Zero history

14. YELLOW HELMET

In Shaftsbury Avenue, on the way back to Milgrim’s hotel, through light rain, a dispatch rider on a dirty gray motorcycle caught up with the Hilux at a pedestrian crossing. Aldous powered down the window on the passenger side, squeegeeing raindrops from the bulletproof glass, as the helmeted rider took an envelope from his jacket and passed it to Milgrim, his glove like a Kevlar-armored robot hand. The window slid back up as the bike pulled away between the lanes of traffic ahead of them, the rider’s yellow helmet dwindling steadily. The back of it was marred, as if mauled by the swipe of some great paw, revealing a white substrate.

He looked down at the envelope. MILGRIM, centered, in a cartoonist’s loose caps, pm lower right. Pamela. It felt empty, or almost so, as he opened it. A limp transparent ring-binder sleeve, containing the inkjet image of his cop from Caffe Nero. Though not in Caffe Nero, here. Behind her, nicely in focus, Gay Dolphin Gift Cove’s dog-headed angels. And there the sweatshirt had been red, though he could make out the same white moon-and-palm logo. A different colorway. Had Sleight taken this? It appeared to be a candid shot. He imagined her sleeping, back in the coach compartment of his British Midlands flight.

The cab filled with the opening chords of Toots and the Maytals’ “Draw Your Brakes.” “Aldous,” said Aldous, to his iPhone. “Certainly.” He passed it to Milgrim.

“You see,” said Bigend.

“That’s her,” said Milgrim. “When I was there?”

Remembering Bigend’s advice about telephones, he didn’t ask where the image had been found, or how. “More or less,” said Bigend, and hung up, Milgrim returning the iPhone to Aldous’s large, waiting, beautifully manicured hand.

Fitzroy,” Clammy said, on her iPhone. She was staring up at the round bottom of Number Four’s birdcage, having left a freshly coiffed Heidi in Selfridges, preparing to test for residual viability in several of fuckstick’s credit cards.

“Fitzroy?”

“This neighborhood,” Clammy said, “Melbourne. ’Round Brunswick Street. Rose Street, off Brunswick. Rose Street’s got this artists’ market. Mere took me. Meredith. Ol’ George knew her.”

That would be “Olduvai” George, the Bollards’ brilliant, virtually forehead-free keyboardist, whom Inchmale said had more brains in his little finger than the rest of them put together. An even No. 2 crop that looked like a very tight fur hat. Like one of Clammy’s black cashmere beanies, except he couldn’t take it off. Massive jaw and cheekbones, permanent glossy black stubble, huge deep-set intelligent eyes.

“First thing I saw was her Hounds, girls’ Hounds,” Clammy continued.

“Looked good?”

“Hit it in a minute.”

Meaning, she thought, that he hadn’t, but would’ve. In theory at least. “And you had Hounds in common?”

“Wanted to,” Clammy said, “worst way. I’d seen that pillock Burton in a pair. Fat ass.” The transition from “arse” not yet quite bridged. Burton, whose fat ass she thought she’d heard cited before, did something in a band Clammy detested. The intensity of loathing one professional musician could manifest for another had been one of her least favorite things about the business. She’d bypassed it, she supposed, by generally avoiding the company of professional musicians. They weren’t all like that, by any means, she knew, but better safe than sorry.

“So you admired her jeans?”

“Made it known,” Clammy said, “that I knew what they were.”

“And?”

“She asked me if I’d like a pair. Told me she knew of a drop.”

“Drop?”

“A shipment.”

“Where from?”

“Didn’t want to ask,” he said, gravely. “Wanted me Hounds. Next day, she said. Said she’d take me.”

It was growing dark outside, taking Number Four with it. The bottom of the birdcage hung above her, the shadow of a mothership, discoidal, like solidified dusk. Waiting to radiate some energy, carve her with crop circles perhaps. She became momentarily aware of a susurrus, the sea of London traffic. The fingers of her free hand on the scrimshawed walrus-ivory of the Piblokto Madness bed. “And?”

“The others, they figured we were hooking up. ’Cept George. He knew her.”

“Where from?”

