The Blue Place

by Nicola Griffith

  I ran up lightly, listened at the foot of the second flight. Nothing. What I wanted was the inner sanctum, the room where Honeycutt and his cronies had gathered Saturday night. It had to be up there.

  The third floor was very dark. A short hallway and four doors. I opened the first. Cold, hard floor, scents of soap and toilet cleaner: bathroom. The second led to a dark space with the empty feel and dead air of a guest room. The next was a storage closet. Then scents of leather, very faint expensive perfume; thick carpet underfoot; utterly dark. I stepped inside, pulled the door to behind me, and Move! shouted my crocodile brain, just as my skin registered the warmth of a body standing to one side, the light swirl of air that was another stepping towards me.

  It unfolded like a stop-motion film of a blooming rose: bright, beautiful and blindingly fast. And I wanted to laugh as I ducked and lunged; wanted to sing as I sank my fist wrist deep in an abdomen, whipped an elbow up, up, through a fragile jawbone, slid to the side of a thrusting arm and took it, turning it, levering it, letting the body follow in an ungraceful arc. My heart was a tireless pump, arteries and airways wide. I was unstoppable, lost in the joy of muscle and bone and breath. Axe kick to the central line of the huddled mass on the floor; disappointment at the sad splintering of ribs and not the hard crack of spine. Mewl and haul of body trying to sit; step and slam, hammer fist smearing the bone of his cheek. Latex slipping on sweat. Body under my hands folding to the floor, not moving. Nothing moving but me, feeling vast and brilliant with strength, immeasurable and immortal.

  A bellow from downstairs and the world snapped and reformed and I was running, running, taking the steps three at a time, four, and a woman was standing in the hall, bathed in the yellow entry light because the door was wide open. Her head was back and her eyes huge. A woman. Julia.

  “I hit someone.”

  “Yes.” I stopped four feet away.

  She shook her hand at her side, lifted it, looked at it. “I hit him. He came down the stairs and I hit him. I really hit him. I’ve spent years wondering if I could, wondering what I’d do if it happened to me, if I’d been the one in front of that theatre….” She looked at her hand again, fascinated. “I hit him, and he ran away.”

  The realization of what she had done, the exhilaration of her own strength rushed into her, like champagne rushing to fill lead crystal. She shimmered with it, she fizzed. I wanted to lift her in both hands, drink her down, drain her, feel the foam inside me, curling around heart, lungs, stomach.

  I stepped closer. She lifted her chin. Closer still.

  “Wolf eyes,” she whispered, and I could feel her breath on my throat, “so pale and hungry.”

  A car roared into life behind the house and headlights sliced through the window and doorway, then away and towards the road. She turned slowly, blinking in their light, their undeniably real light, and the exaltation faded. My left wrist ached slightly and breath was harsh in my throat. Just under the ribs on my left side, my shirt was cut and wet.

  “The tape?”

  She shook her head.

  “Finish it.”

  I ran back up the steps. The den door was open. I closed the curtains and found the light switch: thick green carpet; two men, both in dark clothes, one still holding his stained knife; a desk, under which lay the other knife and on top of which sat a computer, screen blank and dead. A drawer hung broken and empty from the middle. I knelt, felt for a pulse in the first body, found it. The second one was breathing audibly so I didn’t bother. I checked them over. Gloves, clothes with brand labels cut out. In one jacket pocket a small sheaf of papers covered in strange-shaped letters. I tucked them inside my own jacket to examine later. No scars or other identifying marks. Both knives were broad-bladed, serrated on the upper edge, black composite handle: standard manufacture, available in any catalogue. I wiped the thin thread of my blood from the blade still in one man’s hand.

  Something bleeped, and bleeped again. The computer. A red light on the minitower flickered. I felt around for the screen switch and pushed. The cursor blinked by the c: prompt and the cheery message Reformatting complete. Hoping it didn’t mean what I thought it meant, I tapped in dir /p. Nothing. All gone, wiped in the hard drive reformat. No sign of any diskettes.

  I searched the rest of the room quickly but methodically. No safe. Filing cabinets full of personal papers, each hanging file carefully labelled in blue ink, presumably by Honeycutt. Two hanging files labelled BANK and INVESTMENTS were empty. Honeycutt’s doing, or the man who got away? I pulled off the first one’s gloves, dabbed his hand on the arm of a chair upholstered in leather, put the glove back on. Took off the gloves of the second man, pressed his hands, one at a time, against the broken drawer.

  The door creaked. I whirled. Julia, swaying. “Are they…?”

  “No.”

  She watched in silence as I put his gloves back on. “The tape’s clean.”

  “Back in the machine?”

  “Yes.”

  I finished and stood. “Get the Walkman, the balloons and champagne, and wait by the door.” She straightened. Her march down the hall was wooden but not wobbly. She’d make it.

