leads, one for garbage, and one for mail he hadn’t opened yet. That third pile had dwindled away to almost nothing.
‘I found him,’ Gordo said, waving the piece of paper in his hand. ‘He’s out on Staten Island. He’s at his mother’s house.’
CHAPTER 3
They gave Gant a bedroom, and a girl to go with it.
The bedroom was very large, with a gigantic bed and the girl draped across it. Cool stone floors and windows facing the ocean. Evening was coming in. Peach-colored curtains billowed in the light breeze. Wide double doors gave out onto a private balcony. Someone had left him a cart on rollers with a bottle of spirits, as well as a bottle each of red and white wine. Also, there were some finger sandwiches, a pitcher of water and a bucket of ice. He barely glanced at the wines or the sandwiches. The whiskey was Glenfiddich 30-year-old Scotch, so that was good news. He poured three fingers-worth into a glass, without ice or water, and sipped it, enjoying the taste and the feel of the fire entering his belly.
The girl was fair-skinned and young, just old enough to be out of high school. She was dressed in an electric blue sarong and a bikini top, and had a body with so many curves that it was almost an outlandish cartoon of the female form. She spoke English with a strong accent from somewhere. Her eyes were green, and while Gant stared out at the breakers marching toward land far below him, he felt those eyes on his back.
‘Russia?’ he said, still facing away from her.
‘Moldova,’ she answered.
He shrugged. Same difference to him. Commies. They lost, we won. It took a hell of a bite out of some of us, but we did win. He turned now, and took a long look at her. Good Lord, he remembered how they used to make you think Eastern Bloc women were huge, ugly – powerlifters in the Olympics. Of course, after the collapse it turned out nothing could be further from the truth. He thought of maps and how one day the Soviet Union was this big red smear across the top of the world, and the next day there were all these little countries you never heard of there instead, places like Tajikistan, and Belarus, and Moldova. He remembered air raid sirens and how in junior high school, when the sirens sounded, the teachers used to make the kids go out in the hallway, kneel in front of the lockers, and cover their heads with their arms. Each kid had to kneel in front of his or her own locker. Gant figured that if the nukes ever came, whoever was left afterward would know him as the pile of radioactive dust on the floor at the base of locker number 126.
Gant remembered other things as well, things that happened during his time as a soldier for the United States of America, but he pushed them aside for now. He sighed, just a little. This girl was probably too young to know the history, or even care. She didn’t know she was a trophy taken from a defeated people. Well anyway, she was here, and he was here, so he might as well put her to her intended use. To the victor go the spoils, after all.
‘Wine?’ he said.
‘Yes, please. Red, with ice.’
He grimaced at the thought of it, but uncorked the bottle and poured it for her. She drank it fast and he poured her another. She downed it and he poured yet another. If she needed to numb up, so be it. From her perspective, this could hardly be the ideal romantic encounter. She drank about half of her third glass then put it aside on the table. She removed her top and her sarong. Her body coming free reminded Gant of wild horses galloping on a high plateau. He sipped his whiskey.
‘Who are you available to?’ he said.
She stared at him, her head slightly to the side, her pretty mouth open just a bit. She didn’t understand. For a moment, Gant tried to think of another delicate way to put it, then decided he couldn’t be bothered.
‘Do you have to fuck everybody?’
‘Oh. No, only guests. You. The fat politician. People like that.’
‘The gunmen?’
She shook her head. ‘Uh-uh. I stay far away from them. They are animals.’
‘Do you ever see a doctor?’
‘Every month. The old man’s doctor himself sees me.’
He joined her on the bed. She’d been with the fat politician, and recently – Harting, Hartley, whatever his name was – that wasn’t great news, but it could have been worse. She could have been servicing the goon squad every day, too. Gant ran a hand along her leg, and soon forgot about the guards, and the good representative, and even Fielding himself. He took his time, even though he knew it was all about him, and not about her at all. Once, he looked into her face and saw that her mind was elsewhere, maybe running on that high green field with all those beautiful horses. Afterward, they lay on top of the sheets, not tangled, not even touching. Gant picked up his drink where he’d left off.
He looked at the girl and her sad face. An artist could make a painting of her – Tragic Girl. Gant was nothing if not curious – he could attribute his success to several factors, including luck, but certainly one of the factors was that he had a voracious appetite for knowing things.
‘OK Moldova, how did you wind up here?’
She polished off the last of her wine, then stood on unsteady legs and fixed herself another one. ‘I was poor, but men always liked me from the time I am young.’ She shrugged, probably at the self-evident truth of her statement. ‘I was dancer in club. A woman came to my village and told me about good jobs abroad. I could be cleaner in hotel, or work as hostess. I sign up, pay some money, and they bring me here. I owe more money, of course. And so maybe I can never leave.’
Gant thought maybe the whiskey, combined with the travel and his tiredness, had given him a buzz. He wasn’t sure he had the girl’s responsibilities down pat just yet. ‘Do you also clean up around here?’ he said.
She gave him a baleful look. ‘Island women come and clean. They have to be searched every time they come. I don’t know how to clean. I fuck instead.’
‘Do you hate it?’
‘It bores me. I fuck, I eat, and I watch the satellite TV from America. Stupid reality shows, people shouting at each other, and then crying, and giving hugs. We read The Great Gatsby in school in Moldova. It is the best story. I owned a poster of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I hung this on the wall in my room. The great American writer. But they don’t show these things on the TV. The greatness is over. I think all Americans must be stupid now.’
She was on to something, but Gant didn’t want to get into it. What to do or say about an entire nation of overweight, lazy people so addled by junk television and junk food and prescription drugs that they had only recently begun to notice they were systematically lied to, and robbed blind and left to sink in quicksand? Only now, long after the cheese had been moved, were some of the mice starting to wake up to that fact.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘at least you probably don’t have to fuck all that much. I mean, there can’t be that many guests.’
‘Howe. The assistant. I have to fuck him, too.’
Gant felt a knife twist in his heart. He didn’t even have to examine the feeling – it was a visceral response. ‘I wish you had mentioned that earlier. I don’t like Howe.’
‘I don’t, either.’
‘Is there anything you do like about this place?’
She didn’t hesitate. ‘The view.’
Gant nodded. ‘It’s a great view. Anything else?’
It took her a moment to come up with something more. ‘Howe’s wife and daughter live on the grounds here in guest house, so I never have to spend whole night with him.’
The conversation made Gant sleepy. He lay back with his glass propped on his chest and closed his eyes. He could sip his Scotch with only the slightest movement of his hand and his chin. His mind drifted from its moorings and began to scan through the past, settling here and there on various memories. It was a pleasant sensation. He smiled.
Gant was nobody to mess with.
