The Book of Air and Shadows

who argue the causes in mockerie. Perhaps these alone be enough to hange W.S. but ’twould be better bolder. The scena wherein Quene Mary goeth to her death is verie affectyng & designed to make who heareth it forget she was a vyle murthering whore. Mayhap this shall pleaze you enough my lord, but the telling I doe is as naught to the heering of it in full, for it be most artful & fulle of witte though I am a poore judge of plaies. But when I am able to sende it shal you judge if it be fit for your purpose. Until then I remayne thy faithful & obd t serv t wishing all prosperytie & long lyfe to your gracious lordship London 28 th October 1611 Richard Bracegirdle

14
    B eing armed, Crosetti found, felt a lot like having a broken zipper on your fly, something that made you feel self-conscious and somewhat stupid, and he wondered how his dad had been able to stand it during his entire working life. Or maybe it was different for cops. Or criminals. When he arrived at work, he was torn between leaving the thing in his bag (It might get stolen! Someone might find it!) and keeping it on his person. At first he left it in the briefcase but found that having done so, he was reluctant to leave the briefcase out of his line of sight, and after an uncomfortable hour or so he removed it and clipped it to his waistband, concealed under the cotton dust-jacket he wore in his basement workspace.
    Mr. Glaser had gone on an extended buying trip, and so Crosetti’s workload was rather light, except that he had to relieve Pamela, the non-Carolyn person, upstairs during her breaks. High-end rare books shops don’t get much walk-in business, even on Madison Avenue, and so Pamela spent most of her time on the phone with her friends, who were all top-of-the-line comedians to judge from the shrieks of fun that floated down the basement stairs, or cruising Craigslist for a better job, publishing, she had volunteered, unasked. Crosetti realized he was being something of an ass with her-it wouldn’t kill him to be a little friendlier-but he could not bring himself to generate an interest in a preppy girl who wanted to break into publishing.
    On one of the changings of the guard that day she asked him to reach down a book from an upper shelf and he did so and heard her make a small sound of alarm. When he handed her the book she asked, eyes wide, “Is that a gun on your belt? I saw it when you reached up…”
    “Yeah. It’s a dangerous business, books. You can’t be too careful. There’re people who’ll do anything for a Brontë first-
anything
.”
    “No, seriously!”
    “Seriously? I’m an international man of mystery.” A lame line, and he thought very briefly about saying he was just glad to see her, to see if she would pick up on the line from
She Done Him Wrong
and then he could ask her if she’d actually seen the film the line came from, that it was Mae West’s only Academy nomination and so on and so forth, his usual rap, but why bother? He shrugged, gave her a tight smile, handed her the book, and walked behind the counter.
    When she came back from her lunch she seemed less interested in being friendly than previously, seemed a little frightened of him in fact, which suited Crosetti very well. He spent the rest of the afternoon calling people he knew about places to stay, and trolled the Web sites with the same intent. After work, he went by the likeliest place he had found, a room in a loft near the Brooklyn Navy Yard occupied by a friend from college, a freelance sound engineer, and his girlfriend, a singer. The tenant list was rich in media wannabes and the friend said the Navy Yard was destined to be the next Williamsburg. The building stank of old toxins but was full of pale ocher light from the huge, filthy industrial windows and so reminded him painfully of Carolyn’s place. As he was a sucking-on-a-bad-tooth sort of fellow, this alone was enough to make the sale, and Crosetti walked down the splintery stairs eight hundred dollars poorer and with a date to move in after Thanksgiving. He then followed a difficult multiple bus route back to the A line and the train to 104th Street, Ozone Park.
    As he turned off Liberty Avenue onto 106th Street, where he lived, he passed a black SUV with tinted windows. It was not the kind of neighborhood that ran to new, shiny, $40K vehicles, and since he knew every car native to his street, and since Klim’s warning of the previous night instantly sprang to mind upon observing it,