"Why don't you begin, Mr. Mishkin?" she said.

"Jake," said Mr. Mishkin.

"As in Chinatown 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." 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!"

"Mother, that is so...so completely off the charts. You a.s.sume that Carolyn's the perpetrator here on zero evidence. She could just as easily be another victim. She could've been tortured too, and that's that's how whoever it is knows about the ciphers." how whoever it is knows about the ciphers."

"He's right, Ma," said Donna, as her natural defender's personality emerged. "We just don't know enough to speculate about the guilt of Carolyn Rolly, although unless the leak comes from Allie indirectly, the source of knowledge about the ciphers has to come from her. Meanwhile, this is clearly a criminal matter and-"

Bang.

The sound came from the street, and the three Crosettis knew immediately what it was, because they were not a family to ever say "I thought it was a firecracker or a car backfiring." In the next seconds a fusillade sounded from the street. Everyone stood up and Mary Peg made for the cordless phone sitting on an end table. Now came breaking gla.s.s, the sound of heavy feet, and three big men charged into the room, all of them carrying large 9 mm semiautomatic pistols. One of them shouted at Mary Peg to drop the phone. She ignored him and continued to punch in 911. When the operator came on she gave her address twice and said, "Shots fired. Home invasion," before the phone was torn from her hand and a big man grabbed her around the neck and held a gun to her temple.

THE F FIFTH C CIPHERED L LETTER.

My lord I have not had message from you these five moneths & what shal I doe? W.S. saith he will not give hys plaie of Mary to anie hand but my lord of Rochester's owne or onne of hys house. Shal I steale it of hym & sende? Mr Wales is dead this weeke, found stabbed in Mincing Lane. From London 2nd December 1611 Restyng y December 1611 Restyng yr Lords.h.i.+ps moste loyal & obd Lords.h.i.+ps moste loyal & obdt serv servt Richard Bracegirdle. Richard Bracegirdle.

15.

After Shvanov left I used the cell phone to call Miriam. She was, of course, out and with her own cell phone switched off (I have never once, in more than twenty years, connected with my sister on the first try), so I left a somewhat frantic message. Why? Because no one is supposed to know Dad but the three of us? Ridiculous, but there it was, a feeling of dread.

Around ten the next morning I received a cell phone call from a woman named Donna Crosetti, who said she was representing her brother, Albert, in the matter of certain papers fraudulently obtained by the late Bulstrode. I replied that it remained to be seen whether any fraud had taken place, but that I would be happy to meet with her, or Albert, to discuss the matter, all the while thinking that it was odd for a lawyer to be representing a family member, and odd too was the venue she proposed, a house in Queens rather than a law office. After we had arranged the meeting for that evening, I dialed the number she had called from and was surprised to find it a Legal Aid office. This is yet another indication of how nuts I was then, as in my right mind I never would have agreed to such a meeting. next morning I received a cell phone call from a woman named Donna Crosetti, who said she was representing her brother, Albert, in the matter of certain papers fraudulently obtained by the late Bulstrode. I replied that it remained to be seen whether any fraud had taken place, but that I would be happy to meet with her, or Albert, to discuss the matter, all the while thinking that it was odd for a lawyer to be representing a family member, and odd too was the venue she proposed, a house in Queens rather than a law office. After we had arranged the meeting for that evening, I dialed the number she had called from and was surprised to find it a Legal Aid office. This is yet another indication of how nuts I was then, as in my right mind I never would have agreed to such a meeting.

Meanwhile, my diary helps not at all, as I was now cut loose from my normal office routine. My appointments were cleared indefinitely, which turned out not to be such a good thing. People in stressful jobs are often told to take a rest, but sometimes it is just that stress that has held them together, like the proverbial ancient biplane kept in the air with rubber bands and baling wire, without which it falls from the sky. So, now, in unaccustomed idleness, all the little wheels started to wobble loose or jam up. I paced. I flicked channels. I watched pigeons and traffic out my window. I had a ma.s.sive coronary....

