So I asked why they did not use the methode of triangles & sines & at this they were amazed haveing not heard aught of this beforre. Soe I drew a little picture shewing how a gonners quadrant, a square & a yard-sticke could be soe used to take the distance from one point to another far offe. They had to see & trye this methode without delay & I arranged all & tried to a distant tree & wee paced it out after & they were greately pleazed thereby how it accorded with my figures. Then a bigge heartie man Thomas Keane clapped my shoulder saying lad I would make a true gonner of you, be you ever wearie of making gonnes you can come with mee as matrosse to the warre & shoote them at Spaniardes, for a matrosse you know is a gonneres holpe. Soe I thanked hym kindlie but sayde I had no thought of warre then, how little we know Lord of youre devizynges or youre werkes.
5
To my credit, I suppose, I did not immediately race back to the office after the two detectives left. I finished my normal routine at the gym and took a shower and had a steam before returning. In the car, I admit I was not as engaged as I usually am with Omar’s conversation. Omar worries a little obsessively about our involvement in Iraq and in general about the relations between his adopted nation and the Islamic world. His experience in this city after 9/11 has not been pleasant. This particular morning, as the radio murmured the latest bad news, and Omar put in his comments, the only atrocity that engaged me was the grim fate of my late client, Bulstrode. Could he actually have found a document that led to an invaluable manuscript? And had someone killed him to find out where said document was? There followed the even less pleasant thought: torture meant a desire for information, and what information did Bulstrode have to give out but the name of the person to whom he had given his manuscript, which was me? I did not really know the man, but I did not consider for one second the possibility that when they put the pain on him he would be able to conceal the location of that fat envelope.
Again, as with the cops, the feeling of unreality, the slipping into the forms established by fiction. Shortly after I graduated from college, that being still the era of the draft, and not being the resistant type, I yielded to the inevitable and volunteered myself (virtually alone among my graduating class I believe) as a draftee. They made me into a medic rather than an infantryman, and I ended up in the Twelfth Evac Hospital in Cu Chi, in South Vietnam. Unlike my S.S. grandfather, I was an entirely undistinguished soldier, being what was then known as a rear-area-motherfucker, or white mouse, but I did see an ammo dump spectacularly explode after being hit by an enemy rocket, and I recall all the witnesses thereto, in order to validate the experience, repeatedly using the phrase “it was just like the movies.” Thus, although life is by and large unthrilling, when we do find ourselves in the sort of situation upon which thrillers dote we cannot really experience it, because our imaginations are occupied by the familiar tropes of popular fiction. And the result of this is a kind of dull bafflement, and the sense that whatever it is cannot really be happening. We actually think that phrase: this can’t be happening to me.
Back at the office, I obtained the safe-deposit box key from the place where Ms. Maldonado keeps it, having waited for her to be away from her desk. I retreived the Bulstrode envelope and took it back to my office. Ms. Maldonado looked at me inquiringly when I returned her key, but I did not offer to explain, nor did she ask. I said I wanted to be undisturbed until further notice and locked my office door.
I am no expert, but the papers from the envelope looked genuinely old. Of course, they would, if forgeries, but clearly someone believed in their validity, assuming Bulstrode had been tortured to reveal their whereabouts. There were two separate series of papers, both clearly in English, although using a style of handwriting I could not easily read, except for the shortest of words. One was marked up in what looked like soft pencil.
I put the papers into a fresh manila envelope and shredded the old one, after which I returned them to the bank. Then back to business for the rest of the afternoon. The next day, my diary tells me, I had lunch with Mickey Haas. We do, or did this, on average once a month or so, with him usually making the call, as he did this time as well. He suggested Sorrentino’s near my place, and I said I would send Omar to pick him up. This is our usual practice when he comes downtown. Sorrentino’s is one of a large number of nearly interchangeable Italianoid restaurants that dot the side streets of midtown on the East Side of Manhattan, and which live by serving somewhat overpriced lunches to people like me. The more prosperous denizens of this great mass of Manhattan office space each have a favorite Sorrentino’s; it is much like being at home, but with no domestic stress. They all smell the same, they all have a maître d’ who knows you, and what you like to eat and drink, and at lunch they all seat at least two interesting-looking women upon which the solitary middle-aged diner can rest his eyes and exercise his imagination.
Marco (the maître d’ who knows me in particular) seated me in my usual table in the right rear and brought me, unbidden, a bottle of his private rosso di Montalcino, a bottle of San P., and a plate of anchovy bruschetta for nibbles while I waited. After about half a glass of the delicious wine, Mickey walked in. He has gained a good deal of mass over the years, as I have, although I am afraid that his consists almost entirely of fat cells. His chin has clearly doubled, where mine retains something of its former line. His hair, however, is still thick and curling, unlike mine, and his mien confident. On this occasion I recall that he appeared uncharacteristically haggard, or maybe haunted would be a better word. The skin under his eyes was bruised looking, and the eyes were bloodshot and pinched. He was not exactly twitching, but there was something wrong. I’ve known the man for years and he was not right.
We shook, he sat down and immediately poured himself a glass of wine, of which he drank half in one go. I asked him whether anything was wrong and he stared at me. Wrong? I just had a colleague murdered, he said, and asked me hadn’t I heard and I told him I had.
Reading this over, I just decided that from now on I’m going to concoct dialogue, like journalists seem to do with impunity nowadays, because it is a pain in the ass to paraphrase what people say. The fellow who invented the quotation mark was no fool; if only he had established the copyright! Thus:
I asked, “When did you hear about it?”
“My secretary called me in Austin,” he said. “I’d just given my paper at the morning session, and of course, I had my cell off and as soon as I turned it on there was Karen’s message. I flew back right away.” He drank off his glass and poured another. “Can I have a real drink? I’m turning into an alcoholic behind this.”
I gestured to Paul, our waiter, who was there in an instant. Mickey ordered a gimlet.
“And then when I got back, chaos, needless to say. The university was going ballistic, with the implication from my chairman, that asshole, that somehow it was my fault for obtaining the appointment for someone of dubious moral status.”
“Was he?”
Mickey flushed at this and snapped back, “The point is that he was also one of the great Shakespeare scholars of his generation. Our generation. And his only crime was that he was duped by a swindler, which could have happened to any one of the people who now condemn him, including my fucking chairman. Do you know this story?”