Bookman's wake

The only negative was that it was a remainder copy, savagely slashed across the top pages with a felt-tip marker. I hated that: it’s a terrible way to remainder books, and Viking is the worst offender in the publishing industry. “Look at this,” I griped. “These bastards must hire morons right off the street with a spray can. I can’t believe they’d do that to a book.”

“It’s just merchandise to them,” she said. “Nobody cares, only freaks like you and me. It is a fine-looking book, except for the remainder mark.”

“I saw a woman once who would’ve been a beauty queen, if you could just forget the fact that somebody had shot her in the face with a .45.”

We were stopped at a red light about a block from the freeway. She was looking at me in a different way now, as if I had suddenly revealed a facet of my character that she had been unable to guess before. “Are you interested in the Graysons? If you are, I know a guy who used to have the best collection of Grayson books in the universe. Maybe he’s still got a few of them. His store’s not far from here.”

“I think we’ve got time for that. Lead on.”

Otto Murdock was an old-time Seattle book dealer who had seen better days. Twenty years of hard drinking had reduced him to this—a shabby-looking storefront in a ramshackle building in a run-down section on the north side. “This man used to be Seattle’s finest,” Eleanor said, “till bad habits did him in. For a long time he was partners with Gregory Morrice. You ever hear of Morrice and Murdock?”

“Should I have?”

“If Seattle ever had an answer to Pepper and Stern, they were it. Only the best of the best, you know what I mean? But they had a falling-out years ago over Otto’s drinking. Morrice does it alone now—he’s got a book showplace down in Pioneer Square, and Otto wound up here. I hear he ekes out a living, but it can’t be much…he wholesales all his good stuff. They call him In-and-Out Murdock now. A good book means nothing but another bottle to him.”

She pulled to the curb at the door of the grimiest bookstore I had seen in a long time. The windows were caked with dirt. Inside, I could see the ghostly outlines of hundreds of books, stacked ends-out against the glass. The lettering on the hand-painted sign had begun to flake, leaving what had once said books now reading boo. The interior was dark and getting darker by the moment. It was a quarter to five, and already night was coming. A block away, a streetlight flicked on.

“He looks closed for the night,” I said.

“He’s still got his open sign out.”

I knew that didn’t mean much, especially with an alcoholic who might not know at any given time what year it was. We sat at the curb and the rain was a steady hum.

“I’ll check him out,” Eleanor said. “No sense both of us getting wet.”

She jumped out and ran to the door. It pushed open at her touch and she waved to me as she went inside. I came along behind her, walking into a veritable cave of books. There were no lights: it was even darker inside than it had looked from the street, and for a moment I couldn’t see Eleanor at all. Then I heard her voice: “Mr. Murdock…Mr. Murdock…hey, Otto, you’ve got customers out here.” She opened a door and a dim beam of light fell out of a back room. “Mr. Murdock?” she said softly.

I saw her in silhouette, moving toward me. “That’s funny,” she said. “Looks like he went away and left the store wide open.”

I groped along the wall and found a switch. It was dim even with the lights on. I took my first long look at how the mighty could fall. Murdock had tumbled all the way down, hitting rock bottom in a rat’s nest of cheap, worn, and tattered books. His bookshelves had long since filled to overflowing, and the floor was his catchall. Books were piled everywhere. The piles grew until they collapsed, leaving the books scattered where they fell, with new piles to grow from the rubble like a forest after a fire. I walked along the back wall, looking for anything of value. It was tough work—the fiction section was almost uniformly book-club editions of authors who aren’t collected anyway: Sidney Sheldon, Robert Wilder, Arthur Hailey. A sign thumbtacked to the wall said books for a buck. Cheap at half the price, I thought.

“You see anything?” Eleanor asked from the far corner.

“Four computer books, two copies of The Joy of Sex , and five million Stephen King derivatives.”

She sighed. “Put ‘em all together and what’ve you got?”

“Desk-top breeding by vampires.”

She gave a sharp laugh, tinged with sadness. “This place gets worse every time I come here. I’m afraid I’m wasting your time; it looks like Otto hasn’t had a good book in at least a year.“

You never knew, though. This was the great thing about books, that in any pile of dreck a rose might hide, and we were drawn on through the junk in the search for the one good piece. I had worked my way around the edge of the front room and had reached the door to the back when I heard Eleanor say, “Good grief, look at this.” She had dropped to her hands and knees, out of sight from where I stood. I asked what she had and she said, “You’ll have to come look, you’ll never believe it.” I found her near the door, holding a near-perfect copy of The Fountainhead .

“It’s a whole bag of stuff,” she said. “All Ayn Rand, all in this condition.”

There were two Fountainhead firsts, both binding states, red and green, in those lovely crisp red jackets. There was an Atlas Shrugged , signed Ayn in old ink and inscribed with endearment as if to an old friend. Finally there was the freshest copy of We the Living that I ever hoped to see in this lifetime. A Rand specialist had once told me that there were probably only a few hundred jacketed copies of We the Living in existence.

Six, seven grand retail, I thought. Sitting by the door in an open bag, in an unattended store.

“It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Eleanor said.

I shook my head.

“If the door blew open, they’d get screwed by the rain in a minute,” she said. “Jesus, Otto must’ve really lost it.”

“Look, you know this guy—do you think he’s so far gone that he wouldn’t know what he could get for these?”

“I doubt that. Otto might not know about the new guys—the Graftons, Paretskys, Burkes—but he’d sure as hell know about Ayn Rand.”

We stood there for a minute and touched them.

“What’re you gonna do?” Eleanor said.

“Damned if I know. I’m dying to buy these from him.”

“What would you offer him?”

I pondered it. “Three grand. Thirty-five hundred if I had to.”

“You could get them for less than that. There are some guys in this town who’d pay him that kind of money, but Otto’s burned his bridges here. I’ll bet you could get ‘em for two.”

“I’d give him three in a heartbeat.”

“Take ‘em, then. Leave him a note, make him an offer like that, and you’ll be doing him the biggest favor of the year. Tell him you’ll send the books back if he doesn’t like it. I guarantee you you’re doing him a favor, because nine out often people would come in here and see those books and take ’em and run like hell. You know that’s true. Take ‘em and leave him a note.”

“That’s probably against the law,” I said, but I knew it probably wasn’t. In most states, theft requires evil intent.

I put the books back in the bag, folded the top over carefully, and tucked it under my arm. “What’s in the back room?”

“Just more of the same,” she said.

We went on back. The room was cluttered with books and trash. In a corner was an ancient rolltop desk half-buried in junk books and old magazines.

“I see he still reads the AB ,” I said.

“That’s probably how he sells most of his books.” Eleanor looked along the shelves behind the desk. She held up a thin canvas bag. “Here’s his briefcase. He never goes anywhere without this. In the old days, when he and Morrice were top dogs, you’d see him at book fairs and stuff, and he’d always have his two or three best pieces in this book bag. It was his trademark: if he liked you, you’d get to look in the bag; if he didn’t, you wouldn’t.”

She fiddled with the straps. “Wanna look?”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

Reluctantly, she pushed the bag back to the corner of the desk. “He probably hasn’t used it in ten years, except to carry a bottle around.” She sighed. “Not a Grayson book in sight. So much for my good intentions.”

“That looks like another door over there.” I walked across the room and opened it.

A set of steps disappeared into the dark upper floor.

“Try calling him again,” Eleanor said.

I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted Murdock’s name up the stairwell.

“He’s just not here,” she said.

“I don’t know. Something’s not right.” I moved into the stairwell.

“Don’t go up there. That’s how people get blown away.”

I turned and looked at her.

“Otto’s got a gun. I saw it once when I was here last year.”

“Good argument.” I backed away from the stairs.

“He’s gotta be up there sleeping one off. He’ll wake up in a panic over those books, come running down the stairs, and when he finds your note, he’ll be so relieved he’ll drop dead right there on the spot.”

I wavered.

“Goddammit, take the books,” she said. “Don’t be a fool.”

She’s right, I thought. I went back and sat at Otto’s desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and wrote out my offer. I made it three thousand and signed it with both my Denver phone numbers, then taped it to his canvas bag where he’d be sure to find it.

In the car we sat fondling the merchandise, lost in that rapture that comes too seldom these days, even in the book business.

It was just six o’clock when I happened to glance in the mirror and saw Pruitt watching from the far corner.

14

He appeared like a single frame in a set of flash cards. You blink and he’s gone, and you’re not quite sure he was ever there at all. I was as sure as I needed to be: I was suddenly tense, keyed up and ready to fight. We headed down to the Hilton. I was driving now, handling the freeway traffic with one eye on my mirror. If he was on my tail as I swung into town, I didn’t see him. He was a magician, good enough to make you doubt your eyes. The invisible man, Slater had called him, the best tail in the business, and he wasn’t keeping after me because he liked my looks. Who is Slater ? The voice of Trish Aandahl played in my head. I had a hunch I was about to find out who Slater was and what he wanted. He had just five hours to break the stalemate: if Pruitt didn’t play Slater’s hand by then, we’d be in the air and it would all be academic.

I parked in the hotel garage and took Eleanor to my room. I poured us drinks, cutting hers slightly with water. She asked if she could use the shower and I said sure. I sat on the bed at the telephone, happy for a few minutes alone.

I punched up Slater’s number in Denver.

A woman answered. “Yeah?”

The lovely Tina, no doubt.

I tried to sound like someone from their social set, a cross between George Foreman and Bugs Moran: “I need Slater.”

“So who’re you?”

“I’m the man with the money.”

“I’m not followin‘ ya, Jack.”

“Just put Slater on the phone, he’ll be glad you did. Tell him it’s the man with the money.”

“Clyde’s not here.”

“So where’s he at?”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about a bagful of money, sweetheart, and I’ll tell ya what, if I don’t get to give it to him pretty damn quick, I’m out of here. Slater can fly to Jacksonville and pick it up himself.”

“I don’t know anything about this.”

“That’s how you want to keep it, hon. Let’s just say Slater did a little job for me and this is the bonus I promised him.”

“Well, damn.”

“Oh, let’s not agonize over it. If you don’t wanna tell me where the man is, it’s no skin off my nose.”

She was breathing in my ear. “Is it…”

I waited.

“…is it a lot of money?”

I couldn’t help laughing: I had played her just right. “Let’s say there’s a good reason he wanted it in cash.”

“Wait a minute, I’ll give ya a number.”

I could hear her fumbling around. “Call him at area code two oh six. It’s six two four, oh five hundred. Ask for seventeen twelve.”

I sat staring at the phone. Slowly I straightened up and looked at the far wall.

Slater was in the room next door.

And I knew I might as well have him in my lap.

Eleanor came out of the bathroom in a swirl of steam. She sat at the mirror sipping her drink and combing out her incredible hair. I thought she was lovely, alive with the sparkle of youth in spite of her trouble. She wanted to talk. Our short mutual history was the topic of the moment, to which was added her general assessment that we were a damned exceptional book-hunting team. “Today was special,” she said, “a real toot.” I looked at the far wall, where Slater was, and told her the pleasure was all mine. To her way of thinking, it was the perfect day, one she’d remember: “This is how I’d live my life, every day of the year, if I had my way. A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, some good books…”

She looked at me with open affection in the glass. “And you.”

She tugged at a place where her hair had knotted up. “We wouldn’t even need much money,” she said. “Money just takes the edge off. You need to be a little hungry to get that rush that comes with finding a really good one.”

Again she amazed me, this kid barely out of her teens.

“It’s not-having money that keeps you on your toes,” she said, meeting my eyes in the mirror.

I told her we were probably the most on-our-toes pair since Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and she laughed. “Why couldn’t I’ve found you a year ago,” she mused. “Why-o-why-o-why?”

“It wouldn’t‘ve done much good,” I said absently, “since we’ve already got it well established that I’m old enough to be your father.”

She scoffed at this. “Yeah, if you’d started hiking up skirts when you were thirteen, maybe.” She looked at me in the mirror and said, blushing fiercely, “You’re probably not up to a little seduction right now, I’ll bet.”

I thought long and hard about how to respond, the words to use. The ones I picked were clumsy and inadequate. “Under the circumstances, you know, this is not the best idea you’ve had all day.”

“Well, it was just a thought.”

I told her it was a lovely thought, I was flattered. In another time, maybe…in another place…

“In another life,” she said, closing the book on it.

I decided to hang out here until just before our flight left. The certainty of Slater’s listening in on us I accepted as the lesser of two evils: here I could keep my back to the wall until the last possible moment. I looked at the wall but it told me nothing. I knew what I needed to know. Detectives today can punch a hole the size of a pin through a concrete wall, run a wire into bed with a cheating housewife, record her ecstasy with the other guy in eight-track stereo, and add a Michael Jackson sound track for the entertainment of the office staff. I told Eleanor none of this: no sense waving a red flag just yet. I called out and ordered a pizza delivered. She kept up a running chatter while we ate—her way, I guessed, of relieving her own building tension. She talked about all the great books she had found that had been screwed up by one anal-obsessive chucklehead or another. I laughed as only a fellow traveler can: I too knew that peculiar heartache. You find a grand copy of an old Ross Macdonald and open it to see that some fool has written all over it, destroying half its value and all of its factory-fresh desirability. Why is a book the only gift that the giver feels free and often compelled to deface before giving? Who would give a shirt or a blouse and write, in ink, Happy birthday from Bozo all over the front of it? Even worse than the scribblers, Eleanor said, were the name embossers. “When I become the queen of hell, I’m going to parade all those embosser freaks past me in a long naked line. I’ll have an embosser with the word IDIOT on it, smothered in hot coals, and I’ll emboss them , sir, in the tenderest place that you can imagine.” That punishment sounded pretty sexist to me, which was exactly her point. “Have you ever seen an embossermark with a woman’s name on it…ever?” I had, but only once and it probably didn’t count—a sadistic dominatrix whose murder I had investigated long ago. “Women write in the spirit of giving,” Eleanor said. “Men emboss like they’re branding cattle, to possess.” For the books, we sadly agreed, the result was the same.

I hoped Slater was getting an earful. I looked at the clock: the plane took off in three hours, I was almost home free. The day was ending on a wave of nickel-and-dime bookstuff. I asked her to define anal-obsessive chucklehead, please, and tell me how that particular characteristic expresses itself. She laughed and slapped my hand and said, “Get out of here, you damn fool,” and the night wound down. We drank a toast to the defilers of good books—scribblers, embossers, and the remainder goons at the Viking Press—may their conversion to the cause be swift and permanent. At eight-thirty she asked if she could mail a letter. She sat at the table and scratched out a few lines on hotel stationery: then she turned away, shielding the letter with her body so I couldn’t see it. I knew she had taken something out of her purse and dropped it in the envelope with the letter. I was riddled with second thoughts, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it: I could either be her jailer or her friend. She licked the envelope, sealed it, and called for a bellhop to mail it. And I sat mute, her friend, and watched it disappear.

I was a bit curt with her after that. She asked when we should leave and I told her not to worry about it, I’d let her know. I had decided to linger here until exactly seventy minutes before takeoff, then haul ass for Sea-Tac in a cloud of smoke. I hoped the TV would cover our sudden retreat. I’d let Slater listen to the Tonight Show until reality began to dawn: if I was lucky, we’d be halfway to the airport before he knew it. Out on the street I’d have only Pruitt to deal with.

Duck soup, I thought, an even-money standoff.

I always bet on me with odds like that. I had forgotten that line from Burns about the best-laid schemes of mice and men. I should read more poetry.

15

At 9:35 the telephone rang. We looked at each other and neither of us moved. I let it ring and after a while it stopped. Now we’d see, I thought: if it had been a test, somebody would be over to see if we were still here.

At 9:43 it rang again. By then I had rethought the strategy of silence, and I picked it up.

“It’s me.” Slater’s voice sounded puffy, distant.

“So it is,” I said flatly, with a faint W. C. Fields undertone.

“We need to talk.”

“Send me a telegram.”

“Don’t get cute, Janeway, your time’s running out.”

I gave a doubtful grunt.

“We need to talk now. I’m doing you a favor if you’ve got the sense to listen.”

I listened.

“Come out in the hall.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m in the room next door.” His voice was raspy, urgent. “I need you to come out in the hall so we can talk.”

Then I got a break I couldn’t have bought. Eleanor got up and went to the bathroom.

“You must think I was born yesterday,” I said as soon as she closed the door.

“This is on the level. I know you’re on the eleven-eighteen. I’m giving you fair warning, you’re never gonna make it.”

“Try and stop me and you’re a dead man, Slater. That’s fair warning for both of you.”

