The Book of Air and Shadows (17 page)

At this time in my life, I should add, I was entertaining at least four women, all lovely, all sexually available, and I can barely recall their names and faces now, so completely did Amalie take over my erotic life. And I had always been perfectly casual about allowing my girls to know I had others, it was after all the sexual revolution, and I did the same with Amalie, and amazingly she said I had to stop if I wanted to keep company with her, and even more amazingly, I did. I called up my current ladies one after another and kissed them off, so to speak.

Because—and this is the whole point of this long excursion—being with Amalie was better than sex. It was mystical. It was as if you could lean into a sunbeam and it could support you. Colors were brighter, music was more enticing, everything moved slowly, elegantly, like a grand entrance of ancient royalty, caressed by perfumed zephyrs. I had heard of stuff like this, but I thought it was all figures of speech. The moon did not hit my eye like a big pizza pie, but short of that, all the songs came true.

Eventually, I did seduce her, in the time-honored and honorable old way: that winter we were married, in the Liebfrauenkirche in Zurich, with her large and very proper Swiss family in attendance, banker dad and professor of linguistics mom and the six siblings, all blond and rosy-cheeked, and none of them thinking that she had carried off the prize, but everyone was as polite and correct as could be. My sister and brother came too. Miri happened to be on a fashion shoot in Paris and arrived with her coke-fiend Eurotrash husband, Armand Etienne Picot de Lavieu, and Paul came from his studies in Italy, so it was convenient. Maybe they would have still come had it not been, but that’s something I was not sure of at the time. Dad was uninvited and absent. It was all
something of a blur, actually, as I imagine weddings always are to the principals. The only thing I recall is Paul gripping me hard above the elbow and saying, This is a keeper, kid, don’t fuck it up. And that Miri cried and, as far as I could tell, remained drug-free during the event.

We went on our honeymoon to Zermatt and stayed in the family chalet and skied. Or she skied. I mainly fell down and watched her zoom gorgeously down the pistes, and afterward participated in what was then and yet remains the most terrific sexual experience of my life. An orgasmic calliope. She made a sound like doves, the delighted
uohh uohh uohh
they produce, from almost the moment we started, and she was able to generate a nearly epileptic crescendo in which Time quite stopped, as it is supposed to do in heaven, existence without duration. Naturally, within six months, as I said, I had started sleeping around again, although I was able to keep this secret for many years, taking clever advantage of Amalie’s near inability to think badly of anyone. No excuse, sir: it was evil plain and simple, evil black as night. I did fuck it up, as Paul feared, which is why he grasped my arm so tightly on my wedding day, leaving a bruise.

And having ruined paradise, I have for years desired to return there (without, naturally, having to make any major changes in my spiritual state) and have nurtured a longing for a new and fresh Amalie, but this time one not quite so good, someone more along the lines of me, but not
too
much like me, if you take my meaning, but with the same electricity and without the unbearable burden of guilt that I bring to relations with my wife. Which is why I have made this long excursion, to make it clear what was happening in the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room. A fresh start, and there she was with her tiny blond braids and her Amalie-esque look, shaking my hand with the tingles goosefleshing up my arm.

I asked her what she was doing, and she pointed to a thick volume open on the desk. Something my uncle wanted me to research—family history. I gestured to chairs and we sat down. It was a library, so we had to speak softly, and since we had to, it was necessary for me to have my head closer to hers than ordinary interlocution would require. She wore a light perfume, floral.

“You’re an academic too, I gather?”

“No, I work for the ministry of education in Toronto. This is more of a sideline, and to help him out.”

“But he’s deceased.”

“Yes. I thought I could finish up the work and arrange for a posthumous publication. I think he would have liked that.”

“You were close, then?”

“Yes.”

“Although separated by oceans?”

“Yes.” Then, somewhat impatiently, with a little wrinkle forming across her fine high forehead, “My uncle Andrew was a very important part of my life, Mr. Mishkin. My father left my mom when I was four, leaving us in a very precarious financial position. He was something of a wild boy and not at all interested in fatherhood. He’s dead now, as is my mother. Uncle Andrew, meanwhile, paid for my education, had me over to England during practically every summer vacation starting at age eight and…oh, God, why am I telling you all this? I guess I haven’t quite recovered from the shock of what happened to him. I’m sorry. I hadn’t intended to spill my guts like that.”

