by John Dunning
John Wayne’s ass. These women had no clue.
Erin had left to meet Archer when I got back and Koko was gazing at the same stupid TV fare with the volume off. “So what caliber razor blades did you get?”
“Big enough to fit a size thirty-two razor.”
“Even on Sunday.”
“Rexall’s always open.”
She smiled foxily. “I saw that man again. Same one who followed me up the street.”
“Where?”
“Out on the street. I had to go to the store for some female needs.”
“You’re becoming a real wit, Koko. So tell me about him.”
“Nothing to tell. He was just going into a store up the street when I saw him.”
“I guess it’s possible he’s just some guy who lives around here.”
“What else is possible?”
“Maybe he’s the mayor of Charleston, scouting for people to welcome to his fair city.”
Her face was pensive. “I don’t know how Erin will feel about this. Me, I’m glad you got those razor blades.”
She roused herself from the bed. “I’m going to the library. I don’t expect to find anything, but I’ve got to do something or go mad in this room.”
“Library’s closed today. It’s Sunday.”
“We could go to a movie.”
“I’m for that. Point out this dude if you see him on the street again.”
I had already made up my mind that Erin’s date with Archer was the last thing she would do solo. I wasn’t leaving Koko alone anymore, either. I left a note under Erin’s door telling her to stay put and we drove out to a suburban mall theater. Three hours later we came out frustrated: the film had been like the weather, lousy. “At least it got us through the afternoon,” Koko said. “Just one more day of this. I’ll kill that woman at Fort Sumter if she plays around with us.”
Erin was there when we got to the motel.
“I hope your lunch was charming,” I said.
“Lunch was fine. I waited two hours and ate alone. Archer never showed up.”
In the morning we learned why.
CHAPTER 34
The story was on the front page of the second section in the News and Courier. The headline said author beaten, hospitalized. Hal Archer, a Pulitzer prize-winning historian now living on Sullivan’s Island, had been brutally attacked and was in fair condition at Roper Hospital. Police had no motive and the victim had refused to talk to the press.
“I’m going to see him,” Erin said.
“We’ll all go.”
“I don’t think that’s wise.”
“Maybe not but we’re going with you anyway. We’ll try not to get in your way.”
Roper Hospital was on Calhoun Street near the Ashley River. Erin inquired about Archer at the desk and was given his room number. His condition had been upgraded to good. Koko and I sat in the lobby, where we could watch the flow of people coming and going, and Erin went up in the elevator alone.
We had only been there a few minutes when Dean Treadwell appeared. “Here we go,” I said softly. I got up, motioned Koko to come with me, and we followed him across the lobby to the elevators. We stood waiting in a small crowd, and when an elevator arrived we all got in the same car. Up we went, picking up doctors and nurses until we were all packed tightly together. Dean stared at the floor. The door opened and he got out. We were a few steps behind him as he moved down the hall. I didn’t know till that moment what I would do, but suddenly the sound of Erin’s voice moved me to his side.
“Hey, Dean.”
He stopped and looked at me but I didn’t seem to register. “How’d you know me?”
“I’m a psychic. I looked at your face and you looked like a Dean.”
“That’s interesting,” he said, but the flat tone of voice said it really wasn’t. “‘Scuse me now, I’ve got to go see somebody.”
I put a hand on his arm. “Uh-uh.”
His eyes opened wider.
“He’s got company,” I said. “One visitor at a time.”
He coughed that raspy smoker’s cough I had first heard on the telephone. “Who the hell are you?” he said, coughing into his fist. “You don’t look like any doctor.”
“That’s misleading. I took my Ph.D. in mayhem and hell-raising.”
“So you’re a wise guy.” His eyes narrowed. “Haven’t I seen you before?” He looked at Koko, searching for help.
“This is Ma Barker,” I said. “Ma, this is Dean Treadwell.”
“Hi, Dean,” Koko said with a perfect edge of joyous malice. That was too good to have been intentional, but I winked at her.
Dean patted his shirt pocket for a smoke, then seemed to remember he was in a hospital. “You talk like crazy people,” he said.
“I am a little crazy, Dean. I really get crazy when things don’t go my way. Right now, for instance, I’d like you to go quietly downstairs with us. When my friend comes down, we can all walk quietly up the street till we find a nice, quiet coffee shop. Then we can sit down and have us a quiet talk. I like things quiet. You got any problem with any of that?”
“I don’t guess so,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell you want with me.”
“That’s what we’ll find out, Dean,” I said, and we all went downstairs and waited quietly.
Erin came down almost on our heels. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Dean, he owns that bookstore in Baltimore. Dean, this is Lizzie Borden.”
“Lizzie Borden my ass. Who the hell do you think you’re fooling?”
“Nobody, but let’s leave it at that. And watch your language, there are ladies here.”
“I know who you are. I don’t know these two but I know you. I’ve been trying to remember your voice and it just came to me.”
“Come on, let’s walk up the street.”
