Official Trailer - Booksluts and Other Bibliophiles
When a rebellious young doctoral candidate at a southern university is compelled to commit a theft of rare books as part of a political protest, she becomes a fugitive hunted not only by the authorities, but by a powerful and vengeful church leader politician, as well as a pair of professional, and ruthless, fortune hunters.
An ambitious start-up company in Miami is researching experimental building materials and has hired a New York agency to look into unexplained disruptions in its business operations. On his way to start the job, the lead investigator encounters the woman on the run and they become interlocked in a volatile chain of events that leads to the exposure of political corruption and industrial espionage, and to a priceless rare book that isn’t supposed to exist, but which a lot of people are ready to kill for.
Chapters 1 & 2 (pdf)
DownloadListen to "the soundtrack" on Spotify; songs that inspired the writing of the novel.
1. Black Swan
2. Lighten Up
3. You Are A Runner And I Am My Father’s Son
4. Miami
5. Never Gonna Sleep
6. Wanting To Kill
7. Florida Man
8. The Geeks Were Right
9. Everything Hits At Once
10. It’s Not You, It’s The E Talking
11. There Goes My Gun
12. The Book Of Love
13. Last Day Of Magic
Stockholm, Sweden; December 8th, 2004
Hours before sunrise on a silent and frigid Wednesday morning the public/private emergency switchboard company SOS Alarm Sverige AB suddenly received a barrage of calls reporting a massive explosion in the center of the city.
Four different fire departments responded with a dozen trucks, and some sixteen police patrol cars blocked off a four-block radius around the scene. Nearly sixty people had to be evacuated from the area and twelve people were seriously injured by the blast.
After four days of searching for survivors and the removal of debris, rescue workers came upon the body of prominent intellectual and former head of the manuscript department at the National Library of Sweden, Anders Burius.
It had recently become discovered by authorities and the public that Mr. Burius had been stealing and selling valuable rare books from his globally prestigious workplace. Upon a brief release from pre-court custody, he’d decided to end it all by slitting his wrist. Ever thorough in his actions, Burius had added the precautionary measure of cutting the gas line in his apartment to ensure his desired outcome, which also had the (presumably) unintended effect of blowing up half the building.
Even with help from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, it would take another ten years for some of the stolen treasures to be found and returned to Sweden.
Yet many of Burius’s thefts remain missing to this day.
“What will grow crooked, you can't make straight
It's the price that you've gotta pay
Do yourself a favour and pack your bags
Buy a ticket and get on the train
Buy a ticket and get on the train”
- Thom Yorke, “Black Swan”
The Eraser, 2006
Havana, Florida; Saturday, March 12th, 2005, 9:16pm
Run.
She had to run.
That’s all she knew. They were coming for her and her only option was to get away. Campus police were circulating flyers with her photo and a description of her car throughout Tallahassee so there was no use trying to go back through the city.
And there was no turning back from what she’d done, either. She just hadn’t expected to be discovered so quickly, or to incur such a heavy response.
Now that lunatic preacher politician and his horde of psychotic followers were coming in a caravan along Interstate 10 from Pensacola, complete with a media circus and a fifty-thousand-dollar bounty on her head. The state troopers were looking for her at the border and at the area ports. This was not at all how she had planned it.
Breathe.
The only way out was to make the 30-mile journey to Miccosukee, where she could hide for a few days at her cousins’ house and figure it all out. They were not on her contact list at the university and their last names were nothing alike.
She would have to go on foot, in the dark of the night and through the swamps between the big lakes. She could get some rest a couple of hours near dawn and make it to their house by around seven or eight, while the preteens would be sleeping late on a Saturday and Kanti was alone with Grandmother Nadie.
What would she tell them? The truth might be too shameful. Or maybe they would understand. But she had to get there first.
This apartment she was in belonged to her boyfriend, like her finishing up his doctorate. He was a really good guy and she didn’t want to get him mixed up in this mess but she also didn’t want to disappear without an explanation. As a gesture toward getting serious in their relationship, he’d given her a spare key months ago “just in case” she ever wanted to escape her two roommates and the cramped little apartment in a sketchy downtown neighborhood. This was the first time she’d used it.
He should have been home by now, though, and he hadn’t answered any of her voice messages. She’d been pacing back and forth in the large living room for nearly two hours.
The house phone shrilled loudly and she nearly jumped out of her skin. He had Caller ID, she remembered. It was the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office.
Damn! He wouldn’t turn me in, would he?
Then she heard the sirens in the distance. In a town this small, that was a rare occurrence and even then, only for a car wreck on highway 27. They were getting louder.
Time to move. Grabbing the bookbag she’d packed in a rush this morning and the leather satchel containing her hefty illicit prizes, she bolted out the door and down the back stairs of the condominium to the resident parking lot. Heading swiftly north on 4th Street she came to 11th Avenue East, which brought her to the little-used Iron Bridge Road.
After more than an hour of walking in the dark she found Orchard Pond Parkway which was the only road between Lakes Iamonia and Jackson and which would take her all the way to the next town, Bradfordville.
But by now her legs were already beginning to throb, the bags seemed to get heavier and the mosquitoes wouldn’t let her rest for a minute. About every fifteen minutes or so she would have to jump into the mucky underbrush off the side of the road, ducking down to avoid the oncoming headlights. She might have to rethink this whole walking thing.
At the edge of that regional expanse of oak groves after what seemed like a lifetime, she saw up ahead what looked to be a well-lit athletic field. As she drew closer, it revealed itself to be the golf course she had worked at her first two years of college. They didn’t have night lighting then, that she could recall. In the distance some male voices carried on the wind, loud laughter.
She was walking on an upward incline of a manicured hill when they came into view some forty yards below her near a sand trap.
Four of them, out exercising their privilege of nighttime shenanigans at the very selective establishment. Pastel polo shirts, big bellies, long white or khaki shorts. Only one of them had a bag of clubs and he was using one to lean on as he pontificated about something enthralling to the other three who were just standing around yessing. All of them had long silver beer cans in hand. At the top of the small hill she was climbing there was a golf cart.
They stopped talking amongst themselves when they noticed her passing nearby, illuminated by the overhead spotlights. One of them called out to her.
“Hey, there, mamasita! You a little lost? This here’s private property.”
She ignored him and kept walking.
Another one gave it a try. “Hey, honey! Need a ride somewheres? Ah ken definnely give you a ride, baby!” Haw, haw, haw, it was a laugh riot.
A third joined in, “Come on, mami, we need a caddy!” They yukked it up.
Jerks! Don’t respond, you’ll only get them riled up.
As she passed the golf cart she noticed the key in the starter and a bunch of cellphones and car keys in a front holding compartment.
“Last chance, seńorita!” the first one resumed. “You don’t wanna be wandering around in the dark all alone out here. We can take the scenic route, nice and slow, sweetie!”
Okay, she thought, you’re a wanted criminal now, anyway. The hell with it…
She turned back a few paces toward the small electric vehicle, threw her bags onto the little floor below the front seat and slid in behind the steering wheel. She knew this golf course well. The clubhouse was way on the either side and it would take them at least twenty minutes to walk there.
When it dawned on them that she was taking their only transportation the all-night golfers began running after her shouting all kinds of obscenities. These higher end carts can hit maximum speeds of 14mph.
At the parking lot for the club were three luxury cars. Two were stick-shift sportsters, which might present a problem, but the third was a large, comfortable automatic sedan.
“Yeah, I need a Caddy, too, jackass,” she said to the crisp night air. She pressed the unlock button on the key fob, took her stuff and upgraded from the golf cart. Built into the front console was one of those fancy new GPS units. As she started the car a sultry female voice filled the interior.
“Where to, big boy?” cooed the sexy robot entity.
The woman shook her head a little and leaned into the dashboard closer than she needed to.
“Miccosukee!” she said to the digital display as some folks do to mute persons who are not deaf.
“Okay, Miccosukee,” the car replied breathlessly as it began giving her directions for the twelve miles she needed to put behind her. According to the omniscient automobile the trip would take seventeen minutes. Those guys would be getting to the clubhouse in about that time and immediately calling the police. She needed to cut the driving time some and the audible directions would help in the dark. She kept the headlights low as she zoomed and zipped through the back roads in an area made up mostly of horse farms and a few small churches.
When she hit Moccasin Gap Road she knew she was close. Soon she saw the sign she was looking for. At the northeastern end of Sanders Hammock pond, a dirt road hugs the waterside with intermittent boat launches. After the first two of these she turned onto one and slowly drove over just up to the water’s edge and stepped down on the emergency brake. She opened her door, grabbed her bags and placed them on the ground outside. Releasing the brake, she jumped out of the car and rolled slightly as the heavy car submissively descended into its watery grave with barely a sound.
She heaved herself up quickly and rushed with her bags to the tree line away from the pond and the inroad. She hadn’t walked more than a few steps when her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she saw behind a five-foot wood post fence the giant darkened shape of the horse that had been watching her. She’d forgotten about the equine hospital on this side of the small lake.
After the initial small shock of seeing the large beast in the shadows, she could make out a palomino mare.
“Well, you won’t tell on me, will you, lady?” she asked the horse.
The answer was a snort and a mane toss.
“Good.”
She climbed over the fence to begin the last leg of her journey. She could avoid the road and save a little time by cutting through the expansive medical facility. The horse started trotting leisurely alongside her. About fifty yards on she came to a gate in the fencing where two saddles were hanging by hooks.
