On her fifth week on the job, Samantha began to feel disappointment creeping in on her. She still organized rigorously and kept both herself and Hayes to the plans laid out for them, but the days went by more slowly. Looking back on the past weeks, it was difficult to say what they had accomplished. Her work had become condensed to mere paperwork and research, just facts and figures to feed Hayes before each interview. Conversations about violence and horrible suspicions drifted by, and she wrote them down without any expectation of redress. It became difficult to remember that often there were fortunes at stake when the day seemed to repeat itself again and again, with no hint of progress gained.
Hayes seemed to feel similarly. Each day he swept into the room, his eyes alight with a mad, dancing spark as he did his little performance, and then when he was done he shambled out, little and tired again. They did not speak much beyond work. They nodded hello and went about their business and then parted. Each time she reflected that she really knew very little about the man she was paid to assist.
So it came as a surprise one day when, as they packed up and prepared to leave, Hayes turned to her and said, “Well, Sam, I believe that went rather well, didn’t it?”
“I would say so, yes,” she said.
“Care for some dinner?”
She thought about it, wondering if it was some ploy. “If you’re sure.”
“Of course I’m sure,” he said. “Bit of food would do us both good.”
They ate boiled beef and cabbage at a bar across the street, a dim and murky place built of weeping wood. They sat at a scarred table in the corner, and she had a glass of stale tea and he a porter, telling her offhandedly that she was not to tell anyone about that as he was supposed to be bone-dry, you know, but every once in a while a man has to put a toe out of line. They exchanged curt comments about the food or about work, and Hayes drank beer until his lips were a thin black-brown and his cheeks gained color. Eventually he asked her where she was staying, and when she said Newton he cried, “My God. You’re practically living among royalty. How did you land that?”
“Mr. Evans arranged it for me, actually. It is quite nice,” she said haltingly.
“A bit too nice?”
“Maybe a little. I’m not really used to such treatment.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Evans is just fond of young girls in the most boring way possible. Thinks they’re his children. I’d ride it out, if I were you.” Hayes sloshed down more beer and said, “Where did you live in Cairo, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“In my father’s house,” she said.
“Do you miss it?”
“Yes. Yes. Very much.”
His eyelids fluttered. “Would you tell me about it?”
“What? Why?”
“Because I’m curious, I suppose. I have you watching over my shoulder all day. I thought I might learn a bit about you. Can’t I order you to tell me, or something?”
“You are not my direct superior,” she said.
“Well. You’re my assistant. Just assist me with it, then.”
She sighed. She looked at Hayes and saw that familiar light in his eyes she’d seen in their interviews, that hunger to take a person apart and learn their story, like studying and dating a fossil found deep in the earth.
“My house?”
“Yes.”
“It was small,” she said. “Very small. We lived on the second story. I did, I mean. Below us was a large family. Their father was a tradesman. He dealt in spice, and downstairs it always smelled strange. Strange but beautiful. People sang in the mornings and throughout the day, calling people to prayer. I never prayed with them, it wouldn’t have been appropriate. But I often wish I had. I don’t know why.”
Hayes shut his eyes. He took a deep breath as though he could catch that same exotic fragrance. “It sounds very nice,” he said.
“It was. Very nice.”
“What did your father think of your transition to here?”
“My father has been dead for ten years.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s all right. It was ten years, after all.”
“If it was all so nice, why did you accept this position?” he asked.
She put her spoon down as she considered the question. “Well. It would have been impossible to say no.”
“Why?”
“Because… because this is Evesden. This is the most famous city in the world. I mean, I’ve worked for McNaughton for a few years, but never here, never at the main office. At the Nail. I had been looking for a chance to go further, and when this came along I couldn’t refuse.”
“Yes. I suppose I forget how this city seems to the outside,” he said. “Do you regret it? Taking the position, I mean?”
“No. Should I?”
“Well, you seem like a capable, career-minded young woman. It’s lucky you’re working for one of the more liberal places around, but you could really get a leg up if you did something else here.”
“This is a leg up,” she said.
Hayes lit a cigarette and spat smoke out the side of his mouth. “No it isn’t.”
“This is a position of extreme importance, operating for some of the most powerful people in the country. Of course this is significant.”
“Oh, all right, but beyond that? Beyond wanting a pat on the head from the fogies upstairs?”
Samantha glared at him. “I don’t want a pat on the-”
“I apologize,” he said, immediately and insincerely. “Very sorry. Totally out of line. But honestly. What do you want, beyond the prestige?”
“It’s also putting things to right,” she said, trying to believe it. “Keeping things safe. Protecting people. Prosecuting the murders in the lower ranks.”
Hayes was quiet. He swilled his beer around at the bottom of his glass, watching the slick muddy tide wash up and down the sides. “There was a man once,” he said. “A man named Teddy. Teddy Montrose. This was a few years ago, mind. Engineer. Worked in Telecommunications, Teddy did. Teddy handled a lot of high-security designs. Oversaw a lot of important information being passed back and forth. Then one day Brightly calls me up and says, Hayes, my boy, we think there’s something amiss with our dear friend Teddy. In fact, we think he’s running something on the side. There’s a lot of Russian traffic up north along the coast, and there’s talk that someone in Telecommunications is going to pass some information about trade agreements on to them. Teddy’s our weak link, my boy, the chink in our armor. The likely spot, yes? So why don’t you look into Teddy and make sure everything’s tip-top. And of course I say sure, Larry. Sure thing.”
