The Book of Air and Shadows

21

It’s snowing now, a heavy wet snow such as they get in the Northeast when the temperature is just cold enough for snow to form. I am back at the keyboard after a bracing trip in the chill. I visited the boathouse again and checked out the old mahogany speedboat. It is a seventeen-foot 1947 Chris-Craft Deluxe Runabout, with a ninety-five horsepower six, and it looks in mint condition. I filled its tank from a fifty-five-gallon gasoline drum with a hand pump on it. The key was in the ignition and I started it up. After a little coughing it roared nicely and filled the boathouse with a pungent cloud of blue smoke. The other thing I did was to stow my pistol under the cushion of the driver’s seat. Do I have a plan? Not really. I am preparing for various contingencies. If you are expecting a visit from a number of armed men and you have a weapon yourself, you can either start shooting as soon as they arrive, since if you don’t they will come in and take it away from you, or you can hide the thing and hope you can get to it at need. I was not prepared for a firefight with an unknown number of bad guys and so that is what I did. I wonder whether the snow will interfere with my visitors.

To return to this account (and I expect it will be closing soon, as time past rushes toward its rendezvous with time present): after I spoke with Crosetti in Zurich there passed some days of waiting, a dead period, as I had nothing to occupy my time. I really can’t recall what I did except I called Amalie several times a day, to reassure her that things were actually going quite well and to inquire whether she had heard from the kidnappers. Yes, she had. Each morning a video would arrive by e-mail showing an apparently unstressed Niko and Imogen, the latter smiling as at a secret joke, with a copy of that day’s paper, and the message spoken by both of them, always the same: “Hi, Mommy, we’re fine, don’t worry, see you soon.” Fade to black. No warnings, no threats, no clue as to where they were being held or by whom. Beyond that there was nothing for us to talk about, and I believe both of us were happy to break the connection.

Then the call from Crosetti that they actually had the thing and a further day of waiting, during which I left at least six messages with my brother and with my sister. My sister never replied, but late that night my brother called me.

I asked him where he was and he said he was in Zurich with Amalie and updated me on the status of his plan. He said a package would arrive at my house by air express the following morning which would give me what I needed, and I asked him again if he had identified the other players in this game, the ones besides Shvanov, and he said he had not, but his sense was that they were heavily connected to the people who did big-time art heists in Europe, not the kind who stole to sell or to ransom but the ones who supplied very rich immoral people with the odd Titian or Rembrandt for private contemplation. I said that I thought that those people were concocted by writers of cheap fictions and he assured me that they were not, that sinister forces were definitely involved in the affair and that his plan was the only way he could think of to extricate us all from their grip. I sensed that he was hiding something from me but I had no leverage on him then to make him come clean, or perhaps it was my native paranoia with respect to my family.

The next day I received an international FedEx package from Paul, and somewhat later Omar called from the airport saying that Crosetti was off the plane. An hour later Crosetti walked into my loft and handed it over. Of course, I had given Omar, who was armed, instructions to watch the man like a hawk from the second he left the customs shed, but still…I’m not sure I could have done it myself, turning over something he believed was worth tens of millions at least, of uncertain ownership, to rescue two kids he barely knew. A decent man, clearly, and a reproach to all my kind, and I think it speaks badly of me that I could not like him. Like many of his type, he was also something of a schmuck-this Carolyn Rolly apparently had put him through the wringer, and I was not entirely surprised to learn that she was and had always been an agent of Shvanov. I suppose I should have asked him if he had heard anything of Miranda, but I decided that the fewer people who knew about my continuing interest in her the better. In any case, we were not best buddies. He made his feelings about me quite clear as well, and we completed our business quickly.

Shortly after Crosetti left, my phone rang and it was Shvanov. He congratulated me on having recovered a great cultural treasure and told me he would be by shortly to pick it up. I inquired about my missing children. A considerable pause on the line and then he said, “Jake, you are always accusing me of kidnapping people from your life and I have told you sincerely that I do not do such things. This is now becoming boring, you know?”

