“Point me to him, take your money, go free and clear. No harm, no hassle. You don’t ever gotta know what happened to him.”
“Twenty grand, huh?”
Mustache nods confidently, his smirk returning.
“A man who’ll pay twenty might go fifty.”
The smirk dies. “You tryin to extort me?”
“You’ve already been extorted,” Jacob says. “I’m just haggling.”
Mustache slaps his hand over the bag, big enough to cover the entire brick. The smack it makes jars the custodian’s last nerve. “If you wish to converse,” he snaps, “there’s a coffee shop on the ground floor.”
“We’re talkin books!” Mustache says. Back to Jacob: “Don’t fuck with us. They’ll never find all your pieces.”
“Send Mr. Shoulders to an ATM. We can read to each other while we wait.”
The bag goes back into the jacket. “Money’s off the table. You had your chance, fuckface. Now you show us to him or we start breakin bones.”
Evidently not intimidated by the cop’s size and ferocity, the custodian of the Rare Book Room has shambled to their side and is about to utter another protest when Jacob turns to him, holding up the atlas he’s been thumbing. “I’ll take this one. Do you gift wrap?”
Jacob finds Shoulders standing guard outside the room, even less amused-looking than his partner. Mustache grabs Jacob’s arm, steers him toward the windows by the Photography section. “I got you a present,” Jacob says, handing him the atlas.
Mustache flings the book aside. “Your mistake is thinkin you’re safe long as you’re in public.”
Shoulders adds, “It’d be real easy to get you someplace private.”
“And then we’ll have some goddamn fun.”
“I can see you guys mean business,” Jacob says. “Final offer. You keep the book, I’ll take the money, and I’ll go set up an introduction with my client.”
Mustache and Shoulders bookend Jacob, glaring down at him from impressive heights. “You know what we are, right?” Shoulders says. “Fuck with us, you ain’t safe crossin the street. Ain’t safe in your home. From here on out, there’s no such thing as you bein safe, ever again. Got it?”
Jacob holds out his hand expectantly. Mustache looks at Shoulders, who nods, then Mustache takes out the money and fills Jacob’s palm.
Jacob goes downstairs, the cops trailing him-hanging back far enough to be inconspicuous to anyone who doesn’t know what to look for. Jacob pauses on the Mezzanine entrance to the Gold Room. Then he walks over to the Green Room, the front entrance.
Glancing around, Jacob notices the cops are tense, ready to spring if he even looks at the front doors wrong. Jacob, never very good at improvisation, tries to work out his next step.
He lingers by the best-seller shelves, peering around with a confused expression he hopes is halfway convincing. The cops don’t look convinced. They watch him with massive arms crossed in front of their huge chests, grinding their jaws.
Out of the corner of his eye Jacob steals glances toward the front doors. A constant stream of customers flows from the cashiers out onto the sidewalk, which is crowded with what appears to be a gang of suburban tourists. Mothers and their young children, mostly, perhaps wondering why anyone would make such a big deal about a bookstore.
Jacob considers his chances. He could bolt, catch the right moment, get a few people jammed between him and the cops. He might get away.
Then again, he might spend the rest of his life in a convalescent home.
He approaches the cops. “Not here.”
“No shit. So where is he?”
“We had a backup meeting place,” Jacob says, “in case either of us got nervous.” The cops look skeptical as Jacob leads them back to the Mezzanine, up the stairs to the Purple Room, and then a sharp left into the Red Room.
He pretends to pretend to browse the travel guides while looking around for a client who isn’t there. The cops might see right through this performance, but they’ll let it play out for a few minutes before their patience finally gives out. Jacob weighing his options, hoping a few minutes is enough time… but for what?
Across the room, he catches sight of a memory.
The young female employee with the tattooed arms slouching at the info desk reminds Jacob of the woman he dated. She could be her, frozen in time. He wonders how many twenty-something kids wander into this job with temporary expectations and stagger out years later, trying to recall where they’d misplaced their youth.
Celeste. That was her name-the one she gave Jacob, at any rate.
And now he remembers the way things ended. When she’d told him she was seeing someone else now. Jacob thinking, That’s fine, it’s just casual sex. Surprised to find himself lying awake in a bed that felt too big. Picturing some other guy touching Celeste’s tattoos in ways Jacob never would again. His hand stroking the roses twined around her calf. Lips caressing the blackbirds fluttering above the swell of her breasts. The Celtic knot on her upper arm expanding, contracting, expanding, shiny in her sweat, contracting again as she clings to his shoulders.
A lanky young man with limp black hair, who’s wearing eye makeup and tight jeans that proudly display his androgyny, leans on the info desk and the employee puts her hand gently on his forearm. She beams with an unguarded warmth that no one has directed at Jacob since he was their age. In return, Lanky affects a bored expression, acting like everything else in the room is more interesting than she is.
Jacob catches the cops’ eyes. Nods his head to the info desk.
Shoulders knits his brow with confusion.
Jacob nods emphatically, mimes “jacket” in his best attempt at charades, then indicates the inside pocket. Mustache eyes the studded jacket folded over Lanky’s arm, and starts toward him. Shoulders hesitates another beat, clearly thinking this doesn’t add up, but knowing better than to abandon his partner.
Jacob would love to stick around and see that asshole’s expression as these giants hook his arms in theirs, but schaden-freude is a luxury he can’t afford just now. He dashes back to the Purple Room, bounds down the stairs to the Mezzanine, runs across to the Gold Room-never move in a straight line when you don’t want to be followed-and hurries up the aisles.
He finds the kid standing at the endcaps, right out in the open.
Jacob grabs the kid by his elbow, steers him through the Blue Room as fast as they can hustle without looking too suspicious. He shoves the paper bag into the kid’s hands, talking right over his meek protests: “Get out of here. Get on your bike and ride your scrawny ass off. Keep off major streets, ride the wrong way down one-ways. Don’t go home till you know you weren’t followed.”
“Wait, I don’t-”
“Tomorrow you and your girl move to another city. Don’t tell your friends, don’t leave a forwarding address, and don’t come back.”
“Can’t we just-”
Jacob yanks the kid’s arm, hard. “You got all that?”
The kid nods, and as they proceed into the Green Room, he glances past Jacob and his eyes widen with alarm. Jacob doesn’t have to look, but he does, looks as he keeps moving toward the front entrance, sees the cops descend the steps from the Purple Room to the Mezzanine.
They spot him at the same instant. Both men start as if to run, but think better of it, fast-walking past postcards and books about Oregon. Huge legs clearing the short distance quickly.
Jacob shoves the kid toward the front doors, putting himself between the kid and the cops who are fast approaching. He flings himself at the info desk and the two managers chatting behind it. He doesn’t have to fake the urgency in his voice: “My son’s missing! He’s only six!”
One of the managers darts for the doors-just as the kid disappears into the night air. The other manager picks up the phone and her voice crackles over the PA system: “White Rabbit. We have a White Rabbit.”