Free Stay by Nicola Griffith

tapped diligently on her tiny keypad and frowned at the display. The web. Of course. You had to have an official billing address for a credit card or utility, but you could pay by phone or online.
    Somewhere, Karp would have an e-mail address, maybe even a business website. I didn’t have my laptop and my phone screen was tiny, its processing power more suited to instant text than a web search.
    A hard-eyed young thing behind the counter asked me what she could get me. I ordered latte, and dropped two ones in the tip jar. “Where’s the nearest library?” I asked.
    “Library? Public library?”
    “Yes. Where is it?”
    “Hold on.” She called back over her shoulder to the man behind the espresso machine. “Hal, the library’s at Sixth and Tenth, right?”
    “Around there, yeah.”
    She turned back to the counter and spoke to the customer behind me. “Get you something?”
    The library was an imposing brown-and-white building that looked like a cross between a Gothic cathedral and the Doge’s Palace. There were two Macs on the second floor, one, on the right, already taken by a woman in her fifties, who froze when I came into her peripheral vision, and stared rigidly at her screen until I sat.
    A Google search brought me eight hundred hits, none of which seemed to be a home page. There was a profile from
Talk
a year ago, a
Business Week
cover spread, and literally dozens of features in obscure trade journals, both print and web-based. Interestingly, there was no photo: both the
Talk
and
Business Week
articles were accompanied by the cover illustration for his book,
Hostage Exchange: Their Money for Your Goods
, which had been reprinted in a paperback edition last month.
    The woman next to me had relaxed enough to resume her tapping. Every now and again she sighed loudly.
    There were several links relating to recent and forthcoming appearances; he was doing a reading and signing at the Citicorp Center Barnes and Noble in four days. I skimmed half a dozen interviews: repeated citations of design awards, recycled plaudits from a variety of retail executives, including a glowing but utterly impersonal quote from the Nordstrom VP of Full Service Stores, some number-dense analyses of retail sales from various stores pre- and post-consultation with Karp, and one snippet in an article written almost five years ago about how Karp worked from his SoHo loft “with a cell phone and a laptop.”
    The articles shared a sameness that hinted at very, very careful information management by Karp. It wasn’t easy to control the editorial content of magazines. I wondered how he had done it. Then I laughed, aloud, which made the sighing woman look at me sharply—funny how tiny infractions made people bold. I gave her a smile with a lot of teeth.
    Most magazines rely on advertising revenue; many advertisers are retailers; Karp had great contacts in the retail world. A discreet word here, a favor called in there would bend a few rules. But favors were usually costly in any profession. What did he have to hide?
    I wrote down the number and address but knew it wouldn’t be for Tammy, and found nothing promising. I tried again on Bigfoot with the same results.
    I followed a few more links. Nothing. Why was he so careful? What was he afraid of?
    On my way past the woman at the other computer I stopped. Her shoulders hunched but she didn’t turn around. “You should always look,” I told the back of her head. “Not looking never kept anyone safe.”
    Outside, I called the Brooklyn number. A machine picked up after four rings. “Hi, this is Gina Karp. Leave a number. You know the drill.”
    I closed the phone. A loft in SoHo, but five years ago. Not much else. Just the book, and the bookstore signing in four days. If all else failed, I could go to that and follow him home, or go to the restaurants and bars listed most frequently on his statement and hope he showed up. Either alternative meant staying in New York, talking to people,