  I turned the light off and stood at the top of the steps. When she was by the door, balloons bobbing, I went back into the spare room and reconnected the battery to the alarm, checked my watch, then closed the breakers and ran downstairs. Six seconds. I stripped the wires from the alarm box, clipped the cover back on, accepted the Walkman from Julia and put everything back in the satchel. Nineteen seconds. “Out,” I said. She stood there, balloons bobbing, as I closed the door behind us and relocked it. Twenty-seven seconds. Free and clear, with no sign of our passage but the two unconscious men in the third-floor study.

  She was shaking by the time we got to the car. I opened her door, gave her the balloons. “Hold on to those.” I pulled my jacket from the backseat and settled it over her shoulders.

  I drove for about five miles. She was still shaking, though not as badly. One eye on the road, I handed her the satchel. “Use something in here to burst the balloons.” She looked at me as though I were crazy. “It will be easier to dispose of them.” And it would give her something to do. “There’s a brown paper grocery bag in there, too. When you’re done with the balloons, put them in it.”

  It took her a while.

  “Now your gloves. Carefully.”

  She complied, peeling the left right down to the fingertips, then using the left to peel down the right, and dumping the whole lot into the bag. She flexed her bare hands, studied them. Graceful, clean hands. Made for holding, not hitting. After a while, she said, “How about you?”

  “One more thing to do first.”

  I pulled up at a phone box. Dialed 911. When they asked whether I wanted fire, police, or ambulance, I just said, “4731 Fallgood Road, Marietta,” and hung up.

  Back in the car, I stripped off my gloves and dropped them in the paper sack. We drove in silence for a while. The wet patch on my shirt was spreading and with it a cold ache.

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It might be important.”

  “I’m sure it is, to them. Not to you. You have the information you wanted. You know who ordered Lusk killed. You know you didn’t make a mistake brokering the painting. Now that we’ve fixed the phone tape, no one knows you know.”

  Her face was pale and set. “Can you find out who they were?”

  “It’s over, Julia. Done.”

  “Can you?”

  She looked small and fragile and alone. I wanted to take her hand, tell her everything would be all right, that no one would ever hurt her again because I would track them all down, tie up the loose ends, make the world safe. But there is no perfect safety. “Jim Lusk is dead. He’ll stay dead whatever you do. You are not to blame. The police will take it from here. Let it go.”

  She looked at me as though from a great distance, then turned away.

  She stared out of the windo
w all the way back. When I pulled up outside her house, she thanked me nicely, smiled at me gently and without depth, and said she would be by to pick her car up in the morning. Just as though we had been carpooling from the PTA meeting. Partially shock, partially a need to distance herself from blood, and burglary, and attacks by strange men dressed in dark clothes. I would have gone in with her, made her something hot and sweet to drink, but I belonged to that world she didn’t want to think about right now, not in her nice little house in Virginia Highlands with roses climbing up the trellis.

  I drove myself and the bottle of Mumm’s champagne back to Lake Claire. I put it in the pantry, not the fridge. I had a feeling it would be a long time before I drank it.

  The knife wound was not too bad, a shallow four-inch gash across a lower rib. I cleaned it, pulled the edges together with butterfly Band-Aids, covered it with gauze, then started wrapping a crepe bandage round my torso. If it hadn’t crusted over by the morning, I’d get it seen to. The emergency room staff would believe the fake name and a story about a mad, jealous husband with a steak knife, and a terrified wife who didn’t want to face the truth and call the police. Happened all the time. As usual, the bandage finished in the small of my back, where I couldn’t reach to pin it. I had to fold it back and pin it at my right side.

  I swallowed some ibuprofen and broad-spectrum antibiotics, then took the papers from Honeycutt’s house into my office. They were stained with my blood but in clear halogen light their nature was plain: blackmail notes. They were photocopies of messages made by cutting out words and phrases from magazines, with careful annotations—in the same blue ink, the same handwriting, I’d seen on Honeycutt’s files—in the top right hand corner: date, time, and method of arrival. All but one had come by U. S. mail.

  The first was from March last year. It was straightforward:

  I know who you work for. I know how much you wash: I want some. I’ll call.

  Interesting. No problem saying “I.” No problem with grammar: the colon had actually been written in using a black marker. Obviously not stupid: a photocopy meant no saliva, no magazine subscriptions to trace.

  I assumed whoever it was had called. The next one was dated May last year:

  Same place, same method, same amount.

  The next dated just a week later:

  Don’t ever try that again. The rate just doubled. Every time you try something, it will double again. I know how much you can afford.

  What had Honeycutt tried? Whatever it was, the blackmailer didn’t seem too perturbed. They obviously thought of themself as rational, reasonable, and aimed to keep Honeycutt controlled by simultaneously reassuring him and laying down simple rules. The next note was two words:

  Thank you.

  I had a sudden flash of a networking cynic. Grip and grin. Be nice. Say the right thing….

  After that, the notes came regularly, every month; identical copies of the Same place, same method, same amount note, followed a week later by the Thank you. Until January.

  A new year, a new rate. Fifty percent more, with penalties for late payment.

  January, just when Honeycutt had shown interest in the Friedrich. Say two weeks to track down someone to commission the fake, another few to paint it…. But obviously no outward complaint from Honeycutt; the usual Thank you note followed on schedule. More Same place notes followed by more Thank yous. Until an April date two days after Lusk’s death.