“Nevertheless, Osip, you see that I can’t release the manuscript to you, as that is what the kidnappers demand for the return of my children. If you don’t have them.”

He said, “Jake, believe me, you have my greatest sympathy and I would be happy to help you in any way, but that does not affect our business relationship. That manuscript was located through means of Professor Bulstrode’s information, which is my property, and so the manuscript is also my property.”

“I think you would have a hard time with that argument in a court of law.”

Another longish pause and then in a voice some decibels quieter he said, “And are you going to take me to court, Jake?” Here a mirthless chuckle. “Maybe I should take you to court.”

“Well, we do have the rule of law in this country, or did. Unlike your own homeland. In any case I will not-”

“But, Jake, listen to me: you will do this. You will give it.”

“Or what? You’ll outsource some persuasion?”

“No,” said Shvanov, so quietly that I had to strain to hear him. “I believe I will handle this in-house.”

After this unsatisfactory conversation I was rather at a loss as to what to do next. I suppose I had regressed in a way to the period just after my mother’s suicide, when I was entirely alone, the main difference being that now I had plenty of money. They say that love will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no love, but this is only partially true, I have found. I had Omar come over with his little machine pistol and I set him to guard the manuscript. He loves this kind of stuff and is full of little ploys to determine how different players in a conspiracy have been compromised and how to communicate that fact by unobtrusive signals. After that I went out for a walk and maybe a drink and lunch at a place I frequent on West Broadway. Walking alone always helps to clear my head.

Although lower Manhattan has of late become a bustling collection of boutiques, it is still possible, particularly on a weekday and in cold weather, to be quite alone on many of its streets. I was walking east on Franklin when one of those awful white Cadillac stretch limos with smoked windows glided past me, pulled to the curb in front of me, and stopped. The curbside door popped open and a large man emerged and opened the rear door. He gestured to the opening. I made to walk around him but he moved lightly into my path and drew a long-barreled.22 semiautomatic from the side pocket of his leather car coat and used that to gesture more forcefully. My brother says you should always pay attention to people carrying pistols of this type because the little gun is an advertisement for the ability of the person holding it to shoot you very accurately, through the eye, for example, if need be, and he can also blow your toe off if you don’t do what he says. The man’s face was intelligent and its expression was the slightly bored but efficient look of the professional doorman. He had the large, merciless brown eyes of a seal. I immediately sensed that I was dealing with a higher order of thug than I had heretofore. I got into the car.

These vehicles can be variously configured, but this one had a typical layout. There was the driver’s seat of course, and behind it two regular bench seats for the lesser entourage, here occupied by a couple of well-tanned fellows with good haircuts and the typical wiseguy expression of confident viciousness on their faces. In the rear, where there are doors only on the curb side, there was a kind of semicircular banquette, with the bar and stereo and TV positioned so that the big shot, who sits in the rearmost part of this sofa, has them at his or her disposal. I slid in, the gunman slid in beside me, and I sat down across from the big shot.

“Where are they?” I said.

“That’s a fine way to greet your father,” he replied. “‘Where are they?’ No, ‘how are you, Dad, glad to see you?’”

“You kidnapped my children, your own grandchildren, and you expect filial affection?”

He made a sour face and his hand flapped a familiar go-away gesture. “What’re you talking ‘kidnap’? I’m their zaideh, can’t I take them on a little trip.”

“Without telling their parents where they are?”

“I sent her a nice video every day. You saw them? Did they look fucking kidnapped to you? Believe me, they’re both having the time of their life.”

Oh, it all came back in a rush and I sat there gaping in frustration, as I had gaped as a boy at the ingenious rationalizations he spun out so easily to his wife and children. The very structures of reality had shimmered and dissolved under the flow of his words, and we’d always ended up thinking that somehow we were in the wrong. Decent people who have read this document thus far would be justified in thinking me a conscienceless, selfish piece of shit, but here sat my master. In that miserable department I couldn’t tie his shoes. A life of perfect egoism had done him good, however, and at eighty years old he looked ten years younger. He’d had implants and maybe a little work around the eyes, and his face had that leathery tan you see on rich old guys. He seemed strong enough for at least another decade of corruption.

