The Book of Air and Shadows (53 page)

Crosetti saw that Shvanov had gone white around the lips and that a vein in his temple was pulsing. He said, “How do you know the price is ten million?”

“Because my father told me. He’s the syndicate’s man in New York, and his principals are going to be very, very unhappy with you.”

“You have told him this?”

“Of course. And now I’m telling you, which is why I arranged for everyone involved to be here so we could get it all thrashed out. Oh, except for Carolyn Rolly. She seems to be in the wind just now, but I’m sure you can put your hands on her.”

Crosetti observed a puzzled expression appear on Shvanov’s face. He pointed to the woman in the white parka. “What do you mean?
That
is Carolyn Rolly.”

“Oh, Carolyn,” said Crosetti, half to himself. No one seemed to hear him. Everyone was looking at Mishkin, who had staggered as from a blow. His face had taken on a crushed look that the beating had not been able to put there. Shvanov saw it and it appeared to delight him.

“Yes, I can put my hands on her as you say, Jake,” he said and put his arm around Rolly’s shoulder. “And should I believe him, Carolyn? That you have conspired to cheat me with this professor? Osip, who took you in off the streets, gave you where to live, and showed you what is to be with a man.” In falsetto: “Oh, fuck me more in the ass, darling, it is so good.”

He took her jaw between his thumb and fingers and twisted. “Heh? Have you done this to me, you whore? Yes, maybe: it is something you would do, if maybe you don’t like your children anymore, or you forget I know where they live in Pennsylvania? But who knows what a whore will do?”

He walked to the table where Haas was standing, gaping at him, a rabbit to the cobra, and picked up the packet of manuscript. He evened the edges and weighed them in his hand. “But you, Professor, you are not
a whore. We have a business relationship, we are dealing with each other for all this time, I have confidence in you, man-to-man, how could you do this? I am very disappointed.”

“He’s lying,” said Haas, speaking rapidly, stuttering over the words. From where he stood, Crosetti could see the man’s knees actually trembling. “He made all that up to…confuse you. He’s very clever, he thinks he can get away with anything, the great Jake Mishkin, but he’s lying here, this is a genuine play, the greatest manuscript discovery of all time. I’m the fucking expert, Osip, for Christ’s sake, and anyway how could I have ‘conspired’ as you say with this woman, I never set eyes on her before in my life, and going to Pascoe and arranging all this…it’s ridiculous…you can’t believe. These pages in your hand, and the ciphers, and everything, they’re precious, precious, I never dreamed I would ever have my hands on something like this….”

Mishkin said, “He
did
know Carolyn Rolly. She was a student at Columbia. Bulstrode introduced them. Ask Crosetti.”

Crosetti cleared his throat, which felt like it was full of white library paste, and said, “Well, yeah. She definitely knew Bulstrode. And Bulstrode knew Haas.”

“You see, Professor?” said Shvanov. “It will not add up. And so I think he is right, I think this is all a cheat, and this paper is garbage.” With that, he took two quick steps and tossed the stack of pages into the fireplace.

Haas uttered a cry that seemed to come up from his descending colon, a brute scream of desperate loss, and immediately dashed across the room and threw himself into the heart of the fire. He grabbed handfuls of paper off the coals, pinching out any fire that had bit into them with his bare hands and tossing the pages back into the room, like a dog tossing earth out of a hole. Some of the pages, Crosetti saw, had caught in the updraft and had been plastered against the back of the deep fireplace, but Haas heaved his whole body across the blazing logs and pulled them free. As he did this he never stopped screaming, nor did he stop when he pulled himself out of the fire, ablaze all down the front of his clothes, his scarf a necklace of fire. He trotted in little circles slapping at
the flames, his face a hideous black-red mask, his glasses warped and partially melted.

Mishkin now snatched up the flaming professor as if he had been a hollow man and made for the door, carrying him on his shoulder. The Deckhand tried to stop him and was stiff-armed out of the way, falling on a side table with a crash. Once outside, Mishkin dived into a hollow where the snow was relatively deep and used handfuls of it to douse the flames and after these had hissed out, used more snow to cool the red and tortured flesh showing through the charred clothing and on the face.

