Fascinated, La Ponte stroked his curly beard. Of course he had heard of Fargas, the Portuguese book collector. As for Baroness Ungern, she was a potty old woman who'd become a millionairess from writing books about demonology and the occult. Her recent book, Naked Isis, was a runaway bestseller in all the stores.
"What I don't understand," said La Ponte, "is what you have to do with any of it."
"Do you know the book's history?"
"Vaguely," said La Ponte.
Corso dipped a finger in his beer and began to draw pictures on the marble counter. "Period: mid-seventeenth century. Scene: Venice. Central character: a printer by the name of Aristide Torchia, who had the idea of publishing the so-called Book of the Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows, a kind of manual for summoning the devil. It wasn't a good time for that sort of thing: the Holy Office managed, without much trouble, to have Torchia handed over to them. He was charged with practicing satanic arts and all that goes with them, aggravated by the fact, they said, that he'd reproduced nine prints from the famous Delomelanicon, the occult classic that, tradition has it, was written by Lucifer himself."
Makarova had moved closer on the other side of the bar and was listening with interest, wiping her hands on her shirt. La Ponte, about to take another swallow of beer, stopped and asked, instinctively taking on the look of a greedy bookseller, "What happened to the book?"
"You can imagine: all the copies went onto a big bonfire." Corso frowned evilly. He seemed sorry to have missed it. "They also say that as they burned, you could hear the devil screaming."
Her elbows on Corso's beer diagrams between the beer handles, Makarova grunted skeptically. With her blond, manly looks and her cool, Nordic temperament, she didn't go in for these murky southern superstitions. La Ponte was more impressionable. Suddenly thirsty, he gulped down his beer.
"It must have been the printer they heard screaming."
"It must have been."
Corso went on. "Tortured with the thoroughness the Inquisition reserved for dealing with the evil arts, the printer finally confessed, between screams, that there remained one book, hidden somewhere. Then he shut his mouth and didn't open it again until they burned him alive. And then it was only to say Aagh."
Makarova smiled contemptuously at the fate of Torchia the printer, or maybe at the executioners who hadn't been able to make him confess. La Ponte was frowning.
"You say that only one of the books was saved," he objected. "But before, you said there were three known copies."
Corso had taken off his glasses and was looking at them against the light to check how clean they were.
"And that's the problem," he said. "The books have appeared and disappeared through wars, thefts, and fires. It's not known which is the authentic one."
"Maybe they're all forgeries," Makarova suggested sensibly.
"Maybe. So I have to find out whether or not Varo Borja was taken for a ride. That's why I'm going to Sintra and Paris." He adjusted his glasses and looked at La Ponte. "While I'm there, I'll see about your manuscript as well."
The bookseller agreed thoughtfully, in the mirror eyeing the woman with the big breasts. "Compared to that, it seems ridiculous to make you waste your time on The Three Musketeers...."
"What are you talking about?" said Makarova, no longer neutral. She was really offended. "It's the best book I ever read!"
She slammed her hands down on the counter for emphasis, making the muscles on her bare forearms bulge. Boris Balkan would be happy to hear that, thought Corso. Besides the Dumas novel, Makarova's top-ten list of books, for which he was literary advisor, included War and Peace, Watership Down, and Patricia Highsmith's Carol.
"Don't worry," he told La Ponte, "I'll charge the expenses to Varo Borja. But I'd say your 'Anjou Wine' is authentic. Who would forge something like that?"
"People do all sorts of things," Makarova pointed out sagely.
La Ponte agreed with Corso—forging such a document would be absurd. The late Taillefer had guaranteed its authenticity to him. It was in Dumas's own hand. And Taillefer could be trusted.
"I used to take him old newspaper serials. He'd buy them all." He took a sip and then laughed to himself. "Good excuse to go and get a look at his wife's legs. She's a pretty spectacular blonde. Anyway, one day he opened a drawer and put 'The Anjou Wine' on the table. 'It's yours,' he said straight out, 'provided you get an expert opinion on it and put it on sale immediately.'"
A customer called, ordering a tonic water. Makarova told him to go to hell. She stayed where she was, her cigarette burning down in her mouth and her eyes half-closed because of the smoke. Waiting for the rest of the story.
"Is that all?" asked Corso.
La Ponte gestured vaguely. "Almost. I tried to dissuade him, because I knew he was crazy about that sort of thing. He would sell his soul for a rare book. But he'd made up his mind. 'If you don't do it, I'll give it to someone else,' he said. That touched a nerve, of course. My professional nerve, I mean."
"You don't need to explain," said Corso. "What other kind do you have?"
La Ponte turned to Makarova for support. But one glance at her slate-gray eyes and he gave up. They were about as warm as a Scandinavian fjord at three in the morning.
"It's nice to feel loved," he said bitterly.
The man wanting a tonic water must really have been thirsty, Corso thought, because he was getting insistent. Makarova, looking at the customer out of the corner of her eye and not moving a muscle, suggested that he find another bar before she gave him a black eye. The man thought it over. He seemed to get the message. He left.
"Enrique Taillefer was a strange man." La Ponte ran his hand again through his thinning hair, still watching the blonde in the mirror. "He wanted me to sell the manuscript and get publicity for the whole business." He lowered his voice so the blonde wouldn't hear. "'Somebody's in for a surprise,' Taillefer told me mysteriously. He winked at me, as if he was going to play a joke on someone. Four days later, he was dead."
"Dead," repeated Makarova in her guttural way, savoring the word. She was more and more interested.
"Suicide," explained Corso.
She shrugged, as if to say there wasn't that much difference between suicide and murder. There was one doubtful manuscript and a definite corpse: quite enough for a conspiracy theory.
On hearing the word suicide, La Ponte nodded lugubriously. "So they say."
"You don't seem too sure."
"No, I'm not. It's all a bit odd." He frowned again, suddenly looking somber and forgetting the blonde in the mirror. "Smells fishy to me."
"Did Taillefer ever tell you how he got hold of the manuscript?"
"At the beginning I didn't ask. Then it was too late."
"Did you speak to his widow?"
La Ponte brightened. He grinned from ear to ear. "I'll save that story for another time." He sounded like someone who has just remembered he has a brilliant trick up his sleeve. "That'll be your payment. I can't afford even a tenth of what you'll get out of Varo Borja for his Book of the Nine Lies."
"I'll do the same for you when you find an Audubon and become a millionaire. I'll just collect my money later."
La Ponte looked hurt. For such a cynic, Corso thought, he seemed rather sensitive.
"I thought you were helping me as a friend," protested La Ponte. "You know. The Club of Nantucket Harpooneers. Thar she blows, and all that."
"Friendship," said Corso, looking around as if waiting for someone to explain the word to him. "Bars and cemeteries are full of good friends."
"Who's side are you on, damn it?"
"On his own side," sighed Makarova. "Corso's always on his own side."