The Blue Place

by Nicola Griffith

He always did. I always wrote him a cheque.

  I got up and went into my office, turned the computer on, and pulled up the template I used for invoices. A warm breeze sneaked through the screened window and ruffled my papers. I typed in the Lyon Art address, Attn. Julia Lyons-Bennet. Denneny would not be pleased at my news, he liked things clean and clear and simple, but he was a good cop and, besides, he might see some political hay to be made by the connection of a prominent banker with the drug trade. Once he got started, he would be thorough. Let Denneny find out who had left the coke in Lusk’s garage, and why; let Denneny work out who was blackmailing Honeycutt. Maybe he’d give the blackmailer a medal. Julia had the information she wanted; my job was done.

  I added up dates, times and expenses, and started transferring totals to the form.

  A receipt fluttered out of reach. When I reached for it the scab over my ribs stretched and cracked. I pressed the gauze tight with my right hand until the warm trickle stopped. Who carried knives these days? Someone who had reason to be quiet. Someone who had been ordered to be quiet by a man or woman who had a lot to lose. The blackmailer. Find the man with the knife and he would lead you to someone else. Someone interesting. But Denneny didn’t know about the men in black who had tried to slip a knife between my ribs and I couldn’t tell him anyone had even tried. That evidence was not only inadmissible, it was illegal, and he had given me a hard time about breaking rules in the past.

  Who or wherever the men were now, they would be needing a doctor. I could tell Denneny to canvas the accident and emergency rooms of five counties to find two men brought in on the same night: one with displaced ribs, shattered cheekbone, and—depending on how much my fist had slipped on his sweat—compressed cervical vertebrae; one with a broken jaw, dislocated shoulder and probably concussion. But it was a lot of work, and Denneny wouldn’t start for a few days, and, meanwhile, whoever had sent them probably had a good description of Julia from the man she had hit.

  What could that third man say? White, five-foot-seven, a hundred and twenty-five pounds, blue eyes, long dark hair, a pale imitation of the real Julia standing there, head thrown back, glorious in her triumph. It might be a generic description, but if they worked for Honeycutt it would be enough. But why would Honeycutt employ people to sneak around his own house? It had to be the blackmailer. And one of them had seen, had most definitely seen Julia’s face.

  I saved the file for later and went back into the living room for the phone.

  “Eddie? Did any of your reporters hear about a break-in at the Cobb County home of Michael Honeycutt, Fallgood Road, last night? Good. Give me the details.”

  There was little enough: police, in response to an anonymous call, had proceeded to the Marietta home of banker Michael Honeycutt only to find that the burglars had left some time before. Officers were reported as being puzzled at traces of blood found in an upstairs room. Honeycutt could not be reached for comment; he was believed to be out of the country. Convenient, but it meant nothing one way or the other.

  I promised Eddie we would have that dinner very soon, then hung up and dialed again.

  “Benny? I need the crime scene report on a disturbance last night at the Marietta home of Michael Honeycutt, banker. The address was Fallgood Road. Yes, yes, I know it would have been Cobb County but didn’t you once say computers were born to talk to each other?” His response was definite and inflammatory. “Well, I’m sure you and NCIC between you know how to persuade them. And when you do, look for any reference to fingerprints and blood typing…. Yes, yes, I know Cobb County has to input the information before you can access it. I’ll wait…. Well, how about a full pass to the Atlanta Film Festival next month?”

  Eventually he agreed. He always does.

  When I got up to the fourteenth floor, the Lyon Art office smelled just as strongly of coffee, the air was bright with noise, but this time Annie Miclasz knew my name.

  “Aud!” Her look of surprise was swiftly hooded. She nodded back towards Julia’s office. “She didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  “No,” I agreed.

  She studied me, then made up her mind. “You’ll want it with cream again, no doubt.” She beckoned me to join her as she poured and added and stirred.

  “How is her schedule?”

