by Con Lehane
“Where is everyone?” Cosgrove asked, a good-natured needle.
Ambler rose to the bait. “Today’s quiet. Lately, it’s been busy.” He caught Mike’s little grin and felt foolish for being defensive, yet how could he not be with so much of the library, especially what might be thought an underused collection, on the chopping block?
“All of this is crime fiction?” Higgins waved his arm to take in the bookshelves.
Amber smiled in spite of himself. “Where are your files now?”
Higgins lowered his eyebrows. “Somewhere safe.”
Ambler told him the library didn’t like to restrict access to collections. “We like to think we’re here so people can find things, not build collections people can’t get at.”
“Some of my notes and reports on my undercover work, real-life operations my books are based on, I’d have to know for sure no one would see them. Or I’d have to get rid of them.”
If the collection was valuable, Ambler told him, the library could restrict a limited part of it for a period of time. He’d have to look into it and get permission. They talked for a while longer, with Higgins describing what was in the collection and telling Ambler about some of his undercover work.
After a while, when Higgins seemed to have gotten comfortable talking about the past, Ambler asked, “Do you remember in the mid-eighties a truckers union leader, Richard Wright, was murdered?”
Higgins knitted his brow and then shook his head.
Ambler told Higgins and Cosgrove the story Devon had told him.
“Sounds like bullshit to me,” Higgins said. “His brother’s dead. Why not hang the murder on him?”
“Maybe you’re right. But it could have happened the way he said, couldn’t it? You used bad guys to set up other bad guys. Nothing ever got out of hand? Suppose he’s telling the truth—”
“He’s not.” The change in Higgins’s expression was remarkable, as if someone yanked a cable tightening everything in his face. He turned to Cosgrove. “What’s with this guy? You said we could trust him.”
“I trust him,” Cosgrove said mildly.
Higgins turned sullen. “What’s in my papers might help if someone wants to write my biography someday, if a scholar wants to analyze my books, if someone studying crime fiction wants to know the history behind the books. That’s why I’m donating the papers. Nothin’ in there’s gonna help some gangbanger who thinks he got a raw deal. All them fucking lowlifes think everything they did is someone else’s fault.” He drilled Ambler with a rock-hard stare. “I gotta think about this.” Higgins then turned an accusatory glare on Cosgrove.
Ambler watched them leave. It was unlikely Higgins would drop a collection of incriminating documents into his arms. If he did donate his papers, he’d most likely purge the collection of anything incriminating, preserving documents that reflected his unique view of the history of his times. “History is written by the victors.”
Chapter 2
The main exhibition room on the first floor was closed to the public while the library staff assembled the exhibit Ambler was curating. He’d chosen a dozen crime-fiction writers who either lived in the city or whose stories were set in the city, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe.
He found the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage records in the Manuscripts and Archives Division’s holdings. The other holdings included a facsimile of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” as well as a lock of Poe’s hair, an original calling card of E. A. Poe, and a few original letters to Poe, including one written by Washington Irving. There were also prints from the library’s collection, including one entitled Mary Rogers, The Cigar Girl, Murdered at Hoboken, July 25, 1841, the real-life murder case that inspired Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”
Late that afternoon, Adele closed a display case containing book covers from the library’s Dime Novel collection and looked up at Ambler. “Sorry about what happened on the stairs. I hope Detective Cosgrove didn’t think I was avoiding him.”
“No. It was Leila avoiding us. She needs to practice if she hopes to do well in the Miss Congeniality contest.”
“She’s really not so bad, Raymond. She’s abrupt. That’s her manner. I don’t know why you’re so hard on her.”
Ambler rolled his eyes.
Adele began shuffling through Ambler’s notes. “Georges Simenon? He’s a stretch. Paris? The Riviera?”
“Two books set in New York. He lived here for a time.”
“And he’s one of your favorite writers. I’ll let it go. Dashiell Hammett? San Francisco.” She put her hands on her hips.
