by Ed Gorman
“I apologize for Dale,” he said. “I’m his dad. He ain’t the trustworthiest kid around.”
“No apology needed,” said Jim. “But he’s no kid.”
“He swore there was nothin’ missing from that bag.”
“It was all there,” I said.
Badger jammed the gloves down into a pocket. “Jason says you’re good people. But I would appreciate it if you didn’t offer him no more work. And if he comes by, if you would just send him back home.”
“To get beat up?” said Jim.
“That’s not an everyday occurrence,” said Badger. “We keep the family business in the family.”
“There’s the law.”
“You aren’t it.”
Badger had the same old-ice eyes as Dale. There was sawdust on his shirt and bits of wood stuck to his bootlaces, and he smelled like a cord of fresh-cut pine. “Stay away from my sons. Maybe you should move back to California. I’m sure they got plenty a’need for bleedin’ heart know-it-alls like you.”
We left the party early. When we were almost home, Jim saw a truck parked off in the trees just before our driveway. He caught the shine of the grill in his headlights when we made the turn. I don’t know how he saw that thing, but he still has twenty-fifteen vision for distance, so he’s always seeing things that I miss. A wind had come up, so maybe it parted the trees at just the right second.
He cut the lights and stopped well away from our house. The outdoor security lights were on, and I could see the glimmer of the pond and the branches swaying. Jim reached across and drew his .380 automatic from its holster under the seat.
“We can go down the road and call the sheriff,” I said.
“This is our home, Sally. I’m leaving the keys in.”
“Be careful, Jim. We didn’t retire up here for this.”
I didn’t know a person could get in and out of a truck so quietly. He walked down the driveway with the gun in his right hand and a flashlight in the other. He had that balanced walk, the one that meant he was ready for things. Jim’s not a big guy, six feet, though, and still pretty solid.
Then I saw Dale backing around from the direction of the front porch, hunched over with a green gas can in one hand. Jim yelled, and Dale turned and saw him, then he dropped the can and got something out of his pocket, and a wall of flames huffed up along the house. Dale lit out around the house and disappeared.
I climbed over the console and drove the truck fast down the driveway and almost skidded on the gravel into the fire. Had to back it up, rocks flying everywhere. I got the extinguisher off its clip behind the seat and walked along the base of the house, blasting the white powder down where the gas was. A bird’s nest up under an eave had caught fire, so I gave that a shot too. Could hear the chicks cheeping. I couldn’t tell the sound of the extinguisher from the roaring in my ears.
After that I walked around, stamping out little hot spots on the ground and on the wall of the house. The wind was cold and damp, and it helped. My heart was pounding and my breath was caught up high in my throat and I’m not sure I could have said one word to anyone, not even Jim.
An hour later Jim came back, alone and panting. He signaled me back into our truck without a word. He put the flashlight and automatic in the console, then backed out of the driveway fast, his breath making fog on the rear window. There was sweat running down his face, and he smelled like trees and exertion.
“He’ll come for his truck,” Jim said.
Then he straightened onto the road and made his way to the turnoff where Dale’s truck waited in the trees. We parked away from the Ram Charger, in a place where we wouldn’t be too obvious.
We sat there until sunrise, then until seven. There were a couple of blankets and some water back in the king cab, and I’m glad we had all that. A little after seven, Dale came into view through the windshield, slogging through the forest with his arms around himself, shivering.
Jim waited until Dale saw us, then he flung himself from the truck, drawing down with his .380 and hollering, “Police officer,” and for Dale to stop. Dale did stop, then he turned and disappeared back into a thick stand of cottonwoods. Jim crashed in after him.
It took half an hour for him to come back. He had Dale out in front of him with his hands on his head, marching him like a POW. Their clothes were dirty and torn up. But Jim’s gun was in his belt, so he must not have thought Dale was going to run for it again.
“You drive,” Jim said to me. “Dale, you get in the backseat.”
I looked at Jim with a question, but all he said was “Coeur d’Alene.”
