Read The Book of Air and Shadows for Free Online Page B

you have to know to make a book from scratch. I can do
repairs
. It’s like…it’s like the difference between being able to repair a cracked Ming porcelain vase and
making
one out of clay and glazes.”
    “Uh-huh. And while we’re sharing confidences like this, getting cozy and all, why don’t you tell me what you’re going to do with the Churchill when you’ve got it doctored?”
    “What? I’m not doctoring them. I’m going to break them.”
    Red splotches appeared on her cheeks and her eyes darted-picture: girl caught in lie.
    “No,” he said confidently. “If you were going to break them you would have just airfreighted them to Andover and had them vacuum dried. No muss, no fuss. You get them back dry and clean and snip snip. You look surprised. I’m not what you’d call a book guy but I’m not stupid either. So what are you going to do with the doctored books?”
    “Sell them,” she said, looking down at the sodden volumes.
    “As doctored?”
    “No. Everyone knows we own an extremely fine set. There are private clients who like discretion. They have funny money they want to stash in collectibles. Glaser does it all the time. Look, he’s going to declare these a total loss to the insurance company, and show them the invoices for the broken-out items. They’ll come to, I don’t know, not more than twenty-five hundred, and the insurance company will pay him the difference between that and what he paid for the set, figure around twenty thousand dollars.”
    “Which is approximately the amount you’re planning to divert to your own pocket when you sell to your shady character. Isn’t there a word for that? Begins with an…?”
    “It’s not…it’s
nothing
like stealing. He told me to break the books. As far as Glaser’s concerned, the set no longer exists. He’s made whole by the insurance company and I’m profiting from my own skill. It’s no different from making things out of pallets that’re being thrown away.”
    “Um, no, actually it’s not the same thing at all, but that’s my Jesuit high school education talking. See, you
are
an interesting person. Devious is interesting. How are you going to produce the invoices for the illustrations, since you’re not really breaking the books?”
    She shrugged. “Sidney never bothers with broken items. It depresses him. He calls it vulture food.”
    “Not answering the question. But I figure you’re going to sell the set for twenty-two K, give Sidney a couple of grand, let him collect from the insurance, meanwhile phonying up the accounting system with fake invoices. You’re simultaneously screwing the insurance company, Glaser, your shady client, and the tax people. That’s quite a plan.”
    “You’re going to rat me out!” Crosetti had heard of blazing eyes but had never actually seen any outside a movie screen until now. Little blue sparks were whizzing around in there.
    “No,” he said, smiling. “That would be boring. So…how’re you going to fix the broken covers?”
    He saw the relief on her face as she turned away from ethical issues to the moral neutrality of technique.
    “Well, I think I can save the leather cover on volume one. The boards are cracked and the spine, but I can strip the leather off of it and replace the boards.”
    With that she pulled a thin spatulate tool from a can and started to peel back the marbleized paper that held the leather cover to the boards. She worked carefully, and Crosetti was content to watch her small skillful hands at their task until the kitchen timer she had set previously rang out and he had to change the towels between the drying pages. When he had finished with this, he saw that she had the leather cover loose. Underneath it, between the leather and the cracked pasteboard were damp sheets of paper with closely set lines of handwriting on them. She put these aside and held the leather up to the light from the window, examining it closely.
    “What’re these papers?” he asked,