***
Liesl couldn’t get control of the paper in Christopher’s office. She’d been reading it and filing it and shredding it, but every time she opened another box, another drawer, another cupboard, there was more paper. The man had loved to print things. Essential things like the full donor list for the Plantin that she still hadn’t managed to find and trivial things like movie listings from the week of March 15, 2000. Every time she thought she had carved out some cleanliness, there was more aging paper.
“Call for you,” Francis said, poking his head through the door. “Percy on line two.”
Francis played with the buttons on what looked like a new cardigan. Too cozy-looking to fit with his image. She pictured him at the store, trying it on, wondering if it looked nice. She didn’t say anything about it.
“I’ll take it in here,” she said.
“I’ll close the door then.” And he did.
“How can I help you, Mr. Pickens?” Liesl said.
“I think you know, Liesl.”
“It’s been a hard month, Percy. Tell me, what can I do for you?”
“A hard month for me too,” Percy said. “My accountant is getting nervous.”
Liesl stood and stretched her back. She knew what he was after. She knew she couldn’t get it for him.
“A nervous accountant,” Liesl said. “That sounds ominous.”
“It’s November,” Percy said. “November is almost the end of the year.”
There were jokes she could have made, of course, about having learned the order of the months in kindergarten. She refrained.
“I need a tax receipt for the Plantin by the end of the year.”
“I’d like to give it to you,” Liesl said. “But I can’t do anything until it’s recovered.”
“Yes,” said Percy. “So my accountant tells me.”
“So how can I help?”
“You can recover the Plantin manuscript, or you can tell President Garber that the university has lost my funding support.”
In the library’s collection, there were a lot of bookplates with Percy Pickens’s name on them. Like most rich people, he loved writing his name on things. Hospital departments, university buildings, ancient texts. That’s what she was thinking about as Percy hung up on her. What the campus might look like if everything in it tagged with the name Pickens were to simply disappear.
It was raining outside, and Liesl decided to go for a walk in it. Her breath came easier as soon as she left the cluttered library and stepped into the rain under her purple umbrella. The sidewalks were her own as students hid under awnings or stayed inside buildings waiting for the rain to pass. No one else was willing to get wet.
The St. James Hotel was only a nine-minute walk from the library. Closer than the subway, so it only made sense to go in and get dry, and once she was inside, it only made sense to take a seat in a corner booth, and once she was seated, it only made sense to order herself a bottle of sparkling water, and once the water was ordered, it only made sense to ask for a whiskey, neat, as though it were an afterthought. Liesl hadn’t been sleeping. Miriam was making it impossible. Liesl was afraid that if she dozed off she’d be flooded with that image of the back of Miriam’s head, alone in the corner of the workroom, and in doing so she’d be immersed in her complicity in Miriam’s death, that she’d wake up drenched in sweat and guilt, bringing down the straw house built of the notion that Miriam’s death had been unavoidable. And now this, this threat from Percy and the knowledge that Liesl was going to undo what Christopher had spent decades building, and that when he woke up, if he woke up, he would be so disappointed.
The St. James Hotel had undergone a recent renovation, and the lobby bar banquettes were now upholstered with aquamarine velvet. Hideous. When she was younger, when Hannah was in preschool and Liesl would stay after work to have a drink rather than go home to an itinerant toddler, the room was mauve, and bartenders got your order right and weren’t judgmental. Liesl fished an ice cube out of the whiskey with her fingertips and cracked it with her teeth.
She left a twenty-dollar bill on the table and left the hotel. The rain had stopped. She walked across the street to the subway station and almost bought gum but then realized that the smell of whiskey and gum was more telling than the smell of just whiskey. So she bought peanut M&M’s and popped them in her mouth, one by one, as she walked back to the library. She had barely been gone thirty minutes. But her hands weren’t shaking anymore.
She didn’t say anything to anyone as she went back to her desk.
“Detective Yuan speaking.” He answered on the first ring.
“It’s Liesl. Liesl Weiss.”
“Hello, Liesl Weiss.”
“I’m a librarian? We met when you were investigating the disappearance of one of my staff?”
“Not a thing I would forget.”
“Right. Sorry. I was hoping we might speak again. Do you have time?”
“Nah, people keep getting murdered.”
“Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry. I’ll let you go.”
“I’m mostly joking, Liesl.”
“It’s about the missing books.”
“Have you had lunch?” he said.
“Lunch? I guess it’s almost lunch,” Liesl said. “No, not yet.”
“That great falafel truck still parked out front?”
She looked out the window at the yellow truck.
“It’s still there.”
“You had to check and see, didn’t you? How you can walk by such a thing every day and miss it, I’ll never know.”
“You’d like to meet there?”
“Sure thing. Thirty minutes?”
“Thirty minutes.”
She didn’t like waiting; it made her feel visible. She thought she would feel less awkward if she were a person waiting for food and not a person just waiting. She wasn’t hungry but ordered herself a sandwich anyway. A line was forming behind her, the area around the yellow truck all of a sudden swarming with students. The sun was out now. It might be one of the last days of the year where it was warm enough to stand and eat a sandwich in the street.
She looked up and down the sidewalk for Yuan. Anxious that if the sandwiches arrived before he did, she would once again be standing anxiously. Two sandwiches getting cold in her hands while everyone around her chewed. The one bench near where the truck parked was available, and she inched toward it, knowing full well that even if she got the seat, she would have to give it up once the sandwiches were ready. She heard her name called and looked up at the truck but saw that it was Detective Yuan, striding toward her with a grin.
“Did you already order? Liesl Weiss, I could swear you’re beginning to like me,” he said.
“I didn’t know how much time you’d have.” She glanced up at the truck as their order was called.
“I’ll grab the sandwiches,” he said. “No hot sauce for you, right?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “I suppose you haven’t brought me here to inquire after the health of my family, but before you start your grilling, I have to remind you that I don’t work in the property crime unit, and I can’t help with your missing books.”
“I don’t understand,” Liesl said. “If you can’t help, then why did you agree to meet me?”
He signaled for her to wait, heading to the truck window. He came back with hands full of the foil-wrapped sandwiches, balancing the ramekins of hot sauce on top.
“This is great falafel. I agreed to have lunch with you and to talk. I was assigned to a missing persons case, and that case is now closed.” He reshuffled and held her sandwich out to her. She kept her arms crossed.
“I need your help,” Liesl said. “As a police officer.”
“I really prefer detective,” Yuan said. “Every time you get my rank wrong, my mother is reminded that I didn’t go to medical school.”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking or if you’re serious,” Liesl said, finally taking the sandwich. “You didn’t come down here just to eat lunch?”
“I mostly did. But we can talk,” Yuan said.