by M. J. O'Shea
Alo was half asleep in the library. He’d been up for two nights grading the essays from Dr. Perry’s intro class. It had been interesting to see such a range—from horrible papers to those he imagined could give his own some competition—but not interesting enough that he wanted to repeat the process very often. He’d handed them to his advisor that morning with a smile and a serious hope that he wouldn’t be getting any more of them. At least not until he got ahead of his own coursework.
The library was quiet that afternoon, which was perfect, since he had a lot of reading to do and wanted to work on the outline for his first paper for his Symbolism in Medieval Art seminar. His professor, Dr. Harris, and Dr. Perry had both seemed pleased with his topic and thesis, so it was down to actually doing the work, which was the hard part. Ideas were fun. Ideas were easy. Annotation, although routine, sucked.
He was surprised when his cell phone started to buzz. He didn’t get all that many calls during the day, and his mother would have known it was his library hours, so she wouldn’t call. He didn’t recognize the number, but he picked up.
“Hello,” Alo said quietly. He put the “away for a few minutes” sign up on his desk and headed for the front entrance.
“Is this Aloysius Green?” asked a man. It was definitely a voice Alo didn’t recognize. At least nobody he talked to regularly.
“It is, but Alo is fine. Can I help you?” He was officially interested.
His cell wasn’t listed on any of his official papers. He’d made sure at the beginning of the year that he wasn’t easy to find once he walked off campus at night. It was rare enough for him to have some free time. He ventured out of the library into the fresh air. The day was overcast, which was unfortunate. He’d been looking forward to using the phone call as an excuse to grab a few moments of sun.
“Yes. I don’t believe you will have heard of me. My name is Jonathan Harrington Watson.”
Alo nearly swallowed his tongue. He had in fact heard of him. Everyone had heard of Jonathan Harrington Watson. He was one of the major benefactors of the university—especially the history department—and a Gatsby-like character of mystery. Wealthy beyond imagination, intelligent, cultured, celebrated, and elusive. The stories spread about Watson had nearly reached mythic proportions.
The board of directors spent a lot of time sucking up to him, the professors spent a lot of time sucking up to him, half the students were waiting for him to ride in on his white horse and decide their thesis piqued his interest enough for him to fund their research—if that included a trip or two to Europe, even better. Alo mostly didn’t bother with all the gossip and whispering, but he had heard the name quite a few times already since school began, whispered like some sort of urban legend. Apparently the legend was very real and on the other end of the phone.
“Yes. O-of course, Mr. Watson. Pleasure to meet you.” He was intimidated, a sensation that was becoming more and more common lately. Alo didn’t know what to say to someone like the man on the other end of the line. What do you say to New York royalty? “Is there something I can do for you? My advisor, Dr. Perry, is in the middle of office hours if you were looking for him.”
He was confused, to say the least.
“No, no. I was calling to look for you, actually, Alo. Richard gave me your private number.”
“O-oh. Okay.”
What else was he supposed to say to that? People like Jonathan Harrington Watson didn’t make their own phone calls let alone call a random lowly grad student. Personally.
“I’d like to fund your research.”
Well, Watson sure got to the point. Shit. Holy shit was more like it. Alo stood with his mouth open for a number of seconds before he got it together enough to answer.
“Research? I’m not sure how you could fund me any further, sir. I’ve received a number of grants for my research from the university and the programs I applied to. I don’t believe I’m doing anything further that you’d need to fund.”
The line was quiet for a moment. The last thing Alo wanted was to offend someone like Watson, someone who practically floated his department and probably owned half of Manhattan. He’d probably get ousted from the program and burned at the stake.
“Your degree program isn’t what I’m referring to.” Watson cleared his throat. “I’d like to fund some research of a different kind.”
Alo couldn’t explain the sudden queasy jolt in his stomach. He grabbed on to the stair railing. “Then I’m very confused, Mr. Watson. I’m not doing any research of another kind. What would you be referring to?”
“I believe you were looking into some possible sites in the World War II area. Antique letters? Some possible missing artwork?”
Letters? How the bloody hell...?
“No. Actually I wasn’t. My grandfather has some old letters, but they’re just a family heirloom. I haven’t even seen them yet, but I can guarantee you they’re not worth looking into. He was the family storyteller, that’s all. There certainly won’t be anything of value with them.”
First his mother’s odd, sharp expression, and then a phone call from an eccentric billionaire. Alo was suddenly very interested in his great-grandfather’s letters. And possibly a little afraid of them.
He thought he heard a smile over the phone, if that was even possible. “I think you’ll be surprised at just how much value those letters hold—and the research potential. Please call me at this number once you’ve reviewed them. I’d like to talk to you about a proposal.”
It had to be on record as the weirdest phone call Alo had ever received.
“I can do that, sir. But I have quite the heavy workload for my own program and the classes I’m assisting Dr. Perry with, so I honestly don’t see when I’ll have time to do more than a bit of checking into the matter for my father. I’m sure it won’t be anything you’d be interested in.”
