Zero History

here. He scratched his chest, stood up, put his shirt on, buttoned the front and a few of
the cuff buttons on either sleeve, left it untucked, put on his new shoes. His old ones were
more comfortable, but they wouldn’t go with whipcord. He went to the door, tried it. Not
locked. He hadn’t thought it was. The driver whooped, twice.
He opened the door, stepped out, amazed to find the day gone. The filthiness of
Benny’s garage, under bright fluorescent light, instantly made the cube seem surgically
clean. Fiona and Benny were looking at Fiona’s bike, which now had a shiny white box
with slightly inward-slanting sides fastened where Milgrim had sat, behind her. It looked
solid, expensive, but sort of like a beer cooler. There was something on the side, in black,
neatly lettered.
“Red crosses?” Fiona asked Benny.
Benny had a yellow power wrench in his hand, a red rubber hose trailing away from it.
“Punters would be flagging you down for first aid. This is bog standard for hauling fresh
eyeballs. Copied from one that does just that, by the look of it.”
“The name and numbers?”
“You see it as received. Truck was from a prop house, Soho.” He removed the cigarette
tucked behind his ear, lit it. “Film and telly. That’s the plan, then? You’re doing telly?”
“Pornos,” said Fiona. “Saad’ll like that.”
“Won’t he just,” said Benny.
Fiona, noticing Milgrim, turned. “Hullo.”
“May I borrow your phone? Have to call someone.”
She fished in her slouchy armored pants, came up with an iPhone, not the one Milgrim
had used with the Festo ray, and passed it to him. “Hungry? We can have doner sent in.”
“Dinner?”
“Doner. Kebab.”
“Ready for a curry, myself,” said Benny, studying the lit tip of his cigarette intently, as
though it might suddenly offer curry reviews.
“I’ll just make this call—” He froze.
“Yes?”
“Is this … a Blue Ant phone?”
“No,” said Fiona. “Brand-new. So’s Benny’s. We’ve all been freshly resupplied, and the
old ones taken away.”
“Thanks,” said Milgrim, and went back into the Vegas cube. He found Winnie’s card,
on which he’d added the dialing prefixes, and dialed.
She answered on the second ring. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” said Milgrim.
“Where are you?”
“Suth-uk. Over the river.”
“Doing?”
“We had a nap.”