Always

by Nicola Griffith

  He was sixteen, and not bright. I would give him a minute or so to work out where his best interests lay.

  He took forty seconds. “The film stock? He said he’d buy me a beer if I swapped it out for some other film? And, y’know, it wasn’t like it would hurt anyone or anything. I mean, it’s just film. Right?” I nodded. “Right. And it’s not like my dad is broke or anything. So I said okay.”

  “How did you do it without anyone seeing?”

  “Oh, man, it was so easy. I didn’t have to swap the film, Mackie doesn’t know anything. I just changed the exposures. Like, thirty seconds’ work.”

  “Pretty good, wasting thirty thousand dollars in half a minute. What does that work out to an hour?” He was getting uncertain again, which would just waste time. I gave him my best smile. “So you’re pretty smart. Smarter than Mackie, I’ll bet. The drugs were your idea?”

  “Nah, they were his. He was like, We can get them so totally fucked up! and I’m like, Okay, all right, so he goes, I’ll get the stuff and we’ll, like, do it right now. So I said okay.”

  “So he had the drugs with him, even before you discussed it.”

  He thought about it. “I guess.”

  “So when did you do it?”

  “You were there. That night. We just dumped the baggie in the pot. You were macking on the craft-services girl, and she was, like, ignoring you so hard she wouldn’t have noticed if I took a dump in the food. So I held up the lid and Mackie shook out the baggie into the coffee, and then stirred it with a wrench.”

  “A wrench?”

  “We didn’t have a spoon. Anyhow, someone would have noticed if one of us had been carrying a spoon, he said.”

  Mackie wasn’t nearly as dumb as Brian. I looked at my watch. “So what do you think I should do with you?”

  “Do?”

  Perhaps there was no such thing as consequences in the world of almost-Hollywood high school parties. But it wasn’t my job to teach him morals. “I’ll just let your father deal with it.”

  Now he panicked. “My father?”

  “He’ll decide about the police. But you won’t be working here anymore.”

  “But I don’t go back to school for three months.”

  “Not my problem.” I waited until I caught Turtledove’s eye, and gestured him over. “Do as you’re told for the next few minutes.”

  I stood, and he tried to stand, too, but I pressed him back into the seat without effort. His face went slack; he still didn’t really grasp what was happening. It was tempting to punch him until he understood; I was grateful when Turtledove came up.

  “Watch him. I have to talk to Rusen. If Mackie comes in, don’t let him leave.”

  I drank my water, threw the bottle in the trash on the way out to the trailer. I knocked and went in. Rusen and Finkel looked up. “Rusen? A word?” and didn’t give him time to consider, but stepped outside again.

  He joined me.

  “Bri Junior and Mackie are the ones who have been sabotaging things.”

  “Bri? Mackie? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. The drugs, the film stock, everything. Bri has admitted as much. Mackie, real name Eddard, was the leader, of course. I haven’t talked to him yet.”

  “But Bri’s just—”

  I needed him to pay attention. “Do you still want me to invest?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Then listen. Turtledove is going to babysit Bri. You keep Finkel in the trailer, away from his son, until I’m finished with Mackie. Do you understand? ”

  He understood.

  I stood by the scaffolding for a while. It was more than thirty feet high. Carpenters were banging busily nearby. I recognized one of them; he’d been talking to Steve Jursen the day I arrived. Perhaps he didn’t like coffee.

  Turtledove and Bri were not in the line-of-sight of anyone walking into the warehouse. There were no obvious weapons lying about, no crew whose stance would scream “Take me hostage!” if things went bad. I went out into the lot and sat in my car.

  Mackie’s car turned out to be an unremarkable Toyota, old, but not too shabby or too bright. He got out, slung his leather jacket over his left shoulder, and headed for the warehouse.

  I shimmed his door open, released the hood, lifted the distributor cap, removed the rotor, closed it up again. Hummed to myself as I followed him in.

  He was admiring the scaffolding, nodding at the carpenters, his wide-spaced eyes clear and friendly: matching the appearance of his prey, a small-predator trick. Either he spent more money on tailoring than I did, or he was unarmed.

  He was alert. He turned when I was ten feet from him, one foot carefully positioned in front of the other.

  “Don’t run, Jim. I’d have to knock you down.” He dropped his shoulders in an appearance of instant relaxation. I smiled. “Or run if you like. Knocking you down might give me an appetite for lunch.”

  “Why should I run?” His voice was as whippy as a steel antenna. He probably thought he was a good actor.

  “Why do people usually?” I shrugged. “Come and sit and tell me everything. ”

  “Make me.”

  “All right.”

  “Nah, nah, just kidding.” Rueful smile. The it’s-a-fair-cop routine. Casual glance this way and that to see if there were any uniforms at the exit. “What do you want to know?”

  “Oh, I already know. I just need verbal confirmation of when Corning hired you and how much she paid.”

  That rattled him: I knew. I smiled, allowed myself the indulgence of imagining how I’d take him down if it came to that.