“It’s quite all right,” I said. “Losing a close relative through violence can be a devastating thing.”

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

“Yes,” I said, but in a tone that did not encourage further queries. Changing the subject, I asked, “How long have you been in the city?”

“Toronto?”

“No, here. I’m sorry—when New Yorkers say ‘the city’ they always mean the island of Manhattan.”

She smiled at this, our first shared smile. “Since Monday. Two days.”

“In a hotel, are you?”

“Yes, the Marquis on Eighth Avenue. I was expecting to stay in Uncle Andrew’s place, but there are legal complications. It’s still a crime scene and they won’t release any of his things, although Professor Haas very kindly let me look through his office and take some personal items.”

“You’re comfortable there?” Making conversation here, God knows
what I was thinking, I suppose I just wanted to keep her talking, prolong the moment. Ridiculous, as I say, but in the interests of an honest tale…

She replied, “Well, to be frank, it’s fairly grotty. It’s supposed to be cheap, but cheap in New York is more than I can afford, especially with Canadian dollars.”

“You’ve seen the police?”

“Yes. Yesterday. I thought I would have to identify the body like they do on TV, but that had already been done. They asked me some questions, really, pretty awful questions.”

“This is their theory that he was killed as part of some gay sexual ritual?”

“Yes, but my God!—and I told them this—Uncle Andrew wasn’t like that at all. He made no secret of his, um, romantic orientation, but he was devoted to Ollie. He’s a don at Oxford. They were like an old married couple when they were together.” Her tone abruptly changed and she asked, “Do you think we can conclude our business today?”

“Our business being…?”

“Uncle Andrew’s manuscript.”

Oh, that! I asked her what she knew about it.

“Oh, he didn’t tell me much, only that it was a Jacobean manuscript. He paid several thousand dollars for it, but he thought it might be a lot more valuable if some things checked out.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.” Again she produced that adorable wrinkle. “And frankly I can’t see that it’s any business of yours. It’s my property.”

“Actually, Ms. Kellogg,” I said, somewhat prissily, “it’s the property of the estate. In order for you to claim it, you have to demonstrate both that you are who you say you are, and that you are the sole legal heiress of Andrew Bulstrode. In order for that to happen, you must produce a will and have it probated in surrogate’s court for the County of New York. Only then will the executor of the will have the authority to instruct me to hand over the estate’s property to you.”

“Oh, gosh! Will that take long?”

“It could. If the will is faulty or contested, it could take weeks, months, even years to settle. As in Dickens.”

At this she gave a despairing cry, bit her lip, and brought her hands to her face. The clerk at the desk looked over at us disapprovingly.

“I can’t wait that long,” she wailed. “I could only get these few days off. I have to be back in Toronto on Monday and I can’t afford to stay in a hotel. And…” Here she stopped and dropped her eyes, as we do when we are about to reveal something it’s best not to reveal. Interesting, that; I thought it might be part of why she was reluctant to come to my office. I decided to push on that door.

“And…?”

“Nothing.” A poor liar, I thought, observing the delicate flushing below the jawline.

“Well,
not
nothing, I think. You ask me to meet you in a secluded place, you keep looking up at the door, as if you expect someone to barge in, and now you seem to be concealing something. Add to that the fact that your uncle died in mysterious, even frightening circumstances, and you strike me as a woman with something of a problem. A woman who, if I may be so bold, needs…”

“A lawyer? Are you volunteering yourself?” Suspiciously.

“Not at all. You need an estate lawyer who can help you get through probate. I am not that kind of lawyer, but my firm has some good ones. I was thinking of volunteering myself as your friend.”

“You think I need a friend?”

“You tell me. I’m guessing that you were approached about this manuscript and that this approach was of a disturbing nature.”

