Bookman's promise

Ralston shook his head. “That would’ve seemed…”

“Seemed what, Mr. Ralston?”

“Wrong.”

“Wrong,” Whiteside said. “Well, you know what, I believe you. I believe exactly what you’re telling me when you say you never looked at that book. I believe it was such a habit not to look in that book that it just wouldn’t have occurred to you to do that, no mat-ter what else might have happened in your lives. You just wouldn’t do that, would you, Mr. Ralston?”

“No.”

“No.” Whiteside shook his head. “That’s why you didn’t know what she wrote there.”

He got up and came around the desk, pulled up a chair, and faced Ralston from a distance of less than two feet. “What she wrote in her diary, just two days ago, was how this old woman just died in that bedroom of yours, and how she gave you all this great deathbed gift, this rare book which Mr. Janeway says is worth a lot of money. Have I got it right so far?”

“Denise wanted…”

Whiteside waited. Ralston faltered again and dabbed at his eyes.

“You were saying, Mr. Ralston? Denise wanted something. What did she want?”

“She wanted to do what the old woman asked.”

“Find the other books, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“But you didn’t want to do that, did you? You wanted the money. And you two quarreled about it, didn’t you?”

“We never quarreled about anything. Not ever.”

“What would you call it then, when she wrote these lines?” He fished a notebook out of his pocket. “‘Michael wants so badly to take the money. So we have our first strong disagreement, but he’ll come to see this was the right thing to do.’ How would you interpret that, Mr. Ralston?”

Ralston shook his head. “That wasn’t any quarrel.”

“Maybe that’s not how it started. Maybe it was just a disagreement at first, then it got to be more than that. Hey, I know how it is: I have disagreements with my wife all the time. Sometimes I’d like to shut her up so bad I feel like pushing a pillow in her face.”

“Hey, Whiteside,” I said. “None of that shit.”

He turned on his chair. “Another word from you and you’re out of here.” He turned back to Ralston. “That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“Don’t answer that, Mike.”

Ralston looked dazed, horrified.

“Hell, if you didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did, I can understand that,” Whiteside said. “You’re a big, strong man—once something gets started, it can be hard to stop.”

“Don’t say another word, Mike. This guy has no honor, he’s trying to sandbag you and he’ll twist anything you say. He’s an asshole and a bad cop besides.”

Whiteside leaped up from his chair and grabbed my arm. “I warned you. Now you can get the fuck out of here or spend the night in jail. Go ahead, call a lawyer if that’s what you want.”

I pushed him away. “Touch me again and I’ll leave your ass on the floor.”

“As if you could.”

“Try it and find out.” I looked at the stenographer. “You getting all this down, Jay? I want the record to show that Mr. Whiteside is throwing charges around and he hasn’t even read Mr. Ralston his rights.”

“Goddammit, get out of here,” Whiteside said.

“When you make up the transcript of this, I want to see every word of it in the record.”

“You’re obstructing justice, Janeway. I’m giving you five seconds to get out of here.”

“You wouldn’t know justice if I chiseled it on your dick.”

“Jay, tell Matthews to get in here.”

“What are we doing now, calling the A-team? Hey, I’ll make it easy on you. I’ll walk out, but not quietly, pal, and I’m coming back with one helluva savage New York lawyer who is going to make buffalo chips out of you and your tactics. You hear that, Mike? Don’t say a word to this prick. Write that down, Jay. Janeway wants it on the record, this man was not Mirandized, and it better be there. Randy Asshole Whiteside can kiss Mrs. Ralston’s diary good-bye.”

I kicked over the chair and pointed at the stenographer. “Do you know how to spell asshole, Jay? It’s your ass if it’s all not in there.”

I got right into Whiteside’s startled face. “Because you know what, asshole?” I patted my pocket. “I’ve got a tape of this whole sorry interview.”

I pushed my way past him. Ralston sat in wide-eyed disbelief. I had his attention at last. I looked down at him as I passed. “Remember, Mike, don’t sign anything, don’t say anything.”

I walked out and slammed the door, and the spirit of Harold Waters walked out with me.

Outside, I took a deep breath and touched my empty pocket as if I’d really had a tape there.

CHAPTER 13

My pal Robert Moses came from an old New York family of lawyers. Named after a public official who had transformed New York’s parks in the La Guardia administration, he had moved to Denver years ago and I had met him when I was still a motorcycle cop. He always sounded wide awake and ready for battle, even when I woke him in the middle of the night.

“You should’ve called me right away. The minute you heard they wanted to question your friend, that’s when I should’ve gotten this call.”

“When have you ever known me to do what I ought to do?”

“This isn’t funny, Cliff. Do us both a favor and don’t try to play lawyer, please; you’re not that good at it. Do you know how lucky you are not to be in jail now?”

I said I did know that. I had known that possibility even before the dance got started. But I had been on the cop’s side of the table enough to know that Whiteside was after more than background information, and somebody had to be there to get Ralston a fair shake.

“You made Whiteside a promise and you broke your word. You said you’d be quiet. You call that quiet?”

“I said I’d be quiet if he’d be civil. You call that civil?”

He sighed loudly into the telephone. “All right, I’ll go down and see what they think they’ve got on your boy. With luck we’ll both walk out of there.”

An hour later he called me from downtown. The cops had released Ralston even before he had arrived. There were no charges pending; the evidence consisted only of motive, which the police still considered strong. Twelve thousand-five was a lot of money to a man with Ralston’s checkered past.

“Have they even asked along the block if anybody saw any strangers?”

“They weren’t about to tell me that. You’ve got to assume they did, and found nothing.”

“Which only means nobody was looking, nobody noticed, or nobody’s talking. Or they haven’t found the one who was, did, or will. But it gives them an excuse to stop looking, doesn’t it?”

“They think Ralston wanted the money so he could go back to his gambling, womanizing ways. The missus wouldn’t budge and things got out of hand. Frankly, Whiteside is having a hard time believing that a strapping young guy like Ralston, with his past, would form a personal attachment to a very plain older woman. Ugly I think is the word he used.”

“The son of a bitch had better not use it around me.”

“If he does, you smile, look in his pretty face, and say, ‘Thank you, Constable,’ on advice from your attorney.”

A cop had taken Ralston back to his home, Moses said, and it was assumed that’s where he was now. I thanked him and told him to send me a bill.

Then I drove back up to Globeville. Ralston’s car was no longer parked at the curb where I had seen it earlier, and now the street was quiet and dark. I went up onto the porch and banged on the door. Nothing. I came down into the yard and stood there for a moment wondering where he might be. Finally I realized I didn’t know him well enough to even begin such a hunt.

I was about to leave when I saw a shadow move on the porch next door. Then I saw the darting orange motion of a lit cigarette.

I walked over to the fence and said hi.

“Hey yourself,” came the gruff voice. A black male: not a kid, an older guy.

“You know Mike?”

“Yeah, I know him.”

“You know where he went?”

“Maybe I do. Who’re you and what do you want?”

“I’m his friend Janeway. I’d like to help him.”

“I don’t think anybody can do that.”

Before I could react, he said, “That man’s bleedin‘. He’s bleedin’ out of every crack and sweat hole. Awful damn thing, what happened.”

“Yeah, it was. Denise was great. I didn’t know her real well, but I sure liked what I knew.”

He said nothing.

“You know them well?” I said.

“About like you. Not long but long enough. They ain’t been livin‘ up here real long, and people here tend to mind they own business.”

“Did the cops talk to you?”

“Oh yeah. They talked to everybody.”

“You able to tell them anything?”

“Not a damn thing. I was sleepin‘ all afternoon. The Salvation Army marchin’ band could’ve come through here and I wouldn’a seen ‘em.”

There was a pause. “I work nights, sleep days,” he said. “This’s my night off.”

“Well,” I said. “You feel like telling me where he went? I want to help him if I can.”

“Then you better have one helluva fast car, friend. Mike said he was gettin‘ out of here, goin’ to Vegas.”

BOOK 2 - Baltimore

CHAPTER 14

Eastern Avenue was the color of a Confederate uniform and just about as empty in the pale light before dawn. The Treadwells’ building squatted in the block like a brick fortress. At one time it might have been respectable, with its tiled portico and the leaded glass in its front door. Now the tiles were cracked and worn, the tiny glass pieces in the door replaced with glass that matched poorly or not at all. The sign said books, and just inside the portico another sign, equally peeling, equally faded, was mounted on the door. ten a.m. to six p.m., seven days a week. I had more than four hours to kill.

I cupped my hands against the one clear window, but I could see little more than the dim outline of the front counter, a rickety-looking bookcase with a sign hawking sale books at a dollar each, and just inside the door a poster advertising book fairs in Wilmington next week, Washington next month, and Baltimore later in the summer. Shadows of more substantial bookshelves loomed in the darkness beyond.

I walked back to South Broadway and went down toward the harbor. I was looking for a cafe that might be open that time of morning, and what I found was a dingy place across from the market, which even then was beginning to come to life. I ordered a plate of grease and sat over coffee with my Baltimore Sun untouched on the vacant chair beside me. I could feel the weariness in my bones: the payoff for a general lack of sleep, compounded by the bumpy evening flight from Denver and the loss of two hours over the Mountain to Eastern time zones. It had been after midnight when I checked into a hotel not far from the bookstore. The events of recent days still played in my head, but I slept almost four hours, waking just before dawn.

I heard Willie Paxton’s voice like a broken record: smothered with the pillow…smothered with the pillow…smothered with the pillow…

I saw Ralston’s despair and felt my own.

I never know quite what to do at a time like that. I knew I could find Ralston if he had actually gone to Vegas. A man like that stands out. Give him time to settle and he’d be no problem.

Denise was another matter. If Whiteside didn’t find her killer, and I didn’t think he would, I would have to give it a try. Brave thoughts for an ex-cop who had just burned most of his bridges downtown. Brave thoughts when in all likelihood my first hunch had been the right one, that some two-bit burglar had killed her when she’d walked in and found him there. A spider, maybe a transient: a stranger, in any case. Those guys can be hell to catch, even when you’ve got the resources of a big-city department behind you. Even when you get prints, who do you match them to?

The guy jumps a train and he’s in Pittsburgh tomorrow.

Or he stays pat, right under your nose, and you still can’t find him.

I knew I couldn’t expect any help from the cops. Cops stick together, and I’d be an outcast after news of my snit with Whiteside made its way through the department.

But two days after Denise’s death I had walked along Ralston’s block, knocked on every door, and talked to everyone I saw. In my own police career I had sometimes found that two-day wait productive. It gives talk time to ripple through the neighborhood; it can smoke out a reluctant witness and bring new facts to light. I know the theory of the trail gone cold and most of the time it’s true. But more than once I had found something forty-eight hours later, just by walking the same walk and talking to the same people. In the third house across and down from Ralston’s, I found a kid, about twelve years old, who had seen a man come out of the house just before dark. He didn’t remember much but he was sure of two things: the man was in a hurry and the man was white.

On Saturday night, after brooding about it for another two days, I called Whiteside and left the kid’s name and address on an answering machine.

Thus had the weekend passed. On Monday I had this flight to Baltimore, bought and paid for, so this was what I did.

I walked for a while, found a little park and settled on a bench, where I recovered an hour of sleep. At ten o’clock I walked back to Treadwell’s, timing my arrival well after they’d be open and thus, I hoped, I’d be inconspicuous. But the closed sign was still out and the place was still dark. I cursed Treadwell’s work ethic and waited some more.

Eventually, from the window of another cafe near the corner, I saw a young woman turn briskly into the block. She was the living, breathing manifestation of that telephone voice, a bleached blonde in her late twenties with skintight leather pants and a scandalously thin T-shirt glorifying the local ball club in scarlet letters. Her unhal-tered breasts held the Orioles scoreless at both ends, bouncing freely as she walked by.

I had more coffee and gave her time to open the store and get her act, whatever that might be, together; then I moseyed up the street and went into the store.

“Hey, hon,” she said. “You need some help?”

I faced her breasts and fought back the urge to say, I do now. I shook my head and said, “Thanks, I’ll just look around,” and immediately she went back to whatever she wasn’t doing and forgot I was alive. I moved on into the store. It was dusty, dog-eared, and immense, everything I had imagined when I’d first heard about it that day on the telephone. In the lower front room someone had long ago made an attempt to classify, with sections marked off by possible fields of interest. Whoever had done that had probably been dead at least two generations, buried in the Treadwell graveyard with all the old bookpeople. There was a sign that said first editions, but if that was supposed to mean literature, the section had died or moved somewhere else years ago. I did find firsts of Marcia Davenport’s Mozart biography and the New York edition of Zorba the Greek mixed in with a bunch of thirties-era science and technology, but their condition was nonexistent and dust jackets weren’t even a fading memory.

I went upstairs and up yet another flight, moving from one dark row to another, ostensibly browsing but in fact getting the lay of the land. Sporadic lightbulbs hung in each row but most of the light came from the enormous windows that faced one another on each floor from opposite sides of the building. The floors creaked as I walked on them. The place had a musty, dusty smell to it from top to bottom.

Slowly I worked my way back downstairs and came out into the room where Blondie was holding the fort. I stayed behind the stacks, watching her through the bookshelves as she went about her work. This was mostly sand-sifting, marking the sale books and putting them out, putting others aside for the Man to see if and when he decided to come in. There was no business as yet: no customers, no telephone calls, no people lined up to sell their treasures. But it was Tuesday morning and that could be dead in any bookstore in any city. I walked along behind the shelves, mainly to keep my feet moving and my blood pumping. I tried to stay away from the creaking boards: if the lady had forgotten me, I wanted to keep it that way.

A few customers finally came in. Two books bought, one sold. Always more coming in than going out, and again, that was the way of the trade, the nature of things.

Dean arrived sometime before noon.

He was a big man, hulking and bearlike behind his thick red beard, impossible to read at first glance: the kind of guy who could be palsy, intimidating, or anything in between. Something had been missing from the descriptions I had collected of Dean Treadwell, and I had also missed it in his voice on the phone. On second glance I made a guess at it: Dean was an actor, a chameleon who never showed anyone his real nature.

He said nothing by way of greeting to the blonde and she went on pushing books around behind the counter as if he wasn’t there. He browsed his own shelves, looking critically at the dusty rows of books that stretched away toward the back of the room. Abruptly he said, “You ever think of straightenin‘ this fuckin’ place up, Paula? Maybe we’d sell a book once in a while if you did.”

“So where’m I s’posed to start?”

“Throw all this shit out in the street would be a good place.”

He came behind the counter and looked at the one receipt, then at the books she had bought. “The Girl Scout’s Book of Dildos,” he read. “Is this a goddamn joke?”

“I thought it might appeal to ya,” she said, smiling brightly.

He thumbed through the book, pausing over what seemed to be a triple-paneled foldout illustration. “How damn much money did you pay for this thing?”

“Buck and a half. I’ll keep it if you’re not int’rested.”

But he took the book and walked away, disappearing into a room that looked like a private office, deep in the back of the store.

Carl came along about forty minutes later and the blonde’s demeanor changed in a heartbeat. I saw her stiffen, craning her neck as he came to the door. From where I was I could see that he had stopped outside with a man who had been walking with him. They huddled together in the portico, as if what they had been discussing had to be finished now and kept strictly between themselves. Carl was about what I expected: a weasel. The guy with him had the hard look of a real hood, and he did most of the talking. My radar sensed the iron he carried under his coat and I knew this was a seriously bad dude. Not a pretender, not a man you could easily bluff. I knew this at once, from an old cop’s experience. Blondie was right to be wary.

They finished their talk and came into the store. Carl went straight back to the office and Capone drifted to the counter, where he could ogle the blonde’s tits. She looked up at him and tried to smile. “Need some help, hon?”

He leaned over the counter and his coat flopped open. “I dunno, hon,” he said. “What kinda help you givin‘?”

She saw the rod and chilled.

“I thought I asked you a question,” the hood said.

She paled then, so visibly I could see it from across the room. “You know,” she said. “Books and stuff.”

“Oh, books and stuff,” he said. “Do I look like I need books and stuff?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not? You think I can’t read?”

“No, sir. I mean yes, sir. I’m sure you can read.”

“You don’t know what the hell you mean, do you?”

“No, sir.”

Then she looked up over his shoulder. That spooked him and he turned away from the counter like a cat had crossed behind him. Our eyes met through the stacks. I looked away, too late. I heard his footsteps coming. I took a deep breath.

“Hey, you.”

I turned and looked at him down the row of books.

“Yeah, you. What the hell are you lookin‘ at?”

“Nothing.”

“Is that right? Am I nothing?”

“I wasn’t looking at you.”

He took a couple of steps into the aisle and I felt my gut tighten. Here we go.

“What am I, a liar?”

“I was looking at the books. I just happened to glance up.”

“I don’t think so,” he said in a singsong voice.

“Well,” I said. “Sorry if I offended you.”

“You better be. And you better keep your fuckin‘ eyes to yourself unless you wanna go around with a cane and a seein’-eye dog. You got me?”

“I got you.”

He took another step forward as if he hadn’t liked the tone of my voice.

“I don’t think you got me at ail.”

“Yeah, I did.” I made a slight laughing sound, hoping to put a layer of respectful unease into it. “I really got you.”

We looked at each other. It could have gone either way in those few seconds but then Carl came up from the back room. “Dante?”

He turned his head slightly. “Yeah, I’m comin‘.”

He pointed a finger at my face, then he turned and the two of them left the store.

I came out from behind the stacks. The blonde had sunk onto a chair and had a white-knuckle grip on the arms as if she feared falling out on the floor. She looked at me and in a trembly voice said, “I’m gonna quit this goddamn job.”

“You okay?”

“Hell no, I’m not okay. Did you get a look at that guy? Did you see his eyes? Did you see that goddamn gun?” She blinked. “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with him?”

“He just likes scaring people. He likes to watch ‘em cringe, that’s how he gets his kicks. His shtick is to always take offense no matter what you say.”

“I’m not talking about that guy. I mean what’s wrong with Carl, bringing people like that around?”

“I guess you’ll have to ask Carl that,” I said. Then I nodded a silent good afternoon and left the store before Dean could come out and find me there.

Out on the street I stopped for a minute and took stock. A dark mood followed me down the block and into the same café as before, where I sat at the same window so I could look back at the block and the bookstore. I ordered a light lunch and took stock again. The last time I had backed away from a bully like that I had been in grammar school, about to learn one of the great guiding lessons of my life: never blink first, never let the bastards intimidate you. But I hadn’t come all the way from Denver to get in a deadly brawl at Treadwell’s on my first day in town.

Deadly was right. You don’t take on a guy like that unless it’s for keeps. And once it starts, you’ve got to be willing to do anything.

Dante.

You and I will see each other again, Dante.

I hoped not. But I had a hunch.

I ate my sandwich, then went to the phone booth and tried calling Koko Bujak. No answer. I went back to my table for some real coffee, strong and black, none of that decaf crap after the night I’d had. I sipped my way through three cups, took stock for the third time, and pronounced myself okay.

