Booked to die

“Wrong, sport. She was with you when she played you a tape that she said had just been made. Besides, you don’t have to pull the trigger to be involved in something.”

I nodded slowly. “It’s a calculated risk. If she’s still got the tape, a phone call might make sure she keeps it.”

“Or burns it.”

“Or uses it over,” Hennessey said. “That’s the most likely thing. She’ll slip it back in the machine and just use it again. Shucks, even by calling her, we might be erasing it.”

“Oh, hell,” I said, remembering. “I think I may’ve already done that.”

“What’d you do?” Cameron said meanly.

“I got back here about midnight. She called me almost as soon as I came in the door. We talked for a few minutes, then I called her back. God damn it, she had the recording on. I talked on it for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Long enough.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“Just stupid bullshit. Dumb, stupid stuff.”

“Love talk?” Cameron asked.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t think that question requires a translation. Are you involved with this woman, Janeway?”

“Yeah,” I said after a moment. “I believe I am.”

“Shit,” Cameron said.

“Next time I decide to have an affair with a woman, Lester, I’ll be sure and come ask your permission first.”

“We’ve got to go get that tape now,” Hennessey said, “before she uses it anymore.”

“You can’t get in there without a warrant,” I said.

“You still can’t stop playing cop, can you, Janeway?” Cameron said. “I think maybe it’s time you remembered who the police are.”

“I’m trying to tell you something that might do you some good if you’ll just shut up and listen. You don’t just walk up to this lady’s house and knock on the door. She’s got a ten-foot fence and a gate that locks. If you go over that fence without a warrant, anything that comes from that tape is out the window, even if the killer confesses in verse and leaves you his telephone number.”

“That’s only true if she’s involved,” Hennessey. “We couldn’t make a case against her with the tape, but we sure as hell could if the killer’s somebody else.”

“Why not cover your ass?” I said.

“You’ve always been good at that, haven’t you, Janeway?” Cameron said. “Except once.”

31

They carried the bodies out in rubber bags strapped to stretchers. The crowd gave a soft collective sigh and moved back from the door. It all seemed to take forever, as if people were trapped in some slow-motion twilight zone. The lab men combed the place, and this is not a hurry-up process. I waited them out. I sat by the door and tried not to think, and when I could see that it was winding down I started working on a new sign for the window. I wrote it on chipboard with a heavy black marking pen. It said, closed until further notice.

I began to see familiar faces in the crowd. Clyde Fix. A couple of bookscouts I knew. I saw Ruby standing alone, and Neff a few feet away, also alone. I’d seen it before, how death both repels and attracts, leaving even best friends alone with their darkest fascinations, fears. Jerry Harkness peeked in and asked what had happened. When I told him, he looked sick. He drifted down the street without another word.

Any violent death is bad, but this one was worse than bad. I felt like I’d just been mauled by a tiger.

Then, suddenly, they were all gone. The lab boys rolled up their tents and packed away their gear and the crowd outside began to dissolve. Fifteen minutes later the place was empty. A wave of loneliness washed over me, deep and cutting, almost unbearable. How little we know about people, I thought. Can you ever really know anyone? Already I saw Pinky Pride as a one-dimensional figure. I liked her but I knew in years to come I’d have trouble remembering her face. How little time I had actually spent with her. Never mind, Pinky, I’ll spend the time now. I’ll spend it now.

I went from room to room turning off the lights. The bathroom was the worst. The blood was still there and the room was puffed with fingerprint dust and there was still the smell of death, but fading now. I’m not much of a crier: I hate to admit that these days, when macho is a dirty word and people use it to trap and unmask insensitive bastards like myself, but I did shed a few quiet, private tears for Pinky Pride. Then I dropped my new sign into the front window, locked the front door, and started on the trail of her killer.

32

“I can’t believe this,” Ruby said. “God damn, that poor kid. That poor sweet kid.”

Neff looked truly shaken. He sat in his usual spot behind the counter, but his usually busy hands were idle.

“What were you boys doing last night?” I asked.

“We were right here, Dr. J. You called me here, you know where we were.”

“Did you see anything, hear anything, or see anybody unusual?”

I was looking at Neff, who had gone pale. His hands had begun to tremble. “I…I think I…may’ve seen him,” he said.

“We been sittin‘ here waiting for the cops to come down, but they never did,” Ruby said. “We didn’t know what to do.”

“They had to chase down something urgent, but they’ll be back,” I said. “What did you see, Neff?”

But Neff couldn’t speak. He put his hand over his face and sat there shivering.

“Give ‘im a minute,” Ruby said. “This’s been one helluva shock.”

“For all of us, Ruby,” I said. “What were you doing between five and six?”

“Lookin‘ at books.”

“What books?”

“We’d just gotten in some wonderful stuff. I was humped over here at the door, lookin‘ at the books. I didn’t see a thing.”

“That’s what you were doing when I called?”

“Yeah. Em was here with me, sittin‘ right where he is now. He didn’t feel good…”

“I’ve had a touch of stomach flu,” Neff said. “Had the runs all day long. I thought maybe if I got out a while, if I went on a buy, I’d stop thinking about how lousy I felt. I shoulda gone home and went to bed. But I went out and bought these books instead. I’d just gotten back. I had to hit the can so bad I thought I’d bust. You know how we’re set up back there, real cramped, with the toilet right on the alley. I sat down and did my duty, then opened the back door to air the place out. There was a guy… coming up from your way… Christ, I looked right in his face.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Like a man 1 wouldn’t want to run into, in a dark alley at night.”

“Give me some color, Neff. Give me a size, a shape. How old was this dude?”

“I don’t know. Forty… maybe older. I wasn’t paying that much attention then. I know he was white, and big.”

“How big? Two hundred? Six feet? You tell me, Neff, I’m a lousy mind reader.”

“Yeah… big. Two hundred… at least that. Six feet… I don’t know. But heavy through here. God, he saw me watching him.”

“What did he do when he saw you watching him?”

“Turned his head away… like this… then went on by.”

“Did that strike you as suspicious?”

“Why should it? I didn’t know anybody’d been killed. I’m used to seeing weird characters around here; why should I think anything about it. Jesus, the guy looked straight at me. What am I gonna do?”

“Tell the cops what happened, just like you’re telling me.”

“Well, where the hell are they? And what if that guy comes back before they do?”

“I’m not telling you not to worry about it: somebody’s killed three book people in this town and maybe we all better worry a little. If I were you I’d leave the store closed today. Stay together. Go downtown and wait for Hennessey, then tell him what you told me. Could you describe this guy for a police artist?”

“Maybe… I’m not sure. I didn’t stare at him. When he looked away, so did I.”

“How was he dressed?”

“Black. Black slacks, black sport coat open at the neck, pale gray shirt…no tie. Jesus, he might’ve had the gun right there under his coat. He could’ve shot me.”

“Or he could’ve been some neighborhood bum who had nothing to do with it. I take it you’ve never seen him around here.”

“Never seen him anywhere. He didn’t look like a bum to me.”

“Did you watch him at all after he went on by?”

“No. I came… right back up front.”

I let out a long breath. “Okay, let me get a feel for the time frame. You say you went out on a buy and got back here when… about quarter to five?”

“It wasn’t much later than that. I didn’t look at the clock, but I’m sure I was here by five.”

“It was right at closing time, Dr. J,” Ruby said. “I remember I was thinking I’d be closing up in a minute, then Em came back.”

“Then it was closer to five than quarter to,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Neff said. “I thought it was earlier than that, but you may be right.”

“It was a few minutes before five,” Ruby said.

“What’d you drive?” I asked.

“My car, same’s I always drive. Same one’s out back.”

“And you came up Colfax, right past all the stores?”

“Yeah.”

“When you passed my place, did you happen to look in?”

“I gave it a glance, I always do. I like to see if there’s any business on the block. I look in all the stores when I come by.”

“Was the store open or closed?”

“I don’t remember, I didn’t look at the sign. There was nobody in the front, though, I do know that.”

“Did you look in at Harkness and Fix?”

“Yeah, sure. Fix was sitting in that chair by his window like he always does. Harkness was gone somewhere—he had that clock on the door that said, you know, be back at such-and-such a time. I didn’t notice what time it said. I need some water. This shit’s got me shook.”

I waited for him to come back. Then I started in again. “So you drove past the stores and pulled up here and unloaded the books. How long did that take?”

“No more’n a minute,” Ruby said. “There wasn’t all that much, quantity-wise. Just three boxes. Didn’t take but a second to bring it all in.”

I kept looking at Neff. “Then what did you do?”

“Like I told you, headed straight for the can. I thought I’d bust before I got back there.”

“How long were you on the pot?”

“No more than a minute. You know how it is when you’ve got the runs, it’s all water.”

“Then you opened the back door and saw the guy.”

He took a shivery breath, nodded, and let it out.

“So you were back there what… two minutes? And this would all have taken place by a few minutes after five? And you didn’t see the guy get in any car and drive away, either of you?”

“I didn’t see anything,” Ruby said.

Neff looked ill. We were all silent for a moment.

“I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Janeway, this thing’s made a mess of my nerves. I’m not gonna sleep till they catch this bastard.”

I gave him an encouraging little nod. “Tell me anything else that comes to you. Hair… scars…”

“I didn’t notice any scars. He had thick black hair with deep recesses. It went way back, made the front of his head look like a big letter M, but the hair was still real thick where it did grow. He had a face like a…turtle… just a flat line for a mouth. I can’t tell you about his eyes: he turned away before I got a look, and I probably wouldn’t remember anyway.”

“And he didn’t say anything?”

“Hell no. The whole thing didn’t take more than a few seconds. But that was enough.”

“All right,” I said. “Stay away from here today. Get downtown and tell Hennessey what you’ve told me. Get the artist involved. Do the best you can.”

“Sure… you bet.”

“A couple more questions, then I’ve got to go,” I said. “I talked to Miss Pride in the middle of the day. Told her to call and tell you she’d be there alone at closing…” I looked searchingly at both faces.

Ruby shook his head. “She never called me.”

“No,” Neff said.

Damn you, Pinky, I thought. Next time do what I tell you.

I felt the shivers in my own spine, and hoped I wasn’t coming down with Neff’s flu.

“What about Peter?” I said. “I asked you before if you knew where he lived.”

“Didn’t know then, don’t know now,” Ruby said.

“What was Peter’s last name?”

“Uh, wait a minute… yeah, I know it, I just can’t call it. Hell, Em, help me out, you know what it is.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Come on, we’ve written enough hot checks to the old fart. I don’t mean that the way it sounds, Dr. J… don’t want to speak ill of the dead…I’m just… tryin‘ to…call the damn thing up for you and I can’t get a handle on it. Haven’t you ever written him a check?”

“I always paid him cash,” I said.

“Must be nice. It’s on the tip of my tongue, that’s how close it is. It’s Peter, uh… uh… God damn it! Peter, uh… I know the damn thing as well as I know my own.”

“Think about something else for a minute,” I said. I looked at three boxes of books stacked against the glass case. “Is this the stuff you bought yesterday?”

“Yeah. Damn lovely stuff it is, too. Go ahead, take a look.”

I peeked over the edge and saw a fine copy of Ellison’s Invisible Man. Under it was A Clockwork Orange, a beaut. Under that was a nice double stack, about fifteen books. The three boxes would hold forty, maybe fifty pieces.

“It was a hurry-up deal,” Ruby said. “Woman was going out of town, she calls us and needs the cash right now. I tell you, Samson, we had to scrounge to get it up. Fifteen hundred we had to pool, and two hours to do it. But we did it.”

I didn’t go through the box. For once I didn’t feel like looking at books.

I started to leave, stopped at the door and said:

“Hey, Rube! What’s Peter’s name?”

“Bonnema,” he said. “Two n‘s, and one m. Peter Bonnema. By God, Dr. J, that’s a good trick. That’s a damn good trick.”

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” I said, and left.

33

Harkness too had been out on a major buy late yesterday. His place reeked of fresh Stephen King. There were King books scattered across the counter and stacked on the floor. He had gotten the call two days ago and had closed early yesterday to go look at the stuff. The buy was in Boulder, thirty miles away. He had closed the store around one-thirty. He had walked up to my place and had stood talking with Miss Pride for about ten minutes. She had mentioned in passing that she would be closing alone—Mr. Janeway had made her tell him that, she explained with a frown—but he had told her he’d be gone at closing time so she should call Seals & Neff and let them know. She had rolled her eyes and said, “You men!” and that was the last time he had seen her. He looked to be on the verge of tears.

I asked what time he had come in last night. “It was almost eight,” he said. “By the time I got to Boulder it was quarter to three. The buy didn’t take long. King stuff never does. You know what it goes for and so do they: the only question is, can you get it from them for any kind of a decent price, or do they want to make all the money? Usually they want full pop, but this one was reasonable. I only had to pay sixty-five percent.”

“Man, that sounds high,” I said.

Harkness didn’t react at all. He said, “It is, for anything but King. I’ll put it away and in a year it’ll look cheap, what I paid for it. What the hell difference does it make? What difference does anything make?”

“Yeah,” I said.

The Kings had been owned by a woman. Her husband was the collector but he had died and she was trying to figure out the rest of her life. King didn’t figure in it, but she could get a fair start with the money he would bring her. “It cost me plenty,” Harkness said, “every damn dime I had in the bank, but look at what I got.” It was all there, the entire King output: the five major Doubleday firsts, variant jackets on the two Salem’s Lots, all the signed limiteds. Harkness didn’t seem to care.

“I was done with it by four o’clock,” he said. “I should’ve come back. If I had, maybe she’d still be alive. I’d‘ve got back here before five and taken her to dinner and she’d still be here.”

“What did you do instead?”

“Went out to eat alone. Some burger joint near the campus. I sat there for an hour thinking about it.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Her.”

He looked at me with sad eyes that had aged immeasurably since the last time I had seen him. He said, “I know what you think, Janeway, but you’re wrong. She was a kid. I knew that. But there was something about her that got me down deep. I couldn’t shake her. You know what that feels like?”

I thought of Rita McKinley, but I didn’t say anything.

“I knew it was all wrong… man my age, screwing around with a girl her age. But what can you do? When they get you they get you. So I ate a cheap supper and walked around killing time, just thinking about it. Then I came back here. Unloaded my stuff. Worked here till ten o’clock. Went home.”

“You didn’t see anything?”

“What was to see by then?”

Clyde Fix, as usual, was no help. He had not seen Peter in months. He didn’t like the son of a bitch. Peter wasn’t welcome in his store. I asked Fix if he’d seen anyone resembling the man Emery Neff had described. He hadn’t seen anyone and wouldn’t tell me if he had. I wasn’t a cop anymore: he knew that. He didn’t have to tell me anything.

34

I sat in my store and called Motor Vehicles: told them I was Detective Cameron and needed a rundown on a murder victim. Impersonating a cop is against the law and, strictly speaking, it wasn’t necessary. Motor vehicle records are open to everybody, but being a cop speeds the process. Current driver’s licenses had been issued to two Peter Bonnemas in Denver. One lived in Cherry Hills Village, a posh country club neigh-borhood, the other in a rooming house on the fringe of Five Points. It wasn’t hard to choose: ten minutes later I pulled up at a rambling old brick tenement near 22nd and Arapahoe. I took a small pouch of tools out of my trunk, slipped it into my coat, and went inside. It wasn’t the Brown Palace: there was no security door and some of the mailboxes in the stale-smelling foyer looked like they had never borne a name. Peter’s name had been scrawled in pencil on a small white card and Scotchtaped to the mailbox for apartment 310. There was a letter inside. I took out my pouch and got a tool and picked open the box. It was really no lock at all, just a simple latch. I lifted the slim envelope out and closed the mailbox. It was handwritten and postmarked Portland, Oregon. The return address said “Mrs. Peter Bonnema, 12335 SW 123rd, Portland.” I took it without a second thought, slipped it into my coat, and went upstairs.

The lock on Peter’s door was almost as simple as the one on the mailbox. It’s a real wonder more of these guys don’t get murdered, I thought as I went in. I let out a long breath. Bobby Westfall’s so-called apartment had been a cradle of luxury compared with this. There was a dank smell about it, like curdled milk. The bed was a rollaway, layered with old dirt that had worn itself slick: there was no sign that the bed had ever worn a sheet. I saw empty cans on the floor, rat droppings in the corner, and everywhere, of course, the inevitable books. There were two small rooms and a toilet, and books were piled in every crack and corner. There were books on the sills of both windows and piled high in the middle of the floor. I knew I had little time; Cameron and Hennessey would be here before the day was done. I pulled on a pair of gloves and went to work. I handled the books carefully, so as not to destroy any prints, and it was the same as before— almost one hundred percent junk. It was so much like Westfall that I wasn’t surprised when I found, pushed away in the back of a closet, a two-foot stack of good books.

Very good books.

It was about the equivalent of the stack I had found at Bobby’s: great titles, all modern lit, first editions, perfect condition, a healthy mix of mainstream and genre. I didn’t bother making a list this time—I knew at once that when I walked out, these were going with me. I looked at the mysteries and actually felt my mouth water, like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Early Rex Stout… Ross Macdonald… Cornell Woolrich in his real name and both pseudonyms: a nice little stack adding up to at least four grand retail. I didn’t know yet how to assess it, didn’t know what to do with it, but I wasn’t leaving it here. Rats eat books, you know.