  He made a show of swinging his jacket off his shoulder, fiddling with the zip, slinging it back onto his other shoulder. It hung there as easily as it had on the other side. Ambidextrous. That would make it more fun. I wouldn’t want to leave bruises, though: it would shock Finkel and Rusen and, by extension, Kick.

  "And what do I get?”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “Immunity.”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ve got nothing to say.”

  “Your choice.” I got out my phone, let him watch me dial 411, press TALK. His shoulders relaxed a little more, but the weight moved to his back foot. Clearly he wouldn’t be expecting a foot sweep. “Yes,” I said to the operator, “Seattle police, nonemergency. Yes, please. Thank—” He bolted.

  He got to his car before I did, but that was because I wasn’t trying. He leapt into the driver’s seat. He gave me the finger and slid the key home without slamming the door. He turned the ignition. Nothing happened.

  I hummed to myself as I pulled him out and kneed him on the sciatic nerve hard enough to collapse the leg.

  “Get up.”

  “You’ve broken it!”

  “No. But I could if you like. Get up. Sit.” He dragged himself into the driver’s seat and rubbed at his leg.

  “I can’t feel it.”

  “There won’t even be a bruise.” I was really tired of people whining today. “Now, tell me about Corning.”

  He wasn’t scared, and if he was angry he didn’t show it, but he knew a no-win situation when he saw it. He talked.

  Corning, he said, had given him five thousand dollars, with a promise of double that when he was done. “But if I’d known it’d take so long, I’d have asked for more.”

  The five thousand was a lie. She’d given him three installments of two thousand dollars. “What did she ask you to do?”

  “If you don’t know, then why are we having this talk?”

  “I know what you did. I want to know what she asked you to do.”

  “Wasn’t specific. Make them leave, she said. Make them go broke.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.” Another young man who liked breaking things for no particular reason. Maybe a horrible childhood was to blame, or some genetic glitch. It really didn’t matter; he was twenty-two, and he saw no reason to change a life with which he was perfectly satisfied.
r />   “Did she give you the drugs?”

  “Karenna?” He laughed, and it struck me that Corning had a penchant for young men: Gary and Mackie and probably Johnson Bingley. Big Mac.

  “When and how did you meet her?”

  He shrugged. But it didn’t really matter. I had the date of the first payment.

  “Come with me,” I said, and motioned for him to stand.

  “My leg.”

  “You’ll just have to limp.”

  Inside the warehouse, people glanced at each other as he limped in ahead of me. “You got any duct tape?” I asked an electrician. He passed a roll to the carpenter, who passed it to me without a word.

  I walked Mackie to the food-services table, where it looked as though Bri had been crying. Turtledove seemed interested in his nails. “Yo,” Mackie said to Bri. “Fucking pussy.”

  I made him kneel and put his hands behind his back. I put his jacket on the table, and taped his hands and feet together, then lifted him onto a chair. I taped him to that. No more hammering. The crew stared openly.

  “One more question. When were you going to claim the rest of the money from Corning?”

  He shrugged, though not as elegantly now that he was bound. “When the job was done.”

  “How were you going to get in touch?”

  “Her cell phone.”

  I went through his jacket, found his cell phone, slipped it into my pocket.

  “Hey!”

  He seemed genuinely outraged that I was taking his fifty-dollar phone. I could have taken his sight, or his life. I just looked at him. Something deep in his eyes squirmed like a sea mollusk under pressure. I went through his wallet, but there was nothing interesting. I dropped the jacket on the table.

  I said to the listening crew, “This man that you know as Mackie is really Jim Eddard. He and Bri spoiled the footage and drugged the coffee. If that pisses you off, feel free to let them know.” To Turtledove: “Don’t let either of them move.”

  NO POLICE, Finkel and Rusen decided.

  “That’s not wise,” I said.

  “It would be too hard on the boy,” Rusen said. “His brother has just died.”

  This wasn’t about how Bri felt. But I hesitated. What did I feel? What did I want? One called the police to ensure protection, punishment, or revenge. I didn’t need protection from a sixteen-year-old boy. Punishment was only useful when it triggered remorse, or acted as a deterrent. Revenge, as George Orwell pointed out, is the product of helplessness. I wasn’t helpless, though I had been for a few days, thanks to Bri and his friend. Perhaps if I’d understood a few months ago how it felt to be helpless, I could have explained to my students that having power meant not needing vengeance. Perhaps things would have turned out differently.

  “Fine,” I said. “But I don’t want to see either of them on my property again.”

  “But Bri is just a boy. I’m sure he wouldn’t—”

  “He already has. Several misdemeanors and at least one felony. He would be tried as an adult. He might well go to prison.” It didn’t really matter. Turtledove would keep them off the set if I said so, and I’d be gone in a week, back to Atlanta, after which I wouldn’t care.

  I went out to the parking lot to call Kick. She didn’t answer. I waited for the beep. “It was Bri and Mackie who drugged the coffee. I have verbal confessions. They’ve been banned from the set. Finkel and Rusen don’t want to prosecute, but there’s nothing stopping you from doing so.” Though there wouldn’t be much point bringing suit against Mackie, because he had no money, and if she sued Bri, his father would make sure she never worked in the industry again. I hesitated, wondering if I should remind her to drink lots of water, wishing I could take back the morning and do it again, unsure what I’d do differently. The tree was rotten. It had had to come down. “I wanted you to know.”

