She shook her head. “Not yet.” When she tried to reach him on her mobile, there was no reply.
“Maybe he’ll be okay,” Kiley said.
“Let’s hope,” Kate said, and pushed back her chair, signalling it was time to go. Whatever was happening back in England, there was nothing they could do.
From the outside, Kiley thought, the new extension to the Stedelijk looked like a giant bathtub on stilts; inside didn’t get much better. Kate seemed to be enthralled.
Kiley found the café, pulled out the copy of The Glass Key he’d taken the precaution of stuffing into his pocket, and read. Instead of getting better, as the story progressed things went from bad to worse, the hero chasing round in ever-widening circles, only pausing, every now and then, to get punched in the face.
“Fantastic!” Kate said, a good couple of hours later. “Just amazing.”
There was a restaurant some friends had suggested they try for dinner, Le Hollandais; Kate wanted to go back to the hotel first, write up her notes, rest a little, change.
In the room, she switched on the TV to catch the news. Over her shoulder, Kiley thought he recognised the street in Ladbroke Grove. Officers from the Metropolitan Police arriving at the residence of former photographer, Graeme Fisher, wishing to question him with regard to allegations of historic sexual abuse, found Fisher hanging from a light flex at the rear of the house. Despite efforts by paramedics and ambulance staff to revive him, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
A sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, broke from Kate’s throat and when Kiley went across to comfort her, she shrugged him off.
There would be no dinner, Le Hollandais or elsewhere.
When she came out of the bathroom, Kate used her laptop to book the next available flight, ordered a taxi, rang down to reception to explain.
Kiley walked to the window and stood there, looking out across the square. Already the light was starting to change. Two runners loped by in breathless conversation, then an elderly woman walking her dog, then no one. The tables outside the café at right angles to the hotel were empty, save for an old man, head down, sleeping. Behind him, Kate moved, business-like, around the room, readying their departure, her reflection picked out, ghost-like, in the glass. When Kiley looked back towards the tables, the old man had gone.
Apocrypha
Richard Lange
If I had money, I’d go to Mexico. Not Tijuana or Ensenada, but farther down, real Mexico. Get my ass out of L.A. There was this guy in the army, Marcos, who was from a little town on the coast called Mazunte. He said you could live pretty good there for practically nothing. Tacos were fifty cents, beers a buck.
“How do they feel about black folks?” I asked him.
“They don’t care about anything but the color of your money,” he said.
I already know how to speak enough Spanish to get by, how to ask for things and order food. Por favor and muchas gracias. The numbers to a hundred.
The Chinese family across the hall are always cooking in their room. I told Papa-san to cut it out, but he just stood there nodding and smiling with his little boy and little girl wrapped around his legs. The next day I saw Mama-san coming up the stairs with another bag of groceries, and this morning the whole floor smells like deep-fried fish heads again. I’m not an unreasonable man. I ignore that there are four of them living in a room meant for two, and I put up with the kids playing in the hall when I’m trying to sleep, but I’m not going to let them torch the building.
I pull on some pants and head downstairs. The elevator is broken, so it’s four flights on foot. The elevator’s always broken, or the toilet, or the sink. Roaches like you wouldn’t believe too. The hotel was built in 1928, and nobody’s done anything to it since. Why should they? There’s just a bunch of poor people living here, Chinamen and wetbacks, dope fiends and drunks. Hell, I’m sure the men with the money are on their knees every night praying this heap falls down so they can collect on the insurance and put up something new.
The first person I see when I hit the lobby — the first person who sees me — is Alan. I call him Youngblood. He’s the boy who sweeps the floors and hoses off the sidewalk.
“Hey, B, morning, B,” he says, bouncing off the couch and coming at me. “Gimme a dollar, man. I’m hungry as a motherfucker.”
I raise my hand to shut him up, walk right past him. I don’t have time for his hustle today.
“They’re cooking up there again,” I say to the man at the desk, yell at him through the bulletproof glass. He’s Chinese too, and every month so are more of the tenants. I know what’s going on, don’t think I don’t.
“Okay, I talk to them,” the man says, barely looking up from his phone.
“It’s a safety hazard,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he says.
“Yeah, yeah, okay to you,” I say. “Next time I’m calling the fire department.”
Youngblood is waiting for me when I finish. He’s so skinny he uses one hand to hold up his jeans when he walks. Got lint in his hair, boogers in the corners of his eyes, and he smells like he hasn’t bathed in a week. That’s what dope’ll do to you.
“Come on, B, slide me a dollar, and I’ll give you this,” he says.
He holds out his hand. There’s a little silver disk in his palm, smaller than a dime.
“What is it?” I say.
“It’s a battery, for a watch.”
“And what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Come on, B, be cool.”
Right then the front door opens, and three dudes come gliding in, the light so bright behind them they look like they’re stepping out of the sun. I know two of them: J Bone, who stays down the hall from me, and his homeboy Dallas. A couple of grown-up crack babies, crazy as hell. The third one, the tall, good-looking kid in the suit and shiny shoes, is a stranger. He has an air about him like he doesn’t belong down here, like he ought to be pulling that suitcase through an airport in Vegas or Miami. He moves and laughs like a high roller, a player, the kind of brother you feel good just standing next to.
He and his boys walk across the lobby, goofing on one another. When they get to the stairs, the player stops and says, “You mean I got to carry my shit up four floors?”
“I’ll get it for you,” J Bone says. “No problem.”
The Chinaman at the desk buzzes them through the gate, and up they go, their boisterousness lingering for a minute like a pretty girl’s perfume.
“Who was that?” I say, mostly to myself.
“That’s J Bone’s cousin,” Youngblood says. “Fresh outta County.”
No, it’s not. It’s trouble. Come looking for me again.
The old man asks if I know anything about computers. He’s sitting in his office in back, jabbing at the keys of the laptop his son bought him to use for inventory but that the old man mainly plays solitaire on. He picks the thing up and sets it down hard on his desk as if trying to smack some sense into it.
“Everything’s stuck,” he says.
“Can’t help you there, boss,” I say. “I was out of school before they started teaching that stuff.”
I’m up front in the showroom. I’ve been the security guard here for six years now, ten to six, Tuesday through Saturday. Just me and the old man, day after day, killing time in the smallest jewelry store in the district, where he’s lucky to buzz in ten customers a week. If I was eighty-two years old and had his money, I wouldn’t be running out my string here, but his wife’s dead, and his friends have moved away, and the world keeps changing so fast that I guess this is all he has left to anchor him, his trade, the last thing he knows by heart.