The Dirty Book Murder

by Thomas Shawver

Most of my clients wore suits, attended Mass, and enjoyed Sunday dinners with their families, but that didn’t prevent them from employing others to do some very dirty business on their behalfs.

  In my defense, I fancied myself a champion of the First Amendment. If that meant a large part of my income came from keeping strip clubs open and modern-day shylocks rich, I was still able to sleep at night. It was lucrative and, with Supreme Court precedent on my side, not very difficult. It was also plentiful, there always being some civic do-gooder or politician trying to outlaw their idea of lewd and lascivious behavior.

  The trouble started when I began to accept certain fringe benefits associated with the juice bar trade. At first it was free booze, then women, and inevitably, cocaine. Plenty of cocaine.

  Carol saw what was happening and threatened divorce more than once. I made a few feeble efforts to get out, but always came up with an excuse to be pulled back in. Representing vice was, after all, the money train that paid for our country club membership, ski vacations to Aspen, and other perks deemed necessary by the upwardly mobile.

  Tim Winter attempted to help by referring some of his personal injury cases to me. But medical malpractice and product liability lawsuits required the kind of patience I no longer had. Word got out about my late-night activities and my law license was suspended for six months.

  During the period of my suspension, I kept off drugs and focused on saving my marriage. Although barred from appearing in court, I earned my keep assisting Tim prepare his cases for trial.

  At the end of the six months, I found myself ready to take my career in a new direction. Carol stuck by me with unending patience. I took time off and we visited her parents in England. On a summer evening while on a hill in the Lake District, we rededicated our lives and love for each other. But happiness isn’t something you decree to yourself; it’s not a thread you can pick up when you feel like it, any more than you can choose your parents.

  One of the healthier aspects of my life at that time involved rediscovering a rugged game I had learned in the Marines and played at an international level for a time.

  Rugby kept me fit, and my teammates on the Kansas City Blues, a wholesome cross-section of hardworking cops, bartenders, postgrad students, and a trio of Samoan Mormons, were in direct contrast to my clients.

  Not long after my reinstatement to the bar, Carol and I traveled to a tournament in Tulsa. I hadn’t meant to play on the “A” side, but a lock forward had been injured so I borrowed his boots and went in for him. I played well despite being the oldest man on the pitch and afterward insisted to Carol that we attend the post-tournament party. As the daughter of a former British rugby player, she knew full well what that might entail, but she reluctantly agreed.

  After consuming four or five beers, I gave in to her demand that we return home that night and that she would do the driving.

  The car shot off the highway somewhere past Fort Scott while I dozed in the back seat. The trooper’s report concluded that Carol, who had not been drinking, must have fallen asleep at the wheel as there was no evidence of skid marks. My wife died of head injuries before the Life Flight helicopter landed. Unhurt except for a three-inch gash on my forehead, I was left to grieve with our then five-year-old daughter, who had been left at home with a babysitter.

  Friends said I did the right thing by not driving while intoxicated. Carol’s parents, bless their hearts, even told me at the funeral it was God’s will. I’ve been told a lot of things. But it comes down to this: My irresponsibility killed the love of my life, the mother of my child.

  I hung in there for three months, maintaining a semblance of sobriety and struggling to show up at the firm each day before ten A.M.

  Isn’t that what you do, particularly when you have a five-year-old motherless child depending on you?

  Well, I couldn’t do it. The man whom Carol had so carefully brought back from one abyss couldn’t handle her loss. One night I went out drinking, leaving Anne home alone without a babysitter. The next morning, after realizing what I had done, I bought an airline ticket and sent her to live with her grandparents in London.

  I managed to get by at the firm for another year, but the loss of Carol, accentuated by unrelenting guilt at her death and relinquishing my parental duties, sent me spiraling downward in a haze of drugs and booze.