  That hooded look again. She carried my coffee to her computer. I followed. She pulled up a screen of calendars and deleted all but Annie and Julia. She studied the mosaic, then with a few keystrokes she moved several chunks around, one from Julia to Annie, and one to tomorrow. “It looks pretty uncrowded for the next hour or so.”

  I smiled at her. “Isn’t that lucky?”

  Her voice was round with approval. “I imagine you remember the way. She’ll probably want some coffee, too.”

  I carried both mugs in one hand to Julia’s door, knocked, and went in.

  She was at her desk, brilliant with the sunshine streaming through the big picture window, staring out at the Atlanta skyline. In quarter profile I could just see the tip of her right ear and the glint of gold at the lobe. A lavender shirt collar softened the grey silk suit. Her head was very still.

  “I’ve brought coffee.”

  She swung around. “I thought you were Mrs. Miclasz.”

  There seemed no point responding to that so I just put her mug on the desk. “No sugar, no cream. Annie doesn’t approve.”

  “No.” She ignored the mug.

  “I brought you an invoice.”

  “You could have left it with Annie.”

  “The thing is, I don’t think we’re done. There are a few more things to be said. To be considered.”

  “I have a lot to do this afternoon.”

  “I took the liberty of checking with Annie. I believe you’ll have time to talk for a few minutes.”

  She picked up the phone. “Mrs. Miclasz? What do I have on my plate this afternoon? I see. Thank you.”

  I sat down in the sofa near the window and assumed an unthreatening pose, legs crossed at the knee, hands folded in my lap. She watched me, like a bird with a broken wing backed into a corner.

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “So talk.”

  “I’d rather know you were listening. Perhaps you’d like to tell me what is disturbing you.”

  “You. This is my office.” She seemed to realize that did not make much sense. “You walk in here, cool as glass, you conspire with my staff to rearrange my schedule…. This is my office.”

  “When did it happen, Julia? Who was in front of that theatre?”

  She looked at me as though she hated me.

  “You’ve spent the last few years preparing yourself for this. It happened. You responded. You did the right thing, only now you’re not sure.” She said nothing. “Maybe you should have let him hit you after all, then run back upstairs and help his friends to finish me off.”

  “He was running, trying to get past me. I should have let him.”

  “He might have killed you—”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “—his friends were certainly trying to kill me. One of them had a knife. Very sharp, very businesslike.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. I sighed, put down my coffee, and unbuttoned the bottom of my shirt. She stared at the bandage.

  “It’s a knife wound.” I unfastened the safety pin.

  “Don’t.” Her face was dirty white. “I don’t…”

  “No. I want you to see. I want you to see what might have happened to you if you hadn’t hit that man.”

  She watched, mute, as I unrolled the bandage. When I peeled back the gauze, she stood, took a half step, then slumped like a melting column of ice cream onto her knees. Her eyes were black, but whatever she was seeing, it wasn’t me.

  “It’s about four inches long. If I hadn’t moved, it would have slipped right into my stomach. You can bet they wouldn’t have called an ambulance. I would have died, Julia. If you hadn’t been there, ready to hit that man, he might have come b
ack upstairs before I could disable the other two.”

  “My brother,” she said. “My brother, Guy. I was nineteen. He was knifed to death in front of a Cambridge theatre. In the middle of the day.” She stretched out her hand.

  “No. Don’t touch it.” I started to cover it up again.

  “Please. I have to see.” She crept closer on her knees, like a child; so close I could feel the heat of her breath on the cut. “It’s so thin.”

  “It was a very sharp knife.”

  “Guy was stabbed eleven times. My mother wouldn’t let me see his body. His face was all cut up. There were no cuts on his arms or hands, and it was only later that I realized what that meant, that he hadn’t even tried to defend himself, and I promised I would never, ever let someone do that to me. Never just stand there and let them hurt me. But I never knew what it was really like….” She settled her weight back on her calves and looked at her hand, open on her thigh. “I can still feel the shape of his face on my palm. I think I might have broken his nose. And I liked the fact that I had hit him. I knew I wouldn’t have died without fighting if I had been in front of that theatre. I really knew. And I spent all night wondering—why people do this in the first place, why Guy didn’t fight, what makes me capable of violence and not him. Part of me wants to feel like a bad person because I could.”

