The Ross Forgery Read online

  O’Kane drummed. The rain exercised a nearly hypnotic attraction. When I am the hammer, I will strike. When I am the anvil, I will bear. Patience. Passivity. Wait. Tick tock.

  O’Kane drained his glass and stepped over to the bar for a refill. He tried to read the financial newspaper he’d brought with him, but his eyes kept wandering back to the rain-filled streets. The gutters were rilling with rain, and the streets were covered with large puddles, churning in the heavy downpour.

  His position was absurd. A keeper of enormous economic power, an executive whose decisions affected the lives of tens of thousands of people, he sat in an Irish workingman’s bar waiting for a typesetter to bring him a counterfeit bit of literary history—waiting to learn if it had earned the imprimatur of literary authority. All this silliness to tweak the nose and twist the tail of an immature, homicidal monomaniac.

  A comic act of petty revenge.

  Yet his stomach was in a knot, his composure the act of only the greatest self-control. His overwhelming craving for that pamphlet reduced the entire operation of his polyglot conglomerate to a child’s sandbox.

  An idiot is a man who treats all problems as though they were all the same size.

  It was one o’clock, and Ross was nowhere in sight.

  15

  “You the business manager for Local 227?”

  O’Kane looked up at the construction worker standing before him in a yellow hardhat. O’Kane shook his head.

  “I been watching you for the last ten minutes, trying to place the face. You in the building trades?”

  O’Kane shook his head again. Every time the door opened now, he could hear the heavy rain shattering in the streets, and he looked up. The construction workers were leaving, and every few seconds the door opened and shut. He watched them jog across the street, leaping puddles, and turn the corner.

  “Were you ever in the trades?”

  O’Kane nodded.

  “Where’d you work?”

  “Jersey, mainly. Newark Harbor.”

  “You work on that Kill van Kull Drydock?”

  O’Kane raised his eyes and looked with interest at the man’s face. “Yes.”

  “That’s the place. Didn’t you live in Jersey City?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you was going to Fordham?”

  “Yes. I think I remember you.”

  The man nodded happily. “I’m always bumping into people I ain’t seen in ten, twenty years. ’S funny. You ever finish college?”

  O’Kane nodded.

  “You seem to be doing OK. What business are you in?”

  O’Kane studied his face. “I own my own business.”

  “Oh.” The man drank his glass of beer in two gulps. “Well, gotta go. How many kids have you got?”

  “Three.”

  “Me, too. See you around.”

  O’Kane watched him cross the street, hopping around puddles and dashing out of sight.

  Kill van Kull Drydock. Three kids. Paycheck. And a literary forgery in a rainstorm. Absurd. It was twenty after one.

  The cabs were busy in the rain, picking up and dropping off fares. O’Kane was watching the cabs now with considerable eagerness. He shifted in his seat and gulped down his beer. He went over to the bar for another.

  “Is that clock right?”

  The barman nodded. “To the minute. Been keeping time for over forty years in here, and I bet it don’t lose five minutes in a year.”

  O’Kane looked down at the cardboard box by the cellar door. The cat and her five kittens were all sound asleep.

  Ross’s ninth inning.

  16

  It was twenty to two when the cab made a sweeping turn off Third A venue, throwing a bow wave, and stopped by the door of the tavern. When the door swung open, O’Kane could see Ross, struggling to get his hand into his trousers pocket. He pulled out a wad of paper money and coins. He paid the cabman in a slow-motion parody that enraged O’Kane. Finally, Ross stepped out and scurried toward the door.

  O’Kane took a deep breath and composed himself. He didn’t like the look on Ross’s face. Morose, was it? Angry? Shock? That was it. He read shock on Ross’s face.

  He watched compulsively as Ross approached him, hulking, in a raincoat, raindrops on his bald head, brown eyes paralyzed.

  He slumped down in the booth and plopped the envelope on the table.

  Wordlessly.