“So where are they having this super time?” I asked, in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, my throat constricted, my head pounding, my vision going red around the edges. I heard in my ears the sound of gritting teeth. Had I not feared a bullet through the elbow I would have ripped his head off right there.

“They’re here, in an apartment belongs to a friend of mine up on the East Side. Miriam’s with them.”

Of course. That’s why a savvy city kid like Imogen had walked without a fuss into a strange car in Zurich: the occupant had been no stranger, but her beloved Aunt Miri.

“Then I’d like to see them,” I said.

“Not a problem. You’ll go get the manuscript, we’ll take a drive, we’ll see the kids, everything’ll be fine.”

“And if not, what? They’ll stop having the time of their life? You’ll cut off pieces?”

He sighed dramatically and said a brief something in a language I didn’t know, but which I supposed was Hebrew. The thugs laughed. To me he said, “Don’t be stupid. I’m not going to hurt anyone. But you are going to get me that manuscript, and you know it, so why fuck around?”

“What about Shvanov? He thinks it belongs to him.”

Again the hand waggle. “Shvanov is a putz. He’s a small-time loan shark with fucking delusions of grandeur.” He raised his voice and called out to the driver, “Misha, let’s go.”

The car moved smoothly away from the curb.

“Where’re we going?” I asked.

“To your place, to get the thing, where’d you think?”

“No,” I said.

“No? What do you mean, no?”

“Just what I said. Why should I give it to you? And how the hell did you get involved in this at all?”

He rolled his eyes and sat back in the cushioned seat, with his hands laced across his belly and his dark eyes (mine!) regarding me with the amused contempt I recalled as being their almost perpetual expression during my childhood. “Jake, your problem is you got my kisser and your mother’s brains. That wasn’t the good combo.”

“Fuck you!”

“An example-you’re sitting in a car with three guys who’d rip your eyeballs out with their thumbs as easy as they’d pick their nose and you’re using language? To me? But since you’re family I’m not going to get mad, I’m going to explain to you the situation here. Okay, I’m in Tel Aviv, I’m semiretired but I still keep an interest, a nice deal comes along I might go in on it. I have a lot of connections. So Shvanov-he’s in Israel three, four months ago and he’s talking big, he’s got a line on the treasure of the ages but he won’t say what it is, and people are thinking he’s on to some gold, some art, because he’s talking to people who handle that kind of thing. I’m curious, and the next time I see Miriam I ask her what her pal Osip is up to and she tells me about Shvanov and this Bulstrode character and the Shakespeare manuscript. Of course, by that time Bulstrode’s dead-why, I never figured out…”

“Shvanov thought he brought it back from England and was holding out.”

“Okay, that’s the problem with Shvanov right there,” said Izzy, “he’s too quick with his hands, he doesn’t think it through, and so he goes and kills the one guy with the best line on this thing. Anyway, after that, Miriam tells me you’re involved, you have these papers that point the way to the thing, so I talk to some people and we set up a little syndicate, start an operation to keep an eye on you and Shvanov and see if we can get our hands on this. And then it starts to look like you and this guinea, what’s-his-face…”

“Crosetti.”

“Yeah, him: it looks like you’ve got the best leads on it, so we start to follow you…”

“So it was you and not Shvanov’s, who mugged me in front of my apartment and broke into Crosetti’s house and made me kill two people?”

He shrugged. “Someone associated with the syndicate set that up, and I have to say, you buy cheap, you get cheap. The fuckin city’s full of Russian patzers don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. These boys here, on the other hand, are a whole different proposition, in case you get any ideas.”

“But before that you sent someone to pretend to be Bulstrode’s niece and she stole the manuscript I got from Bulstrode.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

I studied his face; no liar more skillful than Izzy, but the look of confusion appeared genuine.

