by John Dunning
“Clydell, what’s this got to do with me?”
“Keep your pants on, I’m getting to it. This is all by way of saying that your old buddy is leading a very full life. They invite me on to talk about the detective business and find out I can hold my own on anything. I’m filling in for the morning drive-time host next week. Denver Magazine is doing a piece on me, a fullblown profile. They’re picking me as one of Denver’s ten sexiest men over fifty. Can you dig that?”
I could dig it. Any magazine that would come up with a horse’s-ass idea like that deserved Slater and would leave no stone unturned in the big effort to find him. I hoped they’d shoot their pictures in the morning, before the town’s sexiest man got his hair off the hat rack and his teeth out of the water glass.
Slater said, “On radio they’re thinking of billing me as the talking dick.”
“This also figures.”
“I can talk about any damn thing. Politics?…Hell, I’m a walking statistical abstract. Ask me something. Go ahead, ask me a question…about anything, I don’t care.”
“Oh, hell,” I said wearily.
“ I’ve got an answer for everything and you can’t even come up with a fuckin‘ question.”
I looked at him numbly.
“Here’s something you didn’t know. They skew those microphones in my favor. If I get any shit from a caller, all I’ve gotta do is lean a little closer and raise my voice and he just goes away.” He gave me a grin and a palms-up gesture, like a magician who’d just made the rabbit disappear. “I’ll tell you, Cliff, I’m really hot as a pistol right now. I’m at the top of my game. There’s even talk about them doing one of my cases on the network, on Unsolved Mysteries .”
“If you’re such a ball of fire, how come you didn’t solve it?”
“I did solve the goddamn thing, that’s why they want to do it, you goddamn moron, as a follow-up to a story they did last year about all the meatheads who couldn’t solve the damn thing. Get this straight, Janeway—there is no case I can’t solve. That’s why I’m cutting Denver a new rear end, because I guarantee everything. I get results or I don’t cash the check. You got a missing person?…I’ll find the son of a bitch. If he owes you money, I’ll drag his ass back here, and before we’re through with him, he’ll wish he’d never laid eyes on you, this town, and most of all me. I can find anybody in a day or two—it’s just a matter of knowing your guy and using the old noggin. We’ve got a computer database with access to seventy million names in every state in the union. If the bastard’s got a MasterCard, works for a living, or has ever subscribed to a magazine, I’ve got his ass in my computer. I can tell you his home address, phone number, the size of his jockstrap, and how many X-rated videos he watched last week. I can tell you stuff about yourself that you didn’t even know.”
“Clydell…”
“Okay, the point is, I can’t keep up with it. I’ve got three legmen and three tracers on my payroll full-time, and I still can’t keep up with all the work. I could put on three more people right now and we’d still be a month behind in our billings. I turn down more jobs now than I take on: I take on any more, I won’t be able to do the sexy ones myself. I’ll just be a Paper man, shoveling shit and passing out assignments. Not the life for your old buddy, if you know what I mean. This is where you come in.”
“Uh-uh,” I said, shaking my head.
“You’d be second-in-command. Write your own ticket. I guarantee you’d make fifty grand, rock bottom, your first year. You’d have your pick of all the interesting cases, you’d be the go-between between me and the staff. You’d get a staff car and all expenses paid. I’m telling you, old buddy, my people go first-cabin all the way. My liquor cabinet opens at four and the staff has all the privileges. And if you’re lonely at night, we’ve got three secretaries with world-class’t-and-a, and they do a helluva lot more for a guy than take his dictation. I know you’re not crazy about me, Janeway, I got eyes in my head. But you ask anybody who works for me, they’ll all tell you what a pussycat I am. A guy does it my way, he’s got no problems. You’re gonna love this, and you’ll love me too before it’s over. Even if you don’t, nobody says we’ve gotta sleep together.”
With that sorry premise, I excused myself and went to the bathroom.
He was still there, though, when I came back.
“Think about it,” he said.
“I already have.”
“ Think about it, you dumb schmuck.” He looked around critically. “You’re like me, Janeway, a man of action. What the hell are you doing here?”
I’ll give it one try, I thought, see if I can make him understand the tiniest truth about the world he’s blundered into. But I couldn’t find the words even for that. You’ll never convince a doorknob that there’s anything more to life than getting pushed, pulled, and turned.
“I appreciate the thought,” I said, “but I’ve got to pass.”
“This job’s tailor-made for you, it’s got your name stamped all over it. You want proof?…I’ll toss you a plum. Two days’ work, you pick up five grand. There’s even a book angle, if you’re interested.”
I stared at him.
“Do I finally have your attention?” he said, grinning. “Did I just say a magic word or something?”
“You might’ve started with that, saved yourself a lot of time.”
“Shut up and listen. I need somebody to go pick up a skip. My staffs booked solid for the next two weeks; I’m so tight right now I can’t even send the janitor out there. This lady needs to be delivered back to the district court in Taos, New Mexico, ten days from tomorrow, absolute latest. The bondsman’s out fifty grand and he’s willing to grease our cut to fifteen percent for dragging her back. I’ve already done the arithmetic: that’s seventy-five big ones, just for taking a couple of plane rides. I pay your freight out there, you go first-class all the way, plus I give you the big cut.”