There were still four miles to go and she was thoroughly exhausted. She looked up at the star-filled night sky and didn’t know whether to offer her ancients apologies for what she was about to do, or thanks for the assist.
She did neither. She merely grabbed one of the saddles, strapped it onto the horse and off they went, galloping softly on the moist grass as the cicadas and frogs muffled the cadence of hoofbeats. The horse seemed to have needed to stretch her legs and glided freely under the practiced rider. What would have taken her more than an hour of walking the pair covered in less than fifteen minutes.
At the Miccosukee Cemetery, near the end of Moccasin Gap Road, she dismounted and gently turned the horse around toward where they’d come from. With a grateful hug and a sharp smack on the rear end she sent the horse cantering back down the road to where her breakfast would be set out in a few hours.
Avoiding the three main streets of the tiny town, she made a beeline to her cousin’s small ranch-style home on Blake Street. It was one-thirty in the morning.
Kanti’s big bear of a husband, Menewa, answered the door groggily in a white wifebeater undershirt and gray cut-off sweatpants, momentarily confused, unsure if it was really his wife’s nerdy first cousin, whom he also had grown up with, standing there before him in that wild, muddy and disheveled state.
“Damn, ‘cuz, you look awful! What happened?”
*
Jersey City, New Jersey; Sunday, March 13th, approximately 11am
Finishing the last words of the last chapter of a book that had appropriated many hours of sleep from him in the past weeks, he clapped the heavy hardcover shut, tossed it emphatically onto the large wooden desk across from him, nearly dislodging one of numerous incongruous piles of other books, and exhaled heavily as though from physical exertion. And yet he’d done nothing more than turn pages for the last three hours; half a carrot dangling from his lips like a cigar, slumped in a padded arm chair, night robe draped over the wings, his legs splayed out before him still in pajama pants, one foot out of its slipper, while Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 performed by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of the Netherlands concluded none too quietly in the large attic he had transformed into his hitherto neatly organized library.
It had rained all night and into the day with steady menaces of thunder claps and lightning flashes. Only now somewhere toward noon was the sun making timid inquiries from behind a heavy grey curtain of angrily retreating clouds.
He sat for a while longer, pondering all he’d been reading recently at the quiet end of the darkest winter of his life. A sense of dissatisfaction gnawed at him, this reserved-for-last book, like the others, having failed to deliver against unreasonable expectations, leaving him once again bereft of the answers to life’s big questions.
Thusly had proceeded his quixotic staycation quest to once and for all solve the riddles of the universe, while licking a few wounds and catching up on his eternally evolving reading list as the wicked northeast cold had its way with the city. But he’d found no absolution, no redemption and no acceptable explanation nor excuse for his immeasurable tininess in the vast cosmos.
So he rubbed the shrubbery covering his jaw and thought about lunch. Did he have it in him today to wash and chop some vegetables and boil some liquids? Or would he just go rummaging through the cupboards and freezer again for instant nourishment only to return hastily to his hibernation? And where the hell did this new extraneous little layer of flesh that had developed over his once armor-plate abs come from?
He thought for a moment of resuming his daily run but it was already so late in the day, look at that, eleven-forty already. A good long healthy walk was in order instead, then. Perhaps in the warmer late afternoon, he assured himself. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Passing the pets’ room he saw Mathilda, the adoring, hopelessly stupid slob of an oversized pit bull, raise her head slightly from her queenly repose just to make sure it was him walking around and not some burglars who’d already made it to the second floor. Fritz the cat must have been outside doing his thing or he’d already be following him downstairs to demand a snack.
It was when he reached the chilly kitchen and autopiloted over to his favorite cabinet shelf that he made the horrific discovery that there was no coffee left. None. He double-checked for any forgotten almost-but-not-quite-empty refrigerated foil bags as well as the emergency counter drawer for those little tubes of instant powder he kept around, but there was nothing. Beginning to despair, he looked to the coffee machine for any leftover brew or undisposed grinds but the filter tray was neatly placed atop the water tank and the pot was clean and shiny, upside down in the dish drying rack.
He was slightly devastated and leaned back heavily against the sink. This meant going out into the world again.
Too soon! he protested to himself. He clearly remembered having to trek through some six inches of snow recently with four large bags of groceries, including the biggest can of coffee grounds he could find. And what day was it today, anyway?
He decided he would scan the headlines before heading out the door. As he didn’t own a television, he fired up the desktop computer in the dining room that doubled as his home office and ran up to his bedroom on the second floor to throw on some street clothes. There he noticed the urgently blinking little red light on his answering machine indicating numerous messages. How long had that been going on, he wondered. No matter, it would have to wait a little longer till he got back from the store.
Returning to his makeshift workstation he scanned the headlines and learned that a temp job computer technician, enraged by a church sermon two weeks prior, had shot and killed seven members of his own congregation, including the minister and his son, at the Living Church of God in Brookfield, Wisconsin, before turning his 9mm Beretta handgun on himself.
Goddamned religious fanatics at it again, he tut-tutted in his mind.
Also, he saw, that morning the wonderful singer and indisputably most-sampled female musician of all time Lyn Collins had passed away in California at the young age of 56. Way too soon, he lamented.
In her honor, he initiated on his portable music player a song mix based on her best-known song, ‘Think (About It)’, written and produced by James Brown, then trudged out stoically to face a cold gray day. Walking down a stretch of Harrison Street that had devolved into a wide auto garage back alley, he passed Superfly Auto Sales where the smiling owner, as always, waved a hearty greeting to him even though the two had never exchanged a single word. Turning left onto Monticello Avenue he walked passed a beauty supply store that had been there since the sixties, before crossing the corner at Brinkerhoff Street to the independently owned food mart which, to his dismay, was jam-packed with a global assortment of Sunday shoppers and all of their children and friends and neighbors, and it seemed they were having a wonderful time and all he wanted was some coffee. He decided to continue on to see what was available at the bodega on the next corner at Astor Street.
There he found it occupied only by Zaheeda, the fearless little elder Pakistani woman who owned it, and her selectively talkative cat.
“Holey moley!” the proprietress exclaimed. “Look who it is, Jack! It’s you buddy!”
The cat jumped onto the glass counter that displayed everything from underarm deodorant to fake leather wallets and strutted over mirthfully to greet one of the few humans in the neighborhood that he allowed near him.
“Where you been, man?” she asked her long lost customer in choppy Middle Eastern English. Before the receding winter he used to stop in regularly for packs of incense she imported from India and other items he couldn’t find elsewhere. Until a few years ago when she moved her business and residence to Jersey City, her store had been located in the West Village in Manhattan and when she wasn’t busy they would often talk leisurely about his hometown.
“When you start growing beard?”
“I’m not. I’ve just… been taking it easy.”
Cocking her head slightly, she examined him a little more closely. She considered him a friend and felt comfortable enough to speak freely without offending him.
“You look like shit, buddy! You are wearing your pajamas under that shirt, yeah? Is everything okay? You normally in suit and tie, man!..”
He laughed. “Everything’s fine, Z. I took a long vacation, at home.”
Yes, she advised, one has to take some time off now and then, even though she herself worked seven days a week and hadn’t taken more than an occasional day off in years.
He had to content himself with a jar of name brand instant coffee but was nonetheless rewarded with a compensation prize of the former restaurateur’s delicious spinach turnovers, which she had pulled fresh out of the oven in the little kitchen at the back of the store. Like a child with a bag of sweetcakes, he meandered his way back home taking a different route than usual while munching on the warm pastries, oblivious to the whiplash weather.
Once back inside his spartan bed room with a cup of some hot makeshift espresso he sat to listen to his voice messages. There were six total, three each from two of the very few people who had his home number; his lawyer and his agency’s office manager.
Sophie, his manager, sounded a bit frustrated.
“Hiya, honcho! This is you’re loyal aide-de-camp again… I’m starting to get a little worried, now, hon’, so when you can give me a holler, please. It’s Saturday afternoon now. I’ll be home all day today and tomorrow. Weather’s kinda sucky so Teague and I are doing a classic movie couch weekend.
Anyway, I don’t know if you got my messages from earlier this week but the new client’s attorney arrived this morning for Monday’s meet. I can handle it, of course, just wanted to remind you in case you wanted to be there. We’re at the signing stage already, by the way.
Okay, I’m going to assume you’re enjoying your exteeeended vacation but I do need to hear from you, boss man. I sent you an info sheet about the new case as well as some related stuff. And I scheduled the lawyer for one o’clock Monday.”
His own, normally upbeat lawyer, Matthew, was grave.
“It’s me again, bud. Today is Friday the eleventh, three… fifteen in the afternoon. I didn’t want to tell you this over the phone but since you haven’t returned my calls all week I’m obligated to at least leave a message.
“Listen: Anne has filed papers seeking a court order requiring you to submit to a psychological examination before you can continue visiting with your son. After last year’s… thing at the airport and the events around it, she’s claiming you might present a danger to your son, either directly or indirectly. I probably don’t have to tell you that it was her father who suggested this move and paid for the firm that submitted the motion.
“One more thing, man. The other attorneys paid me the professional courtesy of letting me know that she also had them draft a preliminary set of divorce papers. I’m sorry, brother, I swung by your office so we could talk but Sophie said you were MIA. Call me whenever you get this.”