  My law career came to an abrupt end when I was disbarred at the instigation of a hotshot assistant district attorney named Denton Crowell for commingling a client’s funds with my own. It was unintentional neglect, but that didn’t matter. I had frittered away a once-promising career long before that. I was in no shape to defend myself.

  In the following decade Crowell became the Jackson County DA and went on to become the white knight of Missouri’s moral majority, attacking sin wherever he deemed it lurked. That not only included my former clients’ establishments, but birth control clinics as well. He was incapable of stopping the proliferation of gangs and meth labs in our county, but he made national headlines when he filed criminal charges against teenage girls who failed to disclose the names of doctors who had prescribed birth control pills for them.

  Now he was his party’s front-runner for the United States Senate and looking for another cause to emblazon his name among the electorate. I wondered if he had found that cause in my case.

  It took the disbarment and a kick in the ass from my British father-in-law to get me thinking halfway clearly again. I swore off drugs, reduced my drinking, and, six years ago, thanks to a generous loan from Tim Winter, opened Riverrun Books.

  Since then, my profits from the shop have been enough to feed myself and make house payments on time. The rest of the income goes for a modest social life spent mostly in neighborhood bars, traveling to book fairs, and covering my daughter’s fees at the University of Colorado.

  Such parental tithing had not brought with it redemption, however. Nor had it brought respect, love, or forgiveness from Anne.

  It was nearing seven-thirty and I was putting the day’s receipts away when I noticed her walking across the street looking as if she had just stepped off a Grecian urn.

  Strands of her silken hair streamed in the light wind and the setting sun gave her skin a golden glow. A simple dress, soft and gentle in cut, hung loosely on her tall, slender figure. Despite my frustration and anger at what she was doing with her life, I couldn’t help feeling proud that she was my daughter. She really did have the looks and style of a movie star. No wonder Bob Langston was making a fool of himself over her.

  A boy, seven or eight years old, swept around the corner on a skateboard. Anne moved to avoid him, but he panicked and collided with her so that both fell hard onto the concrete. Anne picked herself up, oblivious to the debris embedded in her forearm, and leaned over the boy, who was trying unsuccessfully not to cry. She put one hand on his back to comfort him and with the other gently wiped gravel and dirt from his skinned knees. She helped him to stand and, with arms entwined, they limped across the street to my store like two veterans of trench warfare.

  I had the first-aid kit out by the time they entered. After dressing their wounds, I added a couple of cookies and soft drinks to aid the healing process. His tears dried, the boy soon jumped back on his board in search of new sidewalk victims.

  “Thanks,” Anne said.

  “No problem. I’m proud of you.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think it’s worth mentioning.”

  “Still, I’m proud of you for a lot of other things as well.”

  “You don’t have to elaborate,” she said, as if sensing a lecture. “I was coming to see you. I didn’t drop in for medical treatment.”

  “I’m glad you’re here for whatever reason.”

  “Well, you always say that we ought to talk. I’m here to talk.”

  “But not to listen?”

  She looked away, then back again. “Are you jealous of Robert?”

  “That’s a strange way of putting it. I’m your father. I don�
�t want you to be hurt.”

  “Don’t try to protect me. It’s not as if I were in some kind of danger.”

  “Aren’t you? A guy like that, so much older than you, for all his charm and glamour, will toss you aside when he gets tired of …”

  “Of what? Bob is doing more for me than you ever did. He believes in me and doesn’t treat me like a child. While you blew a lucrative career to become a used-book salesman, he’s fighting to get back on top. You have no right to prevent me from loving him.”

  “I’m entitled to share my opinion. For one thing, I’m still in financial bondage to Sallie Mae on your behalf.”

  She pretended not to hear.

  “Have you ever thought why he might be attracted to you? Aside from your beauty and tender age, of course.”

  Her response was to pick up a book from the new arrival table. It was a National Geographic photography book about bees. She had never shown any interest in bees before that moment, although she could be about as unpredictable as a swarm of them.