“Where’s out there?”
“She’s in Seattle.”
“How do you know that?”
“I went to Madame Houdini and looked in a crystal ball, you fuckin‘ schlemiel. I play the odds, that’s how. This gal comes from there, she’s still got people there, where else is she gonna go? I called a guy I know and put him on her case. Just sit and watch, you know the routine. Yesterday, around four o’clock, there she comes, bingo, we got her. My guy just gives her plenty of rope, and after a while she leads him to the Y, where she’s staying.”
“Where’s your guy now?”
“Still on her tail. He called me from a phone booth an hour ago, while she was getting her breakfast at the bus station lunch counter.”
“Why not just have him pick her up? Seems to me that’d be the easy way.”
“It’s not him I’m trying to impress, meatball. Let me level with you, Janeway: I don’t give a rat’s ass about this case, it’s just a way for you to make some quick and easy dough and see how much fun workin‘ for your old buddy really is. I swear to God, when I thought of you last night, it was like the answer to some prayer. I’ve been needing somebody like you as a ramrod in my office for at least a year now, but nobody I talked to seemed right for the job. Then this Eleanor Rigby thing popped and it came to me in one fell swoop. Cliff Janeway! What a natural.”
“What Eleanor Rigby thing?”
“That’s the skip’s name.”
I blinked. “Eleanor Rigby ?”
“Just like the song,” Slater said in the same tone of voice. But his eyes had suddenly narrowed and I sensed him watching me keenly, as if, perhaps, I might know Eleanor Rigby as something other than a song of my youth.
“Eleanor Rigby,” I said, staring back at him.
“Yeah, but this little baby’s not wasting away to a fast old age.”
I blinked again, this time at the picture he showed me.
“Not bad, huh? You make five big ones and you get to ride all the way home handcuffed to that . I’d do this one myself, old buddy, if it wasn’t for a radi
o date and Denver Magazine .”
Then, very much against all my better judgment, I said, “Tell me about it.”
2
Eleanor Rigby had gone to Taos to steal a book: that, at least, was how the betting line was running. On the night of September 14, four weeks ago, she had by her own account arrived in New Mexico. Five nights later she had burglarized the country home of Charles and Jonelle Jeffords. While tossing the house, she was surprised by the Jeffordses sudden return; a struggle ensued and shots were fired. According to a statement by Mrs. Jeffords, the Rigby woman had shot up the place in a panic and escaped the house. The law came quickly and Rigby was flushed out of the surrounding woods. She had initially been charged with aggravated burglary, a violation of New Mexico statute 30-16-4: then, after further interviews with the victims, the DA had added the more serious business—aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon, and attempted murder. I didn’t know what the penalties were in New Mexico, but it probably wasn’t much different from Colorado. The whole package could get her ten years in the state penitentiary. The judge had set a standard bail: the DA had probably argued that Rigby had no ties to the community and was not a good risk, but judges, even in the punitive era we seem to be heading into, are reluctant to throw away the key before a defendant has had her day in court. Bail was $50,000: Rigby had put up as collateral a property she owned, a wooded tract near Atlanta that had been left her by her grandfather. The bondsman had posted the cash bond and had taken title to the property as a guarantee that she’d appear for her court date.
But Rigby did not appear. She returned to the Jeffordses’ house, broke in again, stole some papers and a book, and this time got away.
“That’s where we come in,” Slater said. “The Jeffords woman wants her book back; it’s one of those things, you know how people get over their stuff. A few days later she heard from the cops that Rigby had been seen in Denver; Jeffords got pipelined to me. It didn’t take us long to figure out that Rigby had been here for one night only, just passing through on her way to Seattle. The rest is history. My guy’s got a bead on her and she’s sittin‘ in the bus station, waiting for one of us to come pick her up. That’s when I thought of you, old buddy. I’m sittin’ at my desk thinking about this crazy dame and her book, and all of a sudden it hits me like a bolt of lightning right in the ass. Janeway ! And I wonder where the hell my head’s been the last two years. I didn’t give a damn about the case anymore, I’ve got bigger problems than that on my mind, and you, my good old buddy, are the answer to all of ‘em.”
I looked at him, wondering how much of this bullshit I was expected to swallow at one time.
“Think of it this way, Clime. You got nothing to lose, and you can buy a helluva lot of books for five grand.”
It was almost uncanny: that’s exactly what I was thinking, almost to the word. It was as if Slater had drilled a hole in my head and it had come spilling out.
“And while you’re up there, you can double your money if you happen to stumble over that little book that Jeffords wants back so bad. Best deal you’ve had in a month of Sundays. You get five grand guaranteed, just for getting on the airplane. Get lucky and make yourself another five.”
“What’s the name of this book you’re looking for?”
He got out his wallet and unfolded a paper. “You familiar with a thing called The Raven ?”
“Seems like I’ve heard of it once or twice. It’s a poem. Written by Edgar Allan Poe.”