What it felt like for a moment, but which was only the start of panic: short breath, sweats, tingling in arms, a little dyskinesia. The cell phone buzzed its simple factory-installed tweedle and I grabbed for it like life itself and it was Omar, and would I be going out today? Actually, I would. I had the usual number of friends and acquaintances around town, but there was only one person I thought I could go to after getting fired from my job for malfeasance, which was my wife. So I cleaned myself up, dressed casually but with care, checked my image for corporal signs of depravity, found many, took a Xanax so as not to fret about these overmuch, and away we went uptown. More dummheit dummheit! I always forget that my wife understands me.

I believe I mentioned that Amalie runs a financial newsletter out of a small office in our town house. This is somewhat misleading, because there is also an actual office full of gnomes down on Broad Street, and in other offices scattered throughout the planet in the time zones that matter to international money. My wife visits these as infrequently as she can get away with, because it is her fancy that she is a simple wife and mother with a paying hobby, as if she were crocheting pot holders instead of running a multimillion-dollar enterprise. It is something of a joke in the financial district, I am told, but it turns out (ask Mike Bloomberg) that after a while one's financial information empire more or less runs itself, and the founder's main responsibility is to resist kibitzing.

Thus I had every reason to believe that Amalie would be free for a nice consoling chat, but when I arrived at the house and was let in by Lourdes, and asked where Amalie was, she told me (with what I thought was excessive satisfaction) that Amalie was not available, that she was having a meeting. I could wait in the living room.

So I waited and fumed and wished for more drugs and got tight in the chest for what seemed like hours, but by my oft-consulted watch was less than forty minutes, until I heard voices in the hallway and sprang up and was able to witness Amalie showing out a trio of suits, who looked at me curiously, as at an exhibit (I imagined): unemployed ex-husband, lurking. Amalie, for her part, showed no surprise, nor did she introduce me to the suits but ushered them graciously out the door.

When she came back, I said, "Big meeting?" keeping the tone light.

"Yes," she said. "What's wrong, Jake?"

I related the law firm story in the most pathetic and self-deprecating manner possible, sitting on her/my leather couch while she perched primly on the chair opposite. I omitted only the horrible Russian of the previous evening.

"Poor Jake," she said when I was finished. "What will you do?"

"I don't know. Take some time off, think about life. Maybe I'll look for this lost play."

"Oh, don't even joke about that!"

"Why not?" I said. "Where's the harm?"

"The harm is that one man has been killed over this, according to you, and my children are having to be watched by Paul's gangsters. I cannot stand to live like this, Jake. I have said to Paul, thank you very much, but please no."

"What, no one is watching the children?"

"No, and there is no reason for anyone to bother with them because you have nothing they want any longer." She must have observed something in my face that I was not aware of, because she added, a little more forcefully, "Or so you have led me to believe. Is there anything?"

"No," I said quickly. "Of course not. They have the original letter already and that was all I ever had. It's over."

She kept looking at me as if waiting. At last I said, "What?"

"Nothing. I have nothing to say. You are the one who came to my house."

"I thought we could talk," I said.

"Upon what subject? Shall we discuss your new woman?"

"There's no new woman."

"That would amaze me. Look, we have had a terrible fight, yet another another terrible, shameful fight about your lying and your girls, and now you have ruined yourself in your profession because of one of them, and you come back to me for...for what, I should like to know? Punishment? Shall I stand in the door like a cartoon wife, tapping my foot, with my arms folded, holding a rolling pin? Or take you back? On what basis? That you will act like a mutt dog in heat whenever you please, and I shall be waiting with the lamp in the window?" terrible, shameful fight about your lying and your girls, and now you have ruined yourself in your profession because of one of them, and you come back to me for...for what, I should like to know? Punishment? Shall I stand in the door like a cartoon wife, tapping my foot, with my arms folded, holding a rolling pin? Or take you back? On what basis? That you will act like a mutt dog in heat whenever you please, and I shall be waiting with the lamp in the window?"

