Booked to Die (28 page)

The day dawned cold and wet and miserable, one of those days in the Rockies when it’s too warm to snow and too cold to rain. We had slept for a few hours, and I came awake with her head nestled under my chin and my hand cradling her breast. I lay still, reluctant to wake her. But there was a killer to catch, and today was the day, and the day wasn’t getting any younger. I thought I had narrowed it down to an either-or. Everything about it had begun to make sense, except her part in it, and that made no sense at all.

She turned over and opened her eyes. She touched my face and said, “Love me again,” and I couldn’t, couldn’t, say no. Then, spent, we lay under the covers and locked eyes and touched. At some point I said we had to get up. She said, “We don’t have to do anything, not ever again.” She did get up, though, and for a moment she stood by the bed, naked and lovely. She walked away and I heard the shower start. I stared up at the darkest part of the house and thought about it. And I thought: God bless America, I hope you’re not mixed up in this. I tell you it’ll break my heart if you are.

Either-or: six
of one, half a dozen of the other. We came down from the mountain and I did a mental crapshoot. It came up Littleton. We rolled in on Hampden and turned south on Santa Fe Drive. The streets were still slick but it was daylight now and I had made the drive down in less than forty minutes.

I pulled into a Denny’s and stopped.

“This’s where you get out.”

“I told you before, Janeway, I have a constitutional problem with fast food.”

“You’ll live through it. Have a cup of coffee. Read the paper. And just wait here for me.”

“How long am I supposed to wait?”

“Till I come back.”

She gave me her long-suffering look. “I hope this isn’t the kind of treatment I can expect from you.”

She got out and came around to my side. I rolled down the window and she stood for a moment looking at me, her coppery hair wafting around her head. This is how I’ll remember her twenty years from now, I thought: her priceless face framed in the car window on a lousy gray day. She leaned in and kissed me. “Don’t get killed,” she said in a tiny voice. “You too,” I said. She had already turned away and was walking toward the restaurant. “Be back before you know it,” I called, but she didn’t do anything at that. Strange girl, I thought: strange woman, still full of secrets.

Our discussion that morning had been brief and to the point.

“I’d like you to stay with me today,” I had said.

“Sounds lovely. What’ll we do? Wanna fly to New York?”

“I’m going out to get the guy who killed those three people.”

“And for this you need me?”

“I need to know you’re safe,” I had said. “I think there’s a possibility he may try to kill you next.”

A few minutes later I pulled up at Val Ballard’s house. I could see the house in the misty morning. If I walked along the road, as I now did, I could soon see the garage. It was closed: the doctor was in. The road told me nothing: it was so full of puddles and melting snow that there was just no reading it. But the furrow he had plowed across the back yard was gone, washed away completely in the night, and there were no fresh tracks to take its place.

He had been home, then, for some time.

I didn’t know what to expect: I just hoped I was ready for it. I had my gun in my hand with my jacket folded over it. Now I had to walk across thirty yards of open space to reach the house. The windows were dark: any of them were perfect hiding places for a sniper. I took a breath and went: walked up to the front door just like the Fuller brush man. There, I flattened against the wall and listened. The house sounded exactly like it had the last time I had been here, nine hours ago: in other words, there was no sound at all. I started around it, stopping at every window. I peered down the hall and saw nothing. Moved on to the next window. Kitchen. No help. A ray of sunshine was starting to peek through the clouds. It cast a beam almost like a rainbow through the kitchen window. I eased my way to the back of the house. Turned the corner. The next window looked into his den, and there he was, sitting at the desk, his back to the window. He wasn’t doing anything. I thought maybe he was asleep: that’s how still he was. But suddenly he moved: dropped his feet, fumbled, lit a cigarette. He sat there smoking and I stood outside, not two feet from the back of his head, wondering what to do next.

There were really only two choices. I decided to play it straight. I walked around the house, went to the front door, and rang the bell.

I heard him coming immediately.

He jerked open the door and started to say, “It’s about fuckin‘ time.” He got most of it out before he realized that it wasn’t about time at all.

“Who the hell’re you?”

“Detective Janeway. I talked to you at your uncle’s house, remember?”

