Geoff Dyer - The Search

‘I think you said the other night that you’re not working just now,’ she said at last.

‘That’s right.’

‘So what do you do all day?’

‘You know, the time passes.’

‘Pleasantly?’

‘It passes.’

‘What did you do before this?’

‘Various things. Drifted from one thing to another. Whatever came up.’

‘You’ve never had a job?’

‘Off and on. Off mainly.’

‘And what do you do for money?’

‘Are you a social worker?’

‘I’m just interested.’

‘Odds and ends. My brother’s renovating a house just north of the bay. I work for him now and again. Maybe you met him the other night?’

She shook her head, took a sip of orange. The imprint of her lip appeared on the cold glass, fading as he noticed it.

‘You’re being too modest. I think you’ve had a more interesting life than you let on.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. I think you’ve been involved in quite a few interesting things. Not all of them quite legal.’

‘If you say so.’

‘You’re trying very hard to be enigmatic, Mr Walker.’

‘I know, I’m putting everything into it.’

‘Perhaps it would be a help if you borrowed these,’ she said, handing him her sunglasses.

‘That’s much better,’ Walker said when he had put them on.

‘They suit you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘How was prison?’

‘It was great. Bit cloudy a couple of days but the rest of the time it was terrific,’ he said and chucked the remains of his drink at her. ‘Now fuck off out of my house.’

She brushed the melting ice from her lap, surprised but unruffled.

‘Dramatic,’ she said, only the faintest hint of nervousness in her voice. Seeing him smile she went on, ‘Do you really want me to leave?’

Walker was watching her carefully from behind the sunglasses. Her knees parted, almost imperceptibly, a quarter of an inch, no more, as she spoke. With his empty glass he gestured for her to continue.

‘For a while you worked as a tracker.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘You found Orlando Brandon.’

‘I came across him. By accident.’

‘A very fortunate accident. For you, at any rate. People had been looking for him for three years. The buy-out must have been considerable.’

Walker waited, studying her.

‘Not so fortunate for him, however,’ she said. ‘If I remember rightly, he was dead three weeks after you found him.’

‘Four.’

She dug around in her bag and found another pair of sunglasses. Blew dust off the lenses.

‘How many pairs do you have in there?’

‘This is the last,’ she said, her eyes disappearing behind the shades. ‘I would like you to find someone for me.’

‘That’s illegal. Besides, like I told you, I was never a tracker.’

‘I appreciate that, Mr Walker, but I will, if I may, explain myself a little further.’

Walker shrugged. ‘What’s all this Mr Walker bit?’

‘The situation seems to demand it,’ she smiled. ‘Can I continue?’

Walker nodded. Shrugs, nods, smiles.

‘Have you heard of Alexander Malory?’

‘No. Should I have done?’

‘There have been a number of articles in the paper about him.’

‘I don’t read the papers.’

‘Well, he’s disappeared.’

‘A lot of people disappear. Or try to.’

‘Hence the need for trackers.’

‘What’s your interest in him?’

‘I am his wife.’ On cue she removed her sunglasses. As an expression of frankness it was so perfectly executed that Walker suspected it might not be genuine. ‘We’re separated. That was years ago. He was very generous. Since then, however, certain irregularities in his dealings have come up. The police are interested in him. They don’t yet have a warrant for him but they will have one soon. There are other people interested in him also. To speak plainly, they want to kill him. It’s possible he is trying to evade them but he moves around a lot anyway. It’s equally possible he is just off travelling. Earlier I said he had disappeared — in a way he is in a state of constant disappearance.’

‘And?’

‘And I want to find him. For two reasons. If he is simply travelling, I would like to warn him — as I say, our parting was entirely amicable.’ Walker poured more orange into her glass. ‘The second reason applies wherever or whatever he’s doing. My lawyers have found a loophole in our arrangements. I need him to sign and fingerprint a copy of one of our contracts.’

‘Fingerprint?’

‘It’s a new legal requirement with certain documents. I don’t know why. But once he’s done that, whatever happens to him, everything comes to me. He has to sign this before the police get to him. If he dies or is arrested before this document is signed, I lose everything.’

‘Everything you have or everything you have coming to you?’

‘Both.’

Walker had been studying her closely. Now, suddenly aware that she was scrutinizing him, he asked hurriedly, ‘So why me? There are trackers who —’

‘Too unreliable. It’s quite possible that trackers have already been employed to find him — by the people who want to kill him.’

‘But why me?’

‘As I said, you’ve had a more interesting life than you let on. You could do it. You’re not doing anything else. And you’re restless.’

‘How do you know I’m restless?’

‘I meant you’re totally content. Is that better?’

‘Yes, it doesn’t matter,’ Walker said, smiling.

‘I have no idea what it will involve,’ Rachel continued. ‘It’s possible you will find him in a few days. It is equally possible that he has genuinely disappeared and has camouflaged his tracks — in which case finding him will be more difficult. Either way the important thing is that you find him before anyone else.’

‘So you want me to find him and get him to sign and fingerprint a piece of paper. That’s all?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what if he doesn’t want to sign this new will or contract or whatever?’

‘Then perhaps you mention that there are people who wish to see him dead and who would pay a lot to know his whereabouts. It won’t come to that. Like I said, Alex has always been generous to me.’

‘And —’ Walker paused ‘— why is this of interest to me?’

‘First, I will pay you a great deal of money. Tell me, how much did you make from finding Orlando Brandon?’

‘Enough.’

‘Whatever you earned for finding Brandon, I will pay double. More than enough, you might say.’

Walker raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘That’s a very generous offer.’

‘I think it is not the money that will interest you. It is the case itself. You will have very little to go on. It will be a challenge. For example, Alex hated — hates — being photographed. There is no photograph of him as far as I can discover.’

‘Not even a passport?’

‘He has that with him.’

‘And are trackers already after him?’

‘Impossible to tell.’

‘How long since you heard from him?’

‘Six months.’

Walker was tugging at his right ear-lobe with thumb and forefinger. She pointed at his ear and said, ‘You’ll end up with one ear longer than the other.’

‘What?’

‘Pulling your ear like that.’

‘My father used to do it. It’s a gesture I’ve inherited.’

Their glasses were empty apart from melting ice.

‘Well?’

‘I’ll call you,’ he said, and this time she gave him her number.

The strangeness of her story bothered Walker less than the way it challenged his gathering sense of inertia. He had been drifting for months, uncertain what to do, forming vague plans but lacking the resolution to see anything through. He was waiting for a decisive moment — a moment that would impel him to make a decision — but no such moment came. Every morning he had breakfast at the Café Madrid and walked down to the ocean. Every other day he lifted weights. Afternoons he went running along the beach. Evenings he drank. His growing addiction to this regime of fitness — and the drinking it served to offset — was one of a number of small details that made him postpone any commitment to change. He had so little to do that even minor chores like going to the bank became major events in his day. The more he pondered things the more restless he became, floundering in a sea of impulses. He had no responsibilities, no obligations, and so found himself paralysed by choice, waiting to see what came his way. Now something had come his way — a challenge, she had said — and he balked at the prospect, longed instead for his current life to continue indefinitely and without interruption.