Zero History Page 6

  “That’s an advantage, actually,” said Bigend.

  “Did he notice your suit?”

  “He didn’t say,” said Bigend, glancing down at an International Klein Blue lapel of Early Carnaby proportions. He looked up, pointedly, at her Hounds jacket. “Have you learned anything?” He rolled a piece of the dry, translucent Spanish ham, waiting for her answer. His hand fed the ham to his mouth carefully, as if afraid of being bitten. He chewed.

  “It’s what the Japanese call a secret brand,” Hollis said. “Only more so. This may or may not have been made in Japan. No regular retail outlets, no catalog, no web presence aside from a few cryptic mentions on fashion blogs. And eBay. Chinese pirates have started to fake it, but only badly, the minimal gesture. If a genuine piece turns up on eBay, someone will make an offer that induces the seller to stop the auction.” Turning to Pamela. “Where did you get this jacket?”

  “We advertised. On fashion fora, mainly. Eventually we found a dealer, in Amsterdam, and met his price. He ordinarily deals in unworn examples of anonymously designed mid-twentieth-century workwear.”

  “He does?”

  “Not unlike rare stamps, apparently, except that you can wear them. A segment of his clientele appreciates Gabriel Hounds, though they’re a minority among what we take to be the brand’s demographic. We’re guessing active global brand-awareness, meaning people who’ll go to very considerable trouble to find it, tops out at no more than a few thousand.”

  “Where did the dealer in Amsterdam get his?”

  “He claimed to have bought it as part of a lot of vintage new old stock, from a picker, without having known what it was. Said he’d assumed they were otaku-grade Japanese reproductions of vintage, and that he could probably resell them easily enough.”

  “A picker?”

  “Someone who looks for things to sell to dealers. He said that the picker was German, and a stranger. A cash transaction. Claimed not to recall a name.”

  “It can’t be that big a secret,” Hollis said. “I’ve found two people since breakfast who knew at least as much about it as I’ve told you.”

  “And they are?” Bigend leaned forward.

  “The Japanese woman at a very pricey specialist shop not far from Blue Ant.”

  “Ah,” he said, his disappointment obvious. “And?”

  “A young man, who bought a pair of jeans in Melbourne.”

  “Really,” said Bigend, brightening. “And did he tell you who he bought them from?”

  Hollis picked up a slice of the glassine ham, rolled it, dipped it in olive oil. “No. But I think he will.”

  8. CURETTAGE

  Milgrim, cleaning his teeth in the brightly but flatteringly lit bath room of his small but determinedly upscale hotel room, thought about Hollis Henry, the woman Bigend had brought along to the restaurant. She hadn’t seemed to be part of Blue Ant, and she’d also seemed somehow familiar. Milgrim’s memory of the past decade or so was porous, unreliable as to sequence, but he didn’t think they’d met before. But still, somehow familiar. He switched tips on the mini-brush he was using between his upper rear molars, opting for a conical configuration. He would let Hollis Henry settle down into the mix. In the morning he might find he knew who she was. If not, there was the lobby’s complimentary MacBook, in every way preferable to trying to Google on the Neo. Pleasant enough, Hollis Henry, at least if you weren’t Bigend. She wasn’t entirely pleased with Bigend. He’d gotten that much on the walk to Frith Street.

  He switched to a different tool, one that held taut, half-inch lengths of floss between disposable U-shaped bits of plastic. They’d fixed his teeth, in Basel, and had sent him several times to a periodontal specialist. Curettage. Nasty, but now he felt like he had a new mouth, if a very high-maintenance one. The best thing about having had all that done, aside from getting a new mouth, was that he’d gotten to see a little bit of Basel, going out for the treatments. Otherwise, he’d stayed in the clinic, per his agreement.

  Finishing with the floss, he brushed his teeth with the battery-powered brush, then rinsed with water from a bottle whose deep-blue glass reminded him of Bigend’s suit. Pantone 286, he’d told Milgrim, but not quite. The thing Bigend most seemed to enjoy about the shade, other than the fact that it annoyed people, was that it couldn’t quite be re-created on most computer monitors.

