CONTROL, 24 HOUR SECURITY
INTEGRITY—QUALITY—SAFETY
FOR ALL YOUR FINE ARTS NEEDS
KEEPING YOUR VALUABLES SAFE SINCE 1968
Apart from the desk clerk, the place was deserted. We loaded the service elevator and—with the aid of a key card and a punched-in code—took the elevator up to the sixth floor. Down corridor after long, faceless corridor we walked, ceiling-mounted cameras and anonymous numbered doors, Aisle D, Aisle E, windowless Death Star walls that seemed to stretch into infinity, a feel of underground military archives or maybe columbarium walls in some futuristic cemetery.
Hobie had one of the larger spaces—double doors, wide enough to drive a truck through. “Here we go,” said Grisha, rattling the key in the padlock and throwing the door open with a crash of metal. “Just look at all this shit he has in here.” It was jammed so full of furniture and other items (lamps, books, china, little bronzes; old B. Altman bags full of papers and moldy shoes) that at first confused glance I wanted to back off and shut the door, as if we’d stumbled into the apartment of some old hoarder who had just died.
“Two thousand a month he pays for this,” he said gloomily as we took the padding off the chairs and stacked them, precariously, atop a cherrywood desk. “Twenty-four thousand dollars a year! He should rather be using those moneys to light his cigarettes than pay rents for this shithole.”
“What about these smaller units?” Some of the doors were quite tiny—suitcase-sized.
“People are crazy,” said Grisha resignedly. “For space the size of car trunk? Hundreds of dollars a month?”
“I mean—” I didn’t know how to ask it—“what keeps people from putting illegal stuff here?”
“Illegal?” Grisha blotted the sweat from his brow with a dirty handkerchief and then reached around and mopped the inside of his collar. “You mean like, what, guns?”
“Right. Or, you know, stolen stuff.”
“What keeps them? I will tell you. Nothing is what keeps them. Bury something here and no one will find it, unless you get bumped off or sent to the can and don’t pay the fee. Ninety per cent of this stuff—old baby pictures, junk from Bubbe’s attic. But—if walls could talk, you know? Probably millions of dollars hidden away if you knew where to look. All kind of secrets. Guns, jewels, murder victim bodies—crazy things. Here—” he’d slammed the door with a crash, was fumbling with the slide bolt—“help me with this fucker. I hate this place, my God. Is like death, you know?” He gestured down the sterile, endless-looking corridor. “Everything shut up, sealed away from life! Whenever I’m coming here, I get a feeling like hard to breathe. Worse than a fucking library.”
vii.
THAT NIGHT, I GOT the Yellow Pages from Hobie’s kitchen and carried it back to my room and looked under Storage: Fine Arts. There were dozens of places in Manhattan and the outer boroughs, many with stately print ads detailing their services: white gloves, from our door to yours! A cartoon butler proffered a business card on a silver tray: BLINGEN AND TARKWELL, SINCE 1928. We provide discreet and confidential State-of-the-Art storage solutions for a wide range of businesses and private clients. ArtTech. Heritage Works. Archival Solutions. Facilities monitored by hygrothermograph recording equipment. We maintain custom temperature control to AAM (American Association of Museums) requirements of 70 degrees and 50 percent relative humidity.
But all this was much too elaborate. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to the fact that I was storing a piece of art. What I needed was something safe and inconspicuous. One of the biggest and most popular chains had twenty locations in Manhattan—including one in the East Sixties by the river, my old neighborhood, only a few streets away from where my mother and I had lived. Our premises are secured by our custom 24-hour manned security command center and feature the latest technology in smoke and fire detection.
Hobie was asking me something from the hallway. “What?” I said hoarsely, my voice loud and false, shutting the phone book on my finger.
“Moira’s here. Want to run down to the local with us for a hamburger?” The Local was what he called the White Horse.
“Sounds great, be there in a minute.” I went back to the ad in the Yellow Pages. Make Space for Summer Funtime! Easy solutions for your sports and hobby equipment! How simple they made it sound: no credit card required, cash deposit and off you went.
The next day, instead of going to class, I retrieved the pillowcase