Spook Country

Tito dunked and chewed a piece of his tostada, considering. “Yes.”

“There you are,” said Juana. “Of course he was.” She brushed her wrinkled hands together, as if wishing to be free of the traces of something. “But who did he work for? Think of our saints, Tito. Two faces. Always, two.”

15. SPIV

I nchmale had always been balding and intense, and Inchmale had always been middle-aged—even when she first met him, when they were both nineteen. People who really liked the Curfew tended to like Inchmale or to like her, but seldom both. Bobby Chombo, she thought, as Alberto drove her back to the Mondrian, was one of the former. But that had been a good thing, really, because it had meant that she’d been able to lay out her best public pieces of Inchmale without revealing herself, then shuffle them, palm them, rearrange them, withdraw them, to help keep him talking. She’d never asked Inchmale, but she took it for granted he did the same with her.

And it hadn’t hurt that Bobby was himself a musician, though not in the old plays-a-physical-instrument-and/or-sings modality. He took things apart, sampled them, mashed them up. This was fine with her, though like General Bosquet watching the charge of the Light Brigade, she was inclined to think it wasn’t war. Inchmale understood it, though, and indeed had championed it, as soon as it was digitally possible pulling guitar lines out of obscure garage chestnuts and stretching them, like a mad jeweler elongating sturdy Victorian tableware into something insectile, post-functionally fragile, and neurologically dangerous.

She’d also assumed that she had Bobby’s Marlboro binge on her side, though she’d noticed that she was starting to count his smokes, and to worry, as he neared the bottom of his pack, about having one herself. She’d tried distracting herself with sips of room-temperature Red Bull from a previously unopened can she’d excavated from the table clutter, but it had only made her bug-eyed with caffeine, or perhaps with taurine, the drink’s other famous ingredient, extracted supposedly from the testicles of bulls. Bulls generally looked more placid than she now felt, or perhaps those were cows. She didn’t know cattle.

Bobby Chombo’s sampling talk had helped her make a kind of sense of him, of his a

“It went better than I expected it to,” said Alberto, interrupting her thoughts. “He’s a difficult person to get to know.”

“I went to a gig in Silverlake, a couple of years ago, what they call reggaeton. Sort of reggae-salsa fusion.”

“Yeah?”

“Chombo. The DJ was a big deal in that scene: El Chombo.”

“That’s not Bobby.”

“I’ll say. But why’s our Bobby white-guy a Chombo too?”

Alberto gri

“Software?”

“Yes.”

She decided there wasn’t much to be thought about that, at this point. “He sleeps there?”

“He doesn’t go out, unless he has to.”

“You said he won’t sleep twice in the same square of that grid.”

“Never mention that to him, no matter what, okay?”

“And he does gigs? DJs?”

“He podcasts,” Alberto said.

Her cell rang.

“Hello?”

“Reg.”

“I was just thinking about you.”

“Why was that?”

“Another time.”

“Get my e-mail?”

“I did.”

“Angelina asked me to call, re-reiterate. Ree-ree.”

“I get the message, thanks. I don’t think there’s much I can do about it, though, except do what I’m doing and see what happens.”

“Are you taking some sort of seminar?” he asked.

“Why?”

“You sounded uncharacteristically philosophical, just then.”

“I saw Heidi, earlier.”

“Christ,” said Inchmale. “Was she walking on her hind legs?”

“She drove past me in a very nice-looking car. Headed in the direction of Beverly Hills.”

“She’s been headed in that direction since the birth canal.”

“I’m with someone, Reg. Have to go.”

“Toodles.” He was gone.

“Was that Reg Inchmale?” Alberto asked.

“Yes, it was.”

“You saw Heidi Hyde tonight?”

“Yes, while you were getting rousted in Virgin. She drove past on Sunset.”

“Wow,” said Alberto. “How likely is that?”

“Statistically, who knows? Subjectively, feels to me, not so weird. She lives in Beverly Hills, works in Century City.”

“Doing what?”

“Something in her husband’s company. He’s a tax lawyer. With his own production company.”

“Eek,” said Alberto, after a pause, “there really is a life after rock.”

“You’d better believe it,” she assured him.

ODILE’S ROBOT appeared to have died, or to be hibernating. It sat there by the drapes, inert and unfinished-looking. Hollis nudged it with the toe of her Adidas.

There were no messages on the hotel voice mail.

She got her PowerBook out of the bag, woke it, and tried holding the back of the open screen against the window. Did she want to rejoin trusted wireless network SpaDeLites47? Yes, please. SpaDeLites47 had treated her right, before. She assumed SpaDeLites47 was in the period apartment building across the street.

No mail. One-handed, supporting the laptop with her other, she Googled “bigend.”

First up was a Japanese site for “BIGEND,” but this seemed to be a brand of performance motor oil for dragsters.

She tried the link for his Wikipedia entry.

Hubertus Hendrik Bigend, born June 7, 1967, in Antwerp, is the founder of the i

Her cell began to ring, in her bag, back on the table. If she moved the PowerBook, she’d lose the wifi from across the street, though this page would still be cached. She crossed to the table, put the laptop down on it, and dug her phone out of her bag. “Hello?”

“Hubertus Bigend, for Hollis Henry.”

It sounded as though her phone had received some sort of corporate upgrade. She froze, out of primeval fear that he’d caught her Googling him, peering into his Wiki.

“Mr. Bigend,” she said, giving up on the idea of any attempt at the Franco-Belgian pronunciation.

“Miss Henry. Consider us introduced, shall we? You may have no idea why I’m calling. The Node start-up, you see, is a project of mine.”

“I’ve only just Googled you.” She opened her mouth wide, wider, in the silent scream that Inchmale had taught her reduces tension.

“Ahead of the game, then. What we want in a journalist. I’ve just spoken myself with Rausch, in London.”

If Rausch is in London, she wondered, then where are you? “Where are you?”

“I’m in the lobby of your hotel. I was wondering if you might like a drink.”