Free Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) by Elizabeth Hand Page A

made my call.
    “Helsingin Taksi.”
    I gave him the bar’s address. The cab arrived a few minutes later, still blaring Wagner, and Lindblad nodded as I climbed in. “Back to Ullanlinna?”
    “Airport.”
    “You should like this,” he yelled, backing out of the alley. “Valkyries. Like you.” He jabbed at my reflection in the rearview mirror, then touched the outer corner of his eye. “That scar, right? You’re going home already? Helsinki in the winter is not a lot of fun. That’s why you should try Disneyland.”
    “Next time I’ll remember that,” I said, and braced myself as we careened out of town.

 
    10
    There were only two flights a day to Reykjavík. Icelandair wouldn’t let me pay cash, so I was stuck with a smaller operation that appeared to service vacation destinations near the Arctic Circle. No one seemed to want my money. When I tried to trade some of my euros for krónur at the currency exchange, the woman gave me a bored look.
    “We don’t do krónur.”
    “Is there anyplace else?”
    “No one is doing krónur.”
    I found a quiet corner, finished my Jack Daniel’s, then went through security. I got checked out thoroughly, presumably because I’d just paid cash for a one-way ticket to a country so broke it made me look like Bill Gates, if Gates traveled coach on a plane that had rolled off the assembly line back when Bono meant Sonny. The flight was nearly empty—four Japanese girls, a few people I assumed were Icelandic because they smiled more than the Finns, and me.
    I dozed fitfully for several hours, woke when we hit some turbulence and one of the Japanese girls behind me started hyperventilating. I looked out the window and saw a shimmering archipelago of lights far below—Iceland’s coast. A few minutes and the lights were gone. I searched for some other sign of life below us, but there was nothing. I fell back asleep and dreamed of gazing at an immense photographic negative, a vast sheet of black glass that splintered at my touch.
    *   *   *
    It was past midnight when we finally touched down. The Keflavik airport was empty, except for a single clerk at Border Control. I exited into what seemed like an abandoned shopping mall—shuttered duty-free shops, deserted seating areas, empty escalators moving up and down. The currency exchange was closed, and when I tried to use an ATM, it refused to convert my euros into krónur. I wondered what the black-market rate was for foreign money.
    Outside, a solitary bus idled in the pouring rain. The driver asked for a ticket. I gave him a couple of bills and clambered on board.
    The trip to Reykjavík was like a bus tour through Mordor. Black lava fields, an endless waste broken here and there by ruined machinery or a building of stained corrugated metal. No trees. No towns. No stars, no moon; nothing but black sky above and desolation below. Occasionally a streetlight shone through the rain, ominous as a UFO. Desultory ’70s music dribbled from the radio between the rhythmic shriek of the wiper blades. The Japanese girls tried in vain to get a cell-phone signal. One of them staggered on tippy-toe heels to the front of the bus and asked the driver about the northern lights.
    “Not cold enough,” he said.
    Finally we reached a stretch of suburban strip malls—gas stations, fast-food joints, an Icelandic megastore—and pulled onto a spur road into the city. At the bus station I followed the Japanese girls into a minivan that took us downtown. Narrow streets crowded with SUVs and Audis; sidewalks even more crowded with drunken kids. The van stopped in the middle of what looked like the main drag, where a neon HOTEL sign glowed above a metal awning. The girls straggled out, retrieved their luggage, and went inside. The driver looked at me.
    “Where to?”
    I realized I had no idea where to stay. I was too exhausted to think of looking for Quinn, too tired even to find a bar. I pointed at the hotel awning. “This place