Library of the Dead Read online

  Library of the Dead

  Glenn Cooper

  Glenn Cooper

  Library of the Dead

  MAY 21, 2009

  NEW YORK CITY

  David Swisher spun the track ball of his BlackBerry until he found the e-mail from the CFO of one of his clients. The guy wanted to find a time to come down from Hartford to talk about a debt financing. Routine stuff, the kind of business he saved for his ride home. He thumb-typed a reply while the Town Car jerked up Park Avenue in stop-and-go traffic.

  A chime announced the arrival of a new e-mail. It was from his wife: I've got a surprise for you.

  He texted back: Excellent! Can't wait.

  Outside the window of his limo the sidewalks were busy with New Yorkers intoxicated with the first blush of spring weather. The bleached evening light and the warm weightless air quickened their steps and lifted their spirits. Men with jackets on their thumbs and rolled-up sleeves felt the breeze on their bare forearms, and women in short diaphanous skirts felt it against their thighs. The sap was rising, for sure. Hormones, locked-up like ships trapped in arctic ice, started flowing free in the spring thaw. There would be action tonight in the city. From a high floor of an apartment tower, someone was exuberantly playing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring on a stereo, and the notes wafted down from open windows and fused with the cacophony of the city.

  All this was unnoticed by David, who concentrated on his little glowing LCD screen. And he too was unnoticed, veiled by a tinted window-a thirty-six-year-old investment banker, plainly affluent, with a good head of hair, a lightweight wool suit from Barneys, and a scowl plastered on from a day that had done nothing for his career, his ego, or his bank account.

  The taxi stopped at his building on Park and 81st, and walking the fourteen feet from the curb to the door he realized the weather was pleasant. By way of celebration he breathed one full measure of atmosphere into his lungs then managed to smile at his doorman. "How're you doing, Pete?"

  "Just fine, Mr. Swisher. How'd the markets do today?"

  "Fucking bloodbath." He swept past. "Keep your money under your mattress." Their little joke.

  His nine room co-op on a high floor cost him a shade under four and three-quarters when he bought it shortly after 9/11. A steal. The markets were nervous, the sellers were nervous, even though this was a gem, a white-glove building, a prewar with twelve-foot ceilings, eat-in kitchen, and a working fireplace. On Park! He liked to buy in at the bottom of a market, any market. This way he got more space than a childless couple needed, but it was a trophy that got wows from his family, which always made him feel pretty damn good. Besides, it was worth well over seven-five now, even in a fire sale, so all in all a great deal for Swish, he reminded himself frequently.

  The mailbox was empty. He called back over his shoulder, "Hey, Pete, did my wife come in already?"

  "About ten minutes ago."

  That was the surprise.

  Her briefcase was on the hall table, sitting on a pile of mail. He closed the door noiselessly and tried to tiptoe, maybe sneak up behind her, cup her breasts in his hands and press up against her rump. His idea of fun. The Italian marble blew his plan when even his supple dress loafers tapped and echoed enough to betray him.

  "David? That you?"

  "Yeah. You're home early," he called. "How come?"

  From the kitchen: "My deposition got pushed."

  The dog heard his voice and ran at full throttle from a guest bedroom at the far end of the apartment, its little paws skidding on the marble, sending the poodle crashing into the wall like a hockey player.

  "Bloomberg!" David shouted. "How's my little baby!" He put his case down and picked up the white fluff ball, who licked at his face with its pink piston tongue while furiously wagging its bobbed tail. "Don't pee on Daddy's tie! Don't you do that. Good boy, good boy. Honey, was Bloomie walked?"

  "Pete said Ricardo walked him at four."

  He put the dog down and went for the mail, sorting it into piles in his obsessive kind of way. Bills. Statements. Junk. Personal. His catalogues. Her catalogues. Magazines. Postcard?

  A plain white postcard with his name and address printed in black type. He flipped it over.

  There was a typed date: May 22, 2009. And next to it an image that instantly disturbed him: the unmistakable outline of a coffin, about an inch tall, hand-drawn in ink.

  "Helen! Did you see this?"

