Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

The thing about private investigators, Gavin had read somewhere— Raymond Chandler? A dim memory of an essay with heavy underlining among his abandoned papers in New York, no doubt dragged out to the curb by his landlord and turning to mush in a landfill now— was that they wore trench coats. It sounds trivial but it isn't, because the profession exploded in the 1920s. These were men who'd been through trench warfare and emerged hard and half-broken into the glitter and commotion of the between-wars world; men out of time, out of place, hanging on by the threads of their uneven souls. The detectives were honorable but they'd seen too much to be good. The hardest among them had seen too much to be frightened. The mean streets were nothing compared to the trenches of Europe. Some of them had lost everything and all of them had lost something, and consequently most of them drank too much.

He'd been shot but he felt more tired now than hard-bitten. At his desk in the rec room of Eilo's house he stared at the flicker of the computer screen and thought of the motel room, the man's voice in the shadows and the soft carpet under his face. His fedora had been lost at the Draker Motel. It was too hot here for a trench coat.

"I brought you some lemonade," Eilo said. Ice cubes clinked softly as she set the glass on his desk. "It's cold."

" Thank you," he said. He was unexpectedly moved. "That's exactly what I wanted." W ounded private detective Gavin Sasaki is reduced to tears by lemonade.

"It's a hot day," she said. "There's a pitcher in the kitchen if you want more."

He had been doing desk work for a few days now, typing up descriptions of properties and uploading photographs, updating the website as new properties came in or were sold. Quiet, undemanding work and he didn't mind it, he liked not having to go out into the heat. But he was aware at all times of a story unfolding just beyond the edges of his vision, some terrible drama involving Anna and his lost daughter and Liam Deval and a gun, a transaction whose details remained dangerous and vague.

Th a t n i g h t Gavin took a taxi back to the diner and sat by the window again until Sasha came to him.

"You're so pale," she said, when she gave him his coffee.

"I haven't been out much since I hurt my arm." And then, experimentally, "have you spoken with Daniel?"

She smiled. "He told me he has the money," she said. Her voice trembled a little, with fear or relief. "His inheritance came through. It's happening tomorrow night."

"It'll be nice when it's over with."

"It will be like it never happened," Sasha said, and he saw how desperately she wanted this. "We'll pay back the debt and he'll disappear. Are you ordering food?"

"Two hard-poached eggs and multigrain toast," he said.

She nodded and turned away from him. He watched her recede across the restaurant, wondering why, if this whole thing was simply a matter of paying off a debt, Liam Deval was in Florida with a gun.

W h e n G a v i n went back to the diner the following night, Sasha was at a banquette with a girl. His breath caught, but she wasn't his daughter. She was older than the girl in the photograph. He realized as he crossed the room that he'd seen her before, leaning on the door frame of a house where everyone was sleeping, her eyes closed.

"May I join you?" he asked. Sasha had watched his approach. She shrugged, so he sank into the booth across from them. The girl was sitting by the window with Sasha beside her, and it seemed to Gavin that she was dressed oddly. The last time he'd seen her she'd been wearing cut-off shorts and a dirty t-shirt, but now she wore a cheap-looking white-and-pink dress with scratchy-looking lace and bows on the sleeves. She looked like a thirteen-year-old playing at being nine. Her hair was darker than he remembered.

"Hello, Grace," he said.

"You two know each other?"

"I've seen her around."

The girl only watched him. He couldn't read her expression. She was perfectly still.

"She doesn't talk much," Sasha said.

"Probably wise." The girl's silence made Gavin uneasy. "Only gets you in trouble." It occurred to him that she was probably always in trouble anyway. "You dyed your hair," he said. He realized that he had absolutely no idea how to speak to a thirteen-year-old, and he seemed to have said the wrong thing. Grace winced.

"She's being a good sport," Sasha said. "Aren't you, Grace?"

"A good sport?" A plan unfolding all around him while he only grasped at its hanging threads. "What do you mean?"

"You said you knew the plan," Sasha said. "You know exactly what I mean."

"They said if I sat here in this dress by the window," Grace said, in a voice so soft he could hardly hear her, "then I wouldn't face charges."

"Charges," he repeated helplessly. He was so close now but he still couldn't see it, he didn't quite grasp how her presence here fit into any sort of a larger scheme, the story just beyond his reach. "Who said that, Grace?"

"The detective," Grace said. "The detective and Anna."

"Grace," Sasha said, "would you listen to your music for a minute?"

Grace had a tiny plastic purse, suitable for a girl much younger. She zipped it open with difficulty— it was cheap, and the zipper stuck— and pulled out a scratched-up iPod, inserted the earbuds and looked away from them. He could hear the music very faintly but couldn't make out what it was.

"Sasha," Gavin whispered, "I don't know this part of the plan. Could you tell me what's going on here?"

"What do you mean, you don't know this part of the plan? This is the plan."

"She's not— you're not giving her to anyone, are you?"

"Of course not," Sasha whispered. "You know that. She's a decoy."

"So nothing will happen to her?"

"She'll sit here as planned, and at a certain point I'll walk her toward

the back door in full view of someone who will be waiting outside in the parking lot. That's all."

"Why her?"

"She's a runaway," Sasha said softly. "She's facing drug charges. She's at hand."

"So if she sits here as a decoy, the drug charges go away?"

"All she has to do is remain in full view through the windows while a payment gets handed off in the parking lot. It's not such a bad deal. How do you not know all of this? You said you knew the—"

"What happens to her afterward?"

"Afterward? I'll drive her home."

"The home she ran away from."

"It's an imperfect world. Would you rather have Chloe sitting here?"

Gavin was silent.

"Me neither," she said, " Grace made a deal. She knows what she's doing. Nothing will happen to her."

"Then why not have Chloe here?"

"There's always a risk."

"And you think this girl's disposable." Something was welling up inside him. He reached across the table and pulled the earbuds gently from Grace's head. He heard thin tinny voices. She was listening to rap.

"Grace," he said, "do your parents know you're here?"

Grace reached for the earbuds and turned her face to the window. Sasha was glaring at him.

"Gavin, what the hell was that?"

"She's so goddamn young," he said.

"We all were, at one point or another." Sasha sipped her coffee, watching him over the rim. It struck him, watching her, that he'd never realized how hard she was. "And we all survived our youths, didn't we? She fell into our laps. She's a little old for our purposes, but she looks young for thirteen and Chloe's almost eleven. It's plausible." Sasha glanced at her watch. "Are you really supposed to be here for this?"

"No," Gavin said, "I don't think I am." His arm was throbbing, a dull sick pain. The floor lurched alarmingly when he stood, the diner lights too bright. "Will you. could you possibly tell me where to find Anna?"