There was nothing else of any possible value: I was finished here as a bookman and now I went through the place with the eyes of a cop. The main room was depressingly bare, a bleak testament to the way some people live today. There was no desk where papers might be stored, no cabinet, no table with drawers. There were some trinkets, some Indian turquoise, probably mid-twenties Navajo that Peter had scouted at a flea market. I pushed it aside and left it there. Under the bed I found a bundle of letters held together by a rubber band. They looked like the same cheap stationery as the one from the mailbox. I thumbed through them and noticed the obvious common denominators. All were signed “Mumsy.” Each began with the same line: “Your big box of books arrived today.” There had been one letter every two weeks for the last three months. Mumsy was a lean, sparse writer: she got right to the point and didn’t linger over flowery sunsets. There was no return address inside because Peter would undoubtedly know it. She had put a return address on the envelope in case the letter, for some reason, had to be returned. Mumsy was a practical soul who didn’t write extra words and Peter didn’t save envelopes. I had probably fished the only Mumsy envelope in existence out of the mailbox. It had probably been delivered only this morning.

I didn’t open it till I got home. It was just like all the others. “Your big box of books arrived today and I put it with all the others.” Not much chitchat. “Went over to Dadsy’s grave today… Your friend Junie Sykes is expecting again, this makes six she’s had with five different men. I said at the time and I say again, you are well out of that. You can’t eat your heart out forever… Why don’t you come home?” A sudden image of Peter wafted up, a vision of the bleak and solitary road he had chosen becoming so clear in the half-dark room. A young man then with little verbal ability, crushed by love. Junie Sykes had eaten him alive and sent him on his way, banished to this. Getting by on fifty-cent books and bummed cigarettes, still carrying the faint hope of the Big Score, the $10 million map found in a Salvation Army store for six bucks. In his mind, Peter Bonnema drove home to Portland in a solid gold Cadillac and snatched Junie Sykes from all that. He would come on like Gary Cooper, tall and lean and silent, infinitely ready to forgive. Life was sooooo good, in that dream, and it was only one… god… damn… score… away! Just that moment in time when something wonderful was put out by someone stupid, and he was there. He’d go home vindicated, king of the bookscouts!

I opened the drapes and read again through all the letters. It never varied. Mumsy acknowledged the books, wrote a line or two about Dadsy or Dadsy’s grave or what Dadsy would think of the world today, and slipped in a stinger about Junie Sykes. It was always “your friend Junie Sykes,” slapped on the page like an indictment. Mumsy’s apron strings snaked across the country, dooming her son to the life he led, sealing him in squalor.

Mumsy probably hadn’t been informed yet. The cops would still be in the early stages of investigating Peter’s next of kin, and without the Mumsy letters it might be days before they found her. I picked up the phone and called United Air Lines, got the next flight to Portland charged to my credit card. I called Hertz and had a rental car arranged on the other end.

If Jackie Newton wanted my money, he’d have to hurry. If I kept on this way, there wouldn’t be much left.

I had five hours to kill and I killed them well.

I had never stopped believing in that U-Haul lead. A two-ton truck doesn’t just materialize on Madison Street: someone somewhere rents it, buys it, or builds it from scratch in a back yard. I sat at my telephone with an open yellow pages and dialed one number after another. It didn’t take nearly as long when vou had a name. Peter Bonnema had rented a truck from an East Colfax gas station on the night of June 10: I had found the place on the sixth or seventh try; told the man I was Cameron of DPD and said I’d be over in a while to look at his records. Then I took a shower and lay down to rest. It was the first sleep I’d had in thirty-six hours.

Eighty minutes later my alarm went off. I got up feeling worse than ever, dressed, threw enough clothes together for a short weekend, locked up, and left. I didn’t take any dress clothes or neckties—I wasn’t flying to Portland to keynote a national conference of Disgraced Ex-Cops of America.

I pulled into the gas station with an hour to spare. The guy who had actually rented the truck to Peter didn’t work there anymore. He wouldn’t‘ve remembered anyway, the manager assured me. I thought it was also too much to expect that the same truck would still be on the lot, and it was. “That baby’s long gone,” the man said. “That went out on a one-way to Florida back in early August.” The truck had been rented out of this same station no less than eighteen times between Peter Bonnema and Tampa-Saint Pete: any physical evidence, unlikely under the best circumstances, would’ve disappeared a dozen times over, but I had to ask. “Do you people keep stuff that’s left in the trucks—papers, notes, anything like that?” The guy said yeah, sure, if it looked valuable or important. He showed me a box of junk. That’s all it was, junk: I combed through it and found nothing. I asked to see the original contract that Peter had signed. The original had been turned in to the U-Haul people, but the gas station kept a file of duplicates going back a year. “See, this-un went out without the proper paperwork,” the guy said. “That’s one of the reasons Jerry don’t work here no more, the bastard wouldn’t do what I told him. All these trucks are supposed to be backed up with credit cards. I don’t care if it’s Jesus Christ straight from the cross, if he wants to drive one of these babies out of here he’s got to have a card. I tell Jerry this fifteen times, and what’s he do? He rents the goddamn thing for cash and we got nothing but the guy’s driver’s license number on file. What good does that do us if he cracks it up?”

I looked at the pink contract dupe. Peter had signed out at 4:18 on the afternoon of June 10. He had returned the truck in good shape at 2:56 p.m. the following day—at least, someone had returned it: there was no mention made as to whether the same guy had brought it in, but even if old Jerry had been on duty, he wouldn’t‘ve noticed. Old Jer wasn’t real quick on the uptake. The truck had been out twenty-two hours and change. A few blocks from here, Peter had pulled over and stopped. Bobby Westfall had taken the wheel and Peter had faded into the night. These were the things that weren’t noted on the dupe. Bobby had taken over and driven the truck into eternity. By five o’clock he had been at Buckley’s store, cocky and alone: by seven he had been at Ballard’s, again alone. He had worked alone all night and left in the morning. The obvious thing to do would’ve been to have Peter come along and help, but Bobby hadn’t done that. Bobby would far rather do all the work himself than let Peter in on his secret.

Here was another important thing. On the contract dupe was a space for mileage. The truck had checked out with 39,523 miles on the odometer. It had come back with 39,597. Seventy-four miles. A guy could play with that in many ways, and none of it was certain. Bobby might’ve gone to Buckley’s and then straight to his real destination. Or he might’ve spent the entire early evening just cruising, full of restless energy. The whole seventy miles might be accounted for in drifting, waiting for the allotted hour for his appointment. Somehow I didn’t think so. Bobby had no driver’s license, and that meant that every minute he spent driving was a risk. If a cop pulled him for anything, he’d be in the soup. So he went to Buckley’s and killed time, and when Buckley closed the store he went to a cafe and sat over coffee to wait it out. That was my guess, and that meant he had taken Stanley Ballard’s books to some point that could be roughly calculated. Twenty-five to thirty-five miles, fifty to seventy there and back.

Rita McKinley’s place, for instance, was just about thirty miles from where I stood.

35

My flight into Portland arrived at seven forty-six, Pacific time. I slept the whole way. Hertz didn’t tie me up too badly, and by eight-thirty I was driving south on Interstate 5 through subdivisions called Raleigh Hills, Metzger, and so on. Mumsy Bonnema wasn’t easy to find, even with an address. I had to backtrack a couple of times through sprawling suburbs, and it was nine o’clock before I found her. She lived on a rural stretch, far away from neighbors. A mailbox on a post said bonnema in faded, worn letters. One of the n‘s had peeled away, leaving its outline.

I pulled into the driveway. Brace yourself, Mumsy. It wouldn’t be the first time I had broken bad news.

The place was weedy and rough, full of untrimmed trees. In a sad way it reminded me of the Liberty place, where I had lived with my crazy mother for the first six years of my life. There were huge piles of junk about, and the house was in pretty shabby shape. I killed the lights, killed the engine, took a deep breath, and got out. A pale yellow light shone through the drawn shades. Somewhere deep in the house, a dog barked. I knocked and the dog went into a frenzy. I heard a voice, a woman shouting at the dog, which, amazingly, shut up. Steps came and the door opened a crack. An eye peeped out.

“Mrs. Bonnema?”

She just watched me: didn’t say a thing.

“My name is Janeway. I’m a sergeant with the Denver Police Department. I have some bad news for you.”

The door opened wider. I got a glimpse of cheek, of brittle hair and a wrinkled cheek. Her face was old and haggard, as pale as a vampire’s. She had deep red lipstick on. It smeared on her teeth and reminded me of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.

My hopes for a safe and sane trip tottered precariously.

“Where’re you from?” The voice was brittle, like the hair.

“Denver.”

“A policeman.”

I didn’t deny it and she didn’t ask for ID. In a small brassy voice that had begun to quake, she said, “Is this about Pete-sey?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Has Petesey been hurt?”

“He’s dead, ma’am.”

For almost a full minute she stood there, motionless and silent. Then a wail came up, a hideous inhuman cry that finally found its true pitch, somewhere around the scale of an air raid siren. The dog started howling and they blended flawlessly into two-part harmony. She disappeared from the doorway and the door creaked open. I could see her, collapsed in a chair. The wailing never stopped: she had unbelievable lung capacity and that dog, wherever he was, was pretty amazing too. It might have been comical if it hadn’t been about death.

Eventually she had to stop. What she did then was equally enchanting: she began to destroy the room. She had done this on a regular basis, if the state of the house was any evidence. She began by hurling a heavy cut-glass ashtray through the front window. She ripped down the curtains and stomped them into the floor. She smashed and ripped and tore, and all the while the dog howled and howled and occasionally barked when Mumsy got winded and had to rest. She smashed a lamp and finished off a table that looked like it had somehow survived an earlier attack. This too had to pass. She sat on the floor, breathing heavily, muttering what sounded like medieval curses.

I stepped in, but without much enthusiasm. The hospitality of crazy people has always left me cold.

“That selfish little monster,” Mumsy said. “That ungrateful, spiteful, rotten child!”

I didn’t know whether to sit down, help her up, or stand still and wait for Act Three. She looked up at me and in a voice that had no emotion whatever said, “Did you know Petesey?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“He was a selfish child, all his life. Didn’t you think so?”

“I didn’t know him that well.”

“A selfish child. Cared for no one but himself. I knew someday he’d go away and leave me alone. What am I supposed to do now? Who’s going to care for me? You, young man?”

She leveled her eyes on me and I thought, I’d rather be with Peter. I managed to hold her gaze till she looked away. She grunted and got to her feet. Lit a long black cigarette: filled the place with smoke. Bustled around, picking things up, putting them down, muttering, talking to herself. “Hope he burns in hell for what he’s done to me,” she said. “Hope he burns, the selfish boy. It’s Dadsy he’ll have to answer to now, and we’ll see how he likes that. Dadsy knows how to handle errant little boys.”

Yes, I had broken a lot of bad news as a cop, but it had never happened quite this way.

You go to the scene, you break the news, you wait through the initial shock waves, the absolute heartbreak, and if you’re lucky and the survivors don’t collapse you might get to ask a few questions. Usually they had questions too: Did he suffer? Did he go easily? I realized suddenly that I was waiting for those questions that would never come. Mumsy Bonnema had no thoughts for Peter. Her world was herself. She was the center of the universe, and even her son was a prop for her amusement, convenience, or comfort. All I wanted at that moment was to put distance between myself and this clutching old bat.

But there was business to do.

“He sent you some books.” I said this as a matter of fact, my voice heavy with authority.

“Books!” she shouted. “I’m going to burn those books!”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Like to see you stop me. Just you try it. Those books are the reason I’m alone here. They took him away from me. If it hadn’t been for books, Petesey would still be here.”

“Let me try to explain something to you, Mrs. Bonnema—”

“Get a job, I said. Go out and find work and take care of your mother like any self-respecting boy should do. But no, would he do that? All his life, all he cared about was books!”

“Where are the books, Mrs. Bonnema?”

She gave a wicked little smile. “That’s for me to know.”

“You can’t destroy them. They’re not your property.”

“Who says they’re not? Didn’t Petesey send them to me?”

“They weren’t Petesey’s to send. Those books are evidence in a murder case. If you try to keep them, or if you destroy them, you can be prosecuted.”

“I don’t care,” she said, but she did care. The key to Mumsy was simple: hit her where she lives.

“You could go to jail, Mrs. Bonnema.”

“I don’t care. My life is over anyway. Everyone I loved has left me. I hope Dadsy punishes that boy.”

I walked around and looked in her face. What the hell, I thought.

“Mrs. Bonnema,” I said. “I’d hate to have to arrest you.”

“You dare talk to me like that. Take them. Take the dirty things and get them out of my house. I never wanted them anyway.”

“Where are the books?”

“In the garage, where do you think?”

I started through the house toward the back door.

“It’s all junk,” she cried. “I’m telling you that right now, there’s nothing there but junk.” I heard her footsteps: she was following me through the dark house. “Petesey was always off chasing silly dreams,” she said. “Always scavenging, pawing through what other people threw out. It was shameful, my son picking through people’s trash. I cringe when I think of it, how that must’ve reflected on me’t He looked all his life and never found anything but junk. The world called it junk, but—oh no!—not him! He knew it all! Everybody else was wrong and he was right, that’s the way he saw it. Everything he found was worth its weight in gold. Hah! He goes all the way to Denver, and what does he send me back? More junk! Can you beat that, Mr. Policeman? Can you beat that? Are you listening to me?”

I groped through the kitchen. The dog growled, very near, and I skirted the sound and felt for the door. I could still hear her yelling: her voice followed me through the yard and into the underbrush. She had turned into a book expert. “A book’s gotta be old to be worth anything, everybody knows that. Gotta be old, but does he find old books? No, he picks up junk that anyone could find and then tries to tell me it’s valuable. Same silly thing he’s said all his life… ” At last she faded: her screeching blended with the crickets and the breeze and maybe she finally gave up. I saw the garage: it was forty yards from the house along a dark path. I pushed open the door and blundered along the wall in search of a light. The light I found was dim, but it was enough. Stacked against the far wall were eight cartons of books, most unopened, all with Denver postmarks. I cut open the tops and looked inside. There were twenty books, give or take, in each box. I took a quick inventory.

One hundred sixty-four titles. Flawless first editions from the period 1927 to 1955.

Retail value? My guess was as good as any.

I called it twenty grand, and started putting the boxes together again.

36

The earliest flight I could get back to Denver was the 6:47. I checked in an hour early and fought the ticket people at the Portland airport. There was a luggage limit and I was over it: even by paying excess freight charges, I couldn’t get more than five boxes on board without special permission. I battled my way up the bureaucratic chain, telling them I was a Denver detective working undercover on a case involving a major book theft ring. I didn’t have any identification, I said, because undercover cops never carry any, but my story could be verified by Detective Hennessey at DPD. Of course, before they could reach Hennessey, my plane would be gone, I said with the proper degree of helplessness. The man in charge at five-thirty in the morning was a suspicious bird: damned if he didn’t call Denver.

“They do verify that a Detective Hennessey is employed with the Denver police,” he said to the ticket people. He looked at me severely. “What did you say your name was?”

“Cameron.”

He looked at my ticket. “It says Janeway here.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m traveling undercover,” I said with just the right edge of strained patience.

“Is there a Detective Cameron on the Denver police force?” he asked the telephone. He nodded and hung up. “Let him through,” he said to the ticket people.

God bless United Air Lines.

I slept all the way home.

At Stapleton, the chores of the day arranged themselves in my mind. The first order of business was to secure the books.

I drove to a storage locker I knew, rented a small unit, stacked the boxes two high on pallets off the floor, locked the unit, and went home.

I took a shower, shaved, and ate breakfast. A pot of coffee, double strength, brought me almost back to life, and I sat at the phone and lined up the day’s work.

Hennessey. The Ballards. Rita McKinley.

I wanted to know what the cops had found when they had gone into Rita’s place yesterday. I wanted to see the artist’s sketch, if they had made one, from the description Neff had supplied. Hennessey was the best avenue to that information. But then I looked at the calendar and saw that my entire afternoon was blocked out: today I was scheduled to give my deposition on the Jackie Newton lawsuit. “Son of a bitch,” I said. I said a few other things, fought back a temptation to throw my coffee cup through the wall, then settled down and called my lawyer.

Robert Moses wasn’t handling my case gratis, but he might as well’ve been. A long time ago, when I was in uniform, I saved his child from a pervert—strictly my good luck, and the little girl’s, that I was four blocks away when the stupid ass snatched the kid in broad daylight. A neighbor had seen it all, had called the cops, and a vehicle description was on the radio in less than two minutes. The dispatcher was still reading it when the car came speeding past the little greasy spoon where I sometimes stopped for coffee. I nailed the guy, and though I was only doing my job, Mose had been in my debt ever since. So he thought, and those are the only kinds of debts that matter. You couldn’t put the man off: he owed me a big one, and when Jackie Newton went after my hide, Mose offered his legal services free. We argued over money and finally resolved it this way: he would give me his best shot and I would pay him what I could, when I could pay it. I wondered how he liked making janitor’s wages.

“Where the hell’ve you been?” he said. “I’ve been trying to get you ever since I saw the paper this morning.”

“Been up in Oregon communing with nature. What’s the story this afternoon?”

“I dunno, what do you want it to be? I can get it put off, given what happened in your store yesterday. What the hell was that all about?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. I could sure use the time this afternoon. How long is this likely to take?”

“They’re gonna try to sweat you. Levin’s a mean little prick; if he thinks you’re in a hurry, you’d better pack your supper and bring your toothbrush. That’s all this is, you know: he’s just trying to run up your legal fees.”

“Little does he know,” I said.

“This is just the opening salvo, my friend. My guess is they’ll try to bring you in again in a few weeks. Levin’ll conveniently forget to ask a fairly crucial question, and he’ll ask the court for a new deposition. Then there’ll be a flood of interrogatories and if we’re lucky we might get to trial sometime in 1994. My advice is this. Give ‘em a stiff upper lip. Don’t let the bastards rattle you. Be there today, right on time if you can. Let him take all night if he wants to. I’ll be with you, pal.”

“I know you will.”

“Our turn comes next week. I can’t wait to get that Crowell dame up here. I’m gonna nip this baby right in the bud. See, she’s never been deposed before, she don’t know what it’s all about. If she thinks Jackie Newton frightens her, I’m gonna scare what’s left of her into an early grave.”