Business at Treadwell’s had improved by early afternoon and now they had a steady stream of book-toting traffic going in and out. A bookscout with a heavy backpack came out with his load no lighter. Things were the same all over.

Dean appeared at two o’clock. He stood on the street and scratched his balls for a moment; then he came on down the block, passed my window, and hustled himself across Broadway. I left three dollars on the table and hustled on after him.

He walked north a couple of blocks, went west on Gough, and on into a lively section of Italian restaurants and bars. He turned into one of the bars. I waited outside but that soon lost its charm so I went in, lingering in the dark place just inside the door. The room was crowded with afternoon boozers and I didn’t see Dean anywhere. I started to move deeper into the room, but suddenly I stopped and jerked back against the wall. I had seen someone sitting at a table just a few feet away, someone who couldn’t be here but was, who would know me on sight. I eased myself out and took another quick look.

It was Hal Archer.

CHAPTER 15

I had to move away from the door. People were now coming in a steady stream, so I walked behind Archer to the end of the bar, where I could hopefully blend into the heavy afternoon crowd. I had just taken the last available stool when Dean came out of the John, went over to Archer’s table, and sat down. They had a long powwow that ran into the happy hour, through half a dozen beers for Dean and two slow-sipping cocktails for Archer. I sat, watched, and nursed my own beer, thinking of these two odd bedfellows and what a small world it was. Small world, my ass. Seeing them together made everything murkier, but it left no room in my mind for coincidence.

Archer left first. He got up, said something to Dean, hit the boys’ room, and walked out of the bar a few minutes later. Dean had ordered another beer and seemed to be settling in for the night. I decided there might be more to gain by tailing Archer than watching Dean get drunk, so I followed him out into the street. I had to be careful now: one mistake and my cover would be blown. But on second thought, how much did that really matter? My time here was short: I would have to confront them all at some point.

I half expected Archer to hop a cab and leave me gaffing on the street, but for once I was lucky. He kept walking and he never looked back. Five minutes later he went into a hotel. I followed him into the lobby, just in time to see him get into an elevator and go up to the tenth floor.

What now?

I would wait, at least for a while: sit in the lobby with a newspaper, and if my luck held nobody would bother me till Archer came down again. Again I was lucky. The desk clerk had just begun eyeing me suspiciously after an hour when the elevator opened and Archer stepped out.

He had changed clothes and now wore a dark evening jacket and a bright turtleneck. I watched him over the top of my newspaper as he turned in to the dining room. The old Murphy’s Law derivative ran through my head. If something jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. A plan, whole and devious, unfolded in my mind. Hit him where he lives—in the book he’s writing. Don’t wait for it to grow cold. Just do it.

I followed him in. The hotel offered a buffet in addition to the regular menu and Archer had opted for that. I got into the line a few people behind him.

I was close enough now to hear him giving the cashier his room number. He took a table in the far corner of the room, a solitary figure with all his glory unrecognized. The Pulitzer prize may have its charms, but it’s a lousy bedmate.

I paid with a twenty and headed across the room toward him. “Well, Hal Archer, imagine seeing you here.” He looked up. “Do I know you?”

He knew me, all right: I could see it in his face. But I said, “Cliff Janeway. We met at Lee Huxley’s.” I said this warmly, as if we had become buddies at once that night. Boldly I put my tray down on his table and sat down. “Do you mind?”

“Actually, I’m waiting for someone.”

“Oh, listen, I’ll get out of your hair as soon as she gets here. I’ve just got to tell you something that’s been on my mind since Miranda’s party. I never should’ve fawned over you like that; I know it must be a drag being set upon by strangers. I’ll bet it gets tiresome as hell, being told how great you are every minute of your life.”

“That’s all right,” he said coldly.

“How generous of you to say that. But I was a boob and I need to say so.”

“Well, you’ve said it.” His face remained passive, indifferent, distant, and finally tinged with annoyance. “Now if you’ll excuse me.” But I had already started to eat. “I really did mean it when I said I liked your stuff. I was your biggest fan, long before you won anything.”

“Look,” he said. “If I’ve written something you liked, I’m happy for both of us. But at the moment—”

“In fact, I owe you a big favor.”

He looked at me with doleful eyes, like a man afraid to ask.

“You’re the guy who turned me on to Richard Burton.”

He said nothing but his eyes wondered where the hell this was going.

“I’m a book dealer, you know.” “I remember.”

“Because of you, Burton has become one of those burning passions that comes along just a few times in a bookman’s life.”

He looked at me coldly.

“I’ve done a lot of homework on the man and his life and times since that night, and I’ll bet I can even tell you a thing or two. I know you’ve been researching him for years and you’ve got a book in the works, but I’ve come across stuff nobody else knows.”

The plan was suddenly on track: I had rattled him. For a moment he kept staring at me, then he said, “Who told you that?”

“What, that you’re writing a book? Oh, come on, it was so obvious that night even a blind man could see it. But your secret’s safe with me. I know how writers are. Just let it be known that Hal Archer is doing Sir Richard Burton, and half a dozen wannabe writers will rush into print with warmed-over retreads. And of course that’ll cut into your market even if their books are lousy. Which they will be, right?”

“Listen…Janeway…”

“It’s o-kay,” I said warmly. “I won’t tell a soul.”

“All I ever said about Burton was what a grand figure he was. I never said I was writing about him.”

“I understand completely. My lips are sealed.”

“You don’t understand anything. There’s nothing to seal. Get that? Nothing.”

“Sure.” I put on my best look of phony camaraderie, guaranteed to let him know that I knew bullshit when I heard it. I did everything but wink at him. Then I said, in a masterpiece of my own bullshit, “Look, I’ve taken up way too much of your time.”

I started to get up. But he said, as I knew he would, “Just as a point of curiosity…what the hell are you talking about?”

“You mean about Burton?”

He looked at me like a scientist studies a lower-life form. No, about the queen’s sex life, you bumbling goddamn ignoramus!

I leaned close, as if spies were everywhere. “I’ve found a great source of untapped Burton material. Somebody with a direct link to his time in America.”

“And who might that be?”

“Mrs. Josephine Gallant. Does that ring a bell?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“Well, since your interest in Burton is just academic, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

The silence stretched. I nibbled at my cornbread, then said, with lighthearted malice, “Looks like your friend’s gonna be late. Maybe she ran into traffic.”

Again I made as if to rise. He said, “So who is this woman?”

“Josephine? Oh, she died last week in Denver.”

“Well, then.”

“Mmmm, I wouldn’t say that. She left behind some interesting stuff.”

“Such as?”

“Way more than we can discuss here and now. But listen, if you ever do write that book you’re not writing, you’d better get together with me before you send it in.”

He gave me a bitter little half-smile. “For which you would want…what? Assuming there was anything to any of this, which there isn’t.”

“Oh, Hal, I am hurt by the implication that I’d do this for money. I’m a bookman! All I want is to see a great book come out of it. I can’t write it, but somebody sure needs to. If that’s really not gonna be you, maybe I should talk to somebody else.”

“Such as…who?”

“Oh, there’s no end of writers around. I know lots of ‘em. Some really good ones. That’s one of the things about the book business, you meet writers.”

I saw the flesh sag a little around his cheeks and that alone was worth the price of my ticket to Baltimore.

“I gotta go,” I said abruptly.

It cost him a million in trumped-up arrogance to say this, but he said it. “You haven’t finished eating yet.”

“Yeah, but I’m going to another table now.” I looked away at an absolutely stunning brunette who had just come in alone. “I think your date is here.”

“That’s not who I’m waiting for.”

“Well, that’s a damn shame. Jesus, what a dish. Anyway, I’m sure your friend will be along any minute, and I’ve taken up way more of your time than I intended to.”

Before he could say Stop, Wait a minute, or Get up from that chair and I’ll kill you, I was gone. I went clear across the dining room to a place near the window, but not so far away that we couldn’t see each other. I ate hungrily while Archer picked at his food, and every so often our eyes would meet and I’d smile at him and nod pleasantly. A roving waiter came by and asked if I wanted coffee and I said yes, thank you, even though I’d had three times my caffeine allowance for the day. I went back to the buffet for dessert, something else I didn’t need, but at least I stayed away from the cheesecake. The stewed apples were sensational.

Archer didn’t seem to be eating much at all. After a while he pushed back from the table and got up. The moment of truth had arrived. He was coming my way.

He was sitting at my table.

“You should try these apples,” I said. “Wanna bite?”

When he spoke again, all the bullshit between us was suddenly gone.

“You really are an annoying bastard, Janeway. Do you have any idea how annoying you are?”

“Yeah, I do. It’s my one real talent, so I work at it.”

He seethed while I ate the last of my apples.

“So, Hal…what does this mean? Do you want to talk real now?”

“Come up to my room. The number is 1015.”

“I know what the number is.”

“I need to make a phone call. Give me fifteen minutes.”

“Okay. But listen very carefully to what I say. Don’t try any funny stuff with me, Hal. If Dean’s brother shows up with his gangster bodyguard, I promise—are you listening to me, Hal?—I promise, Hal, the first casualty of the evening will be you.”

Fifteen minutes later I stepped off on the tenth floor. Archer opened the door to a midpriced plastic hotel room, indistinguishable from every Holiday Inn or Ramada the world over. I looked in the bathroom and closet, I opened the balcony door and looked outside; I barely resisted the urge to look under the bed. I checked the lock on the door, slipped the security chain into its slot, and sat on the bed. Archer watched in annoyance, but there was also a trace of alarm on his face. “What’s wrong with you? You act like a man on the run from somebody.”

“Let’s just say I’ve lived this long partly because I make most of my mistakes on the right side of caution. I had the pleasure of meeting Dante this afternoon.”

“Who’s Dante?”

“You’re not helping us much here, Hal. I hope I don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every question.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then just this once I’ll draw you a picture. Big, ugly-assed thug who goes around with Carl Treadwell. An intimidator. A genuine bone-cruncher. Attila the Hun would cut him some real slack.”

“I don’t know anything about Carl’s friends.”

I looked dubious.

“Believe what you want, but I stay away from Carl.”

“What about Dean?”

He went over to the bureau, picked up a pint bottle of scotch, and poured himself a short one. He was putting the bottle away when I said, “I take mine straight, thanks,” and he looked at me again with that mix of bitter amusement and contempt. But he poured me the drink.

I took a sip. “I believe we were talking about Dean.”

“Why don’t you refresh my memory about why I’m talking to you at all.”

I sighed. “This is gonna be a toolbox-and-coveralls conversation all the way, isn’t it? You’re gonna make me work for everything I get.”

At last he said, “Dean Treadwell helps me find books that I need in my work.”

“Are you still living in Charleston?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“This seems like a long way to come, just to find a bookseller.”

“That’s my damn business.”

I sipped my scotch.

“You try finding books in Charleston,” he said. “See how long it takes you to turn up a copy of anything truly rare.”

“So you’re saying you stumbled upon Dean, way up here in Baltimore, and he performed for you. He found the books you wanted and that’s all there is to it.”

“If I’m saying anything, that’s probably what I’m saying.”

“Who’d you call on the phone just now?”

“What possible business—”

“Maybe I’m making it my business. Maybe I’m suddenly starting to see a whole scheme unfolding and it’s making me nervous as hell.”

“What scheme? I don’t know what—”

“How long have you really known about Mrs. Gallant and her books?”

“I never heard that name in my life before tonight.”

“Now see, Hal, that’s a lie. If you’ve got to lie, at least try to develop some style to go along with it. People appreciate honest bullshitters like Dean and me, but nobody likes a cold liar like you, Archer. Nobody.”

“How dare you,” he seethed.

“Yeah, right. Maybe you can sell that indignation in polite society, but to me you just look like another scared street rat.”

“How dare you!” he shouted.

“Gosh, Hal, I seem to have offended you, and just when you were beginning to like me so much. Could it have been something I said?”

“You’re wasting my time. I don’t think you know anything.”

“About what? Is that why you invited me up here, to find out what I know? I’ve got startling news for you, Hal. I came up here to find out what you know.”

He swished his drink, buying himself a moment to think. In a calmer voice, he said, “Let’s get this straight. I don’t care anything about your little old lady, or her…”

He blinked, as if he’d just saved himself from a stupid blunder.

I smiled at him. “Or her what?”

“Or her books. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”

“Nice try, but I think you were about to say something else.”

“I can’t be held accountable for your silly hunches.”

“Hal, please. I know you’re much the superior being here, but do I really look that stupid?” I cleared my throat. “Obviously I do. It’s amazing, dense as I am, how I picked right up on that crack in your story.”

“What crack? You’re talking in riddles.”

“Are you still trying to tell me that what you were going to say was you have no interest in my little old lady or her books? Isn’t the whole reason you brought me up here because of Josephine and her books?”

We stared at each other.

“Oops,” I said.

He went on, blindly stonewalling. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Could it be you were about to say my little old lady and her grandfather? Or my little old lady and her mother, who was screwed out of what should have been her daughter’s by a shyster bookman and her drunken husband?”

“You should be the one writing fiction, Janeway. My interest is purely academic. If there’s Burton material that has never been seen, and if you have some kind of access, which based on this conversation so far looks goddamned doubtful, then yes, I would be interested in knowing about it.”

“Even though you’re not doing Burton.”

“Yes! Jesus Christ, do we have to go all the way through this stupid dance? Of course I’m interested. What historian wouldn’t be interested in seeing material like that?”

“Then maybe we can work out a deal.”

“I don’t even know what you’ve got to deal with. Why should I deal anything with you when all you’re probably doing is wasting my time?”

“Bluster all you want, Hal, but these questions won’t go away. What are you doing with the Treadwells? Don’t you know how suspicious this is, given the history of that bookstore and its double-dealing with Mrs. Gallant’s books? Don’t you realize how far beyond chance it is that you went looking for a rare-book dealer and just happened to stumble over Dean Treadwell, six hundred miles away, at exactly this moment in time?”

“What double-dealing? What coincidence?”

“Are you actually trying to tell me you don’t know about the Treadwells? You don’t know how Josephine was robbed of those books eighty years ago?“

He tried an artificial laugh but it came out shrill, like a hyena’s bark. “Eighty years ago! Jesus, you are out of your mind.”

“Do you really think you’re fooling anybody with this bluff? I didn’t kick your door down, you’re the one who brought me up here. If you want to talk, talk, but don’t try feeding me any more of that bullshit about Dean looking for rare books on your behalf. Do I look like I just leaped out of some bookstore in far left field? What rare books? What books do you need that only Dean Treadwell can find for you? Old Dean must be a killer bookman. I saw him in action this morning and I didn’t think he could find his own cock in a pissing contest, but hey, maybe I was wrong. Give me the titles of a few books he’s finding for you. I’m prepared to be knocked out by Dean’s brilliance, so go ahead, give me his best shot.”

“I don’t have to give you anything.”

“Tell me just two titles you’ve been looking for and only Dean can find them.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Just one title, Hal. One lousy title and I’ll believe anything you say.”

“This conversation is over.”

“Have we been having a conversation? I couldn’t tell.”

“Get the hell out of here! Get out now or I’ll call hotel security.”

“I’ve got to improve my manners, I’m getting thrown out of everywhere these days.” I tried for a look of contriteness. “Can I finish my drink first?”

The room went suddenly quiet, and only in its void did I realize how completely I had been thinking and acting like a cop again. It had started last week with Whiteside, with Denise, and it wasn’t just the nature of my questions or my interrogative manner, it was part of my heartbeat. A good cop suspects everybody of everything.

In that minute the case swirled through my mind and I saw them all: Josephine, Ralston, the Treadwells, and Denise, carried out of her bedroom on a coroner’s stretcher. The thought I’d just had was so farfetched it had come only as an impression, lacking even the words to give it substance, but almost at once it became specific. I thought of the kid who had seen a fleeting white man leaving Ral-ston’s house. Archer was a white man. So were the Treadwells. So was Dante. And Denise had had Josephine’s Burton: for one night only, but who would have known that?

What if these sons of bitches had been following Josephine? What if they knew she’d died at Ralston’s? What if they’d killed Denise?

Denver’s three hours away. They hop a plane, bingo!

I leaned forward on the bed and riddled Archer with my eyes. “Where were you this time last week?”

“That’s none of your business either, but I was in South Carolina, working.”

“Can anybody verify that?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“It’s a really, really simple one, Hal. It means, did anybody see you there?”

“I know what it means. Why are you asking? Why do I have to verify anything?”

“Obviously you don’t…yet. I’d still like an answer.”

“The answer is no. When I’m working I see no one and I don’t pick up the telephone. Does that satisfy you?”

“Sure. I admire that intensity, that’s why you’re so good. But I couldn’t help wondering if you were in Denver last Wednesday night.”

“Why would you wonder that?”

“I don’t know, just a wild hair. You’re sure you weren’t there?”

“Of course I’m sure. Do you think I wouldn’t know if I’d just been halfway across the goddamn country?”

“You’d know, all right.”

“Why would I hide that? Did somebody rob a bank last Wednesday?”

“Yeah, that’s what happened, Hal, I’m trying to pin a bank robbery on you.”

He walked to the window and looked out into the night. “I think I’d like you to leave now,” he said softly. “This meeting hasn’t exactly been productive.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

I got up and went to the door, betting he’d say something.

“What are you going to do now?” he said.

I looked back across the room. “Oh, I don’t know, screw up your life as much as possible, I guess. I’ve got a friend at Publishers Weekly who’ll be interested that you’re doing Burton. She’ll call you to verify. Of course you’ll lie, but I’ll tell her to expect that. It won’t be much of a story, just a little squib. ‘Is he or isn’t he?’ Enough to let the world know.”

“Damn it, Janeway, will you please listen? I am not doing Richard Burton.”

“Then whatever I say won’t matter, will it?” I reached into my distant past and pulled out a name, a freckle-faced kid with pigtails I had loved madly in the third grade. “My friend’s name is Janie Morrison. If you read Publishers Weekly, you’ve probably seen her byline. She’ll love you, Hal, you’re such an awful liar. Janie cut her teeth on the New York Post, so she knows a bad liar when she hears one.”

I pulled the chain out of its slot and looked through the peephole at the empty hall. I could feel his eyes on my back, and when I turned for a final look, he had moved away from the window and was regarding me with a pitiful, whipped-dog look. “I’m really sorry, Hal,” I said. “I’m sorry you’re such a flaming fucking dick-head, because I really did love your books. You’ve got the rarest of all rare gifts, and you’ve got it by the bucket. If you’d just get your head out of your ass, maybe you’d even be happy.”

“What would you know about happy? Are you happy?”

“Hey, I’m doing what I like, why wouldn’t I be happy? So what if it’s not perfect, I don’t believe in perfection. Maybe happy’s as good as it gets.”

He said nothing.

“C’mon, honey, talk to me. It’s not too late, we can still be friends.”

He looked up and met my eyes. “Don’t hold your breath.”

“I never do. But if you change your mind, I’m at the Bozeman Inn.”

