Booked to Die (20 page)

“Go ahead, be blunt. I’ve got a thick skin, I can take it. I’m not gonna fall on my sword. Since we’re being blunt, let me ask you something. Are you worried that I’ll eat my fish with the salad fork? Or do you big-time book dealers have a rule about not playing with the little guys.”

“Don’t be nasty, sir.”

“I’m just trying to figure you out.”

“Then stop trying. It’s very simple. 1 don’t want to get involved.”

“And you think knowing me will involve you in something?”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

“How, for God’s sake?”

“How do you think? How do men and women always get involved?”

I sat back and looked from afar. “Well, now, that’s quite a thing to say.”

“A good deal more than I wanted to say.”

“So what’s wrong with that? It’s what makes the world go ‘round. If it happens, it happens.”

“It’s not going to happen, Mr. Janeway, I promise you that.”

She had been sitting rigidly in her chair: now she relaxed; sat back and let her breath out slowly. “I didn’t want to let you come up here at all. You know that.”

“Don’t give me that. You called me back, remember?”

“I don’t know why I did that.”

“You know, all right, you just don’t want to say it.”

“Doesn’t need to be said. You’re here, aren’t you? Don’t be so damned analytical. You’re here, I must’ve wanted to see you again. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you into my life. I’m sorry if that’s too blunt, Mr. Janeway, but you can’t say you didn’t ask for it.”

Then a curious thing happened: her hands began to tremble. She groped for words, reached down into a stack of newspapers and came up with THE newspaper. “I never stop my papers when I go away. There’s a boy I hire who brings all my mail and newspapers in every day. I guess I should have them stopped but I don’t. I like to see what’s been happening while I’ve been gone. Look what I came across this morning.”

The story was a little different than the one I had seen. The headline said cop named in brutality charge. They had moved my picture out to page 1 for the late edition. It lay on the table, staring up at me, glaring angrily at the angry old world.

“Is this my dessert?”

She just looked at me.

“Miss McKinley, I’m wasting a helluva lot of great one-liners on you. I’m starting to think you’ve got no sense of humor at all.”

She still said nothing. Her eyes burned into my face like tiny suns.

“You want maybe I should comment on this? Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“My comment is this. Don’t believe everything you read.”

“That’s it?”

“Tell me what you want and I’ll do my best to give it to you. I mean, look, you read that this morning, right? Plenty of time for you to call to cancel. You didn’t do that, did you?”

Her eyes never left my face. She gave a shake of her head that was barely a movement.

“Even after I got here, you could’ve shuffled me in and out. But you didn’t do that, either. You gave me a good stiff drink and free run of the place, then you gave me dinner. What am I supposed to make of that?”

She said nothing, did nothing.

“I’m going home,” I said.

I stood and paused for just a moment, my hands clasping the back of my chair. We looked at each other. Her face was a solid wall. She said nothing. I went to the door and looked back. What a great exit, I thought: I’ll just fade away like some damnfool hero in a bad cowboy movie. In the yard I looked back. She had come to the doorway, a silhouette in the yellow light. I gave her a cheery wave. The hell with you, I thought. Then I thought, Don’t walk away, it’s too important; don’t do this. What you say and do this minute will set the course of your life from this day on, I thought.

I had opened the car door, propped my foot inside, and leaned over the window. When I spoke, my voice carried strong and clear over the mountaintop. “What’s in the newspaper is his side of it. Here’s my side, in case you’re interested. That guy is a killer. I’ve tried to pin him for more than two years. I guess I finally got sick of it. He raped a woman and beat her silly and was coming back for an encore. He found me there instead. As far as brutality is concerned, forget it— he’s plenty big enough to take care of himself. When he says I cuffed him and beat him, he’s lying. I took the cuffs off and it was a fair fight. That’s the end of it. I’m going home.“

I drove down the mountain feeling depressed. But under it was a strange feeling of elation, of joy, making a mix that’s almost impossible to describe. I didn’t know what was happening but it was big. Oh, was it big! Could I have lived thirty-six years and never once felt this? I stopped at the side of the road about five miles from her house and fought the urge to go back. I won that fight… one mark for good judgment.

I’d call her in the morning.

She’d call me.

Somehow we’d get past all the problems of her money and her expertise and my brutal nature.

One way or another, it wasn’t over. That was the one sure thing in an unsure world.

I got to
the store about quarter past midnight. The street was deserted except for an ambulance far away: the overture of another long night on East Colfax. I tucked the Steinbeck under my arm and let myself in. The place had a stale, slightly sour smell at midnight. I locked the door and put the book on the counter, then sat on my stool looking at it. I opened it and looked at the doodle Steinbeck had drawn all those years ago, when fame and glory and money were his, when his talent was at its peak. “May 12, 1940: Tom Joad on the road.” A prize, yes, one might even say a small victory, but a hollow one. You can have it back, Miss Rita, you hear that? You can
have
the damn thing. All you’ve got to do is ask.