Nobody said a word to Coeur d’Alene. It wasn’t far. Jim got on his cell when we reached the city and got the address for army recruitment.
We parked outside.
“Tell Sally what you decided to do about all this,” said Jim.
“I can join the army or get arrested by your husband,” said Dale. “I’m joining up.”
“That’s a good thing, Dale,” I said.
“Name me one good thing about it.”
“It’ll get you out of trouble for a few years, for starters,” I said.
We walked him into the recruitment office. There were flags and posters and a sergeant with a tight shirt and the best creased pants I’ve ever seen in my life. He was baffled by us at first, then Jim explained that we were friends of the family, and Dale had decided join up but his mom and dad weren’t able to be here for it. Which didn’t explain why Dale’s and Jim’s clothes were dirty and more than a little torn up. The sergeant nodded. He’d seen this scene before.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Nineteen.”
“Then we’ve got no problems. Notta one.”
There were lots of forms and questions. Dale made it clear that he was ready right then, he was ready to be signed up and go over to Iraq, try his luck on some ragheads. He tried a joke about not having to cut his hair off, and the sergeant laughed falsely.
Then the sergeant said they’d have to do a routine background check before the physical, would take about half an hour, we could come back if we wanted or sit right where we were.
So we went outside. The wind was back down and the day was warming up. Across the street was a breakfast place. The sun reflected off the window in a big orange rectangle, and you could smell the bacon and toast.
“I’m starved,” said Dale.
“Me too,” said Jim. “Sal? Breakfast?”
We ate. Nothing about Dale reminded me of JJ, but everything did. I hoped he’d find something over in that blood-soaked desert that he hadn’t found here.
And I hoped that he’d be back to tell us what it was.
T. JEFFERSON PARKER was born in Los Angeles and has lived in Southern California his whole life. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine. He began his writing career as a reporter and published his first novel in 1985. He is one of only three people to have won the Edgar Award for best mystery twice.
The Bookbinder’s Apprentice
BY MARTIN EDWARDS
As Joly closed his book, he was conscious of someone watching him. A feeling he relished, warm as the sun burning high above Campo Santi Apostoli. Leaning back, he stretched his arms, a languorous movement that allowed his eyes to roam behind dark wrap-around Gucci glasses.
A tall, stooped man in a straw hat and white suit was limping towards the row of red benches, tapping a long wooden walking stick against the paving slabs, somehow avoiding a collision with the small, whooping children on scooters and tricycles. Joly sighed. He wasn’t unaccustomed to the attentions of older men, but soon they became tedious. Yet the impeccable manners instilled at one of England’s minor public schools never deserted him; and besides, he was thirsty; a drink would be nice, provided someone else was paying. The benches were crowded with mothers talking while their offspring scrambled and shouted over the covered well and a group of sweaty tourists listening to their guide’s machine-gun description of the frescoes wi
thin the church. As the man drew near, Joly squeezed up on the bench to make a small place beside him.
“Why, thank you.” American accent, a courtly drawl. “It is good to rest one’s feet in the middle of the day.”
Joly guessed the man had been studying him from the small bridge over the canal, in front of the row of shops. He smiled, didn’t not speak. In a casual encounter, his rule was not to give anything away too soon.
The man considered the book on Joly’s lap. “Death in Venice. Fascinating.”
“He writes well,” Joly allowed.
“I meant the volume itself, not the words within it.” The man waved towards the green kiosk in front of them. Jostling in the window with the magazines and panoramic views of the Canal Grande were the gaudy covers of translated Georgette Heyer and Conan the Barbarian. “Though your taste in reading matter is plainly more sophisticated than the common herd’s. But it is the book as objet d’art that fascinates me most these days, I must confess. May I take a closer look?”
Without awaiting a reply, he picked up the novel, weighing it in his hand with the fond assurance of a Manhattan jeweller caressing a heavy diamond. The book was bound in green cloth, with faded gilt lettering on the grubby spine. Someone had spilled ink on the front cover and an insect had nibbled at the early pages.