I can't recall what I said in reply. I can't recall what I wanted from the wretched woman. For the past to be erased, I suppose, for a clean slate. I believe I did actually sink to the level where I appealed to her Christian charity: did she think I was beyond forgiveness? Whereupon she pointed out to me what I knew very well, that there is no forgiveness without repentance, and that I had not really repented; and then stopped herself and cried out that I was doing it again, making her feel like a d.a.m.ned prig and a Sunday school teacher, I am not to instruct my husband as to morals, he is supposed to know all this already.

And so on. Early in our relations.h.i.+p, Amalie had revealed to me that when she was thirteen her beloved dad had been discovered with an entirely separate second family on the other side of the Mont Blanc tunnel, mistress and two daughters, a la Mitterand, very high tone and civilized, of course, no question of divorce, just a continuing slow h.e.l.l of silent meals and separate bedrooms and the children sent away to boarding schools. Amalie thus had a horror of infidelity, why she fled sophisticated decadent Europe for America the puritan, we are fat and stupid and lack culture but American men are perhaps not such hypocrites about their marriage vows. And married me.

Then she changed the subject, standing up, and pacing back and forth, bent over a little, her hands stuck in the pockets of the cashmere cardigan she often wears while working. She told me that the men I saw going out were from the Dow Jones organization. They had been d.i.c.kering for Mishkin's Arbitrage Letter Mishkin's Arbitrage Letter for some time and Amalie had agreed just now to sell it for a figure not quite sufficient to purchase a squadron of air-superiority fighter planes. She added that she was going to sell the town house as well and move to Zurich. Her mother was getting on and was lonely and depressed and it would do her good to fuss over the grandkids, and Amalie was angry at my nation, she did not wish to bring her children up in a christo-fascist empire, that was not what she had bargained for when first she flew the ocean to America the free, and she wanted to devote herself full-time to charitable works in the earth's more desperate regions. And on cue I blurted out, "What about me?" for some time and Amalie had agreed just now to sell it for a figure not quite sufficient to purchase a squadron of air-superiority fighter planes. She added that she was going to sell the town house as well and move to Zurich. Her mother was getting on and was lonely and depressed and it would do her good to fuss over the grandkids, and Amalie was angry at my nation, she did not wish to bring her children up in a christo-fascist empire, that was not what she had bargained for when first she flew the ocean to America the free, and she wanted to devote herself full-time to charitable works in the earth's more desperate regions. And on cue I blurted out, "What about me?"

It certainly hurts when someone you have loved looks at you with pity, as Amalie did then. Now that I think about it, I should have known then that the love was still alive in my heart, or it would not have hurt so much, I could have remained the cool "separated" man about town like all the others one sees in the parks and tony restaurants on Sundays in Manhattan: uncomfortable, phony-jolly, overindulging the unhappy tykes. She lowered her eyes, as if embarra.s.sed by what she saw, and retrieved a Kleenex from the wad that always lurked in the pocket of her cardigan, wiped her eyes, blew her nose. In my wickedness I thought, Ah, she weeps, that's a good sign! I found myself begging her not to go, that I would be different, etc. She said she loved me and always would, and wished very much that she could be complaisant, but could not, and if I ever decided to return on terms of perfect honor to my marriage, she would see, and I said, Now, now, I have have decided, and she gave me a searching look as only she can and said Oh, no, Jake, I am afraid you have not. decided, and she gave me a searching look as only she can and said Oh, no, Jake, I am afraid you have not.

Which was true because just before before that moment, when I thought she might roll, I was still thinking that somehow I could retrieve Miranda and clear up our little misunderstanding and have both the old and the new Amalie at my disposal. I can't stand to type any more of this hideous account of what was taking place in my weasel mind. It doesn't matter. that moment, when I thought she might roll, I was still thinking that somehow I could retrieve Miranda and clear up our little misunderstanding and have both the old and the new Amalie at my disposal. I can't stand to type any more of this hideous account of what was taking place in my weasel mind. It doesn't matter.