I watched the floors tick off as I went down in the elevator. It stopped on three and I braced back against the wall, expecting…what?

An elderly couple got in, eyeing me suspiciously.

I was not just nervous, suddenly I was very nervous. What had seemed like a good idea had become, in Archer’s continued silence, heavy and tense, fraught with peril. I had had that sudden hunch, and once it was there I couldn’t shake it.

Let it settle. See if it sticks.

How many murder cases had I solved just this way? I’d get an idea, some harebrained notion that had no facts or logic to support it, and I’d start growing a case around it. How many times had I gone after a killer with nothing more than a wild hunch, and suddenly had the whole ball of wax fall into my lap?

Long ago I learned that murder isn’t logical. Sometimes it is but those are the easy cases: the old man kills the old lady, the kid cuts his father a new orifice, the hooker shoots her pimp. The tough ones almost always go against the grain of common sense.

I walked out into the cool night air. The world looked peaceful, serene: all the synonyms for tranquillity. I walked west, then south, around the Inner Harbor toward Federal Hill. I finally settled on a bench overlooking the harbor.

The thought came again: What if these sons of bitches had killed Denise?

How could they have known about her? The book was the only possible motive and no one knew Denise had had it. Just Denise herself, Ralston and his doctor, Erin, and me.

I had another hunch, dark and full of trouble. Suddenly I feared for Koko. Koko knew things no one else knew.

My cop juice was finally perking. What if Denise’s killer had not been a two-bit Denver cockroach looking for pocket change? If the Burton had been the motive, the killer had turned into a much bigger cockroach. What if it had all begun here, not in Denver? Almost surely, then, Archer was in the middle of it. So were the Treadwells. Dante was their enforcer, and I had just put out big pieces of myself as roach bait.

And what about Koko?

The night was no longer young but under the circumstances, I didn’t care much about propriety. I stopped at the first phone booth I saw and punched in her number.

“Come on, Koko, answer the damn phone.”

I let it ring twenty times before I gave up, cursing the darkness.

CHAPTER 16

Forty minutes later the cabbie looked back over his shoulder and said, “What part of Ellicott City you want?”

“I don’t know. How big is it?”

“Not big—few thousand people, one main drag, buncha winding little streets. But it helps if you know where you’re goin‘. It can get dark here.”

I held up a paper and read my own writing in the glare of oncoming lights. “Where is Hill Street?”

“I can take you there.”

“Just wondering if it can be walked from downtown.”

“If you like to walk. It’s uphill both ways, as my kid likes to say.”

We crossed a river and were suddenly in Howard County. We clattered over a railroad track, passed a large stone building, and started to climb. “My wife comes from around here,” the cabbie said. “Her dad had a gas station.”

If I expected just another sprawling suburb, this was a surprise. Everything seemed to be narrow, winding, carved out of stone and at least a century old. Frederick Road had become Main Street, with stone buildings on both sides. What I could see in the night reminded me of Colorado. The town made me think of Central City.

The road took a turn and a moment later the cabbie said, “This is as downtown as it gets. Hill Street’s straight ahead on your left, maybe a quarter of a mile. It’s no skin off my nose to drive you there.”

“Thanks.” I thought about it, then said, “I’ll get out here and go on my own.”

I stood in the shadows of Main Street as the taxi disappeared back down the hill. It had to be eleven o’clock by then: pretty late to go groping through a strange land. I still felt jittery and I couldn’t shake the notion that I was being followed. I walked along a street flanked by pubs and eateries and various shops that had closed hours ago. Night-lights shone through darkened windows, and beyond the street I could see an occasional light higher up, as if on a hillside. The Central City image grew stronger as I walked past something called Church Road and continued up the hill.

I passed a fire station and a bar. Stopped for a moment and looked back. A few cars were there on the street behind me, a few people were out on the sidewalk. No one who seemed to care, no one who watched, no one who followed.

Near the top was an old church. Hill Street led away to the left, looking like a lithograph, like a country lane in the moonlight.

The climb continued with only the moon as a guide. Occasionally I could see lights from a house but most were dark, their people asleep for the night. I had no flashlight but I remembered what Koko’d said: the fifth house on the right and her name was on the mailbox.

I saw it then, a low, flat dwelling on a large piece of land, surrounded by trees. Surprisingly there was a light, a faint glow that might have come from a lantern or a gas lamp. I stepped along her walk and clumped up onto her porch. Knocked on her door.

I heard a bump. The house was quiet then for what seemed a long time.

A shadow passed at the side window. I saw a hand, then a face in silhouette.

The porch light came on. I saw a dark figure looking at me through a small window. The shape looked female but I couldn’t be sure yet.

“Koko? It’s Janeway, from Denver.”

The shadow backed away from the window and a moment later the door opened just a crack. I saw nothing of a face, only the rims of her glasses reflected from the porch light. But when she spoke, I recognized her voice.

“Mr. Janeway?”

“I know it’s late. I’m sorry. I did try calling earlier.”

“I was meditating. I can’t hear the phone when I’m in that room.”

“I should come back tomorrow.”

I hoped she would counter but she said nothing.

A moment passed. I took a chance. “Listen, Koko, what I really need is to talk to you right now, tonight. Some things have happened since we spoke on the phone.”

I heard her take a breath. “This can’t be good if it brings you here at midnight.”

“A friend of mine has been killed.”

She leaned closer to the door and said, “I’m sorry.” I saw the shadow of her face move across the crack in the door and she regarded me with her right eye.

“How was he killed?”

“She. The police think it was just a neighborhood burglary.”

“Sounds like you don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what I believe. It’s not like me to make up spooks, but I’ve been thinking all kinds of crazy things since I got to Baltimore.”

“Things that have to do with Josephine.”

Before I could confirm that, she said, “My manners are terrible. Come in.”

I stepped into a dark hallway. The entire house was dark except for the dim orange lamplight in the room off to my right, and Koko was still nothing more than a shadow. She led me toward what was apparently a living room and I had a vision of a slender girl with a shawl over her shoulders, surrounded by books. The shawl was dark, I saw in the lamplight from the doorway; the girl, from her own description on the telephone, would be a woman somewhat older than me, but the girlish image persisted as she crossed the room into the light.

There was a hint of incense in the air. The room was slightly hazy, like a scene in an art film. She turned and motioned me to a chair. She was indeed slim. Her face was young and unwrinkled, her age just hinted by the glasses and her hair, which now in the orange light looked to be black speckled with either white or gray. Even with the salt-and-pepper hair she looked no older than thirty-five. Her face like the rest of her was thin, but warm in the fuzzy light. I could see a line of sweat on her forehead, though the house was cool. She said, “Please sit,” and she took a chair facing mine.

I looked in her eyes, which seemed to be blue. “You’re younger than I thought.”

She smiled slightly. “I’m afraid that’s a huge illusion. If I look younger than I am, it’s because I’ve been doing the right things for about thirty years now. It’s no great secret—just do what they all tell you.”

“Who are they?”

“Herbalists, medicine men, a shaman or two. I stretch, I walk, I get violent, fierce exercise at odd moments of the day. Just before you came, as a matter of fact. I eat right. And I don’t smoke. That’s the absolute worst thing you can do to yourself.”

She had a kind smile, which began in her eyes and radiated through her face. She smiled now and said, “I’ll be sixty-two next month.”

“Get out of here!”

“You look pretty fit yourself.”

“That’s because I’m young at heart.”

“You look like you’re thirty-five and you talk like a wise guy.”

“I’m thirty-seven. I run obsessively, drink occasionally, take in way too much caffeine, and dispense more verbal trash than you’ll get from a dozen other sources in a month of Sundays. That’s the wise guy part of my nature. But I don’t smoke.”

“Good for you. Can I get you something? I was just about to have tea.”

“At midnight?”

“I’m retired, Mr. Janeway. I have no clock to answer to, so I sleep when I want, stay up all night if I feel like it, and drink tea whenever it pleases me.”

“I would love some tea at midnight.”

“Good. I’ll be right back.”

While she was gone I got up and looked around the room. She had books shelved everywhere, works on Eastern philosophy, on India and Egypt, Sufism and hypnosis; some poetry, some literature, a few fascinating individuals. The works of Rabindranath Tagore, the life of Gandhi, all the obvious books by and about Richard Burton. She had tacked a small framed quote from Tagore on the end of her bookcase: Modern civilization has gathered its wealth and missed its well-being. I looked into a dark hallway and I could see more books on both sides.

“I read a lot.” She stood behind me, holding a tray with cups and a steaming pot.

“And you move like a cat.”

“It’s a solid house. Not many creaking boards. And I never wear shoes inside.”

I looked back at her books. “Interesting collection.”

“Does it tell you anything about its owner?”

“Sure. There are no better indicators of character than the books you have.”

“What do you look for when you go into a house and there are no books at all?”

“I don’t know. Whatever’s there, I guess. But I always feel a sense of…what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Pity’s the word.”

“That’s a strong, judgmental word.” But I thought about it and said, “Yeah.”

“I couldn’t live without books. What amazes me is how many people can. I know writers who have no books at all, if you can believe that.”

I not only believed it, I knew some of the same writer types. Glory seekers who want to make lots of money writing books but would never think of buying one.

“Come drink your tea before it gets cold.”

I took a sip and said, “What is this? It’s not tea.”

“It’s an herbal concoction. Do you like it?”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

“It’ll put hair on your chest.”

I laughed. “Never had that problem, actually.”

I asked her what kind of name Koko Bujak was.

“My father was what’s called a White Russian. My mother was from Baltimore.”

We looked at each other. “So what can I do for you?” she said.

I owed her the truth and I told it all: facts, suspicions, everything.

She didn’t say a word the whole time. She barely moved in the chair. Her eyes were riveted to mine, a compelling gaze that made me keenly aware of her hypnotic skills as I talked. She must have blinked during the half hour but I never saw her do it. After a while her eyes were like pinpoints of energy and the rest of her went out of focus. I wasn’t telling this story, she was pulling it out of me, but that was okay, none of it was against my will; I never had the feeling of going under or being out of my own control. If I wanted to I could get up any time, in the middle of a sentence, walk out, and fly back to Denver. It was almost pleasant except for the reality that someone had killed Denise and my sudden hunch that the killer might be in Baltimore, not Denver.

“That’s why I’m here at midnight,” I said as her face came into focus.

I didn’t know what I expected her to do with it. What I didn’t expect was how the conversation went from there.

“So you think I may be on someone’s list, is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know, Koko. That sounds pretty goofy, doesn’t it?”

“A week ago, maybe. Now, it doesn’t.” She took a deep breath, let it out through her nose. “I’ve had a feeling for the past week that someone’s been watching me.”

“Have you seen anybody?”

“I had a prowler last night. But I felt someone there long before that happened.”

“What kind of prowler? Noises?”

“No, not just a sound. Someone I actually saw in the yard behind the house.”

“How much of a look did you get?”

“Not much. He was back there in the trees, just for a moment.”

“What time of day was it?”

“Middle of the night. Just about this time.”

“How’d you happen to see him?”

“Felt a cat cross my path. Went to the back door and there he was, in the yard.”

“Did he see you?”

“Oh yes. He was crossing the yard, looking toward the house when I came to the door. I couldn’t have been more than a silhouette from where he was but we saw each other. He stopped in his tracks, then he veered into the trees and ran off that way.”

“Did you call the cops?”

“What good would that do? He was gone before I could even get to the phone. Besides, the police would only blame the blacks.”

“Why would they do that?”

“There’s a black housing project up on Mount Ida Drive. Lots of low-income black families, lots of crime. The police are always over there about something.”

“This prowler you had, were you able to see him well enough to—”

“He was white. It never crossed my mind that he might be some local kid. Maybe I couldn’t see him well enough to identify him, but there was moonlight, like tonight. I know what I saw.”

“Anything else?”

“You mean other incidents? No, nothing that obvious.”

“Anything at all.”

“Like I told you, I’ve been restless for about a week. Actually, it’s been more than a month now, but for the past week since I talked to you it’s been more…intense. I’m not sleeping well, and that’s unusual. I wake up after a few hours with a feeling that my life’s been invaded. That probably makes no sense at all and I can only tell you that it makes as much sense to me as seeing that man in the yard. I’ll get up at, say, two o’clock in the morning and go straight to the back door, as if someone had knocked on it.”

“But there’s never anyone there.”

“Except that one time, no. But on Tuesday…” She shivered suddenly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I felt it just now. It’s probably talking about it that gives me the creeps.” She got up and went to the window. “See? Nobody there.”

She came back and sat in her chair, but I could see she was still nervous.

“You were about to tell me what happened Tuesday.”

She smiled wanly. “You’re pretty serious with your questions. Almost like a policeman yourself.”

“I was one, for a long time.”

I told her a bit about it, hoping to gain her confidence. Then I asked her again what had happened on Tuesday.

“I went to the store out on the highway to get some groceries. I was gone maybe an hour. When I got home I had a feeling even before I got out of the car. Like, somebody’s here, only it was stronger than just a feeling. For a few minutes I was absolutely certain someone was in my house. I sat in the car for a long time, working up the courage to go inside. When I finally did, there was nothing…and yet the feeling wouldn’t go away.” She looked at the window. “Obviously it never has gone away. I still have it.”

“Did you look through your stuff to see if anything was missing or out of place?”

“I looked through everything. If I’d had a burglar, he was a very good one. Nothing was missing. And the first thing I did was look at the Burton material.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“I had a hunch. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I follow my hunches.”

“So you thought all along that this had something to do with Burton and Josephine. Is that what you’re saying?”

“There’s more to it than that. Did Jo tell you about the Tread-wells?”

“She said one of the old Treadwells stole her Burton books eighty years ago.”

“She always believed that. One of the first things that came out of our sessions was the name Treadwell. I was surprised to learn about that store, how it’s still in business, and Jo was haunted by it. I don’t think that’s too strong a word—she was just haunted by the idea that something they did all those years ago might have had such a negative effect on her life. It became such an obstacle that I knew we’d have to confront it, so one day I suggested that we go down there and see the place, look around. She leaped at the chance. I never thought we’d be in any kind of danger.”

“So what happened?”

“One afternoon we went and at first it was just what I thought— a look around. She had me carry her bag, which was heavy. I didn’t know what was in it then. There was a woman running the place. Jo asked if the Treadwells still owned it and the woman said yes. Jo asked if she could speak to them, and a minute later a man came out of the office.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Small…cold.”

“Carl.”

“You know him?”

“I’ve seen him—talked to him, so to speak.”

“Well, at that point I didn’t know what was going to happen, what she was going to do. ‘Show him my book,’ she said, and I looked in the bag and there was this exquisite old book—it turned out to be the African book. I was as surprised as Treadwell; I had no idea she had anything like that. ‘What’ll you give me for this?’ she said, and Treadwell got all shaky and tense. I mean, truly, you could see it all over him. ‘Where’d you get this book?’ he said, and it was almost like an accusation. ‘What’ll you give me for it?’ Jo said again. He looked at her hard, like he was trying to size her up. Then he said, ‘Two thousand.’ Jo smiled. It was a bitter smile, not funny, and she said, ‘I thought so. You’re still a den of thieves.’”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow. But what happened then still shivers my timbers. He reached over and put his hand on the book and said, ‘I’ve got to tell you something: this looks like a stolen book to me. I’ll have to confiscate it till we learn where it came from.’”

“Wow. Then what happened?”

“I snatched it away from him. Said, ‘Don’t you even think of trying to take this lady’s book. I’ll go to the cops so fast it’ll make your head swim.’”

“What’d he say to that?”

“Nothing. I put the book back in the bag and we walked out. But he saw us drive away, got a good look at my car.”

“And maybe the plate number. So was that when…” “That’s when it started—that spooky feeling I had. For a while I thought it was just nerves, but I’m not usually like that.”

“So that day, when you went to the store, you had good reason to worry about your Burton stuff. But nobody had touched it?”

“I have it well hidden.”

“Here in the house, though, right?”

She took her time answering that. At last she said, “If somebody wanted to tear the house apart, he could find it. Whoever was here had decided—at least for the moment—not to do that. He wanted to keep me thinking no one had been here. I don’t know how he could even get in without breaking something, but somebody was here. That’s what I think, since you asked. I think someone was here. And he looked through my Burton books, the ones on the open shelf. He went through my things, then very carefully he put them all back. Then he left, just a few minutes before I got home. But his aura—his heat—was still here. That’s what I think.”

She looked at me hard. “What do you think? And don’t humor me.”

“No, I think that’s all very possible. People can get into houses— I could pick this lock myself. So I think you’d better get that stuff, wherever it is, and get it the hell out of here. Make copies. Put it in a safe deposit box. You might not be so lucky next time.”

She nodded. “I hear what you’re saying.”

“Good. So what’d you do after the prowler came?”

“I bought a gun.”

I felt my backbone stiffen. “What kinda gun?”

“Little thirty-eight. I had it in my hand when you came to my door.”

“Where is it? Can I see it?”

“Why?”

“No reason. Forget I asked if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“No, I’m fine with you.” She unfolded her shawl, took out a wicked-looking snub-nose, and put it in my hand. “It’s loaded.”

“I see that. No offense, but do you happen to know how to use this thing?”

“The man who sold it to me told me a few things. About the safety lock or whatever you call it. Other than that, what’s to know? You cock it, point it, and make someone very sorry he’s come into your house.”

I handed it back to her. “That’s basically it. As long as you don’t shoot me or the paperboy, the mailman, or some Jehovah’s Witness who’s only trying to save your soul.”

She pursed her lips. “That’s pretty strong disapproval I hear in your voice.”

“Hey, I wish you didn’t need a gun. I wish the world could be a better place.”

“But you don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it that some clown sold you this thing with you not knowing any more about it than I know about transcendental meditation. You should see what this baby will do to a pound of flesh.” I made a fist about the size of a human heart.

Her look said she could imagine. “Well, don’t worry, I’m not going to kill anyone with it. I thought it might scare someone off.”

“Jesus, Koko, that’s even worse. If he gets it away from you, you’ve just armed your enemy.”

Nothing was said for a moment. Koko put the gun down on the table.

“You never want to pull a gun on a guy unless you mean it, that’s all I’m saying.”

She looked frustrated. “I know you’re right. I’ve been uneasy with that thing in the house. But what am I supposed to do? You don’t get Jehovah’s Witnesses at two o’clock in the morning.”

“You never know. Those birds never stop trying.”

The gun yawned up from the table between us. She started to say something but again her eyes drifted nervously to the window.

“I was pretty careful when I came up here,” I said.

“Why? Did you think you were followed? Did the same cat cross your path?”

“I was careful, Koko. You know the reasons.”

“Maybe so, but I think you were followed.” She got up and went quickly to the window to peep through the curtains. “See? He’s there. He’s out there now.”

I came up and we stood together, close enough to touch.

“I don’t see anything.”

“I saw someone, across the road. He went back in the trees.”

“Same guy?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I can’t be sure.”

“I’ll go take a look.”

“No. Don’t do that.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that. I’ll call the police.”

