Death by the Book jsm-1

by Lenny Bartulin

  Business was slow that day. Nobody came in and saw Jack crawl over behind the counter and lift himself up into a chair. Nobody got him a couple of aspirins and a glass of water, or a stiff drink and a cigarette. Nobody helped him clear up the mess. And nobody made him chicken soup that night either.

  But that was okay. Jack Susko could take care of himself.

  ~4~

  Lois had appeared in the lane behind Susko Books about six months ago. Her right paw was off-white, like a dirty sock, the rest of her was a cheap, stripy ginger. Her ears were stubby and her tail was too long. Just a run-of-the-mill short hair, but she flounced around like Marlene Dietrich. No name, no past, and nothing to lose. A free agent with time on her paws. Jack made the mistake of tossing her some bacon out of his breakfast roll: after that, she was there every morning. He could not remember what had possessed him to take her home. She was a bedraggled thing, with no breeding or manners. She had the gall to refuse tinned pet food. But Jack could not deny there was something about her. He thought it was style. He never guessed that it was trouble.

  It was a little before 6.00 a.m. Jack pushed Lois off his head and got up.

  In the lounge room he turned on the heater. Lois stood in front of it and waited for the warm air to start blowing. Their ground-floor flat in Leinster Street, Paddington, was comfortable, but cold in winter. It was part of a large, double-fronted terrace that did not receive a lot of natural light. The last time it had received anything was a paint job in 1955. Its main features were a shabby ambience, high moulded ceilings and some fancy ironwork. It was apparently a fine example of the architecture of its day. Considering the rent for all this unique charm, Jack probably should have paid it more attention.

  He sat down in his Eames lounge chair and pulled on a pair of socks. Along with his small collection of blues and jazz vinyl, the chair was his prize possession, a 1970s number 670 that he bought at a garage sale last year while trawling for books. It was missing its base and the footrest, and the leather had a couple of scratches in it, but for seventy-five dollars he could not believe his luck. He happily spent five hundred getting it repaired. It was the most comfortable chair in the universe. Jack yawned. Maybe he should sit in it all day.

  He went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water, dropped a Berocca into it and lit a cigarette while the thing fizzed. Normally he would wait until later for his first cigarette. Each day he had been trying to beat the previous day’s time, even if only by a minute. He was getting close to 8.00 a.m. But not today. Jack did not feel so good. He struck a match and drew deeply.

  The damp Saturday morning streets were empty, except for some late-night boys and girls huddled under leaky awnings. They shivered, looked up and down the street, and silently wondered what to do. A few cabs drove by, searching for a last fare. Walk signals ticked loudly at intersections and bins overflowed with rubbish. Everything seemed to be suffering from a mild hangover, the sky, the buildings, even the trees. Rain drifted down in a grey mist.

  Jack walked along Oxford Street. Punched in the gut. He felt the bruise to his ego. The worst thing about a sucker punch was the thinking afterwards: you should have done this, you should have done that. And the whole time knowing you had done nothing.

  In the city he bought the weekend paper and a pack of cigarettes. He stopped at a small café in the Strand Arcade. It was a warm, timber-lined place with a few tables on one side and a row of booths on the other. Framed reproductions of old coffee and tea advertisements hung on the walls. Jack removed his coat and scarf and slipped into one of the booths. The waitress came over to take his order. Her honey blonde hair was done up in a loose bun at the back of her head. She was young and plump, her brown eyes were bright and her cheeks rosy. She made Jack feel a little better. He ordered a ham-and-cheese croissant and a long black.

  A story on page four of the paper caught his eye. It was about a GP who had been supplying his receptionist with drugs. After everybody went home they liked to stay behind in the surgery and relax together, talk a bit and pop a few pills. Have some fun. Make a couple of home movies if they felt like it. Everything was going fine until one found its way onto the net. It was popular with a lot of people but none of them worked for the Medical Association of New South Wales.