“Cordwainers. London College of Fashion. She’d studied shoe design. Had two seasons of her own line. Went back to Melbourne after that, making belts and purses. Serious girl, George said.”

“He was at Cordwainers?”

“Fucking Oxford, George. Seeing another Cordwainers girl, friend of hers.”

Hollis realized that she was framing all of this, visualizing it, in a Melbourne that had almost nothing to do with any actual city. They’d played Melbourne and Sydney twice each, touring, and each time she’d been so jet-lagged, and so embroiled with band politics, that she’d scarcely registered either place. Her Melbourne was a collage, a mash-up, like a Canadianized Los Angeles, Anglo-Colonial Victorian amid a terraformed sprawl of suburbs. All of the larger trees in Los Angeles, Inchmale had told her, were Australian. She supposed the ones in Melbourne were as well. The city in which she was imagining Clammy now wasn’t real. A stand-in, something patched together from what little she had available. She felt a sudden, intense urge to go there. Not to whatever the real Melbourne might be, but to this sunny and approximate sham. “And she got them for you?” she asked Clammy.

“Came in the morning. Drove me to Brunswick Street. Eggs and bacon in a vegan lesbian cafe bar.”

“Vegan bacon?”

“Open-minded. We talked about Hounds. I got the idea she’d met someone here, London, when she’d been at Cordwainers, who was in on the start of Hounds.”

“It started here?”

“Didn’t say that. But someone here had known something about it, early stages.”

The bottom of the cage was perfectly dark now, the insectoid wallpaper dimly floral. “We have a deal,” she reminded him.

“We do,” he agreed, “but there may be less to it than you’re expecting, now I’ve had time to think about it.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“So breakfast, and we talk, then we hit the market. I’d thought it would be more like the clothes end of Portobello, or Camden Lock. But it was more artists, craftsy stuff. Japanese prints, paintings, jewelry. Things the sellers had made.”

“When was this?”

“Last March. Still hot. People had been lining up, for Hounds, while we ate. Market’s not very big. Mere leads me straight to this queue, inside, I’d say twenty people, more after us. Out in a yard. I’m thinking, That’s not for us, but she says it is, we have to queue too.”

“What were the other people like, waiting?”

“Focused,” he said. “No chatting. And they all seemed to be alone. Trying to look casual, like.”

“Male? Female?”

“More male.”

“Age?”

“Mixed.”

She wondered what that meant, to Clammy.

“And they were waiting for…?”

“There was a table, in under this old beach umbrella. We were in the sun, getting hotter. He’s sitting under there behind the table.”

“He?”

“White. Maybe thirty. American.”

She guessed Clammy might be unable to estimate age accurately, over about twenty or so. “How do you know?”

“Spoke with him, didn’t I, when I got up there.”

“What about?”

“Shrinkage,” Clammy said. “Sizing. Hounds are sized to shrink to the label size. Just under, in the waist, then that stretches a little. True sizes, no vanity sizing.”

“Anything else?”

“He’d only sell me the one pair. Had three in my size. Showed him the readies. Said he couldn’t. One to a customer. Kept things moving. ’Nother twenty, thirty people behind us.”

“What was he like?”

“Reddish hair, freckles. A white shirt I wondered about.”

“Why?”

“If it might be Hounds. Simple, like, but then not so simple. Like Hounds. He had his cash folded in one hand. No coins. Cash only.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred Australian.”

“Was he alone?”

“Two Aussie girls. Friends of Mere’s. It was actually their pitch he was using. Sell Mere’s belts, T’s they print, jewelry.”

“Names?”

“Nah. Mere’d know.”

“She’s in Melbourne?”

“Nah. Paris.”

She let the darkness of the mothership’s hull fill her field of vision. “Paris?”

“What I said.”

“Do you know how to reach her?”

“She’s at some vintage clothing fair. Two days. Starts tomorrow. Ol’ George is there with her. Inchmale’s pissed that he left while we’re in studio.”

“I need to meet her. Tomorrow or the next day. Can you arrange that?”

“Remember our agreement?”

“Absolutely. Get on it now. Call me back.”

“ ’Kay,” said Clammy, and was gone, the iPhone suddenly inert, empty.