  “Was your brother a saint?”

  She blinked. “Guy? Not even close. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  I laid the gauze back over the wound and starting winding the bandage back around my waist.

  “Tell me what you—Please, let me do that.” She wrapped me gently, started to pin the bandage neatly at the back.

  “I won’t be able to reach that.”

  She repinned it. “You should get it stitched.”

  “It’s already healing.”

  She accepted that with a nod, then kept nodding. Eventually she said, “I understand, I think.”

  And I think she did. Being capable of using violence to defend yourself did not make you a bad person. Being dead because you couldn’t did not make you a good one. I buttoned up my shirt and she waited for me to lean back and get comfortable, handed me my coffee, then trundled her desk chair over to the sofa. “You said it wasn’t finished.”

  “I think you may still be in danger.”

  “That’s not what you said last night.”

  “No. Think. Did you get a good look at the face of the man you hit?”

  “Yes. Ah. He probably got a good look at me, too. If they find out I’ve been pursuing this…”

  “They’ll want to know what information you have. They might be frightened. Honeycutt tried something very stupid last time he was scared. Who knows what he’ll try this time?”

  “We should go to the police.”

  “That’s in hand, but given that the police think they already have an explanation for Lusk’s death—”

  “Jim. He was my friend. Call him Jim.”

  “Jim,” I acknowledged. “Given the fact that they think it was a drug-related murder, they’re not going to be eager to dig. The only one I trust to get things going is out of town at the moment. As soon as he returns, you can relax. Until then, you might like to think about going away somewhere. The farther the better. Do you have any jobs abroad waiting?”

  “Yes.” Her pupils dilated briefly; a strong reaction to a job. “There’s a foreign glass-making corporation that wants me to set up a sculpture garden for them. I could call them. I’m sure they’d be delighted if I arrived tomorrow. I’d be gone a week or two. Could you get everything sorted in that time?”

  Sorted out, tidied up, ended.

  A hundred feet below, a siren wailed. People streamed endlessly back and forth in their gerbil tubes. Empty city.

  “Aud?”

  “Yes, I could get everything sorted.”

  She leaned forward, coffee balanced on her knees, and studied me as though I were a hieroglyph. “Why do you do this?”

  “It’s a job.”

  “You don’t need the money.”

  “No.”

  “So why?”

  “I’m Norwegian.” I didn’t care if she understood or not.

  “Are you?” she mused. I had no idea what she meant by that. If she’d read my file, she knew about my mother. She sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “Do you miss it, being a police officer?”

  I had no idea where she was going. “No.”

  “Always so definite. But if you didn’t miss the APD, why did you take that job with the Dahlonega police? You resigned after thirty-eight days.” Her voice was neutral. “It must have been pretty different from the big city.”

  “Not really. The same kind of people thinking the same thing: that the rules don’t apply to them because they’re special.” She seemed to want me to talk. I had seen her vulnerable, now she wanted to see me. “The last man I arrested was beating a lamb. There was a show. A taut, firm body is one of the things judges look for in prize livestock. This man was beating a lamb so its body would swell and feel more firm. I arrested him. The district attorney refused to prosecute. They kept saying to me, ‘Officer Torvingen, Bubba here is a fine, upstanding citizen, and you want to spoil his reputation, for a lamb?’”

  “I don’t blame you for resigning if your superiors didn’t back you up.”

  “That wasn’t my reason. I had to drive him back to his house, and all the way I was thinking I should have just taken him behind the woodpile and beaten him until he swelled up, nice and firm, then maybe he would learn.”

  “And wanting to beat him bothered you?”

