The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,90

of trash. The birds regarded Lamech familiarly, puffing with disdain when his coat brushed their drawers.

“Won’t you ever clean this place up?” Lamech said. He rounded a filing cabinet and stood with his hands in his pockets. “Arthur, there used to be a chair here.”

The custodian was seated at a little desk that had fallen to the same disarray plaguing the rest of the room. His accordion was hung on the wall behind him, over the wide basin sink from which a mop handle extended. Hanging beside it was a pistol in its holster. The place must have been a replica of the custodian’s real-life office, though surely the original was not equipped with so many file drawers. And hopefully the custodian did not have all these pigeons, either—nor that gun.

Arthur looked up from the file he was studying, stared at Lamech a moment, then removed his spectacles. It was the first time Unwin had seen the man’s eyes. They were pale and attentive. “Emily,” he said. “Find our guest a place to sit, please.”

Unwin had to stop himself from speaking her name aloud as Emily Doppel, wearing a yellow peignoir and blue slippers, emerged from behind a stack of papers at the back of the room. She stuck her pencil into her hair and came around the custodian’s desk. Waving her arms, she evicted the pigeons nesting on a chair, then moved a pile of papers off it and onto the top of another pile.

“Elaborate,” Lamech said, watching her.

“She’s real,” Arthur said. “I have her come in to keep things tidy, but mostly she does crossword puzzles. Imagine the devotion, to do crossword puzzles in your sleep.”

Emily sniffed at this.

“I hope he pays you enough,” Lamech said to her.

“He doesn’t pay me,” Emily said. “I have a condition. I fall asleep when I mean to be awake, and he takes advantage by bringing me here. Nights, too. I’ve always wanted to be an Agency operative, but this is not what I imagined.”

“Tell him to get you a day shift,” Lamech said.

“Get me a day shift,” she said to Arthur.

“What, and have you nodding off on the job? Sweetie, you know it wouldn’t work.”

“I quit, then,” she said. The two men watched as she gathered her things: black lunch box, newspaper, a pillow. She brushed past Lamech and went out of the room, slamming the door behind her. The pigeons fussed and warbled.

“She does this every day,” the custodian assured Lamech. “It’s the only way she knows how to leave. I do have plans for her, though. Just waiting for the right assignment to come along. Now sit, sit.”

Lamech shrugged and sat down, letting his coat droop open. His face was still red from the struggle with his hat. He probably could have dreamed up a new one, but maybe he could not bear to.

Arthur ran his tongue along his teeth and looked at the ceiling. “Those memos of mine,” he said.

Lamech waved his hand. “You know, Arthur, it gets hard to keep track of all the rules. It’s getting to be like the bylaws need bylaws.”

The custodian sat upright and tossed his spectacles onto the desk. He stared straight at Lamech, his face reddening. “These are the basics, Ed. You keep track of your copy of the Manual. You know that.”

Lamech hung his head.

“Who took it?”

“I don’t know.”

“The whole thing makes me tired,” Arthur said. “Imagine that: tired in your sleep.”

Lamech said nothing for a moment. Then he asked, “What are you, three days in?”

“Three, four, maybe,” Arthur said, shaking off a laugh. “Shows, does it? I’m trying to keep up on Cleo, that’s all.”

Unwin recalled what Miss Greenwood had told him, out on the barge, about the eyes in the back of her skull. Not just a watcher’s eyes, but this man’s. Who was the Agency custodian, that he should be conducting dream surveillance?

“Most I ever went was six hours,” Lamech admitted, “and that was by accident. Strangest thing, too. My subject dreamed she woke up, and I thought she really was awake. Went about my day for a while, but it turned out I was still in her head.”

“Hah,” said Arthur.

“But listen, Greenwood’s back in town, isn’t she? Maybe she’s the one who nabbed my book. I’ll get after her myself. I’ll—”

Arthur stopped him by slapping a sheaf of papers against the desk. He stacked the pages even, his big fingers moving with an accordionist’s quickness. “You don’t ever quit, do you, Ed? You could have retired—what,