The other four messages were the previous attempts at reaching him.
With the wind gone out of his sails, he sat still on the bed for a long while. When the swirl of anger and exasperation had calmed some, he picked up the phone’s handset. It was almost one o’clock. Matt was a lifelong Catholic and with his family attended the ten o’clock Mass every week. They were just getting in from a pizzeria lunch when he called.
Apart from their client-attorney relationship, he and Matt were also old friends and the lawyer wasn’t considering his fees when he agreed to accompany his earliest patron the next day to south Jersey, where the latter intended to exercise his father’s rights and see his only son.
The new case that Sophie was referring to was still just a distant memory of an initial inquiry about six weeks ago. He pulled up the email with the data sheets she’d sent so he could review the particulars and refresh his memory about it.
The job was in Miami, the only other metropolitan area that he included in his business territory. The client was a research-and-development lab focused on alternative structural materials. They were concerned about the possibility of infiltration and interference at their facility.
Sophie picked up after a couple of rings and expressed a sincere relief at hearing from him. He assured her everything was copacetic and that he’d had just enough time off to recharge mind, body and spirit. He asked her where the clients’ attorney was staying and told her he would not be seeing her until Tuesday.
Facing himself in the mirror for the first time in days he noticed he was pale as a ghost. Showing up like that down in Miami would make him stick out like an albino rabbit. He’d have to address that. After a long hot shower and a long overdue shave, he suited up for what had always been the first day of his week, albeit a few hours later than normal. It was time to get back to work, and back to life.
*
Miccosukee, Florida; 2pm
She’d slept nearly eleven hours after last night’s journey. Upon letting her in, Menewa had gone upstairs to tell his wife who had arrived and her cousin Kanti had gotten out of bed. They talked for a while in the kitchen so as to not wake anyone. At first, Kanti was annoyed that her cousin wouldn’t tell her what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself into but they were as close as sisters so she had to trust her when she said that the less the family knew, the better. Menewa went and got some linens and a pillow and apologized that the only spare bedroom was at the moment occupied by an aunt and uncle heading north for the summer and she would have to sleep on the sofa in the living room.
“Are you kidding me? That sounds like heaven to me right now. I just really need to use the shower downstairs in the den, please.”
They gave her another couple of hugs and went upstairs to bed. After twenty minutes of hot water and steam she lay on the couch and tried to calm the tempest in her head. How did it all go wrong? Why had the little red-haired man come back a week early to ruin everything? She would have never gotten caught had it not been for him.
Sarge, the large family Rottweiler, had come downstairs and given her a warm welcome then lay down on the rug below the couch to fall fast asleep within minutes, rumbling softly. The sound of the dog’s breathing calmed her and soon she too drifted off to the dreamland.
The next day, disoriented by waking in the afternoon, it sounded to her like everyone had gone out. When she ambled over to the kitchen Grandmother Nadie was sitting at the table waiting for her. The old woman’s face lit up when she saw her smart and sassy granddaughter who made her so proud. But the young woman was so ashamed in front of her beloved elder that she immediately began crying. Grandmother simply pulled her close and held her without saying a word.
After a while the young woman gathered up the courage to begin speaking.
“Grandmother, I have done something that will be causing me a lot of trouble and I can’t tell you what it is.“
“You don’t have to tell me, child. Whatever it is, I know you have your reasons for your actions, you always do. I only care that you are safe and whole.”
“I didn’t want to bring my problem to the family but this is the only safe place I have right now.”
“Of course, girl. Now what do you need us to do?”
A loud rumble of multiple motorcycles and volume ten headbanger rock music interrupted their conversation as it arrived in the driveway. That could only mean one thing.
In through the kitchen door blew her other cousin, Kahkewistahaw, Kanti’s rambling, long-haired younger brother, who had an apartment above the garage and who right now reeked of gasoline, smoke and last night’s firewater. He had three friends with him, one woman and two men. Heading straight to the fridge without even glancing over at the table he called out, “Hi, Grammy! We’re gonna eat, okay? I’ll refill the fridge later today.”
To put it mildly, he was a big boy, naturally muscular and augmented by weightlifting. It wasn’t until he turned around with his arms full of foodstuffs that he saw they had a visitor.
“Ho ho! No way! Cousin! Whatta you doing here?!” he exclaimed as he stomped gleefully over to the table in his welder’s boots.
Don’t do it. Please don’t do it. He’s gonna do it, she knew.
Dropping the sundries on the table he took her head in his massive left arm and with the knuckles of his right hand began giving her a noogie.
“Who’s a tiny little thing now, huh?” he teased.
“Stop, Kahkewi, please,” she pleaded feebly.
“Nooooo, ho, ho, you’re not the boss of me anymore, cousin…” he laughed.
“Kahkewistahaw!” shouted Grandmother Nadie. “Now is not the time.”
He froze and released his older cousin.
“I’m sorry, Grandma,” he said quietly. Penitent, he walked over and gave his Grammy a peck on the cheek, mumbling “Good morning.”
Like a bad Greek chorus, his three companions all greeted the elder woman in unison with “Good morning, Grandmother Nadie.”
The chastised young man turned to apologize to his cousin when he saw that she’d been crying.
“What happened?! Did that white man hurt you? I will ride over to campus town right now and-”
“No, he didn’t do anything, relax. It’s… it’s something else. I can’t talk about it right now, okay?”
The impetuous young man realized it was an adulting moment and jutted his chin forward.
“Any way I can help?” he asked.
“Well,” she considered, “you think you can give me a ride into Lloyd tomorrow? I need to stop by their post office when they open.”
The post office in Miccosukee was actually just a six by six shack with a flag pole, and it operated only as a pick-up and drop-off point for the carriers. There was no window service.
Kanti and Menewa came back with the kids and a load of food and barbecue supplies. Kahkewi’s two male companions rode over to the ABC store and picked up some cases of beer and sodas. The weather in north Florida in March is crisp and pleasant and this was an exemplary March day. The big barrel grill roared, the bikers shifted to classic rock mode to be more accommodating and the children cajoled the adults into participating in their games. The traveling relatives had a guitar and tambourine with them and everyone was able to join in with the songs on the radio. She spent the afternoon and evening enjoying the company of her closest family and trying not to worry too much.
Along with a dozen other cousins who’d since scattered to nearby towns, she’d grown up around here. Of their group she had been the oldest and maturing quickly so she had been their default leader whenever they undertook their childhood expeditions and adventures. It had been she who’d taught them all never to fight amongst themselves but to stand united when the racist white teens and adults drove by shouting all kinds of horrible insults at the Native children.
Kanti, a year younger and ever loyal, had been her second-in-command. Kahkewistahaw, which means “he who flies around” in Cree, had always looked up to her as a leader and basically adored her. Except, of course, for that one time when he was six and she had had to put him in a headlock because he was throwing a temper tantrum that had gotten out of control.
Growing up as a Native kid in the sticks would have been unbearable without them all and they had stuck together through thick and thin. That was until her parents had abruptly decided to move to Montana right after her sixteenth birthday and ruined her already angst-filled teenage life. As soon as high school hell in the cruel north had finally finished and she was free to go to college, she had immediately returned to Florida, enrolling at the university closest to what she considered home.
She hadn’t been over here to visit her family since September, when school had started up for everyone again and this being her final year. It wasn’t meant to last, she knew, but for the moment she was at peace, and with loved ones.
*
Jersey City, NJ; 5pm
The sun was calling it a day over on the west side of town but not before setting the Manhattan skyline ablaze with a strong glare that made it seem like an otherworldly city. Reconstruction had not yet begun on the new World Trade Center and the downed twins were still conspicuous by their absence.
The attorney’s name was Martin Koehler, a tall, sturdily built and handsome young country boy in a slick blue city suit straight out of the magazines and which he’d bought just for this trip, complete with the requisite distressed brown leather loafers.
When the man he’d come to see unexpectedly rang him up in his waterfront hotel room in the middle of the afternoon he’d been laid up in his wonderfully oversized luxury bed in his boxers, socks and an undershirt, snacking on an assortment of room service desserts while he binge-watched cable TV movies about New York.
Since the meeting wasn’t until tomorrow he had planned to spend today sightseeing. But for someone from South Florida, forty-one degrees Fahrenheit is friggin’ freezing. And those were damn near hurricane winds out there when he stepped outside onto the balcony for a looksee! Yesterday when he arrived it had been even colder. It was already mid-March, for cryin’ out loud. It should be warmer than this. No, sir, he could wait until after the signing to go exploring since it was supposed to be a lot nicer tomorrow. The movies were almost as good, anyway, and he especially loved the ones from the 80’s.
Then the contractor had called out of nowhere sounding like a gravelly voiced orthodontist, polite and precise. Would he care to meet late this afternoon, he had asked, inviting him to an early dinner where they could wrap up the paperwork a little ahead of schedule. A little unusual, Koehler thought to himself, but he’d already been advised that the contractor had unorthodox methodologies.
Deciding he might as well meet with him since he wasn’t really doing anything else, the attorney had suggested the hotel restaurant but the other man had insisted they should “hop over to Manhattan”. As it so happened, the newly minted lawyer from Pompano Beach had come with a list of things to do in the Big Apple while he was in town and a visit to Katz’s Deli was one of them. He acquiesced despite the cold. Remembering that there was a shopping mall near his hotel, he saw that he had two hours to find a coat. On his way out, he dropped into the hotel bar and quickly downed a double whiskey sour to steel himself against this horrid northeast weather.
