by Darren Shan
He yanked the register out from under a pile of dirty linen, sat on the couch and opened it. “There. The Moores. I remember them now. The Sims were just before them. You want a beer? I’ve got plenty in the fridge. A man can never have too much fucking beer, right? I’ll get a couple bottles.”
I concentrated on the register while he rooted through the fridge for a beer. Handwritten entries, torn pages, stains and smudges from months back. No trace of any Adrian Arne. Nobody had been in that apartment—officially anyway—for months. I glanced at the supervisor as he came back, sweating, opening the beers. He probably knew nothing, but I called his bluff just in case.
“Do you think I’m a fool?” I snapped. “This has been fixed.”
“No fucking way! Gimme it!” He snatched the register and stared. “Nah, this hasn’t been touched. That’s my handwriting. And that jam stain… I remember making that. You trying to stir up shit, man?”
“Who owns this building?” I asked. “Who pays your wages?”
“Some business corporation. They pay cash. Never volunteered their names and I never asked. I’ve been here six years and never had a spot of trouble. Don’t put up with any shit. Now why don’t you piss off and—”
“I don’t care what this book says,” I told him. “I’ve been here before. With Adrian. You can’t tell me that room’s been empty because I know it hasn’t. Even if he was squatting, you’d have heard him. You’re telling me you never heard any noises from above?”
“Damn fucking straight,” he replied, sipping his beer. “Mister, I’m gonna tell you something and I’m gonna be blunt. You’re fucked in the head. You’ve got the wrong house, wrong city or the wrong fucking world. I check the rooms a couple times a week. Believe me, there’s no Adrian Arne here.”
He took a drink and waited. Could it be true? Had I gotten the wrong building? No! Damn it, they might all look the same from a distance, but they weren’t. I knew one from the other. I knew Adrian’s. There was no mistake and I wasn’t crazy. The supervisor had to be lying. Somebody had put the frighteners on him. Someone so threatening, he wouldn’t crack even when his prick was on the line. An expert got to him and fixed it so he’d never talk about his lodger. It took a lot to put a man in that state. Maybe he had a family somewhere, or a dark secret he could never risk emerging. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to get anywhere with him.
“Tell them Capac Raimi’s after them,” I said softly. “Tell them Adrian Arne has a friend who won’t put up with this. Tell them I’m coming. I’ll find them and make them sorry. Whoever they are.” I left.
The supervisor came to the door after me. “Fucking nut,” I heard him chuckle. I almost turned back but he wasn’t worth the hassle.
There was a beggar with a tin box standing on the street near my car. He was wearing dark glasses and carried a white cane. “Some spare change?” he asked. I normally didn’t bother with beggars—the city was full of them—but my mind was elsewhere and I tossed him a few coins. “Thank you, Mr. Raimi.”
I was four or five steps past before I realized what he’d said. I stopped. Turned slowly. “How do you know—,” I began.
“—Your name?” He smiled and removed his glasses. His eyes were white blanks and I suddenly recalled the blind man I’d seen outside the station on my first day here, and the one at the building site during the fog. This wasn’t the same guy if memory served me right—he was taller—but the eyes were the same.
“I know many names,” he said. “Capac Raimi. Y Tse Lapotaire. Adrian Arne.”
“You know Adrian?”
“Who?”
“Adrian Arne.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“But you just—”
“There is no Adrian Arne,” the man said. “Never has been, never will be. There is soil. Air. Blood. Strings. Nothing more.”
“Very poetic,” I sneered. “Now cut the crap and tell me what you know about Adrian.” I took a step toward him. His cane came up immediately and he held it lengthwise between his hands.
“Your search is only beginning,” he said. “You have far to go and the way is hard, but the start is always hardest. Forget about your friend. You have more important matters to consider.”
“Listen,” I said, taking another step. He threw his cane at me. I raised my arms to knock it away, but all of a sudden it transformed and I was covered in plastic wrapping. It swirled around me, encasing me from head to foot. It stuck to my skin, smothered my lips, tripped me. I tore at it angrily, ripped holes in it, and was free in ten or fifteen seconds. But the blind man was gone. The street stretched away in both directions, no sign of any beggars.