“It’s not me that’s gonna stop you, stupid. Goddammit, are you coming out or not?”

I thought about it for five seconds. “Yeah.” I hung up.

I opened my bag and got out my gun. Strapped it on under my coat and waited till Eleanor came out of the bathroom.

“Just a little problem with my bill, no big deal,” I told her. “I’ve got to go upstairs and straighten it out. You sit right there, we’ll leave as soon as I get back.”

She didn’t say anything but I could see she wasn’t buying it. She sat where I told her and clasped her hands primly in her lap, her face a mask of sudden tension.

I opened the door and eased my way out into the hall. I had my thumb hooked over my belt, two inches from the gun.

Slater was down at the end of the hall, looking at the wall. I pulled the door shut and he turned. I think I was ready for anything but what I saw. His face had been beaten into watermelon. His left eye was battered shut, his nose pounded flat against his face. His right eye was open wide, a grotesque effect like something from an old Lon Chaney film.

“What happened to you?”

I had flattened against the wall so I could see both ways. Slater came toward me, shuffling in pain. His leg was stiff and he held his arm in a frozen crook, suspended as if by an invisible sling.

“Pruitt,” he rasped, livid. “Fucking bastard Pruitt.”

I just looked at him, unable to imagine what might have gone down between them. He came closer and I saw what had caused that pufnness in his voice. His dentures were gone—smashed, I guessed, along with the rest of him—and he talked like a toothless old man.

“Goddammit, I’ll rip that fucker’s guts out.”

“What happened?” I said again.

“Bastard son of a bitch sapped me, damn near took my head off. I went down and he did the rest of it with his feet.”

He did it well, I thought.

“He’ll pay, though, he’ll pay for this in ways I haven’t even thought up yet. Even if he doesn’t know it was me, I’ll know, and that’ll be enough.” He took a little step to the side and held on to the wall for support. “And it starts today. I’m gonna tell you something, Janeway, and then it’s your baby. Pruitt will kill you if he has to.”

“He should play the lottery, his odds are better.”

“Don’t you underestimate that fucker, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“I’m reading that. Now why don’t you tell me what he wants.”

“The book, stupid, haven’t you figured that out yet? He’s been after it for years.”

“Tell me something real. Grayson couldn’t make a book worth this much trouble if he used uncut sheets of thousand-dollar bills for endpapers.”

“That’s what you think. Forget what you thought you knew and maybe you’ll learn something. Your little friend in there’s got the answer, and Pruitt’s gonna take her away from you and get it out of her if he’s got to tear out her fingernails.”

“Say something that makes sense. Pruitt had her and you two handed her to me. Now he’s ready to kill me to get her back?”

He started to say something but a click in the hall brought him up short. We both tensed. I gripped the gun under my coat.

The door swung in and Eleanor peeped into the hall.

She didn’t say anything. She was looking past me, at Slater, and he was looking at her. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide with fright.

“Eleanor,” I said, “go back in the room and sit down.”

She backed away and closed the door.

“She knows you,” I said to Slater. “She recognized you just then.”

He tried to move past me. I stepped out and blocked his way.

“What do you want from me, Janeway? I’m doing you a favor here, maybe you should remember that. I didn’t have to tell you anything.”

“You haven’t told me anything yet. Pick up where you left off. Make it make sense.”

“Goddammit, I’m hurting, I need to lie down.”

“Talk to me. Give me the short version, then you can lie down.”

He grimaced and held his side. But I wasn’t going to let him pass until he told me what I wanted to know.

“Me and Pruitt grew up together. Southside Chicago, early fifties. You want my life story?”

“The short version, Slater. We haven’t got all night here, I’ve got a plane to catch.”

They were kids together, birds of a feather. Nobody could stand either of them, I thought, so they hung together.

“He called me for a few favors when I was a cop. We’d have a beer or two whenever he passed through Denver. Four years ago, on one of his trips through, he told me about this book.”

He coughed. “He’d been chasing it for a long time even then. He was trying to track down a woman he was sure had taken it, but he never could find her. He’d run every lead up a blind alley.”

“What’s the big attraction?”

“Pruitt knows where he can sell it. For more money than any of us ever saw.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Then fuck you. Do you want to hear this or not?…I can’t stand up in this hall forever. I’ll tell you this, he convinced the hell out of me. That night I wrote out the stuff he told me on that paper you read, but nothing ever came of it…until last month. Then I get a call from Seattle and it’s Pruitt. It’s all hitting the fan over this book he’s after. There’s a woman named Rigby in the Taos jail and Pruitt thinks she’s got it.”

“Why didn’t he go down himself?”

“Later on he did: he had some Seattle angles to work out first. He thought the girl’s parents might know about it, might even know where she’d hidden it; maybe she’d even mailed it to ‘em. So he sent me to Taos to nose around, see what was what. I’d barely got there when she came up for bail. Pruitt came in the next day.”

“And did what?”

“Made her wish she’d never been born. That was just the beginning of what he had up his sleeve for her. The book’s been like a monkey on his back, I could see it driving him closer to the edge every day. I started thinking he might even kill her for it. But she wouldn’t give it up.”

“Probably because she didn’t have it.”

“But she went back to get it, didn’t she?”

“She went back for something. Weren’t you boys on her tail?”

“You’re not gonna believe this, Janeway. She slipped us.”

I just stared at him.

“She’s cute, all right, a little too cute for her own damn good. The next thing we knew she’d skipped the state. Pruitt went nuclear.”

“This must be when you got the bright idea of dragging me into it.”

“Our time was running out. She could be picked up by the cops anywhere and we’d be up the creek. Pruitt thought she’d head for Seattle: he put out some people he knew to watch her haunts. And it didn’t take long to spot her: she turned up in North Bend a few days later. I didn’t know what to do. I sure didn’t want to let it go. Pruitt had promised me a piece of it, if I helped him reel it in. I’m talking about more money than you’ll believe, so don’t even ask.”

“I thought money didn’t matter to you, Clydell. What about the radio job? What about Denver magazine?“

“All bullshit. I owe more federal income tax than I’ve got coming in. I do a weekend gig on radio, not enough to pay my water bill. The magazine piece’ll be lining birdcages before the ink’s even dry. Business sucks; I’m almost broke. What more do you need to know? And besides all that, I really was afraid of what he’d do to that kid.”

He took a long, painful breath. “So if you’re looking for a good guy in this, it’s probably me. That same night I told Pruitt about you. I thought I could tempt you with the bail money, it was easy to get the papers from the bondsman; hell, he doesn’t care who brings her in. But the bail was just bait. I knew you’d never bust Rigby for that bail money, not once you had that book in your mind.”

He touched his face. “I really thought you might get the book from her. You might have, too, if the cops hadn’t busted her and messed everything up. I sold you to Pruitt as a bookhunter. He didn’t like it but I talked hard and late that night he decided to try it.”

“And that’s what finally got your face kicked in. Pruitt didn’t like the way it turned out.”

“I had to try something. She knows us both on sight, and Pruitt’s her worst nightmare. She’s right to be scared of him: he’s over the edge now. He’s your problem, you and that poor kid in there. Me, I’m out of it, I’ve had enough. I’m goin‘ back to Denver.”

He pushed his way past. Stopped at his door; looked back at me. “I’ll give you two free pieces of advice. Pruitt didn’t get to be called the invisible man for nothing. He can fade into a crowd and you can’t see him even when you know he’s there. He’s great with makeup—wigs, beards, glasses—he can make himself over while you’re scratching your ass wonder-ing where he went. And he’s always got people around him, scumbags who owe him favors. One of’em’s a fat man, but there may be others. Don’t trust anybody. Don’t let ‘em get close and sucker punch you.”

He opened his door. “You didn’t hear any of this from me, okay? I’ll figure out my own ways of paying Pruitt back, and I don’t want him sticking a knife in my ass before I’ve got it worked out. So here’s your second hot tip. Pruitt fucked up your car. If you’re counting on that to get you to the airport, think again.”

He looked at his watch. “You cut it pretty short, old buddy. You got one hour to get her there. Stay clear of old ladies and fat men, Janeway. If you ever get back to Denver, call me, we’ll have lunch. Maybe I’ll have a job for you.”

16

My brain kicked up in the cop mode. From then on I was running on overdrive.

My goals had narrowed to one. Nothing else mattered—not money or pain, not even the books I had foolishly taken from Otto Murdock.

We were going on the run. That meant travel light, travel fast: leave the books, leave the clothes, call the Rigbys from New Mexico, hope Crystal could come pick up my stuff. Not a perfect answer, but when you’ve got a woman to guard, eight grand worth of books in a cardboard box, and a man on your tail who might be seriously unhinged, perfection is a little too much to ask for.

We were going to Taos, over Pruitt’s dead body if that’s how he had to have it.

No time for cops: no help there. By the time Seattle checked me out, my flight would be somewhere over Wyoming.

Move.

Move now and move fast.

I called out for a cab. The dispatcher said she had drivers in the neighborhood. The wait would be five minutes, ten tops.

Cover your ass.

I called the desk. Yes, the Hilton ran a shuttle service to the airport. It ran twice each hour, at seven minutes past the half hour.

It was now 9:55.

The key.

Crystal would need my room key to get in here and take out my stuff. Had to hide it somewhere so she could find it.

In the car.

Out there in the garage, all logic dictated, Pruitt would be waiting.

Good. Face the bastard head-on.

Eleanor sat rigidly in the chair. She looked terrified, her knuckles white as she gripped the armrests.

“Wh-why’re you…d-do-ing this?”

I reached out to her but she recoiled. “I’m on your side, kid,” I told her, but it didn’t help.

“Th-at m-man in the hall…”

“His name is Slater. He’s gone now.”

“He’s with the d-darkman.”

“He’s nothing. He’s out of here.”

“Darkm-man.”

I squeezed her shoulder. “Cheer up now, you’re in good hands.”

I turned off the light, flipped off the TV. Nobody was fooling anybody anymore.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We went with the clothes on our backs. I hung a do not disturb sign on the door.

“Stay close,” I said as we came into the garage.

She was shivering so violently she could barely walk. Our footsteps echoed as we crossed to the far wall where I had left my car.

He was with us all the way, I could feel him out there in the dark. “Oh, please.” Eleanor’s voice quaked with fear. She too had sensed him there, and Slater had it right, he was her bogeyman: just the thought of him made her incoherent and numb.

“Darkman,” she whispered. “D-d…kman.”

I put an arm over her shoulder. “Everything’s cool. We’ll laugh about it on the plane.”

“Darkm-m-an’s‘s-here.”

“Hush now. We’re heading for the land of sunshine.”

I jerked open the door and hustled her into the car. I looked over the roof, my eyes sweeping down the ramp and across the garage to the door. Just for show, I moved around the car, opened the driver’s door, and slid under the wheel.

I kept watching through the mirrors. I put the key in the ignition and turned it. It did nothing but click.

Eleanor whimpered faintly in the seat beside me.

“It’s okay, I expected that,” I said calmly. “Just sit tight, we’ll be out of here in a minute.”

I got out of the car, locking the doors.

Went through some motions, with peripheral vision working like sonar.

Raised the hood.

Scanned the garage.

Looked at my watch while pretending to look at the engine.

Ten oh one. The shuttle took off in six minutes.

Got down on the garage floor. Pretended to look under the car. Palmed the key to my room and slipped it behind the front bumper.

Scanned the garage from there. With my back to the wall, I could see everything under the wheels of fifty automobiles.

Two pairs of feet…two men, coming my way.

I came up slowly, an Oscar-winning performance. It was a fat man with dark hair, flanked by a young, muscular guy in jeans. The fat man wore a business suit and waddled my way with an air of sweet benevolence.

I slammed the hood and wondered why I wasn’t surprised when they came to the car in the slot next to mine.

“Hey, buddy,” the fat man said. “You know how to get to Queen Anne Hill?”

“I think it’s on the west side, just north of town. I’m a stranger here myself.”

He looked at me over the roof of his car. “Got trouble?”

“Yeah. Damn thing won’t start.”

“I’ll have the guy downstairs call you a tow truck if you want.”

“Won’t do much good. I’m in kind of a hurry.”

“Might be something simple. Bobby here’s good with cars. Why don’t you just let him take a peek under your hood?”

“That can’t cost me much.”

I raised the hood and the three of us crowded into the space between the car and the wall. Here they were, close enough to kiss. I could see a fresh scrape on the fat man’s neck where he’d cut himself shaving. The meat quivered around his ears like vanilla pudding. The kid was carrying his right hand in a fetal position, curled inward toward his belt. He was cradling a roll of quarters, I thought—almost as effective as a set of brass knucks if he got his weight behind it.

Here I am, I thought, take your best shot. When the kid moved, I took a fast step to one side. His closed fist smacked against the car, the roll broke open, and the coins clattered across the floor. I hit him a hard right to the jaw and he went down like a sack of laundry. I could sense the fat man groping for something under his coat, but I was faster and I had the same thing under mine. I whirled around and kneed him in the groin. I punched his wind out, and the next time he blinked I had my gun in his jowls, half-buried in fat.

He was breathing hard through his nose, his eyes wide with fear and surprise. I slapped him across the mouth and spun him around, slamming him against the wall. I took a .38 snub-nose out of his belt and put it in mine. The kid was still cold. I knelt down, frisked him, and got another gun for my arsenal.

I manhandled the fat man back around the car. “Where’s Pruitt?”

“I don’t know any Pruitt.”

I grabbed his necktie and jerked him silly. He tried to roll away: I hammered him under the ribs and he doubled over, wheezing at the floor. I grabbed his hair and smashed his head hard against the car, got down there with him between the cars, and said, through gritted teeth, “You wanna die in this garage, fat man? You wanna die right now, here on this floor?” I had the gun jammed between his jawbone and his eardrum, and I had his attention.

He rolled his eyes down the ramp, into the spiraling darkness.

“That’s better. Lie to me again and you’re dog food. Tell me now, are there any more rats down there with him?”

He shook his head none.

“Gimme your keys.”

He fished them out of his pocket.

“Which one’s for the trunk?”

He held it up. I took the ring and opened the trunk.

“Get in and lie down.”

He looked at me with pleading eyes. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and spun him around and sat him down hard in the trunk. I motioned with the gun and he swung his legs over the rim, curling his butterball body around the spare tire.

I slammed the trunk. It was 10:08, and the enemy himself had delivered us from evil.

I got Eleanor moved over and threw the guns on the seat between us. We careened down the ramp in the fat man’s car. Eleanor sat frozen, gripping her knees like a kid on her first roller-coaster ride. I reached the street just as the shuttle pulled out. I pealed rubber turning north into Sixth Avenue. I was soaring, I was high enough to hit the moon. I had to rein myself in, force myself to stop for a red light. The last thing I needed, now that I had the game all but won, was to get stopped by a traffic cop, and me with a car full of guns.

I was trolling the side streets looking for an on-ramp. I stopped for another light. “Darkman,” Eleanor said, but I looked and the street was empty.

“He’s gone. We kicked his ass, Rigby. It’s time to start thinking about what you’ll do when you get to New Mexico.”

I leaned over the wheel and looked at her. She looked like a stranger, mind-fried with fear.

“We won,” I said.

She looked like anything but a winner. She looked like the thousand and one women a cop meets in a long and violent career. A victim.

“Darkman…”

“Is he your stalker?”

She looked at me. “He’s everywhere. I can’t turn around…”

“He’s a wrong number, honey, a guy in a gorilla suit. He’s only scary if you let him be.”

“He was in New Mexico.” She closed her eyes and quaked at some private demon. “No matter where I go he finds me. I pick up the phone and he’s there, playing that song.”

The guy behind us blew his horn. The light was green. I moved out, giving her shoulder a little rub, but she seemed not to notice.

“He’s there,” she said. “I saw him.”

I scanned the street in my mirrors and saw nothing.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh God oh God oh God…”

“We beat him. We’re gettin‘ out of here.”

“Take me back to jail.”

“We’re going to New Mexico.”

“No!…No…take me back to jail…”

“I want you to listen to me.”

“Take me back to jail…take me…take me…”

No more talk, I thought: the less said at this point the better. I thought if I could get her on the plane, I could win her back: then we’d have the whole ride into Albuquerque to calm down and start digging the truth out. I gave her a long sad look. She had covered her face with her hands, but I could see her eyes looking at me through her fingers.

I gunned the car and banked south into the freeway. I was almost up to thirty when she wrenched open the door and, with a shriek of madness, jumped.

