The Book of Air and Shadows

a pair into the toaster. “Have they managed to dock yet?”
    The kitchen window was on the wrong side of the house, but by moving close to it one could just make out the foot of the dock. Mishkin peered past the chintz café curtains and said, “Just about. They’ve secured the pointy end and now they’re trying to maneuver the stern into place.”
    “I guess they’re probably better gangsters than they are pilots.”
    “Oh, yes. There were some fairly mediocre gangsters sent for me in New York, although not by Shvanov. I bet he’s brought his first team on this venture. So…still think it’s a movie?”
    “No, I’m starting to get scared, since you ask.”
    “You could leave. No one expects you to be here.”
    “There’s Rolly, though.”
    “True. Any final advice from the movies?”
    “Yeah,” said Crosetti, “whatever your plan is, it’ll have a flaw.”
    “Because…?”
    “You can’t think of everything, one; and two, you need a reversal in the last six minutes to keep the tension up.”
    “Well, at least we won’t have a fistfight in the abandoned factory. Let me go greet our guests.”

    Mishkin walked out of the kitchen and Crosetti went to the window. As he did so, he heard the engine of the boat cut off and observed that they now had it tied up and people were getting off: the tall man in the leather coat, who had gone out on the deck, then a medium-size man in a camel hair overcoat and a fur hat (the Boss), then a linebacker-size fellow, also coated in black leather, leading two children, a boy and a girl, then a woman in a white parka, with the hood up over her head, then a man wearing a Burberry and a tweed cap, with the lower part of his face swathed in a striped woolen muffler, and finally another black-leather guy, only this one’s coat came down to his shins. Crosetti went into the living room. Mishkin was poking the huge fire he’d just started and it was ablaze, filling the room with the scent of burning resin. The fatal envelope still sat on the table, but the laptop was gone.
    The front door slammed open and two of the thugs tromped in-the big one and the long-coated one, who had a pale ill-formed face like the monster Pillsbury Doughboy from
Ghostbusters
. Then came the man Crosetti knew must be the famous Shvanov. He said something in Russian to his boys and they immediately grabbed Mishkin, beat him to the ground, and started stomping him. As this proceeded, the rest of the boat party entered, pushed along by the Deckhand. Crosetti noticed a number of things at once. First, Mishkin was taking the beating without resistance, although in London Crosetti had watched him toss a big guy through the air like a Frisbee. Next, the children: Imogen very angry, started to go to her father’s aid, and would have, had the Deckhand not grabbed her; there was something wrong with Niko, his head held at an unnatural downward angle, and his hands moving in meaningless little patterns. He seemed to be humming or talking to himself and he smelled of vomit, traces of which smeared the front of his parka. Finally, the woman. She had pushed back her hood on entering the room, revealing neck-length dark hair, not too clean, and her face, upon which was a look of horror at what was being done to Mishkin. The man in the Burberry was also staring at the beating, but not with horror-morbid fascination maybe, or even satisfaction.
    This all in a quite short time, which seemed longer, an interval, Crosetti knew, that would be drawn out for well over a minute on the screen. The woman shouted at Shvanov to stop it and Shvanov shouted back at her, but he told his men to stop. They dragged Mishkin to his feet, holding him by his arms. He blinked, he wiped at the blood and saliva issuing from his mouth, he said to his children, “I’m sorry, kids, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Did they hurt you?”
    The girl said, “Not really. But Niko was sick on the boat and he’s acting weird.”
    Shvanov strode forward and slapped Mishkin hard on the face.
    “This is entirely your fault, Mishkin,” he said. “I try to act in a civilized manner to obtain property that is rightfully mine, and what do I get? Respect? No, I have to chase you here, which is a colossal inconvenience, and you require me to also kidnap children. This is unconscionable. Osip Shvanov does not kidnap children, as I have told you before, but you don’t listen. And now we have come to this. So, now, at last, hand me over my