I hurried back to the car and asked Thomas if he’d seen what happened. He frowned. “A blind man, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Here, sir? A minute ago?”
“Yes,” I growled.
“No, sir. Do you want me to get out and look?”
I spat on the pavement in disgust, then got into the car. “Just take me back to the office,” I muttered, and covered my face from the sun with a hand. I spent the ride brooding and for once I was glad of the silence up front.
I pulled our files on Cafran Reed and tried to immerse myself. Reed had no middle name, was fifty-four, divorced fourteen years ago, never remarried, a few romantic entanglements but nothing incriminating. He owned his own restaurant which he’d been running for more than twenty years, a small joint, popular with a select crowd, average annual income of…
My mind wandered. Adrian in the trunk of a stolen car, blood oozing out the corners of his eyes, cold, alone, dead. Dumped in the river, strands of his bowels indistinguishable from feeding eels. In a field outside the city, pushing up nettles, ribs home to a family of foxes.
Or was he alive? Maybe he’d skipped town one step ahead of whoever his enemies might be. Maybe he was hiding, waiting for a safe moment to contact me. Shit, he probably wasn’t even thinking about me if that was the case—we weren’t that close. Still, he would have said something surely. And what had that blind beggar been mumbling about?
I pushed the papers away. I couldn’t concentrate, not with this on my mind. My right hand flexed and I recalled its grip on the tennis racket. That’s what I needed to clear my head. A few hours on a court. I grabbed the phone to call for Thomas and only then remembered Sonja. She’d know about Adrian. If she was here, not home weeping and planning a funeral. If she wasn’t caught up in the same trouble. Ifshe wasn’t feeding the fishes with her brother.
I rushed up two flights of stairs to her office, suddenly certain she was dead or MIA. I burst onto her floor, alarmed her receptionist and crashed through her door without knocking. She was there. Looked up nervously, a hand snaking to the intercom to press for help. Then she realized it was me and relaxed. “Jesus, Capac,” she laughed, opening her drawer to take out a cigarette. “You nearly gave me a stroke.” She saw my red face and the look in my eyes, and lit the cigarette slowly. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Adrian. He…” I was panting. She told me to sit. Held up a hand when I tried to speak again, said to wait until I had my breath back. I said nothing until I felt myself regaining control, then began again. “It’s Adrian. He’s missing. I went to his apartment and he was gone. The supervisor said Adrian had never even been there, but that’s bullshit, Ivisited him there plenty of times, I know it was the right place, I—”
“OK,” she interrupted. “Calm down. Let’s go through this slowly and carefully. Who did you say was missing?”
I frowned and said it slowly. “Adrian.”
She tapped her teeth with a glossed fingernail. “Adrian who?”
I said nothing for a moment. Then, bitterly, “Is that your idea of a fucking joke?”
“Adrian who ?” she repeated.
“Adrian!” I yelled. “Your goddamn brother, Adrian Arne. He’s gone.”
She stared at me, confused. “I don’t have a brother.”
“What?” I
said hollowly.
“I’m an only child, an orphan since the age of six.” I could only stare at her wordlessly. Her eyes were filling with tears. “If this is some sort of a prank, Capac, it’s in very poor taste.”
“A prank!” I exploded. “Your brother disappears and you—”
“Stop it!” she shouted, tears trickling down her cheeks. “This isn’t funny. Why are you being so cruel?”
“Sonja, what are you saying? You know you have a brother! You introduced us, for the love of Christ!”
Her face whitened. “The joke’s over,” she snapped. “I don’t know why you’re doing this and I don’t want to. I would have given anything for a brother or sister, as I must have told you, or else you couldn’t target me like this. How dare you throw shit like this at me? Get the hell out of my office.”
I tried to say something.
“Now!” she screamed.
I stood, head spinning, and stumbled to the door. I tried one more time before leaving. “Who got to you, Sonja? Who made you turn on your own brother?”
“If you don’t leave,” she growled, “I’ll set security on you, Cardinal’s pet or not.”