17

I hit the brakes and the car spun across the wet pavement and slammed into the guardrail. I leaped out on the rim, running along the edge of a dark gulf. She was somewhere down in the street: I couldn’t see her, but I heard her scream as I skidded down the slope. I had a long clear look at the street running back downtown: she hadn’t gone that way, so she had to have ducked under the freeway to the east. This led me into a dreary neighborhood of shabby storefronts and dark flophouses. The rain had kept people off the street and the hour was late…the block was as dead as an old graveyard. The wet clop of my feet punctured the steady hiss of the rain, but I was chasing a ghost. She was gone.

I reached a cross street still clinging to a shred of hope. She could be blocks away by now, going in any direction. Guess wrong and kiss her good-bye: the next time she stuck her head up, she’d be scouting books in Florida. She could make a pauper’s living forever in that anonymous subculture, never pay taxes, never have her name recorded on any official docket, never be seen again by friend or foe. I pushed on into the rain, as if she had suddenly materialized in the block ahead. But the street was as empty as ever. I came to another intersection and stopped to look. No use running anymore, I could just as likely be running away from her. I walked along a dim wet block looking in cracks and crevices. Gone with the goddamn wind, son of a bitch. I passed the flickering light of a neighborhood bar and looked at my watch: 10:23. It was still possible to make the plane, if she came to her senses this very minute, if we stumbled into each other in the murk, if the car was still on the ramp where I’d left it, if I was all paid up with the man upstairs, if pigs could fly and I could break every speed limit going to Sea-Tac and get away with it. I stopped and leaned against a mailbox and longed for a break, but Luck had gone her fickle way.

I looked into the bar on a hunch. Nobody there but the neighborhood drunk, who’d been holding up his end of the bar since Prohibition ended. I walked up the street in the rain, unwilling to admit that the fat lady had sung her song. Something could still happen. Something can still happen, I thought again, but my watch was pushing ten-thirty, and it had to happen now.

What happened wasn’t quite what I had in mind. A car turned into the street and I knew it was Pruitt half a block away; I had the color and shape of that Pontiac cut into my heart forever. I stepped into the shadows and watched him roll past me. Apparently he hadn’t seen me: he cruised by slowly; I stood still and watched him go the length of the block. He was hunting, same as me: he would drive a bit, slow, occasionally stop and look something over. It seemed she had given us all the royal slip. Pruitt stopped at the corner and turned. I broke into a full run, reaching the cross street well before he had turned out of the next block. He was taking it easy, trying to miss nothing as he worked around one block and into another. The block was dark: a streetlight was out, and I thought I could run along the edge of the buildings without being seen. Something might still be salvaged from this rotten night, if I could get close enough to pull that door open and jerk Pruitt’s ass out of that car.

A pair of headlights swung toward me two blocks away. I flattened into a doorway as the two cars flicked their brights on and off. It was the fat man’s car—I could see the crushed fender where it had hit the guardrail. I patted my pocket and knew I had left them the keys, a stupid mistake, and I’d left their guns there on the seat as well. The two cars pulled abreast for a confab. Then Pruitt turned right, went on around the block, and the fat man was coming my way. He passed and I could see there were two of them in the car—the kid, riding shotgun, was slumped in the seat as if he hadn’t yet come back to the living. Lacking Pruitt, I’d be thrilled with another shot at these two. I wanted to put somebody in the hospital, and any of the three were okay with me.

I let the fat man go on into the next block. I moved out in the rain and ran after Pruitt. He was still the grand prize in this clambake, but by the time I reached the next corner he was gone. Again, I could go off in any direction and be right or wrong, or wait right here while the wheel took another spin. When nothing happened, I crossed to the dark side of the street and walked along slowly, hoping they’d all catch up. For a time it seemed that the action had moved on to another stage. No one came or went. I worried about it, and I was worrying three blocks later when Eleanor turned a corner far ahead and walked briskly up the street toward me.

She was two blocks away but coming steadily. I stood flat in a shallow doorway and egged her on in my mind. I peeped out and she was still there. She passed a light in the next block and I could see her clearly now, looking none the worse for her tumble down the slope. Her hair had come down but that was good: I could get a grip on it and hold her that way if I had to. She was close enough now that I could catch her, but I let her keep coming, each step a little added insurance. If she kept on, she’d pass so close I could grab her without a chase. I had pushed myself as far back in the doorway as I could get: I didn’t dare even a peep as she came closer. I thought sure I’d have her, then everything seemed to stop. I had lost the sense of her, I had to look. She was still a block away, stopped there as if warned off by intuition. I waited some more. With a long head start and terror in her heart, she could still make it though.

She crossed the street. Something about the terrain was bothering her: an alarm had gone off in her head and she was like a quail about to be flushed. I buried my face in the crack and held myself still as death. But when I looked again, she was walking in the opposite direction, back up the street the way she had come.

I leaped out of the doorway and ran on the balls of my feet. I stretched myself out and ate up the block, trying to make up lost ground before she turned and saw me. She ducked into an alley. I clopped up and looked down a dark, narrow place. Something moved a block away, a fluttery blur in the rain. She was spooked now, going at a full run: I gave up stealth and chased her through the dark. I hit a row of garbage cans and went down in a hellish clatter, rolled with the momentum, came up running. But I didn’t see her anymore, didn’t see anything in the murk ahead.

I came out into a street lit only by a distant lamp. It was high noon on Pluto, a world bristling with evil. She screamed, a shriek of such ungodly terror that it smacked me back in my tracks and damn near stopped the rain. Far down the block I saw Pruitt’s kid manhandling her into the car. The fat man stood by the driver’s door, smoking a cigarette down to his knuckles. I had no chance to catch them. The fat man gave me the long look as I ran up the block. He flipped his smoke, flipped me off, got in the car, and drove away in a swirl of mist.

18

I walked under the freeway and up toward Sixth Avenue. I no longer felt the rain. The specter of Pruitt dogged my steps, spurring me along the deserted street. I saw his face on storefront mannequins and felt his eyes watching me from doorways. I heard his voice coming up from the drains where the water ran down off the street. Then the heat passed and I felt curiously calm. I had remembered something that might be his undoing: I had a sense of urgency but none of defeat. The night was young, the game wasn’t over yet, I was more focused with each passing block. I wasn’t going to sit in my room all night knitting an afghan.

I had a pretty good idea what Pruitt would be thinking. In the morning I would call the court, file a complaint, and put the cops after him. This meant he’d be on the move tomorrow but perhaps holed up tonight. As far as they knew, I was a Denver knuckle-dragger who couldn’t find my way around Seattle at midnight if the mayor suddenly showed up and gave me his chauffeured limo. This was good: this was what I wanted them to think.

By the time I was halfway up Sixth my juice was pumping. I stopped at the Hilton, fetched my key, and let myself into my room. I didn’t bother changing clothes—this was just a pit stop, I’d be going out again, I’d be on foot, and I was going to get wet. I sat on the bed with the Seattle phone book and did the obvious stuff first. There was no listing for a Ruel Pruitt or an R. Pruitt in the white pages: nothing under his name under Detective Agencies or Investigators in the yellow. In a strange way, this too was good: it contributed to that sense of security that I hoped Pruitt was counting on for tonight.

Now to find him.

I dug through my dirty clothes, and in the pocket of the shirt I’d worn that first day, I found the scrap of paper I had used to jot down his license number.

I called Denver.

A sleepy voice answered the phone. “ ‘Lo?”

“Neal?”

“Yeah…who’s this?”

“Cliff Janeway.”

“Cliff…Jesus, what time is it?”

I looked at my watch. It was exactly 11:18. My plane for Albuquerque was taking off even as we spoke.

“It’s after midnight back there. Listen, I’m sorry, I know how hard you sleep. But I’m lost in Seattle and I need one helluva big favor from an old pal.”

I heard him stirring on the bed thirteen hundred miles away. His wife asked who it was and he told her. She gave a long-suffering sigh and I told him to give her my regrets.

“Lemme move to the other phone,” he said.

I waited, hoping that loyalty between old partners was still alive and well in Denver.

“Yeah, Cliff?…What the hell’s goin‘ on?”

“I need a big one, Neal.” I slipped into the lie with a little dig from my conscience. Hennessey was too straitlaced to hear the truth, and I’d make sure that none of it ever came back to bite him. “I’m supposed to meet a guy and we missed each other in the night. All I’ve got is his plate number and I need an address.”

There was silence on the line.

“This is important, Neal…I can’t tell you how badly I need this. I thought there might be something on NCIC…you could tap into that in twenty seconds.”

“You got reason to suspect the guy’s car is hot?”

“No, but those goddamn computers tell you everything. If the guy’s even been late paying his traffic tickets…”

“Cliff,” Hennessey said in that measured tone I knew so well, “sometimes you’re a hard guy to be friends with.”

“I’ll be singing your praises with my dying breath.”

“Dammit, this information is not intended for this kind of use.”

We both knew that. As always, I waited him out.

“I’ll make a call, but I’m promising you nothing.

Call me back in half an hour, forty minutes.”

I knew it wouldn’t take that long: Hennessey would have the information almost instantly, such was the power of a cop in the age of computers. He would get the dope through the DPD dispatcher, who would tap into the national system, and then he’d brood for half an hour before he decided to let me have it.

Meanwhile, I had some time on my hands.

I was walking again, on through the rain into the night. I needed wheels, so I went to the gas station where Rigby had had Eleanor’s car towed. It was still there, in a fenced yard behind the rest rooms. I told the attendant I was her brother and they had sent me over to fetch it for her. He didn’t worry much: we weren’t exactly dealing with a Lexus here, and he was anxious to get it off his lot. “I rustled up four pretty fair used tires with another eight, ten thousand in ‘em. Tab comes to eighty-six dollars and ten cents. You wanna pay that now?”

I said sure: I was well past the point of brooding over money, so I handed him my sagging MasterCard. “She’s all yours,” he said, slotting my card through his machine. “Keys’re over the visor.” I went back to the yard and opened the car door. It squeaked on rusty hinges. The seats had worn through, the windshield was cracked and a cold draft wafted up from below. The odometer was playing it for laughs—it showed 34,512, which could only be serious if the meter was on its third trip around. I opened the glove compartment. A small light came on, a pleasant surprise. I saw some papers—registration, proof of insurance, and a sheath of notes that looked to be tables of current book valuations, handwritten on ledger paper in ink. They were all Grayson Press books.

There were separate pages for each title. They were fully described, with many variants noted, with prices and the names of dealers who had sold them. These had been taken from Bookman’s Price Index , with the volume numbers in the margins. She had sifted the material as professionally as any book dealer, noting the year of sale and the condition, along with her own impression of whether the dealers tended to be high or low. It was a ready reference on Grayson’s entire output. The final sheet was marked Poe/The Raven, 1949 edition . Only three copies were listed for the past ten years. In pencil she had noted that Russ Todd down in Arizona had sold an uncataloged copy for $600. I knew Russ well enough to call and ask if I needed to. Most interesting, I thought, was the word edition , which appeared for this book only. It seemed to indicate what I already knew—that some people believed there had been another edition and Eleanor may have been one of them.

I tucked everything back as it was. In a slipcase at the side of the glove compartment I found her address book. It fell open to the letter G , so often had that page been used. She had written some names under the general heading Grayson . There were book dealers from coast to coast, several of them known to me as specialists in fine-press books. There was a local number for Allan Huggins, the Grayson bibliographer, and at the bottom of the page were three names in bold, fresh-looking ink.

Nola Jean Ryder.

Jonelle Jeffords.

Rodney Scofield.

Jonelle Jeffords I remembered as the name of the woman in Taos whose house Eleanor had burglarized. There was a phone number beginning with a 505 area code. The number for Rodney Scofield was a 213 exchange, which I recognized as Los Angeles. The space beside Nola Jean Ryder was blank.

I sat behind the wheel, crossed my fingers, and turned the ignition.

Yea, verily, it started.

I was back in business. I had wheels.

I stopped at the Hilton and called Hennessey. I knew by the cautious sound of his voice that he had what I wanted.

“I’ve got bad vibes about this.”

“Neal, it’s your nature to have bad vibes. The time for you to really start worrying is when you don’t have bad vibes.”

“Very funny. Someday you’ll get me fired, I’ve got no doubt of that at all. No, don’t tell me about it, please…you’re not gonna kill this guy, are you?”

“Now why would you ask a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. I just had a vision of the beaches up there littered with cadavers, all of ‘em named Pruitt. It doesn’t sit well at one o’clock in the morning.”

“I’m just gonna pay him a friendly little visit.”

“Like the Godfather, huh? You’ve got that edge in your voice.”

There was nothing else to say: he’d either give or he wouldn’t.

“Your plate’s registered to a Kelvin Ruel Pruitt. He’s got half a dozen old unresolved legal problems, all in Illinois. Careless driving, failure to appear, a bad check never made good, stuff like that. They’re not about to go after him in another state, but if he ever gets stopped in Chicago, it’ll be an expensive trip.”

He sighed and gave me Pruitt’s address.

“Bless you, Mr. Hennessey, you lovely old man. Now go back to bed and make your wife happy.”

“She should be so lucky.”

I sat at the table and unfolded a Seattle street map. Pruitt lived in a place called Lake City, north of town. I marked the map, but I already had the routes memorized. As a courtesy I called Taos and told them Rigby had escaped. The lonely-sounding dispatcher took my message and managed to convey his contempt across the vast expanse of mountains and plains. I didn’t bother telling him that I was going to find Rigby and bring her back to him. I didn’t think he’d believe that anyway.

19

It was a fifteen-minute drive at that time of night. The draft from the floorboards became a freezing gale, numbing me in my wet clothes. The heater was only partly effective, just beginning to get warm as I reached the Lake City turnoff. I went east on 125th Street, zigzagging through dark and narrow residential lanes until I found the street where Pruitt lived. It was wrapped in wet murk, the sparse streetlights as ineffective as candles. The rain kept coming, beating down like a draconian water cure. The first thing I saw as I turned into the block was the fat man’s car, parked under a tree at Pruitt’s address. I whipped around and pulled in behind him, then sat for a few minutes with the heater running, recovering from the cold drive. The house was draped by trees and flanked by thick underbrush. None of it could be seen from the street. There was also no sign of Pruitt’s Pontiac, which was troubling but might be explained by a garage out back. It was now 1:18 by my watch: almost three hours since they’d snatched her off the street. I had to assume the worst and go from here. Assume all three men were in the house. Figure one of them would be posted as a lookout. The fat man and the kid didn’t scare me much: I had dealt with goons many times, and they always fold when the game gets rough. Pruitt was the X-factor, the unknown. You never know what a psycho will do, or what you’ll have to do if you get him started.

I pulled my gun around to the front of my belt. Still I sat, bothered by something I couldn’t pin down. Then I saw that the fat man’s car door was open in the rain, cracked about six inches. The interior light had come on: this had run the battery down and cast the car in a dim, unnatural glow. He took her in the house, I thought: he had to carry her and never got his door closed, then he forgot to come back out and shut it. I thought of Otto Murdock’s store, pulling that connection out of the rain, from God knew where. Things were left empty, open, unattended. People went away and didn’t come back. Nothing sinister about that, except my own nagging feeling that somehow it shouldn’t be that way.

I’d have to move Eleanor’s car, I knew that. Pruitt would know it on sight, and if he happened to drive up, I’d lose my biggest advantage, surprise. I drove around the block and parked in the dark behind a pickup truck. Again I was walking in the rain. I approached the fat man’s car cautiously. Walked around to the driver’s side and looked in. His wallet lay open on the seat. It was stuffed with money…five, six hundred dollars. I fished out his driver’s license and stared at his picture. William James Carmichael, it said. I wrote down his name and address. I looked in the glove compartment and found several letters addressed to Willie Carmichael. I put them back, got out of the car, and walked to the driveway that led back to the house.

It was heavily draped with trees. I could see lights off in the distance, and a walk that skirted the drive. The walk was shrubbed but too visible, I thought, from the house. I came up the drive, dark as a load of coal, planting each step firmly. It converged with the walk near a flagstone approach to the front door. The only light came from the front windows, dimmed by curtains and reflecting off the slick stones of the walkway.

Three long strides brought me flat against the house. I moved to the door, looking and listening. There was nothing doing anywhere. The door was locked, hardly a surprise. I put my head against it, listening for footsteps, movement, anything that betrayed some living presence. There was nothing.

Just…a faint strain of music.