  He was out of his mouthwash, which contained something they used in tap water on airplanes. You were only allowed to take a little bit of liquid with you on the plane, and he didn’t check luggage. He’d been rationing the last of that mouthwash, in Myrtle Beach. He’d ask someone at Blue Ant. They had people who seemed able to find anything, who had doing that as a job description.

  He put out the bathroom lights, and stood beside the bed, undressing. The room had slightly too much furniture, including a dressmaker’s dummy that had been re-covered with the same brown and tan material as the armchair. He considered putting his pants in the trouser press, but decided against it. He’d shop tomorrow. A chain called Hackett. Like an upscale Banana Republic but with pretensions he knew he didn’t understand. He was turning down the bed when the Neo rang, emulating the mechanical bell on an old telephone. That would be Sleight.

  “Leave the phone in your room tomorrow,” Sleight said. “Turned on, on the charger.” He sounded annoyed.

  “How are you, Oliver?”

  “The company that makes these things has gone out of business,” Sleight said. “So we need to do some reprogramming tomorrow.” He hung up.

  “Good night,” Milgrim said, looking at the Neo in his hand. He put it on the bedside table, climbed into bed in his underwear, and pulled the covers to his chin. He turned out the light. Lay there running his tongue over the backs of his teeth. The room was slightly too warm, and he was aware, somehow, of the dressmaker’s dummy.

  And listened to, or at any rate sensed, the background frequency that was London. A different white noise.

  9. FUCKSTICK

  When she opened Cabinet’s front door, pinstriped Robert was not there to help her with it.

  Due, she saw immediately, to the jackbooted advent of Heidi Hyde, once the Curfew’s drummer, in whose assorted luggage Robert was now draped, clearly terrified, back in the lift-grotto, next to the vitrine housing Inchmale’s magic ferret. Heidi, beside him, was fully as tall and possibly as broad at the shoulders. Unmistakably hers, that direly magnificent raptorial profile, and just as unmistakably furious.

  “Was she expected?” Hollis quietly asked whichever tortoise-framed boy was on the desk.

  “No,” he said, just as quietly, passing her the key to her room. “Mr. Inchmale phoned, minutes ago, to alert us.” Eyes wide behind the brown frames. He had something of the affect, beneath his hotelman’s game-face, of a tornado survivor.

  “It’ll be okay,” Hollis assured him.

  “What’s wrong with this fucking thing?” Heidi demanded, loudly.

  “It gets confused,” Hollis said, walking up to them, with a nod and reassuring smile for Robert.

  “Miss Henry.” Robert looked pale.

  “You mustn’t press it more than once,” Hollis said to Heidi. “Takes it longer to make up its mind.”

  “Fuck,” said Heidi, from some bottomless pit of frustration, causing Robert to wince. Her hair was dyed goth black, signaling the warpath, and Hollis guessed she’d done it herself.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” Hollis said.

  “Neither did I,” said Heidi, grimly. Then: “It’s fuckstick.”

  At which Hollis understood that Heidi’s unlikely sub-Hollywood marriage was over. Heidi’s exes lost their names, at termination, to be known henceforth only by this blanket designation.

  “Sorry to hear that,” Hollis said.

  “Running a pyramid scheme,” Heidi said as the lift arrived. “What the fuck is this?”

  “The elevator.” Hollis opened the articulated gate, gesturing Heidi in.

  “Please, go ahead,” Robert sa
id. “I’ll bring your bags.”

  “Get in the fucking elevator,” commanded Heidi. “Get. In.” She backed him into the lift with sheer enraged presence. Hollis nipped in after him, raising the brass-hinged mahogany bench against the back wall for more room.

  Heidi, up close, smelled of sweat, airport rage, and musty leather. She was wearing a jacket that Hollis remembered from their touring days. Once black, its seams were worn the color of dirty parchment.

  Robert managed to push a button. They started up, the lift complaining audibly at the weight.

  “Fucking thing’s going to kill us all,” said Heidi, as if finding the idea not entirely unattractive.

  “What room is Heidi in?” Hollis asked him.

