The Book of Air and Shadows (37 page)

“Oh, get out of here!”

“Idiot child, focus on this! You
stole
an object worth between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars. In a few minutes, a guy is going to show up who thinks that value is part of an estate he holds in trust. What do you think he’s going to do, as an officer of the court, when we have to tell him that this valuable object actually belongs to someone else, and did when you sold it to his client?”

“Listen to her, Albert,” said Mary Peg in a stern voice.

Crosetti rose from the table and stalked out of the room, seething. At some rationalizing level of his mind he had convinced himself that the whole manuscript transaction was something of a prank, on the level of swiping a stop sign from a pole, for which he had been duly punished by Andrew Bulstrode’s scam. Morally, he had argued to himself, the thing was a wash. But now he was sitting with two of the three women in the world he most wished to impress (Rolly being AWOL), and they were agreed that he was a colossal jerk and a felon, and here all the family weight bore down: the disappointment, however veiled by kindness, that he was not the hero his father had been, that he was not an achiever like his sisters, that he
especially
was not a graduate of Princeton
and
Columbia Law School like Donna. He was woozy with wine besides and thought that he might as well go upstairs with his gun and shoot himself, that would save everyone a lot of trouble.

But what he did instead, since he was in fact a decent young man from a loving family and not the tortured neurotic artist he sometimes imagined himself to be (as, briefly, now) was to pull out his cell phone
and call Sidney Glaser in Los Angeles. He had Glaser’s cell phone number inscribed in his own device, of course, and Glaser answered on the third ring. An old-fashioned fellow, Sidney, but he made an exception for cell phones.

“Albert! Is there anything wrong?”

“No, the shop’s fine, Mr. G. Something’s come up and I’m sorry to trouble you, but I need an answer right away.”

“Yes?”

“Well, um, it’s sort of a long story. Can you talk?”

“Oh, yes. I was about to go down to dinner but I can talk for a little while. What is it?”

“Okay, this is in reference to the Churchill. The one that got ruined in the fire and you asked Carolyn to break it?”

“Oh, yes? What of it?”

“I was just wondering about the, ah, remainder. I mean the stripped books….”

A pause here. “Have you had a call from GNY?”

“No, it’s not really an insurance issue….”

“Because, ah, what they paid out wasn’t nearly what we could have got at auction and so, ah…look, Albert, if they call, if they
ever
call, please refer them to me, understood? Don’t discuss the breaking of those books, or what Carolyn did, or anything with them. I mean the prints and maps, the decorator backs, these are really quite trivial matters and you know how these insurance people are….”

“I’m sorry…decorator backs?”

“Yes, Carolyn said she had a customer for the backs and could she burnish them up and deodorize and so forth and sell them and I conveyed them over to her. There should be a paper bill in the files. But the main thing is—”

“Excuse me, Mr. G. When was this?”

“Oh, that day, the day after the fire. She came upstairs and asked me if she could play with the carcasses, the leather and so on. Did you know she was an amateur bookbinder?”

Mary Peg called out, “Albert? Come back here and talk!” Crosetti
stuck his thumb over the microphone slits and yelled, “In a minute, Ma. I’m on the phone with Mr. Glaser.”

Resuming his conversation, he said, “Uh-huh, yes, sir, I did know that. And so you actually sold her the books?”

“Oh, yes, just the carcasses, net of the prints and so on. I think she paid thirty dollars a volume. I really don’t like to bother with that aspect of the trade and Carolyn made a little business of it for some years, sprucing up fine bindings off worthless books and selling them to decorators, who would then sell them, I imagine to illiterates for concealing their liquor cabinets. Now, what was it you wanted to ask me?”

Crosetti made something up, a question about how he should handle the fire loss in their inventory accounting system, got a brief answer, and closed the conversation. He was both relieved and stunned by what he had just learned: relieved because this cleared up the legal ownership of the manuscript, stunned because Carolyn had allowed him to think there was something shady about the deal when there wasn’t. So why had she allowed him to take the manuscript for his own? Why had she pretended to be semi-blackmailed into letting him have it? Why had she used this supposed crime as an emotional lever to get him to sell it to Bulstrode? None of it made sense. And how was he supposed to get all that past his sister?

