Free Stay by Nicola Griffith Page A

interacting. I didn’t think I could stand one more day of concrete and braying voices.
    Washington Square Park was crowded with dog walkers, mime artists, skateboarders, street musicians, jugglers, and chess players; tourists seethed so thickly around the fountains that I could only see the top of the water spout and couldn’t hear it at all; people sat in ones and twos at the foot of every tree, reading.
    Maybe Karp’s book would tell me something about him.
    The Village is full of bookstores. I bought a copy, carried it back to the park, and folded myself onto the grass to read.
    Several case studies, complete with photos. A hint of smugness, perhaps, gleaming cold and hard through the personable prose. Again that boast: he needed no office but his cell phone and his laptop. No other scrap of information about where he was born, where he lived, who he was.
    A pair of police officers strolled down the bike path, a white man and Hispanic woman, nodding occasionally to passersby, smiling at a toddler being dragged along by his parents. Obviously officers specially trained to be nice to tourists. Their eyes remained watchful.
    I turned the book over and over in my hand, front and back, back and forth, feeling its weight, taking its measure, the way an antique dealer might handle a jade carving, or a sculptor her wood. I put it on the grass in front of me, turned my face up to the hazy sun. In North Carolina, the sun would be yellow as an egg yolk on a blue plate, and leaves would be drifting down onto the cabin roof.
    I picked the book up again, riffled through the pages from back to front, and there it was, the copyright notice: © Koi Productions. Hiding behind his own cleverness.
    I had to walk a few yards before my phone got a decent signal. Information gave me the address: Koi Productions, 393 West Broadway. The SoHo loft.
    I took three cabs, getting in and out after random intervals, before I found a driver who spoke English and who spent just a second too long looking in the rearview mirror at the roll of money I took from my pocket. His ID said his name was Joe Czerna; he had a red nose and gray hair. Late fifties, maybe. I made my body language younger, more excited. I smiled a lot, as though nervous.
    “So, Joe, what’s it like driving a cab in New York?”
    He shrugged. “It’s okay.”
    “Bet you get some real wackos to deal with sometimes.”
    “Sometimes.”
    “You ever see anyone get shot?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Did you call the cops?”
    “Nobody shot me. I just drive. I got money to earn.”
    “You want to earn some money for helping me?”
    Pause. “How much?”
    “A hundred, plus fare and tip.”
    “You gonna shoot anybody?”
    I laughed. “No, no. No shooting, but some people might be upset. It’s my sister, y’know? She’s, like, a bit crazy. I’m gonna go get her, from where she’s staying with her boyfriend. But she might not want to come, y’know?”
    “No drugs, nothing like that? I don’t want no throwing up in my car.”
    “Nothing like that. Just some yelling, maybe. Okay?”
    “Your sister?”
    “My sister.”
    “My family shout alla time. Where you want to go?”
    “West Broadway.”
    It didn’t take long. I got out, tore a hundred-dollar bill in half, gave one piece to him, and put the other in my pocket. “Wait for me. I shouldn’t be longer than half an hour maybe.”
    He tapped the meter. “Gonna keep this running, too.”
    “Okay, whatever. But wait.”
    I was beginning to wake up. I had been too long in the woods. I had forgotten, for a while, to be cautious. Bears and bobcats could be dangerous, but they didn’t feel the need to hide, and they weren’t smart enough to hide their addresses. If I needed to get Tammy away against her will or anyone else’s, I wanted a cabbie with a vested interest in taking what would look like a risky fare. Of course, she might not even be there, in which case I’d just wasted a hundred dollars.
    Number 393 was a brick-faced