Zero History

  “Who?”

  “Big End.”

  “What?”

  “We’re on. Ninety minutes.”

  “What’s crucial?”

  “We don’t know where. Venue matters. We need exterior, need privacy. But so do they. You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  “Get a pullover. Back of the van’s unheated.” He’d brought out a second phone. “Message all,” he said, tapping a few tiny keys. The phone beeped.

  She glanced around Number Four. The insect-parts wallpaper, the shelves with their busts and heads. Would she see this again? “Are you taking the scooter?”

  “No further than the door,” he said, rising from the bed with the aid of his cane. “It’s Frank’s turn.” He winced.

  She’d just pulled a sweater on. “Are you all right?”

  “Actually,” he said, “I am. Be a dear and get the ugly T-shirt from the bedside hutch. And the other package, the smaller one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Almost nothing. And a world of woe, for someone. Quick. There’s a vegan van waiting for us.”

  “What the fuck is up?” demanded Heidi, from the other side of Number Four’s door.

  Hollis opened the door.

  Heidi stood, glaring, majorette jacket open over Israeli army bra. “Ajay just got a text, hauled ass down the hall, said he had to see his cousin.” She saw Garreth. “Was that you?”

  “Yes,” said Garreth, “but you’re coming with us.”

  “Whatever the fuck this is,” Heidi said, “I’m coming with—”

  “Us,” interrupted Garreth, “but not if you make us late. And put a shirt on. Trainers, not boots. In case there’s running.”

  Heidi opened her mouth, closed it.

  “Time to go,” said Hollis, zipping her bag shut.

  “Not without the party favors,” said Garreth.

  76. GONE-AWAY GIRL

  Milgrim stood, feeling lost, remembering the sound of Fiona’s Kawasaki fading to nothing at all.

  She’d gotten a message from Garreth and was gone, leaving her chicken and bacon sandwich uneaten on the table in the Vegas cube, but not before she’d snapped a short length of transparent nylon line to tiny eyebolts, front and rear, on the paint-dazzled penguin. He’d helped her steer it through the door, and she’d anchored it, atop Benny’s huge red tool kit, by placing a hammer on the fishing line. Then she’d quickly returned to the cube, where she’d given him the penguin’s iPhone. “That little van I brought you here in,” she said, “will be here shortly. Wait in the yard, with the penguin. It’ll fit in the back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t know.” Zipping up her jacket.

  “Am I going to the same place?”

  “Depends on Garreth,” she’d said, and for a moment he’d imagined she might be about to kiss him, maybe just on the cheek, but she hadn’t. “Take care of yourself,” she said.

  “You too.”

  Then she was out the door, and gone.

  He’d carefully rewrapped her sandwich, tucking it into one of the huge side pockets of the nylon jacket, which he’d kept on. He’d give it to her if he saw her later. Then he noticed Mrs. Benny’s black helmet on the table, and took it to mean he wouldn’t be riding with Fiona tonight. He picked it up and sniffed the interior, hoping for hairspray, but couldn’t find it now.

  He put his bag, with the Air, over his shoulder, dialed the Italian umbrella down, and went out, closing the door behind him. If there was a way to lock it, he didn’t know it.

  He went to Benny’s toolbox, freed the penguin, and walked out into the yard, the line through his left fist, which he held upright, as though he were holding a subway strap.

  “Going out?” asked Benny. He held one of the fiberglass cowlings.

  Milgrim had had no idea that he was there. How late did Benny work? Or was he another cog, now, in Garreth’s plan? “They’re picking me up,” said Milgrim.

  “Have a good one, then,” said Benny, seemingly paying no attention to the penguin. “I’ll lock up.”

  Then the little Japanese minivan with the curtains and the moonroof pulled up, the driver’s-side window powering down. A Japanese mini-driver, looking about fifteen, in a crisp white shirt. “I’ll help you put that in the back,” he said, with a British accent. He cut the engine and got out.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Haven’t been told yet, but we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

  77. GREEN SCREEN

  The broken wheel on her roll-aboard woke, like some ominous precision measuring device, as she pulled it along the corridor to the rear lobby. She’d gone to say goodbye to the ferret, though she doubted she’d ever be able to explain that to anyone. Garreth might understand, who had his own odd ways with fear. She saw the empty scooter-chair, abandoned beside the glass slab door, where Robert now stood.