He started to balk. I stepped on his foot and frosted him with a look. He said, “I don’t have to go anywhere with you,” but I pinched his arm hard enough to hurt and he went. We found a drugstore on Rutledge Avenue and I ordered coffees except for Koko, who had some awful-looking carrot juice concoction.
“It’s good your memory’s working, Dean,” I said. “I need to ask you some things.”
Again we had to go through a certain dance but I expected that. The conversation went like this.
“Tell me about Archer.”
“Archer who?”
“You know Archer who.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“He’s the schmuck you were going to see in the hospital, so knock off the stupid routine.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How are your kidneys, Dean?”
“What does that mean?”
“You look like a guy who needs to go to the bathroom. C’mon, I’ll go with you.”
“If you think I’m going in any back room with you, you’re nuts.”
“Then tell me about Archer, and remember I haven’t got all day.”
“Archer’s a customer.”
“I see. Do you always travel all around the country with your customers?”
“If they pay my freight I do.”
“So Archer’s paying you. What’s he paying you for?”
“You’re a bookseller, you know I can’t answer that. That violates all kinds of ethics.”
“Dean’s going ethical on us,” I said to the ladies.
“Would you answer that question?” Dean said.
“No, but I might kick your ass right here in this drugstore if you don’t.”
Erin cleared her throat loudly. I looked in her eyes and said, “Why don’t you ladies meet me back at the hotel. Take the car, I’ll walk.”
Koko said, “Did you ever get one of them two-by-fours, Lizzie?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean said.
I said, “It means that unless you give us some information, you could be in real trouble. Liz can tell
you about it.”
I threw it to her without warning and instantly she began shooting from the hip, part bluff, making it up as she went along. “You’ve been conspiring with a book thief, Dean. We’re not talking about nickels and dimes, this is a work of major historical importance, worth at least way up in five figures. You know what it is. This can bring you serious grief in Maryland, Colorado, or South Carolina. It’s known as grand theft pretty much everywhere, but it does have a bright side: they’ll come feed you three times a day and you won’t have to worry about making a living for a long time.”
“I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”
She made a “too bad” motion with her eyes. “Then I guess we’ve got nothing more to say to each other.”
He fished for his cigarettes but I pointed to a no smoking sign just above his head. “That stuff’ll kill you, Dean. Stinks up your books too. I had a guy bring in Hemingway’s signed limited one time and I couldn’t even buy it. He was a chain-smoker and you could smell his book clear across the room.”
“Yeah, yeah, spare me the fucking lecture. And you.” He nodded at Erin. “Why don’t you try saying what you’ve got to say in plain English?”
“Your friend Archer has a hot book. We have good reason to believe you’re mixed up in it. Is that plain enough for you?”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“With what? I thought you didn’t know what we were talking about.”
“I had nothing to do with any theft that either did occur or might have occurred.”
“I’ve had enough of this bird,” I said. “Let’s stick a fork in him.”
“Just calm down,” Erin said. “Give the man a chance. If I can’t persuade him to be reasonable, we’ll see him in court.”
“What court?” Dean said.
“That’s a question of jurisdiction, isn’t it? Depends on where a theft occurred and where the hot goods are disposed. Doesn’t matter to me, I’ll go after you wherever I can.”
“Let’s get one thing straight. I never did anything illegal.”
“You don’t get anything straight just by saying it. You can tell it to a judge, but I doubt if your word will meet any rules of evidence. No offense, Dean, I know you mean well.”
They all sat quietly. I commented on the rain, the heat, the touristy things: the houses along Rainbow Row, the fact that we had missed Charleston’s fabled azaleas at the peak of their glory. Erin finished her coffee and Koko drank her carrot stuff.
“We’re leaving,” Erin said. “This was your chance and it’s slipping away.”
“I’m not worried,” Dean said. “Archer says the book is his.”
“Archer lies.”
“Well, I believe him. I was never told anything about any theft.”
“That could be a mitigating factor. If you cooperate.”
“Cooperate in what? You’re no goddamn prosecutor; who the hell are you?”
“This is who I am. I represent the injured party. My recommendation in any proceeding will carry some weight, maybe a lot. Are you going to help us or not?”
“Depends on what you want.”
She took out a notebook and a ballpoint pen. “Answer my questions. Then read what I’ve written and sign it; we’ll get a copy made and you get to keep that.”
He didn’t like it. He shook his head and sat coughing.
“Dean?”
“I’ll tell you right now, you won’t like what I’ve got to say. I’ve got nothing that puts Archer in any kind of bad light.”
“Just tell the truth. That’s all I want.”
“Yeah, right. You’re like everybody else. You can’t get along with him so you want to sandbag him.”
A moment later he said, “You’ve got to understand something. Archer’s special. He’s not like you and me. There’s no use talking if you don’t understand that.”
“I do understand it,” Erin said. “I’ve read his books.”
He looked at her for most of a minute. Then he began to talk.
Long before he had moved to South Carolina, Hal Archer had discovered Treadwell’s. As a teenager in the late forties, he had spent time at his parents’ summer home in Baltimore and had bought books from Dean’s father.
