Booked to Die

by John Dunning

  “He was sorry he had taken it,” Jackson said again. “It’s pretty well ruined, as you can see. He apologized and said he’d buy me a new one if he ever got enough money together. Bob was like that. He never thought ahead. He wanted to dress up and see what it felt like, and he never gave a thought to the work he had to do.”

  “Then there were a lot of books?”

  “Oh, yes… that much I do know. It took him all night to move them.”

  I went through the coat pockets, then the vest. In the pants I found two receipts from a 7-Eleven store.

  “Are these your receipts?” I asked.

  Jackson looked at them and shook his head. “Must be something he left in there.”

  I showed them to Hennessey. “No telling which store,” Neal said. “Must be hundreds of ’em in Denver.”

  Suddenly Jackson said, “It was on Madison Street. I remember it now, he went in that store late that night. He was hungry, he hadn’t had anything to eat in almost two days. He had been working about four hours and was feeling faint. He went out on the upper porch for some air. He saw the sign, 7-Eleven, about half a block away. It was the only place open that time of night. It was unusual that way—usually they don’t put those places in residential areas like that, but there it was… like the Lord had sent it just for him. He had two dollars in his pocket. So he walked up and got a soft drink and a Hostess cake.”

  I asked for his phone book. There was only one 7-Eleven on Madison Street. It was in the 1200s, only a few blocks away.

  We found the house without much trouble after that. It was half a block north of the 7-Eleven, on the opposite side of the street. It was the only house in the block with an upper porch. The doors were open and there were people inside, pricing stuff for an estate sale. There were signs announcing that the sale would be this coming weekend. Inside were bookshelves. There were bookshelves in every room, all of them empty.

  14

  “Where’re your books?” I said from the open doorway.

  The man looked up. “We don’t open till Saturday.”

  “I’m just wondering where all your books went.”

  “Come back Saturday and I’ll tell you.”

  A smartass, I thought. I walked into the room and Hennessey came in behind me. I flashed my tin and said, “How about telling me now.”

  He looked at the badge, unimpressed. “So you work for me. Big deal. Am I supposed to hyperventilate and lose control of my body functions because you can’t find a real job?”

  “Look, pal, I’m not trying to impress you. I’m asking for your cooperation on a murder case.”

  “Oh yeah? Who’s been killed?”

  “How about letting me ask the questions.”

  I knew it was a bad start. I meet a lot of characters like him, cop-haters from the word go, and I never handle them well.

  “You can ask all you want,” he said. “There’s nothing that says I have to talk to you.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “I should be. I’m a lawyer.”

  Wonderful. So far I was batting a thousand.

  “I don’t owe you bastards one goddamn thing,” he said. “I got a ticket coming over here this morning.”

  Now the woman looked up. She was in her mid-thirties, five to ten years younger than the man. Pretty she’d be, in a cool dress, relaxing by a pool: pretty in the bitchy way of a young Bette Davis, mean and intelligent and all the more interesting because of that. Now she was dirty and hot, doing a job that must seem endless—cataloging and sifting and finally putting a price tag on each of the hundreds of items of a man’s life.

  “You have just made the acquaintance of Valentine Fletcher Ballard,” she said. “Charming, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t know what to make of the two of them, didn’t know if they were playing it for laughs or if I had come in in the middle of something. The look he gave her seemed to say that they weren’t playing anything.

  “You’d think the goddamn mayor of this goddamn city would have better things for the goddamn cops to do than sit in a speed trap with goddamn radar guns harassing the hell out of honest citizens,” he said.

  “Don’t even try to talk to him,” the woman said. “You can’t talk to a fool.”

  The guy went right on as if she hadn’t said a word. “Have you seen what they did on Montview? Lowered the goddamn speed limit all of a sudden to thirty miles an hour. It’s four lanes in there, for Christ’s sake, it ought to be fifty. You think the mayor gives a rat’s ass about safety? Don’t make me laugh. They bring ten cops in on fucking overtime just to write tickets and generate revenue. When you get your cost-of-living raise this year, copper, remember whose pocket it came out of and how you got it.”

  I hate the term copper, but I couldn’t argue much. I’ve never liked the city’s use of cops that way. If you have to bring a cop in on overtime, let him do the legwork on a murder case or chase down a rapist. Let him walk the streets in a high-crime area, where his presence might mean something. Don’t put him in the bushes with a radar gun on a street that’s been deliberately underposted. Don’t make sneaks out of cops. The guy was right, people don’t like that, and that’s how cop-haters are born.

  “Goddamn pirates,” he said. “You fuckers are no better than pickpockets.”

  All I could do was try to lighten it up. “Hey, I’m doing my part,” I said. “I’m looking for a killer.”

  “So I’ll ask you again,” the guy said. “Who’s been killed?”

  “The guy you sold these books to.”

  He blinked. The woman stood up and looked at me.

  “You want to talk to me now?” I said. “Maybe we can get off on a better footing. I’m Detective Janeway. This is Detective Hennessey.”

  The guy finally said, “I’m Val Ballard.”

  He made no attempt to introduce the woman: wouldn’t even acknowledge her presence. I thought it was strange that neither had spoken directly to the other, but maybe that was just my imagination.

