The Short Takes

by James Grady

  Condor carried the loose-lid cup of hot coffee out in front of him like a pistol.

  Mustache Man was five, four, three steps away, his head bent over a book.

  Condor “lurched”—jostled the coffee cup he held.

  The loose lid popped off the cup. Hot coffee flew out to splash Mustache Man.

  He and the stranger who splashed him yelped like startled dogs. Mustache Man jumped to his feet, reached to help some older gentleman who’d obviously tripped.

  “Are you all right?” said Mustache Man as the silver-haired stranger stood steady with his right hand lightly resting on the ribs over Mustache Man’s startled heart.

  “I’m sorry!” lied Condor.

  “No, no: it was probably my fault.”

  Vin blinked: “Just sitting there and it was your fault?”

  “I probably moved and threw you off or something.”

  “Or something.” The man’s face matched the I.D. card dangling around his neck.

  Mustache Man used a napkin to sponge dark splotches on his book. “It’s OK. It’s mine, not the library’s.”

  “You bring your own book to where you can get any book in the world?”

  “I don’t want to bother Circulation.”

  Vin turned the book so he could read the title.

  Mustache Man let this total stranger take such control without a blink, said: “Li Po is my absolute favorite Chinese poet.”

  “I wonder if they read him in Nebraska.”

  Now came a blink: “Why Nebraska?”

  “Why not?” said Condor.

  The other man shrugged. “I’m from Missouri.”

  “There are two kinds of people,” said Condor. “Those who want to tell you their story and those who never will.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” said Vin. “We’re all our own kind. I didn’t get your name.”

  “I’m Rich Bechtel.”

  Condor told Mustache Man/Rich Bechtel—same name on his I.D.—that he was new, didn’t know the way back to his office.

  “Let me show you,” volunteered Rich, right on cue.

  They went outside the snack nook where long corridors ran left and right.

  “Either way,” Rich told the silver-haired man whose name he still hadn’t asked.

  “Your choice,” said Condor.

  “Sorry, I work at CRS.” CRS: the Congressional Research Service that is and does as it’s named. “I’m used to finding options, letting someone else decide.”

  “This is one of those times you’re in charge,” lied Condor.

  He controlled their pace through subterranean tunnels. By the time they reached Condor’s office, he knew where Rich said he lived, how long he’d been in Washington, that he loved biking. Loved his work, too, though as a supervisor of environmental specialists, “seeing what they deal with can make it hard to keep your good mood.”

  “Is it rough on your wife and kids?” asked Condor.

  “Not married. No family.” He shrugged. “She said no.”

  “Does that make you mad?”

  “I’m still looking, if that’s what you mean. But mad: How would that work?”

  “You tell me.” He stuck out his right hand. Got a return grip with strength Rich didn’t try to prove. “My name is Vin. Just in case, could I have one of your cards?”

  That card went into Vin’s shirt pocket to nestle beside Kim’s that Condor fished out as soon as he was inside his soundproof cave. He cell-phoned her office.

  Heard the click of answered call. No human voice.

  Said: “This is—”

  “Please!” Kim’s voice: “Please, please come here, see what— Help me!”

  Condor snapped the old phone shut. Grabbed the building map off his desk.

  Couldn’t help himself: counted the stacked coffins.

  Still seven where there should be nine.

  Time compressed. Blurred. Rushing through tunnels and hallways. Stairs. An elevator. Her office in a corridor of research lairs. Don’t try the doorknob: that’ll spook her more. Should be locked anyway. His knock rattled her door’s clouded glass.

  Kim clacked the locks and opened the door, reached to pull him in but grabbed only air as he slid past, put his back against the wall while he scanned her office.

  No ambusher. Window too small for any ninja. Posters on the walls: a National Gallery print of French countryside, a Smithsonian photo of blue globed earth, a full-face wispy color portrait of Marilyn Monroe with a crimson lipped smile and honesty in her eyes. Kim’s computer glowed. A framed black-and-white photo of a Marine patrolling some jungle stood on her desk: Father? Grandfather? Vietnam?

