T. Boyle - Talk Talk

Radko lifted both hands to smooth back the long talons of his hair, then he lifted one haunch and settled himself on the edge of the receptionist's desk and began fumbling for the cigarettes he kept in the inside pocket of his jacket. “This thiff, yes?” he said, his voice softening. “This is it? This is the problem?”

Bridger acknowledged that it was.

“So sit,” Radko said, gesturing to the plastic chairs along the wall, “and you tell me.” And then, to Dana, as he touched the flame of his Bic to the cigarette, “You mind?”

“Yes,” she said, “I do,” but he ignored her.

Over the course of the next half hour, while Courtney went out for coffee and Plum twice stuck her head through the door to assess the situation and deliver updates to the crew and the cigarette smoke rose and the sun inflamed the undersized windows, Dana, who barely knew Radko, unburdened herself, and when she was at a loss, Bridger was there to offer amplification. Drawing at his cigarette, smoothing back his hair, sighing and muttering under his breath, Radko listened as though this were the plot of a movie he expected to bid on. “You know,” he said finally, “in my country this thing goes on all the time. This stealing of the documents, of the people too. Kidnap for ransom. You know about this?”

Bridger nodded vaguely. He wasn't even sure what country Radko came from.

“Let me see that,” Radko said, slipping the ersatz license from Dana's hand. He studied the picture a moment, then offered his opinion that the DMV had screwed up and the computer had sent the license to the address of record rather than the new address the thief had given them. “If you get that address,” he said, glancing up as Courtney came through the street door with their coffees, “then you get this man.”

Dana had become increasingly animated as they worked through the litany of details-how they'd contacted the credit reporting agencies and put a security hold on all her information, how they'd sent out copies of the police report and affidavit to the creditors of the spurious accounts, how they'd gone to the police and the victims' assistance people-and now she wondered aloud just how they might go about doing that. “This guy could have a hundred aliases,” she said, removing the plastic cap from the paper cup and pausing to blow at the rising steam. She took a sip. Made a face. “And how do we get the address? They won't even run a fingerprint trace. Not important enough, they said. It's a victimless crime. Sure. And look at me: I'm out of a job.”

“Milos,” he said.

Courtney had settled back in at her desk, making a pretense of focusing on her computer, and Plum, for the third time, pushed open the security door and let it fall to again. Bridger said, “Who?”

“Milos. My cousin. Milos he is finding anybody.”

The next afternoon-a Friday and Radko gone to L. A. for another “meeding”-Bridger left work early to pick up Dana at her apartment. He had to get out of the truck and ring her bell-or rather, flash it-because she wasn't quite ready, and he stood there on the doormat for five minutes at least till she appeared at the door, but the appearance was brief. Her face hung there a moment, wearing a look of concentrated harassment, the door swung open, and she was gone, clicking down the hallway in her heels, looking for some vital thing without which she couldn't leave the apartment even if it were on fire. He wanted to remind her-urgently-that they had an appointment with Radko's cousin at four-thirty and that his office was in Santa Paula, a forty-five-minute drive, but he wasn't able to do that unless he was facing her and he wasn't facing her. No, he was following her, from one room to another, her hair flashing, her arms bare and animated as she dug through a dresser drawer, pawed over the things on the night table, tossed one purse aside and snatched up the next. “I'm running a little late,” she flung over her shoulder, and slammed the bathroom door.

Bridger wasn't happy-he resented feeling compelled to speed and risk another ticket-but he was resigned. He put his foot to the floor, the tires chirped and the pickup protested, wheezing and spitting as he gunned it up the ramp and onto the freeway, and he glanced over at Dana to see how she was taking it, but she was oblivious. He remembered how she'd told him that when she'd first got her new car-a VW Jetta-it ran so smoothly she couldn't tell whether the engine was actually going or not and had continually ground the starter without knowing it. Only after she realized that people were staring at her in the parking lot-grimacing, clenching their teeth-did she begin to adjust. It was all about the vibration, and eventually she trained herself to pick up the faintest intimation of those precise valves working in their perfect cylinders and all was well. The pickup was another story. Yet once he got it up to cruising speed and kept it there he was able to make up the time with some creative dodging around the cell-phone zombies and white-haired catatonics whose sole function in life it was to block the fast lane, and they pulled into Santa Paula no more than twenty minutes late for the appointment.

The town was a surprise. Instead of the usual California farrago of styles and build-to-suit outrages to the public sensibility, it seemed all of a piece, like something out of an old black-and-white movie. In fact, it all looked hauntingly familiar, the broad main drag lined with one-and two-story frame buildings that must have dated from the forties or earlier, the hardware store, the mom-and-pop shoes and clothes shops, Mexican restaurants, coffee shop, liquor store and cantina, and he couldn't help wondering how many period pieces had been filmed here. Teen movies, no doubt. Greasers in too-perfect '55 Fords and Chevys, cruising, heading for the hop. Dreary dramas about old people when they were young. World War II weepers where the crippled hero returns to receive a mixed message and the streets run ankle-deep with schmaltz. Of course, all this could be re-created today without ever having to leave Digital Dynasty, but still, it did Bridger good to see the real deal, the actual frame-and-stucco buildings of the actual town. They were rolling down the street, going so slowly they were practically parked, when he pointed to the scrawled sheet of directions in Dana's lap and asked, “What was that number again?”

She didn't respond, didn't glance down at his finger or up at his face. She seemed as entranced as he, her head lolling against the frame of the open window, legs crossed and one foot dangling as if it was barely attached, and that made him smile-here she was, relaxed for the first time in weeks, a little road trip, the prospect of Milos and an end to her troubles working on her like a massage. He had to point again before her eyes went to his lips. “One-three-three-seven,” she said, squinting through the windshield to track the numbers on the storefronts.

There was no shortage of parking-the town seemed almost deserted-and they emerged to eighty degrees and sun and a light breeze with a distant taste of the sea riding in on it. The trees bowed and waved. A pure deep chlorophyll-rich square of green crept back from the curb across the street and wrapped itself around some monument to war veterans or a mayor gone down to the exigencies of time. It was all very-what? Very calming. Ordinary. Real.

Milos' office was above a Korean grocery that stocked nothing but Mexican specialties and beer, and Milos himself answered their knock. He was younger than Radko, thinner, with sucked-in cheekbones and tight discolored lips, but he wore his hair the same way as his cousin, gel-slicked and glistening like the nose of something emerging from the sea, with an orchestrated dangle of individual strands in front. It took Bridger a minute, and then he understood: Elvis Presley in “Viva Las Vegas.”