I gave a dry little laugh. “That poor kid.”

“Save your sympathy. That poor kid is gonna put you under, if I let her. Which, given the handsome fee you’re paying me, I don’t intend to do.”

“I can’t help feeling sorry for her. None of this is her fault.”

“It’s all her fault. Don’t even think of asking me to go easy on her.”

“No,” I said. “Do what you have to.”

“I always do, Clifford. Now, what do you want to do about this afternoon?”

“You’ve probably rearranged your whole life for this.”

“I have made a few minor adjustments, yes. But don’t let that worry you; I can always take off and go fishing with my kids.”

“No, let’s do it. I’d sure like to be out of there by three o’clock if I can. It’d be nice to have some of the day left.”

“Don’t count on it,” Mose said.

I called the mortuary and made arrangements for Miss Pride. I called the cemetery and arranged for a burial plot.

I called Hennessey downtown.

“Where the hell have you been?” It was starting to sound like a catchphrase, something people automatically said when they heard my voice.

We decided to meet for lunch in a place not far from City Hall: from there I could walk over to Levin’s office and be there in plenty of time. It was already eleven-fifteen, so I went right over. All I wanted was a beer and a raw egg: Hennessey ate half a horse, with french fries. “Jesus, Neal, you’ll be lucky if you live another year,” I said, and knocked wood. I hoped he’d live forever, the sweet old son of a bitch. Hennessey had his stern look on. “Let’s get down to cases, buddy,” he said, and though I somehow guessed that he didn’t mean it, I managed to give him my rapt attention.

“I been trying to get you for twelve hours,” he said.

“I went for a walk in the mountains.”

“What’d ya do there?”

“Walk. Think. Look at butterflies.”

“It snowed in the mountains last night. There ain’t no butterflies.”

“The pretty kind, Neal, that ski and walk on two legs.”

There was a long silence. Hennessey had been my partner forever, it seemed: he had deliberately taken a more or less subordinate role because we did our best work that way. But he knew me inside out: he knew when I began to bend the rules because he had seen me do it often enough. He said, “Y’know, my bullshit detector’s going crazy here. The needle’s knocking the roof off.”

I ignored that. “What did you get from McKinley?”

He ignored that. “Cliff, what the hell are you up to?”

I said, “Actually, that elephant sandwich you’re eating doesn’t look half bad. Maybe I’ll have one.”

“C’mon, Cliff, stop screwing around. Look, I’ll ask you point-blank: are you messing around in this case? If you are, Cameron’s got a big package of trouble all wrapped and ready to dump right on your ass.”

“When I came back from the hills this morning, I sat down and made up a list of all the things that bother me. My psychiatrist told me to do that. It’s better than scream therapy, Neal, but you know what? I couldn’t find Cameron’s name anywhere on it.”

“God damn it, he’d better be on it.”

“Are you gonna eat that pickle?”

“Sure I am. Listen, do you want to talk to me or not?”

“I might, if you’ll pull the cork out of your ass and stop being a cop for thirty seconds.”

He took a long breath and held it. As he let it out, he said, “I’d just hate to see you take a fall.”

I gave a little shrug. “Are we all finished with the dance now? If we are, I’ll tell you something: the real truth, forty-carat, government-inspected stuff. You can take it to the bank, Neal. You ready? Here it is. This boy is dead meat. I don’t know who he is or where he’s hiding, but his ass is mine. He can’t go far enough and he can’t dig himself a deep enough hole. That’s on the record, and frankly I don’t give a fuck what Lester thinks.”

I picked up his pickle and bit the end off. “Does that answer your question?”

“Yeah,” he said grimly. “It’s also what I was afraid of.”

He ate the rest of the pickle fast.

“This is now my full-time job,” I said. “You want to talk turkey, fine. How much time do you have in a day? Did you guys ever get through checking out that U-Haul lead? Well I did, because I’ve got nothing else going with my time. My business is closed for the duration and I’m on this guy full-time. I can’t wait for you guys, Neal, because you’ve probably got ten other cases on your desk right this minute. Hey, I know how it goes. I also know you’ve got to get on something like this right now, because evidence tends to dry up. I’ve already found something that would be ashes now if I’d waited for you. No offense.”

“What evidence? What the hell’ve you found?”

“Only something that puts a whole new slant on things. Don’t ask for specifics if you’re not willing to punt the football. It’s a two-way street. That’s simple manners, and I know Mrs. Hennessey didn’t raise anything but polite little walruses.”

“You’re out of your mind. Cameron’d have a hematoma of the left nut if he thought I was sharing information with you.”

“It’ll give him something to play with. Look, I’ve got to go, I can’t sit here and bullshit all day. You’ve gotta make up your mind.”

He sat perfectly still, struggling with the forces of good and evil.

“Don’t hurry on my account,” I said. I looked at my watch. “I’m due at an appointment, where I’m getting my ass sued off, in thirty minutes.”

“One time and one time only,” Hennessey said. “What do you want to know?”

“All the good poop. What happened at McKinley’s. You can put in a lot of color. Tell me if her cheeks were rosy or pale when Lester broke her door open and wrestled her down just as she was about to throw the tape into the fire.”

“You should do stand-up comedy.” He fished in his pocket for a small notebook and leafed through the pages. “At eleven forty-eight yesterday morning, your police department, accompanied by officers from Jefferson County and acting on a warrant signed by District Court Judge Harlan Blakeley, scaled the fence at the mountaintop residence at the end of Road twelve, otherwise known as Crestview Street…”

“I think I’ve seen this one. In a minute it snows and turns into Bambi. I really don’t have time for this much color.”

He put his notebook away and looked at me long and hard. He was a cop who went by the book, and it broke his heart when he had to go the other way.

“She gave us the tape.”

“No kidding. Was it all there?”

“Seemed to be.”

“How about the part I erased?”

“Entirely different tape. You remember she had taken the tape out so she could play it for you when you arrived. She had already put another one in the recorder. The tape we wanted was still in the player when we got there.”

“Did you listen to it? Stupid question. What was on it?”

“Same thing you heard.”

“What’d you make of it?”

“We think it was the killer who came in at the end. Almost had to be, the way it goes. The time’s about perfect, and the guy—Peter, right?—seems to fall apart right at that moment.”

“Could you make anything out of the section where they’re talking together?”

“It was pretty much of a mess. I’ve listened to one of the copies maybe two dozen times and I can’t get it. The lab boys have the original; maybe they’ll do some good with it. They’ve got the equipment: they can do some amazing stuff, separating voices. They might have something for me later today.”

“Would it be too much to ask… you know, for old time’s sake… could you tell me what they say?”

“I’m already a dead man. What’s one more shot in the head?”

“What was McKinley like while all this was going on?”

“Couldn’t‘ve been more cooperative. Went right to the tape player and handed over the tape and we were out of there in ten minutes. Even Lester liked her.”

I sat quietly, lost in thought.

“Your turn,” Hennessey said.

I started with the U-Haul rental: told him how Peter had rented the truck and gave him the gas station’s address. I told him about Portland, and the lovely Mumsy Bonnema. I told him about Peter’s books: where I had found them, what I thought they were worth, where I had put them. He kept his eyes closed, a suffering man, all the time I was telling it. At the end, he said, “I don’t wanna know how you found out all this, do I?”

“Probably not.”

“So what the hell d’you expect me to do with it?”

“I’ll try to find a way to get it to you. For now, let’s say there’s a gray point of law involved.”

“Let’s say your ass is gray. Come on, Cliff, what am I supposed to do? Just how the hell am I supposed to have gotten those books from Oregon to Denver, let alone found out where they were in the first place?”

“I guess you’ll have to follow the evidence, like a good cop always does.”

“Right through you. I’ll send you postcards in Canon City.”

“Yeah, 1 thought of that. Maybe I will have to do some jail time before it’s over. I just know I couldn’t leave those books in Portland. By now they’d be ashes in Mumsy’s back yard.”

“You wouldn’t be so particular if the evidence was pornography or dope.”

“You may be right.”

“You know I’m right.” He finished off his beer. “You’re crazy, Cliff, you really are.” He got up and put on his coat. “You’re crazy,” he said again. “God dang, you were a good cop, though. You sure were a good cop.”

37

“This is getting us nowhere,” Levin said. “You admit you hated Mr. Newton. You admit you harassed and persecuted him for more than two years prior to the incident in question. You admit you kidnapped—threatened and beat and illegally handcuffed and detained—Mr. Newton, not in the legal performance of your duty as a Denver police officer, but out of sheer malicious hatred. Then you took Mr. Newton, against his will, for a little ride. Sounds like something out of The Untouchables, Mr. Janeway, but this is what, by your own admission, seems to have happened that night. All these things you have admitted for the record, and now, when we come to that little clearing by the river, you would expect us to believe that you removed the handcuffs from Mr. Newton’s wrists and not only allowed him an even break but actually let him strike the first blow?”

Mose leaned across the table and in a very weary voice said, “Counselor, if you keep asking questions like that, we’ll all be old men before this thing ends. The golden age of oratory is over.”

“Mr. Moses, this is a deposition, not a trial. I believe the rules allow me to obtain information in my own way.”

“As long as you don’t actually expect him to answer that.”

Levin puffed on his cigar. He was a little man with a New York accent, a tough Jewish lawyer as someone, 1 forget who, had said. He turned and looked at me down the length of the table. “Let me ask you this. Are you seriously asking us to believe that you removed those handcuffs and inflicted the severe body and facial damage”—he opened the package of photographs and threw them across the table—“to Mr. Newton that we see in this evidence?”

“That’s what happened.”

“Now Mr. Newton is a big man, would you agree with that?”

“No.”

“Nevertheless, he’s bigger than you are, by quite a bit.”

“He’s got more beef, if that’s what you mean.”

“How would you describe Mr. Newton, Mr. Janeway? Just his physical appearance, please.”

“He’s a white male, approximately six feet four inches, two hundred thirty pounds, muscular, brown hair, brown eyes, sometimes wears a mustache.”

“And yourself? Describe yourself in the same terms.”

“White male, five-eleven, one ninety, dark hair, dark eyes…

“Mr. Newton outweighs you by some forty pounds, by your own description.”

“About that.”

“His reach is longer…”

“Yeah.”

“And would you say that Mr. Newton carries much fat on him?”

“Not much.”

“How much?”

“None that’s evident.”

“In fact, Mr. Newton is a bodybuilder, isn’t that right?”

“That’s what I hear.”

“He boxes, lifts weights…all in all, for his age, a prime specimen of manhood, wouldn’t you say?”

“Look,” I said, “if you want to ask me questions, go ahead and ask. Don’t make statements and try to get me to agree with them.”

“Here’s a question for you, then. Do you expect us to believe that you took on this man on equal footing—in spite of the fact that his wrists still bore chafe marks from the shackles that you bound him with—that you released him and defeated him so overwhelmingly in a fair fight?”

“Is that the end of it?”

“Answer the question, please.”

“The answer is yes.”

“How did you do it, Mr. Janeway? Frankly, I find it a little hard to believe. How did you conduct this fight and bring it to such a successful conclusion, from your viewpoint?”

“I beat the hell out of him. He tried to beat the hell out of me, but he lost.”

“And you expect me to believe that.”

“I don’t particularly expect anything from you, sir.”

“I should apologize for belaboring the point, but I find it very hard to believe—”

“You’ve said that,” Mose said. “Get on with it.”

“I’m trying to find out how he managed it,” Levin said.

“It wasn’t by the Marquess of Queensberry rules,” Mose said. “They were two guys brawling in the country. You ever been involved in a fight like that, Levin? One guy throws a punch, then the other. The guy with the most heart usually wins.”

“I don’t know anything about this so-called heart, Mr. Moses. What I do know is what I see in evidence before me. This is a small man, compared with my client. My client is a man supremely conditioned to such physical combat, yet he was the only one who was physically battered. I’m trying to find out, if the handcuffs really were off, how that happened.”

“It’s simple,” I said.

“If it’s so simple, please explain it to me.”

“Bring your client in here, clear away the furniture, and I’ll show you how it happened.”

38

“I don’t think he’ll ask that question again,” Mose said. “I might have to do it for him.”

“Why would you do that?” I said.

“Are you kidding? You couldn’t have a more perfect answer to the most damaging question we’ll get in the whole trial.”

“How can it hurt us if nobody asks it?”

“Because it’s there, Clifford, whether anybody asks it or not. They’ll look at you, they’ll look at him; then they’ll look at those pictures and they’ll ask it themselves. So I’ll bring it out. You’ll say the same thing all over again. Clear the court, bring him on down here, I’ll show you how I did it. Jesus, I love it. You don’t say it in any flip or arrogant way. Whatever you do, you don’t act disrespectful to the court. You just say it, like you have no doubt whatsoever that it’ll turn out the same way again. I’m even flirting with the idea of asking the court’s permission to stage a fight between the two of you just for the benefit of the jury. That kinda shit’s a little risky and it smacks of an old Perry Mason rerun. The court would never allow it, but it sure makes points. Once you say it, and mean it, the jury never forgets, no matter what that old man on the bench tells them.”

We were sitting in a little cafe across from Levin’s office, doing the postmortem on my deposition. Levin had eaten up the afternoon: it was four-thirty and already the streetlights were on. Hard to believe I had been in Oregon just this morning. I felt depressed, as if I had lost a week instead of one afternoon.

“Next time don’t look so fierce,” Mose said. “Lighten up a little. Think of this as a popularity contest, which it often turns out to be. I know that’s distasteful to a purist like you, but a smile at the right time—if it’s not forced—can sometimes pay big dividends.”

I gave a big stupid grin.

“There you go,” Mose said. “Now you’ve got it. Nobody’ll find against a retard.” He signaled for more coffee. “Come home with me for dinner.”

It sounded good. They were all good people, Mose and his wife, Patty, and their two kids. The daughter I had saved was now nineteen. She was a forest ranger, a child of the earth, a lovely young woman. I hadn’t seen her in a long time.

But not tonight. “Think I’m gonna work awhile,” I said. “I’ve gotta make something out of this day.”

“You’re a real Type-A, Clifford,” Mose said over his coffee. “You better learn to relax, pal, or what happens to you won’t be so funny.”

I was looking through the front window when the Lamborghini pulled up and stopped in front of Levin’s office. Jackie Newton and Barbara Crowell got out just as Levin began to close shop for the day. It was cold in Denver. They huddled for a moment at the front door, then Levin pointed at the cafe and they started across the street. Mose must’ve seen me tighten up. He looked where I was looking, but we didn’t say anything. A little bell rang when they came in. The place was crowded: the only open tables were against the far wall, and they had to walk past us to get there. Levin saw me and hesitated. He said something to Jackie and they all looked. Jackie smiled and said something: he pointed to one of the tables and they came toward us. Barbara passed two feet from where I sat. I hadn’t seen her in all these weeks: she looked haggard, worn out, drained of life.

“Hello, Barbara,” I said.

She couldn’t look at me. Her mouth quivered, and Jackie took her arm and propelled her past our table. They sat in a far corner, as far away as possible.

Mose was looking at me over the sugar bowl. “That was Crowell?”

“That was the lady.”

“She looks like a nervous breakdown waiting to happen.”

“When Jackie gets his hooks in you, he doesn’t leave much.”

“He’ll need more than a hook when I get hold of her. I really think you can stop worrying about this, Clifford. They are in very deep doodoo if that’s their main witness.”

This was good to hear even if I didn’t quite believe it. Mose didn’t know how strong Barbara’s fear of Jackie Newton could be. I knew it was stronger than any threat of perjury or the risk of public ridicule: I thought it might even be running neck-and-neck with the will to survive. If the fear is intense enough, if it goes on forever and there’s still no end in sight, death might begin to look almost appealing.

“You don’t look convinced,” Mose said. “I promise you, Cliff, I know how to get to people like her.”

“Yeah, but what happens to her afterwards?”

“Not your concern.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Her only crime, you know, is being too scared to think.”

“Her real crime is that she’s a self-centered lying bitch. She’ll destroy you or anybody else to get the pressure off herself. I can’t work up much sympathy for people like her.”

Poor Barbara, I thought, and I looked at her across the room.

“Want some more coffee?” Mose said. “I was gonna go home, but I hate to have those bastards think they ran us off. Let’s have another cup.”

I took a piece of apple pie with mine. We lingered over small talk far removed from our case. Mose had taken up fishing in his middle age: he was engaged in a herculean effort to master the fly rod. He asked, out of politeness, how the book business was, and I told him it was a lot like urban fishing. On any weekend morning, the fisherman and the bookscout went through the same motions and emotions. A nice catch for both was a dozen good ones. The hunt was the main thing, the chase was its own reward.

I glanced at the table where Levin and Newton sat hunched over papers and briefs. Barbara was wedged between them, her eyes cast into the bottomless gulf of her coffee cup. Any minute now, if she looked deep enough and hard enough, the Loch Ness monster might surface and show her its face. Jackie said something to her and she nodded: he said something else and she looked at him, looked into the face of the monster. Then she looked at me. I could feel her pain half a room away. I tried to smile and then—I couldn’t help myself—I winked at her.

She excused herself and went back to the narrow hallway where the rest rooms were.

All I could think in that moment was that line from Shakespeare, how cowards die a dozen times before their deaths.

Death was on my mind.

And I was suddenly very uneasy.

Mose was talking about the summer’s best fishing trip. I should take up fishing, he was saying: it was good therapy for us Type-A types. Scouting for books might bear some superficial resemblances to fishing, if you had a good imagination and wanted to stretch a point, but it was too intense. I needed something to help me relax, Mose said.

Jackie Newton gave me a long look from the far wall. I stared back at him. Levin was talking and shuffling papers. Mose was rattling on about a new lure he had found: fish were supposed to be able to smell it. A waitress brought Mr. Newton’s order, putting plates in front of each gentleman and another in front of the empty space where, a few minutes earlier, Barbara Crowell had been sitting.