“Never mind,” I said, “so that was your gang following us in Europe?”

“I don’t have a gang, Jake. Izzy Numbers, remember? I got nothing to do with any rough shit, never had, never will.”

“So who are these eyeball-tweezer guys in this car?”

“They work for people you don’t need to know their names. People in Israel, people in Europe-I told you, it’s a syndicate. Shvanov proposed a simple deal. If he gets hold of this thing, we make sure it’s authenticated up the ass, total legit, Shvanov has the guy to do it, and we agree to buy it off him. He’s asking ten million, the thing’s worth maybe a hundred, hundred fifty mill, but who knows?”

“But you’re trying to grab it without Shvanov, aren’t you?”

“Oh, the lightbulb goes off. Of course, we’re trying to grab it if it’s up for grabs. Ten million is ten million, and why should we give it to that cocksucker?”

“So why did they send you? I thought you were above all this kind of work.”

“Because if there’s an item in play might be worth a hundred fifty mill, they want someone honest on the scene.”

“You? Honest?”

Another dramatic sigh, a specialty of his. “Yeah, me. Tell me, counselor, did it ever fucking occur to you how come I’m still alive? I’ll tell you why. Because I been in this business nearly sixty years, handling fucking billions of dollars, almost all of it in untraceable cash, and I never skimmed a nickel. If Izzy the Book says the numbers add up, they add up. If he says they don’t, guys get whacked. This is in a business full of momsers who’d cut your throat for your shoes. So don’t you look down your nose at me!”

“Oh, excuse me, I beg your pardon: you have a sterling rep with the scum of humanity. You walked out on us, you piece of shit.”

“Oh, and you didn’t? The difference is you did it because you couldn’t stop chasing strange pussy and I did it so I wouldn’t do twenty in Sing Sing. You would’ve been happy to see me in the joint? How the hell would I have supported you?”

“You didn’t support us.”

“No? Did you ever miss a meal, ever not have a roof over your head or a warm bed to sleep in, ever not have toys and clothes? You think she supported three kids on her salary, pushing a mop in a hospital?”

“She didn’t push a mop. She was an administrator.”

“My sweet ass, she was! Schmuck! She could barely read the Daily News. How the fuck could you believe she was handling medical paper? Listen, I sent each of you a card with money in it every birthday and every Christmas, and every year they came back with ‘not at this address’ written on it in her writing. And no money in them either. She steamed them open, took the cash, and sent them back to me. Fuck you, Izzy!”

“I don’t believe you,” I said, with my stomach roiling and a splash of bile high in my throat.

“Then go to hell, you want to hold a grudge your whole life. Meanwhile, here we are. People live in factories now, I can’t believe it. Go up and get this fucking thing and then, alivai, you’ll never have to see my face again. Eli, go with him, make sure he doesn’t trip on the stairs.”

When I got out of the limo, my knees were so weak with fury that I staggered. I had to lean on my front door for a few moments and my hand shook when I used my key. I entered and Mr..22 followed me at a discreet distance, enough, that is, to put a few rounds in me if I tried anything. When I reached my door I had a spasm of coughing.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Eli, “I have a little asthma and it acts up when I’m upset.” He gave an uninterested nod and pointed to the lock. I opened the door and stepped in and the man followed at his usual careful distance and received a heavy blow on the head from a barbell rod wielded by Omar, lying in wait next to the door. The coughing fit I staged had been one of Omar’s little signals.

“Who is he?” he asked.

“An Israeli,” I said sadistically, and then had to stop Omar from breaking more than a few of the man’s ribs with his foot.

I went to my filing cabinet while Omar taped the man up and I retrieved the Shakespeare manuscript, my laptop, the FedEx envelope from Paul, and my German pistol.

“What are we doing, boss?” Omar asked.

I had no idea, but defying Izzy, even over a fake, seemed essential to me now, and after the revelations of the last few minutes I had come up with a plan of my own, one that had nothing to do with any member of my family. “The roof,” I said.

