The Lions of Fifth Avenue: A Novel

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

New York City, 1993

Ihave to go with him, in order to identify the stolen goods.”

Sadie sat next to Mr. Adriano in Dr. Hooper’s office, where the antique grandfather clock had just rung nine thirty. To Sadie, the logic couldn’t be clearer. Time was of the essence. They had to case the downtown bookstores as soon as possible, at the very least to rule them out.

“And that’s why you’re all dressed up? Like normal, I mean,” Dr. Hooper asked.

She fingered the pearls at her neck, momentarily embarrassed. “I have to come across as a wealthy book buyer, I figured.”

“I see.” He didn’t seem convinced. He turned to Mr. Adriano. “You’re all right with this?”

“It makes sense. I couldn’t pull it off alone. And I’ll be there every step of the way.”

Sadie caught a glance between them, a knowing look. This was a setup, possibly, to catch her in the act. No doubt Mr. Adriano would be watching her closely, but that was fine. She had nothing to hide.

Other than her family’s past. Valentina’s comment in the park about the “tambourine” had been whirling around in Sadie’s head since yesterday.

“I suppose it’s worth a shot,” Dr. Hooper finally said.

The downtown train reeked of sweat and greasy metal, the passengers packed together with a physical intimacy that would have been overbearing if they didn’t all refuse to look each other in the eye, an unspoken agreement that made city living possible. A pole separated Sadie from Mr. Adriano, their hands grasping it a few inches apart. This close, she realized he was taller than her by several inches, taller than she’d first thought. She didn’t look at him, instead focusing on the small ketchup stain on one sleeve of his raincoat.

“What’s the plan for today?” she asked. “How do you want to play it?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Quite the lingo. We go in, you say you’re looking for rare books for your collection, that you’re willing to pay for items that are truly valuable. I’ll hang back, pretending to be a random browser, and listen in.” He paused. “We’ll see what they offer up.” He stifled a yawn.

“Out gallivanting last night?”

“Gallivanting.” He seemed to be considering the idea, the word. Maybe he didn’t understand what it meant.

“Out with the boys.”

“I know what ‘gallivanting’ means. No. I was up all night with a sick kid.”

She glanced at his left hand—no ring—and he followed her gaze. “Divorced. My kids live in Westchester. I went up last night to cover the night shift so my ex could get some sleep.”

Something about being three inches away from each other with only one more stop to go made Sadie bold. “How long were you married?”

“Fifteen years. Long enough.”

His answer was so matter-of-fact. “What happened?”

“The usual. What about you?”

“Divorced as well. A while ago.” The train screeched to a halt. “This is our stop.”

Together, they made their way to two of the three downtown bookstores from Mr. Babenko’s list. Both times, Sadie stumbled through her inquiry, nerves getting the best of her. If the bookstore owners had the stolen items hidden away, they didn’t show their hand. The volumes they did offer lacked the distinction of the Hawthorne and the Woolf diary. Sadie hoped she wasn’t blowing it.

The last stop, before they headed north to case the uptown shops, was called J&M Books, one of the remaining stores on the former Book Row on Fourth Avenue. The place was empty of customers, and Sadie strode to the clerk’s desk at the back of the shop. This time, she’d try a different tack. “Hello, is the owner available?”

She affected an English accent this time, which was met by a muffled guffaw from Mr. Adriano, who stood somewhere behind her, doing his browsing thing. The clerk, a tall, thin man wearing a bolo tie, sat behind the counter.

“I’m the owner, name’s Chuck.” He held out his hand, which was manicured and smooth. “How can I help you?”

She shook it. “I’m looking for something valuable, something rare, as a gift to my husband. It’s his birthday in a month, and I promised him something whopping.”

“Whopping?”

“I want to give him a gift that will knock his socks off.” She lifted her heels slightly at the end of the sentence. She needed to appear foolish enough to not understand the trade, and wealthy enough to afford the best. “It’s his fiftieth, so the sky’s the limit. Although I probably shouldn’t tell you that.”

The man loosened the tie around his neck. “I see.”

“For his fortieth, I purchased an antique globe by Blaeu, from the early 1600s.” She made a point of looking down at the counter, where a couple of letters from famous authors were kept under glass, so as to give Chuck time to size her up. “Paid forty grand, but was worth every penny to see the look of surprise on Cyril’s face.” She pointed to one of the letters. “Is this really from Dorothy Parker?”

