Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows

“I don’t see what I can do. You said the thing was uncrackable.”

“Yes, but…your mother has told me this entire story, as much as she has of it, and so I know that a man has already died. Now you must think: the men who killed this professor do not know that the cipher is unreadable. Let us presume they have the Bracegirdle letter or a copy of it. This letter mentions other letters, ciphered letters. These they do not have and they must begin to want them and I am sure they must have obtained your name from the dead man. This young lady who was with you when you found them, she at least knows the ciphers exist. She has already disappeared, and sends a letter you suspect, which you are correct to do: anyone can write a letter, or force a letter to be written, and mail it from anywhere. She might be on the next street. Or dead as well.”

Crosetti had considered that possibility any number of times and always dismissed it. Carolyn may have run away-from what he didn’t know yet-but he refused to admit that she might be dead. At some level he knew he was being infantile: people died, but not Carolyn Rolly. She was a survivor and good at hiding, and the script required that she reappear and conclude her business with Albert Crosetti. A little Polish-movie business was okay, but not that.

“She’s not dead,” he said, as much to hear the magic of the phrase as to communicate the thought to Klim. “Anyway, what’s your point?”

“My point is that we are dealing here with violent people and there is no reason why they should not come after you next. You or your mother.”

“My mother?”

“Well, yes. I presume that if they have your mother you will give them anything they want.”

An unwanted laugh sprang from Crosetti’s mouth. “Jesus, Klim! I think it was a mistake to let you watch John Wayne. They can have the damn things right now. I’ll put an ad out-‘thugs who whacked Bulstrode, pick up the cipher letters anytime.’”

“Yes, but of course they would see that as a ploy. The problem with evil people is that they can see only evil in others. It is one of the worst curses of being evil, that you can no longer experience good. Believe me in this; for perhaps I have seen more evil people than you. Tell me, your father was a policeman-have you any guns in the house?”

At this, Crosetti’s mouth fell open and he felt hysteria well up again but suppressed the feeling. “Yeah, we have his guns. Why?”

“Because when you are gone it will be necessary for me to stay here armed.”

“What do you mean, gone? When I’m at work?”

“No. I mean when you are in England. You should immediately leave for England.”

Crosetti stared at the man. He seemed perfectly calm, but you could never tell with a certain type of crazy person. Or maybe this was how he became when drunk. Crosetti was fairly drunk himself and decided to treat the current run of conversation like drunk-talk, or the type he and his friends got into when they were thinking about how to raise enough money to make a movie. He pasted a humoring smile on his face. “Why should I go to England, Klim?”

“Two reasons. One is to disappear from here. Second is to find out what Bulstrode learned while he was there, if you can. Third is to find the grille.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that shouldn’t take any time at all. They probably have just the grille we want at Grilles R Us. Or Grille World. But first, I think I’ll go to bed. Good night, Klim.”

“Yes, but first the guns. Perhaps they come tonight.”

“God, you’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Extremely serious. Guns is not a joking matter.”

Crosetti was just in that stage of drunkenness in which one is physically capable of acts that the sober self would never have considered for an instant (Hey, let’s drive the pickup out on the lake ice and do skids!), and so he went into his mother’s bedroom and took down the carton that contained all his father’s policeman stuff-the gold shield, the handcuffs, the notebooks, and the two pistols in their leather zip cases. One was a big Smith & Wesson Model 10, the classic.38 that all New York patrolmen used to carry before the semiautomatics came in, and the other was the.38 Chief’s Special with the two-inch barrel that his father had carried as a detective. There was a half-empty box of Federal jacketed hollow-point.38 Specials in there too and he took it out and loaded both weapons on his mother’s blond oak bureau. He put the Chief’s Special, still in its clip-on holster, into his pocket and left the room, holding the Model 10.

“I assume you know how to use this,” he said, handing it butt-first to Klim. “You won’t shoot your foot. Or my mom.”

“Yes,” said Klim, hefting it in the palm of his hand like a pound of sausage. Crosetti was happy to see that he didn’t sight it and put his finger on the trigger. “It is a John Wayne pistol. All the world knows how to shoot this type.”

“There’s a little more to it than that.”

“I was making a joke. In fact, the weapons training I received was quite thorough.”

“Great. Well, knock yourself out.”

“Excuse, please?”

“Another figure of speech. I’m going to bed.”

He did and awakened at 4:10 in the morning, thinking that he had dreamed it all, dreamed that he had given a loaded weapon to a man he hardly knew. He jumped out of bed and went over to his trousers hanging from the closet doorknob and felt the weight of the other pistol there. With a whispered curse he removed it and started toward his mother’s bedroom and then thought better of it. Mary Peg invariably woke during the night after falling asleep in front of the TV, and he could barely imagine what she would think if she awakened again and saw her son in her bedroom brandishing a revolver. He placed it in the canvas briefcase he carried on his way to and from work and returned to his bed. Thereafter he slept fitfully, bemoaning during the waking intervals this last evidence of his terminal stupidity.

The next morning he came down to breakfast late, hoping to keep his contact with the house’s other two inhabitants to the socially acceptable minimum. When he arrived in the kitchen, his mother was there, fully dressed and made up, and Klim was sitting at the table attired in his bad suit. The pistol was not evident. Mary Peg was making bacon and eggs and chatting brightly with her houseguest. They were going to go out for a drive, maybe out to the Island, have lunch someplace, it looked like a sunny day, not too cold, etc. This amiable chatter only increased Crosetti’s depression and guilt. Klim was the reason for the cooked breakfast, obviously, for on weekdays the Crosettis made do with cold cereal and coffee. Crosetti had to eat some out of simple loyalty, and after a decent interval he grabbed his coat and his briefcase and left.

He had thought of asking when Klim would be leaving, now that the deciphering had reached a dead end, but had decided not to, had decided that it would be ill-mannered. It was his mother’s house, she could shack up with anyone she wanted. Why was he living with his mother anyway? It was ridiculous and unsuitable and the hell with saving for film school. Carolyn Rolly had figured a way out of an impossible situation, and she had far fewer resources than he did (as she had pointed out to him), and now he resolved to make a change. There were people he knew in Williamsburg and Long Island City who lived in group dwellings, film and music freaks his own age. The rent would be a pinch, but maybe he could forget about film school for a bit, maybe he could get a small script shot and use that to get an internship or a scholarship, or maybe he should start sending scripts to the contests. He was filling his mind with thoughts that were not about pistols and the menace of violence from unknown parties and this worked well enough until he lifted his briefcase to pass through the subway turnstile and he heard a clank when it brushed against the metal of the turnstile housing and he realized that he still had the pistol with him.