Crosetti observed this through the open door and watched as the Deckhand got up and tromped over to the kneeling Mishkin and kicked him hard in the ribs. He would have continued to kick had Shvanov not called him off.

“You know this gives me an idea,” said Shvanov. With a start, Crosetti realized that the gangster was addressing him. He immediately understood that the man was going to give him an explanation, because this is what movie gangsters always do for their victims, and he wondered if gangsters behaved so in earlier times. Probably yes, he thought, because you saw that in Shakespeare, the self-justifying villain, the delight in describing the prospect of death to the helpless victim. But did Shakespeare
invent
that, like screenwriters invented the quick-draw gunfight? Probably. He invented most of what passes for human behavior. Crosetti made himself concentrate on what Shvanov was saying.

“…so don’t you agree? Everyone will sacrifice for something, but not that kind of sacrifice, not the body, not even for money. For children maybe.” Here he looked coldly at the two Mishkin kids. “Or as we have just seen, for this manuscript. So, of course it is real.”

“You took a risk,” said Crosetti.

“Yes, but a man such as myself must take risks, it is entrepreneurial spirit. Now I have payoff.” He looked over to where his two men were gathering the sheets of scorched paper. “And I don’t think that some little burnt places will reduce the value too much if any. It gives a look of more authenticity, I believe, for so old a piece. But, as I say, this burning gives an idea. The professor Haas invites his good friend Mishkin to his
cabin with his two children, and also his friend Crosetti with his girlfriend Carolyn, and they go out in the Haas speedboat on this beautiful lake, even though it is cold, because it is so beautiful in the snow and there is a tragic explosion, a gasoline leak, or whatever, and they are all burned and sunk in the water.”

“I don’t understand. I didn’t have anything to do with this scam and neither did Carolyn.”

“Yes, but you are witnesses. This is a Russian thing, I believe. Stalin taught this to us and we remember. In doubt, get rid of everyone except those who are…what is this word? Com…?”

“Complicit.”

“Exactly. Complicit. So now, you will all go into the boat.” He reached under his coat, brought out a pistol, and shouted something in Russian to his troops. Soon they were in a sad procession down to the lake’s edge. In the front, Mishkin carrying the moaning Haas in his arms, then the Mishkin children, then Crosetti and Carolyn. The Russians now had their weapons out, the Deckhand with his submachine gun, and the others with semiautomatic pistols. It was the Deckhand who escorted the prisoners into the boathouse and made them enter the speedboat. The Doughboy was filling a five-gallon jerrican with gas from the pump. Shvanov and the third murderer had gone to start up the cruiser.

Mishkin placed Haas in a corner of the rear seat and then helped the others into the craft. As Crosetti climbed in Mishkin said in a whisper, “Can you drive this thing?”

“Sure.”

“Then get behind the wheel.” Crosetti did and Mishkin sat beside him in the front.

The Doughboy finished filling the can and climbed into the boat with it, resting it on the rear seat. He said something to his companion, and they both laughed, and then said something to Imogen, grabbing her arm and his own crotch, and laughed again. The Deckhand said something back, threw off the stern line, and went forward to untie the line that held the prow of the speedboat to a cleat. From outside, they heard the roar of the Bayliner’s engine starting.

The Doughboy was still talking to Imogen, with his face close to hers. She screamed and tried to push him away. He grabbed her hair, forced her head down, and yanked open his fly, at which point Mishkin, to Crosetti’s immense surprise, reached under the seat cushion, pulled out a Luger, and shot the man in the face. Then, as the Doughboy collapsed and fell overboard, Mishkin turned and put five rounds into the kneeling, and even more surprised, Deckhand. “Crank it up!” he ordered Crosetti. “Go!”

Crosetti turned the ignition, the engine coughed, roared; he threw the gearshift forward and the speedboat shot out of the boathouse.

He felt an absurd giggle rise in his chest as they flew through the water. Of course there would be a chase at the end and here it was. It took a moment or two for Shvanov and his guy to understand what was happening, but when they saw that no black-coated figures were on guard in the speedboat, they took off in pursuit. Crosetti knew that there was no way that a Chris-Craft woodie with an ancient V-6 was going to outrun a modern Bayliner, with maybe three times the horsepower, but he jammed the throttle to the stop and awaited the denouement.