  It wasn’t. She said, “I’m Judith Ballard Davis. The klutz you’ve been talking to likes to pretend he’s my brother. Don’t blame me for that.”

  He ignored her fairly effectively: all she got for her trouble was a look of slight annoyance. I was beginning to see a pattern emerging in the hostility. He ignored her: she heaped insults upon him, but only through another person.

  I said, to anyone who wanted to answer it, “Whose house is this?”

  They both began talking at once. Neither showed any willingness to yield, and the words tumbled over themselves in indecipherable disorder.

  “Let’s try that again,” I said. “Eeeny meeny miney mo.” Mo came down on her. That was a mistake, for Ballard began immediately to sulk, and in a moment he went back to his work. I’d have to warm him up, if you could call it that, all over again.

  “The house belongs… belonged… to my uncle. Stanley Ballard.”

  “And he died, right?”

  “He died,” she said.

  “When did he die?”

  “Last month. Early May.”

  “What’d he die of?”

  “Old age… cancer… I don’t know.” She didn’t seem to care much. “When you’re that old, everything breaks down at once.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Eighty, I guess… I’m not sure.”

  “He was your father’s brother?”

  “Older brother. There was almost twenty years between them.”

  “Where’s your father?”

  “Dead. Killed in an auto accident a long time ago.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “They’re all dead. If you’re looking for all the living Ballards, I’m it.”

  I looked at him. “What about you?”

  “I told you what my name is.”

  Something was slipping past me. “Are you two brother and sister or what?” I said.

  Neither wanted to answer that.

  “Come on, peopl
e, what’s the story? Do you inherit the old man’s estate?”

  “Lock, stock, and barrel,” she said.

  “Both of you?”

  She gave a loud sigh. At last she said, “Yes, God damn it, both of us.”

  “All right,” I said pleasantly. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? You inherit the house and all the contents equally, right?”

  “What’s this got to do with anything?” Ballard said. “Whose business is it, anyway, what I inherit and what I do with it?”

  “I have to watch every goddamn penny,” Judith said to no one. “If he gets a chance, he’ll screw my eyes out.”

  “Gee, but it’s nice to see people get along so well,” I said. “Have you two always been so lovey?”

  “I hate his guts,” she said. “No secret about that, mister. The only thing I’m living for is to get this house sold and the money split so I won’t ever have to see his stupid face again.”

  “When you decide you want to talk to me, I’ll be in the other room,” Ballard said, and left.

  “Son of a bitch,” Judith said before he was quite out of the room.

  I had this insane urge to laugh. She knew it, and did laugh.

  “We’re some dog and pony show. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What’s with you two?”

  “Just bad blood. It’s always been there. It’s got nothing to do with anything, and I’d just as soon not talk about it.”

  “How do you manage to work together if you don’t even speak?”

  “With great difficulty. What can I tell you?”

  “What happened to the books?”

  “We sold them. You know that.”

  “You split the money?”

  “You better believe it.”

  “Did you know the guy you sold them to?”

  “Never saw him before. We were in here working and he just showed up. Walked in on us just like you did. Said he heard we had some books and wondered if we wanted to make a deal for them.”

  “Did he say where he’d heard about it?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask. The man had cash money, that’s all I care about.”

  “Did you go through the books before you sold them?”

  “What do I care about a bunch of old books? Besides, I told you we were in a hurry to sell them. I don’t want to stay around him any longer than I have to.”

  “So neither of you looked at the books, or had a book dealer look at them, before you sold them?”

  “Look,” she said shortly. “There weren’t any old books in there, okay? It was just run-of-the-mill crap. Anybody with half a brain could see that.”

  She was angry now. The thought of blowing an opportunity will sometimes do that to people. She said, “Everybody knows books have to be old. Everybody knows that.”

  I shook my head.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Not much. A little.”

  “What could a cop know about books? Don’t come in here and tell me what I should’ve done. You see those bookshelves? They were all full. There are more like this in every room. He had the basement laid out like a fucking library. Do you have any idea how many books were in this house? I haven’t got enough to do, now I’ve got to go through all this crap looking for a few lousy books that might be valuable?”

  I shrugged.

  “Besides,” she said, “Stan did that.”

  “Did what?”

  “He had a book dealer come do an appraisal. It was three, four years ago, when he first got the cancer. He had an appraisal done and it was there with his papers when he died.”

  “Do you remember the name of the appraiser?”

  “I don’t have enough to do without remembering names?”

  “I’ll need to see that appraisal.” I made it a demand, not a request. “Do you have a copy?”

  “You better believe it. I’ve got a copy of everything. With a son of a bitch like him around, I’d better have a copy.”

  Ballard, in the next room, had heard this, and he came in fuming.

  “If you want to talk to me, talk,” he said. “I’ve got things to do today.”

  I shifted easily from her to him.

  “Did you look at the books?”

  “Hell no. There wasn’t anything there worth the trouble. Read my lips and believe it, there was nothing there. This joker wanted them, I say let him have the damn things. I told him he could have my half.”

  “Is that the way you sold ’em?”