Carl and Dean were kids then, working in the store, stocking the shelves, moving stuff, whatever needed doing. One day Archer said something to Dean and that’s how it started. They were about the same age, and whenever he came in they’d pass the time of day. Sometimes Archer would sit on one of the chairs upstairs and tell young Dean Treadwell what a great writer he was going to be.
“Nobody believed in him then, nobody but me. And I had no doubt at all.”
Dean was Archer’s first cold audience. By then Archer had begun to drift away from his few boyhood friends, even the one who later became a judge: “I think he became afraid of Huxley’s judgment; they had been too close, they went back too far, and Huxley was always too kind. What Archer hated most was being patronized, damned by faint praise. Me, I had no reason to care whether his stuff was any good or not. I was the unwashed reader he craved, and right from the start I knew he was a good one.”
Archer began coming to the store with pages of manuscript. He didn’t want any so-called constructive criticism; what he was dying for was hero worship, adulation: he wanted to be someone’s idol, and Dean was simply in awe of his talent.
“I gave him something he needed and he gave me something I loved. He never doubted my sincerity; he had no reason to because it was real. You couldn’t fool him, I knew he would sense any lie right away, but I never had to lie. He had an ability to create a world, he was like God, I never got tired of hearing him read. I loved seeing him come into the store. I loved every line he wrote. Still do.
“We had to hide from my old man. He was a mean son of a bitch about slackers; if he caught me dreaming or slacking off, he’d whip my ass good. So we went way upstairs, Archer and me, where the old man couldn’t go. He had asthma, he couldn’t climb those stairs, and sometimes on Saturdays when the store got busy the old bastard just forgot I was alive.
“I could kill the whole afternoon, dreaming with Archer.”
As time went on, Archer found it difficult and finally intolerable to be with Lee. It wasn’t that Lee ever did anything to make him feel that way. “It’s just that the judge had done everything right in his life and it seemed like Hal had fucked up his own six ways from Sunday.”
He raised an eyebrow at Erin and she smiled, waving off the language.
“Hal needed me. I think he still does. He never got a break from anybody.”
“And by the time he did get a real break…”
“He was full of anger. He even wanted to tell the Pulitzer committee to keep their fuckin‘ prize, shove it up their pretentious asses.” He coughed. “I talked him out of that.”
“Best thing you ever did for him.”
“The best thing I ever did was just believe in him. He sure hasn’t had a happy life. He thinks everybody who came along after the prize was a fair-weather friend.”
“He had Lee. He always had Lee. Lee always wanted the best for him, even if Archer didn’t know or believe it. Now look what’s happening to them.”
“I think there’s some old bitterness there. The judge never took a wrong step. While Archer was scratching to keep body and soul together, Huxley’s legal career was upwardly mobile all the way, always on the fast track.”
“That wasn’t Lee’s fault.”
“Did I say it was? But it does get old if you’re on the opposite end of the stick.”
Erin paused, then said, “Tell me about the book.”
“Nothin‘ to tell. Hal says it’s his and I believe him.”
“Did he ever tell you where he got it?”
“No, and I wouldn’t ask. Tell you this much: I don’t think he stole it.”
“Deny it if you want to, but don’t take that too far, it might come back and bite you.”
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“I don’t know anything about it and I don’t want to hear it. Put that down on your paper: Dean Treadwell’s heard every story ever floated about what a bastard Hal Archer is—I don’t need yours too. Look, can we get out of this goddamn place? If I don’t get me a smoke I’m gonna start punching something.”
Out on the street, Dean lit up and we watched him smoke his weed in three mighty drags. “That’s all I got for you, lady,” he said. “If you don’t like it, go ahead and sue me.”
“Thank you. I think I’m done for now.”
“I’ve got a couple of questions,” I said. “Tell me about your brother.”
“Carl’s a flaming asshole but that’s got nothing to do with me. We each inherited fifty percent of the store, but in real life we don’t have much to do with each other.”
“He’s got some bad friends. One of them burned this lady’s house down. You know anything about that?”
“Hell no, but it doesn’t surprise me. That’s why I stay away from him. Ten years ago he started gambling and going around with those hoods. He won big one year but he squandered that trying to impress a pack of thugs. Now he’s got no money left and that gun-sel is calling the shots. Frankly, I don’t give a damn what they do to him, the little bastard deserves everything he gets. I’d get out of the store and let him have it, if I just knew what else to do.”
He lit a new smoke from the old and threw the butt into the gutter. “I’ve been in the book business since I was twelve years old. I’m fifty-five now and I’m tired of bullshit. This used to be a great way to make a living. Now it’s like everything else, polluted with bullshit and fast-buck artists. You’re a bookman, Janeway, but you’re fairly young yet. What’ll you do when the life goes sour?”
He took another massive drag and two contrails of smoke poured out of his nose, obliterating his face. “Your silence says it all, pal. For a bookman there isn’t anything else.”
At the car, Erin said, “That wasn’t exactly what we expected, was it?”
“I don’t know. What did you expect?”
“Almost anything but for Archer to turn into some deity.”
“What about Archer? You didn’t have time for much of an audience with him.”