I took my head away and the music stopped. I listened again. The beat sounded tauntingly familiar, like something I knew but couldn’t quite call up. The steady hiss of the rain all but drowned it out. It quivered just outside my senses, one of those half-remembered bits of business that drives you crazy at two o’clock in the morning. Other than that, the house was still, so quiet it gave me a queasy feeling. I eased back into the brush and around to the side. I saw a light in a window, dim and distant, escaping from another room well back in the house. I pushed through the undergrowth and looked through a small crack in the curtain. I could see a piece of a drawing room, neat and well-furnished with what looked to be antique chairs. Somehow it didn’t fit what I knew about Pruitt, but you never can tell about people: I really didn’t know the man. I squinted through the crack and saw a doorway that led off to a hall. The light came through from the front, and nothing was going on back here.

I touched the glass and there it was again, that rhythmic vibration, as much feeling as sound. I put my ear against it, and on came that faraway melody, that staccato tune that was right on the tip of my…

I froze, unable to believe what had just gone through my head.

“Eleanor Rigby.”

Somewhere inside, someone was playing that song.

Over and over.

Loud enough to shake the walls.

At two o’clock in the morning.

I kept moving. Everything was the color of ink. I came into the backyard, taking a step at a time. Around the edge of a porch, groping, groping. I touched a screened door and saw a long, dim, narrow crack of light. I pulled open the door and moved toward it. It was the back door of the house itself, cracked open like the fat man’s car. The music seeped through it like some dammed-up thing that couldn’t get through the crack fast enough. I had my gun in my hand as I nudged the door with my shoulder. It swung open and the music gushed out.

I was in a black kitchen, lit only by the glow from another room. I could see the dim outlines of a range and refrigerator, nothing more…then, straight ahead, a table with chairs around it. I crossed the room, feeling my way. The music was loud now: I had come into a hallway that led to the front. I walked to the end, to the edge of the parlor. It looked like some proper sitting room from Victorian days. The light came down from above, where the music was playing. I reached the stairs and started up. There was a blip that sounded like a bomb, and the music started again, a shock wave of sound.

I saw a smudge on the stair, a red smear ground into the carpet…

Another one…

…and another one.

More at the top.

I heard a soft sigh. It was my own. The overhead light at the top revealed a dark hallway. I could see a room at the end of it, dimly lit as if by a night-light. I saw more red marks on the carpet coming out of the hall. I moved that way, the hall closing me in like a tunnel. There was a door on each side halfway down, the one on the left open, the room there dark. I kept flat against the wall, breathing deeply, aware of the sudden silence again as the record ended. The room smelled strongly of ashes. My mind caught the smell but it didn’t hold: there was too much going on. I reached inside and felt along the wall with the palm of my hand, found the light, flipped it up, and the flash turned the room the color of white gold. I could see my reflection in a mirror across the room: I was standing in a half-crouch with the gun in my hand, moving it slowly from side to side. It was some kind of office. There was a desk and a filing cabinet, with one drawer hanging open and several files strewn across the floor. The walls were painted a cream color: the only window was covered by a dark curtain.

I turned and faced the room across the way. I could see the thin line of light at the bottom of the door, and in the light cast out from the office, more crusty red smears on the floor. There, I thought: that’s where all the blood’s coming from. I pivoted back on my heel and flattened against the wall. Turned the knob, pushing the door wide. And there he was, Fat Willie Carmichael, and I didn’t need a medical degree to know he had done Pruitt his last favor. The room looked like a slaughterhouse, with blood on the bed and the floor and the walls: splotches of it spewed as if by a high-pressure pump. The fat man had fallen on his back and died there. His head was wrenched back and I could see that his throat had been cut. His fingers were rigid and clawlike, clutching at nothing. I stood in the doorway, heartsick with fear for Eleanor. My hand was trembling, I felt like a rookie cop at his first bad murder scene. I had looked upon more rooms like this one, streaked with red violence, than I could ever add up and count, and now I shook like a kid. There was still one room to check—the open door at the end of the hall.

I reached the dim circle of light and the music came up full as I peeped in. I almost laughed with relief— nobody there! The record player squatted on a table near the window, one of those old portables from the days before stereo. A 45-rpm disc spun wildly. The set was fixed to the automatic mode: the record would play like that forever, till the power failed or the needle wore the grooves off. It was starting again now, a concert from hell.

It was so loud I felt shattered by it. I had an urge, almost a need, to rip out the plug. The night-light flickered precariously, the bulb on its last legs. I found the switch and turned on the overhead, washing the room in light. It looked like a guest room: there was a single bed in a corner facing a portable TV set, a telephone on a table near the record player, a digital alarm clock. The bed had been rumpled but not slept in. Someone had lain or sat on top of the covering.

Handcuffed to the bed.

The cuffs were still there, one bracelet snapped tight to the bedpost, the other lying open on the pillow. The key had been left in the slot where it had been used to release the prisoner from the bed. The cuffs were the same make and style as the set Slater had given me. I came closer and examined the bed, turning back the rumpled folds of the blanket. There I found the book, no larger than a thumb joint, Eleanor’s miniature Shakespeare, her good-luck piece.

I fingered the soft suede leather, opened the cover, and looked at the publisher’s name. David Bryce and Son/Glasgow .

I put it in my pocket and came back up the hall. Last chance at the death scene, I thought. I was thinking like a cop, and I was not a cop, this was not my town. In an hour the room would be full of real cops. I stepped inside, giving the body a wide berth. I looked at Fat Willie Carmichael and thought, Talk to me, baby , but the fat man was keeping his last awful secret to himself. He had been taken from the front, stuck in the sternum with a weapon that was wicked and sharp, then slashed deep across the neck. Either wound was probably fatal, but the killer had hacked him up in other ways, as if venting some raging fury or settling an old score. His clothes were ripped apart: pocket change was scattered around, and his keys were thrown against the wall. The killer had been looking for the one key, I guessed, to unshackle his prisoner in the next room. I looked around the edges of the body: I could see his gun—he had retrieved it from the car and it lay under his hip, still in its holster. This indicated an attack of surprise: taken from the front, but too quickly to react. Or done unexpectedly, by someone he knew.

Time to call the cops, I thought. Out in the hallway, I smelled again that faint whiff of ashes. The office across the hall was thick with it. I looked into the room and saw where it came from—a wastebasket, half-filled with some burned thing, a bucket of ashes. I got down on the floor and touched the can with the back of my hand. It was still warm. I probed into it with my knife, carefully…carefully, lifting one layer away from another. Whatever it was, it had been thoroughly burned, with only a few solid remnants left to show that it had once been sheets of paper. Maybe a police lab could make something out of it; I couldn’t. Then I saw a flash of white—two pages fused together in heat, with small fragments un-buraed. And as I leaned over it, I smelled another odor, half-hidden under the ash but unmistakable if you knew it. Ronsonol. The can and its contents had been doused with lighter fluid to make sure the papers would burn. Some of the fluid had soaked into the carpet but had not burned because the fire had been confined to the inside of the can. Lighter fluid was a smell I knew well. It is one of the bookscout’s major tools, used for removing stickers from book jackets safely and without a trace. Paper can be soaked in it without getting stained, wrinkled, or otherwise damaged, unless someone remembers what lighter fluid’s really for and sets it on fire.

I sniffed around the can and again probed it with the knife. I worked the point between the two pages and jiggled them apart. The words still and whisp stood out on the unburned fragment, the two words arranged one over the other, at a slight angle, with the paper charred close around them. The lettering was striking and quaint: the typeface lovely. Here was the Raven , I thought. It might not make sense, but it looked as if Pruitt had it all along, lost his mind, whacked Willie Carmichael, and burned the damn thing. It didn’t make sense, I thought again. I parted the ashes and went deeper. There was only one other scrap with unburned letters: ange , it said. I took this piece, to have a sample of the typeface, and left the other segment for the cops.

I nudged off the light with my elbow and left the room as I’d found it. I stood for a moment in the hall, listening. But the record had numbed my senses, and now I had to concentrate just to hear the song.

I moved through the hall to the stairs. Looked down into the drawing room.

Something was different. I waited and listened and waited some more, but I saw and heard nothing.

It was my life that had changed. My dilemma. The universe.

I took a solid grip on the gun and went down quickly. Everything was turned around, like a house of mirrors at a carnival. There were two doors: I looked through the other rooms with that same sense of dread and found nothing: then went back through the hall the way I had come. I didn’t know what was eating me until I got to the kitchen. There’s more, I thought: I’ve missed something, I haven’t seen it all yet. I nudged open the swinging door, groped for a light, found it, flipped it, and saw what it was that I had missed.

The woman was sprawled in a lake of blood by the table. I had walked past her in the dark, so close I might’ve stepped on her hand. Like Fat Willie Carmi-chael, she had died by the knife—throat cut, body ripped and torn. I moved closer and looked at her platinum blond hair. I didn’t want to look at her face, but I did. It was Pruitt’s girlfriend, Olga.

Then I saw the footprints, my own, and, oh, Christ, I had walked through her blood coming in. It was like looking down and seeing your crotch covered with leeches: your skin shimmies up your tailbone and your gut knots up and you just want them gone. I didn’t even stop to think about it—the whole fifteen years I’d spent with DPD was so much jackshit, and I went to the roll of paper towels near the range and ripped some off, wet them in hot water at the tap, and washed out the prints. And in that moment, while I played footsie with the killer, I became part of his crime.

Call the cops, I thought: call them now, before you’re in this any deeper.

I rolled the bloody wet towels into a tight ball, wrapped it in two fresh ones, and stuffed it in my pocket. Everything till then had been blind reflex. Again I thought about the cops, but even then I was smearing the water tap with my handkerchief, where I’d touched it wetting the towels.

Stupid, stupid…

I left the record playing: give the cops that much, I owed it to Eleanor, even if I had to pay the price.

I was lucky on one count—the heavy underbrush made it unlikely that neighbors would see me coming or going. Almost too late, I remembered that I had gone through Fat Willie’s wallet: I went back to his car and smeared it with my handkerchief. I walked around the block and sat in Eleanor’s car with my feet dangling in the rain. I took off my shoes, knowing that human blood can linger in cracks longer than most killers could imagine, and I turned them bottoms-up on the floor.

I drifted downtown, my conscience heavy and troubled.

I was at least five miles away when I called them. I stood in a doorless phone booth outside an all-night gas station and talked to a dispatcher through my handkerchief. Told her there were two dead people, gave her the address.

I knew I was being taped, that police calls today can be traced almost instantly. When the dispatcher asked my name, I hung up.

I stopped at Denny’s, put on my shoes, and went inside for a shot of coffee. It was 3:05 a.m. I sat at the fountain and had a second cup. I thought of Eleanor and that record blaring, of Slater and Pruitt, of Crystal and Rigby and the Gray son boys. I wished for two things—a shot of bourbon and the wisdom to have done it differently. But I was in the wrong place for the one and it was too late for the other.

BOOK II

TRISH

20

I found what I needed over my third coffee. It always happens, I don’t know how. When life goes in the tank, I bottom out in the ruins and come up with purpose, direction, strength.

I knew what I had to do. It was too late now to do it the right way, so the same thing had to happen from a different starting point.

I sat at the counter looking at her card.

I made the call.

She caught it on the first ring, as if she’d been sitting there all night waiting for me.

“Hello.”

“Trish?”

“Yup.”

“Janeway.”

“Hi.”

She didn’t sound surprised: she didn’t sound thrilled. She sounded wide-awake at four o’clock in the morning.

“You said if I’d like to talk…well, I’d like to talk.”

“When and where?”

“As soon as possible. You say where.”

“My office, half an hour. Do you know where the Seattle Times is?”

“I’ll find it.”

“I’ll tell you, it’ll save time. Go to the corner of Fairview and John. You’ll see a big square building that looks like all newspaper buildings everywhere. You’ll know you’re there by the clock on the Fairview side—the time on it’s always wrong. Turn into John, park in the fenced lot on the left, come across the street and in through the John Street door. The guard will call me and I’ll come down and get you.”

The clock on the building said 11:23, but it was an hour before dawn when I got there. The rain was coming down in sheets. I parked in a visitor’s slot and made the sixty-yard dash in eight seconds, still not fast enough to keep from getting soaked again. I pushed into the little vestibule and faced a middle-aged man in a guard’s uniform. I asked for Miss Aandahl: he didn’t think Miss Aandahl was in. He made a call, shook his head, and I sat on a bench to wait. Water trickled down my crotch and I felt the first raw tingle of what would probably be a raging case of red-ass. I squirmed in my wet pants and thought, I hate this goddamn town.

She came in about ten minutes later. She was wearing a red raincoat and hood. She was brisk, getting me quickly past the formalities with the guard. He looked at me suspiciously as I disappeared with her into the building. We went past a receptionist’s booth, empty now, then through a door to the right and up a set of stairs. We came out on the second floor, in a corridor that led past a string of offices. There was a bookcase filled with review copies, overflow from the book editor, with a sign to the effect that the staff could buy them (the money to go to charity) at $3 a copy. In a quick flyby, I saw some hot young authors—David Brin, Dan Simmons, Sharyn McCrumb—whose newest books, with author photos and publicity pap laid in, could already command cover price plus 50 percent in a catalog. That’s the trouble with review books; they tend to be wasted on book editors. I wanted to clear out the case, buy them all.

She was standing about thirty feet away, waiting. I joined her at the edge of the newsroom, a huge chamber quiet in the off-hours. It gave the impression that news happened on its timetable, at its command. Let there be news , the keeper of the key would shout at eight o’clock, and fifty reporters would materialize at their computers, clicking furiously. On the far wall was a full-length mural of the world, with clocks showing times in various places. The world looked as peaceful as the newsroom, which only proved how little the world knew.

She hung up her raincoat, then led me into a narrow place defined on both sides by tall filing cabinets. It was crowded with desks, maybe a dozen of them packed into a space the size of a medium-sized living room. It was like walking into a canyon: it was part of the newsroom yet it wasn’t, because an editor couldn’t see in there without getting up and making the grand effort. I didn’t have to be a reporter to know what a coveted spot it was…out of sight, out of mind. Her desk was far back in the corner, as secluded as you could get without moving up in management, getting yourself glassed in and becoming a different breed of cat.

She sat and motioned me to a chair. She looked different somehow from the image I had retained from our one meeting in the courthouse cafeteria. She looked harder and tougher, more of the world. Then she smiled, like the child looking up at Frankenstein’s monster, and I felt good again.

“Nice racket you’ve got,” I said. “You people must get some great poker games going back here.”

“We call it the Dead Zone. They’ll have to kill me to get this desk.”

“Are they trying?”

“So they say.”

She didn’t push me. If I wanted to small-talk and break the ice, she could do that. She was looking straight in my eyes.

“You look miserable…tired, wet, and hungry.”

I nodded. “Your city has not treated me well.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and managed to look it. “You’ve come in the rainy season.”

“Oh. How long does that last?”

“Almost all year.”

She offered coffee but I had had enough. We looked at each other across her desk.

“I came here from Miami,” she said. “My first month was a killer. It rained twenty-eight out of thirty days. I was a basket case. I was ready to go anywhere. If the newspaper in Grand Island, Nebraska, had offered me a job covering the grasshopper beat, I’d‘ve been on the next bus out of here. Then it cleared up and I learned what a sensational place this is.”

“I guess I’ll have to take your word for that.”

“There’re two secrets to living here. You’ve got to dress for weather and you can’t let it get you down.”

“That’s two for two I missed.”

“Now the only thing that bothers me is the traffic. This town has got to be the worst bottleneck in the United States. It’s great as long as you don’t need to drive, or if you do need to drive, you don’t need to park.”

“It sounds better by the minute.”

“I guess I’m here for the long haul. I can’t imagine going anywhere else. What’s Denver like?”

“I had forgotten what rain looks like till I came here.”

“Sun city, huh?”

“Somebody once said that Denver has more sun and sons of bitches than any other city in the country.”

She smiled and said, “I’ll stay with the rain. I bought a boat last year, I’m a pretty fair sailor now. Sometimes I just take off on Friday and drift up the coast. I put in at some warm-looking marina and spend the weekend exploring. If I’ve got a difficult piece to write, I do it there, out on deck if the weather’s nice.”

“Is that where you wrote your book?”

“Would have, if I’d had it then. Have you read it?”

“Not yet, but it’s high on my list. I just picked up a copy.”

“Yeah, well, don’t believe everything you read.”

I thought that was the strangest thing I had ever heard a reporter say. She shrugged and said, “It’s a good book, I’m not apologizing for it; if I had it to do over again, I’m sure it’d come out mostly the same. A little better, maybe. That’s the curse of being a writer, you never want to look back at what you did last year because the trip’s too painful. You see stuff you should’ve done better, but now it’s set in stone.”