The white boat steadily gained on them, and when they were less than twenty yards astern one of the men started to shoot at them. A bullet snapped overhead and left a long pink scar on the mahogany deck of the runabout. From behind, over the roar of the engine, Crosetti could hear the boy howling in fear.

Ahead and closing fast a line of small wooded islands extended from the eastern shore, to the left of which line stood a pole with a green light fixed to its top. Mishkin was pulling at his sleeve and pointing.

“Go between the marker and the last island!” he shouted. Crosetti twitched the wheel. The runabout whipped past the marker, struck a hidden rock with a jarring crash, ran another fifty feet, and then settled deep into the chilly waters. Crosetti struggled out from behind the wheel, grabbed a floating cushion, and went into the lake. Looking around, he saw the inverted stern of the runabout bobbing just above the surface, and beyond it an object that at first he did not recognize, but in a moment it came into focus as the front three-quarters of the Bayliner, floating on its
side. With its deeper draft the pursuing craft must have hit the rocks even harder.

He saw a smaller white object, which he identified as Carolyn Rolly’s parka. She was floating face downward. He went underwater, undid the laces of his boots, pushed them off his feet, and, using the cushion as a float, kicked his way toward her. As he reached her, he saw the head of Jake Mishkin moving toward them with powerful strokes. Together, they got her turned around with her head and shoulders out of the water on the cushion.

“I got her,” cried Crosetti.
“Where are your kids?”

At this a shocked look appeared on the other man’s face. He swiveled his head wildly and shouted. Some twenty-five yards away they saw a dark little shape appear amid splashing, the boy. Then it vanished. Jake pushed away toward the spot, but it was clear to Crosetti that the big man would never reach the child before he sank beyond reach. And then, from around the stern of the speedboat came a flash of water and a fast-moving shape—Imogen Mishkin doing a perfect crawl. She dived and reemerged with her brother, locked him against her chest in the approved Red Cross manner, and backstroked with him quickly to the nearest island.

Soon the five of them were all on the island, a hump of land not much bigger than a good-sized kitchen. Crosetti got Rolly on her back and blew into her mouth until she coughed and vomited up a quantity of water.

“Are you okay, Carolyn?” he asked.

“Cold.”

He put his arm around her. “We could pool our warmth, like this.”

She held herself stiffly. “I don’t see how you can bear to touch me.”

“Why? Because you screwed other men? I kind of knew that already. Only I would so appreciate it if you didn’t run away again. That’s the only thing about you that really annoys me. And the lying. I could do with less of that.”

“Besides that I’m perfect.”

“Pretty much. Oh, here’s the second climax.”

She looked and saw Shvanov and his henchman wading out of the
water. Neither seemed any longer to be armed. The henchman was staggering and bleeding badly from a head wound, and Shvanov was holding his left arm at the elbow and grimacing in pain. Mishkin waited until they were knee-deep and then he waded up to Shvanov, batted away a feeble blow, grabbed him by belt and collar, lifted the man over his head and flung him at his henchman. Both men went down. He did it twice more until they got the idea and waded and swam to the next tiny island in the chain.

“You wouldn’t have done it that way, unless this was a comedy,” observed Crosetti. “The villain and the supporting lead would have a fight to the death and both of them would perish, or the villain would kill the supporting lead and then the hero would knock him off. But maybe this
is
a comedy. I was thinking it was a thriller. Here comes the cavalry, too late as usual.”

A helicopter thumped into view and hovered over the wreck. In the distance they could make out a pair of gray hulls approaching over the water, each with a bone in its mouth.

“State police,” Crosetti explained to Carolyn’s wondering look. “I called my sister the cop this morning, and she obviously arranged this rescue.”

“You could have called her last night, and the cops could have been waiting when we arrived.”

“No, I had to see that they were really coming. If I’d’ve brought the cops in earlier, Shvanov might’ve killed the kids. Or you. But, as you see, it all worked out.”

“Where’s Haas?” asked Carolyn.

“Shit!” said Crosetti, standing up and looking out over the water. “He’s gone. He couldn’t have survived, hurt the way he was. And the manuscript is gone too.”

“No,” said Carolyn, “linen paper survives for a long time in water, and gall ink is pretty tough. This lake probably isn’t that deep—if it was still in that mailer it should be okay until they send divers for it.”