One of the peculiarities of this part of town is that once on the roof of any building one can pass along the whole street by climbing over low parapets and then descend via one of the fire escapes with which these old loft buildings are generously supplied. Since burglars know this too, the roof doors are alarmed; since this is New York, no one pays any attention to the alarms.

We raced across the rooftops and climbed down onto Varick Street, out of sight of my father’s limo. From there it was an easy matter to go to the garage and get the Lincoln. In the car I called Mickey Haas.

“You’re joking,” he exclaimed when I told him what I had. I assured him I was not and told him a little of the recent cryptanalysis and the adventures of Carolyn and Albert in Warwickshire.

“Good Christ! You say you’ve recovered all the spy letters?”

“Yes, and it’s quite a tale.”

“Oh, Jesus, I’m nauseated. Jake, you have to come to my office this very second. I can’t believe this-you have the actual manuscript of an unknown Shakespeare play in your fucking hands!”

“On my lap, actually. But, Mickey? I’m in a bit of a jam here. You remember those gangsters we discussed? Well, they’re after me, and one of the gangs is being run by my father.”

“Just get up here, Jake. I mean it, just drive to my office-”

“Mickey, you’re not listening. These people are on my tail and it won’t take them long to figure out that I might want to show this thing to you and then they’ll come up to where you are and kill the two of us and take it.”

“But this is Hamilton Hall in broad daylight. We can just walk over and deposit it in the-”

“No, you’re not getting this, man. Listen to me! These are completely ruthless people with almost unlimited resources and they would be happy to wipe out everyone in Hamilton Hall to get their hands on this thing.”

“You have to be kidding-”

“You keep saying that but it happens to be true. Between this minute and the time when you announce the existence and authenticity of this item in public we are totally vulnerable to these people.”

Or words to that effect. I recall that Mickey made a lot of noise over the phone, cursing and shrieking because he couldn’t see this pile of paper right away. It was quite an act, better than I would have given him credit for. Between the two of us I always considered myself the actor. I told him my plan: I would get a four-wheel-drive vehicle and go up to his place on Lake Henry. I had been there many times and knew how to get there and where he stashed the keys. In a while, a couple of days maybe, he would come up and join me and look over the material, both the spy letters on my laptop and the manuscript and render an opinion and also take a sample of the ink and paper to be tested in a lab. That done and should the thing prove real, we would drive to some neutral city, Boston perhaps, and call a press conference. And he agreed to this, as I knew he would. Before ending the call I made him swear on the Bard that he would tell absolutely no one where I was or what our plans were, and as soon as I was off the line with him I rang an exotic car rental place on Broadway at Waverly and arranged for the Escalade I’ve already mentioned. In less than an hour I was on the Henry Hudson, heading north in my comfy domestic tank.

And here I am. Perhaps it’s time for a summing-up, but what should it be? Unlike Dick Bracegirdle, I am a modern man and thus further than he was from moral truth. My mind is still reeling from my interview with my father. Could what he said possibly have been true? Who could I ask? Not my siblings. Miriam would not know the truth if it bit her on her liposuctioned ass and Paul…I suppose Paul thinks he has a professional commitment with the truth but he is also in service to a Higher Truth, and people in such service are often inclined to lie like bastards when defending same. What if everything I thought about my past was wrong? What if I am a kind of fictional character, fed with lies for the purposes of others, or maybe for no purpose at all, or for sadistic amusement? Being alone, having no social function just now, aggravates this feeling of unreality, or incipient madness. Perhaps I will start to hallucinate, whatever hallucinations are. Although feeling one is going mad is supposedly a sign one is not. If you really go crazy, everything makes perfect sense.

