Elsinore by Jerome Charyn Page B

the war. He traded with the Germans for you. And Bibo ran your errands. You made money off Allied blood. Schatz was your point man with Göring and Goebbels.”
    â€œGöring was an addict. And an art collector. I fed him dollars and drugs. We took some of the art.”
    â€œMy hero,” Holden said.
    â€œI promised you Aladdin, and you got it.”
    â€œWith Goring as my silent partner.”
    â€œGöring’s dead.”
    â€œWell, no more errands. I’m not chasing down bonds or cash for you. You’ll have to fix that hole in your pocket.”
    â€œAfter Paris.”
    â€œWe’re not going to Paris,” Holden said. Schatz lived there with the twig. Frog married her when she was seventeen, and one more mannequin in the fur market, a skinny girl who’d never gone to high school, who’d cultivated herself in Frog’s house and then eloped to Paris with Bruno Schatz before she was twenty.
    â€œYou’ll have to go there,” Phipps growled from his blanket. “You’re still my collector.”
    â€œDidn’t you hear me, Phippsy? No more errands.”
    â€œSooner or later, Sid. You’ll have to go,” Phippsy said before burying himself under the blanket.

    A hot, dry wind rose off the roofs of the fur market. The air turned metallic. Frog sat in his bedroom office at Aladdin. He was with Benjamin Rudin, a wildcat accountant who’d been stripped of all his licenses. Rudin’s business doubled while he sat in Attica. He’d attached himself to a family of burglars, and now his fees were astronomical. But he was the one accountant with a “menu” large enough for Holden.
    â€œI want his books, Ben. All of them.”
    The accountant whistled through his broken teeth. “He could have me killed.”
    â€œHe’ll never know you’ve been washing around in his waters. I trust you, Ben.”
    And the bargain was sealed without a “kiss.” The accountant was there with Holden, and then he wasn’t. He lived like a burglar, moved like a burglar. Holden never left his office. He had sandwiches brought in. He’d stopped visiting the Copenhagen. He paid his monthly charges and never thought about his rooms over Central Park. He was a president without his own proper palace. He still had a closet with cutouts from the Duke of Windsor’s clothes. Windsor reminded him of his dad. They’d both been wanderers. They’d both given up the kingdom of their very own names. But Windsor hadn’t been a thief.
    Benjamin returned in two days. Holden liked that kind of miracle. The accountant had no pencil or pad. He kept an inventory of Phipps’ ruin in his head. He could have been humming a musical composition, not the holdings of Howard Phipps.
    â€œPhipps Steel and Tungsten, Phipps Bauxite, Phipps Aromatics … he’s losing book value in everything he owns.”
    â€œTalk my language,” Holden said.
    The accountant stared at him with all the shrewdness of a man who’d been to Attica. “You’re president of Aladdin, aren’t you? Then you ought to learn, my friend … Someone close to Phipps is taking from the till.”
    â€œSomeone like his daughter.”
    â€œI never met his daughter. But whatever accountant he has ought to be shot. It’s highway robbery, Holden. Nothing short of that. They’re moving paper around, and every time the paper moves, the old man drops a million. He’s so fucking deep into debt, he has to keep borrowing so he can afford to borrow. I know a lot of billionaires like that. They just keep putting leverage on the banks. But they have armies behind them … and I think Phipps’ first and last soldier is you.”

    He was in Paris that night. He’d taken the Concorde because he didn’t want to meet Bruno Schatz while he had a woolly head. He got off the plane and took a cab to the piano bar at the