“Sure is. Would you like to see it?”

“No. That’s not what I want.” She looked up, fixing him with a steady gaze. “I want something fabulous, that no one else has. Do you have anything like that?”

“Right. I think there’s something here, just in.” He disappeared behind a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Sadie looked around at Mr. Adriano, who raised his eyebrows before turning away as the man returned, clutching an oversized, ragged atlas.

“There’s this.” He laid it down on the counter. “An antique atlas, from the seventeenth century. Quite an addition to any collection.”

Sadie lifted the cover and examined it. She could tell already that the binding had been replaced. Some of the maps had suspicious markings, where an identifying mark had been either removed or painted over. How horrible, to mutilate what had been intact. Then again, it said something about the shop, that they would try to fob this off on an unsuspecting buyer.

“It’s great, but I want something with words this time. Not pictures.”

“Huh. Hold on.” He disappeared again, coming back a few minutes later with a small stack of books. “These were just about to go in the safe. Take a look and if you see something you like, I can check with the seller.”

“Check with the seller?”

“These are quite rare. Just arrived from London.”

Sadie sorted through the books. The top two were first editions but not by noted authors.

Then she got to the third and froze. The Scarlet Letter.

Willing herself to remain calm, she lifted the cover and flipped through it, pausing slightly on page ninety-seven. There it was, the mark for the New York Public Library. Whoever had taken it either hadn’t known about the mark or hadn’t yet had a chance to remove it.

This was the first edition, the one stolen from the Berg Collection. In her hands.

“Never read this one,” she said. “It’s pretty, with the cover.” She put it to one side and went through the other two. She immediately recognized the familiar stationer’s ring-back notebook. She opened it up, carefully, and her heart leaped at the sight of Woolf’s scrawled cursive, the lines rising up to the right, the date written in the margin.

“How much for these three?” She included one of the lesser books, to throw off the scent.

The man scratched his cheek. “I’ll have to ask the seller. What did you say your name was again?”

“Elaine, is that you?” For some inexplicable reason, Mr. Adriano chose now to come forward, arms wide, pulling Sadie into a hug.

“Sure is.” She went along with the charade, giving him a hard look at the same time. Why was he getting in the way?

“It’s been too long. Of course I’d run into you today. I have something fabulous to show you, come here for a moment.”

“Will you excuse me, please?” Sadie gave an apologetic smile to the clerk and let Mr. Adriano drag her to the front of the shop, out of sight of the desk.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Say you’ll come back tomorrow to make the sale.”

It would be like leaving her children behind, if she had children. They were in her hand; it was just a matter of taking them. And wouldn’t Dr. Hooper be pleased? She’d be sure to get the permanent curator job at that point, no question. She’d be a hero, all problems solved. “I can’t leave the books behind.”

Mr. Adriano practically snapped at her. “You have to. The bookstore owner will want cash, since they’re hot. Do you have enough on you?”

She hadn’t thought of that. “Then what do we do?”

“Say you’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll bring some cops and make an arrest.”

“We have to wait a whole day?”

“Yes. Now go and let the man know.”

Still, it had been worth it. At the very least, they knew where the books were.

She walked back, chin lifted. “Chuck, I’ll be back tomorrow. Can you let the seller know that I’m interested in these three books?” She pointed to them, her finger lingering on the Woolf diary. “My name is Elaine Edmundson, and I simply must have them.”

“I will, but I must ask you a favor.”

She waited, worried.

“My regular customers would be very upset to learn that I didn’t let them in on my latest acquisitions. Which means you’ll need to be discreet about where you found them.”

“Oh, I can be discreet, Chuck. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

She watched, itching with irritation, as he gathered up the stack in his hands.

So close. She was so close.

“How long do we have to wait?”

Although the day was cool, Sadie was sweating in one of LuAnn’s cashmere sweaters, her chosen outfit for the sting operation. She and Mr. Adriano had met in a coffee shop across from the bookstore, and together they watched from the window, looking out for the unmarked car that meant that backup had arrived and they could go meet Chuck and rescue the books from captivity.

“However long it takes,” said Mr. Adriano. “It’s not as if recovering stolen books is on the top of their to-do list.”

