The plane landed gently and taxied briefly through the small airport to the terminal. A blowing rain beat against the windows of the jet. Crosetti and the Mishkin brothers gathered up their carry-ons and outer garments. Crosetti got a handshake and an unexpected kiss on the cheek from Amalie Mishkin, who said, “Thank you for talking with me, and with Niko. And now you will go off to whatever insane adventure Jake will take you to and we will not see you again. I hope you will make your movie, Crosetti.”
Then Jake Mishkin stopped in the aisle, looming behind him; Crosetti got a strong third-wheel feeling and quickly left the plane. The terminal was small, clean, efficient, and a small staff of uniformed ladies carried him through customs and immigration with the sort of service now available only to the very rich, and which Crosetti had never before experienced. A Mercedes limo waited outside along with a fellow carrying a vast umbrella. Crosetti entered the vehicle and within ten minutes was joined by Paul and Jake Mishkin. The car drove off.
“Where are we going?” asked Crosetti.
“Into town,” said Jake. “I have some legal business to attend to, trivial really, but enough to write off this trip and keep my firm happy, or at least less unhappy with me than they are. It should take no more than a day, if that. I’m sure you’ll find a lot to do in London. Paul can show you the sights. Paul is quite the world traveler.”
“Sounds like fun,” said Crosetti. “And after that?”
“We’ll go up to Oxford and see Oliver March. We’ll return Bulstrode’s personal effects and see whether we can get a line on what he was doing here last summer. Beyond that we’ll just have to play it by ear.”
They stayed in a small, elegant hotel in Knightsbridge. Mishkin had stayed there before, and the staff made noises indicating they were glad to see him and that Crosetti was included in the welcome. Paul did not stay in the hotel.
“My brother dislikes the trappings of luxury,” Mishkin explained later in the hotel’s tiny bar. He had drunk several scotches to Crosetti’s single pint. “I believe he’s gone to stay with his fellow Jesuits. And also to arrange for our security.”
“He’s a security guy?”
“No, he’s a Jesuit priest.”
“Really? He said that, but I thought he was putting me on. What does a priest know about security?”
“Well, Paul has a range of talents and interests, as I’m sure you’ll learn. I often think he’s one of the elite corps of papal assassins we read so much about nowadays. What did you think of my lovely family?”
“They seemed very nice,” said Crosetti warily.
“They are nice. Nice as pie. Far too nice for me. My wife is Swiss, did you know that? The Swiss are very nice. It’s their national specialty along with chocolates and money. Did you know that Switzerland was a very poor country before the Second World War? Then it was suddenly very rich. That’s because they supplied the Nazis with all kinds of technical goodies from factories that couldn’t be bombed because they were oh so neutral. Then there’s the matter of the hundred and fifty million reichsmarks the Nazis stole from exterminated Jews. That’s nearly three-quarters of a billion bucks in current dollars. I wonder what became of that? Not to mention the art. My father-in-law has a superb collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings-Renoir, Degas, Kandinsky, Braque, you name it.”
“Really.”
“Really. He was a bank clerk before and during the war. How did he manage to accumulate such a collection? By being nice? My children are half Swiss, and that means they’re only half nice, as you probably observed. You’re probably a good observer, Crosetti, being a creative type, a writer like yourself, always lurking and taking things down. You probably have Amalie and me and the kids all figured out by now. You got a screenplay working in there? The Family Mishkin, now a major motion picture. The other half is half Jewish and half Nazi, which is definitely not nice. Have another drink, Crosetti! Have a cosmopolitan. The drink of your generation.”
“I think I’ll stick with beer. As a matter of fact, I’m feeling a little lagged out so-”
“Nonsense! Have a cosmopolitan on me. Best thing for jet lag, everyone knows that. Bartender, give this man a cosmo! And have one yourself. And give me another, a double.”
The bartender, a swarthy fellow a little older than Crosetti, made eye contact before he started fixing the drinks, the kind of glance that asks whether this moose is going to go batshit in my tiny bar and are you in a position to get him out of here before he does? Crosetti let his eyes slip downward in a cowardly way.
“You think I’m drunk, don’t you?” asked Mishkin, as if reading the vibes. “You think I’m going to be out of control. Well, you’re wrong there. I’m never out of control. Except sometimes. But this isn’t going to be one of those times. Jews don’t get drunk, according to my mother-in-law. That’s the only advantage she admitted in reference to my wife’s generally disgraceful marriage. They were not fooled by my membership in the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church. That, and they’re good providers, Jews. Money, sobriety…oh, yeah, plus they don’t beat you. She actually said that, lounging on her silk settee under her stolen dead-Jew Renoir. The Catholics of southern Europe are extremely anti-Semitic, did you know that, Crosetti? Most of the major Nazis were Catholic-Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels. How about you, Crosetti? You’re a Catholic. You anti-Semitic? You ever get pissed at the Jewish mafia controlling the media?”
“I’m half Irish,” said Crosetti.
“Oh, well, that lets you off the hook, then, the Irish being notably free of all taint of racism whatsoever. I myself am half anti-Semitic on my mother’s side. Isn’t it funny that all the big Nazis sort of looked Jewish. Goebbels? Himmler? Heydrich was constantly getting pounded in the school yard because the kids thought he was a Yid. Aryan features but a big fat soft Jewish ass. My grandfather, by contrast, was a real Aryan, as so of course was my mother, his daughter. And my wife. Do you think my wife is attractive, Crosetti? Desirable?”
“Yeah, she’s very nice,” said Crosetti, and checked the distance to the exit. The place was so small and Mishkin was so huge that it would be a damned close-run thing if he had to make a dash for it. It was like being trapped in a bathroom with an orangutan.
“Oh, she’s more than nice, Crosetti. There are deep wells of heat in my Amalie. I noticed how you leaned toward each other across the aisle. You got a little kiss there too at the end. Did you arrange to meet somewhere? I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least-it cries out for redress. I must’ve fucked forty or fifty women since we got married, so what could I say, right? You should go for it, man! Forget this Shakespearian horseshit and fly out to Zurich. They’re at Kreuzbuhlstrasse 114. You can fuck her in her little yellow girlhood bed. I’ll even give you some tips on how she likes it: for example-”
“I’m going to bed,” said Crosetti and slid off his bar stool.
“Not so fast!” cried Mishkin; Crosetti felt his arm gripped; it was like being caught in a car door. Before he knew what he was doing he’d grabbed his untouched cosmo off the bar and flung it into Mishkin’s face. Mishkin grimaced and wiped at his face with his free hand but did not let go. The bartender came around the bar and told Mishkin he’d have to leave. Mishkin shook Crosetti hard enough to rattle his teeth together and said to the bartender. “It’s all right. I was just explaining to this gentleman how to fuck my wife and he threw a drink at me. Does that seem right to you?”
The bartender now made the mistake of grabbing Mishkin’s arm, perhaps hoping to establish a come-along grip, but instead the big man let go of Crosetti and threw the bartender over the bar and into his brightly lit shelves of bottles. Crosetti was out of there on a run, nor did he wait for the elevator but ran up three flights of stairs and into his room.