At quarter of five he was at the waterfront again getting out of a cab by the pier at Exchange Place and, momentarily taken aback, he noticed the giant statue of the bound and blindfolded military officer with a bayonet thrust through his back. Reading the plaque on its granite base informed him that it was the Katyn Memorial by Polish-American sculptor Andrzej Pitynski, dedicated to the victims of the Soviet massacre in that town in Poland in 1940.
The contractor had instructed him to walk south from the hotel along the pier until he reached the 9/11 Memorial. As he went he marveled at the fiery beauty of New York City at sunset. When he got to the grotesquely twisted steel beams and the double-checking bronze businessman of September 11th, the contractor was already there, a man wearing black-framed eyeglasses, a canvas briefcase hanging from his shoulder, and with his hands in the pockets of a long black wool overcoat, staring across the river in some kind of reverie. Turning his head like an elongated owl, he smiled politely as the attorney walked over.
“Thank you for coming out to meet me, Mr. Koehler. The ferry will be here in about five minutes,” he said, pointing out over the water with his right hand to the boat headed straight toward them from the piers in Battery Park.
They hurried down the boardwalk and onto the pier and bought tickets from the machines just in time to board. On the second floor the young lawyer was delighted to find the snack bar open and serving beer and clams on the half shell.
“Appetizers!” he explained boyishly. “Don’t you want any?” he asked the contractor.
“Enjoy. I have them all the time.”
They took a booth near a forward-facing window and had to almost shout over the passenger boat’s engine and rudders. The out-of-towner couldn’t take his eyes off Manhattan’s looming skyscrapers. What the contractor did not tell him was that he’d insisted on coming into the city as the fastest and surest way to ascertain whether or not he was being followed by anyone. When large amounts of money are involved in a situation, as it was now, there is always a multitude of interested parties.
“Welp,” said Koehler, as he took a long pull of his beer mug, “All the paperwork’s done, really. Your office manager, Sophie, is pretty awesome. I’m just here to witness your signature and sign for my client. And to make a good faith deposit on payment for your services, of course.”
“Yeah, she’s kind of amazing. Thing is, Mr. Koehler-”
“Please, call me Marty. Mr. Koehler is still my dad,” the lawyer joked.
“Thanks, Marty. I sincerely appreciate your flying up here to close the deal. Sophie could’ve taken care of it all without me and with faxes and the internet but I actually had some questions I needed to ask in person, so I’m happy you’re here.”
“No problem. I have full authorization to speak for my client in this matter and I was thoroughly briefed on the matter at hand. Matter of fact, we had a few small questions, too. Just logistics stuff for when we get started.”
“Of course, but let’s wait till we get to Katz’s or we’ll both have sore throats by the time we get there.”
Koehler agreed with a laughing nod as he sucked another clam down his gullet. It’s an eight-minute ride on the ferry to the twenty-four-dollar island side and they were in a cab within another few, cutting through a quiet Sunday evening downtown. Between the pothole jumps and taxi jockeying the younger man kept his head craned upward against the partially opened window, marveling at the lights and massive skyscrapers. Up Broadway and coasting east along Houston they arrived quickly at the Bowery.
Inside the landmark restaurant they found it comfortably devoid of the tourist crowds. From the looks and sounds of it, the few tables that were occupied were seating locals. The contractor suggested a window table on the Ludlow Street side of the dining room.
Koehler ordered the 2-person sandwich package for himself so he wouldn’t have to choose between the pastrami and the Reuben. The contractor asked for a plate of potato latkes and a matzoh ball soup. Since they didn’t serve beer, the attorney walked across Houston to a bodega where he grabbed a couple large bottles of Grolsch. The contractor opted for the house seltzer.
“There are at least a dozen world-class security firms in Miami,” the contractor began. “And they all charge almost half of what I do. Why pick a solo flyer from the northeast?”
“You know, I asked them the same thing myself. No offense, I thought it would have been more cost effective to hire a local service. But the client’s husband is a construction guy and when the gentleman who referred you to him explained that they’d actually be saving money by getting the job done right the first time, and quickly, they were sold.
“‘Sides, the money’s not really an issue, they’ve got that covered. The client specifically wanted someone from outside the Miami area. She’s originally from Brooklyn.”
“And you’re related to the client how?” asked the contractor.
“Ah, you caught that. I’m her nephew, actually. I see you do your homework.”
“She’s been in the news a lot lately. You’re also not the company’s attorney of record.”
“No… Debra, my aunt, wants to keep this as quiet as possible. The firm that represents her lab is little more than a patent attorney and they would have made too much of a fuss about anything outside that scope. I’m a personal injury lawyer but this is something I can do for a family member.”
As the contractor considered this, a trio of young women turned the corner and stopped with their backs turned in front of their window to evaluate and discuss the strip of trendy bars across Ludlow, with one of them pointing to the nearest place with a small crowd out front. Another of them, a strawberry blonde with matching lip gloss, turned behind her to check her look in the window’s reflection and didn’t immediately notice the two men at the table a few feet within. When she did, after puckering her lips and batting her eyelashes at herself, she burst into laughter and shared her faux pas with her two friends who turned around to wave at the men. One of them, a dark-haired woman with bangs, took an obvious interest in Koehler, gave him a wink and blew him a kiss as the trio dashed off in a warm mist of laughter to the lights of the tavern. She looked back at him once and all he could do was feebly wave his hand in simultaneous greeting and farewell.
The contractor, amused, waited until the attorney recovered his bearings.
“Wow,” drawled Koehler, “they were hot.”
“Indeed.”
“Not shy, neither.”
“No, New York City women are not shrinking violets.”
The lawyer’s gaze lingered at the bar the women had entered.
“So,” the contractor resumed, “why not also change out the in-house security system that’s already there?”
“That’s the thing,” Koehler said, facing the contractor with the crux of the matter, “there isn’t any. Not any kind to speak of, anyway. You would think that with the size of the operation, my aunt would have installed a full-fledged team of some sort. They’ve got one security guard on duty at all times, from a service out in Doral that seems to only hire retirees. Her IT department is a recent graduate from UF who specializes in designing video games.
“I’ve tried to tell her she should beef up security, but my aunt has always resisted what she calls ‘the paranoid corporate culture’. And now, look, someone’s trying to mess with her company.
“But there’s no actual hard evidence that someone is directly causing interference…” interjected the contractor.
“At this point, that’s all that’s missing. I’ll let her tell you about it, but from what she describes it sounds like someone out there is trying to get access to the company’s internal computer network, digitally as well as physically. It’s just way too many coincidences, you know?”
The contractor nodded and continued.
“The lab doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of competitors. There aren’t too many companies exploring these new products and they’re all small, single-item outfits. Nor does the lab create a lot of revenue in its niche market. The work, mainly R&D, is almost entirely privately funded except for a couple federal grants. So why would anyone want to attack or infiltrate it?”
“With all due respect,” the attorney grinned, “that’s what we’re hiring you to find out. Debra is a biochemist, her husband, my uncle Tim, is an engineer with his own company to run, and they have two teenagers headed to college soon. They’re not cut out for this type of thing. When Tim mentioned his dilemma to your mutual friend, the man suggested your agency as the fastest way to ‘get the rat out the kitchen’, as he put it.”
“You mentioned there were a couple of questions on your end…” said the freshly titled rat-catcher.
“Oh, yeah. Are you going to need some kind of company identity and/or access to the lab and the computers at any time?”
“More than likely, but not in my real name. I’ll have that figured out by the weekend. I need to take a quick look around first.”
“Understood. Well, that brings me to the second question. Will there be an official record?”
“It’s necessary. Especially if we have to bring criminal charges against anyone or file anything having to do with insurance. Since you’ll be the attorney of record in this matter, you’ll get copies of everything I give the client, from reports to evidence.”
“That’s a relief. I was hoping it wasn’t going to be all cloak-and-dagger like.”
The contractor only smiled. “There is one other thing, though,” he said. “I visited the lab’s website but didn’t see a directory. Who handles the public relations and sales functions?”
“That would be one and the same person: Sharon Arsenault. She handles everything from marketing to press releases to grant writing. No actual sales or PR departments, though.”
“Thank you. I’m just trying to get an idea of the lab’s outward-looking presence. It’s still an emerging field they’re in, both the science and business-wise.”
“Exactly. There’s no telling who might have it out for my aunt Debra and she’s only trying to do good things.”
"Alright, then, it’s a done deal,” the contractor concluded and clinked his soda fountain glass against Koehler’s beer bottle. “You can let your aunt and uncle know that I’ll be down in Miami by Thursday night and we can all meet Friday morning.”
“Cheers,” said the attorney.
“Sophie’s also a notary so she can bang everything out in five minutes tomorrow and you’ll have the whole rest of the day to yourself to enjoy the city without any boring meetings. The weather’s going to be unseasonably warm for the next few days.”
“Well, they did give me until Wednesday to get you to sign, in case there were… delays of any kind.”
“That’s great. Well, mission accomplished. Now you definitely should take a day or two to see New York.”
“That would be kinda nice…” he murmured as his gaze returned to the bar where the women were.
“You know,” said the contractor, “Sunday nights are actually the best night for meeting women in Manhattan.”