“What would you change?”

“A thousand little things…and of course I’d write a new ending.”

“Of course?”

“The ending leaves the impression that the Graysons died in an accident. Just some tragic twist of fate.”

“Which is…?”

“Not true.”

“They were murdered, you said.”

“Read the book, then talk to me again. Just keep in mind that the last chapter wasn’t what I would’ve done, then or now.”

“If you didn’t do it, who did?”

“It was sanitized by an editor in New York. The problem was, I had produced this monster-sized book and it was ending with more questions than it answered. They didn’t like that, they felt it would not be satisfying for a reader to go through seven hundred and fifty pages and come out with the kind of questions I was asking. Especially when the experts seemed to agree that it was an accident and I couldn’t prove it wasn’t. The book really didn’t need to end with any unanswered questions at all. They died. That was the end of it.”

“But not for you.”

“I still keep my finger in it. As you can see.”

“You must have something in mind.”

She smiled into the sudden pause that stretched between us. “I’ve been doing some fiction lately. I’m finding a voice, as the literati say. I’ve had three or four pieces in the literary reviews and I’m working on a novel. Maybe that’s how I’ll finally get rid of the Graysons. I read somewhere that fiction’s the only way you can really tell the truth. I never even understood that when I was learning the ropes, but I sure believe it now.”

She gave me a look that said, Hey, I’m not pushing you, but why the hell are we here ?

I said, “I’ve got a deal for you.”

“I already own the Space Needle, I bought it last year. I never could resist a deal.” She got up and came around the desk, patting me on the shoulder. “Let’s go get some breakfast. I don’t think I want to hear this on an empty stomach.”

21

It was a lick and a promise, all I had time for. My reading on her would have to be the abridged version, once over lightly. This is your life, Trish Aandahl, a tour of the high spots. From that I’d decide: move on alone or bring her to the party.

Conventions and courtesies, five minutes. She had grown up in Ohio, her parents simple people who lived for the moment. Life was what it was: you worked at it every day and got up the next day and did it again. Her father had worked for wages in Cincinnati; her mom found jobs in restaurants, dime stores, car washes, wherever there was women’s work that demanded no special skills. They had produced a child unlike either of them, a daughter who didn’t believe in women’s work and grew up thinking she could do most anything. At least the parents had had the wisdom to indulge her differences.

She beat the clock with a minute to spare. She knew I was fishing, but she had tapped into my growing sense of urgency and was willing to give me some rope.

Personal color, three minutes. Trish was her real name, listed that way on her birth certificate. Her mother had named her after a best friend and had never known that the name was a diminutive of Patricia.

She was alone in the world. Her parents were dead and there were no other children. If there was a man in her life, it wasn’t readily apparent. She wore no rings, but that doesn’t mean as much as it once did.

She was amused now, wondering how far I’d go into this Dick-and-Jane style personal Baedeker. I wondered about her gripes and dislikes and gave her one minute for that.

She didn’t need it. Phonies, stuffed shirts, chiselers, and liars. Her code was much like mine, her hate list virtually identical.

Extra bit of business, thirty seconds. She was a chronic insomniac, able to sleep undisturbed only about one night in four. That’s why she had been sitting there by the telephone, reading a novel, when I called.

I knew everything about her by the time the waitress brought our breakfasts. What more do you need to know about anyone, until the chips are down and you discover that you never knew anything at all?

“I’m ready to tell you about Slater,” I said.

“Why the change of heart?”

“Because the circumstances have changed and I want something back from you. Isn’t that how life works?”

“If it’s an even trade, sure. Is the Slater story worth anything?”

“I think you’ll find it interesting. The entertaining part is trying to figure out where it’s heading. It’s still unfolding, as you newsies might put it.”

“The terminology is breaking . I don’t do breaking stories anymore.”

“I think you’ll do this one.”

“So what do you want for it?”

“A lot less than you paid for the Space Needle. Are we off the record yet?”

“If that’s how you want it.”

I threw in a zinger, to test her dedication to the code. “Don’t take offense at this, but how do I know your word is good?”

She did take offense: she bristled in her chair, and for a moment I thought she might pick up and walk out. “I’ll tell you the answer to that, but you’re only allowed to ask it once. You can check me out with a phone call. I worked in Miami for four years. I went to jail down there over just this kind of stuff.”

“Really?” I said in my most-interested voice. “How long were you in?”

“It was only ten days. My paper made it a frontpage embarrassment for them and they were glad enough to see me go. I might still be there, though, if they hadn’t gotten their information from someone else.”

“That’s okay, ten days is long enough. At least you know the taste of it.”

“The taste, the smell, the color. It colors your whole life. But I’ll go back again before I let them make me betray…even you.”

“Hey, I believe you. In a funny way, though, it makes what I’m trying to do more difficult.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not quite ready to go on the record yet. But I can’t even explain the situation to you off the record without handing you a piece of my legal jam.”

“What kind of legal jam?”

“There was a crime done tonight. A bad one.”

“Did you do it?”

“No, ma’am, I did not.”

“Then…”

“I did some other stuff, stupid stuff that will not make them love me. If the cops don’t love you, you need something in your corner besides a motive, the means, and no alibi. You’d look good in my comer. But you need to know the risks.”

Warily, she said, “Can you tell me in general terms what happened?”

“Generally speaking, two people got killed. I’ve been busy all night destroying evidence and obstructing justice. They’ll almost certainly charge me with that, but at least I can bail out on it. That’s my magic word right now, bail . I have this compelling need to be out. I’ve got to be out.” I let a long pause emphasize that point for me, then I said, “But over the last two hours I’ve come to realize that the magnitude of my fuckup may make that impossible. I’ve got a growing hunch they might start taking my measurement for the murder rap.”

She let out her breath slowly, through her nose. I saw a slight shiver work its way across her shoulders.

“That’s it in a nutshell,” I said. “I’m still trying to figure out how to handle it. I need to do that before I can get into the story or tell you what I want from you.”

“I don’t think it’s a problem. I’m not legally obligated to tell the police what you tell me.”

“I can see a situation, though, where they’d call you in and ask some questions you’d rather not answer.”

“I’ll claim privilege.”

“And end up in jail again.”

“Maybe I’ll take that chance, if the story’s worth it.”

“The story’s worth it. But between the two of us, we may still have to dig for the end of it.”

She looked out into the rainy street, just now awash with the palest light of morning. I floated a hint of what I hoped she could do for me.

“I’m hoping you know a great cop in this town, or a DA with a real head on his shoulders. The closer you’d be to such an animal the better.”

“I’m not sleeping with anybody right now,” she snapped. “If I was, I sure wouldn’t use him that way.”

“You’re touchy as hell at five o’clock in the morning, aren’t you? You should learn to sleep better.”

“Janeway, listen to me. You and I may become the best of pals, but we won’t get to first base if you keep dropping insults on my head.”

“And we’ll never get anywhere if you’re one of those politically correct types who takes offense at everything. I’m no good at walking on eggs. Do you want to hear what I meant or sit there and be pissed off?”

“Tell me what you meant, maybe I’ll apologize later.”

“I may need to turn myself in. If I do, all this is a moot point, you can do anything you want with it. But I’d at least like to be talking to my kind of cop, not one of those tight-asses who thinks the first mistake I made happened way back in Denver, when I quit the brotherhood.”

She didn’t say anything.

“The Rigby girl’s gone. I have good reason to believe that the killer may have taken her. I want to be out looking for her: I need to be looking, I really can’t overstate that. I will come totally unzipped sitting in a jail cell. All humility aside, I’m still the best cop I know. I’m not saying Seattle will give her a fast shuffle, but I know how it is in these big departments, I know how many cases those boys have to clear. I’m here, I’m focused, I’m looking for Eleanor, and I’ll open all the doors.”

I took a deep breath, which became a sigh. “But I’m far from home, I’m being slowly driven crazy by this rain, and I know nobody here but you. The cop in me wants to tear up this town looking for her, but I’m not even sure yet where the doors are. And if that kid winds up dead and the real cops could’ve prevented it while I’m out playing policeman…”

We looked at each other.

“I’ll tell ya, Trish, I’d find that damn near impossible to live with.”

She answered my sigh with one of her own, but it was a long time coming. “You want it both ways. It can’t be done.”

“If it can’t be done, I go in—no arguments, no questions. Her welfare is the first priority.”

“Maybe you should go in. Can you really do her any good out here by yourself?”

“I might surprise you. I really was a decent cop. With me looking too, her chances would have to go up. I don’t know, I’ve got to try. But there isn’t much time.”

I droned on, summarizing the immediate problem. The cops had to be told about Rigby now, this morning, before they closed down the scene. In a homicide investigation, every minute wasted on the front end is critical. I looked at my watch: I had already blown three hours.

“Let’s make it very clear, then, what you want from me and what kind of restraints I’m under,” she said. “As it stands now, I can’t even ask the cops an intelligent question.”

“That’s why I was hoping you knew somebody.”

“That I was sleeping with the chief of police, you mean. Sorry, Janeway, no such luck. I don’t drink with them or eat lunch with them, I don’t backslap or schmooze or let them tell me dirty jokes. My relationship with these guys is respectable but distant. It’s extremely professional and I’ve taken some pains to keep it that way.”

“Do you know anybody on the paper who does schmooze with them?”

“Nobody I’d trust, and I’d be wary of any cop such a guy might bring me. I don’t like reporters who party with people they write about.”

We thought it through another stretch of quiet.

She said, “I feel like I’m playing pin the tail on the donkey, or a card game with half a deck.”

“You want to hear the story, I’ll tell you the story.”

“Sure I want to hear it, isn’t that why we’re here? I’ll take it any way you want to tell it, on the record or off.”

I told it to her with no more clarification than that. I took her from Slater’s arrival in my bookstore through my hasty retreat from Pruitt’s house three hours ago. She asked nothing and made no judgments until it was finished. Her eyes darted back and forth as if she’d been replaying parts of it in her head.

“God, I’ve got more questions now than I had at the beginning. I know who Slater is, but who is Pruitt? Is this really about a Grayson book or is something else at the bottom of it? What happened to the kid who was tagging along with the fat man? And you…oh, Janeway, what on earth possessed you and what’re you thinking now? Do you think Pruitt lost his mind, killed his friends, and took off with Rigby? Does that make sense to you?”

“All I know for sure is there were five people, counting Eleanor. Only two are accounted for and they’re dead.”

“And what about that record playing? What do you make of that?”

“She was being stalked and harassed on the phone. It had to’ve been Pruitt, that’s obvious now. He was her darkman, her worst nightmare.”

“But why leave the record playing, at home, with a dead man there?”

The check came. I made a stab at it but she was quicker. She looked through her purse and fished out a twenty.

“I’m going on up to the scene,” she said. “At least then we’ll know what cops are working it. Maybe I can take them off the record and get them to tell me something.”

We walked out in the rain. I stood beside her car, getting wet again, and talked to her through the narrow crack at the top of her window.

“I’ll be holed up in my room at the Hilton. You call me.”

“As soon as I can.”

“Sooner than that. Remember, I am not calm, I’m not taking this in my stride. I am very nervous.”

“I hear you.”

“You call me, Trish. The minute you can get the smell of it and break away, you get on that phone.”

“I’ll call, but don’t get your hopes up. I think you’re gonna have to go in to get what you want. And the cops won’t be naming you citizen of the year.”

22

I stood under a hot shower, put on dry clothes, lay on the bed with the TV low, and waited uneasily.

She called just before eight.

“The cops on the case, Quintana and Mallory…I know them both, not well, but maybe enough to give you a reading. It’s not good news.”

“Of course not,” I said, sitting up on the bed.

“You might be able to talk to Mallory if you could get him alone. But it wouldn’t do much good, he’d take it all to Quintana anyway.”

“It’s pretty hard to hold out on your partner.”

“And then Quintana would be running it, and your troubles would just begin. Mallory’s the weak sister in this Mutt-and-Jeff show: you can’t ask him about the weather with Quintana in the same room—you ask him a question and Quintana answers it. Quintana’s an overriding presence, extremely inhibiting. He is tough, intelligent to the point of being cunning, and damned condescending to women and other small animals. I don’t think he’d look at a former cop with much sympathy. People call him supercop, and not all of them mean it the way he’d like to think.”

There’s one in every department, I thought. I’d had one for a partner myself, before Hennessey. It didn’t last long. Steed had had to split us up to keep us from killing each other.

The prognosis was obvious. Grimly I moved on to the next round of questions. Had the cops been able to make the Rigby connection from the “Rigby” record?

“I haven’t been able to get into that with them. They’re just not open with stuff like that, and everybody’s wondering what I’m doing here anyway. I told you I don’t do breaking stories. We’ve got other people covering this, and I’m bumping into them every time I turn around.”

“What’s your best guess?”

“About the record?…I can’t see them linking it.”

I lost my temper, probably because I couldn’t see them linking it either. “Goddammit, who does Seattle put on these homicide jobs, Peter Sellers? What’s the matter with these fucking cops, what does it take to get their attention?”

“You asked me what I think and I told you. I could be wrong. But I think they’ll figure the record as noise, to cover up what was happening in that house. The music will go right past them. A million people in this town like Beatles music—it might as well have been the Judds on that deck, or the Boston Pops. Why would the police think twice about ‘Eleanor Rigby’?”

“Because a woman by that name just went through their stupid nitwit court system!”

“You’re assuming the right hand knows what the left hand’s doing. In a system this big, you should know better. Anything’s possible: I just think it would take one brilliant cop or a stroke of luck for that to happen.”

I heard an emergency vehicle pass in her background, the siren fading as it went by on the way somewhere else.

“They’ll be putting a wrap on it soon,” she said. “Are you coming in?”

I thought of supercop. It was almost more than I could bear.

“Janeway…”

“I hear you. I’m just having a lot of trouble with it.”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“What if I didn’t come in?”

“I think that would be a mistake.”

“What have I got to lose at this point, supercop’s gonna have my ass for breakfast anyway. They don’t need me, they’ve got you.”

“I think I’m still off the record. Did we ever get that straight?”

“If we did, consider it inoperative.”

“What do you want me to tell them?”

“Everything. Anything that helps them find Rigby. Tell them if they waste manpower looking for me, they’re a bunch of losers.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Start from ground zero, go till I drop.”

“Listen,” she said as if she had just made up her mind about something. “We need to talk some more. Don’t just disappear on me. Call me tonight.”

“I’ll see where I am then.”

“I know some stuff I didn’t tell you yet…things you need to hear. Will you call me?”

“I’ll try.”

“It’s important.”

We seemed to have reached the end. But she was reluctant to let me go.

“Cliff, is this really what you want?”

“No. But it’s what I’m going to do.”

23

How do you disappear in the other man’s town? I went about it step by step, covering my tracks, playing the odds, counting on what I knew of the supercop mentality to help me along. Aandahl would be getting back to the scene right about now, just as I was packing my stuff out of the Hilton and loading up in Eleanor’s trunk. She’d be starting to tell them now, as I turned into University and hit the freeway. She’d probably start out talking to the quiet one, Mallory: that was her nature, avoid the supercops of the world as long as possible. It wouldn’t be possible for long: Mallory would call in supercop as soon as he realized what he had…just about now, I thought. She’d be segregated in one of the rooms away from the investigation and they’d start on her slowly and work their way up to heat. She’d have to repeat it all, everything she’d told Mallory: supercop never settled for hearsay, even from a partner. Again Mallory would ask the questions and she would answer, and when it was time for the heat to come down, supercop would take over and see if she scared. Maybe she’d tell him where to shove it. I thought about her and decided she just might. It would take an hour off the clock for them to get to that point.

I found a bank that was open on Saturday, half-day walkup-window service. My paper trail would end here, it was cash-and-carry from now on. The paper I had already left would soon take them through Slater to the Hilton. Supercop would also know that I’d been driving an Alamo rental, but he’d be annoyed to find it disabled in the Hilton garage. How long a leap would it be until he had me driving Rigby’s car? It could be half a day or it might be done with two two-minute phone calls. A lot depended on luck—his and mine—and on how super the asshole really was.

I drew a $3,000 cash advance on my MasterCard. There was more where that came from, an untapped balance maybe half again as much. In the other pocket of my wallet I had a Visa, which I seldom used: the line of credit on that was $2,000. I never maxed out on these cards: I always paid it off and the jackals kept bumping my line upward, hoping I’d have a stroke of bad luck and they could suck me into slavery at 18 percent along with the rest of the world’s chumps. It was good strategy, finally about to pay off for them.

