“What if he sees the camera?” Mercer asked, somewhat nervously.
Both men grunted. Impossible. “He won’t, because he can’t,” Elaine said.
Rick handed the buckle ring back and Mercer slid the ends of the scarf through it again. “I’m activating,” Graham said as he punched keys on a laptop.
Rick said, “Would you please stand and turn around slowly?”
“Sure.” As she did so, Elaine and the boys stared at the laptop. “Pretty amazing,” Elaine said, almost to herself. “Take a look, Mercer.”
Standing beside the table and facing the front door, Mercer glanced down at the screen and was surprised at the clarity of the image. The sofa, television, armchair, even the cheap rug in front of her were vividly clear. “All from this tiny camera,” she said.
“It’s a piece of cake, Mercer,” Elaine said.
“The scarf really doesn’t match anything I have.”
“Then what are you wearing?” Elaine asked, reaching for a bag. She pulled out half a dozen scarves.
Mercer said, “Just a little red sundress, I think. Nothing fancy.”
13.
Jake opened the front door and locked it behind her. He introduced himself and said he’d known Noelle for many years. He was a craftsman with rough, callused hands and a white beard, and had the look of a hard worker who’d spent a lifetime with hammers and tools. He was gruff and explained that the writer’s desk was already in the basement. She followed him down the steps, slowly and at a distance, trying to remind herself that everything in front of her was being filmed and analyzed. Down ten steps with her hand on the rail and into a long, cluttered room that seemed to run the length of the store, which, as she well knew, was 42 feet wide and 165 feet in depth, same as the bookshop next door. The ceiling was low, no more than eight feet tall, and the flooring was unfinished concrete. All manner of disassembled, broken, unfinished, and mismatched furniture and furnishings were stored haphazardly along the walls. Mercer nonchalantly browsed around, turning slowly in all directions. “So this is where she keeps the good stuff,” she said, but Jake had no sense of humor. The basement was well lit and there was a room of some sort near the back. Most important, there was a door in the brick wall between the room and the basement next door, the basement where Elaine Shelby and her mysterious company were betting that Mr. Cable was hiding his treasure. The brick wall was old and had been painted many times, now a dark gray, but the door was much newer. It was metal and solid and there were two security sensors at its top corners.
Elaine’s team knew that the two stores were virtually identical in width, length, height, and layout. They were part of the same building, one that had been built a hundred years earlier, and had basically been split in two when the bookstore opened in 1940.
Sitting in a van across the street and staring at their laptops, Rick and Graham were delighted to see that a door connected the two basements. Sitting on a sofa in the condo, Elaine had the same reaction. Go, Mercer!
The writer’s table was in the middle of the room, with newspapers spread below it, though the floor had collected paint droppings for years, and Mercer examined it carefully, as if it were some prized possession and not simply a pawn in their game. Jake pulled out a sheet of paint colors and they talked about several, with Mercer being quite hard to please. She eventually settled on a soft pastel blue that Jake would apply with a thin coat to produce the look of something old and distressed. He didn’t have that color in his truck and it would take a few days to find it.
Great. She could always come back for the next visit, to monitor his progress. And who knows? With the toys Rick and Graham had in their arsenal she might have cameras in her earrings next time.
She asked if there was a restroom downstairs, and Jake nodded toward the back. She took her time finding it, using it, and strolling back to the front, where he was sanding the top of the writer’s table. As he hunched over, she stood directly in front of the metal door for the best footage yet. But there might be a hidden camera watching her, right? She backed away, impressed with her situational awareness and growing experience. She might make a decent spy after all.
She left Jake at the front door and walked around the block to a small Cuban deli where she ordered an iced tea and sat at a table. Within a minute, Rick entered and paid for a soft drink. He sat across from her, smiling, and said almost in a whisper, “Perfect job.”
“I guess I’m just a natural at this,” she said, the knot in her stomach momentarily gone. “Is the camera on?”
“No, I turned it off. I’ll reactivate it when you enter the bookstore. Don’t do anything different. The camera is working perfectly and you got us plenty of footage. We are thrilled that there’s a door connecting the two basements. Now get as close to it as you can from the other side.”
“Nothing to it. I’m assuming we’ll leave the store and walk to lunch. Will you keep the camera on?”
“No.”
“And I’ll be sitting across the table from Cable for at least an hour. You’re not worried about him noticing anything?”
“After you’ve been to the basement, go to the restroom, the one upstairs on the main floor. Take off the scarf and the buckle ring and stick them in your purse. If he says anything, tell him the scarf was too warm.”
“I like that. It would be hard to enjoy lunch knowing I was pointing a camera at his face.”
“Right. You leave now and I’m right behind you.”
Mercer entered the bookstore at 11:50 and saw Bruce rearranging the magazines on a rack near the front. Today’s seersucker suit was striped in a soft aqua shade. So far Mercer had noticed at least six different tints to his suits and she suspected there were more. Bow tie of bright yellow paisley. As always, dirty buckskins, no socks. Never. He smiled, pecked her on the cheek, said she looked great. She followed him into the First Editions Room and he picked up an envelope on his desk. “Ten grand for the two books Tessa borrowed thirty years ago. What would she think?”
“She would say, ‘Where’s my share of the profits?’ ”
Bruce laughed and said, “We get the profits. I have two clients who want The Convict, so I’ll play one off the other and clear twenty-five hundred with a few phone calls.”
“Just like that?”
“No, not always, just the luck of the day. That’s why I love this business.”
“A question. That pristine copy of The Catcher in the Rye you mentioned. If you decided to sell it, what would you ask?”
“So, you’re liking this business too, huh?”
“No, not at all. I have no brain for business. Just curious, that’s all.”
“Last year I turned down eighty grand. It’s not for sale, but if I were somehow forced to put it on the market I would start at one hundred.”
“Not a bad deal.”
“You said you wanted to see it.”