“You don’t say…”
“Sure. There’s no bridge-and-tunnel crowds tonight. The locals like to go out on Thursdays and Sundays to avoid them and the tourists.”
“Bridge-and-tunnel crowds?...”
“From Jersey and the other boroughs…”
“Ah,” said Koehler pretending to understand. “So, uh, you wanna come have a drink across the street?”
The contractor chuckled and shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. I have one more appointment tonight. But you’ll be fine. It’ll work in your favor that you’re only in town for a few days. Just tell them your wing man bailed on you.”
“Yeah?”
“Guaranteed. You’ll be okay to get back to your hotel, right?”
“Aw, shit, yeah!” He was almost out of his seat already. “Listen, you can bill the food to the lab and-“
“Not at all, it’s on me. I made you come out into what I know is not an ideal temperature for you tonight.”
“You know what? I think things are about to heat up nicely…” said the young attorney with a devilish grin.
“I’d have to agree,” agreed the contractor. “See you Friday.”
The lawyer threw on his new coat, pulled out a few bills from his wallet and placed them on the table to cover the tip. Then shaking the contractor’s hand, he turned and did a sort of speed walking thing out of the restaurant and across the street to the Gold Lion.
The man still at the table asked for a slice of cheesecake and waited about fifteen minutes watching the entrance to the bar. Then he paid the check and made his way out to the street. Going up Avenue A he took his time walking through his one-time neighborhood of Loisaida. These old streets in the East Village never failed to evoke wistful memories of his rest
“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Queen Mab’, 1813
Tampa, Florida
9:30pm
While it is certain that there have been innumerable ignoble book thieves throughout the ages, and too often there were also many unsung honorable liberators of looted or endangered books, to properly appraise the modern era of criminal bibliophilia we would have to begin by looking at the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first.
With his spectacular suicide in ‘04, Anders Burius had proceeded to his reserved place in the pantheon of infamous bibliomanes, joining a very exclusive club that lists millionaires, murderers and madmen.
Most recently, in May of 2002 a former executive accountant at oil giant Shell UK named William Simon Jacques, christened ‘The Tome Raider’ by the British press, had been sentenced to four years in prison for the thefts of one million English pounds worth of rare books from Cambridge University Library, the London Library and the British Library. He was also subsequently officially banned from all libraries in the United Kingdom.
Using simple disguises Jacques had been stealing early and first editions of works such as Galileo’s ‘Sidereus Nuncias’(1610) and Copernicus’s ‘Astronomia Instaurate’ (1617), and selling them through auction houses in London, Munich and other European cities. Evidence and testimony at his trial indicated that he’d also made a number of expert forgeries and that he had been engaged in all these illegal activities since at least 1992. Many of the originals he’d lifted were never recovered.
Upon his release in April 2004, Jacques promptly paid a visit to the British Library sporting a full beard, long hair and eyeglasses but was nonetheless recognized by the staff and escorted to the exit.
Undaunted, he managed to satisfy his impulses by stealing books from the library of the Royal Horticultural Society in Pimlico using the alias ‘Victor Santoro’ until the thefts were discovered after an inventory was taken in June.
The Tome Raider is credited with necessitating the implementation of CCTV and security passes at Cambridge and London Library.
Then there is lifelong hardened convict, serial killer and self-educated antiquities expert Gary Charles Evans, who began his criminal career in 1962 at the tender age of eight by stealing $1,000 worth of jewelry. As a boy he especially enjoyed stealing expensive books and first run comics for himself and separately shoplifted easily sold luxury items.
By the time he was twenty-eight years old he’d already done time in all of New York state’s worst penitentiaries including Comstock, Clinton and Attica, the last of these being where he got to hang and work out with ‘Son of Sam’ David Berkowitz, all the while reading up on the qualities and values of antiques, fine art and rare books.
By age thirty-five he’d killed two antique dealers he had robbed, as well as killed and dismembered two of his three closest associates. Despite constantly being in and out of jails from New York to California and Florida, Evans was never suspected or charged in any of the four murders.
Late in 1991, after killing shop owner Gregory Jouben, Evans determined to give up his life of crime and go straight. That lasted about a year and two months during which time he worked as a day laborer in the Albany area. In January 1993 he was arrested for looting and vandalism for having dismantled, stolen and sold a 500kg marble tombstone from the cemetery where he had hidden the gun used in the ‘91 murder. He served one month in the county jail.
Upon his release he decided to move to Vermont and live the life of a survivalist in a tent. There he broke into the Norman Williams Library in Woodstock and stole a rare first edition of John James Audubon’s ‘The Birds of America’ (1827). After a few unsuccessful months of trying to find a buyer in the very rural state, Evans was turned in by informants and captured in June of 1994. Facing a life sentence because of his extensive record and the value of the stolen book, he simply revealed the whereabouts of the volume and received a reduced sentence of twenty-four months.
Paroled almost exactly two years later, Evans returned directly to New York and immediately reunited with his third most trusted partner in crime, then shortly afterward killed and dismembered him.
Had he not eventually been overcome with guilt and walked into the St. Johnsbury, Vermont, police station on May 27th, 1998, to confess to his killings, Evans would have gotten away with all of them.
Later that year, on August 14th, two days after being arraigned on three of the murders, he was being transported to another of a slew of pending court dates. Using a small key he had stuffed up his nose, Evans freed himself from his chains and manacles. When the prisoner transport van was passing over the Menands Bridge in upstate New York, he kicked out the rear window and made a run for it. But the corrections officers quickly caught up to and surrounded him. Rather than being taken alive, Evans ran to the walkway fence, jumped over it and leapt into the Hudson River where he smashed his head on the shallow rocks. Under the circumstances, his death was ruled a suicide.
But if a catalytic point in time can be determined for the start of the golden age of bibliomania it would have to be the March 20th, 1990, arrest of that OG of rare book thieves, the Grand Poobah of bibliophiles, Stephen Carrie Blumberg, who doggedly sought, earned, and still retains the somewhat estimable title of ‘The Book Bandit’.
At that time, the U.S. Justice Department and FBI had determined that this small, quiet man had stolen more than 23,500 rare, valuable, and important other books from 268 universities and museums in 45 states, 2 Canadian provinces, and the capitol District of Columbia. Originally the total value of his grand larceny was put at about twenty million US dollars, but that was later adjusted (because of poor bookkeeping) to $5.3 million, still the largest book theft in United Sates history.
Having been born to a very wealthy family, young Stephen had begun collecting books and antiques at an early age, preferring solitude to interaction with his peers. Far more interested in the forgotten grandeur of the Victorian homes he passed on the way to school than what was being taught in the classrooms he was required to appear in, he began secret explorations of the lost histories in those abandoned houses whenever school was not in session.
Beginning with salvaging items like stained-glass windows and antique doorknobs that had been left behind in homes scheduled for demolition, Blumberg concurrently began perusing and purloining required reference books from libraries, such as the one at the University of Michigan, where he first realized the monetary and aesthetic values of these materials themselves. As an added plus to his blossoming life’s vocation, the necessity of often having to sneak into these once-grand treasure troves of antique collectibles undetected by neighbors, construction workers or passersby at all different hours of the day and night, Blumberg became a highly skilled cat burglar, able to easily maneuver around the outdated alarm systems and negligible security precautions of unprepared institutions. He was quick to acquire a lock-picking set and other burglary tools.
Entering adulthood with a $72,000 annual trust fund account, Blumberg was free to roam North America contentedly indulging his bibliokleptomaniacisms. Though he had money to spare, he took his meals at soup kitchens where he could find them and bought his second-hand clothing at Salvation Army and Goodwill thrift stores. Where he enjoyed his purchasing power was at rare book shops across the continent and soon he became well known among the dealers, instantly recognizable in his shabby clothing and driving an old, beat-up luxury model car hauling a small camping trailer. Blumberg always bought, but never sold.
Whenever he came across a book he wanted but could not buy or easily steal, he would don disguises and aliases to get to it. Such as the time at the University of California where he presented himself as psychology professor Mikehew McGue when a custodian caught him in the special collections department at a quarter to midnight and the library had closed at five. It was this night that began the domino tumble of cases involving unexplained disappearances of rare books and manuscripts from university and special libraries across the country.
Ultimately, it was his close friend, roommate and routine accomplice whom Blumberg had known since the 1970’s who cashed in on the $56,000 reward the FBI had posted for information about his buddy Stephen’s whereabouts.
Although the second floor of the two-story house in Ottumwa, Iowa, was filled ceiling to floor with incunabula and valuable other books, it was all but a portion of what Blumberg had stolen and hidden in storage facilities and other locations around the country and about which he has forever held his peace.
Sentenced to seventy-one months in federal prison and a two-hundred thousand dollar fine, Blumberg (all five feet, two inches and hundred and fifteen pounds of him) served the four and a half years among career thieves and killers without incident, paid the levy, and scarcely missing a beat immediately resumed “collecting” again when he was released on December 29, 1995. He was in and out of jail constantly afterwards for a seemingly uncontrollable inclination toward thievery of rare books and antiques.
At Blumberg's trial in 1991, the director of the Law and Psychiatry Department at the Menninger Clinic, Dr. William S. Logan, also a recognized authority on forensic psychiatry, testified that Blumberg had throughout his lifetime been undergoing treatment for schizophrenia. Beginning early in his adolescence he’d been hospitalized repeatedly for schizophrenic delusions and tendencies, and no less than a dozen psychiatrists had diagnosed him variously as schizophrenic, delusional, paranoid, and/or compulsive. Dr. Logan also stated that there existed a history of psychiatric illness in Blumberg's family and that it was after escaping from a treatment facility that Stephen began breaking into houses and libraries to steal.