“This one was by some guy named Grayson. Does that make any sense to you?”
“Not so far.”
“All I can tell you is what the client told me. I wrote it down real careful, went back over it half a dozen times, and it’s still Greek.”
“Can I see the paper?”
He gave it up reluctantly, like a father giving away a daughter at a wedding. The paper was fragile: it was already beginning to wear thin at the creases. I didn’t say anything about that, just unfolded it gingerly and looked at what he had written. “Actually, I do know the book,” I said. “It’s a special edition of The Raven , published by the Grayson Press.”
I sensed a sudden tension in the room, as if I had caught him stealing something. Our eyes met, but he looked away. “I don’t understand this stuff,” he said.
“What about it don’t you understand?”
“What makes these things valuable…why one’s worth more than the others. You’re the expert, you tell me.”
“Supply and demand,” I said in a masterpiece of simplicity.
Slater was probably a lifelong Republican who was born knowing the law of supply and demand. It’s the American way. If you want something I’ve got, the price will be everything the traffic will bear. If I’ve got the only known copy, you’d better get ready to mortgage the homestead, especially if a lot of other people want it too. What he didn’t understand was the quirk of modern life that has inflated ordinary objects and hack talents into a class with Shakespeare, Don Quixote , and the Bible. But that was okay, because I didn’t understand it either.
But I told him what I did know, what almost any good bookman would know. And felt, strangely, even as I was telling it, that Slater knew it too.
“The Grayson Press was a small publishing house that dealt in limited editions. I’ve heard they made some fabulous books, though I’ve never had one myself. Grayson was a master book designer who hand made everything, including his own type. He’d take a classic, something in the public domain like
The Raven , and commission a great artist to illustrate it. Then he’d publish it in a limited run, usually just a few hundred copies, numbered and signed by himself and the artist. In the trade these books are called instant rarities. They can be pretty nice collector’s items, though purists have mixed feelings about them.“
“Mixed feelings how?”
“Well, it’s obvious they’ll never take the place of the first edition. Poe’s work becomes incidental to this whole modern process. The books become entities of their own: they’re bought mainly by people who collect that publisher, or by people who just love owning elegant things.”
He gave me a nod, as if waiting for elaboration.
“It’s not an impossible book to find, Clydell, that’s what I’m telling you. I think I could find your client one fairly easily. It might take a month or two, but I could find it, assuming the client’s willing to spend the money.”
“The client’s willing to spend ten grand…which I’d be inclined to split with you fifty-fifty.”
“The client’s crazy. I could find her half a dozen copies for that and still give her half her money back.” “Don’t bullshit me, Janeway. How do you find half a dozen copies of a rare book like that?”
“People call them instant rarities: that doesn’t mean they’re truly rare. My guess is that this Grayson Raven is becoming a fairly scarce piece, but I still think it can be smoked out.”
“You guys talk in riddles. Rare, scarce…what the hell’s the difference?”
“A scarce book is one that a dealer might see across his counter once every five or ten years. A rare book— well, you might spend your life in books and never see it. None of the Grayson books are really rare in that sense. They’re scarce just by the fact that they were all limited to begin with. But they’re all recent books, all done within the last forty years, so it’s probably safe to say that most of them are still out there. We haven’t lost them to fire, flood, war, and pestilence. As a matter of fact, I can tell you exactly how many copies there were—I’ve got a Grayson bibliography in my reference section.”
I got the book and opened it, thumbing until I found what I wanted.
“ ‘The Raven and Other Poems , by Edgar Allen Poe,’” I read: “‘published by Darryl Grayson in North Bend, Washington, October 1949. Four hundred copies printed.’ It was one of Grayson’s first books. The last time I saw one in a catalog…I’m trying to think…it seems like the dealer was asking around five hundre
d dollars. That’s pretty steep, actually, for a book like that, but I guess this Grayson was a pretty special bookman.”
“And you really think you could get your mitts on half a dozen of these?”
“Well,” I hedged, “I could find her one, I’m sure enough of that.”
“How do you go about it? I mean, you just said you’d only get to see one of these every five or ten years.”
“Across my counter. But I won’t wait for that, I’ll run an ad in the AB . That’s a booksellers’ magazine that goes to bookstores all over the country. Somebody’s bound to have the damn thing: if they do, they’ll drop me a postcard with a quote. I might get one quote or half a dozen: the quotes might range from two hundred up. I take the best deal, figure in a fair profit for myself, your client pays me, she’s got her book.”
“What if I decide to run this ad myself and cut you out of the action? Not that I would, you know, I’m just wondering what’s to prevent it.”
“Not a damn thing, except that AB doesn’t take ads from individuals, just book dealers. So you’re stuck with me. Old buddy ,” I added, a fairly nice jab.
It was lost on him: his head was in another world somewhere and he was plodding toward some distant goal line that he could only half see and I couldn’t imagine.
“My client wants the book, only the one she wants ain’t the one you’re talking about.”
“I’m not following you.”
“This Grayson dude was supposed to’ve done another one in 1969.”
“Another what?”
“Raven.”
“Another edition of the same book? That doesn’t sound right to me.”
