Booked to Die (11 page)

The body of
Bobby Westfall lay unclaimed in the morgue: if there was a church in Bobby’s life, it had not yet made its presence known. No one had stepped forward and offered Bobby a Decent Christian Burial. The coroner had done more for Bobby in death than most people had in life: his office had spent many man-hours on a long and fruitless search for next of kin. They had found a rumor of a sister living in Salt Lake City, but that had not checked out. Bobby had told people that his mother was dead and he never knew his father. He had mentioned Pennsylvania to several people, but that had not checked out. At seventeen, he had once said, he had been in the army: medical discharge, flat feet. Amazingly, that had not checked out. The army had no record of a Robert Westfall in its service at the time and place that Bobby would have been there. This was important, the coroner said, because if military service could be established Bobby would qualify for burial at Fort Logan. They still had a few leads to check: sometimes a body had to be kept on ice for weeks, until everything petered out. Lacking everything—church, service, next of kin—Bobby would go to an unmarked pauper’s grave at Riverside, and have the earth plowed over him by a bulldozer.

In the morning, I went back to the bookstore beat and Hennessey began checking churches around the neighborhood where Bobby lived. I visited some new stores and went back to the old ones with new questions. Did Bobby ever mention what church he attended? Did he ever mention any names of ministers or people he knew outside the book world? I talked to Ruby Seals, Emery Neff, Jerry Harkness, and Sean Buckley. I went back to Cherry Creek and talked to Roland God-dard and Julian Lambert. It was a wasted morning. Even two bookscouts in Ruby’s store didn’t know much about Bobby. One of them had seen him a few times with the scout called Peter, but no one knew where Peter lived or what his last name was. I wrote down some stuff in my notebook, but I had a feeling that none of it meant anything.

Meanwhile, Hennessey found the church before noon. We thought it likely that Bobby would go to church in his own neighborhood. He didn’t have a car, and probably wouldn’t want to spend Sundays doing what he did every other day of the week—walking or riding a bus. We looked closely at churches that would appeal to born-again types rather than older establishment religions. Ruby remembered that Bobby had once referred to Catholicism disparagingly—“not a true faith,” he had called it—so he wouldn’t like the Episcopal church any better. He probably wasn’t a Lutheran, and anything from the outer limits, such as Unitarianism, was unlikely. No, Bobby was probably caught up in some evangelical splinter group formed by a diploma mill preacher with a slick tongue and a ready supply of hellfire. It was easy: Hennessey found the church on the fifth try. It was one of those little chapels off University Boulevard, the Universal Church of God, it called itself. The preacher recognized Bobby’s picture at once. Yes, Bob was a regular: he seldom missed a Sunday and usually came to Bible studies on Wednesday nights as well. He always came with a fellow named Jefferson or Johnson, good friend of his. They were always together. Hennessey asked it they had come last Wednesday. As a matter of fact they had, the preacher said. Suddenly Jefferson or Johnson became the last known man, except Julian Lambert, to have seen Bobby Westfall alive.

The preacher got the man’s name from the church registry. Jarvis Jackson lived on Gaylord Street, just a few blocks away. The preacher didn’t know either Jackson or Bobby well. They kept to themselves and were quiet and reflective in church. The preacher looked a lot like those birds you see on TV Sunday mornings: sharp and cunning, and dressed in an expensive tailored suit. Hennessey didn’t like him much.

“What does the church do about burying its members?” Hennessey asked.

“That all depends,” the preacher said.

“On what?”

“On whether they’ve made arrangements.”

“In other words, on whether they’ve got any money.”

“Money runs the world, Mr. Hennessey.”

“It looks like old Bob’s headed for a potter’s field funeral, unless somebody stands the tab,” Hennessey said.

The preacher cocked his head and tried to look sympathetic.

Riverside loomed a little larger for dear old Bob.

