Free The Rules of Dreaming by Bruce Hartman

satisfying day of the week, when his clients paid for their misdeeds.  He insisted on personal delivery, usually in cash, in suburban venues of his own choosing: convenience stores, gas stations, even banks—in fact he preferred banks, where armed guards and surveillance cameras were assigned to protect him from any recurrence of antisocial behavior.  The clients were sullen, bitter, contemptuous, the meetings hurried and impersonal with a dash of weary familiarity, like illicit sex or banking itself.   On days like this, when he sensed that he was being watched, he conducted business with a Zen-like simplicity.  Nothing was said that could be transmitted through a wire.
    Having completed his collections, he decided to take a quick drive into the city, as if such a thing were possible—in fact the traffic beyond the Lincoln Tunnel was worse than usual, an impenetrable Middle Eastern bazaar of taxicabs and desperate throngs, locked in deadly combat for every square inch between Eleventh Avenue and Grand Central Station.  Angry, agonized faces on cab drivers and pedestrians alike. He  crawled uptown, then over to Madison, and at last his luck turned.  He found what he was looking for, even found a parking garage with an hourly rate that was less than a lawyer’s.
    It was upstairs in a posh building that housed an art gallery on the ground floor.  Stephen Witz & Son, Inc.  Rare books and manuscripts.  The man who grudgingly unlocked the door—after checking Dubin’s skin color to make sure he wasn’t there to rob him—was fortyish, tidy-looking and smug. Undoubtedly Witz fils , if a Witz at all.
    “Can I help you?”
    Dubin decided not to waste his time with pointless preliminaries.  He reached in his pocket and pulled out the wrinkled page from the dealer’s catalog he’d photocopied at the library and stuck it under Witz’s skeptical nose.
    “Is this still available?”
    “The Offenbach letter?  Heavens, no!  That was sold months ago.”
    “Did you get your price for it?”
    The son of Witz chuckled shrewdly.  “We always get our price.  In this case, we could have asked a lot more.  There was someone who really wanted it.” 
    “You wouldn’t happen to have a photocopy, would you?”
    “A photocopy of the letter?  I couldn’t show it to you, even if I had one.  There is such a thing as ethics, you know.”
    “What’s ethics got to do with it?”
    The dealer’s patience for Dubin’s gaucherie was wearing thin.  “When people buy a manuscript,” he sniffed, “part of what they’re buying—sometimes most of what they’re buying—is exclusivity.  You wouldn’t pay these prices in order to have photocopies floating all over the place, would you?”
    “What if I told you I know where the manuscript is and could get it for you?”
    “What manuscript?”
    “The manuscript score of The Tales of Hoffmann that Offenbach is referring to in the letter.”
    Witz pretended to laugh as he watched Dubin carefully.  “You mean the one he claims to be hiding from his wife, who he thinks is trying to kill him?  I mean, really, wasn’t that all a paranoid delusion?”
    “I don’t know.  Was it?”
    “Do you have the manuscript?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You know where it is?”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “In that case, I’d say I’m interested.”
    Dubin folded his photocopy slowly and put it back in his pocket.  “You have a buyer?”
    “I might have one.”
    “Probably the same one who bought the letter.  But this deal would have to be handled very discreetly.  Not through a catalog.”
    The dealer nodded in acquiescence.  “No, very discreetly.  That will suit my client fine.”
    Dubin picked up one of the dealer’s business cards from the counter and stuck it in his pocket, as if he was impatient to leave.  “We’re talking a lot of money.  Well into s ix figures.”
    “I realize that.”
    “My commission is fifteen percent.” 
    Witz winced.