The Book of Air and Shadows

Patty’s old room.”
    Crosetti finished his vodka and suppressed the usual shudder. He stood up and said, “Well, you seem to have arranged everything, Mom. I guess I’ll just go to bed.”

    In the morning, Crosetti woke not to the buzz of his alarm but to the brisk knock and then the vigorous shoulder shaking of his mother. He blinked at her. “What?”
    “You have to read this.” She rustled the
New York Times
at him, opened at the pages devoted to local crime, corruption, and celebrity.
    English Professor Found Murdered in Columbia Faculty Housing
    This headline brought him up to full wakefulness. He rubbed the blur from his eyes and read the article, then read it again. It was a short one, the police being their usual closemouthed selves, but the reporter had used the word
torture
, and that was enough to start Crosetti’s belly fluttering.
    “Call Patty,” he said.
    “I already did,” said Mary Peg, “but I got voice mail. She’ll call back. What do you think?”
    “It doesn’t look great. He disappears right after I sell him the manuscript, he’s probably in England for a couple of months, maybe with Carolyn, maybe not, and then he comes back here and someone tortures him to death. Maybe the play manuscript really exists and he found out where it was and someone found out he knew and tortured him to get him to give it up.”
    “Albert, that’s a
movie
. Things like that don’t happen to English professors in real life.”
    “Then why was he tortured and killed? Not for his ATM password.”
    “Maybe the mother of another silly boy he cheated took her revenge. From what we know about his character, he may have been mixed up in any number of sleazy deals.”
    “Mom, believe me, movie or not, that’s what went down. I need to get up.”
    This was the signal for his mother to leave, and she did. Crosetti in the shower found his thoughts floating back to Rolly and the plot of his movie and the possibility that she could actually be the villainess of the piece, Brigid O’Shaughnessy as played by Mary Astor in
The Maltese Falcon
. His mother was wrong. Not only was life like a movie, movies were
why
life was like it was. Movies taught people how to behave, how to be a man, how to be a woman, what was funny and what was horrid. The people who made them had no idea of this, they were just trying to make money, but it was so.
    And here they were in the
Falcon
, his next favorite after
Chinatown
, which was essentially a reimagining of the same movie, updated for the ’70s, and why did he like movies about bad girls?
Bonnie and Clyde
, naturally, and
La Femme Nikita
and dozens more. He wondered what part he was playing, the dead Miles Archer, or the dead sea captain in the backstory, or Sam Spade.
You killed Miles and you’re going over for it.
And,
I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I’m gonna send you over.
He had nearly the whole script by heart and now he said those lines to the showerhead with the Bogart hissing lisp and wondered whether, if it ever came to it, he could send Carolyn Rolly over, if she’d really helped kill Bulstrode. Or maybe he would be her sap. The mere imagination of it made his heart race. He turned the temperature of the water down a notch and let it run onto his heated face.
    T HE F IRST C IPHERED L ETTER
    My Lord It has now passed two weekes and some daies since I left your howse and have had passing success as I heere shal tell. Upon a Friday I left my lodging at the Vine in Bishopsgate in company with Mr Wales, who hath lain with mee all this tyme & a sore tryall hath it been, he beyng a verey coxcombe cracking sot & oft hazarded the safetie of oure enterpryse with hys hintes & vauntes in tap-room. Oft have I had to carrie hym to oure chamber with a buffett & threat; but when sober is craven & doth then as hee is bid under menace. Whilst not in cuppes, he hath instructed me divers popish tricks and sayinges as they doe in theyre masses & superstitious shewes, so that at need I may pass for one of theyre number.
    Of the lodgeres heere the greater parte be drovers & some plaiers; of these last, half of them demi-papists & the rest plain damned atheists, scarce a Christian man among them. Soe we stride down Bishopsgate, hym pale & asweat from drinke & wants to stop heere & about for more sacke, but I doe prevent hym saying mind on oure business Mr Wales & I see feare well-marked in his face. Soe we arrive at the Swan in