As described in Dr. Logan’s reports, Blumberg had appointed himself the protector and rescuer of the works he stole, guarding them from what he was convinced was aan intentional destruction. Blumberg claimed the government had plotted to keep ordinary citizens from having access to rare books and unique historical materials, and so sought to liberate them in active resistance to the great governmental plot. He stated he one day planned to return all of the books to “their rightful owners.”
But it was that one big bust of his crimes that had triggered the enactment of state and federal laws in the U.S. placing larcenies in excess of $50,000 squarely under federal jurisdiction. Before The Book Bandit, thefts valued at under that amount were handled at the local level and the FBI only got involved when interstate commerce was involved. Now they were to be called in any time any high-ticket items were stolen in any of the fifty states.
Which was why Special Agent Mary Grace Weiland was working late on a Sunday night, instead of wrapping up a late romantic dinner with her significant other at that new sushi place downtown, which had been the evening’s original itinerary until the call from headquarters this afternoon.
Someone had stolen fifty-two thousand dollars’ worth of rare books scheduled for auction at a university in west Florida. The prime suspect was a marine biologist less than six weeks away from receiving her doctoral degree who suddenly vanished into thin air. This individual worked part-time as an assistant in the library where the books were stolen.
Who would throw away their entire career like that? Nine times out of ten, the rare book thieves were all about the money and 50K was not really a lot these days, considering she would get even less on the black market. The other ten percent of this lot were just book freaks. So, which was it? Or was it both?
From what little information was available, she was an unlikely suspect, but then again, they often are; an exceptional student, with a good number of scholarships, grants, and other awards; membership in various student organizations throughout her college years; no priors or any kind of trouble with the law. Except… she’d been a teenage runaway. Twice. At sixteen took her time running from her parents in South Dakota to an aunt in Florida; at seventeen she ran off with a boy and was missing in New York City for nearly two months. This was from the initial missing persons reports filed with the police by the parents and there were very few details. Juvenile records are sealed but there was a final disposition report filed by the juvenile services bureau on the reservation in South Dakota which simply listed a counseled resolution with her parents.
And so, Agent Weiland had to be on the road by sunrise to drive over to the crime scene in Tallahassee to gather what evidence had not already been stomped on by the local authorities, who would inevitably resent her upon arrival, when she had to immediately take over the scene and the case. The only lead they had was a boyfriend in nearby Havana. Then she was supposed to have something to present to her superiors by a lunchtime debriefing.
Apparently, though, this case did not seem important enough to merit a helicopter ride for the 450-mile trek. With another cup of coffee at hand, she resigned herself to reviewing the files again and imprinting in her mind all the details of the suspect and the four stolen books.
*
Monday, March 14th, 4:14am (London time)
Frankfurt: “Edward! Edward is that you?” whisper-shouted the woman who’d been waiting hours to call.
“Emme? Yes, of course, it’s me, who else would it be? And it’s also… four in the morning...”
“I could not wait any more. You will understand. The auction is in three days.”
“Auction?”
“A charity auction for a university library in the United States.”
“And I care why, then?”
“They have the herbal.”
Not fully awake yet, the Brit had no idea what she was talking about.
“Herbal… What blessed herbal, please, my dear?”
“The Darwin herbal.”
There was a long pause on the London end.
"Impossible…" he said slowly. "That's only a myth."
"Oh? Well, that myth, complete with leaf pressings and hand drawings and notes in a verified handwriting, is being sold alongside a first edition of Percy Shelley's 'St. Irvyne', a journal by an eighteenth-century French priest, and one of the Zamarano Eighty. They're grouped in a lot being offered for a starting bid of just fifty-two thousand US dollars."
He bolted upright. Now he was completely awake.
"Holy fuck."
"Yes, exactly."
"They don't know what they have, do they?"
"It would seem that way."
"How did you find out?"
"How else? Madame called me from Copenhagen late last night. She already has buyers for the journal and the novel. Obviously, she will want to negotiate for the other two but everyone in the world will want to buy them from us."
"What about the Zamarano item? Which one is it?"
"Number thirty-five, the Monterey expedition in California, first edition 1770."
"Crikey! So where in the states, then?"
"Florida, west coast. The airport is Tallahassee International."
"Bloody hell. The boondocks."
"I am scheduled for a flight in a few hours."
"Alright. I'll start packing. I'll see you when I get there."
“Excellent.”
“Emmeline?…” he said in a softer tone.
“Hmmmm… yes, Edvard?”
“I can’t wait to see you.”
“Nor I...”
*
Jacksonville, Florida
5:01am
To make up for lost time in having been notified late, the FBI went public on Monday morning with a bulletin about the theft and a $20,000 reward for information leading to the primary suspect’s capture, matching a reward posted privately by a US congressman.
Electronic and fax notifications went out simultaneously to all police agencies and media outlets within a fifty-mile radius from Tallahassee. The theft had taken place sometime between Friday morning, the last day the library was open, and the missing books had been accounted for, and Saturday morning, when library staff had reported the theft to university police, who had not notified the feds until they’d figured out what to do by the end of first shift at three o’clock.
Miccosukee, Florida
6:12am
“Get up,” said Grandmother Nadie’s voice in the void.
There was an icky haze from those three beers last night. She remembered why she didn’t drink beer much anymore.
“My child, you have to get up. They’re coming for you.”
That did the trick. She jumped up from the couch.
“Where? Who? Are they here?!” she asked panicked.
“Calm down. They’re not here yet, but they’re on their way. You’ll need a head start.”
There were no televisions in this house and she only listened to the radio on occasions like yesterday’s impromptu gathering so something else had told Grandmother her granddaughter’s enemies were approaching. Only for a second she thought of asking her elder how she knew.
“What direction are they coming from?” the young woman asked.
“They are coming from all directions, my beloved.”
The old woman handed her a small leather bag tied with leather string, and a No. 10 envelope holding what felt like a small stack of cash.
“Take this, it should help some. You must get going, though, take all of your things. Your cousin is already in the kitchen waiting to take you to Lloyd. I made breakfast for the two of you to take with you.”
Lloyd, Florida
7:03am
The widowed Geraldine Margaret Burns, as she did every weekday, was enjoying her morning mug of General Foods International Coffees Suisse Mocha and Stella D’Oro biscotti while watching TV on the local infotainment affiliate’s ‘Breakfast Briefs’. The feature story warned the area public about a fugitive from justice possibly hiding out in the vicinity of the Tallahassee suburbs. On the screen was a picture of a bespectacled and very angry-looking young woman with dark skin and hair, a raised fist and silently shouting probably some rabble-rouser slogan or other profanities. The image sent a shiver down Geraldine’s spine. So angry these young immigrants, she shuddered to herself. With that foreign-sounding name she was probably one of those Islamist radicals.
That the image of the suspect, taken at a reproductive rights demonstration two years ago, had been digitally altered to make her skin darker and her facial features more menacing and vicious looking might not have mattered much to Geraldine, but it had its effect. She wondered if there might already be one of those wanted posters hung up at the post office she had to visit this morning and made a mental note to check the bulletin board.
Dollar Planet, Gamble Road, Lloyd
7:45am
With Tallahassee less than twenty miles and only a couple towns away she was taking a big risk coming into this town, but it had to be done. The dollar store plaza had seen various incarnations and renovations in the past fifteen years and yet that faithful old yellow payphone had never once budged. And it still sounded as clear as it did when they used to use it to make prank calls to their classmates and their classmates’ parents. She said a little prayer that it still showed up as ‘Unknown’ on Caller ID.
Her boyfriend had an inflexible schedule during the week and a strict morning routine. Right about now he would be painstakingly preparing his nutrient-calculated, well-balanced breakfast comprised of carefully selected representatives from all the four food groups.
He picked up right away.
“Hello?!” He sounded frantic.
“Hi, it’s me,” she almost whispered.
“Babe, where are you?!”
“It’s better I don’t tell you. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, but what in the hell is going on with you? They’re saying you stole those books from the library!”
“I’m sorry I didn’t prepare you, I wasn’t completely sure I would go through with it. I owe you an explanation but I’m afraid it’s going to have to wait.”
“Sweetie, I know you told me you were angry at what was going on with the university and that… that assemblyman but don’t you think you’ve taken this whole thing a little too far?”
Sweetie? Since when did he start calling me that? She chalked it up to his nervousness in the circumstances.
“I had to do something, I couldn’t just stand back and watch them get away with it.”
“Okay, you’ve made your point and you’ve got everyone’s attention. But, come on, is it really worth throwing your whole life away?”
“I’m not-“
He cut her off. “Listen, you still have a chance to make this right.”
“What do you mean?”
“The university is taking into consideration your otherwise unblemished student record and the years you’ve worked at the library and they just want the books back. They’re willing to work out a deal where they don’t press charges and you get to keep most of your credits toward the doctorate. You’ll have to do this last year over again somewhere else, though.”
“And you know this how?”
“They’ve asked me to convey this to you if you called.”
“You’ve been talking to them?”
“What did you expect? Everyone knows we’ve been dating.”
“And the police? Did they come to you, too?”
