Nicola Griffith - Stay

I went to Switchboard.com and tried Karp, and G. Karp, and George Karp, and Geordie Karp, in the state, then the city. Hundreds of Karps in New York State, too many to trace one by one. No George Karps in the city. One G. Karp in Brooklyn. I wrote down the number and address but knew it wouldn’t be him. An initial was a flimsy hiding place. I repeated the exercise for Tammy, and found nothing promising. I tried again on Bigfoot with the same results.

I followed a few more links. Nothing. Why was he so careful? What was he afraid of?

On my way past the woman at the other computer I stopped. Her shoulders hunched but she didn’t turn around. “You should always look,” I told the back of her head. “Not looking never kept anyone safe.”

Outside, I called the Brooklyn number. A machine picked up after four rings. “Hi, this is Gina Karp. Leave a number. You know the drill.”

I closed the phone. A loft in SoHo, but five years ago. Not much else. Just the book, and the bookstore signing in four days. If all else failed, I could go to that and follow him home, or go to the restaurants and bars listed most frequently on his statement and hope he showed up. Either alternative meant staying in New York, talking to people, interacting. I didn’t think I could stand one more day of concrete and braying voices.

Washington Square Park was crowded with dog walkers, mime artists, skateboarders, street musicians, jugglers, and chess players; tourists seethed so thickly around the fountains that I could only see the top of the water spout and couldn’t hear it at all; people sat in ones and twos at the foot of every tree, reading.

Maybe Karp’s book would tell me something about him.

The Village is full of bookstores. I bought a copy, carried it back to the park, and folded myself onto the grass to read.

Several case studies, complete with photos. A hint of smugness, perhaps, gleaming cold and hard through the personable prose. Again that boast: he needed no office but his cell phone and his laptop. No other scrap of information about where he was born, where he lived, who he was.

A pair of police officers strolled down the bike path, a white man and Hispanic woman, nodding occasionally to passersby, smiling at a toddler being dragged along by his parents. Obviously officers specially trained to be nice to tourists. Their eyes remained watchful.

I turned the book over and over in my hand, front and back, back and forth, feeling its weight, taking its measure, the way an antique dealer might handle a jade carving, or a sculptor her wood. I put it on the grass in front of me, turned my face up to the hazy sun. In North Carolina, the sun would be yellow as an egg yolk on a blue plate, and leaves would be drifting down onto the cabin roof.

I picked the book up again, riffled through the pages from back to front, and there it was, the copyright notice: © Koi Productions. Hiding behind his own cleverness.

I had to walk a few yards before my phone got a decent signal. Information gave me the address: Koi Productions, 393 West Broadway. The SoHo loft.

I took three cabs, getting in and out after random intervals, before I found a driver who spoke English and who spent just a second too long looking in the rearview mirror at the roll of money I took from my pocket. His ID said his name was Joe Czerna; he had a red nose and gray hair. Late fifties, maybe. I made my body language younger, more excited. I smiled a lot, as though nervous.

“So, Joe, what’s it like driving a cab in New York?”

He shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“Bet you get some real wackos to deal with sometimes.”

“Sometimes.”

“You ever see anyone get shot?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you call the cops?”

“Nobody shot me. I just drive. I got money to earn.”

“You want to earn some money for helping me?”

Pause. “How much?”

“A hundred, plus fare and tip.”

“You gonna shoot anybody?”

I laughed. “No, no. No shooting, but some people might be upset. It’s my sister, y’know? She’s, like, a bit crazy. I’m gonna go get her, from where she’s staying with her boyfriend. But she might not want to come, y’know?”

“No drugs, nothing like that? I don’t want no throwing up in my car.”

“Nothing like that. Just some yelling, maybe. Okay?”

“Your sister?”

“My sister.”

“My family shout alla time. Where you want to go?”

“West Broadway.”

It didn’t take long. I got out, tore a hundred-dollar bill in half, gave one piece to him, and put the other in my pocket. “Wait for me. I shouldn’t be longer than half an hour maybe.”

He tapped the meter. “Gonna keep this running, too.”

“Okay, whatever. But wait.”

I was beginning to wake up. I had been too long in the woods. I had forgotten, for a while, to be cautious. Bears and bobcats could be dangerous, but they didn’t feel the need to hide, and they weren’t smart enough to hide their addresses. If I needed to get Tammy away against her will or anyone else’s, I wanted a cabbie with a vested interest in taking what would look like a risky fare. Of course, she might not even be there, in which case I’d just wasted a hundred dollars.

Number 393 was a brick-faced building, a shop front, Anderly Flowers, and six steps with no railing leading up to a metal door, with a keyhole beside it. It took me a moment to recognize it as an elevator door, the kind that goes straight up to a loft. My scalp felt tight. I put my gloves on and pushed the buzzer. No response. I waited a minute, then pushed it again. Nothing. Again. Just like fishing. I had all day.

“Who is it?” A woman’s voice. Tammy’s, though it was hard to be sure over the hiss of the intercom.

“Mr. Karp?”

“He’s not here.” Definitely Tammy’s.

I made my accent warm and Hispanic. “No, no. I’m from Mr. Karp. I have a delivery.”

Silence, then: “I’m not expecting anything.” Her voice sounded thick, as though she’d been crying, and with a questioning lilt, oddly hopeful, like a child’s.

“Well, I have a special delivery here for someone called Tammy. From Prada. They’re paid for. I’m just dropping them off.” Silence. “A present maybe, I don’t know.”

“A present?” Her voice was uncharacteristically tentative. “You could just put everything in the elevator.”

“No, no, I have to come up. You have to sign.”

“Wait, two minutes.”

I waited. After a while the doors opened. There were two old-fashioned Perspex buttons, UP and DOWN. No key slot to override instructions from upstairs. A perfect trap. But I knew Tammy. She would never cry or sound childish in front of a man. I stepped in and pushed UP. The doors closed and the cage rose.

The doors opened to brick and blond wood, soaring spaces lit by bright halogen light, and there was Tammy, elevator key dangling from the thin chain she’d wrapped around her wrist, standing straight, and well dressed, but looking destroyed, torn up by the roots. She had just washed her face, but the lids were still puffy and she breathed through her mouth because her sinuses were still blocked from weeping.

I stepped from the cage. “Hello, Tammy.”

“Aud?”

She looked behind me, as though expecting to see a young Hispanic woman dead on a pile of Prada couture on the elevator floor. The elevator doors closed. “Aud?” Then her hand went to her heart, as though someone had punched her, and her face turned a dirty gray. “Is Dornan here too?”

“No.”

I’m not sure she heard me. She seemed about to topple with fear.

I took her by the elbow and considered. To the right, the stainless steel of a chef’s kitchen; ahead, a short corridor with three closed doors; to the left, a vast living room with ivory leather furniture, a brilliant kilim worth more than a luxury car, and a minimalist audiovisual system flanked by two large plinths that supported what looked like nineteenth-century French bronzes. I steered her towards the living room. “Dornan doesn’t know where you are. I didn’t tell him. No one knows except me. Come and sit down.”