  “Next to yours.”

  “Good,” said Hollis, with more enthusiasm than she felt. That would be the one with the yellow silk chaise longue. She’d never understood the theme. Not that she understood the theme of her own, but she sensed it had one. The room with the yellow chaise longue seemed to be about spies, sad ones, in some very British sense, and seedy political scandal. And reflexology.

  Hollis opened the gate, when the lift finally reached their floor, then held the various fire doors for Heidi and the heavily burdened Robert. Heidi seethed her way through the windowless green mini-hallways, body language conveying a universal dissatisfaction. Hollis saw that Robert had Heidi’s room key tucked for safekeeping between two fingers. She took it from him, its tassels moss green.

  “You’re right next to me,” she said to Heidi, unlocking and opening the door. She shooed Heidi in, thinking of bulls, china shops. “Just put everything down,” she said to Robert, quietly. “I’ll take care of the rest.” She relieved him of two amazingly heavy cardboard cartons, each about the size required to contain a human head. He began immediately to unsling Heidi’s various luggage. She slipped him a five-pound note.

  “Thank you, Miss Henry.”

  “Thank you, Robert.” She closed the door in his relieved face.

  “What,” demanded Heidi, “the fuck is this?”

  “Your room,” said Hollis, who was arranging the luggage along a wall. “It’s a private club that Inchmale joined.”

  “A club for what? What’s that?” Indicating a large framed silkscreen that Hollis herself found one of the least peculiar articles of decor.

  “A Warhol. I think.” Had Warhol covered the Profumo scandal?

  “I should have fucking known Inchmale would come up with something like this. Where is he?”

  “Not here,” Hollis said. “He rented a house in Hampstead, when Angelina and the baby came from Argentina.”

  Heidi hefted a wide-based crystal decanter, unstoppered it, sniffed. “Whiskey,” she said.

  “The clear one’s gin,” Hollis advised, “not water.”

  Heidi splashed three fingers of Cabinet Scotch into a highball glass, drank it off at a go, shuddered, set the decanter down and flicked the crystal stopper back into its neck with a dangerously sharp click. She had a spooky gift for aiming things; had never lost a game of darts in her life, but didn’t play darts, just threw them.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Hollis asked.

  Heidi shrugged out of her leather jacket, tossed it aside, and pulled her black T-shirt off, revealing an olive-drab bra that looked as combat-ready as any bra Hollis had ever seen.

  “Nice bra.”

  “Israeli,” said Heidi. She looked around, taking in the contents of the room. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “The wallpaper’s like Hendrix’s pants.”

  “I think it’s satin.” Vertically striped, in green, burgundy, ecru, and black.

  “What I fucking said,” said Heidi, giving her Israeli army bra a tug, and sat down on the yellow silk chaise longue. “Why did we stop smoking?”

  “Because it was bad for us.”

  Heidi sighed, explosively. “He’s in jail,” she said, “fuckstick. No bond. He was doing something with other people’s money.”

  “I thought that’s what producers do.”

  “Not like that, it isn’t.”

  “Are you in any trouble yourself?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve got a prenup thicker than fuckstick’s long. It’s his problem. I just needed to get the fuck out of Dodge.”

  “I never understood why you married him.”

  “It was an experiment. What about you? What are you doing here?”

  “Working for Hubertus Bigend,” Hollis said, noting just how little she enjoyed saying it.

  Heidi’s eyes widened. “Fuck me. That asshole? You couldn’t stand him. Creeped you totally out. Why?”

  “I guess I need the money.”

  “How bad did the crash do you?”

  “About half.”

  Heidi nodded. “Did everybody about half. Unless you had somebody like fuckstick doing your investing for you.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “Are you kidding? Separation of church and fucking state. Always. I never thought he had any sense that way anyway. Other people did, though. Know what?”

  “What?”

  “The salt of the fucking earth never tells you it’s the salt of the fucking earth. People who get scammed, they’re all people who don’t know that.”

  “I think I’ll have a whiskey.”

  “Be my guest,” said Heidi. Then smiled. “Good to fucking see you.” And started to cry.