  “I sold him my half,” Ballard said. He still refused to admit that his sister shared the same planet.

  “He came here and took all the books,” Judith said. “Is that what you want to know, Detective? The little man came and took all the frigging books, okay? He gave me some money and the rest went…” She jerked her thumb at her brother, who stiffened as if he’d just been slapped.

  “Let’s talk for a minute about the man who came and took the books. You say he just showed up one night?”

  “We were in here just like we are now. I looked up and he was standing in the doorway. I thought he was full of shit.” She lit a cigarette and blew smoke. “He was wearing this cheap suit that didn’t fit and strutting around like one of the Rockefellers. He came in the night we started and said he wanted to buy the books.”

  “Who the hell is telling this?” Ballard shouted. He made sure he talked to me, not her. “God damn it, are you talking to me or what?”

  “Oh, I don’t care,” I said wearily.

  “I said the only way I’d sell the damn books before the sale started was all in one fell swoop. I didn’t want any damn picking and choosing, you see what I’m saying? Get ’em all out of here, that’s what I wanted.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  He gave a sweep of his hand. “They’re gone, ain’t they?”

  “I’m not asking you the question, Mr. Ballard, to belabor the obvious. I want to know what the man said when you told him he’d have to buy all the books. Did he act like he wanted to do that or not?”

  “He didn’t act any way. He just said put a price on ’em.”

  “And what price did you put on them?”

  “In a sale I thought they’d be worth a buck or two apiece. For a guy to take ’em all, I told him I’d knock something off of that.”

  “Could we maybe get to what the final price was?”

  “He gave me two thousand dollars. What he did with the other two thousand’s none of my business.”

  I looked at Judith, who managed to look quite sexy smoking. “Did you get the other two thousand, Mrs. Davis?” I asked in my best long-suffering voice.

  “You better believe it.”

  Ballard took me on a tour of the house. Judith followed at a distance, as if she didn’t trust him long out of her sight. I tried to imagine what long-ago rift had ripped them so deeply and permanently apart. I tried to imagine them locked away in here for days on end, divvying up the old man’s loot without speaking. The picture defied me. Only greed could motivate them, greed and hate and the all-powerful ego motive to come out on top.

  The basement was impressive, but then, I could see what it had been with all the books in it. It was lined with bookcases, against the walls and in rows, library-style, in the center of the room. I did some quick arithmetic and figured that the shelves here and upstairs might hold as many as nine thousand books.

  “The old man really loved his books,” I said with admiration.

  “Some guys like sex,” Judith said from the doorway. “Stan liked books.”

  “So you sold the books for forty, fifty cents apiece?”

  “I wasn’t gonna quibble,” Ballard said. “The guy came back with two grand. Two grand is two grand, and I wanted the crap out of here.”

  I took a picture of Bobby Westfall out of my notebook. “Is this the guy?”

  “That’s him,” Ballard said. “That a dead picture?”

  I nodded and showed it to he
r. She nodded and looked away.

  “Who do you think killed him?” she said.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  • • •

  We talked some more, and it all boiled down to this:

  They had struck a deal and Bobby had come one night last week and stripped the house of everything that remotely resembled a book. He had worn that same silly suit for the heavy work. They didn’t know anything else about him—where he’d come from, where he’d gone—the only record of the transaction was the receipt that Ballard had written out (copy to her, and you’d better believe it) to keep it straight and legal. Bobby had signed it with an undecipherable scrawl and left his copy on the table. All he wanted was to get the books and get on the road.

  He had come for the books in a huge truck, a U-Haul rental. Now we were getting somewhere. Ruby had said that Bobby had no driver’s license: that meant someone else had to have rented the truck. I was hungry for a new name to be thrown into the hopper: I was eager to begin sweating that unseen accomplice. I felt we were one name away from breaking it, and I wanted that name and I wanted it now.

  But Bobby had come to Madison Street alone. If someone else had rented the truck, why not ask that buddy to give a hand with the heavy lifting? The obvious answer was that Bobby wanted no one to know what he had really bought from Stanley Ballard’s estate. He had insisted on loading the books himself, which was fine with the two heirs, who had no intention of helping anyway. Bobby had brought hundreds of cardboard boxes and had spent all night packing and loading the books. Ballard and his sister kept after their own work and before they knew it the night slipped away. Bobby loaded the last of the books as dawn broke in the east.

  • • •

  During all of this, Hennessey had not said a word. This is the kind of cop Neal is: he melts into the woodwork; he listens, he looks, he adds two and two, then stares at the number four to see if there’s any broken type. I didn’t notice when he’d stepped away: I found him on the front porch talking with a neighbor.

  “Cliff, this is Mr. Greenwald. He and Mr. Ballard were friends for fifty years.”

  We stood on Ballard’s front porch and Greenwald stood on his, and we talked easily across the hedge. Ballard was already living here when Greenwald moved in in 1937. They had a great mutual passion—books. In a very different way, they reminded me of Bobby Westfall and Jarvis Jackson—two lonely guys held together by honest affection and one or two deep common denominators. Ballard was an old bachelor: Greenwald’s wife had died in 1975, and the two men took their dinners together at a place they liked, a few blocks away.