Zero History

24. HUNCH
Milgrim sat at a table in the courtyard’s busy café, camera in his lap, cycling through his
four shots of Foley.
The two from behind might be useful if you wanted to send someone to follow him.
The quarter profile, against a glare of Eighties color, was actually less useful. Could be
anyone. Had women’s clothing actually been that bright, in the Eighties?
But this one, which he’d shot blind, by reaching around, behind a hennaed German
girl, was excellent. The girl had given him a dirty look, for getting too close. He’d smelled
her perfume; something pointedly inorganic. The scent of coolly focused concentration,
perhaps. “Sorry,” he’d said, and stepped back, palming the little camera, wondering if
he’d captured Foley, who now had vanished again.
He’d looked down, summoned the image. And had found Foley, zoomed, in tight
focus, crookedly off-center in the frame. He’d seen how Foley’s sunglasses had left slight
tan lines, recalling the porn rectangle he’d worn on the link Winnie had sent. The cap’s
short bill effectively concealed his forehead, cutting out a good deal of emotional
information. His features were smooth, as if untouched by experience, and confident, a
confidence that Milgrim suspected he might not entirely be feeling. Something he’d try to
project, regardless of the situation.
With the camera semiconcealed in his right hand, Milgrim had moved on, scanning the
busy Salon for Foley. He’d soon found him, but simultaneously had found Hollis, who
was listening intently to a younger woman in jeans and a white shirt. Hollis had seen him,
he was certain. Milgrim, focused on Foley’s receding back, had ignored her, avoiding
eye-connect. When Foley had descended the stairs, Milgrim had followed, then had
watched as Foley left the building.
He’d gone into the courtyard, ordered an espresso, and settled down to study his
photographs.
Now he turned the camera off, opened the little hatch on the bottom and removed the
blue card, the size of a postage stamp. When had he last used an actual postage stamp? He
couldn’t remember. It gave him a strange feeling to even think of one. He reached down,
hiked the cuff of his new pants, and slipped the card quite far down into his sock, which
he then pulled up, allowing his cuff to fall back into place.
He was not a methodical man by nature, his therapist had said, but the constant ongoing
state of emergency imposed by his active addiction had shown him the practical
advantages of method, which had then become habit.
He took an unused card from the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted it, with the
usual difficulty, from its cardboard backing. He inserted it, closed the hatch, and slipped
the camera into the side pocket of his jacket.