  “Bothered me? No. It was just that I realized I didn’t want to work for people whose rules got in the way of being effective. I resigned immediately in my head, and then it wasn’t my job anymore to do anything with this man. He was no longer my responsibility. I stopped the car and tossed him out in the middle of the road. I’ve never worked for anyone but myself since.”

  “You said you never wanted to work for anyone whose rules got in the way of doing your job. Will you…I mean, if…Will you work with me again?”

  “This one’s not finished yet.”

  “If I’m out of the country, there’s nothing urgent, is there? So would you?”

  “It depends on the job.”

  “The glass corporation who want the sculpture garden, they’re in Norway. In Oslo. I’d need someone to translate. And we could take a few days to…” She went on in a rush, “What I mean is, I’ve never seen the country. Perhaps you could show me some of it. Introduce me to some people. You could see your mother.”

  “She’s in London.”

  “We could stop off on the way, or the way back. Will you come?”

  Norway. It had been eleven years. Norway: a solid world against which to lay myself and make a mark that could be examined, could be held up in comparison with who I used to be, before. Norway. And my mother. Perhaps it was time. “Yes,” I said.

  It was a cool day for the end of April, in the low eighties, but I drove straight up I-85 with the windows closed and the air-conditioning on because of the ’90 Margaux, duck terrine, boxed sandwiches and assorted delicatessen goodies on the back seat. I put on a CD of Ella Fitzgerald who sang about it being too darned hot.

  The first time I’d driven this road to my new apartment in Northwoods Lake Court, Duluth, it had been a lot hotter. The roads had been a lot less crowded. I had never seen a human body fall and spasm and relax its sphincters.

  I took the Pleasant Hill Road exit, heading for Duluth. At the top of the ramp was a man holding a WILL WORK FOR FOOD sign. Thirteen years ago I would have stopped for him. I drove past. Ella sang about oysters in Oyster Bay.

  I sighed, did a U-turn, parked, walked over to the man. He was wearing black pants, white shirt, and a jacket that was far too big for him. Perhaps once it had fit. His feet stayed in one place, but he couldn’t seem to keep still.

  “Hey, there,” I said. His head wobbled as he turn
ed. “I’m on my way to the grocery. What kind of food do you want?”

  It took him a while to work out what I was saying, then he smiled. Most of his teeth were missing. I doubted he was even my age. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  “I’ll spend up to twenty dollars. What kind of food?”

  “Just give me the twenty dollars.” It was beginning to get through to him that this wasn’t going the usual way. He started moving from side to side.

  “No. Tell me what kind of food you want.”

  “Can’t,” he said sullenly. Even in his jacket and the sun, he did not seem to be sweating. I wondered when he had last remembered to have a drink of water. “Can’t point at something that’s not here.”

  “I’ll drive you to the store, then.”

  “It’s all white person’s food. Can’t eat that. Give me the money.”

  “I’ll drive you to any store you want as long as it’s within ten miles. I’ll buy you food. I won’t give you money.”

  “I need money!” Three steps one way, three steps the other.

  “So you don’t want any food?”

  “I want money!” Now he was shambling along the verge, this way and that, in the lolloping, loose-limbed gait of the crack addict.

  “If you want food, I can get you food. If you want to go to a shelter, I can drive you. I won’t give you money.”

  He started shouting, waving his arms about. I walked back to the car, retrieved a bottle of mineral water from the cooler, and took it back. I put it on the grass two yards from where he stood.

  “You should drink this.” I waited until I was sure he’d seen the water, then left. A mile up the road both lanes were clogged with mall traffic and the asphalt under their tires was still streaked red with runoff from last night’s rain. The strip mall developers might rip out trees and gouge the earth flat but it refused to die completely, it just bled its life away, rainfall by rainfall. Ella sang about saying goodbye, and then I was out of the bottleneck and shifting through the gears.

  The park appeared suddenly, as it always had. One minute I was doing sixty, the next I was in a small, crunched limestone parking lot shaded by a stand of towering Douglas firs. The engine ticked, birdsong wove through the wood. Nothing had changed in thirteen years.