  “Thought I was safe,” babbled Kim. “Everything cool, you out there dealing with it and I unlocked the office door. It was locked—swear it was locked! Looked around and … My middle desk drawer was open. Just a smidge.”

  Kim’s white finger aimed like a lance at a now wide-open desk drawer.

  Where inside on its flat-bottomed wood, Condor saw:

  HARLOT

  Red lipstick smeared, gouged-out letters in a scrawl bigger than his hand.

  Kim whispered: “How did he get in here? Do that? Weren’t you with him?”

  “Not before. And you weren’t here then either.”

  A tube of lipstick lay in desk drawer near the graffiti, fake gold metal polished and showing no fingerprints. Condor pointed to the tube: “Yours?”

  She looked straight into his eyes. “Who I am sometimes wears lipstick.”

  “So he didn’t bring it and he didn’t take it. But that’s not what matters.

  “Look under the lipstick,” he said. “Carved letters. Library rules don’t let anybody bring in a knife, so somebody who does is serious about his blade.”

  “I’m going to throw up.”

  But she didn’t.

  “Call the cops,” said Condor.

  “And tell them what? Somebody I don’t know, can’t be sure it’s him, he somehow got into my locked office and … and did that? They’ll think I’m crazy!”

  “Could be worse. Call the cops.”

  “OK, they’ll come, they’ll care, they’ll keep an eye on me until there’s no more nothing they’ll have the time to see and they’ll go and then what? Then more of this?”

  She shook her head. “I’m an analytic researcher. That’s what I do. First we need to find more to verify what we say for the cops to show we’re not crazy!”

  “First call the cops. Then worry about verifying. Crazy doesn’t mean wrong.”

  “What else you got?” Her look scanned his scars.

  “Grab what you need,” he said. “Work where I found you, the reading room, in public, not alone. I don’t know about afterwards when you go home.”

  “Nothing’s ever … felt wrong there. Plus I’ve got a roommate.”

  “So did the heroine in Terminator.”

  “Life isn’t science fiction.”

  “Really?” Condor rapped his knuckles on her computer monitor.

  Made her take cell phone pictures of HARLOT and email them to herself before he shut that desk drawer. “Got a boyfriend or husband or any kind of ex?”

  “The last somebody I had was in San Francisco and he dumped me. No husband, ever. Probably won’t be. Evidently all I attract are psycho creeps. Or maybe that’s all that’s out there. Why can’t I find a nice guy who doesn’t know that’s special?”

  “Do you like mustaches?”

  “Hey, I wear a lip ring.”

  “Have you ever mentioned mustaches to anybody?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Then maybe he’s had it for a long time.”

  Kim shuddered.

  He escorted her back to the same reading room desk.


  Left her there where her fellow LOC employees could hear her scream.

  Took the spiral steel staircase up and went out the Gallery door, walked back the way he first came, through the stacks, row after row of shelved books. Down one aisle, he spotted a shamus wearing a Dashiell Hammett trenchcoat and looking like Humphrey Bogart before he knew his dream was Lauren Bacall.

  Condor called out: “What’s my move?”

  The shamus gave him the long look. Said: “You got a job, you do a job.”

  His job.

  Back in the sub-basement cave. Alone with the still only seven coffins. Alone with the cart piled high with the few books he could save from the DOSP’s expectations.

  Anger gripped him. Frenzy. Cramming books into the coffins. Filling all seven pine crates, plopping them on the dolly, wheeling it out of his office, stacking the coffins against the yellow cinderblock wall, pushing the empty dolly back into his cave, logging PICK UP in the computer, snapping off the lights, locking the door, home before five with a day’s job done and the shakes of not knowing what to do.