“Yeah, sure. What’re you doing here? Hell, it’s only eight o’clock.”

“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”

“Look, I’m expecting somebody. I don’t have much time.”

“That’s okay, I won’t take much.”

Reluctantly he moved away from the door. I went in, keeping the gun handy under the jacket. You never knew what might happen with people.

We went into the living room. It looked vaguely like a place I’d seen before. He asked if I wanted some coffee. I wanted some badly, but I said no. One of my rules is to never eat or drink with people who might want to kill me.

He didn’t look the part somehow: he was dressed well, in dry clothes: his hair was combed, and in fact he looked bushy-brained and sharp, like a lawyer about to go into court for a big case. He must’ve been sizing me up too. “You look like you’ve been through a war,” he said.

“I have.”

“I’ll bet it’s interesting as hell, but like I said, I’m expecting company. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me what you know about your uncle’s books.”

He was a lousy liar. He looked away and tried to shrug it off. “What’s there to tell? We went all through this.”

“We went through something but it wasn’t this. Look, you’ve got things to do and so do I. D’you want to tell me about it, or shall we wait till Mr. Rubicoff gets here and we can all go through it together?”

It was a sucker punch and he almost fell off his chair from the force of it.

“Why don’t you get the hell outta here right now?”

“Fine. It’s your house. But I’ll be back, and I’ll tell you something, Ballard. You’re gonna have to be a lot better lawyer than I think you are to get yourself out of this mess.”

I got up to leave.

“What mess? What’re you talking about?”

“Oh, I think you know. Let’s not waste time with this.”

“Wait a minute. There’s no sense being mean about it. We can get along. I mean, can’t we get along?”

“I can.”

“Sit down.”

I eased myself down into the chair.

“How’d you know about Rubicoff?” he said.

“I’ve got ways. Sometimes they’re slow and ponderous but I usually find out in the end. For instance, I know about Rubicoff but I don’t know everything. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

We were fencing. This could go on forever. I groped for the words to break us out of it.

“Let’s pretend I don’t know anything; I’ll like it better that way. You tell me who Rubicoff is and how you got mixed up with him.”

“He’s a dick I hired.”

“Keep going. What’s it got to do with the books?”

“I hired him to help me find the sons of bitches.”

“Let me get this straight. First you all but give the books away. Now you hire a guy to help you get ‘em back.”

“I didn’t know then what I know now.”

“Which is what?”

“They’re worth a fortune, that’s what. And they’re still mine, pal, make no mistake about that.”

“You sold ‘em. You signed a bill of sale.”

“Doesn’t matter what the hell I signed: that deal was done on a fraudulent premise. The guy knew something I couldn’t be expected to know. You just let me find those babies, we’ll see who winds up owning them in a court of law.”

“How’d you find out about them?”

“About three weeks ago, a guy came and told me.”

“Uh-huh. A guy named Peter Bonnema.”

“I didn’t know his name then; didn’t know anything about him. I got a call out of the blue. The guy said I’d given away a fortune and he knew where the stuff was. He had some of it himself, and if I wanted it all back I’d meet him in a cafe on East Colfax at nine that night.”

“Then what happened?”

“He didn’t show up. I waited till ten. I don’t know what there was about it…something told me it was for real. Then when he didn’t show I said screw it, some silly bastard wasting my time. But he called me back the next day. I started to hang up on him, but there was something about it…I don’t know which end is up when it comes to books, and I couldn’t care less, but I knew there was something to it. Sometimes you just have a hunch.”

I nodded.

“So at nine o’clock that night I’m in the same skuzzy cafe, and this time the guy comes in and sits down at my table. He was a goddamn bum, a tramp, for Christ’s sake. I almost got up and walked out. Then he opens this box and takes out a book. It looks like any other book to me. Who gives a damn about a stupid book? But the guy says, ‘Look at this,’ and he takes out a little booklet, a catalog from some book dealer in Boston. ‘Look at this,’ he says, and he shows me in the catalog what the asking price is for a copy of the book he’s holding. Six hundred mazumas, buddy! I damn near lost my supper. One fuckin‘ book, six hundred big ones. Then he takes out another book and another catalog. Three-fifty. Do I need to tell you that by now he’s got my attention?”

