The Blade Artist (6 page)

The entire crowd, couple by couple, cleared the dance floor as the stars’ performance built in intensity. It was seemingly reckless, yet at the same time partnered with a technical perfection on every beat. A circle formed around them, as people just watched and clapped. This blocked Melanie and Jim’s view of
the couple, and they too would have risen from the table had they not both been gripped by their own eye-popping climax. When the song finished, the entire room cheered, whistled and clapped. Melanie and Jim sat in a stupor, realising something significant had just happened. He whispered in her ear, — Do they do salsa dance classes in town?

— Yes, Melanie said. — I’m sure we’ll find something.

It had to be Harry the police department sent along. Lonely, sad-eyed Harry Pallister, whom she’d first encountered in seventh grade at Goleta Valley Junior High School. Melanie’s thoughts flashed back to those days. Some boys she could scent lusting after her, their pheromones filling the air. And with some of them, she’d reciprocated their ardour. But Harry lurked in the shadows pining silently, occasionally catching her with his sad, longing stare. Then, when Melanie began freshman year at Santa Barbara High School, as she stepped onto the campus of that Spanish colonial building, flushed with excitement, the first familiar face she saw was Harry’s.

Her joy evaporated.

Now he stands on the front porch, and even with the sun behind him making her squint, Melanie can see his thin, sincere face, that quietly martyred expression of his, as if the world was too much for him, but he was nonetheless valiantly and uncomplainingly fighting on. Then, as now, it seemed to be the harbinger of great disappointment. — A bit of news, about those men you called about.

Already she is wishing she hadn’t made that call about being menaced by those guys. Why had she? Jim had gotten
revenge, of a sort, by blowing up the vehicle. She knew the real reason had been the rape ordeal suffered by her friend, Paula Masters, at the hands of two other men. The culprits weren’t drifters, they were students, but that didn’t matter. Men dangerous to women were just that. — Hey, Harry, come in, she forces herself to sing, stepping into the house. He follows her, looking blankly at the art on the walls, into the lounge and, at her behest, sits down on the sofa.

Harry digs into his leather document case, producing two photographs, placing them on the table in front of her. — Was this them? The two men who harassed you?

There is no mistaking the duo. The criminal mugshots make them look even more like who and what they are; they could have been taken yesterday. The dark one, silent and menacing: the fair one, his face still set in that sneer. Melanie swallows, wishing she’d taken Jim’s advice. Why, why, why had she made that call? But all he’d done was blow up their car . . .

She nods in acquiesence. — Have they been causing more trouble?

Harry acts as if she hasn’t spoken, going back into his document case, pulling out a typed sheet of paper. From where she sits, Melanie can’t make out what it pertains to, far less its specific contents. He lets the silence hang as he reads it. She interprets his behaviour as some kind of domin-ance statement.

Melanie had never been frightened to embrace who she was. She saw no need to apologise for her beauty or her wealthy background. She simply acknowledged that her family’s liberal values had bestowed on her a magnanimity
and concern for others who navigated life in less ostentatious comfort than her, understanding that this relative affluence had also given her the breathing space to indulge her calling. Aware that her good looks got her both positive and negative attention, she had learned, with a calm assertiveness, how to deal with jocks and nerds and everything in between. You didn’t get sucked into the agendas of others. Ever.

But Harry’s mute longing had always grated on her. Like he was just hanging around, waiting on Melanie to validate his life with a smile or a ‘hello’ or even an ‘I love you’. Now he is silent again.

Melanie urges him to speak. — Harry?

— You said they were threatening, he coughs, taking out a small notebook from his trouser pocket.

She is getting it now. Harmless Harry with the notebook. They’re never harmless, ‘the polis’, Frank, no, Jim called them, commenting in glacial reserve after the first time she had introduced them, at an opening of her work. Harry had come along, as a guest of a mutual high school friend whom she resolved to have a quiet word with. What had Harry smelt off Jim? The criminality? The danger? Or even the art? Whenever she’d caught sight of him that evening, he wasn’t stealing the usual disconcerting glances at her. He was scrutinising Jim. Perhaps trying to fathom the attraction for women like Melanie, good-looking, intelligent and rich, of men whom he obviously reckoned were programmed to disappoint. Trying to discern their advantage over ones such as him, the loyal foot soldiers who only wanted to look after a woman. To provide for her. To save her. Melanie pondered how scary in
their own way such men could be, without even knowing it. Often more so than many criminal psychopaths. Now Harry’s slow stare, his slightly awkward, goofy demeanour, as he asks her about the confrontation with those two troubling, troubled souls. — And Jim, how did he react?