“The Thin Man, New York.”
“Vera Caspary? I never heard of her.”
“Laura. You’ve heard of Laura, right?”
“I saw the movie.”
“She wrote the book here. She was a Communist and a bohemian.”
“My kind of girl,” said Adele. “Chester Himes?”
“The Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson books are set in Harlem—an imaginary Harlem, but isn’t everything in fiction imaginary?”
She winked. Her habit was to wink at odd moments, sometimes after a wisecrack, sometimes to make a point. He wondered if she knew how cute she was when she did it. She laughed, too, after the wink, and her face lit up. He felt it, too, her happiness in the moment. Often, she was engrossed in her work or deep in her thoughts. At those times, she was pretty, but remote, lost in herself in a way that seemed to exclude anyone else, including him. At those times, he felt sad for her; she seemed so alone. She had some darkness in her, deep unhappiness. He didn’t know what it was or what caused it. That part of her she kept to herself. So when she laughed like she did now and her brown eyes danced, he grew happy right along with her. He had some dark places himself that, without knowing she did, she yanked him out of when she was cheerful.
Talking about books, doing his work, absorbed Ambler, too. Engrossed in preparing finding aids for the collections, browsing in auction catalogs, digging through piles of long-ago correspondence or hand-written spiral notebooks of once-famous mystery writers, he could spend an entire afternoon without noticing the time passing, never looking at a clock, bent over his work long enough for his bones and joints to practically freeze in place.
A Century-and-a-Half of Murder and Mystery in New York City would come together, despite the difficulties. He’d been able to put the custody battle out of his mind for a few hours and spent part of the afternoon with Adele. It was a good day. Later, when he’d look back, he’d remember this afternoon among manuscripts, diaries, letters, and notebooks as a last moment of serenity—a prelude to the turmoil and tragedy to come.
Chapter 3
When the library closed at 6:00, Ambler walked with Adele to the Library Tavern on Madison Avenue where they often stopped for a beer after work. On the walk over, he told her about the custody mediation session that morning.
She walked close to him, her hip every few steps bumping his, close enough so that every few steps he caught a wisp of a scent like roses from her hair. She wore black slacks of a loose, thin material that drifted against her slim legs, a long, pale green cardigan sweater over a loose-fitting white blouse, her hair tied in a ponytail. Most of the time she was casual and relaxed in dress and manner but striking all the same.
“Those lawyers arguing over Johnny like a pack of wild dogs fighting over a carcass, they only care about winning and making money, not him—and his grandmother doesn’t even show up. What kind of grandmother is that?” Her reaction was because she was protective of him and especially of Johnny. He smiled.
After they’d seated themselves at the bar and said hello to McNulty the bartender, who set them up with their mugs of beer, Ambler told her about Paul Higgins.
Only the slightest hesitation in McNulty’s movements tipped off Ambler that the bartender was listening. Ambler caught this because of something McNulty told him one night. “Like the book,” he’d said then. “The guy sweeping up, sometimes the cab driver, the bart
ender, the secretary—when there used to be secretaries—people talking, especially about something intense, they forget you’re there. They don’t notice you, especially bartenders, unless we want to be noticed, the ‘invisible man.’”
“You can listen,” Ambler said.
McNulty raised his eyebrows, not allowing he’d been caught. Ambler had known him a long time. It was as if McNulty worked at the library. He knew everything that went on there, especially anything to do with Ambler’s crime fiction collection.
“This one might interest you. The FBI spied on your father, right?”
“They probably still do,” McNulty said. “They spied on me. They might be spying on you. Lots of dangerous stuff in libraries—books, ideas, stuff like that.”
“McNulty, you’re paranoid,” Adele said.
“Like Yossarian was paranoid.” McNulty wasn’t a big guy; his gruffness made him seem big. The gruffness was an illusion, too. He’d been a bartender a long time and looked it, a paunch a bit more formidable than middle-aged spread, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, a kind of florid complexion, and a keenness in the expression in his eyes that suggested you wouldn’t put much over on him.