  His wife came into the hall, high heels clipping on the stone, perfectly turned out in a pale turquoise Armani suit with a double strand of cultured pearls resting just above a hint of cleavage, her matching pearl earrings playing peekaboo under salon-styled hair. A handsome-looking woman, anyone would agree.

  "See what?" she asked.

  "This."

  She looked it over. "Who sent it?"

  "There's no return address," he said.

  "It's postmarked Las Vegas. Who do you know in Vegas?"

  "Christ, I don't know. I've done business there-I can't think of anyone offhand."

  "Maybe it's a promotion for something, like a teaser ad," she suggested, handing it back to him. "Tomorrow there'll be something else in the mail that'll explain it."

  He bought it. She was smart and usually figured things out. But still. "It's in bad taste. Fucking coffin. I mean, please."

  "Don't let it put you in a mood. We're both home at a civilized time. How great is that? Want to go to Tutti's?"

  He put the postcard onto the junk stack and grabbed her ass. "Before or after we fool around?" he asked, hoping the answer was "After."

  The postcard bugged David on and off all evening, though he didn't bring it up again. He thought about it while they waited for dessert, he thought about when they got home right after he came inside her, he thought about it when he took Bloomie for a quick pee outside the building before they turned in for the night. And it was the last thing he thought about before he fell asleep as Helen read beside him, the bluish glow of her clip-on book light faintly illuminating the black edges of the master bedroom. Coffins bothered the hell out of him. When he was nine, his five-year-old brother died of a Wilms' tumor, and Barry's little polished mahogany coffin-sitting on a pedestal in the memorial chapel-haunted him still. Whoever sent that postcard was a shithead, plain and simple.

  He killed the alarm clock about fifteen minutes before it would have sounded off at 5:00 A.M. The poodle jumped off the bed and started doing its nutty first-thing-in-the-morning running in circles routine.

  "Okay, okay," he whispered. "I'm coming!" Helen slept on. Bankers went into the office hours before lawyers, so the morning dog walk was his.

  A few minutes later David said hello to the night doorman as Bloomberg tugged him on his leash into the predawn chill. He zipped his track suit top all the way to his throat before heading north for their usual circuit-up to 82nd, where the dog invariably did most of his business, east to Lex, hit the early-bird Starbucks, then back to 81st and home. Park Avenue was seldom empty, and this morning a fair number of cabs and delivery trucks rolled by.

  His mind was perpetually motoring; he found the concept of "chilling" ludicrous. He was always working some angle, but as he approached 82nd Street, he wasn't centered on any particular topic, more an unedited hodgepodge of work-related to-dos. The postcard, thankfully, was forgotten. Making the turn onto the ominously dark tree-lined street, his city-slicker survival skills almost made him alter his route-he briefly considered carrying on up to 83rd-but his trading-floor macho wouldn't let him wimp out.

  Instead he crossed over to the north side of 82nd Street so he could keep an eye on the dark-skinned kid milling on the sidewalk about a third of the way down the block. If the kid crossed the street too, he'd know he was in trouble a
nd he would pick up Bloomie and make a run for it. He had run track in school. He was still fast from pickup B-ball. His Nike's were laced nice and tight. So, fuck it, worst case scenario, he'd still be okay.

  The kid started walking in his direction on the opposite side of the block, a lanky fellow with a hoodie up so David couldn't see his eyes. He hoped a car would come along or another pedestrian, but the street stayed quiet, two men and a dog, so still, he could hear the kid's new sneakers squeaking on the pavement. The brownstones were dark, their occupants dreaming. The only doorman building was nearer to Lexington. His heart rate ramped up as they drew level. No eye contact. No eye contact. He kept going. The kid kept going, and the gap between them widened.

  He allowed himself an over-the-shoulder glance and exhaled when he saw the kid turning onto Park, disappearing around the corner. I'm a fucking wuss, he thought. And a prejudiced one too.

  Halfway down the block, Bloomie sniffed at his favorite spot and started to squat. David couldn't understand why he hadn't heard the kid until he was almost on him. Maybe he'd been distracted, thinking about his first appointment with the head of capital markets, or watching the dog find its spot, or remembering the way Helen had flung off her bra last night, or maybe the kid had made an art of urban stealth running. But it was all academic.