“What did you do?”

“Asked what he wanted. He wanted one-third, a three-way split. I guess he’d done his homework. Anyway, he knew there was that third party involved.”

“Your sister.”

He waved that off with an impatient grimace. “Let’s just say that the guy knew what was involved. Before he’d tell me what happened to the books, I’d have to draw up an agreement and have it signed by…you know. Then I’d have to sign it myself and we’d have to have it notarized. I didn’t care. The damn thing wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on. Anybody could break a document like that when it’s based on blackmail or fraud. So I said sure, I’d have it all drawn up, nice and goddamn legal. He’s playing in my ballpark now. You don’t sheist the shysters, Janeway, and I’m not nearly as bad a lawyer as you think I am. You bet I’d sign it. We’d see what happened later, in court.”

“But then the guy got killed.”

“Yeah. I knew I was onto something then.”

“So you hired the gumshoe.”

“That’s right, and a lot of good it’s done me so far.”

“What’s he been doing?”

“Nothing exciting, you can bet on that. He can’t find his ass with both hands, if you want my opinion.”

“Where’d you go last night, Ballard?” I said suddenly.

“How’d you know I went anywhere?”

“Tried calling you a couple of times.”

“I went driving around. I couldn’t get ahold of Rubicoff. I called his office, called his house—I did everything but go through City Hall, and I couldn’t get anything but that friggin‘ answering service. I’m paying this guy more money than a lawyer makes, and I can’t get him on the phone. Then I finally did get him and he couldn’t see me. I couldn’t believe it. He’s got another case he’s working on, and that pissed me off. He’s gonna be out of town all day today, can you beat that? A whole goddamn day I’m losing while this keyhole-peeper is chasing down another guy’s wife in Santa Fe. He says all he can do for me is see me for a few minutes this morning on his way to the airport. Can you believe that? Eight hundred dollars I’ve paid that clown, and maybe he can squeeze me in at eight o’clock on his way to catch a plane for somebody else.”

“So you went driving around…”

“Yeah. No place special, just workin‘ off steam. What’s the big deal?”

“Maybe nothing. I wanted to talk to you about your uncle’s house.”

“What about it?”

“I may be interested in buying it.”

“You’re kidding.” Suddenly he was a pussycat.

“I’m not kidding, but I don’t have a helluva lot of money to throw around.”

“You won’t need a lot for my half.”

“That’s what Ms. Davis said. It may be the only thing you two have ever agreed on.”

“What’s your offer?”

I shrugged an apology. “Fifty.”

“I’ll get the papers drawn up this weekend. I want to be done with it.”

“That’s fine,” I said pleasantly. I asked if the house had had a recent appraisal done, if it had been inspected for termites, if there’d been any plumbing problems. I chatted and blabbed, went through all the stalling tactics I could muster, and a few minutes later Rubicoff arrived. W?e heard his car pull into the yard and the door slam. Ballard’s kettle boiled over again. “Just watch what the son of a bitch says!” he shouted. “He won’t have time to talk, he’ll be in a hurry now ‘cause he’s late for his flight. Eight hundred I pay this jerk and this is what I get.”

He went to the door and threw it open. Footsteps came up the walk. I moved slowly forward, the gun still under my jacket. I saw a shadow pass the window.

Their voices blended. Rubicoff was saying he was sorry, he’d get back on the case in a day or two but right now all he had was a few minutes. Ballard shouted him down. “As far as I’m concerned, pal, you can fuckin‘ stay in Santa Fe! Gimme my money back, you goddamn crook!”

There was a scuffle: Ballard had thrown a punch. It couldn’t be much of one because two seconds later he was flat on the floor. The guy had decked him without breaking stride. I walked around Ballard, who was struggling to sit up, and I stared into the face of the dick known as Rubicoff.

No turtle face. No flaring nostrils. He was short and bald. He looked like anything but a private detective who had just put his client down for the count.

“You want some too?”

“Not me, bud,” I said. “I’m just the lady from the welcome wagon.”

I eased my way past, went down the road, and got in my car.