  “The federal government will soon be selling the plot of land adjacent to mine. Assuming that in the few days she’s been out of the office the deals she was negotiating with the owners of the two plots north of mine have not closed, I want to buy those, quietly, from the owners.” I had no idea what I’d do with it. I just wanted to make sure no one else could destroy it while I decided.

  “But that’s . . . We’re talking two, two and a half million dollars at least.”

  “Double it and you’ll still be off the mark.” At least according to Corning’s correspondence. “I’ll authorize up to eight million. Are you up to it?”

  He nodded and wrote $8,000,000 carefully in red ink on the pad. His flush was now a waxy pallor.

  “A tip,” I said. He looked up. His eyes were the same soft brown as those of the security guard who probably had been fired by now. “If we’re going to do business, you’ll need to learn a shorthand way to write ‘million’.”

  He stared at the rows of naughts. Just as the waxy look began to go pink again, as he began to understand what his percentage of eight million might look like, I said, “Of course, as you’re not fully qualified, I think a reduced commission is in order. Say forty percent of the customary amount. And we’ll have to work more closely than usual with a reputable real estate lawyer. Your usual attorney is Leith, Bankersen, and Heshowitz, yes? When we’re finished here, get me the direct line of whichever partner Corning usually deals with.” Madison Leith. “I assume that you’re free the rest of the week, and available for appointments?” He nodded so violently that I thought his teeth would fly out.

  We talked it over for a while. Corning’s data was useful but it would take time to go through it, and it was no substitute for personal knowledge. I didn’t know the right palms to grease for a project this size, what was customary. “I want you to set up the kind of lunches, or dinners, or drinks Corning would have organized.”

  “Breakfasts and lunches, mostly. I can do that.”

  “And, let’s see, yes, set up something with Bingley.”

  “The zoning board staffer?”

  “The very one.”

  “May I ask in reference to what?”

  I smiled. “He’s been a bad boy. I’m going to have a little chat.” “He’s . . . ? Oh. Did Ms. Corning make improper, did she—”

  “Bribe him? I believe so.”

  He looked fascinated and unwell at the same time. This was heady stuff.

  “Just tell him I have a delicate matter to discuss. Be brisk, impersonal. We have no proof, and I don’t want him scared.” If I got Corning’s testimony, I wouldn’t need Bingley’s, but there was no harm pursuing the matter from every angle until I was sure.

  We talked about money.

  “If you can show a guarantee of a secured investment already in place for the financing,” he said, “it might give you the winning hand.”

  “I don’t need financing.”

  “But . . .” He stared harder at his red naughts.

  “What’s the customary escrow arrangement?”

  “Earnest money is anywhere from five percent to twenty percent, depending. On, hmmn, eight million, that would be, say, point eight million in bank guarantees, with, say, eighty thousand in actual money.”

  Actual money. It was hard to say whether he meant it to sound exotic or déclassé. “Feel free to tell them they would get their point eight in actual money if we sign the deal within ten days. And the balance, in cash or equivalents, on closing.” Laurence would just have to figure it out.

  Gary was paling again.

  “I’m going to leave you to think things over. In an hour or so I want you to call me and tell me honestly whether you think you can do this. If you can’t, I want you to suggest someone you’d like to work with, and I’ll make sure you get a nice consideration for all your help. It’ll be good experience and no one will think any less of you.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Take some time.”

  “No. I can. I think. I mean, I can. Definitely. If I can work with an attorney. With Ms. Corning I set up all the preliminary arrangements, and sat in on a lot of meetings.” He blushed again. His capillaries were certainly getting a workout. “The hard part will be, well, it’ll be having people take me seriously. I’m young, you see.”

  I nodded gravely.

  “So I’ll need lots of proof of your intent, and ability to do as you promise.”

  “And what do you think is the best way to do that?”

  “Well”—he doodled in the mar
gin—“you could transfer a hunk of cash into the bank Ms. Corning usually uses. Set up an account. All those guys know each other. They’ll make phone calls. Gossip.”

  “All right,” I said. “Set up an appointment for me with the right person at that bank, and pick another bank, too, that you think would be good.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know the banks in Seattle. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  It started to dawn on him that to earn his commission meant making decisions, taking responsibility, running risk. I stood. I wanted to think about happier things than risk. “Think it over. Make those appointments. Call me. Oh, and, Gary, where would I go to buy a wedding present? A nice wedding present.”

  “Nordstrom,” he said. “I’ll give you directions.”

  NORDSTROM STRETCHED along Pine Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It was huge. Inside the door, I paused. Shoes, handbags, scarves. I identified the elevators and stairwells. The center of the store was a vast, atrium-like space, lit from above, designed for customers to float down from floor to floor. The Gift Gallery was on the fourth floor.

  I wandered around the blown glass, the pottery, the tasteful metal wall sculpture and wondered what one bought for a mother and new stepfather. Something for their official residence? I didn’t know where they were spending their time, or what their rooms might look like. Cartoons on the wall? Sixteenth-century Dutch oils? French furniture in the aesthetic style? Julia would have known what to buy. I had no idea whether Kick would.

  I paused by a tapestry cushion. The colors were luxuriant: gold and crimson and moss, sapphire and ruby. A young woman in flawless makeup, her hands clasped carefully in front of her, nodded and smiled warmly at me, but was smart enough to wait for me to raise my eyebrows before approaching.

  We discussed the philosophy of wedding presents. “Something timeless, ” she said, and I was about to sigh at the platitude, when she smiled again. “An object that will last at least as long as a lifetime, and look as beautiful in ninety years as it does today.” Nothing fashionable, she said. Nothing perishable. “Perhaps if you give me some information about the couple you’re buying for, and your budget?”