  Doctor Ian Durst. The name flashed into Jack’s mind. The newspaper story had reminded him of a similar episode about five or six months ago, involving Mr Fake Tan of the Sucker Punches, formerly Doctor Ian Durst, gynaecologist, Double Bay. He had been struck from the medical register after a sex, drugs and money scandal. It was on the evening news: his photograph had been in the papers. That was why Jack thought he had seen Durst before, when he glimpsed his face in the car in Kasprowicz’s driveway.

  Durst. He said the name in a low voice. It sounded like a town in Austria. Or a type of sausage. Son of a bitch.

  Jack paid for breakfast. It was nearly 8.30 a.m. Outside, the drizzly rain had stopped but the wind had picked up and whipped around in annoying gusts. Traffic was quickly filling the streets as Jack hurried on to Susko Books. He wanted to call Brendan MacAllister before opening up. Jack’s former boss at MacAllister’s Old Books knew a little something about everything that went on in old Sydney Town.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Jack.”

  A pause. “Jack?” MacAllister put on an exaggerated English accent. “I am sorry, but I do not believe I know anybody by that name.”

  “Like that, is it?” said Jack.

  “I am sorry, sir, but I suspect that you may have dialled the wrong number.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to send you a written apology before you’ll speak to me?”

  MacAllister laughed. “You can write?”

  “You can read?”

  Brendan MacAllister was a big man: fifty-five and fit, with dark red hair everywhere except his scalp. Handsome in a bald, bristly kind of way. His laugh was deep and resonant. Cups and cutlery shook if he happened to be at a table when something struck him as funny.

  “Nice of you to call,” said MacAllister. “I thought you were dead.”

  “It’s been a busy couple of months.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Then in a Scottish accent: “Did I not treat you like a son?”

  “I was an abused child, your Honour.”

  “Oh, that’s why you’re ringing: blackmail. How much?”

  “Hundred thousand ought to keep me quiet.”

  “Sure, sure. Cheque okay?”

  “Only if it’s in a bag with the cash.”

  “Funny bastard. Hang on …”

  Jack waited. He flicked through a pile of mail on the counter. He could hear MacAllister calling out to his wife.

  “Right,” he said, back on the phone. “My coffee shall be here directly.”

  “How’s Denise?”

  “Demanding as ever. What’s new with you?”

  “I’m getting married.”

  MacAllister grunted. “Really? What’s her name?”

  “Annabelle Kasprowicz.”

  “A millionaire’s daughter, no less! I presume you’ve met the father-in-law.”

  “A gentleman and a scholar.”

  “In the fifth rung of hell.”

  “Know him well?”

  “Used to be a regular. World War II stuff. Especially keen on anything Nazi. Funny, being Jewish, family run out of Poland, all that. Sold him some diaries by an SS man last year. Didn’t even want to bargain.”

  Jack tapped the counter with the edge of an envelope. “What do you know about his brother, Edward Kass?”

  MacAllister slurped some coffee. “Renowned poet. Recluse. Broke. And judging by his poetry, pretty pissed off about it.”

  “Money the family rift then?”

  “The perennial rich bastards’ classic. Back in the seventies Edward took big brother Hammond to court over the family millions. He didn’t get any.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Plus zero. You know mamma and papa Kasprowicz actu
ally used to live in the same street as my parents, back in the fifties.”

  “Anything else, apart from the court case?”

  “A few days after the trial, Kass assaulted Kasprowicz with a fucking lamp. Hammond had to go to hospital, I don’t know, stitches to the head, concussion, that sort of thing. And Kass got a suspended sentence. Aggravated assault or something. Or did I get that from the television?”

  “Nice family.” Jack picked up a pen and started doodling on the back of the envelope. “And now, years later, Kasprowicz is after as many copies of his brother’s books as he can get his hands on.”

  “That’s what he’s after?”

  “Yep.”

  MacAllister scoffed. “The rich are weird.” He drank more coffee. “Is he paying well? Just take his money and don’t worry about it too much.”

