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bugger was refusing to front him any more cash until he’d seen a story he could run with. Catch-22. He needed more money if he was going to be able to give Giles that story. So now he was looking for a spin-off, something he could sell elsewhere. Jesus, he’d already pitched at a couple of travel editors, pieces about San Diego, the border, Tijuana, La Jolla. He’d do the zoo or Sea World if they wanted it! But they didn’t want anything from him. They knew his reputation. Knew several of his reputations. They knew he was bad with deadlines, and didn’t write nice little travel articles to be read over the Sunday cornflakes and coffee. That wasn’t journalism anyway—it was filler, an excuse for a cramming of ads, and he’d told three travel editors exactly that. Also that they could go bugger themselves.
    Which left him running out of money fast, and reduced to cheap motels where they cleaned the rooms once a week and skimped on the towels. He had to work faster. Either that or take CWC’s money, use it to placate Giles, and buy a holiday with whatever was left. Everyone would be happier that way. Maybe even he’d be happier. But it didn’t work like that. There was a story out there, and if he didn’t get it, it would nag him for months, years even. Like the time he had to give up on the Faslane story. He’d been working for a London paper then, and the proprietor had told the editor to rein him in. He’d fumed, then resigned, then decided he didn’t want to resign—so they fired him. He’d gone back to the story, working freelance, but couldn’t get any further with it, and no one wanted to publish what he had except Private Eye, who’d given it half a page at the back of the mag.
    God bless the Fourth Estate!
    He had another cigarette, then pulled the phone off the bedside cabinet.
    Once, he would have been living in a Hyatt or Holiday Inn, maybe even a Marriott. But times had changed, and James Reeve with them. He was meaner now; meaner in both senses. He left smaller tips (when he tipped at all: that guy in Reservoir Dogs had a point), and he was less pleasant. Poor people can’t afford to be pleasant; they’re too busy barely getting by.
    Eddie’s phone kept ringing and ringing, and Reeve let it ring until it was answered.
    “What? What?”
    “Good morning, sir,” Reeve said sweetly, smoke pouring down his nose, “this is your requested alarm call.”
    There were groans and hacking coughs at the other end of the line. It was good to feel you weren’t alone in your afflictions.
    “You scumbag, you loathsome string of shit, you complete and utter douchehead.”
    “What is this?” said Reeve. “Dial-a-Foulmouth?”
    Eddie Cantona wheezed, trying to speak and laugh and light a cigarette all at the same time. “So what’s our schedule?” he finally said.
    “Just get over here and pick me up. I’ll think of something.”
    “Thirty minutes, okay?”
    “Make it half an hour.” James Reeve hung up the phone. He liked Eddie, liked him a lot. They’d met in a bar in the Gaslamp Quarter. The bar had a western theme and sold ribs and steaks. You ate at a long, hewn wooden bench, or at hewn wooden tables, and at the bar they served the tap beer in Mason jars. It was an affectation, yes, and it meant you didn’t get a lot of beer for your money—but it was good beer, almost good enough and dark enough to be English.
    Reeve had come into the dark, cool bar after a hot, unprofitable walk in the sunshine; and he’d drunk too many beers too quickly. And he’d got talking to the man on the stool beside him, who introduced himself as Eddie Cantona. Reeve started off by saying there was a football player called Cantona, then had to explain that he meant soccer, and that the player himself was French.
    “It’s a Spanish name,” Eddie persisted. And it was, too, the way he said it, turning the middle syllable into toe and dragging the whole name out—whereas in England the commentators would try