“She sure is taking her time in there,” I said.

“Who?”

“Crowell.”

I got up and started back toward the rest rooms. Behind me, Mose called my name. “Hey, Clifford, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” There was a note of worry in his voice that almost matched what I suddenly felt in my heart. I went past Jackie’s table. Both Jackie and Levin looked at me as I went into the dark hall.

I called Barbara’s name.

Doors on opposite sides were designated by gender: pants and skirts. I knocked on the skirts and listened. I pushed the door open and peeped in.

“Barbara?”

I was staring at the outer wall of a toilet stall. I called her name again and got nothing. “Hey, I’m coming in,” I said, and did. I looked around the row of Johns and there she was, sitting on the floor. She held a small gun in her hand, and she was staring at it the way you imagine a medical student might look at a scalpel before his first operation. Tears were running down her face. She lifted the gun and looked at it, business end first.

“Hey,” I said, holding out my hands. “Don’t do that.”

It was a little .22 revolver. You can buy them cheap all over Denver without permits or hassles: a little gun, made for ladies and kids, but more than enough to do what she had in mind.

“Hey, Barb,” I said. I tried to smile and wondered if it looked real. It was real: a smile of fear. Softly, I said, “You know what they say about suicide, honey. Permanent solution to temporary problem. This gets you nothing.”

It gets me peace, she seemed to say. I came a little closer and tried to figure my chances. If I rushed her suddenly, without warning, I had about a dead-even chance of getting to her before she could cock the pistol and pull the trigger. She probably didn’t know much about guns—a point for my side. But I was still ten feet away—a big point for her.

“Listen, I’ve got a great idea,” I said. “You put that back in your purse and let me take you out of here. We’ll go to a place I know and we’ll talk it over. Okay? Okay, Barb? We’ll talk it over, and if I can’t give you at least ten reasons for living we’ll both kill ourselves. Now what could be fairer than that? C’mon, Barb. I’ll buy you a great dinner and we’ll work it out. I know you don’t want to do this.”

I stopped talking. She had cocked the pistol, taking away my only real chance. I felt a tightness in my chest, almost like hyperventilation.

“Barb, please… listen to me… Here, look at me.”

She did. Again, her misery was like a beacon, filling the room.

“I swear to God there’s a way out of this,” I said. “I swear there is. I promise you, but only if you do the smart thing.”

I could see it in her eyes: she was on the brink, right at the edge. I’ve seen three people commit suicide, and at the end there’s no doubt that it’s coming. They all look the same, drained of all hope.

I was going to lose her.

She spoke. Her voice was raw, the words ragged and broken. “I’ve left a note…It clears you… backs up everything you said…”

“It won’t mean anything if you do this. Are you hearing me? Barbara, are you listening to what I’m saying?”

“No.”

“Just give me one chance. One chance, Barbara, to prove what I’m telling you. I won’t even take the gun away from you, that’s how sure I am that you’ll see things different. Let me tell you something. Newton can’t do anything to me, and I won’t let him do anything more to you, either. I’ve got ways of fixing that bastard that he can’t even imagine yet. Just put the gun away and I’ll tell you about it.”

It was pointing at her right temple: her finger was on the trigger. She was going to do it. I couldn’t stop her. Janeway, if you’ve got any good quotes, you’d better get ‘em up now, because there isn’t going to be any tomorrow.

“I know a guy who can make Newton hate the day he first saw you. I’m not kidding. I wasn’t just yanking your chain that day when I told you that. Just put the gun down a little and let me say this. Just let me say this much, Barbara. Newton’s a master at playing the system for his own advantage. He’s got it all going his way—money, a sharp lawyer—he knows his rights, old Jackie does. The system’s all greased up for scumbags like Jackie Newton. So we’ll go outside the system. I couldn’t do that when I was a cop, but I damn sure can now. We’ll play Jackie’s game Jackie’s way, and I promise you we’ll make him hate it. And he’ll never be able to lay a hand on you again. That’s the main thing. When we get through with Jackie, he’ll never want to see your face again.”

“You don’t know him,” she said. “Don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“Oh yes I do. But I also know what he’s not capable of.”

She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. I heard a woman come in behind me, stopping suddenly at the end of the toilet partition.

“What’s going on?” the woman said.

“Get out of here,” I said.

She didn’t move: I could feel her behind me; I could hear her breathing.

“Lady, you better do what I tell you. Just turn around and walk out of here.”

She went, quickly now. I heard the door swish shut.

“People will be coming now,” Barbara said.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep them away from you.”

“Cops… cops’ll come.”

“I’ll walk you through that, too. The way it stands now, it’s no big deal.”

We looked at each other. I hoped to hell I looked sincere. In the distance I heard noises: a woman shouting; someone running; sharp, excited voices. In the dimmer distance, somewhere far outside, a siren.

“They come fast,” Barbara said.

“They’re just a phone call away, hon. They’ve got cars all over town.”

“Janeway…” Her voice broke.

“I’m right here.”

“I don’t want to live anymore.”

“Sure you do. You can’t make that decision now… you don’t know what the alternative is…you haven’t given me a chance yet.”

Now her voice was bitter. “You had plenty of chances. You couldn’t do anything…”

The siren got louder. I knew if the cops came in, she would do it. I had maybe two minutes to talk her out of it.

She put the gun in her mouth and my time was up.

One last plea. Desperately, I shouted: “Barbara, for Christ’s sake, don’t do this to me!”

She blinked.

“Don’t do it,” I said. “Please.”

And I watched her… slowly… come back from the brink.

She wavered. The gun came out of her mouth.

I reached out my hands. She didn’t do anything. The gun was still cocked but she held it limply in her lap.

I touched her: ruffled her hair with my knuckles, touched her cheeks where the tears still ran. Kneeled and looked in her eyes.

Outside, the sirens were very close.

I put an arm around her shoulder and helped her up. “We’ll go meet them together,” I said. “Give me the gun now and I’ll take you outside.”

Then the door opened. Jackie Newton was standing in front of us, blocking the way.

“Get out of the way, Newton,” I said.

He just stood and looked. His face was full of contempt.

“Move,” I said.

He gave a little laugh. “Stupid bitch.”

And before I could stop her, Barbara brought up the gun and shot him.

39

They put her in a police car and segregated the witnesses: mainly me. It was getting to be habit-forming. For the second time in two days I told a uniform the bare facts and was told to wait over here, away from the crowd, until a coat-and-tie arrived from downtown. Barbara sat in the car, huddled into herself while a cop leaned across the seat and tried to talk to her. Reading her rights, I imagined: it was amazing how fast your sympathies passed from the cops to the accused, once you knew something about it and were no longer part of that world where the gathering of information must be just so. A plainclothes cop arrived and took charge. He was a burly guy named O’Hara: I had known him for years, though not well. I thought he was probably pretty good. I heard him tell the uniforms not to ask her anything until she could comprehend what she was being asked and what she was saying. She seemed to be in shock, one of the uniforms said. “Okay, let’s get her downtown right away and have a doctor check her out,” O’Hara said.

All this happened in a few minutes, while the medics were still working on Jackie Newton on the women’s room floor.

“Good grief,” O’Hara said when he saw me. “Can’t you stay out of trouble?”

He went back into the women’s room and came out again a few seconds later.

“Well, I guess you finally got the bastard.”

“Hey, all I was was the cheering section, O’Hara. If I’d had anything to do with this, she’d‘ve used a real gun.”

“Lucky for her she didn’t.”

The shot had hit Newton in the throat and had gone through his neck. The exit wound was at the base of the skull. It was messy, O’Hara said, but probably not fatal.

Whatever it was, the medics were taking their time.

“You wanna tell me about it?”

I told him the story, omitting nothing about why and how long Newton had been asking for it. Even at that it didn’t take long: my main statement would come later, downtown, in a smoky room with a stenographer.

“What do you think my chances are of seeing her?” I said.

O’Hara gave a loud laugh. “What a guy. You know better than to ask a question like that, Janeway.”

“I told her I’d help her through it, if I could.”

“Well, you shouldn’t‘ve told her that.”

“I believe she is entitled to see a lawyer. That’s the way it works, isn’t it, O’Hara? Or have they changed the rules since I went away.”

“Where’s your law degree?”

“Standing over there with its thumb in its ear.”

I called Mose and he came over.

“How about going down and talking to Crowell?” I said.

He blinked and looked at me as if I had suddenly started talking Arabic.

“I’m serious,” I said.

“You’re out of your mind, Clifford. You want me to represent that dame?”

“I want you to go talk to her, let her know she’s not alone. Come on, Mose, nobody does that better than you. Tell her about your last fishing trip. While you’re at it, you might slip in some free advice.”

“Cliff, listen to me. There’s no way I could properly do something like that. You understand what I’m saying? You know what conflict of interest is, I believe.”

“Look, I don’t want her facing these dinosaurs alone.”

O’Hara let out a bellow. “What a guy!”

They were bringing Newton out now. He lay on a stretcher, his head immobilized by a brace, tubes dangling from his nose and arm. His eyes were open, lovely blue eyes, wet and terrified. He saw me and his terror doubled.

“Merry Christmas, Jackie,” I said.

They packed him into the ambulance and slammed the doors. The siren came up and they drove away.

“She’s damn lucky she didn’t kill him,” O’Hara said.

“Oh yeah, she’s real lucky. Two months from now she’ll have all her old problems back and a whole shopping cart full of legal problems as well. When she finally does get out of jail she’ll probably find Jackie Newton waiting at the gate.”

If she does, I thought, I’ll be there too.

40

It was still on the right side of seven o’clock when I finished up at headquarters. I was wired to the gills and ready to make something happen. I drove out to Stan Ballard’s house, more on a whim than anything else. A sign on the door said offered by john bailey assoc., and under that was a phone number for an agent named Douglas Barton. There was a lockbox on the door: the place had a sad look about it, as if it had just lost its best friend. It was one of those fine old houses, vintage World War I, that still had a lot of life in it. They built houses to last then, not the prefab cardboard they use today. There was a time in Denver, not so long ago, when a house like this wouldn’t last a day on the open market. The oil business was booming and shale was the coming thing, and there was an economic excitement in the Rocky Mountains that hasn’t been here since. But the bottom fell out of the oil bucket, they never did figure how to suck the shale dry, and then HUD got into the real estate business and started giving houses away. The Ballard place lay fallow. There were simply more houses than people.

I walked up the steps and peeped through the window. Light fell in from old Mr. Greenwald’s place next door and I could see most of the front room. It looked different with everything stripped away. The Ballards had left nothing but the walls and the carpet and, yes, the bookshelves. It was a house made to order for a bookscout, big and solid and already shelved. I wondered what they were asking for it. I went around back and tried to peep in, but visibility was poor: I could see just enough to know that the shelves back there were still intact. I walked across the lawn and tried the garage. It was locked, but I could see that it was a big one, made for two cars and a small workshop. A man could park his car and still have room for five thousand books out here.

I saw a shadow pass the window next door: Mr. Greenwald was watching. There wasn’t anything to watch, but old habits die hard. I gave him a wave and walked into his yard. His porch light came on and he stood for a moment watching me through the door glass. He didn’t seem to recognize me, but he opened the door anyway.

“I’m surprised it’s still available,” I said, gesturing to the house.

“If they don’t sell it soon it’ll start falling apart,” he said.

“Are they not taking care of it?”

He made a sour face and waved me away with his hand. “They take care of nothing. They care about nothing. All they want is money. And to play their silly games.”

“What games?”

‘The game of hating each other. Of beating each other. You never saw anything like it. They act like a pair of dogs with a scrap of meat thrown between them. It’s the worst case of jealousy I’ve ever seen. They don’t care anything about the house: they just want to make sure that if there’s one dollar left over, the other one doesn’t get it.“

“Do you know what they’re asking for it?”

“Are you interested?”

“I don’t know, I might be.”

“Come on inside; it’s too cold to stand talking like this.”

Inside, he offered me coffee, which I was happy to accept. We sat in friendly territory—in his kitchen, surrounded by books—and talked.

“They started at eighty,” he said. “That’s very reasonable for this place, even in these times, don’t you think?”

I did think, and I said so.

“When it didn’t sell, they came way down. I hear it’s sixty-five now and still no takers. I can’t understand that. I’d buy it myself if I had money to burn. I don’t know real estate but I know sixty-five for a place like this is nothing. Ten years ago Stan turned down an offer of a hundred and ten. But those were better times.”

“There are people who think better times are coming back.”

“Then those people could find worse things to do with their money. It’s what I’d do, if I were a young man like yourself. I’d buy it strictly as an investment. I’d make them an offer of forty-eight five.”

“They’d never take it.”

“They’ll take it. They just want to get rid of it. They’ve sold everything but the house and it’s hanging around their necks like a millstone. Those two never want to lay eyes on each other again, and this house is the only thing that ties them together. They’ll take it, Mr. Janeway. In fact, I think they’ll take less than that.”

“I didn’t think you remembered me.”

“I’ve got a good set of eyes and a good memory for a face.”

“If they’d take fifty I’d buy it in a heartbeat.”

“Try it on them. They’ll fall all over themselves taking it. You see if I’m not right. I’ve never seen anything like it. Such hate… such pure venom. So much energy wasted, just burnt up, on hate.”

“Where’d it get started?”

We looked at each other and I knew what I had begun to suspect: this old man had secrets that he hadn’t yet told anyone.

“Where’d it get started, Mr. Greenwald?”

“There are things I can’t talk about… matters of honor.”

“There are also three dead people. I understand about honor, sir, but somebody out there is killing people and I’m trying to stop them. It’s pretty hard if I’m only playing with half a deck.”

He seemed lost in thought. Then his eyes locked on mine and he said, “They are not actually brother and sister.” He got up, poured us more coffee, and returned the pot to the stove.

“How do you figure that?”

“It’s not something I figured; Stan told me. Val Mallard was an adopted child.”

“Well, that explains a few things.”

He nodded. “Stan’s brother Charles married a delicate woman. Physically delicate… you know, frail. It was thought she couldn’t have children, so they adopted the boy. Years later she became pregnant with Judith…a mid-life baby, a great surprise.”

“I’ll bet.”

“There didn’t have to be any great conflict with that. Sometimes those things work out fine, and Stan told me they really did try. Charles and his wife did everything possible to raise them equally, to play no favorites. But from the beginning there was anger, resentment, extreme jealousy.”

“A modern-day Cathy and Heathcliff,” I said.

“Except that love was at the bottom of it all in that story, and here you have just hate.”

“I thought something was out of whack when I questioned them. Judith said something—it didn’t make sense at the time and I let it get past me. Something like, ‘If you’re looking for all the living Ballards, I’m it.’ ”

“Yes. I don’t know what good it’ll do you…”

“It could be a motive for murder.”

“If they were going to murder anyone, it would be each other.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they enjoy the hate.”

“Now you’re talking in riddles.”

“You’ve got to allow for the quirks of human nature,” I said. “Maybe they like what’s going on between them. You know what I mean. The sweet sorrow, the hate that’s really love, the pull of opposites in a single emotion. Maybe they’d be lost without each other. This is the stuff Shakespeare wrote about, isn’t it? If you kill off a hate object, it’s over. So much better to do him in in other ways… to get the better of him in business, to rook him out of his eyeteeth… That you can savor all your life.”

“I don’t believe it,” he said, but I had a feeling he might believe it, deep in his gut.

“You still know something you’re not telling me,” I said.

“It’s nothing… harmless.”

“I think I’ll have to ask you to let me be the judge of that.”

He shook his head. “It’s just something Stan told me. It couldn’t have any bearing on this.”

“I think if Mr. Ballard were here, from what I know of him, he’d want you to tell me.”

“That may be, but he’s not here, and I can’t go back on him.”

“There are things that make no sense at all about this deal. The man had ten thousand books. I know he got them from the clubs; I’ve been through every statement going back almost fifty years. They’re legitimate, they’re in his name, they’re annotated in his hand. He writes in the margin when he received a book and when he read it. The books were appraised and the appraiser, who is a helluva respected authority, found nothing of value. And yet, in the last two days, two hundred books have turned up. They did not come from the clubs. They were fine first editions… very desirable, very valuable, worth maybe twenty-five thousand dollars. I don’t know where they could’ve come from but here in this house.”

“Unbelievable,” he said. “People really pay that much, just to own a first edition?”

“Sometimes more than that. Are you telling me, Mr. Green-wald, that neither you nor Mr. Ballard knew what first editions can be worth?”

“We never discussed money. In our generation money was a man’s private business. Besides, it’s so uninteresting. We didn’t care about money.”

“Somebody did. Were you here when the woman came to look at the books?”

“I was minding my own business. Stan told me how it had gone, after it was over.”

“He told you the woman had appraised the library as worthless.”

“That’s what he said, yes.”

“You never met the lady?”

“No.”

“Is there any way I can persuade you to talk to me?”

“That’s what I’ve been doing.”

“You have nothing else to say to me?”

“Not at this time.”

I got up to leave.

He rose with me, his eyes linked to mine. He won’t let me walk out of here, I thought: it’s bothering him too much. But when he spoke, it was only about the house. “I think you should buy Stan’s house, Mr. Janeway. I really do.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“A man would be foolish if he could get a house like that for fifty thousand and he didn’t snap it up. You could rent it for more than the payments. In a few years… who knows?”

I tried to penetrate that wall. A vast enigmatic gulf lay open between us.

“Sometimes, I’ve heard, houses talk,” he said. “Sometimes they give up secrets. This one may be like that. Sometimes I feel Stan’s presence… sometimes it seems like he’s still there, sitting in the library reading. That’s a solid house, Mr. Janeway: more than that, a kind house. I’d buy it myself, if I were younger and had the money.”