“Whatever you want. But it’s different seeing a guy in your backyard and seeing one out on the road.”

“The police will laugh at me, is that what you’re saying?”

“They’ll have a harder time taking this seriously.”

“What about you? Do you think I’m imagining things?”

“I think you saw somebody. Who that was, we may never know.”

“What if it’s him?”

“He’d have to be pretty good to have followed me here.”

“But if he is pretty good, it could be done.”

“Anybody can be followed.”

“No matter how careful you think you are. And it would be a lot easier if he knew ahead of time where you were going. Or thought he knew.”

“Sure. He wouldn’t need to follow me at all then, would he?”

“Just wait for you. But what would that prove?”

“That you and I have made contact. He’d have to assume that you now know what I know. And that I’ve put you on guard.”

“So the next time he breaks in…”

“He won’t pussyfoot around.”

She stepped away from the window and sat looking down at her gun.

“None of this may happen,” I said. “But you’ve got to play it safe now. I’ll help you if you want.”

She looked up at me. “We’re in this together, is that what you’re saying?”

“We are if you want us to be.”

“I’m not sure what that means. But right now I sure would welcome your help.”

“Then you’ve got it, no strings attached, for as long or short as you want it.”

She gave me a grateful look. Then she looked uneasily around the room. “I guess there’s nothing we can do till morning. But this house has been violated. I think I’ll go crazy just waiting here.”

“Well, the alternative is to get out now. Where’s your car?”

“In the garage behind the house.”

“Get all your stuff together, if that’s what you want to do. Gimme your keys; I’ll get the car and bring it up close to the house. Then we’ll stash the stuff in the car and get it out of here.”

“Where will we go?”

“Down to Baltimore where there are people and lights. Maybe we’ll just drive around till dawn. At nine o’clock we’ll go to your bank and get a safe deposit box. The bank should be able to copy your notes. Later you’ll want to get dupes made of the tapes as well.” I shrugged. “This isn’t the greatest idea since Poe invented the detective story, but it’s the best I’ve got. Unless you want to change your mind and stay here till dawn.”

“No, that doesn’t feel…I don’t know how to explain it.”

She gave me her keys and went away. I heard her footsteps on a stairwell going down, then I heard her moving around under my feet, and I walked from window to window, looking out into the yard for trouble. The backyard looked peaceful in the moonlight, the garage a ramshackle building in the center of it, the whole property ringed by trees and underbrush. From there I couldn’t see any sign of a neighboring house.

I went out through the kitchen, through a small porch to the backyard. Nothing there either: no movements or sounds, no shadows darting away into the trees. It would be easy to find Koko guilty of an overactive imagination, but now I had a dark hunch of my own. I leaned back against the porch and wondered if we were doing the right thing. But I told her we’d go, it was her choice, so I finally moved uneasily away from the house toward the garage.

Halfway across the yard I froze. Something had moved, back in the trees. Might be a man, maybe a dog: probably nothing more than my own imagination competing with Koko’s. A breeze had come up, fluttering the leaves, and maybe that’s all it was.

I egged myself on. Come on, boy, you’re acting like a spooked kid.

I reached the edge of the garage and looked around it. I could see the door a few feet ahead: a double door for the car and a walk-in at the side. There was a small window and the interior looked pitch-black. I eased along the wall. My dark hunch had grown into a monster and I wished I had brought a flashlight, or Koko’s gun.

The door creaked loudly as I opened it and stepped inside. It was dark but I could see part of the car in the moonbeam coming through the window. It glinted off one of the fenders and fell against an empty wall.

I moved quickly away from the door and stood against the opposite wall, listening. This is damn ridiculous, I thought. Koko would wonder where I’d gone. But I didn’t move.

Someone was in here. I felt him breathing: I sensed his spirit. Nothing moved, there was no sound from any part of the garage, but by then my internal alarm was going crazy.

Then he did move. A slight bump, small enough to be nothing more than a rat.

A shadow crossed outside the door. Nothing imaginary about that. I leaned forward and peered out as something flitted past toward the trees. Another shape flicked past the window. There were three of them now, at least three. I eased along the wall, my fingers probing around for anything that might work as a weapon—a tire iron, a wrench, a hammer—but all I picked up was a layer of dust.

Nothing to do but go ahead. I took two quick steps away from the wall, touched the hard, cold door of the car, found the handle, and jerked it open. I was ready for what happened next; he was not. The car’s interior light came on and I saw him, in a crouch about three feet away. He shouted and came at me. I swung from the hip, caught him with a solid left just above the belt, and he dropped like a congressman’s ethics. He rasped out two desperate words, “Jesus…Christ,” and the other two charged into the garage. I slammed the car door shut—we all might as well be in the dark—and spun away as a dancing shadow moved around me. I swung and hit nothing.

Suddenly a powerful flashlight went on in my face. I smelled a gunny sack just before it was thrown over my head and jerked down over my arms. “Now, you son of a bitch,” a voice whispered. “Now we’ll see how frisky your ass is.”

I took a killer kidney punch. Someone wrapped me in another sack, my arms were pinned by some kind of rope or belt, my feet were kicked out from under me, and I tasted the floor, a burlap sandwich garnished with blood. I felt a searing pain and saw red streaks behind my eyes. One of them had stomped on the back of my head. I knew I was hurt; for the first time in years I feared for my life, and I fought like a wild man to get up and get out of that straitjacket.

I never made it. He went to work with his feet, not caring much what he hit or how hard. I took half a dozen in the gut, a bad one to the groin, and again he found my head. At some point I went under.

The next thing I heard was Koko’s voice. I felt her hands as she pulled off the gunnysack and rolled me over. It was still dark. I looked up and saw her shape behind the tiny flashlight.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” I tried to sit up. “I may have some broken bones.”

“I’ll go call a doctor.”

“Let’s see if I’m still alive first.”

“Lie still for a while. Your lip’s split open and you’ve got a broken tooth.”

I touched the tooth with my tongue and felt the ragged break. My lip was busted down to the cleft in my chin.

I tried again and did sit up. But I ached in joints I never knew I had.

“I suppose they took your stuff,” I said.

“You shouldn’t worry about that now.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“Nothing I won’t get over. You got far worse.”

“What’d they do to you?”

“One of them slapped me around, just to get my attention, he said. He put a gun to my head and said there’d only be one warning.”

I took the flashlight and played it on her face. She’d have a shiner in the morning.

“What was the warning?”

“Not to go to the police. If I do, they’ll be back and I’ll be dead.”

I got up from the floor and moved around.

She said, “Does anything feel permanently ruined?”

“Just my pride, Koko.” But as I reached out for the wall it seemed to slip away. When I looked at her by flashlight there were two of her. “Never been kayoed before. Had plenty of chances but never had the pleasure till now.”

“At least your morbid sense of humor’s in one piece. Sit down here, I’m going to call a doctor.”

“Not yet.”

“I don’t want to argue with you. You really do need some attention.”

“I’m a fast healer when I need to be. And I don’t have time for a doctor.”

I figured I had a concussion but I could live with that. I reached out and squeezed her arm. “If you really want to do something for me, go inside and make half a pot of the blackest coffee you can brew. When the spoon stands up in it, call me.”

“There isn’t any coffee. I’m sorry, I don’t use it.” Her voice was distressed, as if she had failed me in my darkest hour. In a smaller voice: “Would you like some tea?”

“Oh God, no.” I covered my face and laughed, and my laughter was the blood brother of tears. “Your tea is lovely, Koko, but please, God, no tea. Thank you for the thought.”

She squatted in the light from the open door and looked up at me like a mother hen. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

“It’s not the first time. Based on past experience, I think I’ll live.”

We sat with each other, just breathing and happy we could.

“What’d you do with that gun?” I asked after a while.

“It’s still in there on the table.”

“They didn’t see it. That’s good, I’m gonna need it.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Go get your stuff back, I hope.”

She didn’t believe me. I smiled and moved away from the wall. She put an arm around my back and I hobbled across the yard to the house.

CHAPTER 17

From across the street I could see the faint light far back in Tread-well’s. Just as I had figured: they were in there trying to dope out what they’d got. I hadn’t needed the brains of a Rhodes scholar to solve this one. One and one are two; two rats plus one rat equals three rats. There they were: Carl and Dante and some other rat.

“What if you’re wrong?” Koko said. “What if it wasn’t them?”

“Then I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

It was still well before the dawn: the deadest part of the early morning, when anyone on the street would be noticed a block away. I had parked out on Broadway and we had walked boldly up Eastern Avenue, finding a crack between the buildings across from Treadwell’s. We huddled there now, sharing our body heat just out of a cold predawn wind. I had draped the bloody gunnysack over my shoulder and it was an effective poncho in the wind. But I had a powerful do-unto-others streak in me, and I thought it might have another use before the dawn.

I had to hand it to Koko: not once had she tried to hide her horror at what I was about to do, nor had she mounted any kind of argument against it. She had only insisted on coming along, and that was her call. They had taken her stuff and slapped her around and that made it her call, as long as she understood the risks.

In the hour since Dante and his boys had left me battered and bleeding on the floor, I had made a good comeback. The double vision had not cleared up, but most of my dizziness had. My bones ached and so did my muscles, but nothing was broken. The old bones would perform well enough when the moment came. That pain would melt away and the stiffness would be gone, but I’d pay a helluva price later.

“Time to go.”

“What do we do if you’re wrong?” she asked again.

“I’ll tell you why I’m not wrong, Koko. They’re back there now, so full of arrogance they’re not even trying to hide from us. They’re so sure they put the fear of God in you, and their boy Dante knows he put it in me the first time we met. That boy plays hardball and if I don’t impress him or kill him, he’s going to be a danger to both of us forever. He holds grudges and he doesn’t forget.”

I gave her a hug and we split up. She went back for the car; I crossed the street to the front of the bookstore. I scrunched down inside the gunnysack and came into the foyer and peered in through the window. The light was coming from the same back room Carl had gone into when I’d first seen them yesterday. The door was closed but it had an old-fashioned transom, well lit and cracked open. I could see their shadows moving on the ceiling. Three distinct rat-shadows.

I walked down the block and around the corner to the back alley; groped through the dark till I could see that guiding light from Carl’s office. Two cars were parked there, a late-model Chevy and a new Ford. These boys bought American: true patriots, born on the Fourth of July, the sons of bitches.

I turned the doorknob. Talk about arrogance, they hadn’t even locked the door.

I had to take them by surprise. Lose that edge and I might as well just walk in, hand them my gun, and let Dante kill me. I had to strike first, fast and hard.

I stepped inside and heard their voices. I recognized Dante’s, then Carl’s, over the transom. The third guy was probably one of Dante’s sidekicks, some extra hired muscle. If I could get him out of the way fast, my attitude would improve. You can’t plan those things, but at that moment, almost eerily, I heard footsteps. I got back between two shelves just as the door opened and the third man came out. He walked past me, opened the back door, and went outside. No chance to get him from there, and a few seconds later I heard one of the cars start. He pulled into the alley and drove away. My common sense said never mind him, he’s just some dummy who does what he’s told. I wanted Edgar Bergen, not Charlie McCarthy. But I was angry that even one of them had escaped, and it took a minute for that craziness to go away.

He had left the door open and now I could see into the office. Dante and Carl were sitting at a table with a cassette player between them. I could hear Josephine’s voice droning in the room. Carl was listening intently and Dante with a look of impatience, as if he didn’t know quite what to do with this voice from the dead, this old lady who couldn’t be roughed up or intimidated to make her talk faster.

Dante was sitting across the table facing the door. That would make it tough to get any kind of jump on him. Maybe I could reach the door before he heard me but I doubted it; guys like Dante all seem to have some built-in radar as part of their defense systems. Even if I made it to the door there’d be a moment before I could get at him across that table: plenty of time for him to go after his gun. I could walk in with my own gun ready, but Dante might go for it against the odds, and a gun battle was not what I wanted. Or was it?

I ran my tongue along my split lip and I thought, Kill the son of a bitch now and worry no more. But I waited, God knows why.

Josephine’s voice was the only sound in the room. Then Dante’s voice rose from nowhere. “Man, this is bullshit. What the hell are we doing with this stuff? We’re wasting our time.”

I couldn’t see Carl’s face, couldn’t tell if he agreed or begged to differ. A moment later he said, “We’ve been through her things. There’s nothing else there. Whatever she’s got, the answer’s got to be on these tapes. Why else would they get ready to haul freight out of there and just take this box?”

“It’s all bullshit: just some cock-and-bull travelogue from a hundred years ago.”

“There’s a lot of tape here,” Carl said. “It’ll take time to hear it all and know what’s here.”

“For you to hear it all. Me, I got better things to do.”

“That’s okay, I’ll take it home and spend the day with it.”

“Don’t you get it yet? This is all it is, there’s nothing else to hear.”

“Maybe, but it’s got to be done. Anyway, I got a feeling all of a sudden, like we’d better not sit around here too long. Where the hell did Harlow go for that coffee?”

Dante laughed. “What, are you afraid they’ll sic the cops on us? Those two ain’t callin‘ nobody, pal; I made sure of that.”

“Still, there’s no sense taking a chance.”

Carl began putting things away: the tape player in its case, the notes and cassettes in their cardboard box. Dante got up from his chair and came around the table. I had less than twenty seconds to make my move. If you wait long enough for something to get better, it doesn’t, but it happens to you anyway.

I slipped around the bookcase toward the office door. Dante’s radar, if he had it, was off tonight: he had turned toward the far wall, looking up at a clock that I could now see said quarter to five. Dawn must be breaking, I thought irrelevantly. All over town people are getting up, taking showers, getting dressed, making love. That’s what all the normal people are doing. In those two seconds I saw a parade of women from my life: Rita McKinley…Trish Aan-dahl…Erin. The ones I had and the ones I hadn’t.

I had to get his gun: my top priority. He wore it inside his coat, well back on the left side. That’s how I remembered it and I hoped I was right.

Carl came through the door and walked right past me. I couldn’t see it but I knew he’d be carrying Koko’s box and I had to get that too before he had a chance to run with it. The gun and the box, with no time-outs in between for a Tennessee waltz with Dante.

It took Dante hours to clear the door. In real time he was just two steps behind Carl, I was standing to his right, and in that half second I think he saw me. If he did, his reaction was lost between darkness and disbelief. He never broke stride till I hit him. I threw the hardest right I had, a jawbreaker. He was still standing as my hand frisked along his belt for the gun. He tried to lurch forward with his hands up and I got him on the other side with a good left. I jerked his gun free and it slipped, clattering on the floor as he went down. I let his face say hello to my kneecap in his free fall and I pivoted and kicked the gun away and ripped the box out of Carl’s hand.

“Hello, asshole,” I said seductively. “Welcome to hell.”

Carl made a pitiful whimpering noise. “W-wait a minute,” he croaked.

“Y-you w-wait a minute. Here’s something to suck on while you wait.” I hit him in the mouth and he joined Dante on the floor.

I shivered. That was way too easy.

Then I heard the car door slam. This would be Dante Jr., the one named Harlow coming back from wherever he’d gone, just when they were about to give up on him. I felt a wild surge of crazy elation as I stepped up to meet him.

He opened the door. I could see by the moonlight that he was carrying three giant Styrofoam coffee cups in a little cardboard tray.

“Hi, Harlow, make mine black,” I said, and I clobbered him.

Coffee flew everywhere. Its first stop was on Harlow’s face, but he never felt it.

I stood trembling. “Sons of bitches.”

Dante groaned. I turned on the light and saw him trying to get to his feet. I threw the gunnysack over his head and kicked his legs out from under him, banging his head on the floor.

Prudence told me to get the hell out of there. I had what I’d come for but the elation was gone. There hadn’t been much satisfaction in the love taps I’d given them, not after what they’d done to me. Besides, I had a blood enemy now and I should at least try to impress him.

I leaned over him. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure. Cliff Janeway from Denver. We haven’t been introduced, but I’m the poor, shivering bastard you scared half to death in here yesterday. And you would be the rough-and-tough Mr. Dante.”

He tried to roll over again and I kicked him hard enough to break his hip. “Don’t do that, Dante. Not unless you want a lot more pain than you pricks gave me.”

I leaned over and talked to him through the burlap. “I’ll bet you’re thinking right now how much fun it’ll be when you kill me. Big mistake if you are, because two things will happen if you try it. First, / will kill you if I ever see your face again. I will kill you the minute I see you, in a dark alley or a Pizza Hut or in a crowd at Rockefeller Center.”

I cocked the gun and put it against his head. “How do you like this? Do you like the feel of it?”

I cracked him on the temple, hard enough to sting. “Just in case you do manage to kill me, here’s the other thing you can look forward to. A pal of mine—a fellow I won’t name but he’s way tougher than I am—has already been put on your case. If anything happens to me—anything, Dante—your ass is grass. If I get a hangnail and get hit by a truck while I’m standing in the street trying to chew it, you can assume the fetal position right then and kiss your ass goodbye. You’ll be dead in twenty-four hours.”

I breathed down at him. “You’d better hope I live a good, long life, Elmer.”

I stuck the gun in my belt, grabbed a handful of burlap, and hauled him to his feet. “That goes for Koko as well.”

Suddenly in a new fit of rage I ripped off the gunnysack and got him with a brutal open-hander that slammed him into the wall. “That’s for Koko. Touch her again and I’ll cut your heart out.”

We stood two feet apart, seething primal hatred. Slowly I backed to the door. “Remember, you only get one warning and this was it.”

I picked up the box, slipped out of the room, and hustled down the alley, where Koko waited with the motor running.

CHAPTER 18

She listened to my account with her eyes wide open and I gave it to her straight. She touched my battered face and said my name. “Oh Cliff. Oh God, Cliff, what a night.” Almost a full minute later, she said, “May I call you Cliff?”

I laughed painfully. “You really are a piece of work, Ms. Bujak.”

We were sitting in some common breakfast joint well away from downtown. She had struggled mightily to find something she could eat and I had eaten whatever came out of the dingy-looking kitchen. I was working on my third cup of real coffee.

“I thought you were a bookseller. I thought you were a scholar. Then you come out here and turn into some warrior straight from the Middle Ages.”

I smiled and she said, “I meant that in a good way.”

“I know how you meant it.”

“Does it make you uneasy, being a hero?”

“Nah. My favorite song is ‘The Impossible Dream.’ But it’s got to be sung in a deep baritone, not some wimpy tenor. I heard a tenor try to do it once. Disgraceful performance. Comical, in fact.” I drank some coffee. “A good bass could really do it up right.”

She smiled, almost lovingly, I thought, and said, “Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“A comedy routine whenever someone tries to say nice things about you?”

I shrugged. “You haven’t even seen my old bullet wounds yet.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about.”

It was fun being her hero but the fun soon went away. She still didn’t understand what had just happened. To her the story was over. We had won.

So I told her. “I wasn’t trying to impress you, Koko. You need to know what you’re up against. Everything I did to Dante was calculated for an effect.”

“Sounds like you’re not sure it’ll work.”