  Jack coloured in a rectangle but went over the edge and had to turn it into a square. “Something else,” he said. “What can you tell me about Ian Durst?”

  “The famous gynaecologist? Jesus, you’re right in there, aren’t you?”

  “I remember he got done for something last year.”

  “You know he’s Annabelle Kasprowicz’s husband, don’t you? Or ex, I’m not sure if they’re divorced.”

  “I don’t think she likes him anymore.”

  “Why would she?” said MacAllister. “He’s the dirtiest dog in the pound.”

  “What happened?”

  “The usual. Champagne, cocaine, so and so’s perfect-breasted wife and her blonde best friend, the handsome doctor with hands the devil gave him in a special deal, and all after-hours in the surgery rooms. They’ve got those stirrups, you see.”

  “Nice.”

  “Beautiful. I’ve got some myself!”

  Jack wrote DURST on the envelope and then scribbled it out. “The good doctor spent all day looking between rich women’s legs,” he said. “Maybe in the end it just drove him a little crazy.”

  “Having too much fun. And you know what happens when you have too much fun.” MacAllister switched to a Scottish accent again. “My dear old mother used to say, Where laughter starts, tears are sure to follow.”

  “What was the scandal?”

  “Well, they were having so much fun they stopped thinking altogether. They threw the colours in with the whites and suddenly everything turned grey,” said MacAllister. “Where there’s sex and drugs, there’s always money. Seems the blonde knew a banker who knew a lawyer who knew the wife of a CEO who bought some shares and made some quick dividends. Too quick.”

  “Patience is a virtue.”

  “The whole thing was bent like a giant banana. And it all came out because a monkey called Durst got caught in a cubicle bending over a high-heeled babe with a hundred-dollar roll up her nose and his smooth hand down her pants. And then they all had none.”

  “Anyone else get into trouble?”

  “Businessmen are allowed to play, but not doctors. Durst was the only one who ended up with none. And he’d actually made his money from working. The rest couldn’t lose it if they dropped it out of a plane over the Pacific Ocean in a hurricane.”

  “Money clings to them like a birthmark.”

  “Yeah, and they’ve always got one the size of a frying pan. Mine’s in my crack and you can’t see it with the naked eye.” MacAllister sighed. “You know I met Durst once. Real arrogant bastard, all slicked-back hair, aftershave and perfect teeth.”

  “What was he after?”

  “Gift for his wife. Anniversary, I think. Kasprowicz must have suggested it because he had no idea.”

  “Did he buy anything?”

  “Yeah, a copy of The Great Gatsby. It was the only title he recognised out of my first editions. He said, oh yeah, Robert Redford wrote this. For fuck’s sake!”

  “Now, now, Brendan,” said Jack. “Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.”

  “According to Fitzgerald.” The telephone brushed against his beard and the sound was like radio static. “Not a bad little copy though,” he said wistfully. “British first edition from Chatto & Windus. Okay, the dust jacket was average and the book was a bit rough round the edges, but nice for two and a half grand.”

  “Thanks. You always know the good stuff. You should write a book.”

  “Twenty-five years serving the rich and bored, my friend. This is nothing. Run-of-the-mill scandal. There’s much, much more. If I wrote it all down it’d be longer than the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

  ~5~

  Jack spent most of Sunday afternoon in a small, musty attic room in Balmain, all spider webs and dust and dejected cardboard boxes. The deceased estate: another feature of the second-hand dealer’s lot. Looking through dead people’s crap, driven by the slim possibility of finding something of value.

  The final haul was meagre: a small box of literary pretension from the 1950s and 1960s. Man and His Symbols by Jung; John Barthes’ Giles Goat Boy and The Sotweed Factor; the trilogy Nexus, Sexus and Plexus by Henry Miller; Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins; The Unquiet Grave by Palinurus; and Meetings with Remarkable Men by G.I. Gurdjieff.