She nodded vigorously, causing her braids to wiggle. Delightful!

“Yes. I got a call just after the police called me and told me Uncle Andrew had died. It was a man with a deep voice and an accent.”

“An English accent?”

“No, like Slavic or Middle Eastern. I sort of yelled at him because I was so upset, I’d just found out that Uncle Andrew had died and here was this vulture circling. I hung up and he called right back and his tone
was…I mean it sounds stupid to say ‘threatening’ but that’s what it felt like. He offered me fifty thousand Canadian for the documents, and I told him I’d think about it. He wasn’t happy with that answer, and he said something like, I forget his exact words, something like it would be better for you in every possible way to agree to these terms. It was like that line from
The Godfather
, an offer you can’t refuse, and it was so unreal, I almost giggled. Then, after I got to the Marquis, I got called again, same voice. How did they know I was there? No one at home knew where I was staying.”

“No significant other?” Concealing the hopefulness.

“No. And my office has my mobile. Anyway, when I left the hotel this morning there was a car, one of those big SUVs, black, with smoked windows, parked down the block from the hotel and there was a man, a big man, with a bullet head and sunglasses, leaning against it. And I looked back after I passed him and he was looking at me with this really horrible smile and then he got into the car, and I took the bus here, and when I got to the library the car was there again.”

“That’s worrisome,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” she said after a long pause. Her voice was a trifle shaky.

“Look,” I said, “let’s say that the police are wrong about your uncle’s death, as you suggest, and that he was murdered. Murdered for this, um, document. Melodramatic, yes, but such things must happen occasionally. So assume for a moment that this item is extraordinarily valuable for some reason, way more valuable than fifty grand Canadian, and that criminals have somehow learned about it and are trying to obtain it by fair means or foul. Does that make sense?”

She nodded slowly. I thought I saw her shiver, and I wanted to fling my arms around her, but forbore.

“Yes, in a horrible way,” she replied, “but I can’t imagine what it could be. I mean the value part. Uncle Andrew said he paid a few thousand for it and that’s probably near what it’s worth, or else why would the seller have sold it? And if for some reason it turned out to be
more
valuable, why would criminals be involved?”

“That’s the question, of course, but my sense is that it’s not the
document itself that’s valuable, but what it leads to. Did your uncle tell you anything about that?”

“No. As far as I knew it was a Jacobean letter of some sort, of purely academic interest. He was really excited about it, and made a special trip to England last summer to check up on some things related to it, but he didn’t imply that it had any, well,
pecuniary
value. Did he tell
you
what it was? I mean what it might lead to.”

“Yes, he claimed it was an actual Shakespeare autograph manuscript, but I’m afraid he might have been unduly optimistic. Later, I spoke with Mickey Haas, and he suggested that this was unlikely, and that your uncle seemed to be somewhat desperate to, as it were, recoup his fortunes.”

“Yes, he was, he tended to be like that since the scandal. You know about that?”

“I’m familiar with the facts, yes. But he must have been aware of this criminal interest, since he deposited the damned thing with me. He must have suspected he might be attacked and wanted to preserve it from being taken. So…to continue, the first order of business would seem to be securing you personally. You clearly can’t return to your grotty hotel. We could change hotels….”

“I can’t afford to change hotels. It was all paid in advance anyway. Oh, God, this is turning into a nightmare….”

“…or, if I may, I have a large loft downtown. There are two bedrooms in it where my kids stay when they’re on school holidays. You could have one of them. It’s probably nearly as grotty as the Marquis, but free of charge. I also have a driver to take you around town. He used to be sort of a bodyguard.”

“A bodyguard?” she exclaimed and then asked, “Whom did he guard?”

“Yasir Arafat, actually. But we like to keep that part quiet. I can’t think of anyplace you’d be more safe.” Except from me, but let that pass for the moment. Honestly, I was not thinking of that at all when I made the offer. I recalled the terror on her uncle’s face quite well and did not want that look ever to appear on hers. “Once you’re stashed, we can see
if we can learn something about the people involved from their vehicle. I’ll alert the police to this development and leave that part to them.”