41

It was just a matter of geography. Val Ballard lived in Littleton, south of town: Judith Ballard Davis was in Park Hill, a few minutes’ drive from Madison Street. I went there first.

She peered at me through the screen door and struggled to put a name with my face.

“Detective Janeway,” I said. “Remember?”

“Ah,” she said, and let me in.

If she knew anything about my recent history, she didn’t let on. To her my life began and ended and began again when I walked into, out of, and now back into hers. “You ever catch that guy?” she asked, leading me to the living room. I said no, I was still working on it. She motioned me to the big stuffed chair and asked if I wanted a drink. I said you betcha and she made me a double. She watched me take off the top third in one gulp. She never stopped watching me. I knew I didn’t look much like a cop anymore, and I sure didn’t feel like one, but she never asked any of the obvious questions— where was my tie, why weren’t my shoes shined, how come I was drinking on the job. She just looked at me and waited.

“I went by your house a while ago,” I said.

She looked momentarily confused. “Oh, you mean Stan’s house.”

“It’s a nice place. I’m surprised you haven’t sold it yet.”

“It’s a white elephant. You couldn’t give it away, the way the Denver market is.”

“Maybe you’ve got the wrong realtor. I think that house should sell.”

“Put your money where your mouth is, Detective. You could have my part of it damned cheap. I mean damned cheap.”

“I’m listening.”

“Is this why you came here?”

“No, but I’m listening anyway.”

“Make me an offer.”

“I’m not really in the market. I wouldn’t want to insult you with what I could pay.”

“Insult me, please. I’ve got thick skin and I want to get out of this.”

“I’m almost embarrassed to offer it…fifty?”

“Give me twenty-five and you could walk out of here with my part right now.”

“What do you think your brother would say?”

“Do you mind if we don’t call him that? Just hearing it makes my stomach turn.”

“What do you want to call him, then?”

“What I call him wouldn’t be allowed on the radio. Let’s keep it on a high plane. Let’s not call him anything. That matches his personality.”

“Okay. What do you think he would say?”

“He needs the dough worse than I do.” She grinned maliciously. “Alimony. I hope she takes the little pissant for everything he’s got or ever will have.”

“Well, let’s put it this way,” I said: “At that price, I’d definitely buy it.”

“Detective, you’ve made my day. Let me freshen up that drink for you.”

I put my hand over the top. “I’d better not. I’ve got a lot to do yet tonight.”

“Going to see him?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“Call me later, let me know what he says. I know he’ll say yes. He’ll cough and sputter and blow smoke out of his ass, but in the end he’ll be as delighted to be out of it as I am. We can have the papers drawn up over the weekend and I’ll never have to see that idiot again.” She lit a cigarette. “So what’s the real reason you came over here?”

“I’ve been thinking about those books. I even found some of them.”

“So?”

“They weren’t exactly the kind of books everyone thought.”

“I don’t mean to be short, but why should I care? They’re gone now. Ancient history. None of my business anymore.”

“You might decide to change your mind about that.”

“You’re talking in riddles, Detective.”

“I think you people screwed up. Or maybe just one of you screwed up.”

“You’ll have to make it plainer than that.”

I watched her eyes particularly. Liars usually look away unless they’re very accomplished. She was meeting me head-on.

“I think somebody pulled a scam,” I said. “I think those books were worth a helluva lot more than anybody ever knew.”

“Who pulled a scam? Are you talking about that little man that got killed?”

“He was just a tool. Somebody else was the main guy.”

“And you think it was one of us?”

“Coulda been. The question is, which one?”

“I don’t even know what was supposed to’ve been done.”

“I think you’re brighter than that, Mrs. Davis.”

“Ms. Davis, please. There is no Mr. Davis: never was, never will be. It’s my mother’s maiden name.”

I didn’t say anything. I could see by the color in her cheeks that she was getting a glimmer.

“That son of a bitch,” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

“Somebody’s a son of a bitch,” I said.

She got up, walked to the window, and came back.

“Let me get this straight. You think one of us found out what the books were really worth, hired somebody to buy them, and…is that what’s going through your head? Is that what he did to me?”

I shrugged.

“So tell me, how much did the bastard take me for?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell her that yet.

“How much?” she pressed.

I finished off my drink.

She lit another cigarette. “Can we get a straight answer here? Christ, you men are all alike.”

“If I had a straight answer I’d give it to you. Like I told you, I’ve only seen two hundred books.”

“Then let’s start with that. How much would those two hundred books be worth?”

“There’s no guarantee they even came from here. It’s just my hunch.”

“What’s your hunch? Talk straight, please. How much are those two hundred books worth?”

“In a bookstore, at retail… twenty grand. Maybe as much as thirty.”

Her nostrils flared, blowing smoke. She looked ready to erupt.

Then she did erupt.

“Thirty thousand dollars! Thirty thousand dollars for two hundred books!” She leaped up and spilled her drink. “Son of a fucking bitch!” she screamed. “Do you have any idea how many books there were in that goddamn house?”

“Books are funny things,” I said calmly. “Just because one’s worth a lot, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything as far as the others are concerned.”

She was trembling now as, she faced me. “What it means, Detective, is that old Stan wasn’t quite the klutz that everybody thought. What it means is that Stan knew exactly what he was doing. And what that means, Mr. Janeway, is that there’s an excellent possibility that all those books were worth money. Christ, we could be talking a million dollars here! Even the house is nothing compared with that!”

I didn’t say anything.

“I will kill that bastard with my own bare hands,” she said.

“I wouldn’t try that.”

“Get away from me! Don’t you dare try to stop me.”

“I will stop you if you take another step.”

“Don’t you threaten me…”

“I’m trying to reason with you. Do you want to listen or do you want to fly off half-cocked and screw everything up?”

She sat and folded her hands primly. She made no effort to blot her spilled drink, which was seeping into the carpet at her feet.

“First of all,” I said, “we still don’t know for a fact that it happened that way. Two, I still don’t know if it was him: it could be you. Three, whoever it is has killed three people. I’m not talking metaphorically here, Ms. Davis. Have you ever seen anyone who’s been shot in the face?”

She looked at her hands, which were trembling uncontrollably.

“It’s one thing to say you’re gonna kill somebody. This boy, whoever he is, is the one with the track record. He bashed the bookscout’s brains out and shot two people in the head not two days ago. Do you think you want to get involved in something like that?”

She spoke through clenched teeth. “What do you want?”

“I want you to do nothing… understand? Don’t make any phone calls, don’t go ripping over there. Just sit tight and wait for me.”

“God!” she cried. “How can I sit back and let that flaming asshole get away with this!”

“Nobody’s getting away with anything. You can’t hide eight thousand books in your hip pocket. I’m gonna find them, if I can get you to stay out of the way.”

She didn’t say anything. I said, “Can I get a couple of straight answers out of you?”

“About what?”

“You and him.”

“There is no me and him. Never was. He has nothing to do with me.”

“You were raised together.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Come on, Ms. Davis, what happened between you two?”

“Nothing. It was just a case of hate at first sight.”

“Were you jealous of each other?”

“He always was.” She lit another smoke; didn’t realize that she had one going in the ashtray. “He was an adopted child. He always hated that. Hated me. I never had a chance with him, not from the first.”

“Did he ever show any signs of violence, either as a child or later?”

“He never had the guts. He was always sneaky.”

“Sneaky how?”

“I caught him looking in the window once…I was thirteen… that kinda stuff.”

“Do you think he’s capable of murder?”

She seemed to melt suddenly, and for a long, strange moment, I thought she might cry. She pulled herself out of it just as quickly.

“No,” she said.

“That took a lot of effort.”

“Damn right. I’d like to say yes, but I just don’t think he could ever find the nerve to shoot someone. No, he’d be more the type to hire it done.”

I thought of Neff’s turtle-faced man.

“A hit man,” I said.

“Sure. He’d do that, all right. I wouldn’t put that past him at all.”

42

I drove south, into the coming snowstorm. I thought about the U-Haul truck and the mileage that Bobby Westfall had racked up. I thought about Greenwald and the screwed-up Ballards and the turtle-faced man. Snow began to crust around the edges of my windshield. The road was getting slick. I had an odd feeling of some omniscient demon riding with me, a malignant force waiting to spring. The strange thing was, I couldn’t remember Val Ballard’s face: I could hear his voice and see his hands working as he sifted through his uncle’s stuff; I could see his red tongue flicking as he licked and stuck labels on this item and that, but his face remained a blank. 1 could see Bobby Westfall easily enough, and we had only met a few times, months ago. I could see Peter and Pinky: silent passengers with the demon curled up between them. C’mon, people, talk to me. “Talk,” I said out loud. Tell me something I don’t already know. Who’s the turtle-faced man, and where are the books, and how-oh-how had Rita McKinley’s appraisal been so far off the mark?

In the old days, Littleton was a prime horse racing town. Centennial was never a big-time track, but it wasn’t the bush league either. Carol and I used to come down two or three times a summer to watch the horses run and lose a little of our hard-earned dough. Now when 1 come, all I feel is loneliness, and an aching sense of my own mortality. They’re tearing everything down, and someday soon they’ll come up behind me and tear me down too. Something as big as a racetrack ought to have a little bit of immortality attached to it But they tore old Centennial down and plowed her under. Right out there where the grandstand stood are high-rise offices and apartment buildings. Oh, sacrilege. All that’s left of the old days is the ever-flowing Platte: it snakes its way down from the mountains and winds past expensive subdivisions and subdivided farms and modern shopping centers built on the land of old ranches. In one of those houses, just south of the racetrack, Val Ballard lived.

I checked the address. The house sat back from the street in a grove of trees. It was very dark: the trees blotted out all light from the road. A wind had risen and the snow had blown in drifts over the driveway. I came in boldly, with my lights on, and sat for a moment with my lights playing across the front of the house. Nobody home, it looked to me. I turned off the lights, then the motor. The darkness was oppressive. I got out and followed my penlight up the walk to the front door. I rang the bell, then knocked. Nothing. I walked around the house, into the teeth of the gale, and fought my way across the yard to the garage. He had gone somewhere and he had gone in a hurry. He had left the door up and there were rubber marks on the cement. I could still see the ruts he had left in the yard, only half buried under the snow.

I went back to the car and got my tools. I knew I was a sitting duck for anyone who drove up—my car was there in the open yard, so there’d be no running away from it. When I decide to commit suicide, I don’t brood over it. I did think once of consequences. I could get three to five for this. Then I held the penlight in my teeth and picked open the front door lock.

The first thing to do was find an escape hatch. The back door. I crossed the main room and went through a dark corridor and found it. I checked it to make sure it could be opened easily. Fine. Well, not fine, but it wouldn’t get any finer. This was it. I had come looking for Ballard, I would tell my executioners. The house was dark but I had noticed the garage door up and had gone around to check. That’s how they happened to catch me walking around from the back yard. I would slip out the back way and walk nonchalantly around the house, and this was what I would tell them. I had stopped behind the house to take a leak, a nice touch, I thought, that gave some credibility to a shaggy-dog tale like that.

With that settled, I went through the house, looking for… what? I had a half-baked hunch I might even find Stan Ballard’s books. The place to start was in the basement. I found it with no trouble, a set of dark stairs that led down from the kitchen. If he came home now, I was sunk. Forget the back door, I’d never make it. I took a long breath and started down. The little light led me to a finished room. There were no books: just a water bed, a chest of drawers, a big-screen TV, a VCR, and a wall of pornographic tapes. I could see at a glance the kind of entertainment he liked, with titles like Love in Chains and Ginger’s Fantasy throbbing on the shelf. It didn’t mean anything. There was a room off the main room and I went there and opened the door. No books: not much of anything. The room was unfinished, and there were a few boxes inside, but a peek in them revealed nothing but junk.

I left it all as I had found it. The next likely place was an attic. Ballard didn’t have a walk-up attic, but I found a tiny trapdoor in the ceiling. I pushed it open with a broom, which I found in the kitchen. I gripped the rim and chinned myself up into the hole. With my little light in my teeth, I turned my head from one direction to another, dropped, chinned, and did it again from the other side. Nothing. It looked like he had never been up there: the place was two inches deep in dust and had never been disturbed.

I went through his living room. There wasn’t even a Reader’s Digest condensed book for the criminally brainless. In fact, Ballard didn’t have a single book in his entire house that I could see. I looked through the kitchen cupboards, remembering that twice before I had found in closets and cupboards small stacks of very good books. No luck this time. So…the hell with the books: maybe I could find a gun. A lot of cases are broken that way, through the almost unbelievable incompetence and stupidity of the killer. I went into the bedroom and looked in all the normal places where a man might keep a gun, and found nothing.

I came at last to his den. He didn’t even have a law book. I had never been in a lawyer’s house that had not even one book around, and it felt almost empty. He had a filing cabinet and a rolltop desk, neither of which was locked. I opened the cabinet and found his dead files, duplicates of old cases long disposed. I flipped through the folders double-time, looking for high spots. There weren’t any.

The bottom drawer was full of pornography. Another waste of time.

The desk had pigeonholes and compartments and many sliding drawers. The pigeonholes were empty, the compartments were full of dust, and the drawers were stuffed with pornography. I didn’t go through the whole boring inventory: it just didn’t look like the den of a guy who practiced much law.

I found what I found in the last possible place. On top of the desk, pushed far back where it lay in dark shadow, was a yellow pad. The top sheet was filled with doodles and notes. There was a name at the top—Rubicoff—and under it a figure, $1,235. There was a phone number. I recognized the exchange as east Denver, not far from my store. Rubicoff. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember from where. At the bottom of the paper he had done some multiplying: the figure 8,500 multiplied by various numbers from 10 to 150. Each time the writing got darker, more slashing, angrier. I didn’t know what it meant but I had some guesses. The figure 8,500 might correspond roughly to the number of books in old Stan Bal-lard’s library. The figures were guesswork—somebody’s idea of what the library might be worth if the books averaged $10, $50, $75, and so on. He didn’t know books very well: it’s unheard of to get a high average on that big a library. On the other hand, I hadn’t seen a book yet that was worth less than $100.

And what about Rubicoff? I’d lay odds he was the turtle-faced man. I was getting close to cracking it, I thought.

I wrote the number in my notebook. I put everything back exactly as it was. Then I got the hell out of there.

43

I sat in the car and listened to the wind. A cold fear was blowing across the Platte.

At a gas station about half a mile from Val Ballard’s, I called Hennessey at home.

“Me, sweetheart,” I said when he answered.

“Oh, lucky day.”

“What’d you find out on that McKinley tape?”

“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone.”

“What’s Lester doing, running a tap on you now?”

“You’re puttin‘ my ass in one big crack, Cliffie.”

“Hey, one big crack deserves another. Come on, Neal, give.”

I let the line hiss for a moment.

“What do you expect me to say?” he said.

“I expect you to say yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. I imagine you’ll break into song, with the chorus of ‘Over the River and Through the Woods.’ I’m hoping somewhere along the line you’ll tell me something about the McKinley tape.”

He sighed. “Why don’t you come on over here?”

“ ‘Cause I’m two thousand miles away and heading in the opposite direction.”

“Then I guess I can’t help you. I can’t talk about it on the phone.”

“They separated the voices, didn’t they?”

“I don’t want to talk about this…”

“They separated the voices.”

“I told you before, they can do wonders with modern equipment. You want to talk about that, fine, I can talk all night. I’ve become a regular scientist since I saw you at lunch, a real electronics wizard. Did you know they can take fifteen people and put ‘em to talking all at once, then take machines and separate every voice? Did you know that, Cliffie? Got something to do with timber and pitch. And all I always thought timber was was something loggers yell when they’re chopping trees down.”

“What did Peter say?”

“I think he yelled timber. Maybe he was an old logger up in Oregon.”

“You’re a pain in the ass, Hennessey,” I said, and meant it.

“Oh yeah? Fine. Someday I’ll sit down with you and compare notes and we’ll see who the real pain in the ass is.”

“It’s you, Neal. You’re becoming one of them.”

“I got news for you. I always was.”

“Hang up, then, if that’s how it is.”

We listened to each other’s silence for ten seconds. Then, with an anger in his voice that I’d never heard, he said, “Cliff, you’re abusing our friendship. It’s bad enough when you put your own neck in a noose, but you want me to stick mine in too and call it for old time’s sake. Dammit, you’re gonna cost me my badge before this is over.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said, but I hung in there, knowing that my silence was working on him.

“God damn it,” he said. “This isn’t right, Cliff.”

I didn’t say anything.

“The bastard said nothing, all right? Not one damn thing you or anybody else can use. You want his exact words? 1 ought to know ‘em, I been sitting here listening to the damn thing all afternoon. He said, ’Get away, get away.‘ He said that twice. Then he said, ’There’s nothing you can do to me, people already know.‘ ”

“What people?” I said—aloud, but to myself.

“I should’ve asked him that,” Hennessey said.

“What people?” I said again.

The line was quiet for a moment.

“What about Miss Pride? Did she say anything?”

“She said, ‘Oh, hi, everything’s fine.’ ”

I blinked. “She said what?”

“She said, ‘Everything’s fine, I’ll call you back.’ ”

The silence stretched.

“If you’re waiting for an encore, there isn’t any,” Hennessey said. “That was it, short and sweet: we busted our humps over nothing. I hope you’re satisfied.”

“Yeah, Neal, I’m satisfied.”

“I want you to be happy, old pal. If you’re not happy, I’m not happy. Is there anything else I can do for you, buddy?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Look, I’m sorry about—”

But he had already hung up.

44

I called rita McKinley, a futile gesture, I knew.

But, wonder of wonders, she answered the phone. Scooped it up on the first ring.

“Rita McKinley,” she said. I love women who answer the phone that way, crisp and cool and professional. “Go to hell you slob” might have been okay too, when the best I expected was a monotone from the damned answering machine.

“Not the real McKinley! Not the genuine article, in the flesh?”