— He was very
calm
, Melanie says, stretching out the word to relax herself. — He got me to take the kids to the car. Then he kinda faced those guys down, and followed us.

After some more scribbling, and another silence, Harry asks, drumming his pen on his notebook, — What did he say to them?

Melanie knows that this isn’t about those guys. She draws in a breath and feels the friction slip into her voice. — I don’t think he said a goddamn thing to those assholes. Why would he? Who were they?

Harry fastens his bottom lip over his top one, makes a smacking sound with his mouth. — A body was fished out of the sea. It got snagged on the rigging of Holly, the offshore oil platform, and was found by a maintenance worker. Otherwise the current would have taken it right out into the ocean. It was this guy, Marcello Santiago, a gang member and career criminal. He passes over one of the photographs again. The darker man, the one with the muscles, who had chillingly wanted to apply her suntan lotion. — He had a bad record, multiple felonies, including violence and rape. His associate, Damien Coover, with whom he was recently seen, and who is currently missing, is a known paedophile. You were lucky Jim was with you and the girls. Those guys are bad news. Well, in Santiago’s case, used to be.

Melanie gazes at Santiago’s picture. Her blood is gelid in her veins. The air-conditioning thermostat clicks on, blasting cool air into the room. She shudders. — He’s . . . dead, she gasps. It was a silly thing to say, given that Harry has just explained that his body had been washed out to sea, but she is in shock.

But through that, Melanie is aware that she’s handed over some power to the police officer. To his credit, Harry pretends that he didn’t hear her stupid, inane remark. Instead, he looks down at his notebook. — Jim came back with you and the girls, yes?

— Yes, Melanie says, flinching. Then she goes into a shivering spasm, just as Harry looks up.

— Are you okay?

Melanie takes a deep breath and nods. — It’s scary to think that they were so close to the girls . . . She looks back at the pictures on the table, regaining her composure. — What do you think happened?

— Well, we don’t have the official pathologist’s report yet, but initial examinations indicate multiple stab wounds.

— Oh my God, Melanie says, then maybe too quickly asks, — Do you think this guy’s murder was gang-related?

— Santiago’s dead, Coover’s vanished. Perhaps Coover killed him after some petty dispute and tried to make it look gang-related by taking him out to sea, but he never figured on Holly . . . but you never really know with those guys, though. Harry tapped the pen on his notebook again. — They might have been high, had an argument, hell, whatever . . . that strip of the beach is normally busy, but after Independence
Day . . . The full forensics report is due soon, he offers, then his tone changes. — But listen, Mel, it’s obviously not my job to jump to conclusions. I’m telling you this in confidence as a friend, he says, then pauses, looking hopefully at her.

Melanie is grateful, without knowing just how indebted he expects her to be. — I appreciate it, Harry.

— But I’m also being candid because I know that I can discuss this rationally with you, given your experience of men like those . . . and he pauses again, as Melanie feels a ringing in her ears, — . . . through your work.

— Thanks . . .

— Anyway, those guys are no great loss, Harry says cheerfully, folding up the documents, — two very dangerous individuals, and he rises to his feet.

Melanie stands up too. — Yes, that was apparant by their behaviour.

— There’s another theory, he nods, scrutinising her reaction, — that Coover might be dead as well. So while these guys are dangerous, they were maybe not as dangerous as whoever took them out. If anybody did.

— Right, Melanie says. She can feel her mind starting to tumble, and knows that Harry is trying to read her again. She attempts to switch her thoughts to Devereux Slough, the marine life and those nesting terns that so interested Jim.

— So how is Jim? Harry sings breezily.