“Have it your way,” I said coldly. “Deny Adrian. Be a Judas. But I won’t bend. You hear me? I won’t fucking bend or let this drop. I’ll find out who’s behind this and I’ll make them pay. Nobody fucks with my friends. Nobody! ”
I stormed out of the office, fingers clenched into fists. I pounded the wall as I went and cracked the plaster, but I didn’t give a fine flying fuck.
I couldn’t stay in the office, not with that bitch laughing at me upstairs. Her own brother! Somebody had wiped Adrian out—I was sure of that now—and she was playing along. To protect herself? She hadn’t seemed scared, so I didn’t think so. To move up another rung on the corporate ladder? She’d sacrificed her own body to get this far. Maybe sacrificing Adrian’s would move her a step further along. It didn’t sound like the Sonja I knew but maybe I was just a bad judge of character.
This was turning into a nightmare of a day. I’d come into it with high expectations. The Cardinal was rooting for me, I had a golden opportunity to impress, and I was still buzzing from my mind-blowing bout of sex the night before. I’d wanted to concentrate on finding my mysterious lover—I was sure I could track her down—but here I was, stuck with a far less attractive mystery. The woman from the stairs would have to wait.
As furious as I was, I took the Reed file with me. Ignoring a direct order from The Cardinal wasn’t on the agenda, regardless of all other distractions. He’d told me to visit Cafran Reed and that remained my number one priority. I could put it on the back burner for a few hours while I did some digging around for traces of Adrian, but I’d have to turn to it in the afternoon. I didn’t want to be the first man in twenty years to tell The Cardinal he had to wait because I had more important things to deal with.
I popped into Party Central and checked the records on three different floors. I wanted to see what sort of background info they had on Adrian, who his friends were, if he was connected with any shady deals, if there were clues in his past. It took a while for me to believe what I uncovered, but in the end I had to face the facts— he wasn’t there. The most complete records in the city, and not a word about him. No birth certificate, no record of his driver’s license, insurance details, schooling or employment history. I checked twice on each floor but every search produced the same result. Officially Adrian Arne didn’t exist, had never existed.
It wasn’t possible. There had to be information somewhere, perhaps tucked away in files on one of the higher, restricted floors. But I couldn’t get in there, so I had no option other than to resign myself to his bureaucratic nonbeing.
Then I recalled my encounter on the stairs. Was the woman in black involved in this? Strangers didn’t wander into Party Central as and when they pleased. Getting an operative in here would require tremendous influence. The same sort it would need to eradicate a person’s files. She could be a link to Adrian. It looked like I’d have to investigate my mystery girl sooner than planned, only not for the romantic purposes I’d initially envisaged. It would be difficult but I’d hunt her down. For Adrian’s sake if not my own.
I called Adrian’s agency and spoke to the manager, John D’Affraino, whom I’d met a couple of times. He remembered me and was all smiles over the phone. “John, do you have an Adrian Arne on your books?” I asked after a while.
“Let’s see.” I heard him tapping the name into his computer. “Is that with or without an e ? With? No, no Arne. We’ve got an Adrian Arnold.”
“Could you describe him?”
“Six-two, black, thirties, bushy beard.”
“No. Do you have a record of my drivers for the last month or two?”
“Sure. Just a minute… here we go. You’ve got Thomas at the moment. He’s one of our best. Before him you had Pat Burke. Gregg Hapes before that.”
“Could you get Pat or Gregg on the phone?”
“Sure. Hold on a sec.”
Pat Burke was off duty but Gregg Hapes was there. I asked if he remembered driving me. “Of course,” he said cheerfully. “I’m due to take you out again next week for a couple of nights, I think.”
“Do you recall the last time you took me out?”
“I think so,” he said. “Last Thursday, wasn’t it? Or was it Friday?”
“One of those, yeah. Do you remember my date, a tall lady in a green dress?”
A slight pause, one I’d have missed if I hadn’t been expecting it. “Sure,” he said, cheerful as before. “A nice lady.”
“She lost an earring, we think maybe in the car. You come up with anything like that lately?”
“No, Mr. Raimi. And I cleaned it out just yesterday.”
“If you do, will you send it on?”