  There was an elaborate bookplate with a striped coat of arms inside the front cover of each volume: From the Library of Harold J. Cummins. Obviously Harry had been all class. The books were in excellent condition. Jack wondered if he had ever actually read any of them.

  Only one little volume really interested him. It was the last book he found, right at the bottom of a crumpled cardboard box, squashed under the weight of a small horde of old literary journals and magazines. Jack supposed it was not too much of a coincidence. Because trawling books was what he did, because at any given time, with any box full of books, the odds were there. That Jack had met the author’s brother two days ago had nothing to do with nothing.

  The front cover was dark blue. The title and the author’s name were in grey typeface. Below, in the bottom third of the cover, was a reproduction of Hundertwasser’s Genesis — Pieces of Pineapple. The strong yellows and greens seemed a little colourful for Kass. Almost humorous. It was the first copy of Simply Even that Jack had come across.

  Inside, it was inscribed: Dearest Harold, For all your help. With gratitude, Edward.

  Jack directed the taxi straight over to Susko Books so that he could dump the box and not have to worry about lugging it there in the morning. The city was empty and spacious. A calm had settled along with the drizzle. It looked clean in the pearly afternoon light. This was how Jack liked it best. The city in winter. Red wine weather. He remembered there was a bottle of cheap Shiraz under the counter at the shop.

  Apart from a few people waiting for buses, York Street was deserted. Jack got out of the taxi and took his box from the back seat. As he crossed the road he heard the flags on top of the Queen Victoria Building snapping in the wind, their cables ringing out against the poles like thin, erratic bells. He glanced at the Town Hall clock. Just after 4.00 p.m.

  He opened the front door to Susko Books and stepped inside. The light was metallic, blue-grey, but soft too, regardless of the cold. Jack left the lights off. He put the box on the counter and switched on the heater by his desk. From a drawer he took out an aluminium ashtray and from under the counter the bottle of Shiraz.

  He took the Edward Kass book from the box and pressed play on the stereo. Sketches of Spain drifted into the shop like a warm desert wind. It reminded Jack that he still had not read Don Quixote.

  He sat down at his desk, poured wine into a glass and lit a cigarette. He opened Simply Even at random. Page 12.

  GREEK TRAGEDY

  Close me to your breast.

  Soothe the broken rhythm

  Of my heartbeat

  That has reduced me to a wreck

  Of ribs upon the rocks.

  I can no longer grip

  This oily chain

  Of endless days.

  My every sweetness

  Is swirled away.

  Jack brush
ed some ash from the page. He flipped through the book again. Page 36.

  LINE THEORY

  You slink away

  adjusted

  by a hammer blow.

  A charred bud

  marks your hand. Tomorrow

  again

  the wet day of your conception.

  Remember, alive

  you never leave

  anything behind.

  So much for the bright cover.

  The phone rang. Jack put the book down, went to the counter and answered.

  “Susko Books.”

  “Jack?”

  It was Annabelle Kasprowicz.

  “Speaking.”

  “Oh, it’s you. I wasn’t sure if anybody else worked there.”

  Jack leaned against the counter. “Well, there’s Carlos,” he said. “But he never answers the damn phone. I’m thinking about sending him back to Costa Rica.”

  Annabelle Kasprowicz did not laugh but she might have smiled. “I tried your home but there was no answer.”

  Jack swapped the receiver to his other ear. He glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. “What can I do for you at a quarter past four on a Sunday afternoon when I shouldn’t even be here?”

  “Are you closed?”

  “Only for the masses, Ms Kasprowicz.”

  “Please, call me Annabelle.”

  “Sure.” Jack heard the click of a lighter and a quick sharp breath.

  “This is a bit awkward. But … well, I heard about what happened on Friday. After I left. I just wanted to apologise. Are you all right?”

  Jack rubbed the edge of the counter with a thumb. Durst must have told her. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

  “Well, yes it was, sort of. You see —” She pulled herself up. “Anyway, I’m sorry. I stormed out and didn’t even say goodbye.”