“Janeway!”

“Was that sound I heard you falling off your chair with pleasure at hearing my voice?”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“So far today, everybody I’ve called has asked me that. I was hoping to get some variation on the main theme from you.”

“I’ve been trying to call you all day. What happened?”

“It’s all in the newspaper, Miss Sunshine. I know how you like the crime news, so I assume you’ve read all about it.”

“I want to see you.”

“Now this is a definite step in the right direction. After you banished me to the National Leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, I thought the only way I’d get back up there was to practice pole-vaulting.”

“Can you come up? It’s snowing pretty hard.”

“Be just as hard for you to come down. You got anything to eat up there?”

“Two steaks in the fridge.”

“What happened to the diet?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I’ll be up in a while. Better give me at least an hour and a half.”

“I’ll leave the gate open.”

It came again, that chill. “Don’t do that,” I said. “Look, it’s nine-thirty now, I’ll meet you at the gate at eleven. Drive your car down. If I’m not there, come back at half past.”

“Why don’t you want me to leave it open? What’s the problem?”

“Tell you when I get there.”

I headed west, into the stormy mountains.

45

It was truly a miserable drive. I sloshed along the deserted freeway and slipped into the canyon. By eleven o’clock I still hadn’t reached Evergreen. I stopped at another gas station and called her, but she had the recording on. I left a cheery message and pressed on. The canyon too was deserted, leading to the inescapable conclusion that I was the only damnfool in the state on the highways tonight. The headlights threw up a glare that was blinding, and I couldn’t use my brights. Back and forth went the car, left and right in the twisted contour of the canyon road: it reminded me of a pendulum, or a hypnotist’s watch. Visions floated on the periphery of my sight. I saw Peter walking beside the car: nervous, furtive. He turned slightly and opened a door and there, yawning back into the dark, was my bookstore. It was empty, except for Miss Pride. Peter was upset. He was so upset that Miss Pride was trying to call me at Rita’s house. Then I lost the picture. I knew it was still playing out there but I couldn’t see anything. It was like a TV show with the picture turned off. I could hear voices but I couldn’t see them.

Miss Pride: Let me talk to him, Peter. Give me the phone.

Extrapolate, Janeway, figure it out. Figure it out and maybe the lights will come on again.

Someone had come to the front street window. Peter Bon-nema locked eyes with death through a quarter inch of clear plate glass.

Miss Pride: There’s nobody on the line.

Peter, his voice rising to a panic pitch: It’s a fucking tape recorder!

And death walked in.

Miss Pride: Someone’s come in, I’ll have to call you back.

That’s what I had heard. Hennessey had heard something else.

Peter knew. He knew exactly what was happening.

Get away! Get away! There’s nothing you can do to me! People already know!

What people?

There was the source of that cold fear I had felt.

If Peter had bartered names for a few final seconds, those people were in trouble. Whether they knew anything or not, he had signed their death warrants.

My lights picked out her road. It looked like a tunnel, slick and steep and dangerous.

I shoved the car into four-wheel drive and started up.

I wasn’t sure how far it was: a couple of miles, I thought, to the gate, maybe another hundred yards after that. I passed a car that had slipped off the road: clattered past it, kept going. You don’t stop on a drive like that: you keep the wheels turning, keep the traction, try to slug your way up the hill. I had reached the steepest part of the incline, a place that shot up suddenly and gained hundreds of feet in no time—simple enough in dry weather with the sun shining, not so simple now. I bumped over ruts and kept going. The canyon yawned mistily to my right. The wind was just vicious.

I passed the last of the side roads. There were no lights anywhere, or perhaps it was just that I couldn’t see them in the storm. The snow got deeper as I went higher. Not gonna make it, 1 thought: I could feel the car losing ground with every foot. The road had taken a hairpin curve and now the canyon lay off to my left. I couldn’t see anything but snow. I began to look for a place to park and found it a few minutes later: a simple widening of the road at a place where it curved again and began climbing. I pushed my front wheels into a snowbank and stopped.

This was dangerous stuff. I had no coat—only the jacket I had worn to Levin’s office. It was adequate for a late-autumn Denver afternoon but wouldn’t do for a trek to the Pole. The only hat I had was a silly knitted thing in the trunk. This is how people die in Denver: they start out thinking they’re going for a walk; one thing leads to another and it turns into something else. I shimmied the gun around on my belt and zipped the jacket. I got the hat from the trunk and got some bullets for the gun; put the hat on my head and the bullets in my pockets and away I went. The snow was deep, but I was fit and I made good time. I slipped and fell a couple of times but did no harm. I wasn’t yet cold—that’s another deceptive thing about Rocky Mountain weather, how it sneaks up on you. On the coast, when it gets down to freezing, you freeze: here, I’ve gone out in short sleeves when the temperature was in the thirties and never felt the need for even a sweater. Then, half an hour later, you notice your fingers are turning blue. Oh, well, it couldn’t be much farther. The road was leveling off now: I remembered that from the other day. I’d be there in no time at all, a piece of cake. McKinley and I would spend Christmas together and live happily ever after. Trees were on both sides now: it was very dark. I kept my little light in my teeth and kept my head down, tried to keep my spirits up, and most of all I kept going.

At last I saw the gate, a silvery vision wavering like a mirage. I didn’t see her, though, and that bothered me. I looked at my watch: it was quarter to midnight. Could she be sitting up there in the trees with her lights off? My own light was so puny it barely reached to the gate, yet it must seem like a beacon from the 1939 New York World’s Fair in this dark. Suddenly the whole world lit up. Flash! She turned on her headlights and it was like a nuclear bomb going off: it froze me stiff and actually drove me back a step. She had her brights on. She flicked them down and I heard the car start. I could see it now, a gaunt outline behind the fence. I saw her pass in front of the headlights and heard the jingle of keys. A moment later the gate swung open.

‘Are you crazy?“ Her voice was disembodied, floating on the storm.

“Good evening to you, too. How’ve you been?”

“Don’t you know you can die in this weather dressed like that?”

“I was just thinking the same thing. Don’t scold me, now, it’s been a hard day.”

I walked through the gate and got in her car. The heater felt great.

She was certainly dressed for it: she wore heavy pants and a coat that buttoned under her chin. Her hat was pulled down over the coat and only a small square of her face could be seen: eyes, nose, and mouth. Enough.

God, I loved her then.

We went up the hill. The house looked mellow and warm. It was. I stood in the hall watching her take off her gloves, and I thought it again. Jeez, I love her. Never thought that before, about anybody.

What a shock.

“You believe in love at first sight?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me directly. “What a silly question.”

“What’s your silly answer?”

She took a long time answering, of course…a long, endearing moment.

“I think I do,” she said. “Yeah.”

She blushed.

“I am so tired of being alone,” she said.

“Don’t be, then.”

“Damn you,” she said. “Damn you, damn you, Janeway. Of all the things I didn’t need in my life, the list begins and ends with you.”

“I bet you’ve been thinking about me constantly.”

“You’re a thug. My God, a policeman! Me with a cop.”

“I’m a refined, wizened dealer in rare books.”

“You wouldn’t know a rare book if it fell on your head.”

“But I learn fast. I soak up knowledge like mere mortals eat soup. I’m witty, I’m bright; I’m a bundle of goddamn laughs in case you hadn’t noticed.” I stopped, realizing suddenly, sadly, that 1 had lifted the pitch somewhere. It was almost the same half-joking plea that Miss Pride had used the night she’d come begging for a job.

Rita was looking at me intently.

“Here’s the best part,” I said. “I don’t mind taking orders from a woman.”

“How kind of you. How generous.”

“Can’t you just see it, lighting up the night sky? Janeway and McKinley. What a wow, huh?”

“Six days ago I’d never heard of you. I was five thousand miles away, lying in the sun. Now you’re not only taking me over, you’re getting top billing.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It’s like in vaudeville: the straight man always gets top billing.”

“Shut up,” she said, coming close. She took off her coat and threw it somewhere. The air seemed electric between us: the fine hair was standing up on her arms and neck. I knew if we touched, the static would fry us both.

She threw her arms around me and kissed me hard. The world went pop.

“This is insane,” she breathed into my neck.

I kissed her too. Her hand was on my gun. I could feel her heart; I could hear it, like a distant drumbeat.

“You never cared about books,” she said. “It’s all just a ruse to get in my pants.”

“I can’t keep anything from you.”

“Well,” she said. “I guess it worked.”

46

I remembered something Ruby had said: It’s the most hypnotic business a man can do. He was talking about the book business, equating it to making love. I still had the gun in my hand: I don’t even remember now how that happened, but somehow the three of us wound up in bed together. I clutched the gun and held on for dear life. That piece of cold blue steel was my last link with sanity. I shuddered my way inside her and she jerked, pulling me all the way down. I held on to the gun and went all the way. This was so right. I closed my eyes and lost it. Oh, I lost it all. Anyone could’ve come through the front door and killed us both: I wouldn’t‘ve known, much less cared. They could’ve come through with a battering ram and six regiments of cavalry. I think maybe they did. They ripped the door out of the frame and stormed through on the way to the Little Bighorn, and the last man through picked up the door, gave it a paint job, hung it back, closed and locked it good as new. Brushed himself off, saluted, and called me sir: then left us there, before I knew they had come.

“Janeway,” she said.

“Mmmm.”

“Tell me that isn’t your gun mashed against my head.”

I took the gun in my other hand and propped myself up.

She began to laugh. “Now that’s one for the books. I’ve just been screwed by a man with a gun and it wasn’t even rape.”

“That’s what you think,” I said. “I never had a chance.”

47

It was two o’clock in the morning and we were just getting around to the steaks. “This is my day for decadence,” Rita said. “Lose my virginity. Go back on meat. I seem to be a wanton, savage creature at heart.”

“Jeez, were you a virgin too?” I said.

She tousled my hair. I liked that. It showed affection, not just lust. I opened two beers. The steaks were almost done.

We ate. The food was wonderful, the company superb. We didn’t talk at all.

It wasn’t till much later, sitting by the fire, when she started to unwind. “I called Paul right after I talked to you the other night,” she said. “The night…it happened.”

“Paul is…?”

“The guy I was gonna marry”

“I love the past tense. Go on.”

“It was three o’clock in the morning back there. I got him out of bed. Guess I could’ve waited, but somehow it seemed too important. God, it seemed earthshaking. I felt like my whole world had tilted off its axis.”

I kissed the side of her head.

“I called him to say good-bye,” she said.

Suddenly there was no more white space, no eternity between the lines. “I met him in Greenpeace a couple of years ago. That’s where I go every summer, to work in the field. I saved a whale this year, can you imagine that? Got in a wet suit, put myself between him and the killers, and harassed them till they went away. I didn’t know I’d have the courage to do it till the time came: then there was no thought of not doing it, it was what I’d come for. We lost a volunteer this year, did you know that? We had a young man killed in a protest over a nuclear test. I knew him slightly, but his death made everything very suddenly real. I knew I could die too, and I didn’t want to. I expected to be blown into nothing every minute. Have you ever seen what a modern harpoon gun can do? It’s frightening, and here you are, taunting them, daring them to shoot you with it, knowing they’d like to do just that if they could find a way to call it an accident. They had me on NBC that night. Paul got me a videotape of the broadcast and I never looked at it: it diminishes the real experience too much. It’s what Hemingway meant when he wrote about hunting and war. Everything’s ruined when you talk too much. I used to read that and think, What macho garbage, but goddammit, he’s right. They show a twenty-second clip on Tom Brokaw and what it really was was a two-hour test of wills. Hemingway was right, the old fool. You do something that people call heroic and you can’t talk about it, you can’t sit in front of a tube and gloat over a tape, all you can do is carry it in your heart. Even talking about it this much fucks it up.”

She pointed to the picture on the wall: the guy in the wet suit.

“That’s Paul. I’ll take his picture down if you want.”

“Leave it,” I said. I could afford to be generous. I knew Paul would be glad to let me be the picture on the wall and him be here on the sofa.

“He’s a good man. I don’t know why things never really… what’s the word?”

“Ignited.”

“Yeah, that’s the word. He really is a fine man. Doesn’t deserve a bitch like me. You, on the other hand…”

“I think I can handle you.”

“I’m sure you do. So handle me, Janeway: tell me what you want to know.”

“Anything you want to tell.”

“Oh, please. Don’t go soft on me now. You’ve been pushing me since the moment I first saw you. Long before that, if you count that snotty phone message.”

“Then tell me all of it.”

It took her a while to get started. We loosened up with brandy and put some logs on the fire.

“I was working in a bookstore in Dallas. We had a customer named William J. Malone. You know the name?”

“Uh-uh.”

“You would, if you’d been in the business longer. William J. Malone was a collector of books. You didn’t see his name much in AB. He was one of those guys who didn’t like limelight. A lot like me that way. Very private. No friends. Distant. I guess to people who didn’t know him, full of mystery. But all the so-called big boys of the book world knew him. He had no credit limit with anyone. A thug from your side of the tracks would say he had deep pockets. And the ruling passion of his life was books. Modern lit, that was his thing. He was the last of his line and he never married, but God— what a bookman! Malone knew everything. He had a wall of reference books but he didn’t need them. He had it all in his head. The joy of his life was to go into a bookstore and find wonderful things. He didn’t care about the money, it was all a game. He paid what they asked and never wanted a discount, didn’t matter whether he spent ten dollars or ten thousand. If he wanted something, he got it.

“Malone knew more about books than any ten dealers I ever met. In Dallas, where he lived then, he was a major celebrity in the bookstores, though he tried not to be. I don’t know what first attracted him to me—maybe the fact that I didn’t scrape and bow whenever he walked in the door. All I know is, suddenly he was in my life. What kept drawing him back to that one bookstore turned out to be…am I vain enough to say it?…me. We had something going from the start, long before we ever talked of such things. It’s like something in the air that only the two of you can see. You know how that can be, Janeway, I know you know.”

“I know now.”

“Yes. That’s exactly right. And when it happens, you don’t care who the other person is, how old he is, how much money he’s got. People who let stuff like that matter to them are fools. Things like race, religion, politics—none of it matters. So one day Malone came in and asked if I wanted to be his assistant. I quit my job on the spot. The guy I was working for was a jerk: I’d‘ve quit in another week anyway. I didn’t even ask Malone what kind of assistant I would be. I didn’t care. I had been bouncing around the book business for a few years— libraries, bookstores—and I was tired of it. I was ready for something different. Well, I got it.

“For the next four years we went everywhere. We went all over the world looking for books. Everything I know that’s worth knowing I learned in that time. We lived in Paris for six months, went to England every summer. One of the most interesting Jack London collections—part of it’s still here, in the big room—we bought in Tokyo, of all places. You get the idea: there isn’t much more to tell. Malone never went back to Texas and neither did I. He bought this place. He liked the solitude. He liked the fact that it came with that big fence already up. You can’t put up a fence like that anymore—too many zoning restrictions—but they won’t let you tear it down either. Malone had always liked Colorado, not in the summer when tourists come swarming in, but in the dead of winter. He liked being snowed in. He was always different than everybody else. I’d still be with him, if he’d lived. I don’t think of it as a mad love affair, it wasn’t like that. But I know I’d still be with him.”

“He died, though.”

“You don’t have to ask that. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. What’s the version you heard? Was I supposed to’ve killed him for his money or his books?”

“It was just talk.”

“Yeah, right. Well, I did kill him in a way. He was fifty years old. He smoked too much and couldn’t quit, he had always smoked and he was dying from it. I guess there comes a time when it doesn’t matter anymore. One day he said to me, ‘Rita, I’m not going to die in a hospital.’ I knew then what I was in for. During the next couple of days he tended to business. Had a lawyer come up, dictated what amounted to his last will. I knew he was leaving it all to me. It was never discussed between us, but I knew him so well, and you might not believe this…I didn’t care. We were so businesslike. That’s even how he wanted to die, according to a schedule of his own making. He’d had a lethal injection made up—I knew where it was and what it was there for, and when the time came I went to the cabinet and got the stuff and helped him as best I could. God, I was such a coward. I couldn’t keep from crying and trembling…I had never seen anyone actually die, and I know he wanted to go with me keeping a stiff upper lip but I just couldn’t. I held his head on my lap while he gave himself the shot. That should’ve been all there was to it, only…he wouldn’t die. People tell you that stuff always works: it’s supposed to be painless and you’re gone like the snap of a finger, only it didn’t work that way. The man would… not… die. I thought he just didn’t get enough. It knocked him out before… you know. And he was in such pain! He writhed and twitched… and still he wouldn’t die! So I loaded that needle and I gave him another shot, enough to kill a dinosaur… and still he lived. It was like some nightmare. Then I remembered his gun.

“I knew it was in the bedroom, but it took me a while to find the shells. I don’t know much about guns but I thought I could figure it out. I came into the room and sat beside him. His breathing was heavy and labored. He was struggling, fighting, and I took the gun and put it to his head and cocked it. I remember thinking, ‘How can I do this, how can I possibly find the strength?’ Then he seemed to relax and I knew he was gone. He just… slipped away… just in time. Another ten seconds and I might’ve been in real trouble. I didn’t even know how to uncock the stupid gun. I pulled the trigger and blew a hole in the wall. You can still see the mark. I think the sheriff suspects me of something even to this day. When they read the will, I just sat there and didn’t say anything, but it was an absolutely grand motive for murder. I knew Malone was well-off, but I was shocked at how much there really was. He never told me how much he had: it was his business and I never particularly wanted to know. I guess I was lucky: I might’ve had some real explaining to do if Malone hadn’t had the foresight to tell his lawyer what he intended. Even now there’s a lot of suspicion. To the people on this mountain, and to some in the book trade, I’m the woman who killed her boyfriend and got away with it. So I keep to myself, don’t have much to do with anyone, and that’s the story. That’s how I became rich and famous. It’s also why I’ve been giving it away in buckets. It never really felt like mine.”