What is the ground of reality then, once you admit mnemonic forgery? When I consider this question I have to think of Amalie. As far as I know, Amalie has never told a serious lie in her life. I mean, I believe she would lie to save someone, like to the Gestapo about a hidden fugitive, otherwise not. But it turns out that if you consistently lie to someone like that, they sort of have to withdraw their function as the foundation of your reality, like a little snail pulling in its horns, leaving you adrift in a dense and opaque gas of fiction. It’s not intentional on their part, it’s an aspect of the underlying physics of the moral universe. And so, thus adrift, I naturally produce nothing but more fiction. I am a lawyer and what is a lawyer but someone hired to produce a work of fiction, which, in court, will be compared with opposing counsel’s work of fiction by a judge or jury, and they will decide which fiction most closely resembles the fictional picture of the world in their respective brains and decide for one or another side and thus is justice done. And in private life, I will continue to dream up people to play in the continuing tedious novel of my existence, Miranda, for example, as the Ultimately Satisfying Mate (and by God I am still thinking about her, wanting her, that phantasm) and Mickey Haas as the Best Friend.

Well, in the midst of this sorry maundering, my sister just called. Reception is quite good here, for there is a tower right on the property, artfully painted to resemble the trunk of a pine. Here is how plans break down. My father had stashed her and my children in an apartment known only to himself, and what did she do but journey from that apartment to her own apartment on Sutton Place to get some clothes and other things, her Botox perhaps, and she took the kids along with her because they were getting so bored with being cooped up and needless to say some of Shvanov’s people were waiting for her there and they took the kids. So the quasi-fictional kidnapping is now a real one. This occurred early this morning and they tied her up, and it was only the cleaning person’s arrival that released her. My sister is not really that stupid, but she does like to look her best.

I did not expect this part of it. But I did and do expect the imminent arrival of various parties to l’affaire Bracegirdle. Mickey will come, because he wants to complete the last part of his marvelous scam, but he will not come alone. I am trying, for the record, to recall when I first understood that Mickey was himself the tertium quid we had discussed, the link between Bulstrode and Shvanov. The mind assembles bits of information in its own time and then the revelation. I can’t imagine why I did not immediately see this. Who else could it be? Maybe it was when Oliver March told us the story about how Mickey had treated poor Bulstrode or maybe it was when I learned that Shvanov was a loan shark who had done well out of the market crash, lending money to rich assholes suddenly illiquid. And is not Mickey a rich asshole with money problems? And did I imagine that his wives, in the midst of the sort of arguments Mickey always got into with his wives, would not have, as a sort of marital nuclear strike, confront him with the fact that I had screwed them all, and would that not make him hate me and plan some terrible revenge? Why didn’t I think of all this? Because I had dreamed him up as the Best Friend, of course. The Confidant.

I also must have known at some deep level after our meeting with the forger Pascoe that there was only one person in my ambit who could have come up with the scam he was hired to assist, the world’s premier Shakespeare expert, the only person who had connections with Shvanov, with Bulstrode, with Jake “The Schmuck” Mishkin. He is about to take a bunch of Jewish gangsters for many millions of dollars, and I rather doubt that I can do anything to stop him. In a strange way, he’s like my father: When Izzy says the numbers add up, no one can doubt him. When Mickey says it’s Shakespeare, ditto.

The question remains why I came up to his place in the country rather than really hiding out in one of the zillion anonymous and untraceable places available to a man with a supply of ready cash. Because I am tired of this. I want to be real. I don’t care very much if they kill me but I do want to emerge into the realm of truth before that. Very noble sentiment, Mishkin, but there is one other reason. I realized quite recently that the picture that Miranda presented to me-her hairstyle, her dress, her whole aspect-was designed to be as much like my wife when I first met her as it was possible to contrive. That was what knocked me off my admittedly not very secure perch, that was the inside curveball. And who knew what that distant girl was like, who had seen her innumerable times back then, who had heard from my very lips just what turned me on about her? Why the Best Friend, of course. God, this is banal. Any halfway intelligent future reader of this will have seen it coming long before I did, but isn’t that true to nature, don’t we see everyone else’s secrets but our own, the mote in our brother’s eye? Yes, good old Mickey set me up, and God help me, I hope that as part of his revenge he brings her along. I would like to see her one more time.