The Thieves of Manhattan Read Online Free Page B

framed by a cathedral window that gave out onto Twenty-first Street. She was smiling at Geoff Olden, who was letting loose with his nasal cackles as he introduced her to his assistants and underlings, all dolled up in their black golightlys, all depressingly plain beside Anya.
    The library seemed to be the only unoccupied room on Geoff’s first floor, so I passed some time there, browsing through all the books he had represented. I flipped through first editions by his famous friends and acquaintances, who had written loving dedications—
“To a heavyweight of literature, with much love, Muhammad Ali”; “To Geoff, Thanks for all the corrections
,
Jon Franzen.”
The only qualified remark came from one Phil Roth—
“To Geoffrey, a true human stain.”
I wondered how much I could sell the books for on eBay if I absconded with an armful.
    In the library, on a small, antique mahogany table between two black leather armchairs illuminated by a Tiffany lamp, was a stack of copies of
Blade by Blade
. Stacks like this were scattered throughout the apartment, and as I inspected the book’s canary yellow cover, I realized that I had never actually tried to read Blade Markham’s book, had based my opinions about it mostly on reviews I had read, appearances Blade had made on talk shows, and remarks Faye had made about the book at work. Maybe I hadn’t given it a chance. As loathsome as Blade seemed on subway posters or on
The Pam Layne Show
, it seemed harder to despise him when he was in the same apartment with me, life-size—I have always been too suspicious of people in theory, too trusting of them in practice. The more time I spend with people, the more I find myself liking them.
    But after I cracked open the book, I almost burst out laughing at the dedication—
“To All My Homies Still Livin’ Under the Gun Right Here in Amerikkka. You Know Who You Are. Keep Runnin’, Keep Gunnin’.”
I turned to a random page. No, the book was ludicrous, the grammar and punctuation awful, no sentence lasted longer than ten words and half of them ended with
yo
, as if Blade had dictated the book, not written it. I picked another page; on it, Blade opined about the merits of prison sex—“There’s worse things than playin’ catcher upriver in Rikers, yo.” I couldn’t help myself. This time, I actually laughed out loud. But when I sensed someone else’s presence, I stopped.
    “What you chortlin’ ’bout, bro?”
    Blade was standing in the library doorway, holding a half-full martini glass and wearing scuffed black boots, a white Stanley Kowalski undershirt under a black suit jacket, a lot of bling, too. Around his neck was that gold cross—
it ain’t a cross for Christ; it’s a T for Tool, yo
, I felt like saying. Blade ripped the book out of my hands, looked to see if I’d done anything to it, then placed it back neatly on the pile.
    “Ain’t no browsin’ privileges here, bro,” he told me. “Y’all gotta
pay
some shit if y’all wanna
read
my shit,
compadre.”
On paper, his hip-hop patois might have seemed laughable; in person, it was scary as hell. I thought all Blade’s prison stories were made up, sure, but I didn’t doubt that he’d gotten into some scuffles in his life. I pushed my way past Blade and walked toward the main ballroom, not looking back to see if he was following.
    Anya was in the same place where I had last seen her, standing with her back to the windows, hypnotizing Geoff and everyone around her with some sad story about the life she had left behind in Bucharest
—“neffer
confuse my life
weeth
my
feection; feection
is not nearly so
tredjic.”
The spell she was casting on all the junior agents and editors was a mirror image of the one Blade had cast on his audience at Symphony Space. Here, all the women seemed to want to be Anya; all the men seemed to want to screw her. Save for Geoff—he didn’t want to screw or be anyone else in his apartment, just to represent them and screw over