“It should be.” Sadie took a sip of coffee. The bitter taste made her stomach churn, or maybe that was just her nerves. “Once we do recover the books, what next?” They’d already alerted Dr. Hooper to the success of the operation, and she could tell he was as excited as she was at the possibility of recovery.

“We’ll find out from this Chuck guy who the seller is, and follow the trail from there.”

“Do you think it’s an employee of the library?”

She was trying to be vague, but Mr. Adriano picked up on her inference. “You mean Claude Racine?”

“I suppose so. He was the only other person with access. Until they revoked it, of course.” In fact, Sadie had deliberately kept the news of the sting from Claude, per the director’s instructions, which made him even more of a suspect, in Sadie’s opinion.

“How well do you know this Claude guy?”

“Too well.” The coffee had started working its way into her bloodstream, and she felt a bolt of energy. “As I mentioned, we dated, briefly, earlier this year.”

“Huh.” Mr. Adriano raised one eyebrow, like he didn’t believe her. The nerve.

“It was a brief affair. I called it off. It’s too difficult when you’re working together.”

She still remembered their kiss, at that Christmas party. They’d stood in a small hallway off of the room where the festivities were raging inside. That evening, Claude had put his hand on the back of her neck and drawn her to him, and she’d closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensation of his mouth on hers. It was a little too wet for her liking, but that was fine. It felt so good to be wanted again, after so many years. He’d laughed then, and she’d pulled back, ready to be offended, but he’d pulled her close again, this time sending his hand roving up to her breast.

“Lovely,” he’d said.

A group from the genealogy division had spilled out of the room and they’d pulled apart. Even though she and Claude hadn’t spoken of the kiss after he returned from his vacation, she was certain that every comment between them, under Marlene’s watchful eye, had been fraught. But then she’d spotted him in the hallway with the young page and, soon after, come upon the Surviving Spinsterhood book, which reminded her that her life was just fine as it was.

But she didn’t want to think about all that. “Mr. Adriano, what made you decide to start your own firm, after retiring?”

“You can call me Nick. I figured my working days were over, but then my wife invested her part of the divorce proceedings with a scam artist, and lost it all.”

“So you’re helping her out?”

“Sure. She’s the mother of my kids. Besides, I enjoy it. Otherwise, what would I be doing? I hate sitting around.” He spoke without any hint of resentment. “Although, at the library, there’s a little more action going on than I expected. A hotbed of intrigue, that place.”

“Well, it’s not usually like that, I assure you. Hopefully, by tomorrow we’ll be back to normal. Which will be a big relief to me.”

Nick’s radio squawked. He looked outside and rose. “Let’s go.”

Inside the shop, Sadie headed straight to the back, where Chuck was waiting, wearing a different bolo tie and a crisp white shirt.

She held out her hand. “Hullo. I’m back to buy the books I set aside yesterday.”

“Right. Mrs. Edmundson.”

“Please, call me Elaine.”

Chuck eyed her up and down again, and she was glad she’d put some time into her hair and makeup. For a moment, she was also glad that Nick had seen her at her best.

The front door squeaked. That would be Nick, who’d said he’d hover within earshot and out of sight. She didn’t want to let him down.

Chuck disappeared for a moment and came out carrying all three books.

She took her time perusing each one, studying the inscription page and quality of the binding on the Hawthorne, then checked that the last diary entry was intact on the Woolf. “Lovely,” she murmured.

“One hundred thousand,” Chuck said in a low voice.

Should she bargain with him? No. Better to get it over with. “Done.”

“You can wire the money into an account. Once I get it, you can retrieve the books. No receipts.”

“Of course, just send me the details. By the way, where did you find them?”

She heard Nick cough. Probably a sign to her to not try to drive the investigation on her own. But she had to know.

“A client came upon them in his grandmother’s attic, in London.”

She almost laughed. Grandmother’s attic? Pathetic that he couldn’t come up with something more original.

The bell to the shop clanged hard as the cops burst in, wearing plain clothes, badges dangling from around their necks. “Stop what you’re doing and stand back.”

Sadie flattened herself against the wall as the cops went straight for Chuck, who stood frozen in place, hands up in the air.

Then, Nick was by Sadie’s side, and together he and Sadie watched as Chuck was placed in handcuffs and read his Miranda rights before being led off, protesting the entire way.

As the police carefully placed the books into evidence bags, it was all she could do not to hug Nick.

The books were safe again, hers again. Finally.