We met at Ruby’s bookstore and went to talk to Jarvis Jackson together. Jackson lived in the south half of a shabby little duplex. He lived alone except for half a dozen cats. The cats, he explained, were what first drew him and Bob together. The place smelled strongly of sour milk and well-used kitty litter. There was a case of books in the front room and I gravitated toward them and let my eye run over the titles while Hennessey and Jackson went through the preliminaries. There wasn’t anything in the bookcase—some condensed books and other assorted junk. The bottom shelf was well stained with cat piss, the books all fused together. I would’ve cried if there’d been a Faulkner first in there.

Jackson and Bobby had met a year ago at the church. They had sat on a bench after the service and talked cats. After that riveting conversation, Jackson had invited Bobby home for some lemonade and lunch. They had soon become friends. Jackson thought of himself as Bobby’s best friend. He was fifteen years older, but age doesn’t matter when the chemistry’s right. They liked the same things, shared the same philosophy. They liked the Lord, books, and the smell of cat poop, in approximately that order. They never ran out of things to talk about. Twice a week they would meet in a cafe on East Seventeenth and eat together. They discussed the Lord and the Lord’s work. Bobby had an idea that the Lord had something in mind for him. It was probably a surprise, I thought, when he found out what it was. Bobby had always wanted to do missionary work, but he’d spent all his life putting out brush-fires. Jackson had heard of Bob’s death only this morning, when he’d read about it in the paper.

“When did you see him last?” I said.

“Wednesday night. He always came by here. We’d eat something, then walk over to church. Neither of us drove. We always walked together.”

“Did you talk about anything?”

“We discussed the Lord’s work over dinner.”

“Anything other than that?”

“Not then, no.”

“Some other time, then?”

“After church we came back here and talked some more. Bob didn’t seem to want to go home. Me, I’m retired…I don’t mind staying up late to talk things over.”

“What did you talk about that night?”

“He said he’d done a big book deal. But it wasn’t working out like he’d thought.”

“When had he done this?”

“The night before. He had been up all night.”

“Did he tell you what the deal was?”

“Not exactly. He did say it involved a lot of money. But it wasn’t working out.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“He didn’t go into any details. Just said things never seemed to work out right for him, somehow it just never went right. He couldn’t understand why the Lord always wanted him to fail. The only thing he could figure out was that the Lord was still angry from the things he’d done as a young man. That’s why he wanted to talk to me—he needed reassurance that the Lord is good, not vengeful, that the Lord doesn’t always work in ways we can understand. He doesn’t do things for our convenience or personal glory. There’s a bigger purpose to His acts. We all need to be reminded of that on occasion.”

“Yes sir.”

“So I listened and we talked. It seemed to help him to talk about it. I think he was trying to make up his mind.”

“About what, sir?”

“What to do about it. He was angry. I think he was even angry at the Lord until we talked about it. I think I got him to focus that anger where it really belonged.”

“Where’s that, Mr. Jackson?”

“At himself. At his failings and weaknesses.”

“Or maybe at someone else?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t tell him to do that. It would never be any advice of mine that one man should hate another.”

“Did he say he hated somebody?”

“He was angry. He felt he’d been lied to and cheated. And I think he was trying to make up his mind what to do about it.”

“But he never mentioned any names?”

He shook his head.

“Maybe a name you’ve half forgotten.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Did he give you any idea where he’d gotten the money for the deal?”

“I assume someone gave it to him. I know he didn’t have any money of his own.”

“Did he say anything that might indicate where the deal was done?”

“No… nothing.”

I looked at Hennessey. He gave a frown and turned his palms up.

“I’m sorry I’m such a dead end,” Jackson said. “I want to help if I can. It’s an awful thing, what happened to Bob. I want to help, but it was his business and I just didn’t pry. All I know is that he worked all night on it. He borrowed a coat and tie from me…he wanted to make a good impression… said it was to be the first day of his new life. He was sorry later that he hadn’t gone in his old clothes. There was too much work for him to be dressed like that. He brought the suit back in pretty bad shape.”

“Could we see that suit?”

“It’s right back here in the closet.”

He went into a back room and returned a moment later with the coat and tie. The pants hung loosely under the coat. It had a vest, as Buckley had said, and it looked worn and limp in the light of day.

“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.

“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 fi-nally 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, people, 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, goddammit, 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 her. She nodded and looked away.

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

“We’ll see,” I said.