He went back into the kitchen and related the gist of the conversation he had just had, and, as expected, Donna was full of the objections that he just passed through his own mind. He cut her off, however, feeling rather more aggressive, now that he had right on his side. “Donna, for crying out loud, none of that matters. For all practical purposes I own the Bracegirdle manuscript. Carolyn isn’t here, and Glaser is not going to make a fuss because I got the impression he’s scamming the insurance company on the ruined volumes. He probably put in for the whole value and forgot to mention to them what he’d realized on the maps and prints, five grand or so. So that part’s fixed.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Donna. “The insurance company might have a case that they own the thing. They paid for it.”

“Then let them sue,” snapped Crosetti. “Meanwhile, do we have any chance of getting the manuscript back from the estate?”

“
You
could sue,” replied Donna with equal heat.

“Children,” said Mary Peg in a familiar tone, “calm down. If no one stole anything, we have a completely different situation, thank God. Why don’t we wait and see what this Mr. Mishkin has to say. What I’m a lot more worried about is this attempted kidnapping business. I’m going to call Patty. I think the police should be involved.”

With that, she went to the kitchen phone, but before she could dial, the doorbell rang. Mary Peg went to the door and admitted a very large man in a black leather coat. He had a close-cropped head and a bleak, hard look on his face, and for a panicked instant, Crosetti thought he might be one of the men who had just attacked him. But as he came forward to introduce himself, Crosetti saw that, despite the hard features, the man was not a thug, that there was a sad look in his dark eyes, reminding Crosetti of his own father, also a man with a hard face and a sad look.

Mary Peg declared that they would all be more comfortable in the living room (she meant: away from the disgraceful jelly glasses on the table and the reek of red wine), and so they all trooped off to the worn upholstery, the knickknacks, and the Portrait, and she said she would make some coffee, and could she take Mr. Mishkin’s coat?

When they were seated, Donna lost no time showing that she was in charge. She told the big man who she was and that she was representing the family temporarily and stated what she believed were the primary facts of the case: that her brother had gone to Professor Bulstrode in good faith for an assessment of a seventeenth-century manuscript he owned; that Bulstrode had abused his professional responsibility to provide an honest assessment, had, in fact, lied about the content of the manuscript, which was a valuable addition to Shakespeare scholarship, and had purchased the document from Albert Crosetti for a fraction of its value, a transaction that any court would find unconscionable. And what did Mishkin intend to do about it?

Mishkin said, “Well, Ms. Crosetti, there’s not much I
can
do about it. You see, I’m here under false pretenses, in a way. My personal involvement in this affair was prompted by the fact that Professor Bulstrode came to me shortly before his tragic death and deposited the manuscript
he had bought from Mr. Crosetti here with our firm. He was seeking some intellectual property advice, which I provided. The manuscript was part of his estate at death, and when a woman appeared claiming to be his heiress, we accommodated her in our trust department. I personally am not handling that aspect.”

“So why
are
you here?” asked Donna, and then, as she registered the import of his phrasing, demanded, “And what do you mean by ‘
claiming
to be his heiress’?”

“Well, as to that: it seems we’ve been defrauded. This woman, the supposed niece to the decedent, Miranda Kellogg, made off with the manuscript. Her whereabouts are at present unknown.”

At this, astonishment. “You must be joking!” said Donna.

“I wish I were, Ms. Crosetti. And I admit it was entirely my fault. This person secured my confidence with an entirely plausible story and I gave her the document.”

Mishkin turned his sad eyes on Crosetti. “You asked why I came to see you. Tell me, have you or has anyone associated with you been threatened in any way?”

Crosetti exchanged a brief glance with his sister, then answered: “Yeah. As a matter of fact a couple of guys tried to snatch me a little while ago.”

“These were two men, one very large and one somewhat smaller, traveling in a black SUV?”

“Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?”

“They attacked me too, last week, and tried to steal the thing. I was able to fend them off at the time, but shortly after that, they, or someone else, invaded my home, knocked out my assistant, and made off with the manuscript and the woman who was posing as Ms. Kellogg. I had imagined that she was kidnapped, but it now seems that she was in league with the assailants. I can only suppose that the first attack was to establish a bond between me and the woman, to allay my suspicions. That, or we’re dealing with two separate antagonists. Speaking of which, Mr. Crosetti, I assume you know the person listed in Bulstrode’s appointment book as Carolyn R.”