I took the cash in hundreds, two hundred in twenties. It made a fat wad in my wallet.

I stopped in a store and bought some hair dye, senior-citizen variety, guaranteed to turn me into a silver panther. I’d have to do it in two stages, bleach my dark hair white and then dye it gray with an ash toner. I’d be an old man till I dyed it back or it grew out. I bought a good grease pencil with a fine point and a hat that came down to my ears. I bought some sealing tape, shipping cartons, a marking pen, and a roll of bubblewrap. I doubled back toward town. In the Goodwill on Dearborn I bought a cane and an old raincoat. For once in my life I left a thrift store without looking at the books.

I sat in the car with the windows frosting up and did my face. I gave myself a skin blemish under my right eye, added some dirty-looking crow’s-feet to the real ones I was getting through hard living, and headed out again. I looked at myself in the glass. It wasn’t very good, but maybe it didn’t have to be. All I needed now was to pass in a rush for an old duffer with the hurts, when I talked to the man at the check-in counter.

I chose a motel not far from the Hilton, the Ramada on Fifth just off Bell Street. I pulled my hat down and leaned into the cane as I walked into the lobby. For now I would be Mr. Raymond Hodges, a name I pulled out of thin air. I also pulled off a pretty good limp, painful without overdoing it. I gave a half-sigh, just audible with each step down on my right foot. The guy behind the desk didn’t seem to notice me beyond the bare fact of my presence, a sure sign that he had taken me at face value. There’s nobody in that room but an old guy who can barely walk , he’d tell anybody who wanted to know. It wouldn’t fool supercop if he got this far, but if they were checking around by phone, it might discourage them from coming out for the personal look.

It was still only midmorning: registration for the night wouldn’t be opening for another four or five hours, but the man let me in when I told him I was tired. The only thing that seemed to throw him momentarily was the sight of cash. In the age of plastic, a man with cash is almost as suspicious as a man with a gun.

For my own peace of mind, I had to get rid of Otto Murdoch’s books, and it was Saturday and the post office was on a banker’s schedule. In my room I sealed the books in the bubblewrap and packed them tight, with the other books I’d bought all around them. I sealed the boxes and addressed them to myself in Denver. I called the desk for directions and he sent me to the main post office at Third and Union. I insured the boxes to the limit—not nearly enough— and felt a thousand pounds lighter when they disappeared into the postal system.

The library was just a few blocks away, and I stopped there to look at a copy of The Raven . The most accessible Poe was the Modern Library edition, on an open shelf in the fiction section. I sat at a table and browsed it, looking for the words still and whisp , printed diagonally one above the other. I found them in the fifth stanza, partial words but strong as a fingerprint.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood

there, wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared

to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness

gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered

word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the

word, “Lenore!”

Merely this and nothing more.

I took the charred scrap from my wallet and looked for the letters ange . It was there, twice, in the sixteenth stanza, reference to the sainted, radiant maiden Lenore, who had been named by the angels.

I made photocopies of the three pages and headed back to the Ramada.

In my room I did my hair, watching with some amazement as the black became white and then gray and by degrees I took on the appearance of my father. I quit when it seemed right. When it dried, I hit it with the grease pencil, giving myself a slightly speckled look.

I redid my face and made a better job of it.

There was a kind of fatalistic rhythm to my movements. I was doing what I had to do and time no longer mattered. Eleanor was either dead or alive: if she still lived, I rather liked her chances for the immediate future. He wasn’t about to kill her, not after all this grief, till he had what he wanted. Never mind the ashes: appearances could be deceiving, and the feeling persisted that what I wanted was still out there somewhere, alive and well. If I could find it first, I’d have a strong bargaining chip, and there was a fair chance we’d even converge in the hunt. I didn’t know Seattle, I had no idea where Pruitt or the fat man’s kid might do their drinking, but I did know books. I’d let the cops do the legwork—the job I’d set them on at no small personal risk to myself, the work they had the manpower and the skill to pull off—and I’d go after the book.

It was now after ten-thirty. Supercop would be finished with Trish, at least for the moment, and he’d be on the phone to Denver, going after my mug shot and stats. I pictured the looks on Hennessey and Steed and almost laughed at the thought. It would go against Steed’s grain, but he’d have to honor supercop’s request and wonder to himself if I had finally popped my buttons and started cutting out paper dolls. As for Hennessey, I’d have some serious fences to mend there, but what else was new?

I knew I was tired—the last real sleep I could remember was the Rigby loft, more than forty-eight hours ago—but I didn’t want to stop. I sat on the bed and began working the phone. I opened Eleanor’s little address book to the Grayson page and decided to start with Allan Huggins, the man who knew more about the Graysons than they had known about each other. I punched in the number, but there was no answer.

I kept going. I called Jonelle Jeffords in Taos. A machine answered. “Hi, this’s where Charlie and Jo live. If you’ve got something to say that I might want to hear, leave a number, maybe I’ll call you back.”

No bullshit there: old Charlie cut right to the short strokes. I hung up on the beep.

I sat for a while looking at the name Rodney Scofield. It seemed vaguely familiar, like something I’d heard once and should’ve remembered. Finally I called his number cold, a Los Angeles exchange.

A recording came on. I wondered if it’s possible in this day and age to punch out a phone number and actually speak to a living human being.

I hung on through the entire recording, hoping for some hint of what Scofield was about. A female voice began by telling me I had reached the business offices of Scofield Plastics on Melrose Avenue. Their hours were nine a.m. to five p.m. , Monday through Friday. At the end was a menu of punch codes: if I wanted to reach the voice mail of various department heads, I should punch one, two, three, and so on. Finally, there was this:

“If you have business pertaining to the Grayson Press, please press number eight, now.”

I punched it.

The phone rang.

A recording began on the other end.

“This is Leith Kenney. I’m not here but I do want to talk to you. If you have Grayson books for sale, or information about single books or collections, please call me back or leave a number where you may be reached. You may also reach me at home, at any hour of the day or night. We are interested in any primary Grayson material, including letters, photographs, business records, broadsides, and even incomplete projects and partial layouts. We pay top cash money, well above auction rates. We will match any offer for important material, and we pay equally well for information that results in major acquisitions.”

He gave a home number and I called it. Again came that scratchy, unmistakable sound of a recording machine. There again was Kenney’s voice, apologizing. He had stepped out but would return soon. Would I please leave a number?

No, I would not.

I had a hunch I had found Pruitt’s moneyman, and I wanted to catch him cold.

I slept five hours. No apologies, no bouts with conscience. My tank was empty: I needed it.

I awoke at four o’clock in a state of anxiety. I had heard a bump somewhere and had come to life thinking of supercop. Dark shadows passed outside, beyond my window, probably a SWAT team getting ready to crash the door.

But when I parted the curtains, it was just a family checking in. The rain had stopped for the moment, but a heavy cloud cover hung over the city, and the streets were wet from a recent drenching. I took a hot shower and dressed, thinking of my immediate future in terms of moves.

My first move had to be to ditch Eleanor’s car. I walked over to the lobby, giving the clerk a good look at me in my old-man role. I used the cane well and was satisfied when he gave me nothing more than a smile and a passing glance.

I bought a Seattle Times from a box and sat in my room browsing the classifieds. I found the car I wanted in less than a minute, but when I called, the party had sold it. I tried again: there were plenty more like that. All I wanted was something cheap that would run for a week.

The one I found was twenty minutes away, in a ramshackle garage behind a tenement house. It was a Nash from the fifties, the oldest car I would ever own. The body was consumed by rust but the engine sounded decent, rebuilt, said the young man selling it, just three or four years ago. He wanted four hundred: it was a classic, he said, selling hard. I told him everything today was a classic and offered him three. “This is a great make-out car,” he said. “The seats fold back into a full bed, with five different positions.” I gave him a long gray stare and asked if I looked like a guy who needed five different positions. He grinned and said, “Just need wheels to get you to the ”VA, huh, pops?“ We settled on three-fifty with no further commentary.

The whole business took less than half an hour. He brought out some papers and signed them over to my Raymond Hodges alias and had one last-minute doubt about the license plates. “I think you’re supposed to pull those plates and go down to motor vehicles and get a temporary.” I told him I’d take care of it and he accepted this cheerfully. I left Eleanor’s car on the street a block away, noting the address so I could call the Rigbys to come pick it up. It was a quiet residential neighborhood and I thought the car would be safe there for a few days before somebody called in and reported it to the city as abandoned.

Back in the motel, I made my phone checks again. Neither Leith Kenney in L.A. or Charles and Jonelle Jeffords in Taos were yet answering the telephone, but I reached Allan Huggins on the sixth ring.

“Mr. Huggins?”

“Speaking.” He sounded out of breath, as if he’d run some distance to catch the phone.

“My name’s Hodges, you don’t know me, I’m a book dealer from Philadelphia. I’ve been hired by a private investigator to track down a book and I’m hoping it’s something you might be able to help me with.”

His laughter was sudden and booming. “You’re a card, aren’t you, sir?…A book dealer who’s also a detective, you say? What’ll they think of next?”

“I guess it’s that combination of skills that makes me as good a bet as anybody to find a book that nobody thinks is real.”

“Aha, you must be looking for the Grayson Raven …Darryl Grayson’s lost masterpiece.”

“How’d you know that?”

“It’s what everyone’s looking for. I must get half a dozen calls a year on it, maybe more. It’s one of those urban myths that got started just after the Graysons died. It just won’t go away, and it’s all preposterous, just total nonsense. Read my bibliography.”

“I’ve done that.”

“Well, then…”

“It’s a great piece of work, but it won’t answer the one question that keeps coming up.”

“Which is…?”

“If there’s nothing to it, why do so many people keep chasing it?”

“Now you’re asking me to be a psychologist, and all I ever was, was a poor bibliographer. This is the reason I stick to books. No matter how complicated they become, bibliographically, their mysteries can always be solved. With people, who knows? Have you ever solved the mystery of anyone, sir—your brother, your son, the woman you love?”

“Probably not. Maybe I could come see you, we could put our heads together and solve the riddle of the Graysons.”

“Not very damned likely.”

“I won’t take much of your time.”

“If you think it’ll help, come ahead. But I can tell you right now, you won’t get any encouragement from me in this Grayson Raven business. If you ask me was Grayson planning another Raven , my answer would have to be yes. I’ve alluded to that much in my bibliography. But there’ve been no major changes in the Grayson Press bibliography since my book was published. Some poems by Richard have turned up, and maybe fifty significant broadsides. But in my humble opinion, the Raven project never got off the ground. If you want to ask me why foolish people keep chasing that myth, I have no idea.”

“Maybe you could show me some of their books. I’ve heard you have the biggest collection in the world.”

My compliment fell strangely flat: he didn’t seem unusually proud of the fact, if it was a fact. But he said, “When will you come? I’m not doing anything wonderful right now.”

“Now is fine.”

I took down his address. He lived on the sound, in Richmond Beach. Five minutes later, I banked the Nash into 1-5, heading north.

24

Huggins lived in a two-story brick house on a large wooded lot facing the water. It was well back from the street, hidden from the world. In the last light of the day I could see the water gleaming off in the distance as I drove into his yard. I saw a curtain flutter: a door opened and he came out on an upper deck.

He had a shock of white hair and a curly white beard, a big belly, and burly, powerful arms. Santa Claus in coveralls and a flannel shirt, I thought as I came toward him. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows: he looked like a working man waiting for some wood to chop. We shook hands and he welcomed me to his home. There was a spate of polite talk as we went inside. I asked if he’d been here long and he said yes, twenty-six years in this house this coming November. His wife had died a few years ago and for a while he had considered selling it—lots of old memories, you know, lots of ghosts—but he had kept it and now he was glad he had. It was home, after all: everything he had was here, and the thought of moving it all, of winnowing down, was…well, it was just too much. Then about a year ago all the pain had begun melting away. He had begun taking comfort in these nooks and crannies and in all the thousands of days and nights he had lived here.

We went through the living area and into his kitchen, where he had just brewed a pot of coffee. The window looked down a rocky hillside to Puget Sound, which stretched away like an ocean into a wall of coming darkness.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, “I’m terrible with names.”

I fed him my alias again and he repeated it in an effort to remember. The coffeepot gushed its last orgasmic perks and he poured two huge mugs without waiting for it to end. “I like it strong,” he said, and I nodded agreeably, waving off the sugar and cream. “So,” he said, getting down to cases, “you want to know about the Gray sons. Where do you want to start? I’m afraid you must be the guide here, sir—I don’t mean to brag, but my knowledge of the Grayson Press is so extensive that we could be here for days.” He gave a helpless-looking shrug.

“I’m not sure where to start either. I said I wouldn’t take up much of your time, but I’m just beginning to realize what a deep subject this is.”

“Oh, my dear,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Even the Aandahl biography is a monster. It’ll take me a week to read it.”

He made a derisive motion with his hand. Santa was suddenly cross. “The woman’s a maniac.”

“Who, Aandahl?”

“Journalists,” he sneered. “All they ever want is the garbage in a man’s life. Gossip. Bedroom stories. Lurid sex. But what can you expect from a newspaper reporter?”

“I guess I won’t know that till I’ve read it.”

“Don’t waste your time, you won’t learn anything about the books, Mr. Hodges, and isn’t that what we’re here to discuss? Listen, if Darryl Grayson himself were sitting with us at this table, he’d tell you the same thing. A man is nothing. All that matters is his work.”

I had never been able to swallow that notion, but I didn’t want to push him on it. It seemed to be a sore spot that he had nurtured for a long time.

“I don’t mean to be harsh,” he said in a kinder tone. “It’s easy to like Trish: she’s witty and quick and God knows she does turn a phrase. I’m sure she can be delightful when she’s not chasing off to Venus or obsessing over the Grayson brothers. But get her on that subject and she’s crazy. I don’t know how else to put it.”

He gulped his coffee hot. “I’ll tell you how crazy Trish Aandahl is. She thinks Darryl and Richard Grayson were murdered.”

I stared at him as if I had not heard the same words from Trish herself. “Is she serious?”

“Damn right she is. She gets her teeth into something and never lets go of it. She’s like a bulldog.”

“I guess I’m at a disadvantage here. I just got her book and I’ve barely had time to look at it.”

“You won’t find any of this in there. The publisher made her take it out.”

“Why?”

“The obvious reason—she couldn’t prove any of it. It was all conjecture. As a reporter you’d think she’d know better. But I hear she fought with her editor tooth and nail, really took it to the wall. It almost jeopardized the book’s publication. If she hadn’t listened to her agent’s advice, the whole deal might’ve fallen through.”

“What advice?”

“To take what she could get now—publish the biography without all the trumped-up mystery. To keep working the other angle if she believed it that strongly. If she could ever prove it, it might make a book in itself, but as it was, it just undercut the credibility of the book she’d written.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Of course it’s reasonable. But a reasonable person also knows when to stop. What’s it been now, three or four years since her book was published? Four years, and I don’t think she knows anything more today than she did then. But she’s still out there digging. Or so I hear.”

“I take it you and she are not bosom buddies.”

He smiled, struggling to mellow. “We’re certainly not enemies. It’s just her book I don’t like: I don’t like it even without the epilogue, or whatever she called the murder chapter. Who cares how many prostitutes Richard Grayson knew in Seattle, or that even poor Darryl never could keep his own pants zipped? I just don’t like that kind of business. I’m not a prude, I’m just suspicious of it. Trish will tell you she did more than three hundred interviews for her book. I say so what. How can we be certain that even Archie Moon, who was Darryl Grayson’s friend for life, was telling her the truth?”

“People usually tell the truth when they know they’re being quoted in a published record of their best friend’s life.”

“That’s what you think. You’ll pardon me if I remain a skeptic. I’m not saying Moon would lie—I just know that people do put their own spin on things. It’s human nature. How can anyone know what really went on between Grayson and Moon over a forty-year friendship, when one of them’s dead and the other might have an ax to grind? Moon’s agenda might be nothing more devious than to have Grayson viewed well by posterity. So he might not tell you something that would undercut that, even though it might well contribute to a better understanding of Grayson’s genius and how he made his books.”

“It sounds like you’re saying that Grayson’s genius had a dark side.”

“Can you imagine any genius that doesn’t? It comes with the territory, as people say these days. You’ll hardly ever find a truly brilliant man who isn’t a little sick in some way. But what difference does it make? The Graysons are of general interest only because of the books they produced. If they hadn’t done the books, they’d be nothing but a pair of swaggering cocksmen, forgotten by everybody including Ms. Trish Aandahl. Anyone can lie down with whores, but only one man could have done the Thomas Hart Benton Christmas Carol . Only one. That book was a creation , you see, and that’s what I choose to focus on. I don’t do interviews for my work, I’m not interested in what people say about the Graysons, all I want to know is what really happened. My disciplines are rigid, precise, verifiable, true. If that sounds like bragging, so be it. I don’t report rumors or pillow talk.”

