The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber [162]
“Like post-traumatic stress?”
The man made a dismissive gesture. “If you buy psychobabble. It suits the culture to dump a whole set of unrelated symptoms suffered by completely different kinds of people as a result of completely different kinds of events into a box with that phrase on the label. It’s about as useful and as intellectually valid as stamp collecting. My brother lived a tightly controlled existence that, while enormously successful, was cut off from the wellsprings of life by addiction. He was living a lie, as the saying goes, and such lives are in fact fairly fragile. There is no real resilience in them.”
“What’s he addicted to?”
“My, you’re a nosy fellow.” This was said not unkindly, and Crosetti grinned.
“Guilty. It’s a bad habit. I excuse it by saying it’s because I want to plumb the depth of the human condition for my work.”
“Oh, right, you’re the screenwriter. Jake mentioned something about that. Plumb your own depths then. What do you think of Tarantino?”
“Not a plumber of depths,” said Crosetti and imitated the other man’s dismissive gesture. “What’re you doing in Europe?”
“Family business.”
“Connected to all this? I mean the paper chase, the secret manuscript…?”
“Indirectly.”
“Uh-huh. You’re a lawyer too?”
“I’m not.”
“You know, if you want to keep stuff mysterious, the way to do it is not to make cryptic comments but to adopt a fictitious and boring persona. James Bond always said he was a retired civil servant and that usually closed out the conversation. Just a tip from the world of movies.”
“Okay. I’m a Jesuit priest.”
“That works for me. I think we’re departing. We didn’t even get a safety demonstration. Is that because they don’t care or because no one can conceive of any misfortune befalling the ruling classes?”
“The latter, I think,” said Paul. “It’s hard to remain rich without developing a defect in the sympathetic imagination.”
Crosetti had never experienced a quicker takeoff. The engines strained briefly, the cabin tilted back like a La-Z-Boy, and they were above the clouds in what seemed like a few seconds.
When the plane was flying level again, Crosetti said, “I assume you know the whole story thus far. I mean about the Bracegirdle letters and the cipher and all that.”
“Well, I’ve read the letter and Jake told me a little of what you’ve learned about the nature of the cipher.”
“What do you think?”
“About our chances of interpreting it and finding this supposed lost play? Negligible. I mean we’d need the actual grille according to you, and what are the chances of a piece of perforated paper surviving for nearly four hundred years? And how would we even recognize it? And no cipher, no play—that seems fairly clear.”
“So why are you here?”
“I’m here because since this letter emerged, my brother has asked me for help for the first time in our entire lives. Twice. I want to encourage this. Jake needs a lot of help. And I owe him. He was very good to me when I was in prison and for a period afterward, although he utterly despised me. It was an act of real charity, and I want to pay him back if I can.”
“Why were you in prison?” asked Crosetti. But the other man smiled, gave a short, low laugh, shook his head, took a thick paperback out of his flight bag, and slipped on reading glasses. Curious Crosetti glommed the title: Hans Küng’s Does God Exist?, which struck Crosetti as an odd choice for an airplane book, but what did he know about the man? He slid his laptop out of his briefcase, placed it on the solid table provided, and turned it on. To his surprise, the little icon that announced the availability of an Internet connection lit up, but of course the sort of people who flew in private jets could not bear to be cut off from the Internet while airborne. Cell phones probably worked too. He put the headphones on and slid a copy of Electric Shadows into the drive. Oh, of course, the seat had an A/C plug in too, God forbid the rich would ever have to depend on laptop batteries! He watched the movie with the usual critical discontent he felt when watching debut features by someone