  “Congratulations, Miss Henry,” he said, inexplicably and rather tenderly, as he opened and held the door for her. Unwilling, after more definitely having noted a multiplication of identical follies in the watercolors upstairs, plus her moment just now with the ferret, to risk further liminality, she thanked him, smiling, and clicked swiftly on, out beneath a porte cochere she supposed had been built for actual coaches, and on toward the back of the tall Slow Foods van, drawn up near it. Tall, the van, a big one, and newly painted a rich aubergine, lettered and trimmed in a dull bronze, as if the Queen herself were vegan, if vegan was what Slow Food was about, and fond of Aubrey Beardsley.

  “Hello,” said the driver, brunette under her Foleyesque cap, and prettily Norwegian. Both a professional truck driver and an actress. Hollis knew all this because she’d overheard Garreth hiring her, via some third party, and hadn’t realized until now that this was what that had been about. “There are two zippered panels, inside these doors,” the driver said, indicating the back of the truck. “I’ll open the first for you, then close it, then you’ll open and close the second. It’s to make sure no light escapes. Clear?” The girl smiled, and Hollis found herself smiling back. Aside from driving, Hollis knew, she was there to engage the authorities, should there be any trouble with where they were parked later. Now the girl opened one of the van’s rear doors, revealing a taut wall of black canvas, like something in a conjuring trick, and climbed three very sturdy-looking folding aluminum steps, where she raised a tall vertical zip. “Give me your bag.” Hollis passed it up. The driver put it through the slit, climbed down. Hollis went up the steps, through the slit, the zip’s plastic teeth odd against her wrist, then turned and pulled the zipper most of the way down. The girl pulled it the rest of the way, leaving Hollis in absolute darkness.

  Behind her, the other zip went up, admitting startlingly bright light. She turned and saw Garreth, and behind him Pep, wearing what she instantly knew must be the ugly T-shirt.

  “I didn’t think it would literally be that ugly,” she said, stepping through the second zip.

  It was. Pep, in black cyclist’s pants, wore the largest, ugliest T-shirt she’d ever seen, in a thin, cheap-looking cotton the color of ostomy devices, that same imaginary Caucasian flesh-tone. There were huge features screened across it in dull black halftone, asymmetrical eyes at breast height, a grim mouth at crotch-level. Later she’d be unable to say exactly what had been so ugly about it, except that it was somehow beyond punk, beyond art, and fundamentally, somehow, an affront. Diagonals at the edges continued around the sides, and across the short, loose sleeves. Pep leered at her, or perhaps only looked at her, and pulled the strap of a dark green messenger bag over his head, tucking what she recognized as Garreth’s other party favor into it.

  “Don’t forget to take that bag off,” Garreth said. He was seated in a black workstation chair that appeared to have been taped to the shiny aubergine floor. “Queer the visuals, otherwise.”

  Pep leered, or perhaps smiled, in reply, then stepped past her, through the open zip in the second scrim of black canvas.
She saw the same hideous features repeated on the back of the shirt. He bent, picked up her bag, deposited it inside, then ran the zipper down, vanishing. She heard the other zipper being opened, then closed, then the sound of the door being closed.

  She turned to Garreth, but saw that he was mounting his black laptop in a sort of clasp that extended from a framework of black plastic pipe. The pipe, like a geometric model of a rectangular solid, almost filled the interior of the van. Like Garreth’s chair, it was held in place with that nonreflective black tape that kept film sets together. There were things mounted on the framework: two plasma screens, one above the other, cables, boxes and bits the cables plugged into, and several very stylish-looking LED lamps.

  “Where we going?” asked Heidi, sounding oddly subdued, seated on the floor at the front, her back against another centrally zippered sheet of black canvas.

  “Should know shortly,” Garreth said as he finished locking his computer in place, so that it sat before him on an invisible desk.

  “Where’s Ajay gone?”

