“A bar. Tibetan-themed micro-bistro. I never quite grasped where. Basement of an office building. Owner sleeps up above the fake rafters he put in, though that’s a secret. Hounds haven’t often done things specifically for women. A knit skirt that nobody’s ever been able to copy, though everyone tries. Your jacket’s unisex, though you’d never know it, on. Something to do with those elastic straps in the shoulders.” She looked annoyed, Milgrim thought, but very much in control.
“Would it be out of line to ask how you knew to be there?”
Their first courses arrived, and Meredith waited for the waitress to leave before answering. When she did, she seemed more relaxed. “I’m not directly connected,” she said to Hollis. “I’ve been out of touch with that friend I told you about, the one I knew at Cordwainers, for a few years now. But he’d introduced me to someone else. I’m not in touch with them either, and don’t know how to contact them. But they put me on a mailing list. I get an e-mail, if there’s going to be a drop. I don’t know that I get them for every drop, but there’s no way of knowing that. They aren’t frequent. Since I took Clammy to buy his jeans, in Melbourne, there’ve only been two e-mails. Prague, and Tokyo. I happened to be in Tokyo. Well, Osaka. I went along.”
“What were they offering?”
“Let’s eat,” said Meredith, “shall we?”
“Of course,” said Hollis.
Milgrim’s was salmon, and very good. The waitress had let him order from an English translation of the menu. He looked around, trying to spot Rausch again, but didn’t see him. A shift in clientele was still under way as people who’d actually only been there, he guessed, for Bram’s exit, signaled for their bills and departed, some leaving untouched food. Tables were being quickly cleared, reset, and reseated. The noise level was going up.
“I wouldn’t want either of you to think I’ll be any less willing to help you with Inchmale,” said Hollis, “regardless of what you may or may not be able to tell me about Hounds.”
Milgrim saw George glance quickly at Meredith. “We appreciate that,” George said, though Milgrim wasn’t sure that Meredith did. Perhaps George was using the band “we.”
“All you really need with Inchmale is someone to tell you where you are in his process,” Hollis said. “And that’s all I can do, anyway. You can’t change the process, and if you try hard enough, long enough, he’ll leave. So far, you’re right on track.”
None of this meaning anything to Milgrim, who was enjoying the salmon, in some light chilled sauce.
“I’m sorry,” Meredith said, “but you’re going to have to tell us who you’re working for.”
“If I were better at this sort of thing,” said Hollis, “I’d start by telling you about my book. It’s about locative art.”
“I don’t know the term,” Meredith said.
“It’s what they’re calling augmented reality now,” said Hollis, “but art. It’s been around since before the iPhone started to become the default platform. That was when I wrote about it. But I meant that if I were going to lie to you, I’d tell you about that, then tell you that I was writing another, on esoteric denim, or mad marketing strategies. But I won’t. I’m working for Hubertus Bigend.”
The last bite of salmon caught in Milgrim’s throat. He drank water, coughed into his napkin.
“Are you choking?” asked George, who looked as though he could perform a really optimal Heimlich maneuver.
“No, thanks,” said Milgrim.
“Blue Ant?” asked Meredith.
“No,” said Hollis. “We’re freelance. Bigend wants to know who’s behind Gabriel Hounds.”
“Why?” Meredith had put down her fork.
“Possibly because he thinks someone’s outdoing him at something he considers to have been his own game. Or so he suggested. Do you know him?”
“Only by reputation,” said Meredith.
“Is Blue Ant doing your band’s publicity?” Milgrim asked George, after some more water.
“Not that I know of,” said George. “Too small a world already.”
“I’m not a Blue Ant employee,” said Hollis. “Bigend’s hired me to look into Gabriel Hounds. He wants to know who designs it, how their antimarketing scheme works. I’m only prepared to go so far. I’m not prepared to lie to you about it.”
“How about you?” Meredith asked Milgrim.
“I don’t have a badge,” Milgrim said.
“What do you mean?”
“To open the door,” Milgrim said. “At Blue Ant. Employees have those badges. I’m not on salary.”
First-course dishes were removed. Second courses arrived. Milgrim’s was pork tenderloin, stacked like a corpulent chess piece, a rook of pork. It toppled as he began to eat it.
“How badly does Bigend want to know?” Meredith’s knife and fork were poised.
“He wants to know everything, basically,” said Hollis, “all the time. Right now, he wants to know this quite badly. Next month? Maybe not so much.”
“He must have a lot of resources. For information.” Meredith cut into her roundel of beef.
“Prides himself on it,” Hollis said.
“I mentioned that I believe most of my last season of shoes are in a warehouse in Seattle. Tacoma, possibly.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know where. Can’t find them. The lawyers say they could make a very convincing case for my ownership, if we could locate them. We’re fairly certain they haven’t been sold off, otherwise at least a few would have surfaced on eBay. None have. Could Bigend find them for me?”
“I don’t know,” said Hollis. “But if he couldn’t, I don’t know who could.”
“I don’t know what I could find out for you,” said Meredith, “but assuming I found something, I’d consider an exchange. Otherwise, not.”
Milgrim looked from Meredith to Hollis, back.
“I’m not authorized to make that sort of deal,” said Hollis, “but I can certainly take him the proposal.”
This reminded Milgrim of the closing rhythm of certain very backstage drug deals, the kind in which one party may know of someone with an Aerostar van, full of some precursor chemical, while another is aware of the approximate whereabouts of a really efficient pill-pressing machine.
“Please do,” said Meredith, smiling, then taking a first sip of her wine.
›››
“That was very good,” Milgrim said to Hollis, after saying good night to Meredith and George outside the restaurant. “The timing. When you told them about Bigend.”
“What choice did I have? If I’d told them otherwise, I’d already have been lying to them. The hotel’s this way.”
“I was never good at that sort of timing,” said Milgrim, then remembered the penguin, and glanced up.
“What was that about UFOs, when you first walked in?”
“I don’t know,” said Milgrim. “I thought I’d seen something. It’s been a long day. I have your computer. Would you mind if I kept it overnight? I have to check something.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Hollis. “I only have it for a book I haven’t started writing. I have my iPhone. What did you think you saw?”
“It looked like a penguin.”
Hollis stopped. “A penguin? Where?”
“In the street. That way.” He pointed.
“In the street?”
“Flying.”
“They can’t fly, Milgrim.”
“Swimming. Through the air. Level with the second-story windows. Using its flippers to propel itself. But it looked more like a penguin-shaped blob of mercury. It reflected the lights. Distorted them. It may have been a hallucination.”
“Do you get those?”
“P-A-W-S,” said Milgrim, spelling it out.
“Paws?”
“Post-acute withdrawal syndrome.” He shrugged, started for the hotel again, Hollis following. “They were worried about that.”
“Who were?”
“The doctors. In the clinic. In Basel.”
“What about the man at the Salon? The one in the pants? The one you thought you’d seen in Selfridges? Did he follow you?”