by John Dunning
We began to go through the nightly ritual, preparing to close.
“So you didn’t tell me,” I said: “how was Harkness?”
“A dear. A perfect gentleman.”
I sighed.
“I know you’d love an excuse to go up there and tear his head off, but I’m afraid I can’t give you one. He was just fine. His manners were beyond reproach.”
“Just watch your flank, Miss Pride, just watch the water fore and aft, port and starboard. Now what do you say we lock this baby up and call it a bad day?”
“It was pretty dreary. I’ll get the lights and put the recording on.”
She disappeared into the back room. I locked the front door and began counting the money. I had just got started when I felt my hackles go up. I turned and looked through the glass. Jackie Newton was sitting in a car at the curb, watching me. It was a long black car, not one of his. The gunsel was behind the wheel.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
Miss Pride, coming from the back room, said, “Did you say something to me?”
“I said we’ve got company.”
“Oh, God.”
“Don’t even look at ‘em; don’t let ’em faze you at all. Just go on about your business and get ready to leave.”
I turned the sign around, in case they had any notions of coming in. Miss Pride bustled about gathering her things.
“Are we ready to go?” I said.
“I am.”
“Good. I’m driving you home tonight, by way of west Denver. Don’t argue with me, let’s just go. We’ll walk right past the sons of bitches and get in my car and drive away. Got that?”
“I got it.”
I flipped the front room lights. The telephone rang.
I heard the machine kick on and then begin recording. I don’t like machines that answer telephones, but Miss Pride had talked me into it, so we wouldn’t miss anyone with a big library to sell. As usual, she was right: the damned machine had made its cost back, three times over.
“I’m gonna see who that is,” I said. “You wait here. Don’t look at those guys and don’t look worried. I’ll be right back.”
By the time I got into the office, the recorder had cut off. It was probably Rita McKinley, I thought, cancelling tomorrow. I rewound the tape and played the message.
It was Peter. His voice was tense, strained. “I need to talk to you, right now,” he said.
I waited. I knew the line was still open, but he didn’t say anything. He was like a man whose attention has suddenly been captured—like the poor scared fool he’d been in the thrift store parking lot.
“Oh, shit,” he said, and hung up.
I ran the tape back and replayed it. It didn’t make any more sense than anything else he had done that day. I had no idea where he lived or how to reach him. Maybe Ruby knew.
I reset the tape, went up front, killed the last of the lights, and took Miss Pride by the arm. “Let’s go.”
I locked the door and we walked past the car where Newton and his thug sat waiting. The gunsel started the engine and the car rolled along beside us. I’m gonna put up with this about ten seconds, I thought; then I’m gonna kick some ass. I walked up to Ruby’s. The store was closed and locked. I walked past Harkness’s, which was also closed. Only Clyde Fix was still open: he sat in the window and watched the street like a vulture.
We went around the corner to the small lot where everyone on Book Row kept their cars. The headlights of the gunsel’s car swung behind us in a slow arc. I held the door for Miss Pride, then I walked back to the gunsel’s car, which was sitting still with its motor running.
I tapped on the window. Jackie rolled it down a crack.
“That’s all for you, Newton. If I see your ass again tonight there’s gonna be trouble.”
“Izzat so,” the gunsel said.
I kept looking at Jackie. “Does this guy speak English? Keep your hands on the wheel, dogbreath; touch that gun and I’ll blow you right through the door.” There was a long quivering pause. The gunsel’s fists clenched around the steering wheel. “Now I’m gonna tell you something, Newton, and this goes for you too, Anton. If you want to live to celebrate your next birthday, don’t fuck with me. You want to put that in Mon-golese, Jackie, so the ape can understand it? Don’t… fuck… with me.”
“Tough guy,” the gunsel said. “I’m gonna walk on you, tough guy.”
“You couldn’t walk the plank without losing your way. Now get this crate down the street.”