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.

48

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.

49

Rita came out of the restaurant carrying a newspaper and a steaming bag of goodies. “Well,” she said, “I don’t see any murderer shackled in the back seat.”

“Don’t push me, McKinley. Get in.”

I headed north toward Denver, up Santa Fe Drive into the heart of the rush hour. She had brought me a king-size cup of coffee and a sweet roll loaded with cinnamon and sugar. She fed it to me while I drove, in tiny morsels between sips of coffee.

“This stuff will kill you,” she said. “It’s probably half and half, cholesterol and cancer-causing preservatives. You can have mine too if you want it.”

“Thanks but no thanks. One dose of death’s enough for a morning.”

She ate the second roll herself.

We were in heavy traffic, halfway to Denver, when she opened the newspaper. “Interesting item this morning. Your friend Mr. Newton got himself chopped up. I see you were the main witness, as usual. How come you don’t tell me the interesting stuff in your life?”

“You get too excited. Read it to me while I drive.”

“Sure.” She folded the paper over and read.

Nothing I didn’t know, except that Crowell still hadn’t talked to police and Newton was listed as serious but expected to make it. Jackie’s altercations with police, including his continuing troubles with me, were summarized at the end.

I thought of Barbara with a flash of guilt.

“I guess it proves something,” I said. “You can drive anybody to murder.”

“It proves something else,” Rita said. “Murphy’s law.”

“Which one?”

“Time wounds all heels.”

Ruby lived on Capitol Hill, in the 1300 block of Humboldt. I parked out front on the street, and told Rita to stay put.

The apartment was on the third floor. Ruby’s face was still full of sleep as he opened the door. “Who the hell’s this? Dr. J?” He was in that early-morning fog common to nighthawks, trying valiantly to jump-start his heart with a third cup of coffee. He waved me to a chair, handed me a coffee cup, nodded to the pot simmering on the stove, and disappeared into the John. I heard water splashing and a moment later the toilet flushed. I poured myself a cup, looked around, and sat in the chair. It was a neat place, which surprised me. I could see back into the bedroom, which was also neat except for the unmade bed. It was a plain apartment, almost stark, with high ceilings and old-fashioned radiator steam heating. There were framed nudes on the walls, four lovely Weston prints that added to the bare landscape. I liked it: could’ve lived there myself.

Ruby came out, fastening his shirt. He still looked foggy, disjointed. He sat and sipped his coffee and only gradually seemed to remember that he had company.

“What’s goin‘ on? What’re you doin’ out here this time o‘ day?”

“How long’s it take you to wake up?”

“Hour… two. I don’t get started till the day’s half gone. Gotta open the damn store this week. Neff’s supposed to be opening, but he still don’t feel good. I think he wants to stay away from there, if you ask me. This thing’s got him scared plenty. Want some coffee?”

“Got some.”

“Oh.”

I leaned toward him, the cup clasped in my hands, warming them. “I want to ask you a few more questions.”

At that point I had only one essential question. But an idea had begun forming in my mind.

“Tell me about those books again, Ruby.”

“What books?”

“The ones Neff bought in Broomfield the day Peter and Pinky were killed.”

“Like what more do you want to know?”

“It was a woman, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Lady moving out of town.”

“Did you talk to this woman?”

“On the phone, sure.”

“Recognize her voice?”

“Why should I? I never met the lady.”

“Did her voice sound like anybody you might know?”

“Jeez, I can’t remember. I wasn’t thinking in that context. She was just a voice on the phone.”

“How much did the buy cost you?”

“Fifteen hundred. And if you think that wasn’t a bitch to get up on the spur of the moment…”

“How did you get it up?”

“Well, there’s still a guy or two who’ll loan me money. We wholesaled a few items. Neff borrowed the rest.”

“How much did each of you borrow?”

“All’s I could get was a couple of bills. We wholesaled a couple of books for three. Neff had to come up with a grand.”

“Where’d he get the grand?”

“Hell, he’s got his friends, I’ve got mine.”

“How’d you hear about this woman in the first place?”

“She called us cold. Saw our name in the phone book.”

“When was this?”

“That same morning.”

“So you must’ve put the deal together in an hour or two.”

“We had to, else the books be gone. You know how it is when you get a crack at this kinda stuff. You gotta move now.”

“How’d you know the stuff was good?”

“Sometimes you can just tell, Dr. J. What do we have to lose driving up there? The lady seemed to know her books. I mean, she knew ‘em inside, outside, six ways from Sunday. None of this chickenshit ’what’ll you give me‘ stuff. She reads off the titles and says what she wants, and she gives us plenty of room to make out on the deal. She knew exactly what she was doing. When you get somebody who talks to you like that, you’ve got to assume she’s got what she says. If she don’t, you bring your money back home.”

“So you had the deal done by when?”

“We had the money together by, oh… two o’clock.”

“Then what happened? Did you call her back?”

“She wouldn’t give us a number: said she’d already turned off her phone and she’d have to call us.”

“Which she did.”

“Yeah, just a few minutes after we got the dough together. She calls up and says she’ll meet us in Broomfield at three.”

“That’s when she talked to you?”

“Yeah, just for a minute. I answered the phone. But most of her dealing was with Neff.”

“When you answered the phone, she asked to speak to him?”

“Yeah.”

“And they agreed to meet… and Neff went right after that.”

“That’s right.”

“He left around what… two-thirty?”

“I guess it was around then.”

“And got back around five.”

“Yeah. The deal took no time at all. The woman had just what she said, and it was all top-grade primo stuff. All Neff had to do was look at the stuff and hand her the dough, then drive back here.”

“Then he went to the can and you started going through the books.”

“Yeah. What’s all this about, Dr. J?”

“This woman you talked to. You sure you never heard her voice before?”

“Hell, that’s a tough question, Dr. J. I only talked to her a couple of seconds.”

I picked up his telephone and dialed Rita’s number. When her recording came on, I held it to Ruby’s ear.

“I guess that could be her. Come to think of it, she did sound like somebody…” He squinted, listening. “Who the hell is that—Rita McKinley?”

I didn’t say anything.

“That could be her, I guess,” Ruby said.

“Did Neff and Rita McKinley ever meet before that day?”

“Well, I told you she’s been in our store a couple of times. He might’ve seen her. I do remember when she was in last year, Neff wasn’t here. He had taken off and gone back east, if I remember right. Bookscouting trip. I do remember that the whole time McKinley was in the store there was nobody else but her and me. I felt funny, like a kid just getting started. Nobody’s been able to make me feel like that in a long time.”

“But Neff wasn’t there then.”

He shook his head. “What’re you gettin‘ at, Dr. J?”

“I don’t know, Ruby.” I looked at my watch: it was eight forty-two. “Tell me about the books again. I only saw a couple of titles when I peeked in the box.”

Now he came to life. He was fully awake, his motor running on something much stronger than coffee.

“Best batch of stuff we’ve gotten in years. You sometimes get these kinda books onesy-twosy, never fifty at once. Never three boxes and every one an absolute cherry. Let me see, there was a fine run of Tony I Hillerman stuff. All the early ones. Blessing Way. Dance Hall of the Dead. Fly on the Wall. All in the two, three-hundred range. It’s like pickin‘ hundred-dollar bills out of the box when those babies come up. You just sit there and add it up, like money in the bank. Hell, it’s better than money in the bank, ’cause this stuff just keeps gettin‘ better and better. Hillerman’s the hottest writer going, especially in these parts. There were a couple of Rex Stouts from the forties, just so salable, so damn good. And Ellery Queen’s first book…1 know you hear me say this all the time, Dr. J, but this was truly the world’s best copy by far. Bunch of early Micheners that you don’t see much anymore. Bridges at Toko Ri, and his first book, South Pacific. And some other stuff…uh…”

“Clockwork Orange” I prompted. “I saw that one myself.”

“Yeah, and that lovely Eastlake thing, Go in Beauty. What a goddamn book, Dr. J, what a total and complete killer. You ever read that?”

I shook my head.

“A killer book. And let’s see, there was some black stuff, a Richard Wright, a Ralph Ellison, and half a dozen horror titles. Just a super Hell House, by Matheson… that’s two and a half now for one this nice… and a couple of Lovecrafts, and, oh yeah, another great Mathison title, / Am Legend. Now there’s a real vampire book, scared the living bejesus out of me one night when I had nothing else to do. So much better than Salem’s Lot, even King says so, but King’s such a nice guy he always puffs everybody else’s books and poopoos his own. He’s right this time, though. And listen, speaking of black stuff, we got I oni Morrison’s first book, The Bluest Eye… hell, even I never saw that book before. Killer copy, I bet we get five bills for it. Let’s see what else… great Crazy in Berlin, a couple of bills on that, and some Van Guliks with that chink detective, you can get two-fifty easy for those, and a great Chesterton Eather Brown with a jacket that’ll knock your damn eye out…”

I looked at my watch. 1 had stopped listening. I knew he was lost, drifting through that vast and wonderful world that all true bookmen know. The most hypnotic business a man can do, like making love to a beautiful woman.

“You ever read that novel, Dr. J?”

1 shook my head. I didn’t know what novel he was talking about.

“My kinda stuff, baby. Just makes my blood go all tingly when I take it out of the box and it looks like it came off the press an hour ago. Yeah, we’ll do great on this buy, even if we have to wholesale a few items to keep the wolf at bay. It’s like a shot of new blood, you know what I mean? It puts joy back in your heart, makes the world right again for a little while. Wait a minute, there was more…”

“That’s enough, Ruby.”

“Oh wait, I haven’t given you much more than half of it, yet.”

“It’s enough anyway. I think I’ve got what I need.”

“I don’t understand you. What the hell’re you lookin‘ for?”

I looked at my watch. “How’s your sense of time, Ruby?”

“I don’t understand.”

“How long do you think we’ve been sitting here talking— just since I asked you what was in those boxes? How long do you think it’s been?”

“Couldn’t be much more than a minute. Two minutes at the outside. Couldn’t be any longer than that.”

“How about seven minutes and twenty seconds.”

Surprise flicked across his face.

Then a flash of horror.

50

I juggled the pieces on the drive north. It gave me a sick, hollow feeling that deepened as we drove.

Rita knew that something had changed between us. She was very sharp that way.

“What’s the matter?”

I shook my head and shrugged it off.

“What’s wrong with you?” she insisted.

“Nothing.” I looked at her and raised my voice to emphasize the point.

I saw her back stiffen. You couldn’t bully her or force your will. You could mandate silence by being silent, but you couldn’t make the mistake of believing that her own silence meant she was putting up with it.

We went at least ten miles before she spoke again.

“Where’re we going? You mind telling me that?”

“Going to see a fella.”

“What fella?”

I looked at her again. “You ever hear of Emery Neff?”

“I don’t know…I guess I’ve heard that name. He owns one of the bookstores, doesn’t he?”

“You never met him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You never had occasion to sell him any books?”

“How do I know? Do you remember everybody you ever sold books to? I’ll tell you something, I don’t much like the way you’re acting.”

“I’m not acting.”

She watched me for a moment, then turned away and lapsed into a curious wooden silence that matched my own. We couldn’t talk and we couldn’t be quiet: it was so deadly I had to turn on the radio, something I never do when I have people in the car. A couple of educated idiots were screaming at each other on KOA, giving a bad impression of what passes today for talk radio. I couldn’t stand it. Eventually I found KEZW, a nostalgia station. They were playing “Sam’s Song,” a vocal banter by Bing and Gary Crosby that I had heard four thousand times by actual count. At least I could stand that.

Ruby had answered my one essential question by drawing me a map. He had only been here once, almost a year ago, but he remembered it well enough to get me here. I spread the map on the seat as we rolled up the back highway, the mountains sprawling whitely to the left. I caught Rita glancing at the map. Our eyes met again. I stopped at a light and we just looked at each other for a moment. On the radio they were playing “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You.” Tommy Dorsey. Jack Leonard was singing the vocal refrain.

“Light’s green,” she said, and I started off again.

Then, without looking my way, she began to take me apart. She did it like a surgeon, without a tremor in her voice to betray her.

“It would seem that I’ve become a suspect again. I don’t like that, not from you.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Trust is a precious thing to me,” she said. “If I didn’t think you understood that, I promise you last night wouldn’t‘ve happened.”

“I know that.”

“Then talk to me, you bastard.”

Even when the words were loaded, her voice remained calm, icy.

“There may be a woman involved in it,” I said. “I don’t know what she did or why.”

“But you think it was me.”

“I don’t think anything.”

“Wrong answer, Janeway, and a lie to boot.”

I nodded.

“This is turning ugly,” she said.

“It’s always been ugly.”

“That’s funny, I thought it was something else. What happened to love at first sight?”

“Alive and well. It’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Then it can’t be much good.”

“Not true,” I said. “I’m just doing what a cop always does. Following my nose.”

“Is that what you were doing last night? You may’ve been following something, but it sure wasn’t your nose. You know what I think?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“You should be. It doesn’t put you in a good light.”

We were getting close to Longmont. My eyes scanned the road for the turnoff.

I knew the question was coming before she asked it: knew and dreaded.

“How long have you been thinking these things?”

I took a deep breath. “You want an honest answer?”

“You bet.”

“It’s always been there. I push it back in my head and try to smother it, but it won’t ever go away.”

“Then it was in bed with us last night.”

“It’s that goddamn appraisal. I just can’t square it.”

She gave a dry little laugh. “You’re pretty good, though, I’ll have to say that. You have a way of saying I love you that makes a girl believe it.”

“It’s true,” I said. “It is, Rita.”

“Ah,” she said in a small voice.

I thought that might be the end of it, but she said, “What I can’t figure out is why I’m supposed to have done this. It couldn’t be for money. You want to see my bankbook?” She flipped open her checkbook from First Federal Savings. It made me dizzy, trying to drive and look. What really made me dizzy were all those digits, and not a decimal anywhere in sight. It was like standing on the edge of a deep cliff, looking straight down.

“This is my traveling money. My book account is about four times this big. I have another account that I use for business not related to books. I have another account for investments: my accountant talked me into doing that last year. I seem to take in more money than I can decently spend now; I can’t even give it away fast enough. I make money while I’m lying in bed. Would you like to know how much I made last night while you were, ah, following your nose? I can calculate it, give or take a little. I’m making money this minute, for Christ’s sake. I don’t ever have to lift another finger. What work I do, I do because I’ve got to do something or go out of my mind. I was never made to be gracefully rich; I’m too restless to be idle. I don’t want any more money, don’t even want what I’ve got. So please tell me why I would lie and steal and kill for more stupid money.”

I shrugged sadly. Maybe for kicks, I thought: maybe for love. Who can ever know what people will do, or why?

“I’ve got one other account,” she said. “You could call it my fuck you account.”

I knew what she meant. I know all about fuck you money, mainly because I’ve never had any.

In that same flat voice, she said, “You are the most exciting man. All I have to do is think of you and I just tingle. Even that first night. I walked out of your bookstore and it was so powerful I had to stop and lean against something. I thought, there’s my guy. It was absolutely terrifying, the most thrilling moment of my life. Couldn’t wait to see you again. But you’ve got no faith, and that’s the most important thing. You’ve got no faith, Janeway. I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

“I need to know. You’ve got to understand that.”

“You need to believe. I know it’s not quite fair. A just God wouldn’t try us like this, before we even know each other. I’m not blaming you, but don’t blame me either. This is what I am. At this particular point in my life, I need faith more than love. An equal amount of each would be nice.”

“I guess 1 was a cop too long.”

She sighed. “And there isn’t any God, and life’s not fair.”

51

The road snaked away to the left, a narrow blacktop five miles south of Longmont. Houses were sprinkled on both sides. The pavement ended with a bump and the houses fell away and we clattered along a dusty washboard road. Trees appeared on the rolling edge of the prairie.

There was a rutted side road, just where Ruby’s map showed it: then the house, peeping through the seams of a wooded arroyo. I turned in and stopped. My odometer showed that we had come twenty-six miles from downtown Denver.

“Looks like nobody’s home,” Rita said.

“We’ll see.”

I left her there with the motor running and walked the hundred yards to the house. It was an old country house, American gothic. The windows were dark and in the mid-morning light it looked deserted. A rambling front porch flitted in and out of view through a blowing hedge. The wind was strong, whipping down the front range. Some of the windows had been boarded up: the front railing was down in places and the steps looked rickety and dangerous. On the east end some scaffolding had been erected and there was evidence of recent work. There were no cars in the yard. I watched for a while but saw nothing that mattered.

I moved to the edge of the house, then around to the front. The place was like a crypt: not even a bird to break the monotony, only that steady beating wind. I eased up the steps to the porch, flattened myself beside the door and listened.

Nothing.

How many times have I done this, I thought: how many times when I was a cop did I jack up my courage and walk into trouble with this same gun pointing the way? It never loses its charm: the prospect of sudden death, maybe your own, always comes with a clutching at the throat and a rush of adrenaline. I tried the door. It creaked open and I looked in at a picture of frontier America. Broken old furniture. Antique pictures. Farm relics from another time. A kerosene lamp stood on a table, its glass charred black. An old wooden yoke had been thrown in a corner.

I took one step inside. The floor creaked and in the silence it sounded like a gunshot. I flattened against the door and caught my breath. I waited, listening. I waited so long a mouse scurried across the room.

It didn’t look promising. The dust in the parlor was half an inch deep. No one had been through here in at least six months.

Doesn’t seem to be Janeway’s year for hunches.

If it didn’t pan out I was back to zero. Square one. Lookin‘ for a turtle-faced man and a whole new gambit.

I left deep black prints in the dust. I crossed the scurry marks left by the mouse. It’s going to be a wash, I thought, another dead end. I had reached a long dark hallway and still nothing had happened. A thick ribbon of dust, undisturbed since time began, stretched out toward the back of the house.