Alo remembered his mother’s voice from the other day when they’d been discussing the letters, how she’d emphasized they were for the family. Little hairs on his back sprung up, and suddenly he shivered in the warm air.
“Just call me when you’ve seen them,” Watson said. “I’ll be waiting.”
“Yes, sir.” Alo didn’t know how else he was supposed to answer that.
“Please, son. Call me Jonathan.”
At that Watson hung up, and Alo stood there, staring at the gray sky, wondering what the hell had just happened. Nobody heard from Jonathan Harrington Watson. He showed up at university events sometimes, black-tie affairs for people much more important than Alo, threw his considerable piles of disposable cash around like a god playing with the lesser mortals, and dashed off into the mists of exclusivity somewhere.
Alo supposed he was abstractly grateful for those piles of money and glad Watson was more interested in sinking his wealth into the university than an entire stable of Lamborghinis and mega yachts, but he was also more than a little creeped out that Watson seemed to already know about the contents of his great-grandpa’s letters—letters Alo hadn’t even heard of until a few days ago.
But the creepiest part as far as Alo was concerned... why did he care?
Alo went back into the library. Jenny, one of his coworkers, was perched in his usual spot at the information desk. “There you are. I was about to come to the bathroom to look for you.”
Alo was still reeling. He didn’t quite know how to respond. “I, um, I was actually on the phone.”
“During work hours? Tsk tsk.” She wriggled her eyebrows at him knowingly. Jenny wasn’t going to get him in trouble. She was cool. She was also completely convinced Alo was harboring some secret hot boyfriend somewhere.
“No. That’s not it. At all.” Alo still couldn’t believe the last few minutes were even reality. “You’re not going to believe who just called me. Not in a million years.”
“Prince Harry?” she teased. He and Jenny had gone out for cocktails a few weeks before in one of Alo’s rare social moments. After three mojitos he might have confe
ssed to a small but longstanding royal crush.
“Unfortunately, no.” He smirked. “But you’re not all that far off, actually.”
“And? Are you going to tell me or what?”
Alo bit his lip. He was still weirded out by the whole thing. “I was just on the phone with Jonathan Harrington Watson.”
It was fun to watch Jenny’s eyes bug out. “Like Moneybags Watson? God of the history department and the Upper East Side? Nobody gets to talk to him,” she scoffed.
“I know.” Alo shook his head.
“I’ve never even seen him.”
“Me neither, other than pictures.” Pictures from events that Alo would never be sophisticated enough to be invited to—at least not until he had a few more degrees under his belt.
“And he called you?” Jenny still seemed to be stuck on that one pertinent detail. Alo didn’t blame her. “Like out of the blue?”
Alo snorted. “Yes. I’m just....” He shook it off. “He wanted to fund my research. Research I’m not even doing.”
He didn’t know how else to explain it. After his mom’s tone of voice and Watson’s spooky clairvoyance, he didn’t think it was wise to tell Jenny about the letters. Luckily she seemed to shrug it off.
“Well, that sounds just about odd enough to actually have been him and not someone from another department pranking you.”
“I know. I’m still waiting for it to have been a prank.”
A few of the other history students didn’t like Alo very well. They called him stuck up and a brownnoser—like it was his fault he got the best grants and the best advisor. Maybe if they worked a little harder, they would’ve gotten a few of those things too.
It would be something they’d have done. Somehow Alo didn’t think it was though. He didn’t think any of them could pull off that voice. Watson sounded like money. He sounded older. He couldn’t have been some student with a grudge and too much time on their hands. Plus, nobody knew about those letters. Or at least that’s what Alo had thought.
Alo decided to put it out of his head and get back to work. Work. Always a good distraction.
By the time Alo got home from class and work Friday night, he felt like he was three shades paler than his usual pasty white. He’d been put through the wringer with class and teaching assistant duties, plus some really tough long hours working on his research on the medieval artist Jean Malouel to add detail to his first paper of the year. He hoped his body got a bit more used to the long hours, because as it stood he didn’t know how he was going to make it through the year.
His mom was out at her evening yoga class, but his dad was sitting at the kitchen table with a book and a pile of buttered sourdough toast— something he only got away with when Mom wasn’t standing over him with a plate of steamed vegetables.
“Hey, Dad,” Alo said quietly.
Aaron Green was nearly his son’s twin. He was tall—over six feet—lanky, pale, and came with a head of shaggy, sandy-colored hair and big brown eyes. Alo’s mother was smaller, curvy, olive-skinned, and had dark, loose curls. There wasn’t much of her in Alo other than his hair’s tendency to flip up if it got long enough. It was odd how things had worked out that way.
“Hi, Son. Good day?” Aaron asked.
“Long. I’m ready for the weekend.”
“Doing anything fun?”
Alo nearly snorted. Fun. Even though he’d get to sleep in, he had another pile of assessments to grade, research to do, a near-necessary trip to the library, and hours of reading. He’d probably do it on Sunday, though. Saturday, he and his parents had big family dinners. Sometimes his aunt would come over with her two kids, who were a bit younger than Alo, or it would just be the three of them. He usually looked forward to it all week.
“No. Not really.”