  “Wherever we’re going,” Garreth said, “but with Charlie.”

  It all smelled of pipe cement, new electronics, lighting.

  “Sit down beside Heidi,” Garreth said as Hollis heard the driver’s door slam shut. “There’s foam.”

  Hollis did.

  “Crazy,” said Heidi, eyes wide, looking from Hollis to the rig that surrounded them. “Claustrophobia.”

  “What about it?” Hollis asked.

  “I’ve got it,” said Heidi.

  The driver started the engine. The van was moving away from Cabinet.

  Deal, said Hollis, silently, to the ferret, though she hadn’t really been aware of making one.

  “I’ve never heard you say anything about claustrophobia,” Hollis said.

  “Fujiwara says it was being married to fuckstick. Why I went to him in the first place. I thought it was just wanting to beat the living fuck out of somebody, y’know?”

  “You don’t think it was?”

  “When he got me calmed down, building models, I could see that it was not wanting to feel trapped.”

  “Did you finish your Breast Chaser?” Thinking it might help, to keep her talking.

  “Not enough detail,” Heidi said, sadly.

  “Have an ETA?” Garreth asked someone. He was conversing in clipped but genial near-code, with some unknown number of people, his headset plugged into a switchbox attached to an octopus galaxy of phones.

  “How ’bout us?” said Heidi. “Do we?”

  “Hush. He has to concentrate.”

  “Understand what he’s doing?”

  “No, but it’s complicated.”

  “Ajay’s cousin got him up in whiteface. Filled the notch in his nose with putty. Dyed his hair shit-brown and sprayed stuff on the sides.”

  “They want him to be mistaken for Milgrim.”

  “I got that. Why?”

  “Someone’s kidnapped Bigend’s star researcher. They’re demanding Milgrim in exchange for him.”

  “Why would they?”

  “Actually,” Hollis said, “it seems to be because you stuck the man who was following you with that dart, though Milgrim had already fucked him up himself.”

  Heidi, her large white hands locked tightly across her knees, black nails chipped, regarded Hollis from just above them with utmost seriousness. “Are you shitting me?”

  “No,” said Hollis.

  “What are they, pussies?”

  Hollis, framing her response, saw that Heidi was struggling not to laugh. She dug her swiftly in the ribs with a knuckle.

  “Win,” announced Garreth, his hand extended to mute all phones. “The Scrubs. The model worked. Optimal venue. Unless there’s wind.”

  “What model?” Hollis asked.

  “Someone at the University of Colorado ran one for us. Scrubs was best for us. Excuse me.” He took his hand off the box and began to type. The van slowed, honked, changed lanes, stopped briefly, turned.

  “Scrubs, dear,” he said to someone else. “Need you in the air. Don’t run lights, don’t speed, get there.”

  “What’s happening?” Heidi asked quietly.

  “I think they’ve agreed on where they’ll do the exchange,” Hollis said. “I think we like it.”

  “They’re getting one ugly-ass version of Bollywood boyfriend.” Heidi shrugged.

  “I thought you were trying not to go there.”

  “Trying,” agreed Heidi.

  “Do you feel better?”

  “Yeah,” said Heidi, and reached under the majorette jacket to rub her ribs, “but it’ll come back, if I can’t get out of this fucking truck.”

  “Somewhere to go now,” Hollis said.

  “Not yet,” Garreth said to someone, “but she’s airborne.” Then he said something in a language Hollis didn’t recognize at all, and fell silent.

  “What language was that?” she asked, as the van made another turn.

  “Catalan,” he said.

  “Didn’t know you spoke it.”

  “I can only say very rude things about his mother.” He sat up straighter. “Pardon.” He fell silent again. “Fully operative,” he said, finally. “Optimal so far.” He was quiet again. “I appreciate that, but no. You’ll have to keep them back. Well out of the area. I have a lot on the ground. Too many moving parts to have anyone of yours in the mix. Not negotiable, no.” She saw his hand come down on the switchbox. “Bugger.”

  “What?”

  “Bastard’s got a private ambulance on the prowl, so he says. Specialists sitting up late in Harley Street, in case Chombo should be damaged.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I had. We’ve medical backup ourselves. Big End’s ambulance won’t just have medics in it. Snatch squad for Milgrim, that would be.”