  David was punched in the temple and went down hard on his knees, momentarily fascinated, more than afraid, by the unexpected violence. The punch made his head soupy. He watched Bloomie finish his poop. He heard something about money and felt hands going through his pockets. He saw a blade near his face. He felt his watch slipping off, then his ring. Then he remembered the postcard, that goddamned postcard, and heard himself asking, "Did you send it?" He thought he heard the kid answer, "Yeah, I sent it, motherfucker."

  A YEAR EARLIER

  CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

  Will Piper arrived early to get a drink on board before the others arrived. The crowded restaurant, off Harvard Square, was called OM, and Will shrugged his heavy shoulders at the trendy eclectic Asian ambience. It wasn't his kind of place but the lounge had a bar and the bartender had ice cubes and scotch so it met his minimum requirements. He looked askance at the artistically rough-cut stonework wall behind the bar, the bright flat-screen installations of video art and the neon-blue lights, and asked himself, What am I doing here?

  As early as a month ago, the probability of him attending his twenty-fifth college reunion was zero, and yet here he was, back at Harvard with hundreds of forty-seven-and forty-eight-year-olds, wondering where the prime cut of their lives had gone. Jim Zeckendorf, good lawyer that he was, relentlessly cajoled and hounded him and the others via e-mail until they all acquiesced. Not that he signed up for the full monty. Nobody was going to make him march with the class of 1983 into Tercentenary Theater. But he agreed to drive up from New York to have dinner with his roommates, stay over at Jim's house in Weston, and head back in the morning. He'd be damned if he was going to blow more than two vacation days on ghosts from the past.

  Will's glass was empty before the bartender was done filling the next order. He rattled the ice to get the guy's attention and attracted a woman instead. She was standing behind him, waving a twenty at the bartender, a splendid-looking brunette in her thirties. He smelled her spiced fragrance before she leaned over his broad back and asked, "When you get him, can you get me a chard?"

  He half turned, and her cashmere bosom was at eye level, as was the twenty dollar bill, dangling from slender fingers. He addressed her breasts, "I'll get it for you," then rotated his neck to see a pretty face with mauve eye shadow and red glossy lips, just the way he liked them. He picked up strong availability vibes.

  She withdrew the money with a lilting, "Thanks," and inserted herself into the tight space he made by sliding his stool a couple of inches.

  In a few minutes Will felt a tap on his shoulder and heard, "Told you we'd find him at the bar!" Zeckendorf had a big grin on his smooth, almost feminine face. He still had enough hair to pull off a curly Jewfro, and Will had a flashback to his first day in Harvard Yard in 1979, a big blond oaf from the Florida panhandle, flopping around like a bonita on the deck of a boat meeting a skinny bushy-haired kid with the self-assured swagger of a local who was bred to wear crimson. Zeckendorf's wife was at his side, or at least Will assumed that the surprisingly matronly woman with thick haunches was the same twiglike bride he last saw at their wedding in 1988.

  The Zeckendorfs had Alex Dinnerstein and his girlfriend in tow. Alex had a tight diminutive body and a flawless tan that made him seem the youngest of the roomies, and he flaunted his fitness and panache with an expensive European-cut suit and a fancy pocket handkerchief, white and bright like his teeth. His gelled hair was as straight and black as it was freshman year and Will pegged him as a dyer-to each his own. Dr. Dinnerstein had to keep young for the sweet thing on his arm, a model at least twenty years their junior, a long-legged beauty with a very special figure who almost made Will forget his new friend, who had been left awkwardly sipping at her glass of wine.

  Zeckendorf noticed the lady's discomfort. "Will, are you going to introduce us?"

  Will smiled sheepishly and muttered, "We haven't gotten that far," eliciting a knowing snort from Alex.

  The woman said, "I'm Gillian. I hope you all enjoy your reunion." She started moving away, and Will wordlessly pressed one of his cards into her hand.

  She glanced at it and the flicker across her face revealed surprise: SPECIAL AGENT WILL PIPER, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION.

  When she was gone, Alex made a show of patting Will down and hamming, "Probably never met a Harvard man packing heat, eh, buddy? Is that a Beretta in your pocket or are you happy to see me?"

  "Fuck off, Alex. Good to see you too."

