“Hello?” a squeaky voice appeared on the line. “Peter? How can I help?”
“Devicki,” Slava emphasized. “We’ve got a story about the Holocaust restitutions happening now, and an expert of your stature…” He waited, then added cautiously: “More about what if there were a fraud of some kind.”
“All right,” Morton said.
“And the main issue is what kind of liability would there be if, you know, someone were inventing the stories that go in those claims.”
“Has something happened?” Morton said.
“To whom?” Slava said.
“You were talking about invented claims.”
“Oh,” Slava said. “No, no. Strictly hypothetical. We like to cover our bases — you know.”
“Century,” Morton said bashfully.
“Century,” Slava said.
“I grew up reading it, you know. I’d steal it from my father’s shelf because he collected them.”
You had to give them a moment to fanboy.
“In any case, the key thing is the money,” Morton collected himself. “Does this person make a profit? Has the bogus claimant been indicted?”
“I’m sorry?” Slava said.
“Indicted. Has the bogus claimant been indicted?”
“Indicted,” Slava repeated.
“Well, yes,” Morton said. “There’s liability in criminal law. I don’t have the time to go into it now, but it’s money obtained under false pretense. So it’s theft — fraud. Criminal law obtains. The question is, is there a federal or state statute that makes this a criminal liability? Where is this happening?”
“New York?” Slava said. “If I had to guess. Is there?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Devicki,” Morton said, amused. “I’m in California.”
“So, we find out if there’s liability under New York law,” Slava said despondently. Indictment? Criminal liability?
“Then there’s German law, of course,” Morton went on. “If it’s criminal under German law, there may be a request for extradition. I’m sorry this is so hypothetical. This hasn’t happened, so there aren’t cases to judge from.”
“Extradition,” Slava repeated. Feebly, he added: “But how can you be beholden to German laws if you’re a citizen—”
“It’s theft from a foreign government,” Morton said. “You don’t have to be a German citizen to be liable.”
“I see,” Slava said. He pumped energy into his voice. “This is very useful.”
“My pleasure,” Morton said. “Not every day Century calls.”
“One last thing,” Slava said, his finger working a groove in the side of an old wooden bookshelf that held reference books on botany and horticulture. “You Can Lead a Whore to Culture…” somebody had handwritten above “Horticulture.” “How would they find out?” he said. “That it’s false?”
“Every fund has its own verification requirements,” Morton said.
“Are there records?” Slava said. “From the war?”
“Very spotty,” Morton said. “The Germans destroyed a lot, and the Russians have always kept theirs close. So it sort of comes down to how persuasive the story is. Whether the facts send up red flags.”
“I see,” Slava said grimly. “Well, I appreciate your time.” Morton started asking when the article would run, so Slava hung up. He sat motionlessly, then wished he’d asked what Morton meant by red flags.
“Hey—” Arianna startled him. She was in the doorway to the library, propping the door open with her hip. How long had she stood there? He marveled again at how lovely she was. The fingers as long and slim as pencils, so slender that they were blue by the morning, even though it was a hundred degrees outside. He would rub them between his, twice as thick. “You okay?” she said.
“Come in,” he said.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Come here.” His cell phone was still flashing Morton’s number, ended call. He pulled her neck toward him and kissed her, swiveling her away from the phone.
“Slava, Avi is heating his lentils around the corner right now.”
“In the armchair, then.” He pointed to a ratty seat around the corner from a bamboo screen, the Austin Miller Home for the Aged. Austin, an editorial assistant, took a powerful south-of-the-border nap there every afternoon.
“Stop,” she said. “At home.” She pulled away and straightened her skirt. Reassured that she hadn’t overheard him, he conceded. “I was going for a walk, if you want,” she said.
He was about to refuse when he thought: Arianna would know something about red flags. She was a fact-checker; it was her job.
“I do,” he said.
“You’re actually going to come with me.”
“You only had to sleep with me.”
Outside, it was less decisively scorching than the day before. The broom of the seasons was starting to sweep summer under the rug. Emerging into the bright light, they slapped their palms against their eyes. Arianna withdrew large sunglasses from her many-buckled purse. “When I leave this place,” she said, “I’m going to write a novel about editorial staffers who work endless hours and then turn into vampires at night.”
“Where to?” he said.
“You choose,” she said.
“I don’t know how to play this game. I don’t want to just stand here.”
“We are the only people on this block standing still.” He followed her gaze: The street scrummed around them, itchy and tense. She told him to close his eyes. He was bumped from behind by someone exiting the building, and given a withering look. “Close your eyes,” she repeated, oblivious. He threw up his hands and walked away from the revolving doors, to a sad wall where the building’s smokers congregated.
“If you just wait for one minute, it’ll come,” she said, joining him.
“I’m waiting,” he said impatiently.
“Sometimes it doesn’t,” she acknowledged.
He rolled his eyes.
“If I’m with someone who’s impatient and annoying, and it just won’t come, then I close my eyes,” she said. “Then I feel like I am in a van Gogh painting. Everything around is a swirl, and I am a still point in the middle.”
He lifted a finger and touched her birthmarked eyelid. She flinched, but her eyes stayed closed. The skin of the eyelid was soft and weary. She never wore makeup.
He saw Mr. Grayson striding out of the elevators, a pack of Merits in his hand like a beacon.
“Okay, let’s go,” Slava said to her.
“Where to?” she said, opening her eyes.
“The park,” he said. “People sit still in the park.”
“What do you know,” she started to say, but he put his hand over her mouth. She wriggled out and he gave chase. They ran up Sixth Avenue.
In Bryant Park, Midtown was sweating through salads. Having hoped to spend their lunch hour pretending in a corner that humanity was not, in fact, pressing in all around, the park’s visitors had no choice but to join strangers at the dollhouse café tables dotting the perimeter. For thirty minutes, they sat next to one another, avoiding eyes.
Slava and Arianna settled onto the grass, still warm in a summer way. Despite being loaded down with a handbag and a wandering skirt, Arianna deposited herself on the ground with a quiet, undemonstrative efficiency. Unspooled against the green, her legs were as pale as plaster.
“How are you holding up,” she said. “I mean your grandmother. You haven’t really talked about it. Sorry if I’m not supposed to bring it up.”
He lowered his head onto her thighs. The air was greasy with summer. “In Uzbekistan,” he said, remembering something his grandfather once told him, “when it’s hot outside, they drink hot tea instead of the opposite.”
“Whenever I ask you about her, you talk about him.”