“Of course.”
“What did you tell them?”
“What could I tell them? All I knew was that you were upset about how the assemblyman was planning to use the books being auctioned off, mixing religion with government and everything.”
In the Havana apartment, Special Agent Weiland, sitting on a love seat across from the young man on the phone, made gestures to him to keep the caller talking as long as possible, and pointed at her watch.
“What else did you tell them?” asked the caller.
“Not much, nothing they didn’t already know. I realized I didn’t actually know as much about you as I thought I did other than that you have some family out in Miccosukee.”
“Oh, my god, how could you?!”
“Babe, they were threatening to kick me out of the doctoral program if I didn’t cooperate. It would have taken me another two years to get back to where I am right now.”
The reality of his betrayal fell on her like a massive boulder.
“So I don’t actually matter more to you than anything, do I?” she asked rhetorically.
He was at a loss for words. But the agent walking in with breakfast for all the other agents anxiously standing around the room was not and he filled the gap as he popped into the room.
“They didn’t have any goddammed strawberry jelly packets!” he complained loudly, then saw that he would not be able to put the sounds of his talking back into his mouth.
“Who was that?” asked the caller.
There was a long three seconds of frozen silence until the young man regrouped.
“I ordered breakfast… I was too preoccupied to do it myself today. Honey, please, be reasonable. There’s still time to fix all of this. Look on the bright side. You’ll avoid jail time and still salvage your career.”
Honey. Sweetie. He knew better than to talk to her like that. And he was a bona fide germophobe; he never ordered food he could not see being prepared.
“Goodbye,” she said quietly as she placed the handset back on its cradle.
In Havana, Agent Weiland shouted desperately into the air.
“Did we get it?!”
“We got it!” somebody answered.
Agent Weiland looked at the agent who had slipped up, pointed a heavy hand at him and gave him a face which telegraphed that were it not for their having clinched the trace on the phone call she would be all over him. The embarrassed agent merely looked at the floor, mentally self-flagellating.
“Alright, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” shouted Weiland. The town of Lloyd, Florida, was about a half hour from here.
Lloyd
8:08am
Housed in the original train station for the town, the United States Post Office in Lloyd can hold four people comfortably, including the window clerk. Everyone else has to stand on line outside. On the first day of the week it’s usually a long line.
The plan had been to ship the books to herself in Miami and let them sit for a while as she worked out a long-term strategy. For now she just wanted to unload them from her person as she hightailed it down there. Kinhagee had agreed to take her all the way to Lake City where she could hop on a bus, although he’d insisted on taking her all the way down to Miami. Acting a bit pouty, he’d gone off to see if there was a store open where he could buy a pack of cigarettes while she waited to mail her parcel. They’d already gotten a few sideways glances from the regular postal customers when they rode in on the loud motorcycle but the Lloydsters must have figured it was just another local Indian couple come into town from nearby.
There were six people ahead of her spaced along the handicapped ramp leading to the entrance, four more inside. An elderly woman walked out of the closet-sized lobby and began greeting the waiting people, one by one, like a royal dignitary at a reception.
The fugitive knew the old woman would immediately know she wasn’t ‘from ‘round here’. She started to get nervous. If Kinhagee would just come back already she could skip this place and mail the bundle from Lake City. He was nowhere in sight.
Sure enough, when the widow Burns had reached the last of the patrons she knew, she came to the fidgety young woman with long hair and tan skin, and froze.
“Oh, hello,” she was barely able to utter to the stranger.
The fugitive smiled as pleasantly and innocently as she possibly could.
“Good morning,” she pleaded.
Then Geraldine turned away and, as calm as the good Lord would give her the strength to do, forced her confused legs to walk the forty-three steps to her Buick in the parking lot. Once in her car, she took a long breath and thanked her Creator that the criminal hadn’t killed her then and there. And suddenly she realized that she must have been spared a grisly death for a reason, and a higher purpose. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the girl had turned her back to her. Proof positive it was her on the news.
No one else had seemed to recognize the fugitive from justice so it was clear that it was up to her to do her citizen’s duty. As smoothly as any of those daytime television detectives, she nonchalantly rolled down her window, beeped her horn three times and waved to her friends and neighbors as she drove away.
She went straight to the Hoagie House a few blocks away and commandeered the two stoned teenagers prepping the counter to call the sheriff, there’s a wanted terrorist at the post office.
Meanwhile, at the US outpost the waiting line moved along comfortably on country time as the clerk caught up on all the news and gossip from her regulars. There were now only three people ahead of her but the fugitive no longer felt safe. The old woman had given her the heebie jeebies. If Kinhagee would just come back already she could skip this place and send the books from Lake City.
At the crossroads of Gamble Road and Old Lloyd Road, where the post office is located, one can look clear down the town’s four principal roads, which included the only two that lead to and from Interstate 10.
The town of Lloyd, Florida, is actually unincorporated and technically just a census-designated place. It has no police department of its own but depends for its public safety on the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, headquartered in Monticello, twelve miles away.
She heard the sirens coming from two different directions, east and west.
It’s done, it’s over, she thought.
She walked slowly down the accessibility ramp and out to the intersection to meet her fate. She looked to her left and about five hundred feet down the road outside a cluster of stores she saw Kinhagee throwing his helmet on and running to his motorcycle which was parked on the sidewalk. As he jumped on his bike and throttled the engine he saw her standing stricken at the curb. He raised his right hand pointing upward and shouted something in Mikasuki then raced toward her.
She prepared herself to jump on the bike behind him. To the north, coming off the highway exit ramp, she saw a line of black SUVs and sedans with red sirens zooming straight towards her. To her right, farther in the distance she saw a stream of police cars speeding in from the direction of Monticello.
Kinhagee slowed down just enough to catch her and revved it up again. She put on her helmet. He was going directly toward the police cars.
In a sudden game of chicken, the fugitive and her cousin both realized the deputies quite possibly might not hesitate to turn them into roadkill. But they didn’t slow down.
The deputies, however, did not know how the fugitive was traveling and simply parted enough to let the speeding motorcycle pass through. Someone must have recognized her, though, because right before they reached the town all of the cars screeched to a stop enough to turn around and start chasing after them.
At the same time, the feds poured into the normally very quiet heart of town like a pack of hungry wolves who’d caught the scent of an injured deer. It only took a moment before they were chasing behind the sheriff’s deputies.
Because they’d caught a bead on their target, Agent Weiland had gotten authorization for helicopter support. But the remoteness of their location had served to the fugitive’s benefit, as the closest unit and pilot had had to scramble out of Tallahassee. The helicopter team was just now catching up to the convoy of Crown Vic’s and Navigators. Weiland rode in the lead car wishing she was in the whirlybird hovering above her. Nobody had yet bothered to notice that she knew how to fly one.
“They’re on a motorcycle heading east on ten!” she radioed to them with a yell. The chopper lurched forward and took off after the prey.
As they approached the entrance to the interstate, Kinhagee looked behind him and saw the helicopter rising in the distance. They had two options and only one chance. Odds were good that the cops would all assume the fugitives would jump on the highway to achieve maximum speed and distance to get away. But Kinhagee, who knew these roads like a map on his palm, just kept right on going north on Old Lloyd Road over the interstate and toward the miniature town of Lois.
“Just like old times, huh, ‘cuz?!” he shouted behind him joyously.
“Not exactly!” she yelled back, not as thrilled by the situation as he was.
About a quarter mile up he swung off onto Rabon Road heading due east for just another quarter mile then veered north again onto Route 259, Waukeenah Highway. As he had hoped, their pursuers had continued east along the interstate. It wouldn’t be long before they realized their error, though, and started backtracking.
They pulled over to the side of the road underneath a copse of trees near the White House Vineyards and Winery to catch their breath and reconnoiter. They only had a few minutes before the helicopter would begin the wide circles searching for them.
“Take me to Monticello,” she said. “And then you have to disappear. I know you can do that.”
“You should let me take you all the way, cousin,” he started up again. “It’s not safe for you to be running alone.”
She took his big, thick-skulled head in both of her small hands and kissed his forehead.
“I know, my guardian angel. And I swear to you, Kinhagee, I wish I could take you with me. But this is mine to handle alone, I don’t want anyone in my family getting hurt by it. Let’s get out of here, they’ll be coming around this way soon.”
Monticello, Florida
8:52am
“Woman, are you out of your mind?!” Kinhagee asked her forcefully, realizing he had delivered her right into the lion’s den. “This is the belly of the beast! Where do you think all those cops were coming from?!”
“Calm down, I know what I’m doing. Sort of. I know this town. I’ll be able to blend in easier. And they’ve got buses going toward Lake City.”
“Alright, you know what you’re doing. Sort of.”
They were standing outside of a gas station next to one of the Wilderness Coast Public Libraries. In the station restroom she had put away the eyeglasses that she always wore and put on some make-up, which she seldom wore. She had tied her hair in a ponytail and bought a baseball cap in the station store.
“Look, I know you don’t like guns but you’re going to need a weapon,” he told her.
He glanced around casually from side to side to check that there were no watching eyes then pulled out a large hunting knife with a Black Ironwood handle from underneath his shirt.
“I’ve never had to use it. One look and it makes the tough guys faint. She’ll even protect you without having to be seen, it was handed down to me from Mahihkan.”
Upon hearing the revered elder’s name, she couldn’t say no.