— Back in Scotland. A family bereavement, and she heads through the hall to the front porch, compelling him to follow. Hoping, for once, that he would be distracted with his eyes on her ass.

— Sorry to hear it. Anybody close? She hears his disembodied voice behind her, thin and metallic.

Melanie opens the front door and turns to face him. — Thankfully, no, she says, unflinchingly. It was easier to say than it should have been. But she has told Harry more than enough. — Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to pick the kids up.

— Of course, he smiles, sauntering out. — Good to see you. I’ll keep you posted, and he gives her a little salute before he heads off down the driveway.

The best way to go to Leith is on foot, right down the Walk from the city centre. Franco had been determined to savour every step of the descending trek, but stopped at a couple of cut-price electrical stores. Neither had a UK-to-US power adaptor, or a UK lead for the iPhone. Instead they had tried to sell him almost every other electrical or phone-related product or service imaginable. He’d declined, and headed back outside.

The rain has started to fall, so he jumps on a bus down Leith Walk. By the time he gets to Pilrig it has eased off, so he disembarks after a couple of stops, striding to the Foot of the Walk, along Junction Street, down Ferry Road, to Fort House. The imposing building, a monument to sixties muni-cipal architecture, is now eerily empty, but they haven’t yet pulled it down. He looks at the huge walls that surround the scheme, and casts an eye over the flats. There was the Rentons’ old house, Keasbo’s, Matty’s . . . but there really is nothing left any more. A melancholia descends upon him, and he heads towards the Firth, following the cries of the gulls. He soon finds himself traversing through a saturated new-build housing development at Newhaven. It has rendered the area unrecognisable to him.

Elspeth had no number for their brother Joe, just an address he’d left her when he’d turned up around a fortnight past, drunk and looking to borrow cash. It seemed a long shot that he’d still be at the same place. Joe was an established couch-surfing jakey, staggering from one insecure Housing Association tenancy or the beneficence of an old pal on to the next, burning down organisations and friendships as he went.

This area had been designated part of the new Leith for urban professionals, but the flats had been constructed with poor building materials, and with no social amenities around the recession had rendered them unsaleable. The developers cut their losses and handed them over to the Housing Association who rented them to breadline council tenants, often those evicted from the big schemes for antisocial behaviour. So the few young professionals who had been misguided enough to purchase such properties found themselves trapped in an embryonic ghetto.

To Franco’s astonishment, Joe is still at the address and answers almost immediately, cheerlessly opening the door, then going back inside, urging him to follow. His brother regarded him in such a perfunctory manner, it was as if Franco had just nipped out for a packet of cigarettes, rather than to California for six years. Joe Begbie, wearing a parka, slumps onto the couch, and swigs at a plastic litre bottle of flat-looking cider, seeming relieved when Franco refuses a slug.

Franco casts his eyes around the small, barren room. The walls are painted white, and are grubby around the light switches. The beige carpet, sticky under his feet, is discoloured with different spillage. The place is littered with empty food
cartons, beverage cans and overflowing ashtrays. It seems an advertisement for how a middle-aged man shouldn’t be living.

— That Sandra, Frank, ye were right aboot her. You had that cow sussed, Joe offers, eyes red and sunken, as he augments his cider consumption with a nip of whisky from a bottle of Grouse.

He makes to pass it to Franco who again waves it away, as he thinks of Sandra and chips. He’s always associated the two after a teenage sex incident up the old goods yard. — Kick ye oot, aye?

— Fuckin evil bitch, Joe hisses, his eyes burning. — Poisoned the kids against ays n everything. He shakes his head, then his face suddenly fills with cheer. — Still, good tae see you again. Kent you’d be back!

— Just for the funeral. Then ah bolt.

Joe’s face crumples into a scowl as he lowers the whisky onto a wooden coffee table, the periphery of which is discoloured by cigarette burns. — Dinnae tell ays yir no lookin for the cunt that did Sean! Ah’ve been lookin!

— Aye, fae that couch?

— Ah’ve been lookin! Joe protests. — It’s no that easy . . . you dinnae ken what it’s like roond here now . . .

— Aye, life kin be hard, Franco blandly concedes.