  O’Kane picked it up. With practiced deliberateness, his powerful hands opened the flap on the envelope and withdrew the papers. He found the pamphlet in a separate brown envelope. A sheaf of test reports and a covering letter.

  O’Kane read the letter, felt a tremendous sense of shock. He studied Ross’s face, reading the same emotion he himself felt. “Congratulations,” he said.

  17

  Ross lurched out of the booth and across to the bar. He brought back a double bourbon and held the glass in his fist with exaltation. Then he took a noisy gulp, breathing into the glass. “Son of a bitch,” he said. He looked at O’Kane. “You owe me one hundred thousand incredible dollars.” He took another swallow of the bourbon. “One hundred thousand. I’ll be goddamned in hell. Fantastic.”

  O’Kane looked smiling back at him. “You like that feeling, eh?”

  “Fantastic.” Ross sprawled back into the booth.

  “Winning,” said O’Kane. “I know that feeling well. It’s the only feeling worth living for.” His compelling eyes watched the victorious flush on Ross’s face. “Winning is everything.” He looked out at the teeming rain in the streets. “Everything,” he echoed.

  Ross drew back violently and looked up at the man who sat down next to him.

  “May I see the report?” asked Service.

  Ross swept the papers and envelopes away from Service with his arm. He held out the letter. Service conned the letter, then laid it down with deliberate slowness. Completely at ease, he turned and looked at Ross from under his red eyebrows. “A great victory.”

  “You bet your blue booties, Service.”

  “Oh, I do, Ross, I certainly do. I bet my blue booties on a winner all the time.” Clasping his hands gracefully on the booth table, he watched Ross tumble down the rest of the bourbon. His eyes addressed O’Kane. “What’s next?”

  O’Kane sat back, smirking and shaking his head. “Oh, this is going to be a glorious piece of vengeance.” He smiled at the tiled floor. “In fact, I think I’ll celebrate with another beer.” He slipped out of the booth and over to the bar. Service picked up the stapled sheaf of reports and began to flip through them. He and Ross sat shoulder to shoulder, wordlessly.

  O’Kane returned with a tin tray. He dealt another double bourbon to Ross, a Scotch to Service, and a pilsner glass of beer for himself.

  “Here’s to a great victory by the God of Illusion. May he bring great confusion to our enemies.”

  After they drank, Service turned his neatly clipped red head and found the bleak eyes of Ross looking at him. Service smiled to himself, then looked again at O’Kane. “What’s next, do you think?”

  O’Kane cleared his throat softly, and softly pulled his chin. “Well, we have the whole sale to arrange. Very tricky matter. We’re not home free yet. This is going to require the utmost delicacy.”

  Ross, with his arms truculently folded, let his eyes go from one face to the other. “Just tell me when I get paid.”

  “Oh, four days. Maybe five. This is going to be a lightning sale among a select and bona fide group of rare book buyers. A private auction.”

  “Auction?” said Ross. “How do you know you won’t get outbid?”

  “Very simple,” said O’Kane. “I’m selecting buyers who can’t raise more than sixty thousand dollars on short notice. My bid for one hundred thousand will be overwhelming.”

  18

  It was after the third drink that Ross began to gather up the pieces of paper.

  Anticipating him, O’Kane said, “Look, Ross. That’s one of the hottest
literary properties in the world right now. If Pickett finds out you have it and that I’m going to buy, he will not hesitate to kill you. I suggest that you let me put it in a place of safekeeping.”

  Ross’s eyes went from one to the other, guardedly. He nodded. “I see.”

  The cat sprang up on the table to go through the curtains to her waiting bowl. Service reached out to stroke her. And Ross uncoiled. Bracing himself against the wall of the booth, he threw a body block at Service.

  Service slipped out of the seat and landed, sitting, on the floor and slowly tumbled sideways. Ross skipped and stumbled over him and regained his feet first. He turned toward the front door, then saw the two men at the bar who had turned and were starting toward him. Quickly, he turned and ran through the side door into the rainy afternoon.

  O’Kane waved the two men down. “Enough. Enough.”