I didn’t have a quick-and-easy answer for that. I sipped my coffee.

“Like maybe you’re afraid you’ve put me at some kind of risk.”

“You were already at risk. I just hope I didn’t make it worse.”

“What choice did we have?”

“Slink away in the night and let them keep your stuff.”

She flushed and shook her head. “No way.”

I liked her decisiveness but Boot Hill is full of decisive heroes. Vast new questions yawned before us.

“They may try to kill us. Does that change your mind?”

She shook her head, this time a little tentatively. But a no is a no, I thought. I said, “I don’t think you should go home. Not till I have a better read on it.”

She looked solemn at this news. I had her focused now.

“Where will I go?” Almost in the same breath she said, “Maybe I’ll go to Charleston. Sooner or later I’ll have to, I told you that. Maybe this would be a good time.”

I felt nothing but relief at this news. “Maybe it would. Maybe I’ll even go with you.”

She brightened. “Do that,” she said. “Please do.”

“Why not? It looks like I’m finished in Baltimore. I think my cover has been blown.”

“If I find what I hope to find down there, it might help you as well.”

“Want to give me a hint?”

“You can listen on the plane. Charlie tells it better than I do.”

I paid the tab and we retrieved her car.

“Can’t I even go home for some clothes?”

“I wouldn’t. Not just yet.”

“How long am I supposed to hide out like this?”

“Not forever. If something doesn’t happen after a while, I’ll force his hand.”

We made a quick swing by my hotel, got my stuff, and headed toward the airport.

“Is the tape player still in the box?”

“Yep. It’s even got earphones.”

We didn’t say any more till the unmistakable signs of runways and aviation rose up around us. She went to long-term parking and we got a shuttle to the terminal.

“What do you really think they’ll do about us?”

“I don’t know. Dante’s an animal. I gave him my best shot.”

“What do you think, though?”

In the end I still didn’t know. “Maybe it’s fifty-fifty. If I had to lay money…I don’t know. I’m just glad you’re getting out of here.”

We got on standby to Atlanta. From there we could get passage on Soapbox Airways to the coast.

“You must put on the world’s greatest bluff,” she said at some point.

But my silence told another story.

“You weren’t bluffing.”

“You don’t bluff a guy like Dante.”

“You would kill him.”

“He’s lucky he’s still alive and I hope he knows it.”

“What about your other promise?”

“He’d better believe that one too.” I looked at her sadly, hating the notion that I was becoming a tarnished hero. “Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to know the answers, Koko.”

“How do you know people like that? People you can just call up and order someone killed?”

“Please,” I said impatiently. “I am not a friend of killers. We’re talking about an old boyhood chum. He went his way, I went mine, but he still thinks he owes me. Something that happened long ago when we were kids. Maybe now I’ll let him get that off his chest.”

After a while I said, “I’m not ordering Dante killed. He’ll be fine as long as we’re fine. If anything happens to him, he does it to himself.”

But I still didn’t call Vinnie. Something in my heart wouldn’t let me.

Instead I called Erin and got her answering machine. “Hi,” I said. “I’m out of town. Not sure when I’ll be back, but we need to talk. Leave a message on my machine.”

No jokes this time around.

An hour later Koko and I looked down on the East Coast from 35,000 feet. She got out the player and rigged me up, picking among half a dozen fat folders and two dozen recorded tapes until she found what she wanted. “This is the best one. This is Charlie. All we’ll ever have of him.”

The tape began to play—an old man’s voice, recounting the times of his life. An old man’s voice, but as I listened the tone sounded vaguely familiar.

“Is that…Josephine?”

“Just listen. She’s trying to tell us what he told her—and what she read in his journal years ago.”

I looked at her.

“There’s nothing supernatural about this. Jo was in a deep trance that day. And this is what he told her. This is it, word for word. It’s been stored there in her head for eighty years. She’s even trying to tell it in his voice.”

“What’d she say when you played it back for her?”

“Nothing. She just cried.”

She pushed the rewind button and ran it back to the beginning.

“You’ll hear me on here, asking a few questions. All the rest is Charlie. Just forget me and listen. Just sit and listen and keep an open mind.”

A hissing sound came through the earphones; then, Koko’s voice.

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

There was a pause, followed by the high-pitched voice of a child.

“Josephine.”

“Josephine who?”

“Josephine Crane. My friends call me Jo. J-o, like in Little Women.”

“That’s a good, strong name. May I call you Jo?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How old are you, Jo?”

“It’s my birthday. I’m nine years old.”

“What day is this?”

“September third, nineteen hundred and four.”

“You sound very grown-up for your age.”

“Thank you.”

Another pause. Then Koko said, “Do you want to tell me about your grandfather?”

“What do you want to know?”

“What’s his name? We can start there.”

“Charles. Charles Edward Warren.”

“Tell me a little about his life.”

Now came a long pause. The tape went on hissing for two or three minutes. At that point there was a click followed by several bumps, then Koko’s voice came across in a whisper.

“I’ve moved the microphone back from Josephine’s presence to add a footnote and a description of what’s happening. She seems to be trying to gather her thoughts. Her face is very relaxed, more so than when I have asked this question in the past. Today I will ask her to tell me more about her grandfather’s life, but she can’t go outside her own persona unless she is relating something she personally has heard or read. I would expect her to be limited to what she knew about him at that age, but at times she seems to go far beyond her stated age. She has knowledge and uses words that I would not expect her to know at nine. I think what she’s giving me here are things she has heard him say about himself, coupled with what she read in his own diary after his death.”

From some distance I could hear the child’s voice. There was more scurrying as Koko moved the microphone closer.

“I’m sorry…I missed that.”

“I asked where you went,” Jo said.

“Nowhere, I just needed to move something. Can you tell me about Charlie now?”

There was a pause. I heard a labored breath.

“He’s retired now. When he was younger he was a draftsman. That’s a mapmaker, you know. He says it was a good trade then, there was so much expansion. He worked as a cartographer in and around Baltimore all his life.”

“For a time he worked for the government in Washington, is that correct?”

“Yes.” Another long pause. “He was in the War Department during the administration of President James Buchanan.”

“What were his interests?”

“In his youth…long ago…he liked opera and history, philosophy, nature. He was a bird fancier. Eventually he became an accomplished ornithologist—good enough to write a book and several scientific pamphlets. He liked playing card games. Poker with his pocket money and whist for fun.”

“His picture reminds me of a college professor.”

“He is often told that. My mother sometimes says so.”

“What else can you tell me about him?”

“Ummm…he’s a book collector.”

“Is that how he discovered Richard Burton?”

“Yes. He knew about Mr. Burton long before they met. Even then he had copies of Richard’s earliest books. Some of them went through many editions and lots of revision, but Grandfather always wanted the first British editions. When there were reprints with textual changes, he collected both. We have all those books, with notations in Mr. Burton’s own hand. Grandfather also kept a thirty-year correspondence. The letters referred to the texts, to Mr. Burton’s problems with his publishers, and to his joys and frustrations in writing his books. From 1861 onward, Grandfather had a standing order, with a request that Mr. Burton himself send two copies of each new work as it came off the press, or as soon thereafter as possible. This he did for more than twenty-five years.”

“Can you tell me how he met Mr. Burton and what they did in May of 1860?”

There was another long breath. “They went to Charleston.”

“Yes, but would you share the story of that trip with us?”

There was another long silence. Again came the bumping: more clicks. Again Koko’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I expect, based on earlier sessions, that this story of their trip south will emerge in a stronger, less hesitant voice than what we have just heard. I should note that we have done this identical experiment several times, and it’s always the same, almost to the word. Comparisons can be made with the tapes numbered seven, twelve, and thirteen.

“In all these sessions, Jo displays adult knowledge that may taint the proceeding for a skeptic. Charlie seems to tell her things—such as Burton’s carnal interlude with the inn girl named Marion—that a grandfather of that era would hardly relate to this nine-year-old child. Burton swears at one point and Charlie reports it, another place where he’d surely censor himself if he were talking to a child. When I asked her about it—find tape ten—she confessed that she had read those passages in her grandfather’s journal of the trip. So what we’re probably getting is a mix of what he told her and what he wrote. His own journal was unfortunately lost in the plunder of their library after Charlie’s death.”

More bumps. More clicks.

“I’m back,” Koko said in full voice. “Are you comfortable now?”

“Yes. Thank you for the water.”

“Can you tell us about Charlie now?”

“What he told me, you mean? Or what’s in his journal?”

“Whatever feels right to you. Can you tell me in his own words? As you read it? As he told it to you?”

“Maybe.”

When the voice began again, almost a minute later, it was the old man’s voice.

“It started on a warm day in May 1860.1 was thirty-three years old. The world was a brighter, more exciting place then. I was young and there were so many things yet to do…”

I closed my eyes and Koko let me listen.

“I was thirty-three,” the voice said. “I was six years younger than Burton when we met. This is how it happened…”

Burton And Charlie

CHAPTER 19

Burton had come to Washington to see John B. Floyd, Buchanan’s secretary of war. This much we know. What went on in that room no one will ever know.

I had admired Burton from afar but I never trusted Floyd. Yes, I worked for him but I had always considered him a rogue. In the daily job my opinion didn’t matter much, for I did my job diligently and our paths seldom crossed. My work required little contact with the secretary, and I functioned well and was reasonably well satisfied. But I was not at all surprised when history put Floyd in a traitorous light—a man who used his position to transfer tons of arms and materiel to the South, then fled to join the Confederacy when the war finally began. In the department I kept my distance.

Even so, I could not possibly stay away when I learned of Burton’s appointment with Floyd that morning. I must have looked exactly like what I was, a nervous young man waiting in the hall with his hat in his lap. Then the door opened and Burton stepped out, and all that unease disappeared. I walked up boldly and said hello. I told him I had followed his adventures and had ordered his books and read them all. This cheered him enormously. As I later learned, he was particularly open to an admirer after the cutting disappointment of Speke and his own relative eclipse in England. Of all the strange and unexpected things, my sudden appearance flattered him and brightened his day.

To me Richard was the salt of the earth. We liked each other immediately.

He put his hand on my shoulder. Like an old confidant, he drew me to him and I stood tall and felt myself a man among men.

“Say, Charles—”

“Oh, please! All my friends call me Charlie. I’d be honored if you would too.”

“The honor is mine. Is there a grog shop nearby? I’ll buy you a glass of ale.”

“There’s a good water hole just up the street, and a free lunch comes with the brew. But I’ll do the buying, sir—you are a guest in my country.”

“We’ll fight that out at the bar.”

The history books say that Burton intended to leave Washington at once. But he disappeared that spring in 1860. Three months would pass before he surfaced again, in St. Joe, Missouri, to begin his long stagecoach journey west. Of these missing weeks, Burton later said only that he traveled through every state.

But he stayed a week in Washington. He lived in our house. All that week we ate together and were constant companions. We argued politics, history, and the great questions of American slavery, secession, and war.

Burton always hated slavery, but he was no great admirer of the Negro. I was something of an apologist. We had differences that were deep and vast, and still we became fast friends at once.

I knew that something extraordinary was happening. I sensed a great adventure, mine for the taking if only I had the courage to open my hand. On the third day he said as much. “You should travel with me for a while. I’ll change your mind about things.”

“Maybe I’ll change yours,” I said, and he laughed.

I was awed by him and he knew that. But I was never cowed and that was my saving grace. I know he respected me. If I had been a toady or a bootlicker, he’d never have made such a suggestion. Burton was quickly bored by those who fawned.

On the fourth day we had a fierce argument. It ended in red-faced laughter.

“I must leave soon,” Richard said on the fifth day. “Come with me on a journey.”

How many of us ever reach such a clear crossroad? How many shrink from the bold path when they come to it? A hundred will pass before one takes the turn.

I had to follow it. To shy away would have been a betrayal of my life.

All my years I had been cautious. We had some money put away. I had my trade: a dozen private firms in Washington, Baltimore, and New York were eager for my services. I was tired of War Department politics, of bureaucrats pulling every string. If I disappeared for a time with Richard, who would be the worse for it?

I gave my employers short notice and said good-bye to my wife and daughter. I left Washington with Burton on Monday, a week after we met.

* * *

On the train for Richmond I asked where we were going and Burton, without hesitation, said, “Charleston.”

My question had been rhetorical. I didn’t care where we went: I was in the throes of a glorious sense of freedom and excitement the like of which I had not known since my graduation from college, long before my marriage and the commencement of my career. If Burton had said “Africa,” I swear I’d have gone, even though I was still thinking like a tourist. I had assumed we’d be going by steamer only because that way was easier. The railroads in 1860 were still fragmentary, with many lines incomplete. An overland passage would require connections on stagecoaches, along roads that could turn impossible in even a moderate rainfall. A ship would avoid most of that. We could board at once, steam down the Potomac, catch the train at Acquia Creek, board another steamer at Wilmington, and go the rest of the way in relative ease. But Richard wanted to see the land. He was not interested in ease for its own sake, or in traveling as a tourist—after all, what fears could even the worst travel in America hold for a man who had just survived that horrific two-year trek across unknown Africa? So we would take the train to Petersburg, on into North Carolina, and from Wilmington depart from the recommended route and instead go inland, into South Carolina.

During this time Burton was a most affable companion. We had many mutually interesting conversations, but there were also times when we each left the other to his private thoughts. At every stop on the long rail journey, Burton sought out the local newspapers and devoured them before passing them on to me. There were tiny towns where the train stopped to take on water and coal, and smaller hamlets through which we sped in the blink of an eye. People everywhere came out to watch us: fools who stood so close to the track that they took their lives in their hands, laughing and refusing to step back even at the angry blast from the engineer. In the smallest towns children and old men gathered and gawked as we whipped through in what must have been a blur. Occasionally I would pick out an individual face and get some notion of character, or perhaps make one up, in the half second it filled my window and then vanished forever. A general impression of poor simpletons began forming in my mind, and in the years since the journey I have often thought of those people and the injustice I did to them. We underestimated them. They were the heart and backbone of the South, and I now believe that my Yankee condescension, repeated on a broad national scale, was a factor in the near-destruction of our great Union.

Whenever our stop was of sufficient duration, we would get off the train and mingle with the natives, who were noisy and anxious to share their outrage at the national government. Often we were challenged on our political beliefs, but Burton billowed among them like a kite of many colors, always getting more than he gave, and I had at least enough good sense not to stir them up with my opinions on their peculiar institution and their absurd noises of secession and war. I had never been south of Fredericksburg and I found the press full of rabble-rousing nonsense. But as we went deeper into the country, I began to understand a little of what they cherished and why. The landscape was singularly beautiful. I saw peach orchards and cotton farms stretching away in the distance, and now and then we came upon the edges of a great plantation with long dusty roads and enormous live oaks and slaves working in the fields. But much of our journey was through dense wilderness, across vast pine forests with occasional swamps.

Everywhere we went Burton used up all his spare moments making notes.

At Wilmington we bought our passage only as far as the village of Marion, which I remembered as a spot on the map about thirty miles into South Carolina. Soon we were in a dismal swampy area of lower North Carolina. I couldn’t help seeing the land in terms of cartography, but I quickly realized that Burton had also studied his maps and had committed them to memory. Until now I had said nothing: I had come as his traveling companion, content to let him plot our course. But this stoppage in such a small hamlet seemed curious and at last I said so. “What’s in Marion?” I asked. “And why are we taking such a roundabout route?” For the first time, I had begun to feel slightly superfluous, almost enough to laughingly add, “And by the way, why am I here?” But this would have been much too pointed, even as a jest: there would be time enough later if the notion persisted. I do remember it was in that swamp, a few miles from the Rebel state, when the thought first crossed my mind that I might have a purpose other than what had been stated, to be merely a friend for the road. Burton gave my question a halfhearted reply.

“I imagine there’s a tavern and an inn at Marion, where we can stay and browse among the people, get a tolerable supper, and then get pleasantly drunk together. In the morning, or the next day, we can go on to Florence.”

I must have still had a quizzical look on my face, for Burton then said, “Are you getting impatient, Charlie? Are you becoming anxious to see the nest of rebellion that is about to bring so much grief to your country?” In fact, I was curious, and a year later when Burton sent me the two volumes of The Lake Regions of Central Africa just before the war broke, I found an amusing handwritten footnote in one of the page margins that I believe refers obliquely to Speke: You reminded me, but only briefly, of another traveler I knew, who always wanted to get there, wherever there happened to be, and as a result missed what was all around him at the time.

There wasn’t much to see of Marion. My memory is of a muddy street and a collection of crude buildings along it, but Burton found it satisfactory. As he predicted, we did find an inn, taking a pair of rooms upstairs facing the street, and that evening we had a surprisingly good supper. It took Burton no time at all to become acquainted with other travelers and with the town’s natives: he was extremely gregarious, but again I noticed his way of telling them nothing about himself, of asking questions and becoming alert whenever the volatile issues of slavery and secession arose. He had also begun speaking in a much more Americanized English. Completely gone was his British accent, and when I remarked on it later, he said, “That’s just my way. Wherever I go, I make an attempt to learn the language.” We shared a laugh, but then he said, “Don’t be surprised if I change even more as we go along. I like to experiment with words, and these crackers, as they are called down here, do have a language of their own.”

It was at that moment when I had the first vague thought that would change things between us. I suddenly wondered if he was slipping into some kind of disguise. After a while this led to a far more unsettling thought, that I might somehow be an unwitting part of it. Years later, in biographies by his widow, Isabel, by his niece Georgiana Stisted, and by a man named Thomas Wright, there were references to the nature of his intelligence work in India. He alludes to this in his own early books: how he would pass among the people as one of them, having fluently learned their language in a few weeks or even days, darkened his skin, made himself up to look the part, and ply his secret service work. And already in print, of course, was his account of the epic journey, in the flawless disguise of an Arab, to Mecca and Medina. Richard could be anyone, and this fact led to a disturbing new thought. Could he now be spying on my country—was that what this journey was? Had he been sent here to assess the likelihood of civil war, when it might come, and how England could exploit it? Such a mission made chilling sense. On the surface, relations between England and the United States had been warm enough since our last war had ended in 1814, but it was common knowledge that many in the British government still seethed with anger and wished us ill. Lord Palmerston, for one, had never forgiven us for that last defeat, when he had been secretary of war. Now that he was prime minister, was he plotting, after all these years, to get his revenge, and was Burton the advance scout for his ambitions?

I felt a great anger come over me at such a thought, and I decided to confront Richard and have it out. I was ready to declare our brief friendship finished if he had undertaken such a deception, and to catch the next steamer north out of Wilmington. But when the moment came, I wavered. As we sat over dinner, I tried and failed to formulate the question, which could result in a grave insult and ruin a friendship that might in fact be innocent. Burton had said or done nothing specific to justify my suspicion: only what he always did, as he said himself. By the end of the evening I had decided to say nothing. But I remained uneasy and several times I caught him watching me, as if he had read my thoughts and suddenly knew what I suspected.