  “Does he know where it is?”

  “They call him first.”

  “How bad is that?”

  “No telling,” he said. He took his hand off the box, and immediately smiled. “Darling,” he said. “Brilliant. Above it? Give me the fix. Four? Moving away from it? Pull back, drop. Approach about two feet off the ground, car between you. Need the number, make, model. Then make sure no one’s inside it. But no IR, in case it flares off the glass and they see it.”

  “Infrared,” said Heidi.

  The uppermost of the two screens mounted on black pipe came on, a washed-out oscilloscope green. He dialed the lighting down.

  Hollis and Heidi edged forward on the foam, peering up at the screen. Image from a moving camera, abstract, unreadable. Then Hollis saw a big British license plate, as if recorded by some robot on the bottom of the sea.

  “Good girl,” Garreth said. “Now raise it a bit and give us a look inside. Then follow them. The one with the parcel: that’s Gracie. Get on him and stay on him.” He touched the box again, turned. “We don’t like a parcel,” he said to Fiona, then back to the green screen.

  78. EL LISSITZKY

  Care for mineral water,” asked the driver, “or fruit? The basket’s right there.”

  Milgrim, seated on the floor behind the passenger seat, noticed the small basket for the first time. He’d been watching the penguin joggle against the moonroof, and wondering what would happen if the Taser went off. “Is there a croissant?” he asked, leaning toward the basket.

  “Sorry, no. Apple, banana. Prawn crackers.”

  “Thank you,” said Milgrim, and pocketed a banana. He wanted to ask what the driver thought they were doing, actually, out in the night with a dazzle-painted robotic penguin, filled with helium, but he didn’t. He suspected that the driver had no idea; that he was someone who drove, who drove and rather specifically had no idea, and was pleasant, unobtrusive, an extremely good driver, someone who knew the city very well. So Milgrim opted to ask nothing at all. Wherever they were going was where Garreth wanted them, and perhaps Fiona would be there too.

  The penguin rolled slightly as they executed
a roundabout. Milgrim sensed the scrupulousness of the boy’s driving; he’d be doing nothing at all in violation, probably driving a steady two kilometers below the speed limit. Milgrim had seen people, sometimes quite unlikely people, drive this way on their way to drug deals. Transactional, he thought of it. Really the whole evening felt extremely transactional, though he’d never been offered mineral water or fruit, doing that.

  The boy wore one of those headsets designed to look as much as possible, it seemed to Milgrim, like a pinball flipper had been pounded into his ear, the flipper part being the microphone. He periodically spoke softly to this, though mainly to answer yes or no, or to repeat the names of streets Milgrim promptly forgot. Milgrim gathered, though, that the boy now knew where they were going.

  And suddenly, no prior announcement, it seemed that they were there.

  “Where are we?” asked Milgrim.

  “Wormwood Scrubs.”

  “The prison?”

  “Little Wormwood Scrubs,” said the driver. “You’ll cross the road, straight in from here, keep going straight, into the grass. He said to tell you she’s under a sheet of camouflage and may be difficult to see.”

  “Fiona?”

  “He didn’t say,” the boy said primly, as though unwilling to be further involved. He got out, closed the door, walked quickly around to the rear, and opened that door.

  Milgrim kept the penguin low, away from the moonroof, as he edged crabwise back to the open rear door. There was something inherently cheerful about the buoyancy of a balloon, he thought. It must have been a wonderful day when they first discovered buoyant gases. He wondered what they’d put them in. Varnished silk, he guessed, for some reason picturing the courtyard at the Salon du Vintage.

  The boy held the balloon for him as he climbed out, his shirt eerily white in the light from the nearest streetlight. Milgrim became aware of the presence of a large empty space, an utter anomaly in London. Opposite side of the road. Empty and dark.

  “A park?” he asked.

  “Not exactly,” said the boy. “Go straight across.” He pointed. “Keep going. You’ll find her.” He handed the balloon’s tether, the loop of nylon fishing line, to Milgrim.