Zero history

16. HONOR BAR

She was waiting for Milgrim when he got back to his hotel. On the upholstered bench where they kept their complementary MacBook leashed, on the left side of the crossbar of the T-shaped lobby, opposite the desk.

He hadn’t seen her there as he asked the Canadian girl for his room key. “Someone’s waiting for you, Mr. Milgrim.”

“Mr. Milgrim?”

He turned. She was still seated there, just closing the MacBook, in the black sweatshirt. Flanked on the bench by her large white purse and a larger Waterstone’s bag. She stood, slinging the purse over her right shoulder and picking up the Waterstone’s bag. She must have had the card out, ready, because he saw it in her right hand as she approached him.

“Winnie Whitaker, Mr. Milgrim.” Handing him the card. Badge-like emblem in gold foil, upper left corner. WINNIE T UNG W HITAKER. He blinked. S PECIAL A GENT. Looking past that, desperately seeking escape, into the Waterstone’s shopping bag, where he saw at least two Paddington Bear fuzzy toys, with their iconic yellow hats. Then back to the card. D EPARTMENT OF D EFENSE. O FFICEOF I NSPECTOR G ENERAL. D EFENSE C RIMINAL I NVESTIGATIVE S ERVICE. “DCIS,” pronouncing the individual letters of the acronym, then pronouncing it again as “dee sis,” stress on the first.

“You took my picture,” Milgrim said, sadly.

“Yes, I did. I need to have a talk with you, Mr. Milgrim. Is there somewhere more private?”

“My room’s very small,” he said. Which was true, though as he said it he realized there was absolutely nothing in his room that he had to keep her from finding. “The honor bar,” he said, “just up the stairs here.”

“Thank you,” she said, and gestured with the Waterstone’s bag for him to lead the way.

“Have you been waiting long?” he asked as he started up the stairs, hearing his own voice as though it belonged to a robot.

“Over an hour, but I got to tweet my kids,” she said.

Milgrim didn’t know what that meant, and had never fully taken the measure of the honor bar, and wasn’t sure how many rooms it might actually consist of. The one they entered now was like one of those educational display corners in a Ralph Lauren flagship store, meant to suggest how some semimythical other half had lived, but cranked up, here, into something else entirely, metastasized, spookily hyper-real.

“Wow,” she said appreciatively as he looked down at the card, hoping it would have become something else entirely. “Like the Ritz-Carlton on steroids. But in miniature, sort of.” She put her bag of Paddingtons carefully down on a leather hassock.

“Can I offer you a drink?” asked Milgrim’s robotically level voice. He looked down at the horrible card again, then tucked it into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Do they have a beer?”

“I’m sure they do.” With some difficulty he located a paneled-in refrigerator, its door covered in red mahogany. “What would you like?”

She peered into the cold matte-silver interior. “I don’t know any of those.”

“A Beck’s,” suggested his robot. “Not the one they have in America.”

“And yourself?”

“I don’t drink alcohol,” he said, passing her a bottle of Beck’s and choosing a canned soft drink at random. She opened it, using something sterling, with a thick haft of deer antler for a handle, and took a swig directly from the bottle.

“Why did you take my picture?” Milgrim asked, unexpectedly bypassing his robot voice and sounding like a completely different person, the one you automatically and immediately arrest.

“I’m obsessive,” she said.

Milgrim blinked, shuddered.

“Basically,” she said, “I collect things. In accordion files, mostly. Pieces of paper. Photographs. Sometimes I put them on the wall, in my office. I have a booking shot of you, from a narcotics arrest in New York, 1997.”

“I wasn’t charged,” Milgrim said.

“No,” she agreed, “you weren’t.” She took a sip of Beck’s. “And I have a copy of your passport photograph, which of course is much more recent. But this morning, following you, I decided I’d be talking to you this afternoon. So I wanted to get a picture of you before I did. In situ, sort of. Actually, though, I really am obsessive about pictures. I’m not sure now whether I decided I’d talk to you this afternoon, first, or whether I just decided to take your picture, which would mean I’d be talking to you this afternoon.” She smiled. “Don’t you want your drink?”

Milgrim looked down at the small can, popped the top, and poured something yellowish and carbonated into a highball glass.

“Let’s sit down,” she said, and settled into a leather club chair. Milgrim took the one opposite her.

“What have I done?”

“I’m not psychic,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Well,” she said, “you haven’t filed income tax for about a decade. But maybe you haven’t been earning enough to need to file.”

“I don’t think I have,” Milgrim said.

“But you’re employed now?”

“On a sort of honorarium basis,” Milgrim said, apologetically. “Plus expenses.”

“Some serious expenses,” she said, looking around the honor bar. “By this ad agency, Blue Ant?”

“Not formally, no,” said Milgrim, not liking the way that sounded. “I work for the founder and CEO.” “CEO,” he realized, having said this, had started to sound somehow sleazy.

She nodded, making eye contact again. “You don’t seem to have left much of a trail, Mr. Milgrim. Columbia? Slavic languages? Translation? Some government work?”

“Yes.”

“Zero history, as far as ChoicePoint is concerned. Means you haven’t even had a credit card for ten years. Means no address history. If I had to guess, Mr. Milgrim, I’d say you’ve had a problem with drugs.”

“Well,” said Milgrim, “yes.”

“You don’t look to me like you’ve got a problem with drugs now,” she said.

“I don’t?”

“No. You look like you’ve got a set of reflexes left over from having had a problem with drugs. And like you may have a problem with the company you’re keeping. But that’s what I’m here to talk with you about.”