There was one incident worth noting in the tavern that night. It almost seems superfluous but its importance came to bear much later. We were sitting with a small group of new acquaintances near the bar when a large, boisterous man named Jedro Fink joined our group. He was clearly a Yankee hater, already well fortified with ale, and the more he drank, the more he seemed to take offense at whatever I said. It was my accent: no one could ever mistake me for anything but a Northerner. Once in the general babble, the phrase “Yankee dogs” floated over my head, and when I looked, his bleary eyes were fixed on mine.

Richard had also consumed a vast amount of ale but his eyes were clear. I gave him an apologetic look and began seeking an out. At the first lull in the conversation I said, “I think I’ll retire, gentlemen,” but our Yankee hater said, “What’s your hurry, mate, are we not good enough for Yanks to drink with?”

I felt two sharp stabs, anger and fear. I had never been in any kind of fight, and what frightened me most was not the prospect of being hurt but the spectacle of being beaten in front of the crowd. Still, I could not let this pass. I said, “That’s an offensive thing to say, sir,” and I steeled myself for whatever might come. But in the same moment Richard said, “I think I’ll join you, Charlie. It is getting late.”

The fellow across the table smirked as we pushed back our chairs.

Richard leaned forward. “You have something else to say, mate?”

The man scoffed again and Burton said, “Be careful, sir.”

Fink made as if to laugh. “Maybe you’re the one who should be careful. In case you don’t know it, we have harsh ways of settling things here when insults arise.”

Burton smiled warily out of his deeply scarred cheeks. “No one’s been insulted…yet. We can all still go to bed and be on our way in the morning.”

“That’s true enough.” Fink pushed himself back, slightly but ominously, from the table. “Unless we choose not to.”

The smile faded from Burton’s face. “That would be unfortunate, but it would be your choice. And I believe under your own code I would have the choice of weapons in any dispute that can’t be resolved. And for what that’s worth, I would choose swords.”

Fink sat back. “What the hell, who carries a sword around?”

“I do.”

They stared at each other. “Well, I don’t have one,” Fink said.

“I could provide a pair. If the occasion arose. Which it hasn’t. Yet.”

Suddenly the man laughed, not derisively as he had before but with a tavern laugh, in uneasy fellowship. Burton remained stoic, waiting.

“You’re all right with me, mate. It’s a good thing for all of us that we know where lines are drawn, eh?”

And on that nervous note, we went upstairs.

In the hallway, I said, “I would have fought him if it came to that.”

“I know you would. I never had any doubt.”

“You don’t have to hold my hand, Richard. It’s important that you know that.”

“I do know it. And I apologize if that’s how it appeared.”

“Of course it is. How else would it appear? You don’t have any swords at all.”

“No. But he didn’t know that.”

“My God, what if he had called you on it?”

“Then the matter would have become far more serious, and the choice of weapons would have passed to him.”

In my room I lay awake staring up at the black ceiling. All my thoughts of the afternoon came flooding back, and my anger returned with great, yawning doubts about the nature of our journey. I saw Richard on my ceiling and he was always making his notes. These I had assumed were for a new book but now I wondered what he was actually writing in that notebook. I felt our friendship had been seriously compromised—perhaps, maddeningly, by nothing more than my own imagination—and I knew then that at some point it must be discussed. I dreaded Richard’s reaction, for in fact I did not know him well enough to initiate a talk of such sensitivity. I personally had never held any grudge against England, I had accepted Richard with wholehearted delight as my friend, but my years in the War Department had given me access to certain intelligence and rumors that had received little or no attention in the press. Now in my dark room all this intrigue swirled across the canvas of the ceiling. The sun never sets on empire, I thought, calling up an old quotation; the sun never sets on England. The only reason we are not serving the queen today is because of those long-dead boys in places like Bunker Hill and Saratoga and New Orleans. Were we really at peace now? Friction between our nations had never actually ceased since 1815, and Palmerston, that old devil, always seemed to be at the root of it. In his forty-year political career he had never ceased agitating. I could almost feel his acrimony invading my room, disrupting my sleep, and now I remembered incidents from my reading, from reports that had circulated through our government. I knew that years ago England had arbitrarily seized our ships and had forced our boys to serve in her navy. I had heard she had given aid and support to our Indians, encouraging them to attack our frontier settlements. Everyone knew how she had tried to keep Texas out of the Union, and there had been persistent rumors that she had helped finance Mexico’s war against us. It was certainly no secret that England had had serious designs on South America since our Revolution, and she had always resented and tried to undermine our Monroe Doctrine. Why should she now turn timid when the upstart nation that so seriously rankled her was heading into deep trouble?

I felt a flush of shame at my suspicion, but it grew into the early morning, until sometime before the dawn, when I finally fell asleep.

I was in poor spirits in the morning: a lack of sleep had combined with my increasing doubts to put me on edge again. I would be much happier, I thought, when Marion, this mud hole of a village, was behind us. The train to Florence had been delayed, but Richard had arranged for passage on a coach, which would put us there late that afternoon. As we left the inn another tense incident occurred. Coming to the bottom of the stairs I turned to say something to Richard and collided with someone coming through on my blind side. At once I begged his pardon, then saw that it was Fink, my antagonist from last night. Suddenly, as if in the grip of some demon, I said, “Mr. Fink, I am sorry I jostled you, but at the same time I must tell you that your behavior last night was inexcusably rude. I can be good-natured enough at being made the goat of the evening, but your repeated insults to my country were intolerable.”

He looked up at Richard, who stood behind me.

“Please speak to me, sir. Mr. Burton is not involved in this.”

For a moment he wavered. I was certain we would come to battle, but he grinned and said, “It was the ale talking, mate. I get that way when I drink too much.”

I took that as my apology and we left for Florence an hour later.

Another mud hole. What Burton saw in such places, or what he was learning from them, remained a mystery as we put up in another inn. But the inn was a pleasant surprise, a rambling building at least sixty years old, showing its age on the outside but warm and tidy within. It was called Wheeler’s Crossing.

We had a marvelous dinner, a simple quail dish with wild rice and various ordinary accompaniments but prepared with such care that it was outstanding. It was easily the best meal I had had in any eating establishment in recent memory, beating the finest restaurants of Washington hands down. “Wonderful food,” Burton said, and he called for the innkeeper to compliment the cook. The man was gracious but said we could tell her ourselves. A woman was summoned from the kitchen, and as she came through the doors I felt Burton sit up straighter beside me. She was truly a beautiful young lady. “This is my daughter Marion,” the inn master said. Burton and I both stood and she gave a little curtsy, and Richard stepped away from his side of the table. He reached out with perfect propriety and took her hand. “Mr. Wheeler,” Richard said without ever taking his eyes from her face, “your daughter is a national treasure. The town we just passed through must be named after her.”

“After Francis Marion, more likely,” she said impishly. “Our hero of the Revolution. My name came from my mother’s side.”

“Wherever it came from,” Burton said, “the best establishments in London can barely do you justice.”

She accepted this politely but as if she had heard it all before. Richard asked where she had learned her cooking and she said, “From Mrs. Simmons and Mrs. Randolph—from our servant Queenie, and from my grandmother.” Mrs. Simmons and Mrs. Randolph turned out to be the authors of popular cookery books, which Marion had on her shelf in a back room. “We buy them for her whenever we can,” her father said. “And my mother left her many good menus and recipes in an old notebook. She uses them all. An establishment like ours is only as good as its victuals.” Burton, ever the charmer, said, “Yours is very good indeed,” and Marion gave another bow and retreated into the back room.

“That’s one reason why I stop in these little places,” Richard said as we settled in again. “You never can tell what you might find.”

It never occurred to me that we had “found” anything, certainly not in the sense that Richard obviously meant it. I was happily married: I would never have betrayed my wife by chasing around after other women, even such a lovely one as Marion. But I was no prude either, and I was anxious in my recent discontent not to be a wet blanket. Richard, in his thirty-ninth year, was still unattached, and a striking vision of bold manhood. Indeed, though he had already formed a strong bond with Isabel Arundell in England and would marry her before the year was out, I had no way of knowing this and in fact I had not yet heard her name. We sat in Richard’s room and enjoyed a small brandy and he looked like the soul of contentment. “This really is a wonderful little inn,” he said. “There’s even a bath out behind the house, and that is not a luxury one takes lightly. I’m tempted to stay over for a day or two. Would you mind?”

I was actually warming to the place myself. “Not at all,” I said. “Don’t worry about me any: I’ll find things to do.”

I retired but again sleep was difficult. At midnight I awoke for the third time, burning with a thirst that comes over me when I drink too much alcohol. I got out of bed and groped my way into the darkened hall, hoping someone would still be downstairs who could fetch me a glass of water. I had just reached the top of the stairs when I heard their voices: Richard’s soft laugh followed almost at once by hers. I moved to join them, then stopped short on the top step. I could see them from there: they were alone, seated at a table over cups of smoking bishop, Burton sprawled in his chair, Marion beside him in a pose that changed from moment to moment, servant, companion, and hussy all at once. His right hand clutched his drink; his left covered hers with such easy intimacy that I was shocked by the quickness of it. We had met her just six hours ago, yet there was an assumption between them that no one could miss. Already they were like old lovers together.

I began to creep back down the hall but a short snatch of their talk followed me. Marion had mentioned my name.

“Wouldn’t your friend Charlie be shocked if he saw us now.”

Burton laughed. “It’s not Charlie I worry about. Your father is another matter.”

“He’s gone to bed hours ago. An earthquake wouldn’t wake him once he hits the pillow, and he’s a late riser as well. I can’t remember when he slept less than ten hours.”

“Well, if Charlie were shocked he’d get over it soon enough.”

“If you say so. He still strikes me as a bit of a pill.”

“Your mistake,” Richard said. “He’s a grand fellow, one of the best I’ve known. He has a lion’s heart, even if he doesn’t always know what to do with it. And the keenest sense of honor.”

“I’ll take your word for that. Even so, it’s not him I’m interested in.”

“My good fortune, I hope.”

“And mine.”

“Marion.” Richard kissed her hand. “It is the fairest name, and you wear it like a birthright. As if Maid Marion of Robin Hood had suddenly been reborn.”

“Oh, Sir Richard, you are such a shameless liar.”

“Not Sir Richard…please, not that. You’ll never hear that honor attached to my name. If the queen knows no better than to approve that coveted title so carelessly, there are many who have her ear and will be happy to tell her why not.”

“Why not is clear enough. It is because you are a scoundrel.”

“So they say.”

Whatever honor Richard had seen in me would not let me eavesdrop another moment and I left them then. I lay in the dark, inflated with pride at his words. Conceit and a vivid imagination kept me awake for the second night running.

At first light I heard a noise outside my half-opened window. My room looked down into the yard, and the bath stall Richard had mentioned was directly below. It was a crude little wooden cage, circular with a canvas draped around it, a perforated steel tank suspended overhead, a pull rope that would open the vents and rain water down on anyone inside, and a set of makeshift steps for a ser-vant to climb up and pour the water in. Now came a real shock! Richard appeared in the yard totally nude, a pale blur in the hour before the sunrise. He parted the canvas and stepped into the stall, and a moment later Marion, still wearing her dress of last night but with a far more disheveled look, came out carrying a large pot of steaming water. She climbed the stairs and dumped in the water, and I heard the tank open as Burton pulled the rope. He sighed deeply and she laughed at his pleasure. When he came out she was there with a blanket, draping it over his shoulders and rubbing him gently, affectionately, sensually.

We stayed in Florence another day, and another, and on after that. On the third day we walked over to the little cemetery together, Richard and Marion and I, and there we saw the plot where her mother rested. Jennie Marion Wheeler, the stone said simply: Beloved Wife and Mother, 1812-1843. “She died giving me life,” Marion said, and something about her face, etched with deep sadness for a woman she had never known, moved me almost to tears. “What a damned shame!” I said in a trembling voice. “That’s what happens with too many women. We’re supposed to be so advanced, yet medical science hasn’t come an inch in women’s health since Caesar’s day.”

She looked at me and smiled tenderly, then reached out and squeezed my hand. That’s what I remember best about her: aside from her liaison with Richard, the warmth of her, the feel of her hand and a smile that has followed me across three decades.

That night we sat on the back porch listening to the Negroes singing. The Wheelers had half a dozen blacks who worked around the inn, whether in bondage or as freemen, I never learned, though the father did not strike me at all as a slaveholder. Burton in particular was enchanted by these melodies: “Some of them are very similar to tunes of tribal songs I heard in Africa,” he said. “The only difference here is the white man’s addition, the inclusion of the Christian spiritual aspect.” He wrote quickly by the firelight, trying to capture the words and compare them with his memory of their African origins. He came out every night to scribble down the lyrics, and in odd moments throughout the trip I would hear him humming them softly, comparing them with others he was picking up across the Southern states.

We left early the following week. I looked back and saw Marion and her father watching our departure, but Richard never gave them a wave or a backward glance. I found that rather cold, considering the kind of friendship they must have had, and the certainty that they would never see each other again. “I said my good-byes earlier,” he told me. “There’s no sense going on about it.”

Charleston now seemed close at hand. But we had to endure another night, and a wretched one it was, on the road. It was too much to expect another grand inn in backwoods country, and we stayed in the worst place ever imagined by the angels of hell. The road from Florence to Charleston was a hundred miles of near-total wilderness. I had never seen its like; the choking thickness of it was unbroken except for an occasional settlement with a few scruffy citizens and the equally unkempt shanties they lived in. There were moss-draped trees, swamps, and all around them that brooding black pine forest: vast, unrelenting, increasingly intimidating. I have forgotten the name of the place where we put up that last night before Charleston. Burton seemed satisfied with it, and I had to be, for darkness was falling rapidly and even he did not wish to be caught on the road in such a night as these trees would bring down on us.

The inn was run by an old woman and two hulking simpletons who were apparently her sons. She had a hag’s face, gaunt and full of gaps where presumably teeth had once been; the men conversed in grunts and were well on the way to losing their teeth as well. The only name I heard for any of them was that one of the boys was called Cloyd. The woman tried to appear friendly but this had an effect that I found chilling. We were given a very poor stew, made of some mysterious stringy meat that I could barely manage to taste and Burton ate not at all. He had his suspicions even then, and we retired soon after our arrival.

“I don’t trust these people,” Richard said. “I think we should bunk together tonight and one of us stay awake at all times.”

This was alarming and what he said next was even more so. “I’ll bet there’s more than one sinkhole, each about the size of a man, out in that swamp.”

“What are you saying?” I asked stupidly. “That they would murder us?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time an innkeeper has done away with a guest to steal his purse.”

He volunteered to take either watch. It didn’t matter: I was tired from my restless nights but unlikely to sleep after that. I took the first six hours, abandoning my own room to sit on a chair in Richard’s. “If you get tired, wake me,” he said. “Don’t worry about the time. Six hours from now or six minutes, I don’t care.” By the light of a coal-oil lamp, he produced a gun from one of his bags. He slapped it into my hand and went to bed while I sat at the door and blew out the lamp. This was going to be a long, long night and I took my responsibility seriously. I must not, must not, fall asleep!

Richard was asleep at once. I sat in the most incredible black void listening to him breathe. He snored briefly and the minutes dragged by. I had no idea what time it was, and after a while time stood still.

At some point much later I heard the noise in the hall: a single footstep and the slight creaking of the floor. I stood with the gun in my hand. There was a bump outside the door and I turned the knob and opened it so slightly—just enough for a look into the hallway. I could see nothing at first, then the two hulks and the smaller one nearby. I heard them whisper, though what they said was much too faint to make sense. I pulled the door wider and cocked the gun. Its sound was loud and unmistakable in that quietude, and suddenly everything froze, all of us where we stood, except Richard, who was just as suddenly out of the bed and at my side. We waited but nothing happened: they had faded away and disappeared.

Inside again with the door closed, Richard lit the lamp. “Well, that settles that. We’ll have to stay alert.” I asked if he had slept, and he said, “Like a baby.” I felt a great sense of camaraderie and pride in his trust. I asked if he had any idea what time it was—my watch had stopped at half past eight. “My sense of things tells me it’s near midnight,” he said. “Your turn to rest.” I protested—I was not at all tired—but fair was fair and he insisted that I take the bed. So I lay down in the recess, still warm from his body, closed my eyes, and did sleep, soundly, for several hours. When the dawn broke I still felt that sense of kinship in what I foolishly imagined lingered from Richard’s body heat.

The proprietress and her sons were nowhere to be seen as we left. “They have no real courage,” Richard said. “They know we’ve figured them out and they will only return like vermin of the night, after we’ve gone. They remind me of Burke and Hare, the infamous Scottish murderers. One held while the other smothered, but I suspect these three had far quicker and more violent deaths in store for us.”

So we were on the road again. I had already studied my maps: I knew that Charleston was located at the end of a long, crooked peninsula, with wide rivers on both sides emptying into a spectacular harbor. It was easy for a mapmaker to visualize it as an eagle might see it, like a long buzzard’s neck. I was not surprised to learn that the upper peninsula was in fact called the Neck. We came down east of the river, on a road that would take us through the village of Mount Pleasant and within a few miles of Fort Moultrie. The road was alternately hard earth and planked, and I suppose we made good time by the standard of the travel Richard had chosen for us. The train would have avoided all this and got us there a day earlier, but this was so obvious I kept it to myself. When you traveled with Burton, this was what you did.

The skies threatened rain, which would have added greatly to our misery, for the road was rough and sloppy in places from another rain two days earlier. Charleston was on the horizon: Richard said that more than once, but in fact we now headed into the deepest forest on the trip and I saw nothing on the horizon but more of the same. There was a river crossing before we came out into land that telegraphed an approach to the sea. Richard spent the time talking earnestly to the ferryboat owner, about what I could only guess. “That was the east branch of the Cooper River,” he said when our coach was under way again. “We are almost there.”

I was ready to believe this, so delighted was I to be out of the dark and dreary forest. “Our luck is changing,” I said: “It didn’t rain after all.” Richard smiled, noncommittally, as if it didn’t matter to him either way. We had to cross again at the Wando River, with its broad expanses of marshlands, and now I saw the unmistakable signs of the sea: sloughs and creeks thick with sea oats, and there was a salty tang in the air. But night was coming and I feared we would still not arrive until tomorrow, an awful prospect. The sunset was spectacular, lighting up the cloud-streaked horizon as we put in at Mount Pleasant.

We managed to catch the ferry to the city. I stood out on the deck and watched the lights draw closer, but Burton seemed restless, circling, looking out to sea, making his notes in light almost too dim to see. He spent his time on the port deck, watching the dark, empty hulk of Fort Sumter, and aft, where he could see Fort Moultrie and the lights of the lonely federal garrison stationed there.

We got in at eight o’clock. “No more backwoods inns for us, Charlie,” Richard said merrily. “Now we go first-cabin.”

He instructed our driver to take us to the best hotel and soon we were on Meeting Street in front of an elegant blockwide, four-story building, gas-lit, with a marvelous facade. I had studied Greek architecture briefly in college, and immediately I loved that hotel and its magnificent colonnade: fourteen great white Corinthian pillars that reached from the second-floor balcony to the roof. The Charleston Hotel. That night I slept the sleep of the dead.

