But that wasn’t what Garreth had told him, in Hollis’s hotel room. Garreth had said that he needed Fiona to operate the other drone, the one with the little helicopters, so he needed Milgrim to operate the penguin. To keep an eye on the general area, he said. When Milgrim asked which area that was, Garreth had said that he didn’t know yet, but that he was sure Milgrim would do very well. Milgrim, remembering the pleasure he’d taken in rolling the black ray, decided that simply nodding was the best course. Though the idea of anyone wanting him to operate anything was new. Other people operated things, and Milgrim observed them doing it. But, he supposed, he was really only being asked to observe something, whatever it was, through the cameras in the penguin, and it was best, as Fiona suggested, to regard the Taser as a random add-on.
It was harder to get the penguin to do anything, in the constrained space of the Vegas cube, than it had been to get the ray to do those rhythmic somersaults, but he was starting, now, to manage a repeated stationary roll. If he bumped the wall, Fiona noticed, and didn’t like it, so he tried to be as careful as he could. She said that the robotics in the wings were fragile, and the penguin was helpless without them. It didn’t really fly, because penguins don’t, and it was a balloon; rather, it swam, through air instead of water, and once you had it going where you wanted it to, it knew how to swim by itself. He was careful to keep that overridden now. He wished they could take the thing out and really fly it, the way he’d seen her fly the other one in Paris, but she said that they couldn’t, because people might see it and get excited, and because Garreth had ordered her to keep him inside.
Being kept inside with Fiona was an excellent thing, as far as Milgrim was concerned, but he was starting to recall Hollis’s scary-looking shower with something other than fear. “I wish there was a shower here,” he said, slowing the penguin’s roll, bringing the Taser around until it was on the bottom, stopping it. There was something wonderfully satisfying about this thing, something silky about the way it worked.
“There is,” said Fiona, looking up from his Air, where she sat at the table.
“There is?” Milgrim, on his back on the white foam, glanced around the blank white walls, thinking he’d missed a door.
“Benny has one rigged up. Drivers use it, sometimes. It has a geyser so old that it has a box that used to take coins. I could do with one myself.”
Milgrim was simultaneously aware of the stickiness of his armpits and what even the briefest image of Fiona in a shower did to him. “You go first, then.”
“You can’t trust Benny’s geyser,” said Fiona. “Get it working, it’ll go once, then stop. We should shower together.”
“Together,” said Milgrim, and heard the voice he only had in police custody. He coughed.
“We’ll leave the light out,” said Fiona, who was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t identify at all. “I’m not supposed to let you out of my sight. Literally. That was what he said.”
“Who?” asked Milgrim, in his own voice.
“Garreth.” She was wearing her armored pants, low on her hips as she sat on one of Bigend’s elegant chairs, and a tight T-shirt, white, that said RUDGE at the top of a round black emblem, the size of a dinner plate, and COVENTRY at the bottom. Between these names was a red heraldic hand, open and upright, its palm presented as if to warn anyone off the small but prominent breasts behind it.
“If it’s all right with you,” said Milgrim.
“I suggested it, didn’t I?”
71. THE UGLY T-SHIRT
Where are you? Robert said you left with a woman.”
She was leaving the denim shop with Meredith and Clammy. “Soho. I did. Meredith. On my way back now.”
“Should have given you the sort of safe-word I gave your employer.”
“No. It’s okay.”
“Better if you’re not out.”
“Necessary, though.”
“But you’re coming back now?”
“Yes. See you soon.”
She looked from the phone in her hand to the faintly candlelit window. Shadows of people. Two more arriving now, to be admitted by Bo. Meredith thought she’d seen an associate editor from French Vogue. Clammy had ignored several other musicians, slightly older than he was, whom Hollis vaguely recognized. Otherwise, not what she thought of as a fashion crowd. Something else, though she didn’t know what. But she could tell that the secret Bigend had been chasing had already been starting to emerge when he’d given her the assignment. Already Hounds wasn’t a secret in the same way. He was too late. What did that mean? Was he losing his touch? Had he been too focused on his project with Chombo? Had Sleight somehow been skewing the flow of information?
Clammy’s little gray wagon arrived, driven by a very Clammy-looking boy Clammy didn’t bother to introduce. He popped out, handed Clammy the keys, nodded, and walked away.
“Who was that?” Hollis asked.
“Assistant,” said Clammy absently, opening the door on the passenger side. He had an unmarked manila shopping bag the size of a small suitcase. “You’ll have to hold this for me.”
“What did you get?”
“Two of the black, two of the chino, two shirts, and the black of your jacket.”
“And something for you,” said Meredith, to Hollis.
“It’s on top,” said Clammy impatiently. “Get in.”
Hollis folded herself, sideways, onto the rear bench, and accepted Clammy’s bag as best she could. A potent waft of indigo.
Clammy and Meredith got in, doors closing. “It was the first thing she ever did,” said Meredith, looking back. “Before she started Hounds.”
Hollis found something wrapped in unbleached tissue, atop Clammy’s thick, heavy pad of denim. Fumbled it out, pulling the tissue aside. Dark, smooth, heavy jersey. “What is it?”
“That’s for you to work out. A seamless tube. I’ve seen her wear it as a stole, an evening dress of any length, several different ways as skirts. Fabric’s amazing. Some ancient factory in France, this latest batch.”
“Thank her, please. And thank you. Both of you.”
“I’m sorted,” said Clammy, turning into Oxford Street, “just don’t crush my gear.”
›››
When the lift descended, answering her call, she found it occupied by a short, older, oddly broad man of indeterminately Asian aspect, his thinning gray hair brushed neatly back. He stood very upright in the middle of the cage, a bobble-topped tartan tam in his hands, and thanked her, accent crisply British, when she hauled open the cage’s gate. “Good evening,” he said with a nod, stepping past her, turning on his heel, and marching for Cabinet’s door as he settled his tam.
Robert opened and held the door for him.
The ferret was in its vitrine.
When she reached Number Four’s door, she remembered she hadn’t taken her key. She rapped with her knuckles, softly. “It’s me.”
“Moment,” she heard him say.
She heard the chain rattle. Then he opened the door, leaning on his four-legged cane, something she took to be a glossy black LP sleeve tucked under his arm.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The ugliest T-shirt in the world,” he said, and kissed her cheek.
“The Bollards will be disappointed,” she said, coming in and closing the door. “I thought they’d had me sleeping in that.”
“So ugly that digital cameras forget they’ve seen it.”
“Shall we have a look at it, then?”
“Not yet.” He showed her the black square, which she now saw was a sort of plastic envelope, its edges welded shut. “We might contaminate it with our DNA.”
“No, thank you. We might not.”
“A single stray hair would be enough. Material like this has to be handled very carefully, given what forensics are, these days. It’s nothing you want to be associated with at all, ever. In fact, there really isn’t much material like this. Something of a one-off, in the field.”