  Service got up, adjusting his clothing. He looked at O’Kane with cold fury.

  “Now we’ve got some problems,” said O’Kane.

  19

  Townsend sat down slowly. Deliberately, he put the phone on its cradle.

  Twenty-five thousand dollars. He had twenty-five thousand dollars. A year’s sabbatical. Two years. Time. At last, at last. Ample time.

  He laughed and threw a paper clip at the rain-wet window. Fooled ya. Li’l ol’ cunning me. I fooled you and your machines and your chemical analysis and spectrographic studies.

  Yep. You did, forger. Live with that: forger. Criminal forger. Michael Townsend, Criminal Forger. Michael Townsend, a dog that mired his own bed. Smeared dung all over the thing he loved. Defiler. Desecrator. It’s done and now, alas, can never be undone.

  Easy, easy. No one will ever know. No one will ever condemn you.

  No one except—oh, weeping sores of a leper. No one except me.

  Live with that. Alas.

  20

  The storm pounded its rain with the violence of malicious intent and filled the world with its splattering roar. The rain danced on the concrete apron and runways of Newark Airport, flooded the outside observation terrace, set up a metallic tattoo on the coin-operated field glasses, and a lower drumming on the coin-operated control-tower broadcaster. It gurgled in the downspouts, dribbled off the marquee of the entrance and created a half-mile-wide, inch-deep river across the automobile parking lot that flowed, furiously spanked by the rain, toward the drainage ditches along the New Jersey Turnpike.

  Ceiling and visibility were zero.

  The rain also set up an amplified roar in the empty boxcars that stood on the siding that paralleled Route 1.

  Under them, the pack of dogs sat, waiting.

  NINE

  1

  On Monday, March 20, Mr. Gerard Twomley, in New Orleans, received a registered letter. He signed for it personally.

  He shut the front door as he carried the letter back through the house to his garden. His aproned butler followed. Mr. Twomley sat down by the softly plashing fountain in the mild, spring air and opened the thick envelope with the tine of a garden hand-tool.

  Dear Mr. Twomley:

  It is my considerable pleasure to announce a limited auction to you. The sale will consist of a single piece, of extraordinary literary value, which will be placed in absolute auction on Thursday evening, March 23, at 6:30 P.M. New Orleans time, by conference-call telephone bidding.

  The piece to be auctioned is one of the rarest my firm has had the pleasure of selling in some few years. It was discovered just a few weeks ago in the literary impedimenta of a celebrated British divine and famous preacher, the late Oswald Lex Dodgson. The discovery was made following the disposition of the estate of his daughter, Miss Amalie Dodgson. The piece is a heretofore undiscovered literary forgery, attributed to Mr. Thomas Wise, founder of the world famous Ashley Library.

  Papers of authentication are enclosed, coupled with photostats of the actual test reports and a certified copy of the laboratory report.

  The sale will be final with one stipulation—that the purchaser has the right to subject the pamphlet to his own scrutiny and those of his assigns or agents for corroborative authentication.

  The piece is “A Lodging for the Night,” by Robert Louis Stevenson. It consists of twenty-eight pages. A photostatic copy of each page is enclosed for your perusal. You’ll note that the piece is dated 1881 and attributed to the Peppercorn Press, Bristol, England.

  Yours truly,

  SKELLY AUCTIONEERS

  Richard Weyland

  New York State Auction License #445-553-231

  Mr. Twomley examined the photostats with great interest and astonishment.

  2

  San Francisco. The window of the shop bore the legend, in gold leaf that had acquired the character of age, Rare Books, Prints, and Antique Maps. Robert Polsley, Proprietor.

  Beyond the window, inside, gilded with early morning sunlight, sat the proprietor himself, Mr. Polsley.

  He sat on an old wooden swivel chair amid piles of old books and map cases. The walls contained bookshelves that ascended to the ceiling. A cup of tea, to take off the morning chill, rested on the rubber tread of a stepladder. A wisp of steam rose from its surface.