* * *

All the next day we were like tourists, walking the streets, talking to people we met, probing the babble of the marketplace not far from our door, strolling along the Battery. The Battery is a walled promenade around the tip of the city with a green behind it and some of the town’s finest old houses in the background. The view of the harbor is spectacular. One elderly gentleman offered the pompous opinion that this was where the Cooper and Ashley rivers met to form the Atlantic Ocean. We should all have shared a hearty laugh except that the old bird seemed absolutely serious and might have been offended. Richard listened politely but I knew he was far more interested in the geography than in any local silliness advancing this city, as lovely as it was, as the center of the Western world. From any point on the Battery we could see Fort Sumter, that brick fortress sitting on its man-made shoal in the mouth of the harbor. On both sides the land curved in tight, with Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to our left and Fort Johnson on James Island to the right, giving Sumter the appearance of a cork in a bottle. “Exactly right,” Burton said when I put it that way. “It’s a cork in a bottle.”

“When it’s finished it will make the city pretty much impregnable,” I said.

“If they finish it. And if they get the guns mounted, and if all three forts are controlled by the same side.”

“A lot of ifs.”

“Indeed. And if the wrong side had it, speaking from their viewpoint, its guns could easily be turned on the city it was built to protect.”

The fort was just a speck from there and I doubted that even the most powerful guns could reach that far. But Richard looked askance and said, “You don’t know much about modern warfare, my friend,” and I had to admit the truth of that.

We walked around the point and back again. The sun was warm and bright, a blessed relief from the miseries of the road, and again I was so delighted I had come. I was in the company of an extraordinary man and he liked me: what else mattered? But then as I stood watching the waterbound fortress, Richard moved away, and when I looked around for him he was standing off at a distance, scribbling in that damned notebook. All my suspicion came back in a gush. What was he doing? If he wanted to spy, why bring me along? That part made no sense. But my doubt magnified and doubled again, and abruptly I walked up to him, quickly enough that I could see he was not making notes but a sketch of some kind.

“What are you doing there?” I asked, making the question sound as much as possible like idle curiosity.

“Just drawing a picture.” He snapped his book shut. “To remember the day.”

Again this was so plausible that it had to be real. Unless it wasn’t.

We walked up East Bay, turned in to Chalmers Street, and saw a slave auction. The building had a platform on its second story where the Negroes were paraded and sold. Richard, who must have seen other such events in his travels around the world, still stood mesmerized for an hour as a family of blacks was broken apart and sent off with their separate masters. The pain in the mother’s face was heartbreaking and I was angry and indignant on her behalf. “You must write about this,” I said, but Richard only watched and kept his thoughts to himself. “These men are beasts,” I said, none too quietly, and Richard gave me a withering look and said, “Try to remember, Charlie, you are in their country now.”

We moved on. On East Bay near Queen Street we saw a photographer’s studio—barney stuyvessant, the sign said—and I asked if we might get a real picture made. “Something that will capture this day.”

Burton’s inclination was to dismiss this as silly, but before he could seriously object I went inside and made the arrangements. I didn’t want a trumped-up studio shot; something on the street would be much better, a picture that captured some semblance of the city and her architecture. Burton did protest then—he wanted no part of it—but the photographer was so young and eager for the business that his equipment was already out on the sidewalk, and I so clearly wanted it done that he stood still for it at last. The photographer fussed over the light: it was high noon and the sun was harsh, and Burton was such a reluctant subject that the young man knew he couldn’t keep us waiting long. He tried to chase away two little colored boys but Burton insisted they be left alone, and he gave each of them a penny. At last the photographer stood us on the walk near a palmetto tree, with the old Exchange Building rising dramatically behind us: Richard smiled and draped his arm over my shoulder, and there we were. The picture we took that day long ago was perfect, and remains one of my dearest possessions.

We lunched at the hotel, and I finally broached the dreaded subject. “You must know Lord Palmerston well.” I said this innocently, I thought, but Richard looked hard in my eyes: there was no fooling him, and his answer was vague. “We’ve met a few times in social gatherings.”

I pushed the point. “What do you think of him?”

“A colorful man. Not one you’d want to trifle with or have as an enemy. Rather like Calhoun was, I would imagine, like some of your fire-eating Southerners of today when he’s opposed.” A long moment passed while he leveled me with those eyes. “Why do you ask?”

Another long moment, and I saw that there could be no lying or evasion. “Richard,” I said, looking straight at him.

He waited.

“I’ve become uneasy about a few things.”

“I could sense as much.”

I felt my insides trembling: my God, I did not want to lose him! In those few seconds a dozen thoughts flooded through my mind. I imagined him taking dire offense, wounded in the heart. I saw him getting up from the table, walking away without a word, checking out of the hotel and disappearing into the bright sunlight. I saw myself rushing along beside him, pleading, I didn’t mean it, you’ve taken me wrong! But in fact if I offended him, he would be taking me exactly right.

I mustered myself and as calmly as I could said, “I would rather cut out my tongue than say this.”

Then to my amazement, he said it for me. “You are worried that I am spying against your country.”

“No,” I lied quickly. “No, no, nothing like that.”

“Please…Charlie.”

“All right, yes. I can’t help it, the thought crossed my mind and it won’t go away. I just wouldn’t have put it so bluntly.”

“Sometimes bluntness is the best way. The only way.”

“The thought never once occurred to me until we were in the backwoods, and you seemed so preoccupied with everything and everybody.”

“I told you, I do that everywhere. It’s my way.”

“Of course it is and I know that. I know as well as anyone how your books were compiled and written. I know these things and yet…”

“No,” he said. “You may think you know them, but you can’t understand the volume of material that runs through my mind in the course of a work. In India, just as an example, I had to make my notes in conditions that only one writer in ten thousand would endure. Impossible working conditions, yet there I worked, sitting under a table in an endless rain, the air so hot I could barely breathe, the paper shredding and falling apart even as I wrote on it.”

“You’re right, I don’t understand that. What’s the point of it?”

“Discipline, Charlie, discipline! And it did serve its purpose. Once I had written it down I had it committed to memory, even if the notes themselves didn’t survive.”

Well, at least I could believe that. I smiled wanly and said, “All right,” and we ate for a time in silence. I thought the discussion was over: if so, it had been wholly unsatisfactory from my point of view, for Richard had not yet answered the most difficult question in plain language. I decided to say no more about it, to forget it, but I had made such resolutions before and what had they come to? Once a dark thought crosses the mind, it is there forever.

Then Richard said, “I sympathize with your worry. This is a very bad time for your young nation, more so than I imagined from the other side of the sea. Anything could tip you into war.”

England, for instance, I thought: Britannia, who could not defeat us in two staunch attempts when we were united but might have far easier pickings if we so stupidly divided ourselves. But I said, “Nothing will come of this. These people are noisy braggarts but they are not going to destroy the Union.”

“If you think that, you are naive.”

I shook my head. “In fact, I don’t think that.”

“No. This is a powder keg. It will take just one incident, and these people are itching for that excuse. It is inevitable.”

I shivered at his words, knowing how right he was. Richard had coffee and I joined him across another silence. Eventually he said, “I will give you an answer, but for your ears only.”

I felt myself blush again. “Richard, you know I can’t accept that.”

“Then let’s put it another way. You must never divulge anything of what I say unless it compromises your own sense of loyalty to your country.”

“And then?”

“Then you are free to do or say whatever you wish.”

I was still uneasy. He smiled and said, “That leaves an awful lot to your own discretion, Charlie. I can’t be much fairer or more trusting than that. And if you think about it, this says a good deal about my faith in your honor.”

I was moved by his words, but I knew what he was really saying. My honor could be clear, for any reason of my own choosing, but I knew our friendship would be lost.

Burton sipped his coffee and said, “I’m not spying on you, my friend. It’s just that there are personalities involved. Issues unresolved in England. Things I still haven’t decided how to deal with— personal things that influenced my decision to come here. I don’t want my business scattered about for everyone to know. Isn’t that reasonable?”

“Of course it is,” I said, but I knew my tone was unconvincing.

He made a small gesture of impatience and lit a smoke. “Damn it, you brought this up and now it must be dealt with. The alternative is fairly unattractive for both of us. We must part company in distrust.”

“I cannot accept that. I won’t.”

“Then what do you say?”

I nodded warily.

For a time I thought he still would not tell me. Even when he did speak his talk was rambling and not obviously to the point.

“You may have heard that I came home from Africa as something of an outcast. If that sad news hasn’t yet reached America, it will. And it will only get worse as Speke publishes his opinions. In my own forthcoming book I mention our differences only briefly. But Speke and I are at impossible odds: he has made his claim to the discovery of the big lake, insisting that this alone must be the source of the great Nile River. Never mind that he has no scientific evidence: he saw nothing more than a vast body of water, not even a visual sighting of a river flowing outward, to the north or any other direction. So it all remains unproved, unprovable, really, without another expedition. None of that mattered in the jubilation of the moment. People wanted a hero, and Speke rushed to get home first and give them one. At my expense, if that’s how it had to be.”

He sniffed derisively but there was no missing the hurt in his face. “We had an agreement: discussion first, before any publication or speech making. We would decide together what we had found and what it meant. But I was burning up with fever and Speke hurried home alone. His book, if he writes one, which I can’t imagine—my God, the man is almost illiterate—but you watch, publishers will wheedle it out of him, and such a book will be calculated for one effect above all others: the glorification of Jack Speke. The public already believes it, hook and sinker, so what more does a publisher need? Damn the truth.”

His eyes took on a faraway look. “The Nile,” he said, almost wistfully. “Do you know how many centuries people have been wondering where it comes from? But no one could penetrate that wilderness until Speke and I did it.”

He sipped his coffee. “I have many enemies in London, Charlie. One has to choose what to believe, and a great number chose to believe Speke’s accounts. And his slanders.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I don’t think it’s in you to write an untrue word.”

He smiled gratefully. “I’ll tell you one of the truest and ugliest things about human nature. If a man betrays a friend, even a little, he must then turn completely on that friend and destroy him. That’s what Speke must now do to me. I alone know what happened. I’m the greatest threat in his life so there’s no other way to validate himself. And maybe get rid of a little self-loathing.”

He looked down at his cup. “I swore I would never trust another man after Speke, but here I am, trusting you.”

Yet another long silence passed, as if he of all people could not find the words he sought. “Listen, Charlie. This must not sound like any form of self-pity.”

At once I said, “I would never suspect you of any such thing. Never, Richard.”

He cocked his head slightly. “There is a woman I have decided to marry.”

I gave him a heartfelt congratulation and predicted that he would greatly enjoy his wedded life. But he looked doubtful and said, “Her family is furiously opposed. Her mother is impossible.”

My look told him how sorry I was.

He said, “This is how things are. If I had returned a hero, many things might have been different. But getting back to the prime minister.”

“Yes.”

“Lord Palmerston was not unkind to me, as some were. I was invited to his home. We had several confidential chats. It was he, in fact, who suggested that I come here.”

I felt suddenly alarmed: we had moved perilously close to that point of leeway Richard had given me. But he said, “There was no intrigue about it. Palmerston simply said that in my shoes, under the circumstances, he would undertake a new journey, something completely unexpected. To the States, for instance.”

He lit another smoke. “That was the first thought I had of it. But I warmed to the idea at once. Suddenly it felt very right. I couldn’t bear London any longer.”

“And that’s all there was to it?”

“Almost all. The prime minister summoned me to his home again, just before I left, to say he’d be anxious to hear my impressions of America when I returned.”

“But no specific expectations—no assignments, so to speak?”

He laughed softly. “No assignments, Charlie. I do have a list of people he wants me to see. To convey his respects.”

“Southern people, you mean. Charleston people.”

“And others. I am going on to the frontier. Your secretary of war was very helpful to me in that regard. He also gave me a letter to the commander at Fort Moultrie.”

I let that pass. There was no use telling Burton of my own personal disdain toward Mr. Floyd. What difference did it make what I suspected or thought?

“But in the main this journey is for my own self-renewal,” Richard said. “Something I needed badly. And am finding, by the way.”

Pointedly he said, “I hope that satisfies you.”

“Of course.”

It had damned better, I thought.

With that we dropped it. But it never really went away.

Richard.

His eyes were so full of mystery, his presence so quietly formidable. He was nothing like I had imagined him to be. With me he was always gentle and respectful, and I found it difficult to imagine him as the intimidating and often feared presence that others saw in him. The pictures drawn by his biographers, by accounts in the press before and after his death, and even in the writings of his widow more than thirty years past the events I am describing, miss much of the Burton I knew. I cannot challenge them: Who am I to challenge anyone? What was I compared with Isabel, or with men who spent years studying his life? I was at best a shirtsleeve authority. Our time together was so brief, and all I can ever be is the authority on those few weeks. Today I see how random it all was: how easily we might have failed to meet and never known what each of us would bring to the other. But we did meet, and I know I had at least a small effect on Richard’s life, and it would be impossible to overstate the vast effect he has had on mine. There has never been a day in forty years that I have not thought of him, written to him, reread favorite passages from his work.

It was only by chance, browsing through a dusty used bookstore in New York, that I first became aware of his name. There I saw in a bargain bin a small volume bound in red cloth: his 1853 book on bayonet exercise. Today it is a rare piece, but then it looked like just another book of narrow interest, to be thrown down among the sales items. What was it about this little book that drew me to him and ultimately led me to this marvelous journey? Was some hand of Providence at work? I remember thumbing through it, ambivalent, waiting for my companion to finish her Christmas buying from a shelf of leather-bound items behind the counter. I looked at the plates and, caring nothing about the subject, tossed it back in its place. I walked away and browsed the shelves, but eventually some compelling force—how else can I put this?—drew me back to the sales bin. I could see from the title page that the author was then a lieutenant in the Bombay army, that he had written of his travels in the Scinde, in Goa and the Blue Mountains. None of that had interested me then, but Burton had also written a book on falconry, and I was a birdman, so that did have some appeal. I bought the bayonet book on a whim, and as we left the bookshop my soon-to-be-wife looked at my purchase and said, “What on earth are you doing with that awful thing?” I joined her in a laugh at Burton’s expense, saying, “It’s no great loss, it only put me half a dime down.” What I could never make her understand was how quickly and deeply my involvement with Burton grew. Even when she knew how and why, years later, she had no idea. Some things, like Burton making his notes under impossible conditions in India, simply can’t be shared. A friend can be told, as I was told, of the table and the rain and the paper shredding as he wrote on it, but no one can ever truly know the experience of another. In the beginning I made light of it, but almost at once I searched out and read his falconry book, then his works on Goa and the Scinde. There was something bigger than life in his words, some mysterious sense of things, an attitude that drew me from one book to another. I sent away to his publisher, John Van Voorst in England, and obtained my own copies of the falconry title. But it was the monumental achievement of his travels to Mecca and Medina that captured my mind and thrilled my imagination. That’s when I became a serious Burton collector.

The hand of Providence guided me to him, then him to me. Call me a self-serving sentimentalist, call me a fool, but that’s what I believe.

We stayed in Charleston a week. On the third day Richard disappeared and was gone almost thirty-six hours.

He had complained of a headache after a night of too much alcohol, and I had gone walking on the Battery alone. In fact I went far beyond the Battery, around the entire city and out on a footpath that ran along the Ashley River. I spent hours walking, watching the people, talking to strangers, and soaking up the sun. I lost track of time with a gang of pickaninnies crabbing from the riverbank, fascinated by their strange language and delighted with their catch. The sun was low over the river when I finally turned back to the city: suddenly I realized I had been gone all day.

At the hotel there was a message in my box: Looked for you and waited as long as I could. Gone to meet some people. Hoped you would return to join us. Opportunity arose suddenly and might not come again. Will see you tomorrow. Richard.

This was disappointing but I had only myself to blame. Never mind: I would enjoy the evening without Richard’s company. The city was exotic; I would explore its tastes and sounds and sights on my own. I dressed for an occasion and was determined to find one. At the desk I asked the clerk what entertainments might be available and he suggested a musicale and a melodrama, both within walking distance. I could catch either of these and still have time for a good dinner before curtain. He gave me the names of several restaurants; then, as I was turning to leave, he said, “There was a message for you from Mr. Burton this morning. Did you get it?” I said I had and thanked him. “It’s too bad,” he said. “You just missed him.”

I was already out on the street when what he’d said brought me up short. I returned to the desk and asked him to elaborate. He said, “I only meant because he left immediately after you did,” and my heart sank.

I was crushed by this proof that Richard had lied. He hadn’t looked for me at all; he had watched for me to leave. If there was any truth in his note, it was only that he had gone to see some people. Yes, I thought bitterly. He’s seeing some people he doesn’t want me to meet or even know he’s met.

I had opted for the melodrama but now I was in too sour a mood to enjoy it. I wasn’t hungry either—normally I am a three-a-day man and I hadn’t eaten since morning, but at that point the prospect of a meal was, to say the least, unappetizing. I walked the streets and I could see only one possible course of action. I must cut the trip short. No more fencing: I would remove even the possibility of further lies by removing myself from Richard’s game, whatever it was. I would simply say that something about the Southern climate had begun to affect my health and I must catch the steamer north at my first opportunity—tomorrow if possible. I could lie if he could, I thought childishly. Richard, of course, would know the reason; he was far too intelligent to be fooled by such a lame excuse, but that was the best I could come up with. The alternative—to remain under pretense—would be intolerable.

I was bitterly disappointed, but once I had decided I felt surprisingly better. Not that I wanted to leave—far from it. I would have given much to have Richard appear that moment with a credible reason for his deception, but I couldn’t imagine what that would be. What I now wanted was to salvage whatever I could of my personal regard for Richard and take my leave while I could still give him some benefit of the doubt.

But out on the street a new thought hit me. I would have to warn someone. Someone had to be told that England was already making plans against us. Someone in our government, high enough to matter, must be told.

Not the treasonous Secretary Floyd, that much was certain.

In the morning I walked to the offices of the steamship company and obtained a schedule. I could get a boat for Wilmington within the hour. But Richard had still not returned; I couldn’t leave without at least saying good-bye, and so I lounged around the hotel waiting until long after the steamer had departed for Wilmington. I was quite hungry: I had not eaten since yesterday, and now I had a substantial lunch at the hotel, then waited over a glass of ale in the bar across the street. Well, I was stuck for another day. This fact brought an odd mix of clashing emotions—anger, dismay, anxiety, along with relief and a wild hope that at times overrode all the others. I was anxious to have it all behind me and be away from here but the thought of what must come filled me with despair. Above all I still wished desperately for some word or act that would save us from the ugly split that seemed inevitable.

I had another ale and sometime later, on my third, I felt my limit and switched to sarsaparilla. My anger had again dissipated, and again I sat groping for some innocent reason behind Richard’s actions. There was none: he had lied, there was no doubt about that, there could be no excuse for it, I had to go, I should have gone at once and left him a note. But that would be a coward’s way and we both deserved better. So I waited.