I cut a piece of plastic and wrapped the jacket anew. With a light pencil I wrote in the new. price, $2,000, and looked in the glass case for the perfect centerpiece spot.

The phone rang.

It can’t be, I thought. I watched it ring three times, then I picked it up and said hello.

“I knew you’d be there,” she said.

“You’re getting pretty smart in your old age.”

“It’s what I’d‘ve done not so long ago. When you buy your first big piece, you can’t wait to see how it looks in its new home. Even if it’s midnight.”

“For the record, it looks great.”

“You’re allowed an hour to gloat. After that, it’s unbecom-ing.”

There was a long pause, what I was starting to think of as a Ritalike white space. Then she said, “I called to tell you something but I don’t know how.”

“We could play twenty questions. Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“Animal,” she said. Her voice sounded thick, lusty.

“I kind of thought it would be.”

Another pause. I didn’t know what to do but fill it with more comic relief.

“Does it walk on two legs, four, or slide on its belly like a reptile?”

“This is difficult,” she said. “I know you think I’ve been manipulating you, but I haven’t. I’m just not very consistent sometimes.”

“Hey, if I want consistency I’ll buy a robot. So you give off mixed signals. That’s all part of the human comedy.”

“You’re angry.”

“Just confused, Miss McKinley. First you tell me, in barely couched terms, to break a leg and go blind. Then you call and invite me up. You fix me a dinner but act like I’m the butcher of Auschwitz when I ask you for a date. You’d already read that newspaper, you knew full well that I stomp puppies to death for a hobby, but do I worry? Nah! I’m just glad I got to see your books.”

There was white space, of course: a ten-second pause. I thought of whistling
Time on My Hands
, but I didn’t do it.

“You are one strange bird, Janeway,” she said.

“I’m fascinating as hell, though, you’ve got to admit that.”

“Yes,” she said, and I felt that buildup in my throat again, and I hoped I’d be able to get through this conversation without croaking like Henry Aldrich.

“I have a dark secret,” she said. “If I tell you what it is, will you promise not to try to see me again?”

“I never bet on a blind. Only fools and bad poker players do that.”

“I guess I’ll tell you anyway. I don’t want you going away thinking I’ve been playing with you.”

“What difference does it make, if I’m going away?”

“I told you before, don’t be so goddamned analytical. Take a few things on faith.”

“You haven’t said anything yet.”

“It’s very simple. I hate violence, but all my life I’ve been attracted to violent men.”

“That’s very interesting,” I said, struggling past a pear-sized obstruction in my throat.

“So the reason I didn’t want you to come up here today is the same reason I finally did ask you up. The same reason I didn’t cancel when I read the paper. The same reason I wouldn’t go out with you. Does that make any sense?”

“No, but keep going. I like the sound of it.”

“You wear your violence on your sleeve. It goes where you go. You carry it around like other men carry briefcases. It’s like a third person in the room. I can’t help being appalled by that.”

I listened to her breathe. My pear had grown into a grapefruit.

“And yet, I’m always a sucker for a man who can make me believe he’ll do anything, if the stakes are big enough.”

I gave a wicked laugh.

Gotcha, I thought.

“I don’t want to see you again,” she said. “I just wanted you to know why.”

“I’ve got a hunch we’ll see each other.”

“I’m engaged, Mr. Janeway. I’m getting married next month.”

“Then it’s a good thing I came along when I did.”

“Good-bye,” she said, and hung up.

God damn it, I thought.

Whoopie! I thought. Yaahoo!

Elation and despair were sisters after all.

I called her back: got the recording. When the beep came, I pictured her sitting in the kitchen listening to my voice. Insanity, the third sister, took over. I got real close and crooned into the phone. “Oh, Rüüü-ta! This is the mystery voice calling! Guess my name and win a truckload of Judith Krantz first editions. Ooooh, I’m sorry, I’m not George Butler the Third! But that was a fine guess, and wait’ll you hear about the grand consolation prize we have in store for you!
Two
truckloads of Judith Krantz first editions! Your home will certainly be a bright one with all those colorful best-sellers lying around. Your friends will gaze in awe—” The tape beeped again, and a good thing, else I might’ve gone on till dawn. I replaced the phone in the cradle and stared at it for a long moment. Ring, you sonofabitch, I thought, but the bastard just sat there.

Convulsed with laughter, I was sure.

Too weak to call.

Savoring my wit in her solitude.