Hayes sat up and hunched over his glass, blond head crooked on his shoulders. “So I did. I did look into Teddy. I followed him for about a month. Spent a lot of time in empty rooms, staring out the window. Spent hours watching his family. He was a nice fellow, Teddy. Two kids, Honoria and Jessica. They liked the river market, I remember that. Nice wife. Sort of dull, though. Elizabeth, I think her name was. Liked horses. I told Evans that, said he’d get along with her. Jim’s a horseman, you see. And I keep following him and following him, and I keep telling Brightly that there’s nothing here. This man’s straight as an arrow. Pure as the driven snow. Waste of time. But he just tells me to keep sitting on him. So I do.
“Eventually it breaks. Teddy told friends and family he was going on some business trip overnight, but I had no record of it. Instead he went east. East to Dockland, suitcase in his hand. To a little building. Next to where the painted women walk, the daughters of joy. But there were no women in that place. I checked, you see, went inside once he had done his bit and left. No. No, they just had a line of little boys. About seven years old, I’d say. All lined up on the wall in nice clean smocks. Bare legs, hands clasped before them. Heads bowed like they were waiting for teacher. The man in the front told me I could take my pick.
“I left. Thought about it for a while. And told Brightly.”
He licked his lips. “Brightly seemed satisfied by this. Very satisfied. Said I did a good job, and thank you for your discretion. But I found out later that there was no Russian connection. No leak on Teddy’s part at all. I asked Brightly about it. He got all shirty with me. Said that didn’t matter. When or if the time came that Montrose’s devotion wavered, he said, well, they had the stuff to get him in line, and now fuck off and forget about it. So that was that. And I never heard more about it.
“We still have Teddy working for us. I don’t think he knows we know. And it’s not my job to care, I guess. After all, this is what we do for a living, you and I. It’s a dirty game, but it’s the winning game.”
Then Hayes looked at her, eyes thin. “But we have our own game, too. Some of the things we’ve dug up in the interviews are very valuable. There are things I need to keep to myself, or give to my contact in the police.”
“The police?”
“Yes. Favors are pretty important in my business. Your business, now. Are you all right with that?”
“What would you give them?”
“Those boys McClintock talked about. I have someone who’d like to know about them. A detective. And we’re not taking any action on them, so someone might as well give it a go. So is that all right, Sam?”
She thought about it. She didn’t feel it was appropriate to contact the police, but then it didn’t seem like their investigation had done much at all so far, nor was it going to. It had been a sad thing to record horrible crimes but never act on them, and she was secretly desperate for it to end. And after hearing what Hayes had said about the nature of their position, she wasn’t sure if their investigation had much to do with justice in any way.
She nodded.
“All right,” he said. Then they stood and walked out to the street. It was raining again, a cold, soft sting that tickled the neck.
“I was wrong about you,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t last, at first. But you might.”
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“Because you’re not stupid. Not by a long shot. But this isn’t a desk job anymore, Miss Fairbanks. This isn’t an ordered world of archives and hierarchies, no matter what you’d like. We don’t live for the approval of our betters, no matter how happy it may make us feel. And the truth here is soft and runny. I know you’d like to stay in the back room, reading and writing and hunched over a desk, but that’s not the way now. See?”
“I see.” Then a thought came to her and her skin went cold. She peered at him and said, “Mr. Hayes, are you trying to turn me?”
“What? Turn you?”
“Yes. Like you do everyone else I’ve seen you speak to. Make them your friends, even though they hardly know you. Tell them whatever lies they need to hear. Is that what you’ve just tried to do, to me?”
He stared at her, and somehow he seemed to grow even smaller and older in his coat. “No, Sam,” he said softly. “No, I haven’t tried to do that with you. You’d know, wouldn’t you. Since you’ve seen me do it so often.”
She still watched him suspiciously. “Was anything you told me the truth?”
“Yes,” said Hayes. “It all was, actually.”
“Even Teddy Montrose?”
Hayes nodded.
“And he’s… he’s still working for us?”
“He’s climbed a few ladder rungs at Telecommunications now. Gone up a pay grade or two. But yes.”
She thought about that. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
He shrugged hopelessly. “Because they’re keeping things from us. From me, and from you. And because I don’t want Naylor and his boys to go unpunished or to do anything more, and I don’t think the unions will be spooked by the police nabbing a few thugs. I’ve seen organizations like theirs before, they’re too disparate. Their reactions are too slow.”
“Is that all?”
He stared at her for a moment longer. With his wet hair and soaking coat, he suddenly seemed like a lost child. “And because I want you to trust me, I suppose.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I just know you now, Sam.” Then he bid her good day, turned, and disappeared into the crowd.