Milgrim took a sip of whatever was in his glass. Some corrosively bitter Italian lemon soda. His eyes teared.

“Why did you go to Myrtle Beach, Mr. Milgrim? Did you know the man you met with there?”

“His pants.”

“His pants?”

“I made tracings,” Milgrim said. “I photographed them. He was paid for that.”

“Do you know how much?”

“No,” said Milgrim. “Thousands.” He made a thumb-and-forefinger gesture unconsciously indicating a certain thickness of hundred-dollar bills. “Say ten, tops?”

“And were they Department of Defense property, these pants?” she asked, looking at him very directly.

“I hope not,” Milgrim said, out of a deep and sudden misery.

She took a longer swallow of her beer. Continued to look at him that way. Someone chuckled in one of the honor bar’s adjoining rooms, from behind drawn French doors of that same red mahogany. The chuckle seemed to match the decor.

“I can tell you they weren’t,” she said.

Milgrim swallowed, painfully hard. “They weren’t?”

“But they’d like to be. That could be a problem. Tell me about the man who let you see them.”

“He had a mullet,” Milgrim said, “and he was wearing Blackie Collins Toters.”

“He was wearing-?”

“Toters,” Milgrim said. “I Googled them. They have Cordura Plus pocket linings, for guns and things. And outside pockets for knives or flashlights.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling briefly, “sure.”

“Sleight said he was special… something?”

“I’m sure he thinks he is.”

“Forces? Had been?”

“Sleight,” she said, “Oliver. British national, resident in Canada. Works for Blue Ant.”

“Yes,” said Milgrim, imagining Sleight’s picture on her wall. “Otherwise, he said almost nothing. Said they needed gussets.”

“Gussets?”

“The pants.” Then, remembering: “Blue Ant’s smartest design analyst thinks they aren’t military. Thinks they’re streetwear. I think she was right.”

“Why?”

“Coyote brown.” He shrugged. “Last year. Iraq.”

“I was in Iraq,” she said. “Three months. In the Green Zone. I got tired of that color too.”

Milgrim could think of nothing to say. “Was it dangerous?” asked his robot.

“They had a Cinnabon,” she said. “I missed my kids.” She finished her beer, and put the bottle down on a cut-glass coaster with a frilled sterling lip. “That was his wife you met, in the gift shop. He’s been in Iraq too. First in an elite unit, then later as a contractor.”

“I was afraid of him,” Milgrim said.

“I imagine he’s fairly dysfunctional,” she said, as though that wasn’t something warranting any surprise. “What is it with that Toyota?”

“The Hilux?”

“What local cooperation I have is via the FBI’s legal attache here. The Brits were willing to follow you from the airport, and to let me know where you were staying. But they’re curious about the truck.”

“It’s Bigend’s,” Milgrim said. “It has armor fitted by a firm named Jankel, special engine, tires that keep going if they’re shot up.” He didn’t say cartel grade.

“Is that really his name?”

“The French pronunciation would be ‘Bayh-jhan,’ I think. But he seems to favor the other.”

“Why would he need a truck like that?”

“He doesn’t need to need it. He just needs to be curious about it.”

“Must be nice.”

“I don’t know if I’d describe him that way,” Milgrim said. “But he’s definitely curious.”

“And extremely well connected here. When my Brits ran the registration, I got the feeling, they decided that a tail from the airport and the name of your hotel was about all I’d be getting. Though that might have been all I’d have gotten anyway. But they did ask about the truck.”

“There aren’t that many genuinely eccentric rich people,” Milgrim said. “Evidently. Not even here.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me.”

“No,” Milgrim agreed, and took a tiny, careful sip of his bitter lemon pop.

“Why did they want the specs on those pants?”

“They’re interested in military contracts,” Milgrim said. “Designing. The actual clothing and equipment has to be manufactured in the United States. There’s a law.”

“No kidding,” she said.

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“No,” she said, “I mean no kidding that they’re looking at contracting?”

“None,” said Milgrim. “They are. It’s a major current project.”

“Fucking hilarious,” she said.

Milgrim looked at his lemon pop, confused.

“Do you have a phone number?”

“I do,” said Milgrim, fishing the Neo from his jacket and showing it to her. “But it’s on this, and Bigend says it’s tapped.”

“Skip that, then. I arrested a serious shitbird who had one of those.”

Milgrim shuddered.

“Not because he had it. Something else. Do you have an e-mail address?”

“A Blue Ant address.”

“How about a Twitter account?”

“A what?”

“Sign up for one,” she said. “As Gay Dolphin Two, all caps, no spaces. Numeral two. From the laptop in the lobby. As soon as you finish your drink. Make your updates private. I’ll ask to follow you. I’ll be Gay Dolphin One. Allow me to follow you, refuse anybody else. It’ll mostly be porn bots anyway.”

“Porn bots? What is it?”

“It’s how I talk to my kids. You’ll register. That will be how we keep in touch. Let’s try to keep you out of trouble.”

Milgrim winced.

“You don’t want to leave town without letting me know. Or change hotels.”

“I have to go where they send me,” Milgrim said. “It’s what I do.”

“Perfect. I’ll be in touch.” She stood. “Thanks for the beer. Don’t forget about that registration. Gay Dolphin Two. Numeral two. All caps. No spaces.”

When she was gone, he continued to sit there, in the club chair. He took her card from his pocket. Held it without looking at it. Fingers on its sharp edges.

“No spaces,” his robot said.