  Shakes that had him walking back to work before dawn. His I.D. got him inside past cops and metal detectors, down the elevator to the subterranean glow around the corner from his office and into the unexpected rumble of rolling wheels.

  Condor hurried around the corner …

  … and coming toward him was a dolly of pinewood coffins pushed by a barbell-muscled man with military short blond hair and a narrow shaved face. The blond muscle man wore an I.D. lanyard and had deep blue eyes.

  “Wait!” yelled Condor.

  The coffin-heavy dolly shuddered to a jerked stop.

  “What are you doing?” said Condor. “These are my coffins—crates.”

  Couldn’t stop himself from whispering: “Nine.”

  Looked down the hall to where yesterday he’d stacked seven coffins.

  The barbell blonde said: “You must be the new guy. I heard you were weird.”

  “My name is Vin, and you’re … ?”

  The blue-eyed barbell blonde said: “Like, Jeremy.”

  “Jeremy, you got it right, I’m new, but I got an idea that, like, helps both of us.”

  Rush the grift so Jeremy doesn’t have time to, like, make a wrong reply.

  “I screwed up, sorry, stuck the wrong book in a crate, so what we need to do, what I need to do, is take them all back in my cave, open ’em up, and find the book that belongs on the rescue cart. Then you can take the crates away.”

  “I’m doing that now. That’s my job. And I say when.”

  “That’s why this works out for us. Because you’re who says when. And while I’m fixing the mistake, you go to the snack bar, get us both—I don’t know about you, but I need a cup of coffee. I buy, you bring, and by then I’ll be done with the crates.”

  “Snack bar isn’t open this early. Only vending machines.”

  Don’t say anything. Wait. Create space for the idea to fall into.

  “Needing coffee is weak,” said Jeremy.

  “When you get to my age, weak comes easy.”

  Jeremy smiled. “They might have hot chocolate.”

  “I think they do.” Vin fished the last few dollar bills from the release allowance out of his black jeans. “If they got a button for cream, push it for me, would you?”

  Jeremy took the money. Disappeared down the yellow cinderblock hall.

  Vin rolled the dolly into his cave. Unlatched the first coffin, found a frenzied jumble of books, one with ripped cover so the only words left above the author’s name were: “… LAY DYING”

  Remember that, I remember that.

  The second crate contained another jumble that felt familiar, all novels, some with stamps from some island, Paris Island. Yeah, this is another one I packed, one of the seven. So was the third crate he opened, and the fourth.

  But not number five.

  Neatly stacked books filled that pinewood box. Seventy or more books.

  But only three titles.

  Delta of Venus by Anais Nin. Never read it, maybe a third of this coffin’s books.

  The rest of the renegade coffin’s books were editions of The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins, many with the jacket painting of a blond woman in a lush pink gown and the grip of a fur stole draped round her shoulders as some man towered behind her.

  I remember it! A roman à clef about whacky billionaire Howard Hughes who bought Las Vegas from the Mob, but what Vin remembered most about the book was waiting until his parents were out of the house, then leafing to those pages.

  Now, that morning in his locked cave in a basement of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, Vin rifled through the coffin of discarded volumes of The Carpetbaggers and found nothing but those books, stamped properties of public libraries from New Mexico to New Jersey, nothing hidden in them, nothing hidden under them in the pinewood crates, nothing about them that …

  What smells?

  Like a bloodhound, Vin sniffed all through that coffin of doomed novels.

  Smells like … Almonds.

  He skidded a random copy of each book across the concrete floor to under his desk and closed the lid on the coffin from which they came.

  The sixth crate contained his chaos of crammed-in books, but crate number seven revealed the same precise packing as crate five, more copies of Anais Nin and The Carpetbaggers, plus copies of two other novels: The Caretakers that keyed more memories of furtive page turning and three copies of Call Me Sinner by Alan Marshall that Vin had never heard of. Plus the scent of almonds. He shut that crate. The last two coffins held books he’d sent to their doom and smelled only of pine.