  The interior of the Audi was hot, aromatic with the new-car volatiles drawn out by the sun. I tossed Mackie’s phone into the glove compartment, then was tempted to curl up in the backseat and drowse like a cat, reset my day, but my phone rang.

  “Aud?” My mother sounded tentative. “I have just had a most interesting conversation with Eric, who had just spoken to your friend, Hugh.”

  “Hugh?”

  “Matthew. Matthew Dornan.” I opened the car door and got out, leaned against the Audi’s hood. “Aud? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.” Hugh? I couldn’t remember anyone ever calling him that before.

  “It seems you have upset your friend. Your other friend.”

  “It seems you always blame me when things go wrong.”

  Silence. “So,” she said. “Your friend. She is upset with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was it something you did?”

  I sighed. “Yes.”

  “Are you are sorry for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she didn’t accept your apology?”

  Silence.

  “Aud.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Then say nothing while I talk. Your last friend died. I didn’t meet her. This friend—”

  “She’s not my friend. I’m not even sure we like each other.”

  “No?” I said nothing. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I did her a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “One she didn’t want.”

  “Eric is very keen on a paperback writer called Heinlein, whose books almost all have spaceships on the cover. He is dead now, I believe. But Eric is fond of a quote from one of these books: ‘In an argument with your spouse, if you discover you are right, apologize immediately.’ ”

  “I don’t know if I am right.”

  “All the more reason.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good. And when you have apologized, I’d like you to bring her to dinner. We’re leaving very soon.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, then,” she said in her it’s-all-settled voice, the one she used with recalcitrant parties in a negotiation, then rang off before I could muster an argument—which was another favorite trick.

  I was still staring at my phone when Dornan arrived in a taxi. He paid the driver, got out—a little more slowly than usual—ran his hand through his hair, and saw me. He turned his head slightly, like someone approaching an unpleasant task.

  We stood silently for a moment. He looked sweaty. It could have been a hangover. It could have been because it was hot.

  “So, Hugh. You called my mother.”

  “Someone had to do something.”

  “Someone could simply tell me what is going on.”

  “No,” he said. “No. You can’t ask me. I can’t—She made me promise.”

  “So you do know what it is.”

  “No. Or, yes, I knew she was going to find out yesterday what the—” He blinked, shook his head. “You have to ask her.”

  “I did.”

  “Ask again.”

  A gull flew overhead. “I dreamt of Luz last night. And Kick’s tree.”

  “She loved that tree.”

  "Yes.” I watched the gull, wheeling round and round. “I shouldn’t have done it, should I?”

  “What do you think?”

  I tried not to think about how my stomach had rolled when she came home, clutching her carrier bag.

  “Aud . . .” He wiped his upper lip. “Try to figure it out.” He headed for the warehouse door.

  It was definitely hot.

  I sweated lightly as I dialed. “Kick? It’s Aud. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m coming to your house to tell you in person. I’m sorry.”

  I called Gary. “Reschedule my appointment with Bingley for tomorrow. Make it afternoon.”

  “But he’s already nervous. He might—”

  “Just do it.”

  LESSON 11

  THE BASEMENT, WHEN I ARRIVED, HAD SMELLED OF PATCHOULI AND INCENSE AND strange women. I had turned on the sluggish
air-conditioning unit and propped open the door, and my students had arrived carrying their own smells, but the room was still heavy with alien scents. I felt displaced. Perhaps it was just strange to be back in Atlanta after a weekend in Arkansas with Luz and the Carpenters. Her tenth birthday. Everything there had smelled of children and red clover and pine needles.

  We had warmed up, and practiced falling again, and now they were sitting, waiting.

  “Today’s subject is children.” I looked at Suze. “Even if you don’t have kids, you probably have younger siblings, or nephews and nieces. You might have a frail elderly relative. You might be out—or in—one night with a friend or roommate. A lot of what I’ll teach today applies in those situations. Also, of course, you never know when you might end up with children in your care unexpectedly. Children are not like adults. They don’t think the way we do or know what we know.” Sometimes this was good, sometimes bad.

  Very briefly, after being pulled off the streets and before the police commissioner had been pressured to remove my badge altogether, I’d been assigned to visit local schools and talk about safety. Some of the things they had been taught astounded me.

  “What do you currently teach your children about safety?” I said.

  “Don’t talk to strangers.” Kim said. Some nods.

  “What’s appropriate in terms of touching,” Therese said. More nods.

  “All right. Let’s go back to that first one. What’s a stranger?”

  “How do you mean?” Kim said.

  “I’ve asked roomsful of children to describe or draw a stranger and they come up with a remarkably similar picture. A man, usually with dark facial hair, wearing dark clothes, and often a hat.”

  They came up, in fact, with the classic mugshot caricature of a rapist, whose race varied with both the socioeconomic status and race of the child. Women taught their children to be afraid of what the news had taught them to fear.