Adele turned to Ambler. “So what happened?” She put one hand on her hip and pressed the index finger of her other hand against her lip, an unconscious pose she struck when she was thinking. He looked into her eyes, feeling more than thinking he was happy she was beside him.
He told her about Paul Higgins’s proposal.
“So you think his books aren’t so good but what’s in his papers might be interesting, if not incriminating, but you scared him off.”
“Yes.”
“You think you’ll find anything?” asked McNulty, who’d hovered nearby. “A lawyer I know did a Freedom of Information request for my files from the FBI. I got about fifty pages; most of them had black lines drawn through them, blotting out anything that would give away who the stool pigeons were.”
“The what!?” Adele laughed. “You sound like James Cagney.”
“I doubt—” Ambler paused because Adele was gathering herself to leave. He looked at her questioningly.
“I’m meeting Leila for dinner.”
* * *
“Why didn’t you tell her you didn’t want her to go?” McNulty said.
“What’re you talking about?” Ambler took a drink of his beer.
“You should see your face. You don’t play poker, right? If you do, stop. You’ll go broke.”
Ambler grimaced.
“If you were a man of conviction, you’d run after her.”
Ambler knew what McNulty was doing, and he’d still fall for it. “What? What?”
McNulty’s eyes sprang open. “What’s the poor woman got to do? After what you’ve been through together? Her taking care of that kid like he’s her own. Her taking care of you, too—” McNulty shook his head. “She’ll find another guy. She’ll find another guy whenever she wants.” He glanced behind him and then drew a draught of beer into a coffee cup and took a drink. “Maybe she’s the one needs her head examined. Who’s this Leila you don’t like so much?”
Ambler started to say one thing and changed his mind. “I wouldn’t say I don’t like her. It’s that there’s something blank about her. She’s guarded, too careful. Almost always, librarians have interests: art history; Jane Austen; the lives of ants; opera; the costumes French royalty wore. For me, it’s crime; for someone else, it’s homing pigeons on rooftops in the Bronx or collecting tea sets. I don’t say librarians have to be interested in things; they just are. She isn’t. It would be as if someone came to work behind the bar who didn’t bet on horses or argue about the Yankees or yell at the servers. It would be weird, right?”
“Such things happen.” McNulty said. “You told Adele about that undercover cop who wants to donate his papers. That’s who you find behind the bar who don’t belong: management plants. Snitches.”
Because the FBI had spied on his Communist father for a half century, McNulty had an abiding hatred of informers and made sure everyone who stayed at the bar long enough for more than one drink knew it.
* * *
“Hey, sorry I’m late.”
Leila looked up from the folded New York Times. She had a pencil and had been working on the crossword puzzle. Lost in thought when she glanced up, her expression unguarded, she seemed fearful—fear and irritation. She didn’t like being taken by surprise. “No problem.” She forced a feeble smile and folded the paper again, placing it in a cloth bag at her feet. “Working late?”
“I stopped to have a beer with Raymond.”
A flash of irritation crossed Leila’s face. Her expression always severe, irritated if not angry, fit her sharp features, thin lips, the muddy, lifeless, brown eyes. She wasn’t attractive, didn’t try to be; her hair a dull color somewhere between blonde and brown, neither long nor short, her clothes shapeless, she dressed like someone with no imagination would expect a librarian to dress.
Leila didn’t like Raymond. She never said why and Adele didn’t ask. Raymond hadn’t warmed to Leila either, not when she began working in Manuscripts and Archives a couple of months ago, not after she and Adele became friends. Leila wasn’t outgoing, certainly not flirty; but that wouldn’t bother Raymond. You wouldn’t mistake him for a charmer either, nor was he easily beguiled by flirty women. Whatever it was they didn’t like about each other, the air crackled with it when they were in the same room.