Damn her.

I worked it off. In a bookstore there’s always something to do. I had a small stack of low-end first editions that needed to be priced, so I did that. I watered Miss Pride’s plant again, and studied the AB. I read for an hour. Sometime after two o’clock I fell asleep in the big deep chair near the front counter.

I opened my eyes to a feeling more desolate than despair. This was not the aching loneliness of new love, it was something far more desperate and immediate. The street was still dark: the world outside was hollow and empty and nothing moved anywhere. The store was like a tomb: still, silent, eerie.

Maybe I’d been dreaming. I hadn’t had the Jackie Newton dream in months. Maybe that had come back and I just couldn’t remember.

Then it came to me.

It was that sourness I had noticed when I’d first opened the door. It was stronger now, ripe and distinct, almost sweet in a sickening kind of way. When you’ve been in Homicide as long as I was, that’s one thing you never forget.

The smell of death.

I got up and went toward the back. The smell got stronger.

Oh boy, I thought.

I opened the door to the office. I turned on the light. Nothing looked wrong. It was just as Ruby had said: everything shipshape.

But the smell was stronger.

There was one place Ruby couldn’t have seen—the bathroom across the hall. That room had no windows, nothing but a skylight, no way for anyone to look in.

I opened the door. Miss Pride stared up at me with glassy eyes. Peter sprawled across her, facedown.

Each had been shot once through the head.

The killer had
come in just after closing time. Miss Pride had not yet locked the front door.

He had come for a single purpose. No money was missing. No books were missing. He had come to kill. By the time I tried returning Miss Pride’s call, at five-twenty-five, she and Peter had probably been dead ten minutes.

He had come through the front door. We keep the back door locked. He had forced Miss Pride to lock up—her keys were still clutched tight in her fingers—and afterward he had used the back door to escape. Unlike the front door, which must be locked with a key, the back door had a latch lock that could be slam-locked from the outside.

The weapon was probably a .38. Ballistics would tell us more.

Miss Pride had been shot first. The shot had hit her in the front of the head, exactly between the eyes: she had fallen over on her back, her head twisted grotesquely against the wall.

Peter had been a more difficult target. In his panic he had done a great deal of scrambling. One slug had missed and gone through the wall. The second one got him.

The killer, of course, had taken the gun away with him.

He had probably worn gloves. There were no fingerprints on the back door latch or on the door itself. There were many prints on the front door, from customers who had come and gone all day long. Most of these would never be identified.

He had come, done his job, and left. The whole thing had probably taken no more than two minutes.

Everything else was speculation. My guess was that Peter had known who killed Bobby Westfall. He had come to the store to tell me about it but the killer got there first. Miss

Pride had simply been unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As always, there were more questions than answers. If this tied back into the Westfall case, why had Peter waited all these months to tell me about it? How had the killer suddenly learned that Peter was a threat? Why had it happened now, and what had caused it to suddenly come on? Had there been something in the Ballard library so valuable that someone would kill for it, then kill twice more? Was it the Ballard library at all, and if so, how could Rita have overlooked it? Something small—so small that no one could see it, yet Bobby Westfall had had to take the entire library to be sure of getting it.
Look at the little things, Dr. J
. I heard Ruby’s voice telling me that. It’s the one lesson that even a good bookman finds hardest to learn. Look at the little stuff—pamphlets, broadsides, tiny books with no lettering on their spines—and remember that one little weatherworn piece could bring more money than an entire library done up in glamour leather.

Something small. Something you know is there but you’re not sure where. If you’re Bobby Westfall, you have to take every book: tear them apart if necessary, go page by page if necessary, slit the cloth and strip away the bindings if necessary, rip the hinges asunder and shred the pieces through a sieve if necessary. Kill or be killed if necessary. Something small and hidden, it had to be, had to, because if it were small and unhidden it would be too easy to steal. Rita McKinley could easily drop it down her dress while old man Ballard went for coffee; Bobby Westfall could’ve dropped it in his pocket, the Lord be damned, while he wandered among the stacks and ostensibly tried to make up his mind.

It all came back to money. That’s what fueled Bobby and Peter and all the guys like them. Money was the one thing they never had enough of: it was the driving force in their lives. Bobby wanted to be respected as a book dealer, not joked about as a bookscout. It took money to do that. It took other things—knowledge, taste, a keen eye, good juice, a gam-bler’s blood, and a hustler’s imagination—but without money you just couldn’t get started.

The scene at my place was like a hundred murder scenes I’d been to. Cops. Photographers. Sketchmen. The coroner.

It was the same, only different. This was me on the receiving end. That dead girl was one of mine.

From the moment I found her, I was a cop again.

A cop without a badge.