Spook Country

“Could you explain that?”

“Not a word of it. But I work in a gallery of contemporary art. Chombo is Bobby’s favorite thing. He says nobody else really appreciates Chombo, understands Chombo, the way he does. He talks about it like it’s a dog, one he’s been able to train to do things no one’s ever thought of training a dog to do. Fetch things. Roll over.” She shrugged. “You’re looking for him too, aren’t you?”

“I am,” said Hollis, putting down her sandwich.

“Why?”

“Because I’m a journalist, and I’m writing about locative art. And he seems to be at the center of it, and certainly he’s at the center of his sudden absence, and the upset it’s caused.”

“You used to be in that band,” said Sarah. “I remember it. With that English guitarist.”

“The Curfew,” Hollis said.

“And you’re a writer, now?”

“I’m trying to be. I thought I’d be in L.A. for a few weeks, researching this. Then Alberto Corrales introduced me to Bobby. Then Bobby vanished.”

“‘Vanished’ is a little dramatic,” said Sarah, “particularly if you know Bobby. ‘Flaked off,’ my father calls it. Would Bobby want to see you, do you think?”

Hollis considered. “No,” she said. “He was unhappy with Alberto for bringing me to his place in L.A. His studio. I didn’t think he’d want to see me again.”

“He liked your records,” said Sarah.

“That was what Alberto said,” said Hollis, “but he really didn’t like visitors.”

“In that case,” said Sarah, and paused, looking from Hollis to Odile, then back, “I’ll tell you where he is.”

“You know?”

“He has a place on the east side. Space in a building that used to be an upholstery factory. Someone lives there, when he’s away, and I run into her occasionally, so I know he still has it. If he’s here, and not there, I’d be very surprised. Off Clark Drive.”

“Clark?”

“I’ll give you the address,” said Sarah.

Hollis got out her pen.

63. SURVIVAL, EVASION, RESISTANCE, AND ESCAPE

T ito watched the old man fold the copy of the New York Times he’d been reading. They were sitting in an open Jeep, its hood dotted with red rust through dull-gray paint that had been applied with a brush. Tito could see the Pacific, this new ocean. The pilot had flown them here from the mainland, and gone, having said a long, private goodbye to the old man. Tito had seen them clasp hands, the grip held hard.

He’d watched the Cessna become a dot, then vanish.

“I remember seeing proofs of a CIA interrogation manual, something we’d been sent unofficially, for comment,” the old man said. “The first chapter laid out the ways in which torture is fundamentally counterproductive to intelligence. The argument had nothing to do with ethics, everything to do with quality of product, with not squandering potential assets.” He removed his steel-rimmed glasses. “If the man who keeps returning to question you avoids behaving as if he were your enemy, you begin to lose your sense of who you are. Gradually, in the crisis of self that your captivity becomes, he guides you in your discovery of who you are becoming.”

“Did you interrogate people?” asked Garreth, the black Pelican case under his feet.

“It’s an intimate process,” the old man said. “Entirely about intimacy.” He spread his hand, held it, as if above an invisible flame. “An ordinary cigarette lighter will cause a man to tell you anything, whatever he thinks you want to hear.” He lowered his hand. “And will prevent him ever trusting you again, even slightly. And will confirm him, in his sense of self, as few things will.” He tapped the folded paper. “When I first saw what they were doing, I knew that they’d turned the SERE lessons inside out. That meant we were using techniques the Koreans had specifically developed in order to prepare prisoners for show trials.” He fell silent.

Tito heard the lapping of waves.

This was still America, they said.

The Jeep, covered with a tarp and branches, had been waiting for them near the weathered concrete runway that Garreth said had once belonged to a weather station. There were push brooms in the back of the Jeep. Someone had used them to sweep the concrete, in preparation for their landing.

A boat was coming, Garreth had said, to take them to Canada. Tito wondered how large a boat it would be. He imagined a Circle Line tour boat. Icebergs. But the sun here was warm, the breeze off the sea gentle. He felt as though he had come to the edge of the world. The edge of America, the land he had seen unrolling beneath the Cessna, almost entirely empty. The small towns of America, at night, had been like lost jewels, scattered across the floor of a vast dark room. He’d watched them pass, from the Cessna’s window, imagining people sleeping there, perhaps distantly aware of the faint drone of their engines.

Garreth offered Tito an apple, and a knife to cut it with. It was a crude knife, like something you might see in Cuba, the handle covered in chipped yellow paint. Tito opened it, discovering DOUK-DOUK printed on the blade. It was very sharp. He cut the apple into quarters, wiped both sides of the blade on the leg of his jeans, passed it back to Garreth, then offered the slices of fruit. Garreth and the old man each took one.

The old man looked at his worn gold watch, then out across the water.

64. GLOCKING

S core some shit,” said Brown, sounding like he’d rehearsed the line, as he handed Milgrim a fold of colorful foreign bills. They were shiny and crisp, decked with metallic holograms and, it looked to Milgrim, printed circuitry.

Milgrim, in the passenger seat of the Taurus, looked over at Brown. “Excuse me?”

“Shit,” said Brown. “Dope.”

“Dope?”

“Find me a dealer. Not some corner guy. Somebody in the business.”

Milgrim looked out at the street they were parked on. Five-story brick Edwardian retail structures lacquered with the unhappiness of crack or heroin. The fuckedness quotient way up, down in this part of town.

“But what are you trying to buy?”

“Drugs,” said Brown.

“Drugs,” Milgrim repeated.

“You have three hundred and a wallet with no ID. If you get picked up, I don’t know you. You get picked up, you forget the passport you came in on, how you got here, me, everything. Give them your real name. I’ll get you out eventually, but if you try to screw me, you’re in there for good. And if you can get the guy to do the deal in a parking garage, that’s a major plus.”

“I’ve never been here before,” said Milgrim. “I don’t even know if this is the right street.”

“Are you kidding? Look at it.”

“I know,” Milgrim said, “but a local would know what’s going on this week. Today. Is this where the biz is, or did the police just shift it three blocks south? Like that.”

“You look,” said Brown, “like a junkie. You’ll do fine.”

“I’m not known. I might be mistaken for an informant.”

“Out,” ordered Brown.

Milgrim got out, the foreign cash folded in his palm. He looked down the street. Every shop boarded up. Plywood papered with rain-wrinkled multiples of film and concert posters.

He decided it would be best to behave as though he were shopping for his own flavor of pharmaceuticals. This would up his authenticity immediately, he thought, as he knew what to ask for, and that the units would be pills. This way, if he actually managed to buy something, it might even turn out to be worth keeping.

The day suddenly seemed brighter, this foreign but oddly familiar street more interesting. Allowing himself to forget Brown almost entirely, he strolled along with a new energy.

An hour and forty minutes later, having been offered three different shades of heroin, cocaine, crack, meth, Percodan, and marijuana buds, he found himself closing a transaction for thirty Valium tens at five each. He had no idea whether these would prove genuine, or if they even existed, but he had an expert’s conviction that he was being asked, as an obvious tourist, to pay at least twice the going rate. Having separated the hundred and fifty the seller required, he’d managed to slip the other half into the top of his left sock. He did things like this automatically, when buying drugs, and no longer recalled any particular event having led to the adaptation of a given strategy.