He held my eyes for a long moment, then said, “You look like you disagree with everything I’ve just said.”

“I’m absorbing it.”

He poured me another cup, got a third for himself, and sat down again. “Very diplomatic, sir. But look, tell the truth—as a bookman—do you actually like biography?”

“It’s like anything else, a lot of it’s slipshod and crummy. I don’t like the Mommie Dearest crap. But I guess I believe there’s a need for biographies of people like the Graysons, done by a writer who’s a real writer, if you know what I mean. No offense to you— what you do is indispensable, but…”

“But I’m not a writer and Trish is. You won’t get any argument from me on that point. The woman is just a sorceress when it comes to words. There’s a seductive quality to her writing that hooks you by the neck and just drags you through it. Just wait till you get started reading her book—you won’t be able to leave it alone. You’ll wake up in the night thinking about Darryl and Richard Grayson, their times and the lives they led. Trish is just brilliant when it comes to conveying emotions with images and words. She could’ve been a great fiction writer, done the world a favor and left the Graysons alone.”

“What about you? Did Aandahl interview you?”

“Several times. I had to overcome a good deal of reluctance to sit still for it. In the end, I’m no better than anyone else, which only proves my point all the more. I’m a ham, Mr. Hodges. I was fascinated with her subject, with the things she was finding out, and I was flattered that she considered me an indispensable source. There’s no getting around it, I did want to know what she was doing.”

“Did she quote you accurately?”

“I didn’t give her much choice. I insisted on reviewing her material—at least the parts where I was mentioned.”

“Did you find any errors when you read it?”

“No.”

I raised an eyebrow and cocked my head slightly.

“She had a tape recorder, sir, how can you misquote someone when you record every syllable and grunt? Look, I’m not saying she isn’t a good reporter —she may very well be the greatest newspaperwoman since Nellie Bly. And if she keeps digging at it, who knows what she might uncover? Maybe she’ll prove that Richard Grayson was in league with Lee Harvey Oswald and her work will go down in history. Pardon me in the meantime if I doubt it. We’re going around in circles—I have my opinion, Trish has hers, and I’m sure you have yours. Where do you want to start?”

I didn’t know. “It’s a little like jumping into a sea. All I know about the Graysons so far is what I got from that capsule biography in your book.“

He fidgeted. “I hated to do even that much. But the requirements of the book…the publisher demanded it, it was felt that readers would want at least the essentials of their lives. So I did it, but I kept it short—only what could be absolutely verified. It’s still the part of the book that I’m least proud of.”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t know the lurid details.”

“I know all the lurid details. I’ve read everything that’s ever been published on the Graysons. I can touch the paper a Grayson book is printed on and tell you whether it’s the regular run or one of his variants. In a sense, every book he made was a variant. Did you know that?”

I shook my head no.

“It was one of his trademarks, one of his eccentricities. That’s what makes the man so endlessly interesting. Try to get a grip on him by looking at his work— you’ll end up in a rubber room talking to men in white coats. I can spend days with his books, and I’m talking about different copies of the same title, and I’ll find some little variation in every one of them. Every time I look! I’m supposed to be the Grayson expert, I’m supposed to know everything there is to know about these things, and I can still sit down with five copies of his Christmas Carol and find new things in every one of them. Sometimes they’re subtle little things in the inks or the spacing of words. Can you imagine such a thing in this day of mass production? —Grayson made every copy in some way unique. It was a trademark, like Alfred Hitchcock appearing somewhere in all his films. Only what Grayson did was far more difficult than anything Hitchcock ever dreamed of. Try to imagine it—the chore of produc-ing an exquisite book in a run of five hundred copies, and making many copies different from the others without messing anything up. It would drive a normal man nuts. He must’ve worked around the clock when he had a book coming out. The binding alone would’ve taken anyone else six months to a year, full-time. Grayson did it in a gush.”

“He had Rigby to help him.”

“But not until 1963.”

“Before that there was Richard.”

“Who was a pretty fair binder, as it turned out. I’m sure these people helped out, but I don’t think anything ever went out of that shop that Grayson himself didn’t do. This is partly where the mystique comes from. Grayson did things that to other printers look superhuman, and once he decided what he was going to do, he did it with a speed that defies belief. He’d fiddle and change things in the process: then, for reasons no one understands, he’d toss in a real variant. It’s as if he suddenly got a notion in the middle of the night, and he’d change the paper or the binding, for that one book only. If the book passed muster when he’d finished it, he’d go ahead and ship it. People on his subscription list were always thrilled when they discovered they had a variant—though it was sometimes years later that they found out.”

“Some of them probably never found out.”

“That’s an excellent assumption. You can bet there are still many Grayson books sitting on the shelves of people who have no idea what they’ve got.”

“The original owner dies, leaves them to his children…”

“Who don’t understand or care.”

“Is there any way of tracing these books?”

“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me…and to one or two other people. You’d think it would be simple—Grayson must’ve kept a master list of his subscribers, but it’s never been found. Some of the books have come to light on their own. They’ll pop up in the damnedest places…last year I got a card from a woman in Mexico City. Her husband had been a subscriber. He had just died and she had all the books, still in their shipping boxes.”

“What did you do?”

“I flew down and bought them. On the first available plane. That’s one of the perks that comes with being an expert. Everything gets funneled your way.”

“I wonder if Aandahl gets any of that.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. When you’ve published a book on something, people do tend to think you know what you’re talking about, whether you do or not. And they’ll call you when they think they’ve got something you’d buy for a price. Trish has a certain advantage in that her book will be read by many thousands more people; mine is so narrow and specialized. But I really doubt if she’d know the differences between the Benton standard issue and the Broder variant”—he grinned widely—“without consulting my book first.”

I didn’t say it, but it seemed to me that Huggins had been reading Aandahl at least as much as Aandahl had been reading Huggins. He caught my drift at once.

“I’ve read that goddamn book cover to cover ten times. That doesn’t count endless browsings. Sometimes I dip into it when I’m at loose ends. I’ve got two copies back there, one for the shelf and the other for the workroom. The working copy’s so marked up you can barely read it anymore. I argue with her in the margins, I rail at the liberties she takes. The book is bashed and battered where I threw it against the wall when I first read it. So, yes, I do know it well. I can quote passages from it the way some people quote Shakespeare. And if we’re going to be totally honest, I’ve got to tell you this: the goddamn thing can move me to tears in places. It has a brilliance that I…I don’t know how to describe it. At its best it rings so true that you just know …you find yourself pulling for Trish to be right. But her book is fatally flawed because there are many other places where you know she’s stretching it. I can tell the minute she starts that horseshit, sometimes right in the middle of a sentence. And in the end the whole book’s meaningless: it’s a fascinating piece of pop culture. Trish can talk to a million people, and even if they all slept with Grayson, they still won’t be able to tell her what she really wants to know.”

“Which is what?”

“For starters, what drove the man, what made him do things, why he did them the way no one before or since has come close to doing, and where did the genius come from. I can’t remember who said this, but it’s got the stamp of truth all over it. James Joyce could spend a lifetime trying to teach his son to write, but the son could never write a page of Ulysses .”

“Grayson sounds like a pure romantic.”

“Trish seems to think they both were—that’s one of the many flaws in her book. Take the term romance strictly in its sexual context and you’ll see right away how silly her thinking is. Darryl Grayson couldn’t have been more his brother’s opposite in his relations with the opposite sex, even if encounters with women invariably ended up in the same place. In bed, I’m saying—they both had enormous sexual appetites. But women to Richard were just objects. Richard sometimes said that he had slept with more than twelve hundred women, Mr. Hodges, can you even begin to imagine such a thing? Trish Aandahl must’ve been in hog heaven when she uncovered that juicy little tidbit. But the point is this—Richard hated women; Darryl loved them. That’s the difference. Darryl Grayson never met a woman he couldn’t just love to death. And it didn’t matter what they looked like: he loved the homely ones the same as the beauties. I’ve known a few of Grayson’s ladies and they all say the same thing. He had a way of making them feel cherished, even when they knew he’d be with someone else tomorrow.”

“The most difficult kind of man there is, from a woman’s viewpoint.”

“Absolutely. Richard had the reputation of being the ladies’ man, because he conquered so many and they fell so fast. But it was Grayson who broke their hearts. His printshop fascinated them—they’d go in there and it was like stepping into a world they’d never dreamed of. Then they’d see what he was doing , and what he had done , with all those Grayson Press books lined up on a shelf above his matrix, and even a whore would know that something great had touched her life.”

“Did he ever show them work in progress?”

“All the time. Grayson was completely secure in himself. I don’t think the notion that anybody might steal his work ever crossed his mind. How could you steal it?—he created it all, from the alphabets to the designs. He took special delight in seeing the uninitiated light up at their first encounter with his art. In the last five years of his life, Darryl Grayson enjoyed his celebrity, as restricted as it was. He loved his uniqueness. He didn’t brag, but he’d spend hours talking to you, explaining the process, if you were interested.”

“Would you mind telling me a little about his process?”

“He was like great artists in every field, from literature to grand opera. Ninety percent of his time on a given project was spent in development, in planning, in trial and error. He created and threw away a lot of books. Sometimes he made a dozen copies, using various papers and inks, before he decided what was what. On the Christmas Carol , for example, he spent a year comparing the color reproductions on various papers. It wasn’t every day you got Thomas Hart Benton to illustrate one of your books, and it was damn well going to be perfect. And it was! What he finally chose was a fifty-year-old stock that he bought from a bank, which had taken over a publishing house and was disposing of the assets. The paper had been in a warehouse, sealed in boxes since 1905. It was very good stuff, intended for the fine-press books of that day but never used. It took the colors perfectly, the registers are just gorgeous.”

“What did he do with the dummy books?”

“Destroyed them. They were just for experimental purposes, and the last thing he wanted was for some flawed copy to turn up later, in the event of his unexpected death. Grayson was extremely aware of his place in publishing history. Rightly so, I might add. A hundred years from now his books will be as prized as anything you can name.”

“And he knew that.”

“Oh, yes. Oooooh, yes, my friend, no doubt of that at all. Grayson gave the impression of being a humble man, and in some ways he was. But don’t let anyone tell you that he ever sold his art short, or that he wasn’t acutely aware of his own importance.”

A thought crossed my mind and I shivered slightly. Huggins asked if I was cold and I said no, I was just thinking of Grayson’s dummy books. “Imagine turning one of those up. What do you suppose it would bring if a thing like that just turned up suddenly at auction?”

He rolled his eyes.

“What if a whole set survived?”

He was too much a gentleman to say it, but the look he gave me said it well. You’ve been out in the rain too long, mister, it’s starting to make your brain soggy .

“So what about The Raven ?” I said.

He gave a laugh and rolled his eyes, a vision of Looney Tunes.

“You did know he was working on it—that much is in your book.”

“Obviously he died before the project was finished.”

“Do you know how long he’d been working on it when he died?”

“In a sense you could say he’d been working on it since 1949. That’s where it started, you know, that obsession with Poe. It began in Grayson’s nagging dissatisfaction with his first Raven . Personally, I love the book. I’ll show it to you when we’re through here, you can see for yourself. It’s simple and lean, but what’s wrong with that? It was done on a shoestring budget, that’s all. It wasn’t the lack of money that kept The Raven from being a great Grayson—Grayson would never let money stand in his way. If the money wasn’t there to commission an artist like Benton, he’d get someone else to do the art. That someone might be a total unknown, but he’d be good, you could bet on it, and the book would still be a Grayson. The trouble with The Raven was with Grayson himself. He was just too young, he didn’t know enough yet. His alphabet was wrong: he was trying for an effect he couldn’t yet achieve—letters that combined the modern and the Gothic in a way that had never been done, that would draw out Poe in the context of his time and still keep him relevant to a modern reader. It was too ambitious for a boy, even a genius, not yet out of his twenties. His vowels in particular were too modern for the rest of it—the A’s and the O’s , but even the bowls of the D’s and B’s too sleek-looking to give him the effect that the other letters were working for.”

“Damn, it sounds complicated.”

“You can’t begin to imagine. At Grayson’s level it can’t even be adequately explained to a layman. But look, let’s try. You have twenty-six letters. Your goal is to have them mesh perfectly, each with the others in every possible sequence, and in absolute harmony. So you tinker around with your E . At last it seems perfect, it looks great, until you discover— after the goddamn book has been bound and shipped—that when you put it between an uppercase L and a lowercase n , as in the name Lenore , it looks just like dogshit. You can’t do this mathematically and you can’t do it with computers: you just have to slug it out in the trenches and hope you don’t overlook some silly thing that makes your work look to all the other printers in the world like it was done by a kid in kindergarten. Sure, the average guy won’t know the difference—even a collector or a bookman like yourself wouldn’t know. Any of you would look at the Grayson dummies and think they were perfect. But a printer like Frederic Goudy could tell right away, because he was also a master designer. Goudy was dead by then, but Bruce Rogers was asked about Grayson and he said what Goudy probably would’ve said—‘This is very good, but it was done by a young man who will get nothing but better.’ The remark got into print and Grayson read it. Rogers meant it as a compliment, but it stung him, and the book always haunted him. He wouldn’t discuss it, and he went through a time when he considered denying that he’d ever done it. Good sense prevailed and he soon got off that silly kick. Grayson in the end was like most great artists, he could never reach his idea of perfection, and he was always too hard on himself. He didn’t understand that the charm of his Raven lay in the very flaws that always tormented him. They show the budding genius at work. The flaws illuminate the brilliance of the other parts, and they do what none of Grayson’s other works can begin to do. They show him as human after all. Especially the mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“There was a spelling error in the poem ‘Annabel Lee.’ He never forgave himself for that.”

“What did he do?”

“He spelled the word sepulchre wrong—with an re in one place, and an er in the other.”

“That’s an easy mistake to make.”

“Of course it is. But gods don’t make mistakes.”

“Actually, I think you can spell it both ways.”

“It had to be spelled the way Poe spelled it. To’ve messed that up was to a man like Grayson the height of incompetence. But it proves what old-time printers all knew—there’s no such thing as a perfect book.”

“Damn. Then what did he do?”

“After the denial stage, he went through another silly time—he decided to round up all the surviving copies and destroy them. Trish has this wonderful scene in her book, and who knows, maybe it even happened that way. Grayson had retrieved five copies and was about to set them on fire in the dump behind his house. But he couldn’t do it—thank God he couldn’t light that fire. I think it was then, that night, when he decided he’d do another Raven someday, in the distant future, when he had the money and the skills to do it right. He saw his career enclosed by those two Ravens , like definitive parenthetical statements.”

Huggins let a long, dramatic moment pass. Then he said, “Isn’t it too bad he never got a chance to do that second one?”

The clock ticked and the question hung in the air. A long silence fell over the room. I knew we were thinking the same thing, but Huggins would never admit it. Once or twice he looked to be on the verge of something: then he’d look away and hold his peace. I still had a million questions and the sinking hunch that even then it would come to nothing.

A simple question could tie us up for an hour. Huggins was expansive: a gesturing, conjecturing, extrapolating encyclopedia on the Graysons, and I didn’t know enough to be able to decide what of all he was telling me was relevant. Then I thought of the one thing that might boot us up to another level—that scrap of charred paper in my wallet.

“Could I ask you something…in confidence?”

“Certainly.”

I took the paper out and put it on the counter between us.

“What’s your opinion of that?”

He squinted at it, then got out his glasses. I heard him take in his breath as if an old lover, still young and beautiful, had just walked into the room. He looked up: our eyes met over the tops of his glasses, and I could see that my hunch was right. I had shaken him up.

“Where’d you get this?”

“I can’t say. That’s part of what has to be kept confidential.”

“What do you think it is?” he said, suddenly coy.

“You’re the expert.”

He gave a mirthless grin. “You’re trying to tell me that this little fragment is part of something that I’m an expert in. But what can you expect from me, with such a small piece? There are only four letters. How can I tell?”

“The word angel appears in The Raven .”

“I know that. But what’s it prove? You think this is part of Grayson’s Raven ? It isn’t.”

“How can you tell?”

He picked up the fragment and held it up to the light. He looked at it through a jeweler’s eyepiece, then put it back on the counter.