What did I do after she had, quite properly, shown me the door? I went to the gym, where Arkady welcomed me with a warm handshake, an embrace, and a false look. G.o.d knows what Shvanov had arranged to get me back in there, but it was clear that the easy gym comrades.h.i.+p was over. The word had apparently also spread to the other Russian lifters in the place because I was treated like a radioactive prince, no waits for the benches or machines for me! I pumped iron until I was ready to throw up, then took a painfully hot shower; Arkady's is known for the dangerous heat of his hot water (there are even cautionary signs), and I wondered if you could accidentally on purpose kill yourself in this way. When I was meat-loaf red I turned the hot faucet off entirely and suffered under the icy drench until my teeth chattered.

I was getting dressed when my cell went off and it was my sister. Without preamble I asked her if she knew that Osip Shvanov knew our father. Sure, she said. They knew each other from Israel. What about it?

What about it indeed? The fact filled me with a particularly infantile kind of fear, where you know you have to keep something hidden from the parent without quite knowing why, only that if they found out they would act out of malice, or worse, some unconscious impulse to claim a chunk of your soul, to innocently eat you up eat you up.

"Jake, is there something wrong?"

Honestly, I can't remember what I was saying that made her say that; I must have been babbling in an uncharacteristic fas.h.i.+on. And it brought me up short, because Miri is rarely interested in what is wrong with her loved ones, there is so much wrong with her her that she prefers to talk about. that she prefers to talk about.

"Nothing," I lied. "Look, Miri, have you, like, discussed discussed this whole ma.n.u.script thing I'm involved in with anyone? Shvanov? Or Dad?" this whole ma.n.u.script thing I'm involved in with anyone? Shvanov? Or Dad?"

"What ma.n.u.script thing?"

"You know, I told you about it that night at Amalie's...Shakespeare, death by torture?"

"Oh, that. I don't think so, but you know, I don't keep a meticulous, like, transcript transcript of everything I talk about. Why? Is it supposed to be some big secret? No, don't leave it there! Move it over by the piano!" of everything I talk about. Why? Is it supposed to be some big secret? No, don't leave it there! Move it over by the piano!"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, they're delivering something. Look I have to go, darling, these people are going to totally destroy my living room. Bye-bye."

With that she was gone, leaving me to deal with the probability that my sister had spread the amusing story of how her brother had found the key to a fabulous treasure throughout her wide circle of friends, including quite a few in the demimonde between business and crime. Miri had never much worried about the distinction, which meant that Shvanov might possibly be telling the truth-the city was full of Russian thugs for hire, and those who had attacked me might not have had anything to do with Shvanov's outsourced violence. But perhaps they did. Perhaps it was a vast conspiracy, watching, waiting to strike, and why had I been so stupid as to come to a gym full of tough Russians? Panic does not really stick in the mind, I believe, it is as transient as smell, although it can be brought back Proust-like by a recurrence of the original stimulus. I am a little batty now, and so I can recall fairly well my irrational desperation sitting half-naked in that wintergreen-smelling locker room. I had the cell phone in my hand and almost without thinking, I dialed Mickey Haas's number. I left a message demanding that he contact me immediately and I must have sounded crazed because he rang me back about twenty minutes later, while I was waiting at the curb for Omar to bring the car around.

"Lunch?" I said when he was connected.

"This is a lunch call? You sounded like your pants were on fire."

"It's a desperate lunch call. I'm being chased by Russian gangsters. I really need to talk to someone."

"Okay. I had something with my publisher, but I can cancel. You'll send Omar?"

"I'll come up. We'll go someplace new." Of course they they would be watching my usual haunts... would be watching my usual haunts...

We went to Sichuan Gardens on Ninety-sixth, somewhat to Mickey's amus.e.m.e.nt. The place is dim and on the second floor of a commercial block, and I sat with my back to the mirrored wall where I could watch the entryway. To fine my alertness to an even higher degree I had a martini.

"So, Lefty," he said when we had ordered, "you think Big Max got a contract out on you?"

"This is not funny, man," I said. "This is not supposed to be my life."