  Mr. Polsley, peering quizzically through his half-glasses, was delighted with the news he’d just read. A new piece, impeccable credentials, in the Wise collection. Very good for trade.

  He read the opening lines of “Lodging”: “It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris …” He remembered the story fondly. Then he regarded his checkbook sternly, on the desk where it lay conquered by piles of books.

  Mr. Polsley quietly folded his hands in his lap and let his eyes rove over his merchandise. He considered several pieces in his vault. Might give the bidding a good go if he sold some of that Dickens stuff.

  3

  Philip Monash, in Chicago, sat at dusk in his cavernous old apartment, amid slippery parquet floors and dark paneling and valuable antiques. A cadaverous old man with a soupy cough, he sat in his dressing gown, augmented by a shawl, before a small but warming fire. Two dogs prowled restlessly, waiting to be walked. Mr. Monash loomed like one of the old, time-darkened portraits that hung on his walls, a white face in old leather-and-brown tones, with here and there a gleam of brass from the low fire.

  By the light of an antique desk lamp, he sat, small and slow, overwhelmed by the large wing-backed chair, reading with a magnifying glass. He read everything.

  He laid the papers in his lap finally, and tapped them with the magnifying glass. “Wait till that crazy loon, Pickett, hears about this.”

  He shifted in his seat to get the heat more on his left side. Lately, no amount of heat seemed to penetrate the chill in his left side.

  Mr. Monash emitted a gurgling cough.

  4

  Boston.

  His name was Wormser. He had a degree in accounting and a sharp eye for a literary bargain. He represented a group of Boston businessmen who always had their eyes on the main chance. He could muster, at particular moments, up to seventy-five thousand dollars. His knowledge and instincts told him that the piece would be worth well in excess of a hundred thousand dollars. And with the mad bomber of Texas blazing away, the sky literally was the limit. He looked at the papers again, but found no list of participants. No Pickett? A very strange proceeding, the whole thing, but let’s see. He decided to stir up his investors’ group. Might be able to pony up as much as seventy-five on such short notice.

  In his lap, a small white dog lay sleeping. Under Mr. Wormser’s idly stroking hand, wisps of white hair floated about the office. Mr. Wormser smoothed his tie, gazed about his ultramodern office, and considered putting up some of his own money. Ten thousand? That would give him a roof of eighty-five—and that would keep him in the game for a while.

  Hmmmmm. He was going to be in New York that evening.

  5

  Emmett O’Kane sat in his office. The city was dark and the smog index low enough to admit the light of many stars. He read Mr. Weyla
nd’s letter thoughtfully.

  He got up and walked down the carpeted hallway, past the banks of elevators. It was after six, and the offices were empty. He approached the telephone room, put his head in, and looked at it: stations for two operators and the latest phone control center. Patch the whole auction right through that equipment. Put Weyland in Service’s office, put Service on the switchboard, and away we go. He walked back to his office and dialed a number. “Ross?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look. This is Emmett O’Kane. First, I thank you for getting those stats. Weyland received them, and the invitations have been sent by registered mail. Now. The auction is three nights from now, and you and I are in a funny bind. The auctioneer won’t auction unless he has the item in his possession or a certified declaration from a vault or bank or what-the-hell that the item is safely ensconced and will be released only on recognizance of Weyland. Now, since your friend Townsend made the purchase of the Dodgson trunk and has the receipt to show for it, this pamphlet is legally his.”

  “What! Come on!”

  “Think, Ross. Think. The credentials have to be impeccable. It has to go from Tinkers to Evers to Chance. From Townsend to Weyland to O’Kane. Now, I know damned well you’re not going to give me or Weyland possession of the pamphlet, but you are going to have to vault it somewhere and give Weyland the certification he needs for control.”

  “No dice.”

  “Smarten up, Ross. You either do it, or there’s no sale.”

  “Why can’t I just sell it to you?”

  “Come on. You’re not that dumb. We went through this. This piece has to be sold on the open market by competitive bid to establish its value.”