“My man cave,” he said as he turned on the lights. “I lived here for the first ten years I owned the store. Back then it covered the entire second floor, but then the café came along. Have a seat.” He waved at a bulky leather sofa that ran along an entire wall and was covered with pillows and quilts. Opposite the sofa, a large flat-screen TV was mounted on a squat table, and around it were, of course, shelves lined with books.
“Champagne?” he asked as he stepped behind a snack bar and opened the refrigerator.
“Of course.”
He removed a bottle, quickly popped the cork, filled two flutes, and said, “Cheers.”
They clinked glasses and he gulped most of his. “I really needed a drink,” he said as he wiped his mouth with the back of a hand.
“Evidently. You okay?”
“Rough day. One of my clerks called in sick so I worked the floor. It’s hard to find good help.” He drained his flute and refilled it. He removed his jacket, untied his bow tie, yanked out his shirttail, kicked off his dirty buckskins. They moved to the sofa and fell into it.
“How was your day?” he asked, gulping again.
“The usual. I walked on the beach, got some sun, tried to write, went back to the beach, tried to write some more, took a nap.”
“Ah, the writing life. I’m envious.”
“I did manage to ditch my prologue, add quotation marks to my dialogue, take out the big words, and I would have cut some more but there’s not enough to cut.”
Bruce laughed and took another drink. “You’re adorable, you know that?”
“And you’re such a con man, Bruce. You seduced me yesterday morning and...”
“Actually it was morning, noon, and night.”
“And here we go again. Have you always been such a ladies’ man?”
“Oh yes. Always. I told you, Mercer, I have a fatal weakness for women. When I see a pretty one, I have one thought. It’s been that way since college. When I got to Auburn and was suddenly surrounded by thousands of cute girls, I went wild.”
“That’s not healthy. Have you thought about therapy?”
“What? Who needs it? This is a game for me, and you have to admit I play it rather well.”
She nodded and took a sip, her third. His glass was empty so he refilled it again. “Easy, boy,” she said but he ignored her. When he was back on the sofa she asked, “Have you ever been in love?”
“I love Noelle. She loves me. We’re both very happy.”
“But love is about trust and commitment and sharing every aspect of your lives.”
“Oh, we’re into sharing big-time, believe me.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“Don’t be such a sap, Mercer. We’re not talking about love; we’re talking about sex. Pure physical pleasure. You’re not about to get involved with a married man and I don’t do relationships. We’ll get it on whenever you want or we can stop right now. We’ll be friends with no strings attached.”
“Friends? How many female friends do you have?”
“None really. A few nice acquaintances, maybe. Look, if I had known you planned to analyze me I wouldn’t have called.”
“Why did you call?”
“I figured you were missing me.”
They managed to laugh. Suddenly Bruce set down his flute, took hers and placed it next to his, grabbed her hand, and said, “Come with me. I have something to show you.”
“What is it?”
“A surprise. Come on. It’s downstairs.”
Still barefoot, he led her out of the apartment, through the café, down to the first floor, and to the door to the basement. He unlocked it, flipped a light switch, and they eased down the wooden steps to the basement. He turned on another light and punched the code that unlocked the vault.
“This better be good,” she said, almost under her breath.
“You will not believe it.” He pulled open the thick metal door to the vault, stepped inside, and turned on another light. He walked to the safe, entered another pass code, and waited a second for the five hydraulic bolts to release. With a loud clicking sound, the door was free and he gently pulled it open. Mercer watched everything as closely as possible, knowing she would be expected to write down every detail for Elaine and the team. The inside of the vault and the interior of the safe appeared the same as the last time she saw them. Bruce tugged on one of the four lower drawers and slid it open. There were two identical wooden boxes; she would later estimate them to be fourteen inches square and made of what she guessed to be cedar. He removed one and stepped to the small table in the center of the vault. He gave her a smile, as if revealing a rare treasure.
The top of the box was attached by three small hinges, and he gently raised it. Inside was what appeared to be a cardboard box, gray in color. Carefully, he lifted it out and placed it on the table. “This is called an archival storage box, made of acid- and lignin-free board and used by most libraries and serious collectors. This came from Princeton.” He opened the box, and announced proudly, “The original manuscript of The Last Tycoon.”
Mercer’s jaw dropped as she stared in disbelief and eased closer. She tried to speak but couldn’t find the words.
Inside the box was a stack of faded letter-sized sheets of paper, perhaps four inches thick, obviously well aged and a relic from another time. There was no title page; indeed, it appeared as though Fitzgerald had simply plunged into chapter 1 with the thought of tidying things up later. His cursive was not pretty and hard to read, and he had begun making notes in the margins from the very beginning. Bruce touched the edges of the manuscript and went on, “When he died suddenly in 1940, the novel was far from finished, but he worked from an outline and left behind a considerable amount of notes and summaries. He had a close friend named Edmund Wilson, who was an editor and a critic, and Wilson cobbled the story together and the book was published a year later. Many critics consider it to be Fitzgerald’s finest work, which, as you said, is remarkable given his health.”
“You are kidding, right?” she managed to say.
“Kidding about what?”
“This manuscript. Is this the one that was stolen?”
“Oh yes, but not by me.”
“Okay. What’s it doing here?”
“It’s a very long story and I won’t bore you with the details, many of which I know nothing about. All five were stolen last fall from the Firestone Library at Princeton. There was a gang of thieves and they got spooked when the FBI grabbed two of them almost immediately. The others unloaded their loot and disappeared. The manuscripts quietly entered the black market. From there they were sold off separately. I don’t know where the other four are but I suspect they’ve left the country.”
“Why are you involved, Bruce?”
“It’s complicated, but I’m really not that involved. You want to touch the pages?”
“No. I don’t like being here. This makes me nervous.”
“Relax. I’m just hiding this for a friend.”
“Must be a helluva friend.”
“He is. We’ve been trading for a long time and I trust him implicitly. He’s in the process of brokering a deal with a collector in London.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“Not much. I’ll get a few bucks down the road.”
Mercer stepped away and moved to the other side of the table. “For a few bucks it seems like you’re assuming a rather significant risk. You’re in possession of major stolen property. That’s a felony that could get you sent away for a long time.”
“It’s a felony only if you get caught.”