  I waited for her to put down the book and answer me. When it seemed as if she would read the whole thing, I changed tactics.

  “How about joining me for dinner? It’s closing time.”

  The couple who had been reciting Keats to each other hovered near the counter, an audience to our test of wills.

  “I’m not hungry,” Anne finally said.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point then, Father?”

  “What’s this formal ‘Father’ stuff?”

  “It’s the most proper word I can think of, given the way I feel about you. Or would you prefer I call you something else? Something more appropriate to your status. ‘Loser,’ perhaps? ‘Barfly’? Less charitable names come to mind as well.”

  The customers put down their poetry and silently left by the back door. Not knowing whether there were others lurking in the stacks, I moved closer to her.

  “Try to understand my concern,” I whispered. “Langston’s been rode hard and put away wet a hundred times. He’s about as stable as a hand grenade with a pulled pin. It’s in your best interests, if not as a matter of respect to me, that you listen.”

  “That’s your point?” she said, smiling. It was a feigning, mocking smile; an empty smile in a cold face. So unlike the face she had presented to the boy who had run into her on his skateboard; so unlike the coy seductive smile that she gave to a has-been movie star. I wished that she was six years old and we could start over again.

  “Come on,” I urged. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ve changed my mind about staying with you. If you want to reach me, leave a message with Laura Dowell. She’s a production assistant on the movie who takes messages for Bob. Here’s her number.”

  Then she was gone, leaving me with a silly grin on my face and a piece of shrapnel in my heart.

  I finished the drink, turned out the lights, and was walking over to the door to lock it when Weston Preston appeared.

  “You still here, honcho?”

  “No, Weston. I left hours ago and am actually getting shit-faced at Fitzpatrick’s Galway Pub.”

  “Hey, that’s funny. Wish I’d thought of it.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I forgot somethin’. You go on to your Hibernian hootenanny. I’ll close up.”

  “All right. Check the bathroom towel dispenser before you go.”

  I walked to my jeep, put in a CD, and listened to Chris Isaak wail “Diddley Daddy” while I drove two miles to the Country Club Plaza for a friendly pint or two.

  Chapter Seven

  Fitzpatrick’s was one of those “authentic” Irish theme bars that sprouted like shamrocks throughout the country in the late nineties. Despite its manufactured charm, it had the liveliest craic and the prettiest women between Denver and St. Louis on Saturday nights. People sat in comfortable snugs listening to The Pogues, Black 47, and the Clancy Brothers on the sound system while attentive barmen from Donegal and Kerry helped to lend a bit of authenticity.

  So in I went, greeted by a charming hostess named Siobhan, who promptly told me the wait for dinner was an hour at least.

  “Well, fine,” I said giving her my name, and made my way through the noisy, suds-gargling crowd to the smaller of the two bars in the second room where Ronan Gill was tending drinks.

  Ronan was a fine fellow, three years off the boat and working during the day for Sprint as a computer analyst. I’d met him and his pretty Belfast-born wife at a few Celtic Fringe meetings.

  I ordered my first Guinness.

  “How are t’ings?” he asked as we waited for the stout to settle.

  “Hundred percent.”

  “To be sure. Every day a holiday. Every paycheck a fortune.”

  “And every line a parade,” I said, laughing.

  “Ah, you’re a good man, Mike. May your daughter grow up to be Pope.”

  Ronan was full of blarney and a few other things but he always managed to make me smile. By the time my stout was presented, he was on to drawing more for others and I turned to the job at hand.

  The first sip of the Guinness is the second best, followed by the second long pull, which is the best. By the end of the jar I was feeling much better. Black 47 was cranking out Irish reggae over the speakers, the girls were looking saucy, and I’d seen several old acquaintances from the days of practicing law who didn’t care that I’d been disbarred. I waved at them and ordered another pint.

