The Book of Air and Shadows

late client cheated my son into surrendering a valuable seventeenth-century manuscript for a paltry sum?”
    So this was the victim. “That’s certainly one of the issues open to discussion, Mrs. Crosetti,” I said.
    “I should hope so.”
    “We should arrange to meet.”
    “I’ll have my lawyer contact you. Good-bye, Mr. Mishkin.”
    I would have immediately called her again, but my office doorway was now occupied by the stout pugnacious figure of Ed Geller. Now, on paper all the partners of Geller Linz Grossbart & Mishkin are equals, but as often happens in such firms, command flows toward where it is most coveted, and it was the case at our firm that Ed was that coveter and so usually got his way. Besides this, he and Marty Linz were the founding partners and somewhat more equal as a result. Ed was twitching-angry, mainly I suppose because I had not come when called, and so he had to deal with me standing, rather than from behind his desk, which is subtly raised above the normal floor level and surrounded by stuffed legless chairs into which one deeply sinks. I knew better than to stand to my full height now.
    I said, “I guess you’ve talked to Jasmine.”
    “Yes, I have,” he said. “And could you please now tell me what the
fuck
is going on?”
    “A misunderstanding is all, Ed. I’m sure it’ll be cleared up shortly.”
    “Uh-huh. So you didn’t convert a valuable part of our client’s estate to your own use and convey said property to your girlfriend?”
    “No. I was the victim of a fraud. A woman presented herself as the legatee of the Bulstrode estate with a will that appeared genuine-”
    “This was a will we prepared?”
    “No. I assumed it was found with his effects at death. I…we were only retained by the deceased in a particular capacity, which was to hold a document in safekeeping and to advise him on its IP status and the IP status of such other documents that might be derived from it.”
    “Derived how?”
    I took a deep breath. “It was a seventeenth-century document purportedly written by a man who knew William Shakespeare. Aside from its scholarly value, which was substantial, it suggested the existence of an unknown Shakespeare play in autograph manuscript and provided what might be clues to the present location of same.”
    Ed is a great litigator, as I believe I’ve mentioned, and part of the litigator’s art is to never seem surprised. But now he gaped. “Holy fucking shit! And this was legit?”
    “Unknown, but Bulstrode believed it was, and he was one of the world’s great experts on the subject.”
    “And this property, this seventeenth-century manuscript, is now in the possession of your fraudulent bimbo?”
    “I wouldn’t call her my fraudulent bimbo. But, yes it is.”
    He ran a hand through his implants. “I don’t understand. How could you have been so stupid? Wait, don’t answer that! You were
shtupping
this honey, right?”
    “Do you want to hear the whole story, Ed?”
    “I do indeed. But let’s go to my office.”

    Or something to that effect, with rather more obscene locutions. Ed is the sort of lawyer who equates toughness with the liberal use of foul language. On the short walk over, collecting a number of pitying looks from the staff, I briefly considered whether I could withhold any significant facts from one of the best cross-examiners in the New York Bar. No, the painful truth would have to emerge, but not the speculation, and not my plans. When we were ensconced in our assigned places I gave him the basic facts, and after he had drained me to his satisfaction he said that we were going to have to get the police involved and that we had to contact the genuine legatee, Oliver March, and let him know what had happened. I was not to be the one to do these tasks, however. In fact, now that we were on the subject, he had noted a significant slippage in my focus of late and I had to agree that this was the case. We discussed my sorry performance at this morning’s meeting and he pointed out that the proposed merger involved the interests of some important clients and that it was unlikely that I was going to do them much good in my present state. He suggested I think about taking a leave for a while, and then he got avuncular, which he hardly ever does with me, a little like King Kong doing social work instead of wrecking Manhattan, and after a while he got to how sorry he had been when Amalie and I broke up and how he thought that I really