Jackie wanted to look amused, but he couldn’t sell that. He rolled up his window and motioned with his finger and the car pulled away from the curb. I watched the taillights go and thought again of Vinnie Marranzino. I stood for a long moment after they’d gone, watching the empty street.
Just another day on Book Row.
27
The next day began like every other. How it ended was another matter.
I made my rounds and found nothing of interest. The entire day was colored by my coming meeting with Rita McKinley. I was on edge, nervous and apprehensive and in a very real but strange way, thrilled. I had an early lunch with Hennessey and we talked a little about the Westfall case. Hennessey liked Rita McKinley and was inclined to believe everything she said. The line from the police department now seemed to be that Bobby Westfall had been killed by a petty thief, who was likely to remain unknown until he was caught for another crime and confessed to this as well. “Right, Neal,” I said, and he gave me a look over a ten-pound sandwich and decided to say no more about it.
I had time to kill and I didn’t want to go into the store. I called in instead, and told Miss Pride I was heading west and probably wouldn’t see her till tomorrow. “Well, that’s going to be a problem for Peter,” she said. “He was here a while ago looking for you. He seemed quite put out when you weren’t here. I told him to come back at closing time, you’re always here by then.”
“Well, tonight I won’t be. Did he say what he wanted?”
“No, but he certainly made it sound urgent.”
“When he comes in, try to help him. He mentioned to me yesterday that he might have some pretty good books to sell. If he needs some money, give him some. Give him up to a couple of hundred if that’s what it takes. Write him a check on the bank up the street and tell him I’ll square it with him tomorrow.”
“Well, all right, but I don’t think that’s what it’s about. He didn’t have any books with him and he didn’t say anything about money.”
“All right, if worse comes to worst, have him call me up at Rita McKinley’s place. Now, one more thing. Call your friend Harkness and let him know you’re gonna be alone at closing tonight. Tell Ruby and Neff too.”
“I’ll be fine, Mr. Janeway.”
“Listen to me. Do what I tell you. That’s the most dangerous time of day for businesses run by women alone. Just let the others on the block know that you’ll be closing up alone tonight. That way they can keep an eye on you.”
I heard her sigh with feminist impatience.
“Miss Pride? Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Mr. Janeway.”
“Do it.”
“Yes, Mr. Janeway.”
I decided to scout west Denver, work my way through Golden and Morrison and let my momentum carry me to McKinley’s place by late afternoon. For some reason, west Denver is a bookscout’s ghetto. There are a few thrift stores, but nothing to write home about, and Golden is a complete wash. Morrison is an interesting little mountain town, full of antique stores that will sometimes cough up a garnet in the sea of junk. It was, however, less than a blue-ribbon performance: the sum total of the day’s work was less than a dozen books, none even on the fringe of greatness. Some days are like that.
It was almost dark when I drove up the road to Rita McKinley’s. The clock in my dashboard said 4:53. I was run-ning a little later than I’d planned—a place in Evergreen had caught my eye, and you know how bookscouting is. She had left the gate open and I
drove right through. She was working when I arrived: she had a fire going in the yard and huge piles of trash waiting to be fed to it. It was chilly. She wore faded jeans and a red flannel shirt and a heavy coat. The house was perched on top of the mountain, a great stone building with a porch that looked east, toward Denver. You couldn’t see the city from there, but that didn’t hurt the view. Miss McKinley gave a wave as I came into the yard. I parked beside her car, a plain Dodge about four years old.
From a distance she looked very young, an illusion that dissolved as I came closer. She was one of those women who look better with some age. She’d be a knockout at forty, about six years from now. We said our hellos and I apologized for intruding. She waved that off and led me inside. “My books are all over the house,” she said. “It’ll take you a long time to see them all. Maybe we should confine ourselves to the big room today.”