"No, your life is supposed to be long dull days at the office doing work you don't particularly like, whose purpose is to render the creative act even more of a commodity than it already is. And chasing p.u.s.s.y in your off hours, looking for the romantic fix that will stay fixed, even though you already found it years ago, and if you did once again convince yourself you found Miss Perfecto, you'd go off chasing p.u.s.s.y again as soon after the wedding as you possibly could, a dreary cycle that will end only when you locate someone st.u.r.dy, reliable, and mercenary who will stick around to nurse you through your final illness and collect all the chips."

"Thank you for your support, Mickey," I said as icily as I could. "And f.u.c.k you very much."

"Whereas now," he continued, undismayed, "you're living the life of a man, every moment rich with import, with danger and excitement. A Shakespearian life, you could say, a life worthy of Richard Bracegirdle. Would you want Hamlet to go back to college and join a frat? Get drunk and party and get a B minus in Scholasticism 101?"

"Doesn't he get killed at the end of the play?"

"He does, but don't we all? The choice is only how we live in the previous five acts. Have you come any closer to finding the Bracegirdle original, speaking of spine-tingling excitement?"

"No, and I don't intend to," I snarled, since I was being frank with Mickey and did not require any sympathy from him, did not care if he thought I might be in danger, which is why I had mendaciously suggested this possibility to my wife. "I want to have nothing to do with Bracegirdle apart from insuring that Russian gangsters or whoever is after the ciphers leaves me the f.u.c.k alone. What about you? Have you penetrated the mysterious ma.n.u.script any since I saw you last?"

"No, and I don't intend to," he echoed. "Giving something like that to a scholar is like giving a glossy photo of a roast beef dinner to a starving man. It'll make his mouth water but is devoid of nourishment. Without the original, as I think I've said, the text itself is a nullity. Never mind a putative letter from a guy who spied on the man, I could whip up a convincing facsimile of Shakespeare's personal diary in a spare afternoon, answering questions that have plagued scholars for years. What Russian gangsters?"

Now the whole thing emerged in a rush-Miranda, Amalie, Russians, the law firm, and all. Mickey chopsticked up his spicy beef with buckwheat noodles and listened quietly, as for years I have depended on him to do, as he has on me. When I ran out of words, I asked him for his opinion and suggested that he not just tell me I was f.u.c.ked up, because I already knew that.

He said, "You're going to see this Crosetti kid with the ciphers?"

"Yeah, but they think I'm going there to d.i.c.ker about returning the original that Bulstrode screwed him out of. I have absolutely no leverage on him, except money."

"That's always seemed to be a decent enough lever to me. Meanwhile, what do you intend to do with your life? Do you think it's likely you'll really be disbarred?"

"Maybe, if there's a complaint from the heir. I'd have to make rest.i.tution, obviously...."

"You ought to go see him."

"The heir? I can't do that!"

"Why not? Have a chat, tell him what happened, beat your breast and cry mercy. You know the trouble with you lawyers is that sometimes, in your efforts to be absolutely legal, you forget ordinary human intercourse. What can he do to you? Call you an a.s.shole? You already know that. And maybe you'll find out something about you-know-what. Maybe Andrew confided in his longtime companion. Anyway, you'll have a nice talk. You were probably one of the last people to see his boyfriend alive-he'll probably be grateful for the meeting. And you can return the personal effects. It'd be a nice gesture after your various peccadilloes."

Yes, it was definitely Mickey who first put it into my head to go to England and talk with Oliver March. Whether I would have gone or not was still in doubt when I left Mickey at the campus, but later events changed that. I felt somewhat better after my lunch. For some reason, virtually every Chinese restaurant in New York has a full bar, even joints that look like they don't sell a martini a month. I had three, something I had never done at lunchtime before in my life.

The remainder of the afternoon is somewhat blurry. Perhaps there was a discussion of marriage with Omar, me quizzing him on Muslim practices in this area. Was fidelity easier if you had two or three? I can't recall his answer exactly. We went back to my loft and I had another drink, a scotch, and then a nap. From which I was awakened by the merry dinging of my cell phone, upon which I was sleeping. I punched the green b.u.t.ton and it said "You jerk!" in my ear, by which I knew it was my brother.