  I listened to a long, not-very-funny joke from a stranger at the bar and ordered a round for him and for me when it was over. An informal seisún began in a corner with a fiddler, a bodhran player, and a girl with a pennywhistle. They played “The Bold Fenian Men” and followed that with “Black and Tan” to put the crowd in a fine rebel mood. Happy wars and sad love songs were the themes for the evening and so I ordered another pint to celebrate.

  When the performers took a drink break, I chatted up the pennywhistler. She was dark-haired, sloe-eyed, slender, and pretty with a smile that made you remember Vermeer. She said her name was Sandra Epstein, played second-chair flute for the Kansas City Symphony, and could I buy her a whiskey soda as she was a little short of cash. So I did and sat with her for the next series of tunes and even chimed in with my voice which, when properly oiled, isn’t half bad. I was good for “Gypsy Rover” and “Finnegan’s Wake” and we all got friendly with everyone else, which is lovely and magical and not easily accomplished, and then I sang “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” a cappella:

  I sat within the valley green, I sat me with my true love.

  My sad heart strove the two between, the old love and the new love.

  The old for her, the new that made me think on Ireland dearly

  While soft the wind blew down the glen and shook the golden barley …

  The ladies were lining up for me by the time I’d finished, but my sights were on Ms. Epstein, whose hand had been on my thigh for the entire second verse. An unhappy day was settling into a pleasant evening and then the winds shifted again.

  “Aren’t you the jolly bloody Irishman, Mr. Bevan.”

  I looked up at the staggering figure of Gareth Hughes. The broad face was bloated, the red eyes rheumy with yellow crusts in the corners. He was the last man in the world I wanted to see that night.

  “Are you enjoying your book?”

  The bloated face got harder. “What book might that be?”

  I set Ms. Epstein’s pretty hand aside and reluctantly stood up. “The book you stole today.”

  Hughes raised his right fist, thought better of it, and picked up a half-filled pint of stout off a stranger’s table. He chugged the contents, glared at the young man whose pint it had once been, then returned his attention to me.

  “Buy me a pint,” he said.

  “Buy your own.”

  “I’m out of cash.”

  “You did a damn stupid thing taking that book.”

 
“That man didn’t deserve a rare gem like that.”

  “His sixty thousand dollars said he did.”

  “It wasn’t his sixty thousand dollars.”

  “He’ll know that book is missing soon enough and he’s a hard case. He’ll be calling on you.”

  “The Dutchman wasn’t buying it for himself. Ever see him before when you were lawyering?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, I have. He works for a big shot. Major money.”

  “Are you going to tell me who?”

  “You didn’t buy me a pint.”

  “And I’m not going to. It’s your problem, not mine.”

  The seisún started up again and Sandra Epstein began singing “The Road to Mayo.” I had turned my back on Hughes to rejoin the group when I felt his hand grip my right shoulder.

  Blame it on the beer or the bad mood he had suddenly put me back in. Or maybe it was a natural reaction for a former Marine who gets pushed too far. Whatever the reason, I dropped my shoulder, spun around, and introduced my left fist to his chin. He went down hard, pulling a table and pints of Guinness on top of him. The music stopped for a beat or two and a woman screamed. An Irish voice shouted back at her, “Ahh, hold your gob! It’s just two bloody arseholes looking to dance with their fists,” and then the music started up again.

  Hughes got to his feet and swung at me, but he was too drunk and slow by nature to cause any damage. I took one of his wrists, spun him around into a bear hug and tried to reason with him. Before I could give my speech, however, the manager and a bouncer had me in their grips.

  They weren’t in a mood to listen and that’s how I found myself on the curb outside of Fitzpatrick’s with Gareth Hughes instead of Sandra Epstein.

  Nothing for it but to apologize. We had both knocked some sense into each other.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t crack it, did I?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Too much padding for that.”

  “Do you need a lift?”

  “No thanks, Mike. I live just past the creek at Plaza Point. The walk will see me right.”

  Hughes turned to go, then stopped and turned around.