Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows

“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 unsatisfactoryconversation 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…”