Clearly, he'd been talking to Amalie and Miri while I was eating and sleeping and had the whole story from both those angles and he let me know what he thought of my recent behavior. "Was that it?" I said after the blast had dissipated. "Because I have an appointment at a child brothel in twenty minutes."

This he ignored as it deserved, and said What does it matter what he said, exactly? I was blurred with drink and unpleasant sottish dreams and so I can't really recall. I think we talked about Amalie and about her asking him to pull his thugs off the case and her plans to leave the country. I was probably rude to him as I so often am, for I have never quite forgiven him for turning out a better man than me, and also I was sick of being lectured by my family about my many defects. I may have asked him about our father, about whether he was connected in some way with Shvanov and his doings. He told me he didn't know, but it was possible, if any scams were going down. What kind of scams?

He said, this Shakespeare business, dummy. It has all the earmarks of a big con: the secret doc.u.ment, never authenticated and now lost, the priceless treasure, the dupe Bulstrode, the false heiress. It stank of fraud, and since it was a bunch of extremely dangerous gangsters who had been defrauded, it would be a wise move not to get involved any more and to get the word out that I was no longer a player. Something like that. Did I beg him to intercede with Amalie not to leave the country? I may have. As I said, it's vague.

Hideously clear, in contrast, is what happened during the remainder of my evening. My stomach was acting up, as it always does when I drink to excess during the day, so I made myself some poached eggs, toast, and tea, and around six or so had Omar drive me out to G.o.dforsaken Queens, to Ozone Park. It was dark when we arrived at a street of depressing little bungalows, all with vest pocket front yards protected by chain-link fencing and decorated with Madonnas and mirror b.a.l.l.s on pedestals. It reminded me forcefully of my Brooklyn roots and my unhappy childhood. I was prepared not to like the inhabitants.

My ring was answered by a thin woman with an Irish kisser and a head full of russet ringlets, wearing a black cotton crewneck and worn blue jeans. A nice freckled face but supplied with the kind of sharp blue eyes it would be hard to lie to. I introduced, we shook. This was Mary Crosetti, mother of. Into the living room: furnis.h.i.+ngs old, worn, reasonably well cleaned, a middle-cla.s.s home such as I had been reared in, cared for, but not kept like my own mother kept house, no odor of furniture polish or bleach. A powerful odor of wine, though. Albert Crosetti was a well-fed medium-size fellow with a frank, open face and large dark eyes that seemed to want to be wary if only they knew how. The lawyer-sister, in contrast, was one of us us-bright, cool, something of a killer. Pretty and slim, though, another redhead, brighter hair, worn in a schoolgirlish ponytail, fewer freckles than Mom: the sort of woman upon whom my charm does not work. The father of the family had been a cop, apparently, and he stared down at us from one of those awful portraits made from photographs, in which everyone looks stuffed and sprayed with vinyl.

After the preliminaries I told my story, made my confession. Learned they had the ciphers but had made no progress in interpreting them. We then talked about Carolyn Rolly, the woman with whom Crosetti had gone to sell the ma.n.u.script to Bulstrode. Rolly seemed like an interesting woman and perhaps a key figure in the affair, and I was about to ask whether anyone had made a serious effort to locate her, when the gangsters came in.

I believe I have already stated that I am not a violent man and that my military experience consists largely in caring for the stricken; my deeds in the events that followed should therefore not suggest that I am anything other than a quite ordinary coward. There was a shot from the street, which I did not identify as such, and then many more ditto. I thought firecrackers, but the Crosettis all rose to their feet and young Crosetti looked out the window. Mrs. Crosetti picked up a cordless phone and dialed 911. I said, inanely, "What's happening?" No one answered and then some gla.s.s broke and three men came running into the living room; to comprehend what happened next you have to understand that we were all in a s.p.a.ce about ten feet across.