“Ah, the first English edition by Secker. I cannot help but be impressed by your discernment. Most young fellows wishing to read Thomas Mann would content themselves with a cheap paperback.”
“It is a little out of the ordinary, that accounts for its appeal. I like unusual things, certainly.” Joly let the words hang in the air for several seconds. “As for cost, I fear I don’t have deep pockets. I picked the copy up from a second hand dealer’s stall on the Embankment for rather less than I would have paid in a paperback shop. It’s worth rather more than the few pence I spent, but it’s hardly valuable, I’m afraid. The condition is poor, as you can see. All the same, I’d rather own a first edition than a modern reprint without a trace of character.”
The man proferred a thin, weathered hand. “You are a fellow after my own heart, then! A love of rare books, it represents a bond between us. My name is Sanborn, by the way, Darius Sanborn.”
“Joly Maddox.”
“Joly? Not short for Jolyon, by any chance?”
“You guessed it. My mother loved The Forsyte Saga.”
“Ah, so the fondness for good books is inherited. Joly, it is splendid to make your acquaintance.”
Joly ventured an apologetic cough and made a show of consulting his fake Rolex as the church bell chimed the hour. “Well, I suppose I’d better be running along.”
Sanborn murmured, ‘Oh, but do you have to go so soon? It is a hot day, would you care to have a drink with me?”
A pantomime of hesitation. “Well, I’m tempted. I’m not due to meet up with my girlfriend till she finishes work in another hour …”
A tactical move, to mention Lucia. Get the message over to Sanborn, just so there was no misunderstanding. The American did not seem in the least put out, as his leathery face creased into a broad smile. Joly thought he was like one of the pigeons in the square, swooping the moment it glimpsed the tiniest crumb.
“Then you have time aplenty. Come with me, I know a little spot a few metres away where the wine is as fine as the skin of a priceless first edition.”
There was no harm in it. Adjusting his pace to the old man’s halting gait, he followed him over the bridge, past the shop with all the cacti outside. Their weird shapes always amused him. Sanborn noticed his sideways glance. He was sharp, Joly thought, he wasn’t a fool.
“As you say, the unusual intrigues you.”
Joly nodded. He wouldn’t have been startled if the old man had suggested going to a hotel instead of a bar for a drink, but thankfully the dilemma of how to respond to a proposition never arose. After half a dozen twists and turns through a maze of alleyways, they reached an ill-lit bar and stepped inside. After the noise and bustle of the campo, the place was as quiet as a church in the Ghetto. No one stood behind the counter and, straining his eyes to adjust from the glare outside, Joly spied only a single customer. In a corner at the back, where no beam from the sun could reach, a small wizened man in a corduroy jacket sat at a table, a half-empty wine glass in front of him. Sanborn limped up to the man and indicated his guest with a wave of the stick.
“Zuichini, meet Joly Maddox. A fellow connoisseur of the unusual. Including rare books.”
The man at the table had a hooked nose and small dark cruel eyes. His face resembled a carnival mask, with a plague doctor’s beak, long enough to keep disease at bay. He extended his hand. It was more like a claw, Joly thought. And it was trembling, although not from nerves — for his toothless smile conveyed a strange, almost malevolent glee. Zuichini must suffer from some form of palsy, perhaps Parkinson’s disease. Joly, young and fit, knew little of sickness.
“You wonder why I make specific mention of books, Joly?” Sanborn asked with a rhetorical flourish. “It is because my good friend here is the finest bookbinder in Italy. Zuichini is not a household name, not even here in Venice, but his mastery of his craft, I assure you, is second to none. As a collector of unique treasures, few appreciate his talents more than I.”
A simian waiter shuffled out from a doorway, bearing wine and three large glasses. He did not utter a word, but plainly Sanborn and Zuichini were familiar customers. Sanborn did not spare the man’s retreating back a glance as he poured.
“You will taste nothing finer in Italy, I assure you. Liquid silk.”
Joly took a sip and savoured the bouquet. Sanborn was right about the wine, but what did he want? Everyone wanted something.