“I’ll bring her back to you. Whatever happens, hakatayompi.”
“Hakatayompi,” he answered and gave her a strong embrace.”
“Thank you, Kinhagee. Now get out of here,” she commanded as she pulled her bags out of the saddle sides.
He looked to the sky for a moment then quickly rode north through the back roads toward Thomasville, where he had some friends he could hide out with until it got dark. She started walking east down the main road, Washington Highway, toward the center of town. The library they had stopped in front of was too little for her to be inconspicuous, but she remembered that there was a large county library in the historic district less than a mile away where she was eventually able to sit in a corner near a window and duck behind a large book for a couple hours.
Ocean County, New Jersey
He had waited until ten, after the morning’s commuter waves had ebbed and the inevitable Monday traffic mayhem had hopefully subsided some, before heading down the coast. He had called his ex-wife to let her know he was coming but, as usual, he received her voicemail so left a message. His attorney had been dropped off in a cab a half hour prior and was doing his best to be as chipper as possible.
Mike had known him since they were in their mid-twenties and he knew when the client he called friend felt like talking even less than usual, so he took the time to go over some paperwork. The drive would be at least an hour and a half with light traffic and he knew the driver had a lead foot but was an expert at it.
For his part, as he drove, the preoccupied client was running through various scenarios in his head whereby he could hopefully put an end to all this foolishness that was hindering his relationship with his son. Michael was actually a civil defense attorney but his firm had a family law specialist and they had been able to help him secure an equitable custody agreement at the time of the breakup.
But when he and his wife had separated, he naturally became the villain to her family, a dangerously negligent louse. Her father had seized upon the moment to secure more authority over his grandson, whom he regarded as the son he’d never been able to produce, and to punish his disappointing son-in-law for hurting his little girl. And out of spite Anne contentedly let her daddy turn the screws for her.
A highly intelligent and very attractive woman, she could have had any man she wanted but had settled for this ambiguous New York City transplant when she became pregnant with his child. They had only been dating about four months and had had to get to know each other in a hurry. Sophisticated and intellectually inquisitive, she could also be astoundingly petty and cruelly vindictive over the smallest perceived slight. And she knew exactly how to push his buttons.
His soon-to-be-ex-wife had discovered early in their marriage that he seemed to be more jealous of the books she read and didn’t discuss with him than he was of any past lovers or the men who flirted with her when they were out in public together. And it was true. He wasn’t the least concerned with anyone before him and not the slightest bit worried by any of the hot-blooded hounds at the parties and on the street because he knew her well enough. But he really, really didn’t like it when she was more intimate with a book than she ever was with him. The quirk had its roots in a brief moment back when they were first dating in their late twenties. Outside the music store where they’d first met, he once happened upon her reading a book of spells. When she noticed that he’d glanced at the title she quickly tried to hide it on her lap. He’d thought the book was cool-looking, but she’d wanted to keep it secret from him.
In the first couple years of their stormy union they occasionally made attempts at book discussions and eventually both came to realize that they were at opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to the printed word. Hers was true literature and poetry and his was all the boring other stuff. Art, music, film, fine food, theatre, cinema and the outdoors they enjoyed together all the time but somehow when it came to books, they could find no common ground. And so, they learned to accept that they were two very different types of book lovers and to avoid the subject altogether.
But whenever they were truly at odds over something and not speaking to one another she would exact her revenge with the one sure-fire weapon that could irritate her otherwise unflappable husband. At around the time their infant son was already asleep in his room and they usually went to bed together, she simply slipped on one of those shimmery little negligees instead of her regular plain cotton nightgown or the flower print pajamas, then demonstratively embraced whichever of those large hardcovers she’d set aside in advance, and stretched out to make him suffer for an hour or so as she rolled around with whichever Leo, Guy or Walker it was these days. It was always worse when it was a writer he’d never even heard of. And when she was really pissed off at him, from the middle drawer of her dresser she would pull out those goddamned lace panties and bras that drove him wild, bring up a bottle of wine to the bedroom, and then giggle and cavort heartily and laugh throatily with Madame Bovary’s suitors or Lady Chatterley’s lover as he grumpily flipped pages of any trade magazine or legal reference work back and forth like a twenty-eight-year-old septuagenarian.
When she was at last satisfied, she would let out a dramatic sigh, allow her literary Lothario to fall to the floor and ceremoniously turn out her night light. He would immediately copy her, turning his off as well and then huffily turning on his side away from her to ruminate in the darkness until he fell asleep, angry, cuckolded by fictional characters and long dead writers.
Once off the parkway they had to crawl along a slow stretch of Route 9, the area’s one main drag tracing the coastline past a slew of chain restaurants, pharmacies and supermarkets.
After a few tiny towns with seaside-themed names they pulled into a small village tucked into the lower first half of the Jersey shore. It was quiet, sleepy and safe to raise children. He could not help feeling guilty for not living closer to be more of a part of his son’s life.
Drawing up to the 70’s duplex where his ex’s parents had chosen to enjoy their retirement, they came upon, as he had expected, a police car parked outside waiting for them. He took the time to carefully park directly in front of the house, in front of the patrol vehicle.
The restrictive court order his ex and her family were seeking hadn’t even been heard yet but they were acting as though it were fait accompli. Mike stepped out of the car to politely introduce himself and inform the officers that he could have them working as security guards at any crappy strip mall nearby within a week if they interfered with his client’s custodial visit. They called into headquarters to see if this might actually be possible and promptly drove off to find a place for lunch.
Had he not brought along his attorney, they would have likely obstructed the visit with his child. He got out of the car and walked up the front steps.
“Thank you, Mike,” he murmured as they passed each other. Anne’s father, Larry, a former mortgage banker, came to the door and, silently, resigned to defeat, held it open wide.
“Pop Pop!” announced the boy as he came bounding down the hall steps. He was five now, a little lion. In kindergarten but Sol had given them a courtesy call as well to keep his son home from school.
Burnished bronze curls and angelic features, he was the light that burned in his immense darkness. The child squeezed his father’s head as if trying to burst it and the father loved every second of it.
“Let’s go for a ride, dragon rider.”
“Uhventcha toime!”
“Exactly. Adventure time.”
Mike had already moved to the back of the car and the child was not surprised to see him.
“Hi, mithta Mike! Coming for the ride?” the boy invited as he strapped on his seatbelt. He no longer had to ride in the baby seat.
“Hi, soldier! I just wanted to make sure I said hello to you when you’re Pop Pop told me he was coming down here. I’ll be driving back from Toms River. What’s going on with you?”
“I’m dwiving, too.”
“Are you now? Is that legal for a five-year-old to be on the road already?”
“On the sidewalk it is, silly. Grampa bought me a mizzureety.”
“I’m sure you’re an excellent driver, then,” Mike obliged graciously. Instinctively, he changed the subject. “So, you two adventurers are going to drop me off at the nearest place with fancy names for coffee so I can make some calls and get some stuff done and I will catch up with you shortly.”
“Big law stuff?”
“Big law stuff.”
In downtown Toms River Mike was able to quickly hire a car to head back north. Father and son continued on to nearby Seaside Heights. It was a little chilly near the ocean and still early enough in the season that a lot of the boardwalk amusement booths and snack bars weren’t open yet. They went instead to one of the large indoor arcade pavilions with the game lanes and machines and a variety of food counters.
After almost two hours of mechanical horses, simulated car races, miniature golf and prize booths they decided to take a break and see how much of a mess they could make at one of the tables with fish and chips and cotton candy.
He had never baby talked to his son, not even when he was a newborn. He figured it was best to get him up to speed on the English language as early as possible and the boy had always understood him perfectly. While he still had a bit of the infant’s lisp, the child’s intellect was maturing rapidly and lately he had started asking the more pointed questions, having graduated from the why-why-whys of locomotives and the color of the sky.
“You know I am very sorry I haven’t been around lately, son. I got a little banged up on the last job like I told you on the phone at Christmastime.”
“I know. I saw it on teevee,” the child said absentmindedly, more concerned with his mouthful of food.
“You did?!” he asked, caught off-guard. He did not remember having been caught on television.
“Uh huh. Your face and your shirt were all black and your eyes looked so big and there was smoke coming out of your hair. It was funny! Like in the cartoons when something goes BOOM!”
“Yeah, ha, ha,” he laughed it off weakly. “That waskinda funny, right?…” He wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed by his son’s mother and grandparents letting the boy see his father in such a debacle or that they let him watch cartoons with characters boomed by explosions. He was now hesitant to say what he needed to.
“Well, uh, the thing is, I have to take a short trip down to Miami, you know, where Grandma Mariam lives. It’s for work and it’s just for a little while but I was thinking that as soon as I get back, like right around May when it starts warming up, we could have ourselves a nice big adventure. Like, we can go fishing and camping for a few days. What do you think?”
“Yay! Are we bringing Frith the cat and Mathilda Rockwilder?”
“Of course! They’ve been asking about you.”
The boy giggled. “They listen to me more than you,” he gloated.
“This is true. They really just tell me what to do. So we’re okay for camping in a few weeks?”
“Yeth! You promise, right?”
“I promise.”
After another hour of play they made their way back to his ex’s parents’ house. Her car was parked in the driveway. Checking his watch, he surmised that she must have left work early after getting a phone call from her father.
Undoubtedly, she had come racing down from her teaching job in Middlesex County not wanting
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