She wasn’t sure why she’d become friends with Leila. Taking the new kid under her wing had been her lot in life since elementary school. Growing up, she’d been reasonably popular and hadn’t worried when she wasn’t. Pretty enough to have a boyfriend of sorts—if not a Prince Charming—most of the time through high school and college; when she didn’t, she had her poetry and her books, and volunteer work with younger kids, which she began in third grade. Now she had her work in the library, her poetry still her secret passion, a boyfriend-of-sorts in Raymond—if he’d ever get his ass in gear—and Johnny, his grandson, who filled her life in ways no one ever had before.
Leila’s cell phone rang. She took it from her purse, looked at the number. “I’ve got to take this.” She walked toward the restaurant door. When she returned, her face was frozen into the kind of numb stare you might expect when someone received terrible news. Adele feared the call had been to tell her someone died.
“No,” said Leila. “It’s not that. It’s personal, a not-so-good memory. Not something I want to talk about.”
They each ordered a salad and an appetizer. Adele drank a glass of Pinot Grigio, Leila a Diet Coke. For most of the meal, Adele answered questions, though she tried to turn the conversation around.
“You’re from Dallas?” Adele asked.
“A small town farther south. I went to college in Dallas and stayed for a few years afterward.”
“Doing what?”
“Not much. Dead-end jobs, sales, telephone solicitation, stuff like that.”
“Then you went to library school? Is that why you came to New York?”
“Something like that. A friend wanted to move here, so I came along.” She sipped from her Coke. Her eyes narrowed and she lowered her voice. “I want to ask you something. It’s about that reader who’s using the Islamic manuscript collection.”
“What about him?”
“What’s he working on?”
Adele shrugged. “I don’t have the slightest idea. The manuscripts are in Arabic.” She was surprised by another look of irritation that crossed Leila’s face, as if she, Adele, was an underling who’d screwed something up.
“Not translations?”
“Arabic.”
Leila’s expression didn’t change.
Adele smiled mischievously. “He is kind of good looking and mysterious.” She really wasn’t one for girl talk. It came out when she talked with Leila—so much in need of a friend yet so hard to connect with.
“You seriously don’t know wha
t he’s working on?”
“He’s a doctoral student at Columbia. He speaks English. You can ask him. He’s translating something; I guess for his dissertation.”
“Is there a record of the documents he’s using—what he calls up?”
“The call slips are there.”
“Can you give me a list of books he’s taken out?”
“No. You know we don’t do that.”
“Okay. Okay.” She bent to her salad and ate in silence. Leila was difficult to figure out. She pouted, as if Adele failed her in some way.
By the end of dinner, Leila’s mood improved; a look of vague worry replaced the irritation. She told Adele about a Korean nail salon near the library that did leg massages. It sounded creepy but Adele feigned interest, agreeing half-heartedly she’d give it a try. Leila decided they’d go on Saturday; she’d make appointments for both of them. Adele really wasn’t interested, yet it was touching Leila tried so hard to be friends. When Leila’s phone rang again as they walked toward Fifth Avenue, she let it ring. When it rang again, she did look, withdrawing into herself, putting up a shield, as she lifted the phone to her ear. “Yes? What?” She walked away, her back to Adele.
Adele took a step or two in her direction. She wasn’t exactly trying to listen, but she wasn’t averse to overhearing. What she heard were snippets, words disjointedly floating on the wind between long pauses and garbled sounds. “You’re not supposed to know … pretend … don’t … I won’t … don’t … my assignment.”
* * *
That night, after being chastised by McNulty, as Ambler put the key into the outside door lock of his building, he felt that something was wrong, something off. He’d lived in the city long enough for it to be second nature to be aware of what was around him on the street at night. He hadn’t noticed anything unusual, or what he’d noticed didn’t register as unusual, until he felt uneasy as he opened the door. As soon as he felt the uneasiness, he remembered a battered, white, Chevy van parked in front of a fire hydrant near Third Avenue, realizing now it shouldn’t have been there, the motor shut off, no lights, apparently no one inside.