  10. EIGENBLICH

  Milgrim woke, took his medication, showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed, and left the Neo charging but turned on. The U.K. plug-adaptor was larger than the phone’s charger. Keeping the dressmaker’s dummy out of his field of vision, he left the room.

  In the silent Japanese elevator, descending three floors, he considered pausing to Google Hollis Henry on the lobby MacBook, but someone was using it when he got there.

  He wasn’t always entirely comfortable with the lobby here, what there was of it. He felt like he might look as though he were here to steal something, though aside from his wrinkled post-flight clothing he was fairly certain he didn’t. And really, he thought, stepping out into Monmouth Street and tentative sunlight, he wouldn’t. Had no reason to. Three hundred pounds in a plain manila envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket, and nothing, today, telling him what he needed to do with it. Still a novel situation, to a man of his history.

  Addictions, he thought, turning right, toward Seven Dials’ namesake obelisk, started out like magical pets, pocket monsters. They did extraordinary tricks, showed you things you hadn’t seen, were fun. But came, through some gradual dire alchemy, to make decisions for you. Eventually, they were making your most crucial life-decisions. And they were, his therapist in Basel had said, less intelligent than goldfish.

  He went to Caffè Nero, a tastier alternate-reality Starbucks, crowded now. He ordered a latte and a croissant, the latter shipped frozen from France, baked here. He approved of that. Saw a small round table being vacated by a woman in a pinstriped suit and swiftly occupied it, looking out at the Vidal Sassoon, across the little roundabout, where young hairdressers were going in to work.

  Eating his croissant, he wondered what Bigend might be up to with designer combat pants. He was a good listener, careful to not let people know it, but Bigend’s motives and modus eluded him. They could seem almost aggressively random.

  Military contracting was essentially recession-proof, according to Bigend, and particularly so in America. That was a part of it, and perhaps even the core of it. Recession-proofing. And Bigend seemed centered on one area of military contracting, the one in which, Milgrim supposed, Blue Ant’s strategic skill set was most applicable. Blue Ant was learning everything it could, and very quickly, about the contracting, design, and manufacture of military clothing. Which seemed, from what Milgrim had seen so far, to be a very lively business.

  And Milgrim, for whatever reason or lack of one, was along for the ride. That was what Myrtle Beach had been about.

  Volunteer armies,
the French girl had said, the one who’d worn the plaid kilt at yesterday’s meeting, in an earlier PowerPoint presentation that Milgrim had found quite interesting, required volunteers, the bulk of them young men. Who might otherwise be, for instance, skateboarding, or at least wearing clothing suggestive of skateboarding. And male streetwear generally, over the past fifty years or so, she said, had been more heavily influenced by the design of military clothing than by anything else. The bulk of the underlying design code of the twenty-first-century male street was the code of the previous midcentury’s military wear, most of it American. The rest of it was work wear, most of that American as well, whose manufacture had coevolved with the manufacture of military clothing, sharing elements of the same design code, and team sportswear.

  But now, according to the French girl, that had reversed itself. The military needed clothing that would appeal to those it needed to recruit. Every American service branch, she said, illustrating each with a PowerPoint slide, had its own distinctive pattern of camouflage. The Marine Corps, she said, had made quite a point of patenting theirs (up close, Milgrim had found it too jazzy).

  There was a law in America that prohibited the manufacture of American military clothing abroad.

  And that was where Bigend, Milgrim knew, hoped to come in. Things that were manufactured in America didn’t necessarily have to be designed there. Outerwear and sporting-goods manufacturers, along with a few specialist uniform manufacturers, competed for contracts to manufacture clothing for the U.S. military, but that clothing had previously been designed by the U.S. military. Who now, the French girl had said, somewhat breathlessly, as though she were closing in on a small animal in some forest clearing, clearly lacked the newly requisite design skills to do that. Having invented so much of contemporary masculine cool in the midcentury, they found themselves competing with their own historical product, reiterated as streetwear. They needed help, the French girl had said, her mouse clicks summoning a closing flurry of images, and they knew it.