“You are here as a tourist?” the American asked. “Who knows, you might follow my example. I first came to this city for a week. That was nineteen years ago and now I could not tear myself away if my life depended on it.”
Joly explained that he’d arrived in Venice a month earlier. He had no money, but he knew how to blag. For a few days he’d dressed himself up as Charlie Chaplin and become a living statue, miming for tourists in the vicinity of San Zaccaria and earning enough from the coins they threw into his tin to keep himself fed and watered. But he’d hated standing still and after a few hours even the narcissistic pleasure of posing for photographs began to pall. One afternoon, taking a break in a cheap pizzeria, he’d fallen into conversation with Lucia when she served him with a capuccino. She was a stranger in the city as well; she’d left her native Taormina after the death of her parents and drifted around the country ever since. What they had in common was that neither of them could settle to anything. That night she’d taken him to her room in Dorsoduro and he’d stayed with her ever since.
“Excellent!” Sanborn applauded as he refilled his new young friend’s glass. “What is your profession?”
Joly said he was still searching for something to which he would care to devote himself, body and soul. After uni, he’d drifted around. His degree was in English, but a career in teaching or the civil service struck him as akin to living death. He liked to think of himself as a free spirit, but he enjoyed working with his hands and for six months he’d amused himself as a puppeteer, performing for children’s parties and at municipal fun days. When that became wearisome, he’d drifted across the Channel. He’d spent three months in France, twice as long in Spain, soon he planned to try his luck in Rome.
“I wondered about learning a trade as a boat-builder, I spent a day in the squero talking to a man who builds gondolas.” He risked a cheeky glance at Zuichini’s profile. “I even thought about making masks ….”
“An over-subscribed profession in this city,” Sanborn interrupted. “I understand why you didn’t pursue it.”
“Well, who knows? One of these days, I may come back here to try my luck.”
“You have family?”
“My parents dead, my sister emigrated to Australia where she married some layabout who
looked like a surf god. So I have no ties, I can please myself.”
“And your girlfriend?” Sanborn asked. “Any chance of wedding bells?”
Joly couldn’t help laughing. Not the effect of the wine, heady though it was, but the very idea that he and Lucia might have a future together. She was a pretty prima donna, only good for one thing, and although he didn’t say it, the contemplative look in Sanborn’s pale grey eyes made it clear that he’d got the message.
“You and she must join us for dinner, be my guests, it would be a pleasure.”
“Oh no, really, we couldn’t impose …”
Sanborn dismissed the protestations with a flick of his hand. He was old and deliberate and yet Joly recognised this was a man accustomed to getting his own way. “Please. I insist. I know a little seafood restaurant, they serve food so wonderful you will never forget it. Am I right, Zuichini?”
The wizened man cackled and nodded. A wicked gleam lit his small eyes.
“Well, I’m not sure …”
But within a couple of minutes it was agreed and Joly stumbled out into the glare of the sun with the American’s good wishes ringing in his ears. Zuichini’s small, plague-mask head merely nodded farewell; he’d uttered no more than two dozen words in the space of half an hour. Joly blinked, unaccustomed to wine that hit so hard; but the pleasure was worth the pain.
When he met up with Lucia, she made a fuss about the dinner. It was in her nature to complain, she regarded it as a duty not to agree to anything he suggested without making him struggle.
“With two old men? Why would we wish to do this? After tomorrow we will be apart, perhaps forever. Are you tired with me already?”
Exaggeration was her stock-in-trade, but he supposed she was right and that they would not see each other again after he left the city. The plan was for him to travel to Rome and for her to join him there in a fortnight’s time when she’d received her month’s pay from the restaurant. He’d arranged it like that so there was an opportunity for their relationship to die a natural death. He hated break-up scenes. It would be so easy for them not to get together again in the Eternal City. If he wanted to return to Venice, he would rather do so free from encumbrances, there were plenty more fish in the sea. As for their argument, in truth she found the prospect of a slap-up meal at a rich man’s expense as appealing as he did and after twenty minutes she stopped grumbling and started to deliberate about what she might wear.