  Zeckendorf herded them up the stairs toward the restaurant then realized they were one short. "Anyone seen Shackleton?"

  "You sure he's still alive?" Alex asked.

  "Circumstantial evidence," Zeckendorf answered. "E-mails."

  "He won't show. He hated us," Alex claimed.

  "He hated you," Will said. "You're the one who duct-taped him to his fucking bed."

  "You were there too if I recall," Alex sniggered.

  The restaurant was buzzing with affluent chatter, a mood-lit museum space with Nepalese statuary and a Buddha-embedded wall. Their table overlooking Winthrop Street was waiting but not empty. There was a solitary man at one end, nervously fingering his napkin.

  "Hey, look who's here!" Zeckendorf called out.

  Mark Shackleton looked up as if he'd been dreading the moment. His small closely spaced eyes, partially concealed by the bill of a Lakers cap, darted from side to side, scanning them. Will recognized Mark instantly, even though it had been more like twenty-eight years, since he pretty much lost touch with him the minute freshman year was over. The same zero-fat face that made his head look like a deep-socketed, high-domed meatless skull, the same tension-banded lips and sharp nose. Mark hadn't looked like a teenager even when he was one; he just grew into his natural middle-aged state.

  The four roommates were an odd-duck sort of grouping: Will, the easygoing jock from Florida; Jim, the fast-talking prep-school kid from Brookline; Alex, the sex-mad premed from Wisconsin; and Mark, the reclusive computer nerd, from nearby Lexington. They had been squeezed into a quad in Holworthy at the northern pole of leafy Harvard Yard, two tiny bedrooms with bunks and a common room with half-decent furniture, thanks to Zeckendorf's rich parents. Will was the last to arrive at the dorm that September, as he'd been ensconced with the football team for preseason training. By then Alex and Jim had paired up, and when he lugged his duffel bag over the threshold, the two of them snorted and pointed to the other bedroom, where he found Mark stiffly planted on the lower bunk, claiming it, afraid to move.

  "Hey, how're you doin'?" Will had asked the kid while sprouting a big southern smile on his chiseled face. "How much ya weigh there, Mark?"

  "One forty," Mark ans
wered suspiciously as he struggled to make eye contact with the boy towering over him.

  "Well, I register at two twenty-five in my shorts. You sure you want my heavy ass a couple of feet over your head on that rickety old bunk bed?"

  Mark had sighed deeply, wordlessly ceded his claim, and the pecking order was thus permanently established.

  They fell into the random chaotic conversation of reunionites, excavating memories, laughing at embarrassments, dredging up indiscretions and foibles. The two women were their audience, their excuse for exposition and elaboration. Zeckendorf and Alex, who had remained fast friends, acted as emcees, ping-ponging the banter like a couple of stand-ups extracting laughs at a comedy club. Will wasn't as fast with a quip but his quiet, slowly spoken recollections of their dysfunctional year had them rapt. Only Mark was quiet, politely smiling when they laughed, drinking his beer and picking at his Asian fusion food. Zeckendorf's wife had been tasked by her husband to snap pictures, and she obliged by circling the table, posing them and flashing.

  Freshman roommate groups are like an unstable chemical compound. As soon as the environment changes, the bonds break and the molecules fly apart. In sophomore year Will went to Adams House to room with other football players, Zeckendorf and Alex kept together and went to Leverett House, and Mark got a single at Currier. Will occasionally saw Zeckendorf in a government class, but they all basically disappeared into their own worlds. After graduation, Zeckendorf and Alex stayed in Boston and the two of them reached out to Will from time to time, usually triggered by reading about him in the papers or catching him on TV. None of them spent a moment thinking about Mark. He faded away, and had it not been for Zeckendorf's sense of occasion and Mark's inclusion of his gmail address in the reunion book, he would have remained a piece of the past to them.

  Alex was loudly going on about some freshman escapade involving twins from Lesley College, a night that allegedly set him on a lifelong path of gynecology, when his date shifted the conversation to Will. Alex's increasingly tipsy clowning was wearing on her and she kept glancing at the large sandy-haired man who was steadily drinking scotch across from her, seemingly without inebriation. "So how did you get involved with the FBI?" the model asked him before Alex could launch into another tale about himself.