The house smelled musty, the way a place gets when it’s been closed for six months. Her living room was long, with a fireplace and a high ceiling. She had an enormous print of a whale, the picture Rockwell Kent had done for the 1930 edition of Moby Dick. There were other whales about—knick-knacks on the shelves, pictures on the walls, paintings, photographs. Over the fireplace she had a blown-up photograph of a lone man standing on the bow of a speedboat. A larger boat was in the background, bearing down. I knew what it was: someone from Greenpeace, putting himself between an unseen whale and a boatload of modern whalers.
There weren’t many books in the living room, and these she said were junk, “just things I’m reading.” The main event was two rooms removed. The whole east wall was made of glass. There were heavy drapes, open now, which she used, probably in the morning, to protect her books against the sun. All the other walls were lined with books.
“Before you get started, there was a call for you about ten minutes ago. It may’ve been your girl at the store. It sounded pretty confused. Here, I got part of it on the tape machine.”
She flipped a small cassette player. The first thing I heard was Peter’s voice. He was in the middle of a sentence, as if he’d been talking over the recording. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his voice sounded almost panicky. He turned away from the phone and there was a jumble of voices. A woman’s voice said, “Let me talk to him, Peter… Peter, would you give me that phone… give it to me, Peter, right now.” There was a click and a bump and Miss Pride came on. “Mr. Janeway, are you there? Hello?” Then I heard her say, lower, as if she’d turned away. “There’s nobody on the line, Peter, are you sure you dialed it right?” Then Peter screamed—literally screamed—“It’s a fucking tape recorder!” and I heard him shout something but I couldn’t make out the words. They were both talking for about ten seconds; then Miss Pride came back on and said in a low voice, “Look, I’m sorry, someone’s come in…I’ll call you back.”
The line went dead.
“You certainly know some strange people, Mr. Janeway,” Miss McKinley said.
“I can’t imagine what was going on there.”
“I think you’d better call her back.”
She went out of the room while I called. The phone rang and rang. The clock on the wall said five twenty-five: the store had been closed for twenty-five minutes.
I sat for a moment and stared at the machine. Miss McKinlev poked her head in.
“Everything all right?”
“I don’t know. Could I hear the tape again?”
But there was nothing on the tape that hadn’t been there the first time.
I called Seals & Neff. Ruby answered on the first ring.
“Hey, Rube, this’s Janeway. Listen, would you walk up the street and see if everything is okay at my place?”
“Sure. What’s wrong?”
“Peter was just in there. I’m afraid he may’ve been giving Miss Pride some grief.”
“Sure… gimme your number where you’re at…I’ll call you right back.”
I hung up and sat down to wait.
“How about some coffee?” Miss McKinley said. “I’ve got some whiskey if you’d like a drink.”
“As a matter of fact, it is almost decent time for a bourbon.”
“How do you like it?”
“Just like it comes.”
She came back with the drink just as Ruby called. She motioned to the phone, that I should answer it, and I did. Ruby said, “Place looks shipshape to me, Dr. J. All locked up tight and the night-light on.”
“Did you try the doors?”
“All both of’em. Walked around, rattled the windows, sang three stanzas of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ through the keyhole. Nobody’s there, Dr. J. Whatever the bug up Pete’s ass was, she must’ve handled it and got him out of there.”
“Okay,” I said in a doubtful voice. “Thanks, Ruby.”
I looked at Miss McKinley. “What a crazy thing.”
“There’s probably a simple explanation.”
“Yeah…but you’d think she’d call back.”
“Maybe it slipped her mind. She did say someone had come in. Anyway, there’s nothing you can do about it now. Might as well do what you came for.”