  You are a fool. What would you have done if I hadn’t cleaned up for you? No more independent action. I’ll call.

  I would love to have listened in on that one. The blackmailer obviously didn’t care for Honeycutt’s creative solution to the rate hike, and seemed to understand that if the drug cartel found out about Honeycutt’s playing both ends against the middle, the source of extorted cash would dry up. You can’t blackmail a corpse.

  That was the last note. I put them all back in order and read through them again. A smart, cynical blackmailer, apparently in it for the long haul and willing to play by clear rules. Someone who liked rules and order, liked to plan ahead but could act swiftly. What would you have done if I hadn’t cleaned up for you? But it had been Honeycutt who had ordered the burn, so what had been taken care of?

  The ibuprofen wasn’t working. My ribs flared every time I moved. I put the notes in the folder labelled LYONS-BENNET, found some codeine in the bathroom, and took myself off to the bedroom of raspberry and Viking gold.

  seven

  I was up early and waiting for the paper the next morning. I scanned the main section. No mention of anonymous burglars in black found hurt at banker’s home. Honeycutt was a prominent citizen. If they’d been found, they would have been reported. They must have dragged themselves away before the police got there. Given how hard I’d hit them, it was more likely the uninjured one had returned with reinforcements and carried them off. The Cobb County police would have noticed the mess upstairs but that wouldn’t be big enough news to hit the main section, and my local news section was all Dekalb County, not Cobb. I shrugged, and it hurt. Muscles going from rest to full output in less than a second felt sore the next day no matter how fit or ready you thought you were. I wanted a long soak in the bath but the cut on my ribs was crusting over nicely and I didn’t want to get it wet. I lay flat on my back on the living room floor and did Chi Gung breathing until all I could smell was the wool rug, and I ran with sweat, and the tightness eased. Then I called the zone six precinct house.

  Just like the man himself, Denneny’s voice mail is pleasant, relaxed, and gives away nothing. “This is Brian Denneny, zone six captain. Let me know how I can help you and I or an assistant will get back to you very shortly.” It was a masterpiece of misdirection. “Very shortly” could mean anything, and his assistant was never allowed to listen to the messages on pain of excommunication. Denneny made it sound as though he were open to inquiries from all and sundry but in fact his secretary was instructed to give the extension to no one, not even his children. He had given it to his lieutenants, and the police chief, and the mayor. Everyone else went through the chain of command or left messages with the desk sergeant—but it didn’t do for one’s message to sound unwilling before the great voting public if someone like the mayor called.

  “Brian, it’s Aud. While you’ve been sampling the produce of Napa Valley and basking in the gentle breezes, I’ve been doing your job. Remember that arson and murder case in Inman Park, corpse name of Lusk—the one you’ve classified as a drug case? It’s not. Or at least only partially. It turns out that the torch was from out of town and was brought in by one Michael Honeycutt, a banker with Massut Vere who appears to be washing money for Arellano’s successor.

  “Here’s what I know. Honeycutt has been laundering for a year or more. To my certain knowledge, he’s washed more than twelve million in the last few months but I imagine the real total is several times that amount. Some of the dirty money is turned into art: small, precious and smuggleable. Mostly he gets this from public dealers, but recently he went to a private source, which is when things started to go wrong. It turns out that in the last few months our banker has developed a little sideline of his own, faking some of this art, then selling both the original and the fake. Proceeds from the genuine article find their way back to whoever is running Honeycutt, those from the fake go straight to whoever has been blackmailing him for the last year or so. Apparently the blackmail rate went up at the beginning of the year. He probably no longer has enough money to stash in his personal bank account in the Seychelles.

  “Honeycutt acquired a fake painting from our old friends Lois and Mitchum Kenworthy. My client suspected fraud and sent the picture to an art appraiser, Lusk. Honeycutt ordered the torching of Lusk’s house, Lusk, and the painting. You can add attempted murder to the murder, conspiracy and arson charges: my client was also supposed to die in that fire. However, I doubt she’s in much danger at this point. The evidence is gone, and Honeycutt doesn’t know she’s been interested—and w
hoever is blackmailing Honeycutt seems to be smarter than he is. I think he’ll keep him under control. At least for now. One thing that doesn’t fit in all this, though, is the coke found in Lusk’s garage”—I wasn’t quite sure where the three men who had been at Honeycutt’s house last night fit, either—“but luckily finding out is not part of my job description. Nor is it in my job description to prove any of this, so I’m not going to bother trying. Let’s just say I got the information from a reliable source.” He would probably figure it out. “And you could always haul in the Kenworthys. Whatever you decide to do, I’m done with this. Once I write up the invoice for my client, I’m taking off for a week or two to plant trees in north Georgia.” Or the Carolinas, or anywhere where people had stripped the earth and I could forget myself, forget all this while bending and planting, forking the rich dirt back over roots, making something instead of breaking it. “Send me a case of something good from one of those wineries.”