I lowered the gun. My forces were still on alert, but the condition was downgraded from red to yellow.

There were two rooms on each side of the hall. At the end was another hall that went into the east wing. There was a door, which was closed.

But it opened without creaking when I tried it.

On the other side was a different world. I world of paint and glass and fresh-hung wallboard. A bright world where music played and people lived.

I went back on red alert, following my gun to whatever lav-ahead.

A skeleton key was stuck in the door. The radio was playing so softly it could barely be heard a room away. The floor was shiny and new. I saw a kitchen off to the left: well lit, papered yellow, with shiny new appliances. There was a half-finished den and, across from that, a bedroom. A radio sent soft tones down the hall from the kitchen: elevator music from KOSI. The scaffold’s shadow leaped across the room.

I peeped into the bedroom.

He was on the bed, fully dressed, lying on top of a bright blue bedspread. He seemed to be sleeping, but his face was to the wall so I couldn’t be sure. I had a vision of him lying there, eyes wide, waiting. I went in cautiously and he didn’t stir. His breathing was deep and rhythmic, as if he’d been asleep for some time. I eased my way to the side of the bed. I still couldn’t see his face. He lay with one arm under him, his hand out of sight. I didn’t like that, but I was as ready as a guy ever gets. I leaned over and shook him lightly.

“Get up, Neff,” I said, “and bring that hand out very slowly.”

He was awake at once: too quickly, I thought, but a man standing over your bed with a gun will bring you up fast. He drew himself up till he was sitting. It was when he tried to look surprised that I knew I had him. He wasn’t enough of an actor to pull it off.

“Stand up real easy,” I said. “Just like that. Good boy. Now. I want you to go to that wall and put your hands against it, just like you see on TV.”

I patted him down. He didn’t have anything.

“Sit down over there,” I said. “Not there…over in the plain wooden chair. Just sit there and face me.”

He sat and watched while I did what a good cop always does: checked the obvious, easy places for weapons and found none.

He moved.

“Sit still,” 1 said.

“I was gonna scratch my leg.”

“Don’t scratch anything. Don’t even look at me funny. This gun of mine gets nervous.”

“You wouldn’t shoot me.”

“I sure as hell would.”

“So what’s going on?”

That was his total and token attempt at denial. He knew he couldn’t act and now I knew it too. Ruby had said he had been a magician and maybe that was true, but he’d never win an Oscar for bluffing his way out of a tight one. I had known a few others like that, guys who could lie as long as you didn’t suspect them. Look them in the eye, though, and accuse, and they’d fall apart.

Neff was trying to avoid my eyes. He looked at the ceiling, at the window—anywhere but at me. “You like my place, Mr. Janeway? My uncle left it to me; I’ve been working on it a year. Sealed off this part and I just do a little at a time. Eventually I’ll do it all. This isn’t really my thing… carpentry… painting… but I do like the way it’s coming together. I just do a little here and there. I don’t like to sweat much.”

“That’s what Ruby tells me.”

He gave a little laugh: wry, affectionate, almost tender.

“Ruby,” he said. “What a swell guy. Do anything for anybody. Great guy.”

“Would you like to tell me where you put the books?”

He shrugged. Jerked his head to one side. Couldn’t seem to find the words.

He looked through the window. He had a clear view of the road from here. “I saw you coming. I knew the way you were coming, cautiously like that… well, I just knew. 1 could’ve shot you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Gun’s in the barn. You’d‘ve seen me run for it. And I wasn’t sure how much you really knew. I thought maybe I could… talk you out of it. Shoulda known better. How’d you find out? What’d I do wrong?”

You were born, I thought.

“Tell me,” he said. “I need to know.”

“Maybe I’ll make you a deal. I might tell you if you tell me where the books are.”

“Sure… I’ll tell you… What’ve I got to lose?”

I thought about it, and wavered. The evidence was slippery, fragmentary. I feared for its life in a court of law. I had proceeded without regard for its welfare and now I had a strange, almost chilly reaction, talking about it calmly with the killer. Neff gave a little smile and the chill settled in. I didn’t need him, I thought: I’d find the books anyway, sooner or later.

But I was a bookman, not a cop, and I wanted to see them now. I had the fever, the bookseller’s madness, and I wanted to see what had driven an otherwise sane man to murder.

How do you figure it out? You think about it all the time. How does a sculptor carve an elephant out of a block of wood? Takes a block of wood and carves away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. When you’re sleeping your mind’s working on it. When you drive through a snowstorm, dead people whisper in your ear. You even think about it when you’re making love and it’s then, in fact, that the first glimmer comes working through the haze. Writers and sculptors work that way, why can’t cops? Books have been written about the creative process: tens of thousands of words from dusty academics about the writer’s vision. The funny thing is, I’ve always worked that way as a cop, but nobody writes books about that.

You get a vision—not necessarily what is, but what might be.

I was making love with Rita and suddenly I heard Ruby’s voice. It’s the most hypnotic business, he said, and just like that I had broken Neff’s alibi. Try to use that in a courtroom. You couldn’t, but baby, I saw the vision. At last I put it into words. “I just kept digging, kept after it. It’s a process of elimination as much as anything. Judith didn’t do it. Ballard didn’t do it. There wasn’t any turtle-faced man, Neff: it was just a cover you made up on the spot. Once I saw that it might’ve happened that way, I started remembering things. They all added up to you.

“Here’s what happened. Stop me if I go wrong. You walked in a minute or two before five. You threw a bunch of cream puffs down in front of Ruby, knowing he’d go into an instant trance. Then you went back to the crapper, only you didn’t stop there. You went on out into the back yard, around the building, and up the street. Your timing had to be perfect. Any little thing could’ve messed you up: any glitch between one place and the other. A customer who lingered past closing time… somebody who saw you go into my store just after five… any one of a dozen things, and all of them broke your way. You must’ve been desperate, Neff, to’ve tried something like that, and it damn near worked.”

He shook his head. “You don’t know what desperation is…”

“But it all worked. It was already dark: there was nobody on the street; luck was riding on your wagon all the way. It took you what… thirty seconds to cover the ground from your back door to my place. You forced Miss Pride to lock the door, then you herded them into the back room and shot them. You were back in your own place in no time, surely less than five minutes. You came through the back and stashed the gun—it was probably still there, somewhere behind the shelves, when I talked to you the next day—and when you came up front, Ruby was right where you’d left him, thinking no time at all had passed. You couldn’t‘ve done a better job on him if you’d hypnotized him. In a way it was better than hypnosis.

“The flu was also a fake, a cover for the shakes you had after killing three people. Once I realized that, I started seeing other pieces everywhere. I remembered Ruby once telling me how you protect your privacy. I remembered him talking about the farm you’d inherited. Longmont’s just thirty miles from Denver: the truck Bobby used had seventy-four miles on the odometer when he brought it back. I thought how strange it was that you gave your phone number to no one. Even your partner didn’t have it. Ruby had laughed about that one night when we were working late in my store—how you didn’t want to be called at home no matter what. There was something wrong with that, Neff; it bothered me and I couldn’t figure out why. Then I remembered. Hell, I had seen your phone number: I’d seen it written down somewhere. Then I remembered where. It was in Bobby Westfall’s little address book.“

He laughed sadly and shook his head. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.

“It’s there in his book,” I said. “We can dig it out of the evidence room and I can show it to you. I’m surprised it took me so long to remember it. So why would you give your number to a bookscout, Neff? There is no bigger pest on this earth than a hungry bookscout, yet you give him your private number when even your partner can’t get it. That doesn’t make sense… unless you and Bobby have something going together. Then it makes all the sense in the world. And that’s what happened. You had something going with Bobby. Something more important than your partner or your business or anything else in your life.

“Then there was the matter of the driver’s license. Bobby didn’t have one but you didn’t know that. Ruby knew it, but not you. You still didn’t know it, even after you killed Bobby. You never understood how Peter Bonnema got involved in it, because you always assumed that you and Bobby were in it alone. The one thing I never could figure was how you found out about old man Ballard and his books.”

“I’ve known about them for years. Known about… thought about them…”

“How’d you know?”

“I had a little bookstore on Eighth Avenue. This was long ago, before Ruby and I even knew each other. It was on Eighth near Ogden. That’s not far, you know, from where Mr. Ballard lived. One day he came in. We got to talking. He said he had a lot of books. One thing led to another, and I said I’d like to come see them. He was very cordial. So I went to his house…I went to his house. The man was… simply incredible. He had the best eye for books…I can’t imagine how he so consistently managed to pick up these things and save them… things that appreciated—I don’t know how else to say it—beyond belief. And he’d been doing this for forty years. In some cases he had two or three copies of a single title, untouched copies pushed back behind the ones you could see on the shelf. They were all first editions, every one… the most immaculate collection I have ever seen, and, Mr. Jane-way, I have looked at a lot of books. And the damndest thing… the rarest thing…he didn’t care about them at all for that purpose. It was like he had no idea or interest in how much they might be worth. Here was the big score everybody dreams about, and there was no way I could buy them, I could just never get the money together. But the old man… God, he was so naive. I thought maybe if I threw some money at him—not too much but enough, I could get them away from him. If I was lucky, he wouldn’t check any further and for a few grand I’d pull off the heist of a lifetime. I was actually… trembling…as I tried to assess it. Started to throw out a figure and called it back. Didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t make it too high or low. You know how it is—go too low and he figures, hell, he might as well keep them; go too high and he begins to suspect what they’re really worth. You know how it goes—you play people in this business as much as books. I looked around. He didn’t live in luxury, didn’t look rich. Five thousand dollars, I thought: that’d really make a difference to this old man. So that’s what I said, and he smiled like a gentleman and said that was most generous but he wasn’t interested in selling them at that point. Maybe someday, he said. That was ten, twelve years ago, and I want to tell you something, there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t thought about that stuff. I’ve dreamed about it…it comes to me a dozen times a day, when I look out the window or see the shit the scouts bring in…when I realize how hopelessly I’ve mired myself in the workaday crap.”

“And then he died.”

“Yeah. The first thing I thought was, now it’ll get out. Somebody’ll go in there and find it and it’ll make a major story. The AB’ll carry it, it’s that big. Imagine my surprise when nothing happened. I couldn’t believe it when those two idiots started to put it in an estate sale. I actually stood outside in the rain one night and watched them through the window. And I went wild with hope. My God, I went crazy. I had to get it, but it had to be done in such a way that it would never be tied to me. I knew there’d be trouble if it became known later that I had bought it. The courts are very consistent on this. They always return valuables to an original owner if someone with specialized knowledge buys it too cheap. And Christ, we were talking less than pennies on the dollar. We were talking nothing!”

“So you hired Bobby to do it.”

“The books needed to simply disappear. I needed for them to be swallowed up by someone anonymous. I thought he could keep his mouth shut…he seemed perfect.”

“Except for one thing. He had no driver’s license.”

“Two things,” Neff said. “I didn’t count on him getting so bitter about it. I thought he’d be happy with a few hundred for a hard night’s work. But right from the beginning we were bickering, and after a while there was a threat implied in everything he said to me. That one night he just pushed it too far. I picked up the crowbar and before I knew it he was on the floor at my feet. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I wrapped him in an old blanket and dumped him downtown. Then I burned the blanket. And of course, you’re right, the son of a bitch never did tell me he had no license.”

“Of course not. Why would he want to screw things for himself? By then Bobby smelled a big score too. He went to a friend of his, Peter, and got him to rent the truck. By then Peter smelled a score. He followed Bobby to Ballard’s house and waited up the block while Bobby carried out the books. In the morning he followed Bobby again, and Bobby led him straight here. Then Bobby was killed and Peter put two and two together and started bleeding you for the books. He sucked your blood out, first book by book, then by the box.”

“It took me months to find out who he was. He was so careful—made me box them up and leave them at a place in the country, and he’d go pick them up later, when he knew I wasn’t watching. I might never’ve found out, but he got too cocky. He sold you a book from Ballard’s and I saw it in your store and knew where it had come from…“

“…and you started following him.”

“I was in the gas station across from the DAV. Didn’t think he could see me there but the bastard had eyes like a hawk. I thought then it was all over; I thought he’d tell you right there on the street.”

“He was too scared—too scared to think.”

“Yeah, but that wouldn’t last. Once he had time to think, I knew he’d be back. I had to get him before that happened.”

“He tried to call me that night, in fact, but luck was still breaking your way. He got my recording. He tried the next day too, but I was up in the mountains, at McKinley’s place. Finally he had to make a choice: hole up, leave town, or come to me. He knew I was always there at closing time. If he arrived exactly at five, got off the bus right at the store and came straight inside, he’d be fine. He figured I’d protect him. So he called Pinky and told her he was coming in. A few minutes later I called Pinky and told her I wouldn’t be there. At that point we didn’t know what he wanted or how to reach him: I just assumed he needed money, and I told Pinky to give it to him. I also told her to let you boys know she’d be closing alone, so you could watch out for her. She followed my orders after all, and got herself killed for it. She told you, didn’t she? Didn’t she, Neff?”

He stared at his hands and said nothing.

“She told you her silly boss was worried about her, but it would probably be okay because Peter was coming in. Peter would be there at five. That’s when you knew you had to do it: that’s when the whole bloody mess got planned. Peter got there at five, and instead of finding me waiting for him, he found you. You came in right on his heels. What vou didn’t know was that Pinky was talking to Rita McKinley’s recorder. And what she said puts it all on you, as clearly as if she’d told us your name. She said, ‘Hi, everything’s okay.’ I thought about that for a long time after the lab boys got it out of the recording. Why would she say that? It didn’t make any sense. She was in the middle of saying good-bye: she was telling me someone had just come in and she’d have to call me back. Why would she suddenly say, ‘Hi, everything’s okay,’ in the middle of hanging up? The only thing that makes sense is that she was talking to the guy who had just walked in. Couldn’t be anybody but Harkness, Ruby, or you. Pinky still thought she was talking to a friend, the nice man from the store up the street who had come in to check on her at closing. It’s okay, she was saying, Peter’s here, I’m not alone. But Peter was already screaming. He knew what was happening. A minute later, so did she.”

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say: nothing except, for me, the most important thing.

“I’ve actually come to hate those books,” Neff said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take ‘em off your hands.”

“Yeah.”

I held my breath, afraid to ask, scared silly of what the answer would bring.

“Who was the woman, Neff?”

He looked at me and didn’t answer.

“I need to know that. Was it Rita?”

His lip curled up in a sneer. “Rita,” he said. “The big-time book dealer. The biggest thief of all.”

“What’re you talking about? What’s that supposed to mean?”

He smiled and reached into his shirt pocket. I cocked the gun but he only laughed in that faint, sad way. When he opened his fist, he had two tiny capsules in his hand.

“What’s that stuff?”

“Guess.”

We looked at each other: a long, searching moment. Barbara Crowell flitted through my mind, along with a hundred suicides and suicide attempts I had known over the years.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

But he popped them into his mouth and swallowed.

“I knew you’d get me,” he said. “Knew it that first day, when they put you on Bobby’s case. So I had these ready.

He doubled up and fell out of the chair.

“Neff,” I said weakly.

I looked for the phone, but you can’t do much with cyanide. It works in a minute.

He went into the shakes and groaned, a long cry of agony.

His pulse slowed, and I could almost see his heart giving up.

I got down beside him and opened his shirt.

Biggest mistake I ever made.

He moved like a snake. I didn’t know what had hit me. Suddenly I was down and he was up and through the haze I knew he had kicked me in the head. He had caught me in the temple with the point of his shoe: the hardest kick he could muster. I spun around and he was on my back. He had a rope: I don’t know where it came from, but he was a magician and there it was, twisted around my neck. He cut my windpipe, and the next twenty seconds were so desperate that I couldn’t think of anything but my heaving lungs. I know the gun fell: it skittered across the floor and slammed into the wall. I was up on one knee with this thing on my back, and I couldn’t shake it and if I didn’t shake it I was going to die.

I tried to buck him and couldn’t. We slammed into the wall. He held on, stuck to me like we’d been born that way, grotesque Siamese twins bent on killing each other. The world turned red. I was losing consciousness…

I heard a scream, then a shot, and the rope went slack.

God, I could breathe again!

But I still had to struggle for it, and for at least a minute 1 had the heaves.

When the world cleared, I saw Rita standing over Neff’s body. She was staring at the mess she’d made, clutching my gun with both hands.

52

I found the key to the storage locker in Neff’s hip pocket. It was the only lock-it-yourself place in Longmont.

We drove the four miles from Neff’s house in what seemed like total silence. Only when we reached the storage yard did I realize that the radio was still playing.

Benny Goodman. “It Had to Be You.”

I drove to unit 254, opened the door, and walked in. It was like walking into King Solomon’s Mines.

He had shelved the locker and some of the books were out on open display. Yes, they were wonderful things.

But I was tired of looking. If you get too much new blood, you begin to drown in it.

Rita had lingered but now she came in. She didn’t touch anything, just walked along and looked at the spines.

“Well, this is it,” I said wearily. “This is what people kill for.”

She was just standing, staring at nothing. She looked older in the dim light.

On a worktable in a corner, I found some papers. The name Rita McKinley caught my eye and I leafed through them.

“Looks like a copy of your appraisal,” I said. “You want to tell me about this?”

She shook her head and said, “I have no idea.”

And that’s how the case ended: with a stalemate, a standoff between someone I loved and everything I believed in. With a dead man and a treasure, a lack of faith, a beautiful girl, and the big question still unanswered.

53

But no:

It really ended on another day six weeks later. Emery Neff was in his grave and the Ballard heirs were embroiled in a battle of books that seemed certain to end up in court. Ruby was in business alone. Rita McKinley had been set free by the Boulder County DA, who had pronounced the shooting justified: she had gone somewhere and had left nothing, not even the damned recording, to tell people where she’d gone or when she might come home.