28
Everything julian lambert had said about her books was true, except that even then you weren’t prepared for them. You just don’t see that many sensational books in one place. It was all literature, published since the mid-1800s, and it was all letter-perfect. You need a bookman’s eye to appreciate what a perfect copy of a fifty-year-old book looks like. It does not look like a new book—it looks so wonderfully like an old book that’s never been touched. Never been touched by human hands—that’s the feeling her books gave you. There were things in that room that I knew hadn’t been seen in that condition in half a century. She had a shelf of Jack Londons in crisp dust jackets from before 1910. She had a little poetry piece that had ushered Ernest Hemingway into the book world. She had Mark Twain’s copy of Kim, signed by Kipling when he and Clemens had met, in 1907. There were so many signed books, variants, unique pieces, books with unusual associations, books from authors’ personal libraries, letters, and manuscripts that mere first editions seemed unexciting and trite. She had factory-fresh copies of Look Homeward, Angel, and Steinbeck’s first, awful, but extremely scarce novel, Cup of Gold. After a while this becomes meaningless: it degenerates into a simple list of the great, the rare, the wonderful. When I came upon Hawthorne’s copy of Moby Dick, inscribed by Melville in great friendship and lavishly annotated in Hawthorne’s hand, I heard a long deep sigh fill the room. I realized a moment later that it had been my own voice.
The phone rang, and I thought of Miss Pride. I heard the recorder kick on and Rita McKinley’s voice repeating the message I had heard so often. At the beep, a man said, “Rita, this is Paul… Call me back when you can.” It rang again, almost immediately. The recorder played and beeped and a voice said, “This is George Butler the Third calling from New York. I have decided to buy the four books we discussed yesterday. Would you please ship and bill as soon as possible?” Of course I knew who Butler the Third was. I saw his self-aggrandizing ads in the AB all the time. “Mr. George Butler III announces his acquisition of…” That kind of thing. George Butler was one of the so-called big boys of the book world. You read his ads and you knew he never put on his pants like a mortal man, he just drifted up and floated down into both legs at once. I wondered what four books George Butler had decided he couldn’t live without, and what the tariff would be. Ten thousand? Twenty? Just routine business for Ms. McKinley, who was certainly operating on a high level from her ivory tower in the mountains.
I took a break and called Miss Pride’s home number. She wasn’t home. I looked through some more books. I had done most of one short wall and still had the long wall and another short one left. I felt light-headed, like a drunk just coming back from a three-week bender. It had been too rich, this feast of her books, and I decided to pack it in for the night. I got up, stretched, and moved to the door. There was no sound in
the house, other than the grandfather’s clock ticking in the hallway. The clock said it was eight-thirty. I went through the dark hall, drawn by the light at the end. Suddenly I smelled food cooking. When I came into the kitchen, I saw that she had set a table for two.
I didn’t see her at first. She was standing by the glass door, perfectly still, lost in thought, looking away into the night. I cleared my throat. She turned. There was a pensive, lonely, almost sad look on her face. I didn’t know what else to call it but a window to the soul. It disappeared at once and the mask came up. She looked surprised, as if she’d forgotten I was there.
“Well, Mr. Janeway. You all finished?”
“Give me another week and I might be just getting started.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I thought I’d buy something,” I said. “I guess I wanted to show off. But I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know where to begin.”
“It has that effect on people. It can be overwhelming.”
“I hope when you go away for months at a time you have some way of protecting it.”
“I do lock the gate.”
“Don’t you even have a burglar alarm?”
She shook her head. “You think I should?”
“Yes, and an armed guard, and spotlights, a siren, and killer dogs. I’d also put a moat around the house and fill it with crocodiles. That’s for starters.”
“Oh, it’s no fun having something if you’ve got to lock it up… if it makes you paranoid.”
“There’s a difference between paranoia and common sense. You’d hate to come home someday and find all these books gone.”
“Yes, but they’re only books. I’d just go get some more.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
She said, “I love what I do but I’m not very materialistic. If I don’t have them, somebody else will. As long as they’re not destroyed, the world’s no worse off.”
“I don’t believe you said that. I could spend a week in that room without water, food, or air.”
“Speaking of food and water, I’m fixing us something to eat. Hope you don’t mind fruit and veggies. I’m trying to stop eating meat.”
