The Book of Air and Shadows

know him?”
    “We’ve met.”
    “A client?”
    “In a way. He entertains a lot. Some of my girls have been at some of his parties.”
    “Could you get us together? I mean socially.”
    “I don’t think you want to do that, Jake.”
    “Because he’s such a bad guy.”
    “He’s pretty evil. I mean
evil
guys think he’s evil.”
    “Bad as Dad?”
    “The same type of person, the two main differences being Dad never played rough and Shvanov is not our dad. Why do you want to meet him?”
    “A frank exchange of views. Anyway, will you?”
    “I’ll suggest it to him. Will he want to see you?”
    “I believe so. We share an interest in old manuscripts. I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about. You should come too. It’ll be a fun evening. We can plan our trip to Israel to see old Dad.”
    She stood up. “I’ll call you,” she said and walked out, leaving me alone except for the strange being tapping away at the keyboard. I stood behind Niko and looked at his screen. It was colored a flat, pale gray, across which field incomprehensible blue letters appeared and vanished like windshield rain. Niko was programming. I should say that for a working lawyer I am computer literate. Most lawyers believe their skin will rot away if they touch a keyboard, but not me. I suppose I am about where Niko was when he was four. I lifted one of his earphones and asked, “What are you doing?”
    I had to repeat myself several times. “Search engines,” he said.
    “Oh, search engines,” I said knowingly. “What are you searching for?”
    “Anything. Let me go.” He shook his head and tried to tug his earphones down, but I lifted them off and spun his swivel chair around so that he faced me.
    “I have to talk to you about something important,” I said. His body was starting to stiffen up and his gaze was directed at an upper corner of the room.
    “Focus on this, Niko! Gangsters are after me and I think they may want to hurt you and Imogen and Mommy. I need you to help me out.”
    This seemed to get through. He asked, bored, “This is pretend, right?”
    “No, not pretend. For real.”
    “Why are they after you?”
    “Because I have some papers they want. A client of mine gave them to me and they killed him. They tortured him, and before he died he gave them my name.”
    Yes, pretty strong stuff for a kid, but Niko is hard to reach. It’s not like he was sensitive. I imagine that if someone were torturing me he would watch with fascinated interest.
    “Why do they want the papers?”
    “I’m not sure. I think they think they could lead to a treasure.” He considered this for a moment, and I imagined the peculiar wheels in his head whirring like a fine clock.
    “For real?”
    “They think so,” I said.
    “We should find the treasure,” he said. “Then they would probably leave us alone.”
    I believe this is one of the few times Niko has used the pronoun
we
to include myself with him. I said, “That’s a very good idea. Now, there are two things I want you to do. The first is I want you to keep careful watch on the street and call me immediately if you see anything suspicious. These guys are Russians and they go around in black SUVs, so call me if you spot them, okay? The next thing is I want you to search for a man named Richard Bracegirdle. He died in 1642 in England.” I wrote this down on a sheet of paper from his printer.
    “Who is he?”
    “The man who buried the treasure. Find out about him and his descendants, and if there are any of them still alive. Can you do that?”
    “Yes, I can,” said Niko. I’m not sure why I engaged him in this way, although Niko is about as expert a data searcher as any I know, he’s won prizes for it, and university professors correspond with him without knowing he is eleven years old. Clearly I could have hired a commercial firm to do the search, or we have people at my office who are good at it. Perhaps I was feeling lonely and here was something Dad and son could do together, like a hike in the piney woods. Thinking on my feet, like philanderers learn to do. Of course, that was the easy part. Now I had to go down and tell his mother all about it.

    THE BRACEGIRDLE LETTER (9)
    This fellowe says he is named James Piggott and is servant to my lord Dunbarton a man high in counsel to the Kinges majestie & askes me if I am of the pure religion & this man had the whey-faced, cold-eyed look I recollect from daies of my youth as markes youre canting Puritan &