“Yes! Yes, I do. Carolyn Rolly. She’s the person who found the manuscript in a set of books. Do you know where she is?”

“No, I don’t, but Ms. Kellogg called me after she vanished and told me there was a person named Carolyn involved. Whether she’s a victim or working with the thugs I couldn’t say. But clearly, she understood that you did not part with the entire manuscript, and that there were still a number of pages, apparently in ciphered form, that you retained. Whoever’s behind this knows you have them and wants them.”

“But they’re useless,” Crosetti protested. “They’re indecipherable. Hell, whoever it is can have them right now. You want them? You can have the goddamn things….”

“I don’t like the idea of surrendering your property as a result of threats,” said Donna.

“No? Then why don’t
you
take it?”

“Take what?” said Mary Peg, entering with a tray full of coffee cups and a plate of biscotti.

“Albert wants to give his ciphered manuscripts to the thugs,” said Donna.

“Nonsense,” said Mary Peg as she handed out the coffee mugs. “We don’t give in to violence.” She sat down on the sofa next to her son. “Now, we all seem to be involved in this in various ways, so why don’t we all share our stories from the beginning, just like they do in the mysteries, and then agree on a course of action.”

“Mother, that’s insane!” cried Donna. “We should call the police now and turn this whole mess over to them.”

“Darling, the police have other things to worry about besides secret letters and attempted kidnap. I’ll let Patsy know what’s going on, but I’m sure she’ll agree. The cops can’t possibly put a twenty-four-hour guard on everyone in this family. We have to figure this out ourselves, which we’re perfectly capable of doing. Besides, my Irish is up. I don’t like it when bums try to muscle my people. When that happens I muscle back.”

At this, both of Mary Peg’s children stared at her, and for the first time in many years recalled certain mortifying events of their childhood. All the Crosetti children had gone to school at Holy Family down
the street, and were part of the last generation of American Catholic children to be educated at least in part by nuns. Unlike the parents of all their friends, Mary Peg had taken no guff at all from the sisters and had often appeared in the chalky hallways to rail against some injustice or inattention or incompetence she had detected in their relations with her children, and continued despite all their pleas to stop. Yet at some level, they still believed that anyone who could take on a fire-breathing eleven-foot-tall Sister of Charity could handle any number of mere gangsters.

“Why don’t you begin, Mr. Mishkin?” she said.

“Jake,” said Mr. Mishkin.

“As in
Chinatown
,” said Mary Peg.

“I certainly hope not,” said Mishkin, withdrawing a small diary from his breast pocket. “Let’s see. October eleventh, Bulstrode arrives at my office, seeking some intellectual property advice….” And he told the whole story, except the dirty parts, ending with his conversation with Osip Shvanov, and his denial of involvement with any rough stuff.

“And you believed him?” asked Mary Peg.

“Not at all. He actually asked me about the ciphered letters. The people who just tried to kidnap you tried it because they want something you have, which can only be those letters, which you tell me you have not been able to decipher.”

The three Crosettis shared a quick look among them, and after a pregnant pause Crosetti said that they had not, and explained why, after which Mary Peg said, “Albert, you understand what this means?”

Crosetti said, “No, I don’t,” a temporary lie, this, to ward off dreadful knowledge.

“Well, it’s very clear to me,” said his mother. “There were only two people still alive who knew that the ruined books contained a set of ciphered letters, you and this Carolyn person, and the only people you’ve told are completely reliable—”

“Oh, right! What about Klim?”

“…
completely
reliable, which means that this Rolly woman has been behind all of it from day one.”

“Uh-uh.”

“No, really, Albert, face facts! Who got you to sell to Bulstrode? Rolly. Who disappeared to England right after you sold to Bulstrode? Rolly. Bulstrode must have found out something in England, and they were probably together when he found it. Then he comes back and he’s tortured to death to reveal whatever it was, and how could whoever did it know what he found out? Rolly!”