Nicola Griffith - The Blue Place

Buddy could not make up his mind which was more interesting: the road or the money I still held. “Those sharks’ll be awake now, Torvingen. Just give me the money. Look, here’s a freebie for you. That evidence that got burned? Two old friends of yours know where it came from.”

“Tell me.”

He held out his hand. “An extra hundred.”

“Free.”

He shook his head and got stubborn. It wasn’t worth pushing. My job was to work out who had tried to have Julia killed, and now I knew. I handed over the money. “Get out of the car.” I climbed out after him and tossed him the keys. He was screeching out of the parking lot before I was halfway to the book shop.

Taeko Jay has worked for the DEA for as long as I’ve lived in Atlanta. Longer. Her coarse black hair is streaked with grey and she wears it long, with no apology. She came over to America twenty years ago—fell in love with a member of the CIA in Tokyo, got married, and had her citizenship papers two days later. The rules are different for some people. Her husband died ten years ago and now she lives with a skinny game designer half her age. She smiles a lot. Her teeth are white and pointed. A Japanese vixen.

Saturday morning at seven we were eating sushi. “Arellano’s successor? Well, here’s the funny thing, we don’t even know if there is one. There haven’t been any of the usual killings you would expect during a power struggle and we haven’t found any evidence of an organizational nexus here in town. Though they are using the same money man.”

“Honeycutt.”

She paused, with what looked like raw squid halfway to her mouth. “How did you know that?”

“I hear he’s not being so smart.”

“Is that so?”

“Playing both ends against the middle. I think you can expect trouble at some point.”

She looked thoughtful. “Two years ago, maybe. Now? Whoever is in charge is very savvy. Very, very savvy. And very low profile.”

I ate some raw tuna rolled up around something cold and spicy. “You sound as though you approve.”

“Well, the stuff’s going to get in no matter what we do, and if fewer bodies pile up, the citizens don’t complain as much, which means the people in Washington don’t breathe down our necks. Though politically speaking coke is old news. Smack’s the thing now, and with its traditional tie-ins with organized crime, everyone in Washington is jumping up and down and getting very hot under the collar. Smack is only just reemerging and the lines of supply are still new and reasonably clear. The politicos see this as their big opportunity, a chance to crush the drug trade—or one of them, anyway—and bang behind bars all those crime bosses they’ve been after since Gotti went down. And the heroin trade doesn’t use street gangs.”

“Not that gangs seem to be much involved in Atlanta’s coke trade.”

“That’s another strange thing—Are you going to use that lemon?”

I passed it to her. “Another strange thing?”

“Yeah. You look at, say, San Diego, and all the enforcers there are gangbangers, little sixteen-year-olds who see hundreds of thousands in cash and coke pass through their hands every week.” She squeezed the last of the lemon over her salmon. “No, smack’s the flavour of the month, and I’m glad. A smack habit is something you have to work to acquire, and when a user goes wild on smack, they just nod out, they don’t go psychotic. Did you know that heroin is actually beneficial to the body in small amounts? Like alcohol.”

“Think how much tax money the government would make if they legalized it.”

“But they never will. Lot of campaign contributions these days—especially in California—being made by pot smugglers. They want it to stay illegal. They make a very nice living, thank you very much. It’s all—Sandy,” to a passing server, “can I get some more lemon? So, yeah, it’s all becoming more or less respectable, like bootlegging during Prohibition. Hell, it already is respectable in Mexico. The Tijuana cartel owns the federal police and everyone knows it, even the politicos, but so few people are getting killed, and those mainly gringos, that none of them care. Just like no one cares here when big American corporations ship thousands of tons of baby formula to the third world and kill all the children. Deadly white powder, but this time wrapped in pretty boxes and the official cooperation of the government. So we have the commander of the federal police openly being the liaison man for the Tijuana cartel, and people down there just shrug. Blood pressures in Washington are, if you’ll pardon the expression, shooting up.”

We both grinned. I applied myself to the ahi.

“Hey, Aud, interesting case last month.”

“Yeah?”

“We helped bust a Nigerian heroin smuggling ring run—get this—by women. Apparently it’s traditional in Nigerian culture for women to run all the business stuff, and they’ve somehow got hooked into the opium pipeline that runs from the East, through Africa, and up to Seattle. I went up to Seattle with the task force. Got them all in one swoop. God, I love my job.”

I drove through the morning traffic, trying to think. Tijuana. Low-profile successor to Arellano. Honeycutt and the torch from Boston. But where did Honeycutt get the coke, and why would he want it there in the first place?

Beatriz was wearing the new sandals and shorts and tee when I picked her up again at half past ten, and her hair was up in a loose twist. She looked young and bright and fresh. She climbed into the front passenger seat.

“It’s safer for you in the back.”

“But I have never really been in any danger, have I?”

“No.”

“And you are wearing your gun?”

I lifted my jacket to show her the Walther. She put her seat belt on and that was that.

We ate brunch on the deck. Beatriz made pencil sketches as she ate. “The front needs some colour. If you cut another trench in front of the porch, we can plant some impatiens out there. Some around the tree, too.” Then she ate a croissant with quick, precise bites and picked up her pencil again. “While you dig the new beds, I’ll start on the tubs.” She sipped at her coffee, stared out at the back. “I wonder if the bed at the end needs widening….”

It was my job to keep her safe, and I was getting free help for my garden.

Two hours later, the new bed was dug, the old one widened, and there were bright flowers dotted around the beech tree and in two three-foot troughs beneath the front windows. Beatriz had a smudge on her left cheek. Her skin was beginning to darken after hours in the sun. It made the whites of her eyes seem faintly blue. She looked healthy, energetic.

“What do you think?”

My house had looked efficient, well maintained and clean. Now it was inviting. “Lunch,” I said.

I turned on the air-conditioning and we ate at the kitchen table. Halfway through the smoked salmon, bean salad and beer, the phone rang. It was Charlie Sweeting. He was excited.

“Hope you don’t have plans for tonight. Honeycutt’s giving a party. Black tie. I can get you an invite.”

I thought fast. “Charlie, can you hold a moment?”

I pushed the SILENT button, turned to Beatriz, who was trying not to listen. “Do you want to go to a big party tonight?”

She plucked at her T-shirt. “We would have to shop again.”

“Charlie? Yes, I can make it if I can bring a guest. And Charlie, when you give our names, just say it’s the daughter of a Spanish Cabinet minister—”

“Which one?”

“Luis del Gato, Minister of Labour.”

“Pity it’s not trade.”

“Indeed. The daughter is Beatriz del Gato. I’m to be her nameless escort.”

“I’ll have to—”