The Thieves of Manhattan - By Adam Langer Page 0,76

much of a reactor, I thought, not enough of an actor. Two hundred and fifty pages was plenty for a book, I thought, and by the time I’d read that much, I put down the book and conked out.

I had been sleeping for some time when I heard the front door open and close, then Joseph’s voice calling my name. I rose to my feet, picked up my bags and my laptop, shut off the bedside lamp, and called back up, but no one answered. I heard footsteps, then something landing hard against the counter.

“Joseph?”

I mounted the steps toward the dark café. I had barely seen the outside world since I had begun writing Zero Ninety-eight; Joseph had always advised me to keep out of sight.

“Joseph?” I called again.

No response.

I stood on the top step and looked into the café, then up at the counter. In the white-and-red glow of the exit sign, I could see Joseph’s body slumped over a stool, his arms outstretched. One of his hands was clutching the copies of Zero Ninety-eight. His head was on the counter, his eyes were closed. Two figures were standing above him. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could make out the bald, tattooed man with the black Rusty James jacket clutching a .38-caliber canino and the woman in the tweed overcoat, dull brown shoes, and gray felt marple. She was holding a copy of the Riverside edition of Shakespeare’s complete works. And then the stool slipped out from under Joseph, and his body hit the floor. I heard him give out a low gasp.

I crouched at the top of the stairs, my heart pounding. I prayed they would leave without noticing me, but then the Hooligan Librarian began lumbering toward me, and Iola Jaffe followed right behind him. I tried to dash for the door, but Norbert Piels grabbed me and brought his gun down fast against my skull.

“I’ve always wanted readers to feel the full impact of Shakespeare,” I heard Iola Jaffe say as she raised her book, then hit me hard across the face.

A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

I awoke slowly in an initially unfamiliar place, with an oddly acute awareness of my elbows; they seemed to be the only part of my body that wasn’t feeling either a sharp pain or a persistent ache. My face burned, and I felt bruises on my knees. My wrists were bound together with ropes and my ankles were tied to the chair’s legs. My palms and fingertips had already felt tingly and weary from typing before Iola Jaffe and Norbert Piels arrived at Morningside Coffee, knocked Joseph out, then did the same to me before apparently lugging me into their car and bringing me here. Now when I inhaled, I smelled the musty, airless, vaguely fetid office in which I was sitting, a room whose windows seemed as if they had never been opened; when I tried to breathe through my mouth, I felt something stabbing my ribs. I was nauseated yet famished, tired yet well beyond the point of sleep; I felt so thirsty and parched that I could detect each crack in my lips. When I tried to swallow, I tasted sawdust and blood.

I opened my eyes onto the room. Atop a long, unfinished wooden table were jewelers’ loupes, magnifying glasses, oversized leather-bound books that looked like ledgers. On the walls on either side of me were long, warped shelves sagging under the weight of stacks of reference books. I didn’t need to look any closer at the table to recognize the woman seated at it, paging through a galley of The Thieves of Manhattan. “A diminutive, silver-haired, beak-nosed woman with her lips pursed as if she had just tasted something foul” was how Roth had described Iola. So this had to be 129 Delancey Street, Iola Jaffe, Rare Manuscripts and Appraisal Services, “a musty, unrenovated office four flights up from an infested bodega.” I didn’t need to look up from the scuffed, steel-toed boots tapping in front of me to know that Norbert Piels was here too, that he was holding a canino, and that this time, I couldn’t knock it away.

“’E’s wikin’ oop,” Norbert Piels said.

Skinny cats lurked about, skulking in and out of the office as Iola Jaffe’s eyes scanned Thieves, searching for information. She read fast, slapped at pages, angrily cursing to herself as she did so, seemingly unable to find what she was looking for. I knew what she

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