“Absolutely. I think I remember them. Green, right, like the dress?”
“Yeah. Like the dress.” I hung up and took a few seconds to collect myself. I thanked the receptionist for the use of her phone, went to the toilet, came down in an elevator and set off to see Cafran Reed.
They’d even gotten to the chauffeurs. Why go to such lengths? Deleting his files, securing the silence of those who knew him, covering every track he’d ever made. What justification could there be for the cost, time and effort that must have involved? And if they’d gone that far, bought out his building supervisor and workmates, his own sister… if they’d solicited everyone who knew him and warned them to deny Adrian’s very existence… why hadn’t they come after me ?
Y Tse called as I was on my way to Cafran Reed’s restaurant. “Hi, kid,” he boomed. “How’s tricks?”
“Fine,” I said. This was the first time he’d called. He hated phones. I guessed somebody had been talking.
“You sure of that? Someone told me you’ve been acting a bit strange today. What’s up?”
“Who was it?” I asked. “Sonja?”
“Well, tarnation’s titties, Capac, how many other dames have you been freaking the living shit out of? She was sobbing, called you a heartless prick, threatened to cancel your contract. She’d been drinking and that’s not like Sonja.”
“And she’s blaming me? Fuck her!” I yelled. “She won’t acknowledge Adrian. Her own brother, and the bitch sat there and told me she was an orphan! Can you believe that shit? Then I go to Party Central and someone’s wiped his files. I call his agency and they say he never worked there—not only that, but they’ve drawn up an imaginary list of drivers for me. And there’s some—”
“Whoa,” he laughed over the line. “Get a grip, Capac. Are you high?”
“Y Tse,” I shouted, “Sonja has a brother! Adrian has been my driver and best friend since I started working here. A couple of days ago he didn’t turn up for work and now it’s like I dreamed him up. Nobody admits they knew him, there’s nothing to prove he was ever alive. How the fuck am I expected to react?”
“Listen, Capac—no, no anchovies—,” h
e said to somebody on the other end of the line. “—Let’s talk this through calmly. I don’t know Sonja very well but a few years ago I had an all-night session with her and Leonora. We got to talking about our lives and inner selves, all the shit you only discuss at five in the morning. She said she’d never had a family, would have loved a brother or sister. She got quite emotional about it.”
“But I saw him! Every fucking day, Y Tse! Are you saying I imagined him?”
“No. All I’m saying is a few years ago, before anyone had ever heard of Capac Raimi, Sonja Arne told me she didn’t have a brother. That means whatever you’ve stumbled into predates you. There are three possibilities as I see it. One, Sonja was lying all those years ago and really does have a brother. I don’t think that’s the case. Why should she lie back then if it was? Two, you’re going mad. Not a pretty thought, but the mind screws up on us sometimes. I don’t think it’s likely but we can’t dismiss the possibility. Three, there never was an Adrian Arne, only a pretender.”
“But she introduced us. She told me he was her brother.”
“She was lying.”
His simple assertion threw me. It was so obvious. Immediately I knew it must be the truth and cursed myself for not having seen it already.
“She wanted you to believe she had a brother,” Y Tse went on, “so she fed you a lie. He was in on it too. It’s an easy deception to pull off—you had no reason to suspect something foul. Now they want the deception to end. So they stop lying. No trick to it. Who’s going to notice the disappearance of a guy who was never real in the first place?”
“Why go to all that trouble?” I asked. “What difference can it make whether I think Sonja has a brother or not? It serves no purpose. Why would they pretend?”
“That’s something for you to unearth if you decide to follow it up. But I’ll tell you, whoever’s behind this, I doubt it’s Sonja. I guess somebody else is involved, someone who likes to play meaningless games for reasons sometimes unknown even to himself.”
“The Cardinal?”
“It’s got his crazy stamp all over it. You checked in Party Central’s files and drew a blank? Well, ignoring the fact that if he’s not her brother, his name wouldn’t be Arne”— Fuck! —“who’s got the power to tamper with those files? A handful of people, and every one of them’s on the shortest of The Cardinal’s many leashes. Nothing like that could be done without his knowledge.”