  Roll the dolly piled high with coffins back out to the hall.

  This is what you know:

  Unlike the books that filled seven of the there-all-along coffins, the volumes in where’d-they-come-from two coffins were precisely packed, alphabetically and thus systematically clustered C and D titles, and all, well, erotic.

  And smelled like almonds.

  Remember, I can’t remember what that means.

  Jeremy handed Condor a cup of vending machine coffee. “You find what you were looking for?”

  “Yeah,” said Condor, a truth full of lies.

  Jeremy crumpled his chocolate stained paper cup, tossed it on top of the crates.

  “I’ll come with you.” Vin fell in step beside the man pushing the heavy dolly.

  “You are weird. Push the button for that elevator.”

  A metal cage slowly carried the two men and the coffin dolly up, up.

  “Do you see many weird people down here?” asked Condor.

  “Some people use this way as a shortcut out to get lunch or better coffee.”

  Rolling wheels made the only sounds for the rest of their journey to the loading dock. Jeremy keyed his code into the dock’s doors, rolled the dolly outside onto a loading dock near a parked pickup truck.

  An LOC cop with a cyber tablet came over, glanced at the crates, opened one and saw the bodies of books, as specified on the manifest. He looked at Condor.

  “The old guy’s with me,” said Jeremy.

  The cop nodded, walked away.

  The sky pinked. Jeremy lifted nine crates—nine, not seven—dropped them into the pickup truck’s rear end cargo box for the drive to the recycling dump.

  “This is as far as you go,” Jeremy told the weird older guy.

  Condor walked back inside through the loading dock door.

  The rattling metal grate lowered its wall of steel.

  Luminous hands on his black Navy SEAL watch ticked past seven a.m. Condor stalked back the way he’d come, as if retracing geography would let him remake time, go back to when and do it right. When got to the stacks where he’d been lost before, down the gap between two book-packed rows, he spotted
a mouse named Stuart driving a tiny motorcar away in search of the north that would lead him to true love.

  Condor whispered: “Good luck, man.”

  Voice behind you! “Are—”

  Whirl hands up and out sensing guard stacks spinning—

  Woman brown clothes eyes widening—

  Fran, sputtering: “I was just going to say ‘Are you talking to yourself?’”

  Condor let his arms float down as he faded out of a combat stance.

  “Something like that.”

  “Sorry to have interrupted.” She smiled like a woman at a Methodist church social his mother once took him to. Or like the shaved-head, maroon-robed Buddhist nun he’d seen in Saigon after that city changed its name. “But nice to see you.”

  Condor frowned. “Wherever I go, there you are.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” twittered Fran. “Doesn’t that just seem so? And good for you being here now. The early bird gets the worm. Believe you me, there are worms. Worms everywhere.”

  Flick—a flick of motion, something—somebody ducking back behind a shelf in an aisle between those stacks way down where Stuart drove.

  “By the way,” he heard Fran say: “Good job. The DOSP will be pleased.”

  “What?”

  “Your first clearance transfer.”

  “How did you know I was sending out a load of coffins?”

  Her smile widened. “Must have been Jeremy.”

  Amidst the canyons of shelves crammed with books, Condor strained to hear creeping feet beyond the twittering brown bird of a woman.

  “Just walking by his shop in the basement, door must have been open, I mean, I used to have your job working with him.”

  Prickling skin: Something—someone—hidden from their eyes in the canyons of stacks moved the air.

  “Vin, are you feeling OK?”

  “—just distracted.”

  “Ah.” Fran marched away, exited through a door alone.

  Alone, Condor telepathed to whoever hid in this cavern of canyons made by rows of shelved books. Just you and me now. All alone.

  Somewhere waited a knife.

  Walk between close walls of bookshelves crammed with volumes of transcribed RAF radio transmissions, 1939–1941. He could hear the call signs, airmen’s chatter, planes’ throbbing engines, bombs, and the clattering machineguns of yesterday.