I saw him arrive at three o’clock. I crossed the street and came into the hotel behind him, but again I wavered. How could I do this? What could I say? I stood in the lobby and watched him skip jauntily up the stairs, and only when he had gone did I go up at a far slower gait. I walked softly past his room and went into my own. I lay on the bed in a state of deep trouble, and after a while I fell asleep.

I opened my eyes at his knock on my door. I didn’t move.

He rapped again. He said nothing but I knew who it was. I heard him walk away, down the hall, down the stairs. I couldn’t keep him waiting much longer.

At last I went down and saw him sitting alone at the far end of the lobby. He was reading a newspaper: the Charleston Mercury, Rhett’s rabble-rousing sheet of traitorous innuendo and sedition. He looked over the edge of the paper as I approached.

“Charlie. I’ve been looking for you.”

Immediately I started my lie. “I haven’t been feeling well,” I said, but my voice faltered and I knew I could not continue with it. How could I chastise Richard for lying if I was doing the same? Before I could go on, he said, “Sit down here, talk to me,” and I sat in the lounge chair facing his. He looked in my eyes. “I want to tell you something.”

I almost brushed him off in a wave of impatience. Please, I thought, no more lies. I felt my hands tremble as I prepared to speak. But he spoke first, offering a surprising confession. “I didn’t tell you the truth in that note I left you.”

I nodded.

“You guessed as much?”

Nodded again.

He regarded me for a long moment. “I don’t lie easily to any man. It’s almost impossible when that man is a close friend.”

Please, Richard, I thought, how close can we be? We barely know each other. I wanted to say it but didn’t.

“The fact is, I had to be away from you for a day. So I waited until you left the hotel. Then I left and called on some people.”

“Am I allowed to ask why?”

“Because you would not have approved of what I did. And it had become necessary for me to play a role.”

I looked up, met his eyes, and suddenly I found my voice, surprising myself at the strength of it. “You must know how this seems to me. You must know I can’t sit still for it. I think under the circumstances—”

“At least hear me out. Then do what you must.”

He spent no time gathering himself. He knew what he had to say, and at his first words I felt my anger melting away. Suspicion remained: it would take years for that bitter pill to completely dissolve. But what I thought I now heard in his voice was truth.

“I have been up to Mr. Rhett’s plantation. I went at the request of Lord Palmerston, who had paved my way in a secret communication.”

He looked at me directly. “There were many ultrasecessionists on hand, and a number of state officials, with lots of heated balderdash thrown about. Charlie, these fools are having the time of their lives. Strutting like cocks in a barnyard. So much self-aggrandizement, so much egotism, no regard at all for the tragedy they are about to rain down on their country. They have no idea how quickly the world is turning against state-sponsored slavery, and how difficult it will soon be for them to function with that as their calling card. They can’t imagine how many of their boys will die for their foolish pride.”

He took a deep breath. “Your presence would have been impossible.”

Softly, I said, “What did they all think, having Richard Burton among them?”

“I didn’t go as Richard Burton. To them I was a friend of a friend of the prime minister whose name they will quickly forget.”

“Richard…”

“My only lie was the manner of my escape yesterday, and I intended to set that straight between us, whether you had guessed it or not.”

“There’s more to it than that. I asked you specifically whether you are on a spying mission.”

“And I told you I’m not.”

“I asked you specifically if you are under any instructions from Palmerston.”

“Lord Palmerston asked me to make this call only as a courtesy and I’ve done that. When I return to England he will want my impression of the overall situation here and I shall give it to him. That’s hardly what anyone would call grand intrigue.”

He gestured impatiently. “I can’t tell you what England will do when your war comes. I’m not the prime minister. All I can do is tell him what I think.”

“Which is?”

“That we would be ill-advised to get involved in this conflict in any way. That the American spirit will not be defeated. That even if the South should somehow prevail—it won’t—but even then there would be resistance groups at work to restore the Union, and that intervention or tampering by any foreign power, especially one based thousands of miles away, would be insane. That such a foreign power can expect fierce guerrilla warfare, perhaps for years, with many casualties. The day is coming when no power, not even England, will be able to sustain such a war. If Palmerston brings us into it, it will be a quagmire and history will remember his name for that above all else. That’s what I’ll tell him.”

He cleared his throat. “I apologize for the small deception.”

“Richard…”

I think he knew then what I had to ask but he waited politely.

“Why did you bring me into it?” I said. “Why involve me in something that could only turn out badly for both of us?”

He smiled dolefully. “Charlie, don’t you know that?”

I blinked at him and gestured impatiently. “Know what?”

“I came to America hoping for self-renewal. You gave it to me. You restored my spirit, almost completely, on the first day we met.”

I couldn’t imagine. I felt numb with surprise, and a flush of—oh God, was that love growing in my heart? I recoiled at once from such a thought.

“I was a wounded man when I left England. My spirits have never been lower, and by the end of that first day with you I felt like my old self again. You were a stranger, a strong and intelligent man far from my own land, who had collected and read my books, and even took time out from his day to come say hello.”

“But that seems…” I groped for the words. “God, that seems so…small.”

“Big gifts often seem small to those who dispense them.”

A minute passed. Then he said, “I shall never forget that week we spent together in your home. You have a rare ability to make a man feel like a hero without pandering to him.”

“How could I possibly have done all that?”

“Just being your own man. You had intelligent opinions and you stood up to me. That’s how I came to value your opinion. And your company.”

“Well, Richard,” I said, still numbly. “I’ve never been much for glaring hero worship. To me, of course, you were a hero, and still are. But there had to be something more than that to create a friendship. I had to bring something of my own to it.”

“Isn’t that what I’m saying? I meet enough kowtowing idiots to know the difference.”

He turned his palms up, the universal gesture for “That’s all there is,” and said, “So why did I bring you? You can be sure I never would have suggested it if I had been sent here on some spying mission. I brought you because I wanted you with me. And I thought I could slip away for a day without offending you.”

He got up and squeezed my shoulder. “Give it some thought, Charlie.”

* * *

That night we went out together as if nothing had happened. We visited bars along the market, from Meeting Street to the waterfront, and I drank more ale than I had consumed in any week of my life or have ever done since. Richard, far more practiced at imbibing, held his liquor well, but I became rather silly with the night still young. As midnight approached, Richard also began feeling the influence, and we sang bawdy seaman’s songs with other merrymakers we met along the way. We laughed at everything: every drunken slur and slip of the tongue brought a riot of laughter from the crowd around us, which, in some of the taverns, numbered almost as many women as men. Richard charmed them all and they seemed willing to give my obviously Northern voice the benefit of doubt. We staggered out of the last open bar at some ungodly morning hour and made a tortuous walk back to the hotel. As we parted that night, Richard said, “Tomorrow we can see some more sights, if you want. And sometime before we leave I’d like to go over to Fort Moultrie and visit the garrison there.”

I wondered through my alcoholic haze whether I’d be welcome on such a trip, but Richard said, “Wouldn’t you like to see that, Charlie—see how it looks from the perspective of those poor devils who will have to die defending it?”

I said I would, and we left it at that.

The commanding officer at Fort Moultrie was Colonel John Gardner. I knew little about him before that day: Richard, in fact, knew much more. “He’s an old man,” he said as our steamer curled in toward the landing at the western tip of Mount Pleasant. “He served in the War of 1812 and in Mexico.”

The former would make him at least sixty, not too ancient for command, but Richard said nothing when I voiced this. We docked and began the cumbersome voyage to Sullivan’s Island. In the sum-mer it would be easier: there’d be a direct ferry crossing from the city, used by wealthy families with island homes to escape Charleston’s worst yellow fever months. But now in late spring it was a more tedious journey, across the marsh on a plank road and from there by small hired boats to the tip of the island.

The beach was lovely in the warm spring air. I remembered reading of this island in Poe, who had been stationed here some thirty years before and had set the tale of his gold bug partly in these dunes. It had changed little in that time. The fort was at least as dilapidated and run-down today, and as we approached it I could see what an untenable mission the garrison had been given. Huge sand dunes had accumulated against the walls, making its defense impossible: I could have walked up and over the walls with no effort at all.

There were no guards out as we approached, and we went on past, turning inland to trek around to the front gate. There, Richard presented our cards and asked if we might pay our respects to Colonel Gardner. We were taken into the fort, where we met Captain Abner Doubleday, who spoke with us briefly.

“Colonel Gardner is quartered not far from here, outside the fort,” Doubleday said. “If you’ll kindly wait here, I’ll send someone to see if he can receive you.”

When we were alone again, Richard rolled his eyes in the universal gesture of disdain. “He lives outside his fort. What does that tell you?”

“Nothing good,” I said. “I wonder if he’s a rebel Yankee like our Mr. Floyd.”

“He’s from Massachusetts,” Richard said, surprising me again with his knowledge.

Doubleday returned fifteen minutes later and said Gardner would receive us after his lunch hour, which unfortunately was already under way. “You’re certainly welcome to share mess here,” he said, and we thanked him and accepted his offer.

Burton had made no attempt to conceal his identity, but if his name meant anything to Doubleday, that wasn’t immediately apparent. Doubleday had just returned to the army after a long leave of absence and was in the earliest days at his new post. I wondered what he thought of this place in these times. He held his own curiosity with perfect military propriety, but when Burton asked who was running the day-to-day affairs of the fort, he said, with a touch of malicious irony, “The officer of the day. Today that seems to be myself.”

We ate the simple fare and talked about small things—the weather, the potential danger of Burton’s proposed trip across the continent, the Indians in the West, and the prospect of yellow fever in Charleston again this summer.

“Come, I’ll show you the fort,” Doubleday said when we were finished.

We walked around the walls, all of us carefully avoiding what was so painfully obvious even to me. The fort could not be defended. Burton finally ventured a gentle opinion. “Those dunes do make it difficult, don’t they?”

“Yes, sir, they do do that.”

“Why can’t they be removed?” I asked.

“There’s a worry that the locals might be provoked by it,” Doubleday said. “They don’t need much to provoke them.”

“Even if the dunes were removed, defense would not be easy,” Burton said.

“No. We are like a leaky raft, surrounded by sharks.”

He was a bit easier now, with the two of us obviously kindred, at least in spirit.

We had come full circle. Doubleday looked out to sea and then at Richard. “So what would you do in this place, Captain Burton?”

Burton smiled, pleased to be recognized and acknowledged by his most recent rank. He looked off to sea and said, “I suppose that would depend on my authority and how I interpreted it.”

A soldier came along then and said that the colonel would see us.

Doubleday walked us to the gate and shook hands. “Drop by again on your way out, if you have the time. There’s a tavern up the beach that you might enjoy.”

We spent an hour with Colonel Gardner, who was an old man in every sense. The talk quickly became political, and Gardner’s sympathies overrode his Northern upbringing, coming down much too solidly with the Southerners for my liking. “You’ve got to understand their anger,” he said. “They are being treated very badly on the question of the territories. If Lincoln somehow gets elected and slavery is outlawed in the new territories, their way of life will soon be suffocated through the legislative process.”

Burton was polite as always, expressing an understanding of the Southern viewpoint without stating his own. But as we took our leave and trudged back to the fort, he said, “It’s not his age that makes him unfit for this command, it’s his attitude. Look at the position this puts his men in. It’s not bad enough to be surrounded by enemies and have the walls of their fort covered with dunes that any five-year-old could climb over; now for a leader they’ve got an old man who lives among the enemy and spouts the enemy’s dogma.” He stopped in the middle of the road and beheld the sorry fort. Loudly, with no attempt to hide his anger, he said, “So, Charlie, how’d you like to be stationed here with your life in the balance?” Then, under his breath, he said, “God damn such authority! God damn such arrogance! God damn politics and politicians!”

Captain Doubleday seemed happy to see us again, as if we represented some fading semblance of sanity in a world going quickly mad. The three of us walked up the beach, chatting pleasantly in the warm May sunshine. He needs our outside voices, I thought, even though he can’t admit that or commit himself to strangers. He’s a soldier; he can’t criticize the politicians who have put him here, or the seditious old man to whom they’ve entrusted his life. All he can honorably do is hope to die well when the time comes.

We stood for a while and watched the sea, looking at incoming ships gliding past Fort Sumter and around the point to the city. Then Doubleday said, “Come, I’ll buy you something to drink.”

The tavern was just a short trek across the dunes: a cool, dark haven with a pair of cool, dark wenches as barmaids. The ladies were so closely matched that they had to be sisters, and Doubleday introduced them to us as Florence and Frances. I thought of Marion, the girl in the little upstate town that now seemed so far behind us: the town of Florence, I remembered with a shudder. I looked across the table and wondered if Burton was having the same supernatural thoughts.

Doubleday ordered ale for us and tea for himself.

I offered a toast. “To the Union.”

Instinctively Doubleday raised his cup. Richard was tardy by just a couple of heartbeats.

We talked into the afternoon. Doubleday and Burton spoke of general military strategies, captain to captain. It all came down to the one thought, without ever getting more specific than they had already been: how to defend the defenseless.

It was after three o’clock when Doubleday said, “I should get back to my post and you have a boat to catch.”

At the very last, he said to Burton, “I’ve been thinking about that question we left unanswered this morning. You said it would depend on your authority and how you interpreted it. I’m not sure what you meant.”

“I meant that in your colonel’s position, lacking specific orders to the contrary, I would move my men under cover of night to that new brick fort out yonder in the harbor.”

If Doubleday had expected some theoretical, wishy-washy answer, this was a surprise. He stiffened, clearly shocked by what he’d heard. “You can’t be serious.”

“I wouldn’t make jokes about something this grave, Captain.”

“That would surely be taken as an act of war by the people who live here.”

“Such a viewpoint has no logic. The fort is Union property, not the state’s.”

“Captain, you are speaking of logic in a land that does not know its meaning.”

“Then the problem must inevitably become critical, no matter what you do to prevent it. You can’t talk logic to madmen and you can’t prevent a war if only one side is interested in doing that.”

Nothing was said until Burton spoke again. “So in that situation my most immediate loyalty would be to my men. Assuming, as I said, no orders to the contrary.”

“And you would move them,” Doubleday said, still in disbelief.

“I would move them now—tonight if it were mine to do.”

“Interesting thought,” Doubleday said. “Depressing but interesting.”

We walked down the beach and took our leave in a hazy afternoon sunlight. At the fort we wished Captain Doubleday and his garrison good luck. As we put it some distance behind us, Burton said, “Those men are going to need a hell of a lot more than luck,” and this reality followed us over the marsh to the steamer and back across the harbor to the city.

That to me was the climax of our journey. All these years later I can still see Burton’s dark face in the candlelight; I can feel Double-day’s surprise, as palpable as a slap in that dark, flickering corner, and I would bet my life that he had never given such a bold move a serious thought before that moment. The act that started our civil war may seem obvious now in its dusty historical context. But what seems obvious to historians might not have been quite so clear to the men who were living it. Yes, those Southerners were mad, hot-blooded and irrational, determined to have their war. If there had been no Fort Sumter they would have found another time and place to begin it. But the fact that it did start at Sumter makes the provocative act, first posed by Richard Burton on a quiet afternoon a year before the shooting started, of considerable historical significance.

* * *

The time was now coming for us to part. Nothing had been said, but I had already gone well past the days I had begged from my wife. Richard planned to go on to New Orleans and then catch the river-boat north to his jumping-off point into the Western territories. Over dinner he launched a spirited campaign for me to join him. “Come at least as far as New Orleans.”

“Richard, I can’t. I’m a family man who has indulged himself long enough.”

We had carefully avoided the subject of his disappearance, but he alluded to it now. “I hope things are right between us.”

“Of course they are. I wouldn’t have missed this trip for anything.” “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

He lit a smoke. Impulsively he reached through the smoke to grip my hand. “I’m not a sentimental man, Charlie. But in all likelihood we shall never see each other again, and I must say this. I’ve had damned few friendships that I value as much as yours.”

“That’s very mutual, Richard,” I said over the lump in my throat. “Then come with me to St. Joe. I wouldn’t insist on anything beyond that, my word of honor. I don’t want your scalp on my conscience if I run into Indians on west.”

I resisted, he insisted, and at last we compromised on New Orleans. The next morning I sent a telegram to Baltimore, stealing another two weeks from my wife and young daughter, and we left Charleston that afternoon. Down the coast we went to Savannah, then west on a rugged overland trip that took us through the growing towns of Columbus, Montgomery, and Mobile. We spent five days drinking and laughing in New Orleans. My two weeks ran into a third, and as the time drew to its inevitable close, I felt a cutting sadness like nothing I’ve known before or since. When my wife died in ‘eighty-three, my grief was crushing; this was different, but in its own way almost as overwhelming. I felt the loss of Richard as sharply as the slice of a knife.

We got roaring, hilariously drunk that final night. Richard drank more than I had ever seen one man consume, and we stag-gered into our rooms in a stupor that I can barely remember. In the morning we both paid the price: Richard was actually ill from the aftereffects, and it took him all morning, until just before his steamer departed, to begin to recover. I walked with him to the dock and we promised to write. I gave him a standing order for any books he might produce, “two copies of each, please, one inscribed to me, for as long as you write them and as long as I’m here to receive them.”

I watched him, a lonely figure on the riverboat’s deck, until he went out of sight. In that moment I’d have done anything to have him back. The city that night was full of tourists, but to me it was excruciatingly empty, and I knew the long voyage home would be solemn and bleak.

As I checked out the next morning, the clerk asked if my stay had been satisfactory. “And will you be seeing your friend again, sir?”

“I hope so. But he lives in London…”

“I only ask, sir, because the maid found something he left in his room.”

He brought it out from behind the desk.

It was Richard’s notebook.

Of course I wrote him, telling him I had the notebook and it was safe with me until such time as he could claim it. Did he want me to entrust it to the mails? That transatlantic passage could be perilous, but I would be happy to send it on if that’s what he wanted. Otherwise I would hold it until we met again.

His reply when it came months later was enigmatic and brief. He would appreciate it if I would put the journal in a safe place, unseen by anyone, until he could retrieve it. “I must have knocked myself out that night,” he said by way of apology. “I thought I packed it, but I drank like a fish.”

Other than that I didn’t expect much from his promise to write: Burton was a busy world traveler and in the gradual letdown after my homecoming, I had to be realistic. I was a minor character in his crowded life, an admirer he had met by chance. But one day a letter came.

It was everything I could have hoped for: detailed, packed with news of his journey to see Brigham Young, his trek to California and across Central America, and the steamer voyage home. Soon he would have a book, to be called The City of the Saints, describing what he had seen of the Mormons and his stagecoach trip across the American desert to California, and his book The Lake Regions of Central Africa was imminent from the publisher. “I have taken you at your word regarding two copies of each book, but don’t hesitate to holler uncle if it becomes too burdensome.” He said nothing about his journal, and though it sat on my shelf like some wicked temptress, I never opened it, I never peeped; I rose to the highest expectation of his trust and let it be.