“Hoping so. She found them in an estate sale in Sydney. They were made in the early Eighties, for the wife of a very successful property developer. Couture, exclusive fabrics. The sellers had no idea, but in order to do really well with them, it’s either here, now, or Tokyo. And the significant Japanese buyers are all here, today, and Paris adds a certain symbolic leverage. They were made here.”

“She was tiny,” Hollis said, reaching out to touch a fabric-covered button, but stopping.

“Would you like to see a photograph of her wearing one?”

“Really?”

“Mere found them in the papers, in Australian city glossies. Even a bit of video.”

“No, thanks,” Hollis said, the eight brightly suited dress forms feeling suddenly like tomb statuary, power objects, the fetishes of a departed shamaness, occultly cocked and ready.

“There are handbags too, purses. Like new. She has them here but decided not to display them. Because they’re a bit more affordable, she’d just have to show them repeatedly. Doesn’t want them pawed over by the punters.”

“Did Clammy tell you what I’m after, George?”

“Not exactly, but now you’re here, I’m guessing it’s about your jacket.”

It felt odd, hearing someone outside of Bigend’s circle, other than Clammy, reference Hounds. “How much do you know about that?”

“No more than Clammy, I imagine. She’s very closely held, Mere is. Business like this is more about keeping secrets than advertising.”

“How’s that?”

“There aren’t that many serious buyers. Quite a few serious dealers, though.”

She’d liked him, when they’d met at Cabinet, and found she liked him now. “Clammy says that Mere knew someone, when she was at that footwear college in London,” she said, deciding to trust him. As usual, she surprised herself in this, but once in, you rolled with it. “Someone associated with Gabriel Hounds.”

“That may be,” George said, smiling. The proportions of his skull were oddly reversed, jaw and cheekbones massive, brows heavy, forehead scarcely the width of two fingers, between a unibrow and his densely caplike haircut. “But best I don’t speak of it.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Bit before Clammy met her in Melbourne. Well, that’s not true, but I already fancied her. She claims it wasn’t mutual at all then, but I have my doubts.” He smiled.

“She’s living back in London? Here?”

“Melbourne.”

“That’s seriously long-distance.”

“It is.” He frowned. “Inchmale,” he said, “while I have you.”

“Yes?’

“He’s certainly hard on Clammy, mixing the bed tracks. I’ve stayed well out of it.”

“Yes?”

“Can you give me any advice? Anything that might make working with him easier?”

“You’ll be going to Arizona soon,” she said. “Tucson. There’s a very small studio there, owner’s Inchmale’s favorite engineer. They’ll do some initially very alarming things to your London bed tracks. Let them. Then you’ll basically rerecord the entire album. But very quickly, almost painlessly, and I imagine you’ll be extremely pleased with the result. I’ve already told Clammy that, but I’m not sure it got through.”

“He didn’t do that on the first album he produced for us, and we were a lot closer to Tucson then.”

“You weren’t there yet. In terms of his process. You are now. Or almost, I’d say.”

“Thanks,” he said, “that’s good to know.”

“Call me, if you’re getting exasperated. You will. Clammy will, in any case. But you’ve jumped with him, and if you let him, he’ll land on his feet, and the album with him. He’s not very diplomatic at the best of times, and he gets less so, the further into the process you go with him. Any idea when Mere will be back?”

He consulted a very large wristwatch, the color of a child’s toy fire engine. “Going on an hour now,” he said, “but I’ve really no idea. Wish she’d get back myself. I’m dying for coffee.”

“Cafe in the courtyard?”

“Indeed. Large black?”

“You got it,” she said.

“You can take the lift,” he said, pointing.

“Thanks.”

It was German, with a brushed stainless interior, the philosophical opposite of Cabinet’s, but not much larger. She pushed 1, but when it passed 0, she realized that she’d pushed -1.

The door opened on a dim, blue-lit void, and utter silence.

She stepped out.

Ancient stone groins, receding toward the street, illuminated by concealed disco floodlights, dialed down low. A small impromptu corral of what she took to be spare Salon du Vintage gear, on the bare stone floor, dwarfed by the arches. Folding chrome sample racks, a few dress forms looking Dali-esque in this light.

All quite wonderfully unexpected.

And then, at the far end of the blue arches, descending stairs, a figure. As described by Milgrim. The short-brimmed cap, short black jacket, zipped up tight.

He saw her.

She stepped back into the elevator, pressing 0.

22. FOLEY

Milgrim, with Hollis’s laptop clamped firmly under his arm, bag over the other shoulder, walked rapidly along a smaller street, away from the one where her vintage clothing fair was being held.

He needed wifi. He regretted not borrowing the red dongle.

Now he neared a place called Bless, at first mistaking it for a bar. No, a place that sold clothing, he saw. There might be someone in there, he supposed, glancing in the window, who would either know about or pretend to know about Hollis’s phantom jeans line.

He kept walking, simultaneously conducting an imaginary exchange with his therapist, one in which they sorted out what he was feeling. Having worked very hard to avoid feeling much of anything, for most of his adult life, recognizing even the simplest of his emotions could require remedial effort.

Angry, he decided. He was angry, though he didn’t yet know who or what at. If Winnie Tung Whitaker, Special Agent, had sent the man in the foliage green pants, and hadn’t told him, he thought he’d be angry with her. Disappointed, anyway. That wouldn’t be getting off on the right foot, in what he thought of as a new professional relationship. Or perhaps, his therapist suggested, he was angry with himself. That would be more complicated, less amenable to self-analysis, but more familiar.

Better to be angry with the man in the foliage green pants, he thought. Mr. Foliage Green. Foley. He didn’t feel kindly disposed toward Foley. Though he had absolutely no idea who Foley might be, what he was up to, or whether Foley was following him, Hollis, or the both of them. If Foley wasn’t working for or with Winnie, he might be working for Blue Ant, or for Bigend more privately, or, given Bigend’s apparent new attitude toward Sleight, for Sleight. Or none of the above. He might be some entirely new part of the equation.

“But is there an equation?” he asked himself, or his therapist. Though she now seemed not to be answering.

Rue du Temple, a wall plaque informed him at the corner, on a building looking as though it had been drawn by Dr. Seuss. A larger street, Temple. He turned right. Past an ornate, Victorian-looking Chinese restaurant. Discovering a smoke shop that also offered coffee, its official, spindle-shaped, red-lit Tabac sign presenting nicotine-lack as a medical emergency. Without slowing, he entered.

“Wifi?”

“Oui.”

“Espresso, please.” Taking a place at the authentically nonreflective zinc counter. There was a faint but definite smell of cigarette smoke, though no one was smoking. Indeed, he was the only customer here.

His therapist had suspected that his inability with Romance languages was too thorough, too tidily complete, thus somehow emotionally based, but they had been unable get to the bottom of it.

Obtaining the password (“dutemple”) from the counterman, he logged on to Twitter, his password there a transliteration of the Russian for “gay dolphin,” the Cyrillic loosely rendered in approximation on the Roman keyboard.