“You need to get out more, Alo. Have some adventures. You’re only twenty-two.”
His dad always wanted him to have adventures. He was outgoing and lively, filled with the need to try new things; despite his very left-brained job as an accountant, he was creative and fun. Alo sometimes wondered if his dad was disappointed by the fact that he’d managed to raise a bookworm as a son.
“I will, Dad. I just need to get through this year. Then I think things will probably calm down a little in the school department.”
“Maybe you need to date someone? Any boys in your program?”
And here we have the pushing. Alo had to grin. His mom and dad were desperate for him to find a nice boy and settle down. Hopefully Jewish, maybe academic like him, rich was a plus. He didn’t know why they wanted it so bad. As his father had just said, he was only twenty-two.
“I don’t think so, but I promise if I’m still single when I hit twenty- five, I’ll start taking the romance thing more seriously, okay?” He chuckled.
His dad reached over to the pile of mail that was on the hutch. “Here. This came for you today.”
It was a thick envelope, one of the padded manila kind, and stuffed to the point where it would’ve been hard to close.
“What is this?”
“Your granddad’s letters, I’d imagine. Your mom told you they were coming, right?”
“Yeah. She did say something like that.”
Alo tried to act casual, like he wasn’t still replaying that weird conversation with Mr. Billionaire in his head. He thought about telling his father, but he decided it wasn’t time for that yet. The creepy factor was still there. Plus, his parents tended to worry. And smother. He didn’t need either of those things while he was trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of Ira Greenblatt and his suddenly popular letters.
“I really do think you’ll find them interesting. We’ve all looked at them, but none of us have your brain in our heads.”
Alo made a face. “That’s bullshit, Dad. You’ve got a one sixty IQ. Don’t act like you’re not smart.”
“Don’t swear in the house. What if your mother heard?” Aaron said. He smiled, though. It wasn’t as if he didn’t swear regularly.
“Sorry,” Alo said. It was a habit to apologize. He wasn’t really.
He pulled open the package. There was, in fact, a big stack of letters tied together with string, and a single new sheet of paper on the top covered in his grandfather’s bold handwriting. It was a little shakier than it had been in years past, but it was classic Saul Green.
“I think I’m going to take my stuff up to my room,” Alo said.
His father looked up from the book he’d given his attention back to and nodded. “You and I are on dinner duty tonight. Your mom wanted to stay for two classes.”
“I’ll be down in a little bit to help, okay?”
Aaron waved him off. “Sure. No rush.”
Alo tramped up the stairs with his heavy school bag and the packet of letters from his grandpa. He stuck the school bag in the corner to be ignored for a few hours, then took the sheet of paper to read. He got a weird guilty feeling when he saw his grandfather’s handwriting again. It really had been far too long. Alo decided that if he made it to winter break alive after the schedule he’d set out for himself, he’d use the time to visit his grandfather. He started reading.
Alo,
Hello grandson. I hope school is treating you
well. Everyone down here is so proud of all you’ve accomplished. I’m sure you will do so much more before your time at school is over. I wanted to send you these letters. I think if any one of us can get to the bottom of an old family mystery, it’s you.
I need to tell you a bit about your great- grandfather first. I know you’ve heard a few stories about him, how he was a great storyteller, good with people, maybe a little bit slippery. All of that is true.
As you’ll read in the letters, it got him a good position during the war, far better than many others like him. He was lucky. Or talented. But I think it might have been his downfall in the end.
His letters are unusual. There are things that don’t quite make sense if you read them just as is, wordin
g that’s off. You’ll see when you take a look at them. Especially the last letter. It barely makes sense at all. None of us know what happened to him after that last letter from Rome. He was never heard from again.
Oh, and here’s a good place to start. Look up Hermann Goering. That’s who my father worked for. Goering is quite well known, especially for the treasures he’d appropriated from all over Europe—many of which disappeared as the war was ending. My mother always thought my father had gotten mixed up in that somehow. That he’d done something to get himself killed. Take a look at the letters and see what you think.
Good luck, Alo, and be careful.
Love,
Grandpa
The hairs on the back of Alo’s neck shivered up to full attention.
Missing art. Nazi gold. A great-grandfather who’d disappeared into the war and was never heard from again. And an American billionaire who somehow knew about all of it.
Maybe there is something there.
Alo shoved the pile of letters aside and stood up. He felt a little shaky, like maybe he needed a stiff drink or ten. He wasn’t even a big drinker, but he thought it might be a good time to start. On instinct, he picked up the packet of letters and put them into the locked drawer in his desk. Seemed like the right thing to do. Then he turned his light off and trailed down three stories to the kitchen.
He wasn’t ready to sit up in his room alone and think about whatever the hell was going on. Maybe it was nothing, but at the moment the best thing he could think of to do was make dinner and try to ignore the sudden lump in his gut.
After dinner Alo made the excuse of homework and trudged up to his bedroom. He opened the locked drawer and pulled the letters out. His hand shook a bit, and he looked around to check that he was alone. As if someone had somehow scaled the wall of their townhouse and was staring in his window.