“The paper, for one thing. Grayson would’ve used a much finer stock than this. Probably an old stock. And he’d have printed it damp. You follow what I’m saying—he’d dampen the paper slightly, so the press could get a real bite into it, so the ink would go deep and become part of the page. Look at this and you’ll see the ink’s sitting right on top of the paper, which is a common and I’ll bet cheap brand of copy paper.”

I felt a surge of relief. It was a photocopy, my hunch was right, the real book was still out there, somewhere.

I picked up the paper chip and put it in my wallet. Huggins followed it with his eyes. He seemed irritated when I put the wallet away in my pocket.

He looked at the clock. “It’s getting late.”

I apologized for eating up his evening.

“A few more questions?”

He nodded. “Make it quick, though. I’ve got a headache coming on.”

I took Eleanor’s address book out of my pocket and opened it to the Grayson page.

“Does the name Nola Jean Ryder mean anything to you?”

He took off his glasses and squinted at the book, then at me.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“It just came up,” I said, not wanting to tell him. “It’s probably not important.”

“She was one of Richard’s…girls.”

“Is she still around?”

He gave a faint smile. “Thinking of talking to her?”

“Sure, if I can.”

“What could you possibly hope to gain by talking to one of Richard’s old whores?”

“Is that what she was?”

He shrugged.

“It’s like you said yourself,” I said. “With a man like Grayson, who knows where the answers are?”

He grunted. “You think she’s got your Raven ?”

Before I could answer, he said, “You’ll find everything that’s known about Nola Jean Ryder in Trish’s book.”

“You sure make her sound mysterious.”

“Do I? I don’t mean to, though she’s certainly mysterious enough. She disappeared after the fire and she hasn’t been seen since.”

We looked at each other and the questions rose in my throat. He cut them off unasked. “Look, I don’t know a damn thing about that. I told you before, this is not my thing. If you want to talk about Grayson’s books , then I’m your man. But if you’re interested in people, especially the whores in their lives, then you’ll have to ask Trish. Or read her book.”

I started to put the address book away.

“What other names do you have in there?” He was suspicious now, his tone accusing.

I looked at the page. “Jonelle Jeffords.”

He shrugged.

“Rodney Scofield.”

He sat up with a start. “What about Scofield?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you.”

“Did Scofield send you here?”

“I don’t even know the man.”

He looked dubious.

“Really.”

“Then where’d you get his name?”

“It’s just something I picked up.”

“Of course it is.” His tone was suddenly mocking, almost hostile. “Really, sir, I think you’ve been taking advantage of me.”

“I can’t imagine how.”

“Can’t you really? Do you think I’m a complete idiot? You come in here and I don’t know you from Solomon Grundy. How do I know who you are or what you really want? You’ll have to leave now. I’m tired.”

Just that quickly, I was hustled to the door.

I took a chance, told him to call me at the Ramada if he had second thoughts, but I probably wouldn’t be there beyond tonight. I sat in the car and looked at his house. The questions had only begun. I still didn’t know why Trish Aandahl thought the Graysons had been murdered, and I never did get to see Huggins’s books.

25

On the way downtown I stopped at a Chinese joint. I ate some great moo-shoo and arrived back at the Ramada at eight o’clock. I sat on the bed and made my phone checks. Leith Kenney was still incommunicado: in Taos, the recorded welcome mat continued on the Jeffordses’ phone. By nine o’clock I was tight in the grip of cabin fever. I tried Trish Aandahl, but there was no answer. Outside, the rain had resumed its hellish patter. Nothing to do at this time of night but wait it out.

At quarter after nine a knock at the door made me jerk to my feet, knocking the phone to the floor. I stood for a moment, that line from Poe running through my head…

“ ‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.“

. . . and slowly I moved to the window and parted the curtains. I could see the dark outline of a man, his shoulders and legs and the back of his head. He knocked again: he meant business. He had probably heard the phone falling and knew I was here, and he didn’t seem interested in helping me by moving back out in the light so I could see his face. I bit the bullet: went to the door and opened it.

It was the deskman. “Sorry to disturb you, I just wanted to check and see if that’s your car. I didn’t recognize it from anybody who checked in today.”

I assured him it was mine: the other car had belonged to a friend. He apologized and went away. But he stopped in the courtyard and looked back at the Nash, just long enough to give me the jitters. He didn’t write the plate number down, and I watched him through the curtain until he disappeared into the office.

If I had any thought about staying here past tonight, that ended it. I’d be gone with the dawn, looking for a new place and a new name. I sat on the bed and tried the phone again, but the world was still away from its desk. Kenney and Jeffords I could understand, but Trish had asked me to call, you’d think she’d be there. I would try her each half hour until she came in. I was reaching over to make the ten-o’clock call when it rang almost under my hand. It caught me in that same tense expectancy, and again I knocked it clattering down the table to the floor. I gripped the coiled wire and the receiver bumped its way back up the nightstand into my hands.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Hodges?”

“Yes…yeah, sorry about the racket.”

“It’s okay, I’ve done that a few times myself.” There was an awkward pause. “It’s Allan Huggins.”

“Ah.”

“I’ve been thinking about that chip of paper you showed me.”

I waited, letting him get to it in his own way.

“Actually, I haven’t thought about anything else since you left.”

“Have you changed your mind about it?”

“No…no.” I heard him breathe…in, out…in, out. “No, I feel sure it’s a photocopy. The question I can’t get out of my mind is, what’s it a photocopy of?…And where’s the original?…And how and when was it made?”

“Interesting questions.”

“I’m wondering if I could see it again. I know I wasn’t too hospitable when you were over earlier. I apologize for that.”

“It’s no problem.”

“Would it be asking too much…Could I perhaps make my own photocopy from your sample? I’d like to study it at greater length.”

“I don’t think I want to do that just now. You can see it again, if you’d like.”

“I would like, yes…very much. The lettering’s what’s getting to me. The more I think of it…I’ve never seen that exact typeface, and yet…”

He didn’t have to elaborate: I knew what was going through his head.

“Tomorrow, perhaps,” he suggested hopefully.

“I’ll give you a call if I can.”

“Please do…please.”

“You could do something for me while we’re at it Call it a trade-off.”

“Surely,” he said, but his voice was wary.

“Tell me why the name Rodney Scofield set you off like a fire.”

“Don’t you really know?”

“No,” I said with a little laugh. “I keep telling you, I never heard of the guy.”

He grunted a kind of reluctant acceptance. “Tomorrow, then. We’ll talk about it then.”

He hung up. I made my phone checks yet again, to no avail. Outside, the rain fell harder, bringing my spirits down with it.

In this mood of desolate pessimism, having exhausted for the moment my last best hopes by telephone, I lay back on the bed and started reading Trish Aandahl’s book on Darryl and Richard Grayson.

26

The earliest Grayson alphabets were etched in the cool, hard sand of Hilton Head Island in the fall of 1937. It was a wild beach then: there were no luxury hotels or golf courses, and the beach was fringed by strips of jungle. On Sunday mornings Grayson would crank up his ‘29 International pickup and clatter out on the oyster-shell road from Beaufort. Never again have I known such a sense of freedom and raw potential , he wrote, years later, to a friend in Atlanta. Never have I had such a clear vision of the road ahead . He was seventeen and on fire with life. He walked the beach alone, glorying in the solitude and in the wonder of his emerging wisdom. His cutting tool was a mason’s trowel. He covered the beach with alphabet, running with the sunrise and racing the tide. He knew all the classic typefaces: he could freehand a Roman face that was startling, and when the tide came up and washed it all away, it left him with a feeling of accomplishment, never loss. It was all temporary, but so necessary—the sweet bewilderment, the sudden clarity, the furious bursts of energy that sometimes produced nothing more than a sense that in his failure he had taken another vital step. It would come, oh, it would come! He could do things at seventeen that he could not have dreamt at sixteen. His youth was his greatest ally, as fine an asset as experience would be when he was forty. A photograph exists—two photographs, reproduced back-to-back in Trish’s book. The young Grayson stands on the beach, his face in shadow, the sand behind him etched with letters. The same scene on the verso, a young woman standing where Grayson had been. The capsule identifies her as Cecile Thomas, the day, September 15, 1931. He was my first love, the dearest, most desperate, most painful. I was eighteen, a year older than he was, but he was in all ways my teacher . On that moonlit night, warm for early autumn, they had become lovers on the sand, obliterating the writing he had done by firelight. Never mind , he said, I’ll make you another one , and he did, running blind in the dark with the tide going out, and when they came back in the morning, the incoming tide had not yet reached it.

Oh, it’s perfect , she had said: when the tide finally did come up and wash it away, I cried, and he laughed and said it was nothing . Someday, Grayson told her, he would create something that couldn’t be washed away, so why cry now for trifles such as this? God, I loved him…still do in a way. I couldn’t believe how it affected me when I read of his death, and I hadn’t seen him in more than twenty-five years . The world was a poorer place when he died. He cared nothing for money or roles or the things that drove others. He learned his art the only way an artist ever learns, by probing the secrets of his own vast heart. He always took the road less traveled, always: he rose up on the page and strode across it, an unspent force even in death. Here he comes now, walking up Hilton Head alone. He carves up the sand with his trowel, running an alphabet of his own creation, knocked off on the spot. The tide licks away the A even as he touches off the small z , and he stands ankle-deep in the surf, breathing the pure Carolina air and tasting his coming victories. Only the spirit of Trish Aandahl is there to keep him company, this woman yet unborn, a kindred essence wafting in the wind. Somewhere in the cosmos they connect, inspiring her to better prose, perhaps, than she can ever do. And slowly as she writes of Grayson, a dim picture emerges of herself. She’s there beside him, coaxing him along the sandy shore. She tells me things about Grayson that would leave a photographer baffled. The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

27

I finally reached Leith Kenney at midnight. The conversation was short but potent.

“Mr. Kenney?”

“Yes.”

“I’m calling from Seattle.” I didn’t tell him who I was. I was more interested at this stage in finding out who he was. I played my trump card right out of the gate. “I’m calling about Grayson’s Raven . The 1969 edition.”

I heard him catch his breath, as Lewis and Clark might’ve done at their first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. I knew one thing right away: I had dealt myself a strong hand, even if I couldn’t see all the cards.

I let his pause become my own. Then I said, “Are you interested in talking about it?”

“Oh, yes.” His voice quivered at the prospect. “Yes, sir,” he said, underlining the sir part.

His eagerness was so palpable that I knew I could run the show. “Tell me about Rodney Scofield.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Look, I’m just a guy who’s stumbled into something. I was tipped to you people by somebody who might know a lot more than I do. But right now I don’t know you boys from far left field.”

“Mr. Scofield is a businessman…”

“And?”

“He collects books.”

“Grayson books.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s fair to say that Mr. Scofield is a pretty substantial man.”

“You can check him out. You’ll find him in most of the financial reports that are available in the library.”

“And who are you?”

“Well,” he said as if it should be obvious, “I work for Mr. Scofield.”

“Doing what, besides taking questions about Grayson?”

“That’s my full-time job.”

I thought my way through a stretch of silence. “Would it be fair to say that Scofield would pay a small fortune if a Grayson Raven were to fall into his hands?”

The silence was eloquent. Mr. Scofield would pay more than that. Mr. Scofield was that most dangerous of book animals, the man with the unquenchable passion and the inexhaustible bank account.

“I’ll get back to you,” I said.

I hung up before he could protest. I wouldn’t worry anymore about Leith Kenney or Rodney Scofield. I had their number, I knew where they were, and they’d be there when I wanted them.

Trish was another matter. I let her phone ring ten times before giving her up. I tried her desk at the Times , but she wasn’t there either.

Jonelle Jeffords continued keeping the world at bay with her husband’s answering machine.

At half past midnight, I shut down for the night.

I would sleep six hours. If supercop didn’t come in the night, I’d be well out of here in the morning.

I had a plan now, a destination that I hoped would take care of the lodging problem. It was a gamble, gutsy as hell. For that reason alone I thought it was probably the safest hotel in town.

In the morning I would become Mr. Malcolm Roberts of Birmingham. I was going back to the Hilton.

I let Trish put me to sleep with her lovely prose.

In the first hour of the new day, I walked in Grayson’s shoes.

28

The Grayson odyssey twisted its way through Georgia half a century ago. The forces that shaped them were already centuries old when they were born. Their grandfather was still alive and whoring when they were boys in grade school, the gnarled old buzzard a whorehouse regular well into his eighties. The old man never stopped righting the Civil War. The big regret of his life was not being born in time to be killed at Fredericksburg, where his father had died in 1862.

A plantation mentality ran the house of Grayson. The father ruled and allowed no dissent. His politics were boll-weevil Democrat and his neck was the color of the clay hills that stretched around Atlanta. Women were placed on pedestals and worshiped, but they quickly lost their sex appeal if they wanted anything more out of life than that. It was Darryl senior’s profound misfortune to marry Claudette Reller, a free spirit who could never quite see the charm of life in a cage. She abandoned her family on a sunny day in 1932, walking off in the middle of her garden-club luncheon without notice or fanfare. Her sons, ages eight and twelve, never saw her again. She was said to have died three years later in Paris. The old man announced it at supper one night and forbade her name to be uttered again under his roof.

The young, fair-haired son obeyed his father well. A psychologist would say, years later, that he never forgave his mother and that every experience with sex was a slap at her memory.

The older son remembered her less harshly. He knew why she’d done what she’d done, and he wished she would write him from wherever she’d gone so that he might answer her and tell her he understood. He and his father were locked in their own battle of wills, and when he thought of his mother, there was sympathy in his heart.

In the summer of his seventeenth year, young Grayson escaped to the Carolina coast. There he lived on a sea island, thinking about life and supporting himself by working in a Beaufort garage. But in the fall he was back in Georgia, doing battle with his father in the determined effort to become his own man. Women became an ever-larger part of his life. Cecile Thomas had been lovely but temporary: now there was Laura Warner, older and more experienced, twice married, widowed and divorced, cerebral, moneyed, and addicted to genius. She saw herself as Mrs. von Meek to Grayson’s Tchaikovsky, one of their literary friends suggested, but Grayson was having none of that. They parted amicably after a short but intense friendship. She moved to Birmingham and, in 1939, sailed from Miami to London, where her trail petered out.

But Grayson’s life was rich with women like that. A biographer trying to dig up his footprints forty years later could still find some of them eager to talk and have their memories mined. Others had been swallowed by time. A line had to be drawn on the hunt for old girlfriends and the book brought back to its dual focus. So Trish Aandahl let Laura Warner slip away into wartime London while she worked her narrative around and brought Richard again into the picture.

There are people in Atlanta today who remember Darryl and Richard Grayson and believe that a strong streak of real hatred existed between them. But there are others who tell a different story. They remember the hazing Richard took from a pack of bullies when he first started high school. The leader of the gang was one Jock Wheeler, a mean little bastard as remembered by the Marietta shipping clerk who had known them all. Today Jock Wheeler is an elderly mechanic in an Atlanta garage. He’s a quiet man who lives alone and bothers no one. Ask Jock Wheeler about the Grayson boys, said the shipping clerk to Trish Aandahl. Ask him about that night in the midthirties, when he was ambushed on a dark country road by two men he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, identify and beaten so badly he almost died. Wheeler had nothing to say, but the rumor mill persisted that one of the assailants was little more than a boy, twelve or fourteen years old. The sheriff floated the Grayson boys as the leading candidates, but Wheelers said no,‘t’wasn’t them. The rumor mill churned. The more thoughtful of their contemporaries pointed to it as a strange quirk of human nature. Probably on some level the Graysons truly did hate each other, but blood is thicker than water. That’s the thing about cliches, you know. They are usually true.

29

I woke to a gray dawn, certain I’d heard a noise off my left elbow. It went click-click, like the sound a lockpick makes when someone is trying to open a door. But I had been dreaming about a raven, its talons clicking as it walked across the table to peck my eyes out.

Both sounds stopped as I came awake and sat up in the bed.

It was Sunday, the day of rest.

Television promised more rain, followed by bad weather. The weather clown played with his million-dollar toys, swirling clouds over a map and grinning with all thirty-two as he did his dance. But this was a floor show next to the competition. Evil, two-faced evangelists pranced about, talked of Jesus and money in the same foul breath, and sheared their glass-eyed flock. Praise the lord, suckers.

The radio was fixed to an oldies station, with something called a salute to the British Invasion already in progress. I got “Eleanor Rigby” as a curtain call to my shave-and-shower, and I stood in the buff anticipating every beat and lyric, for all the good it did me.

The clock was pushing nine, and my departure seemed somehow less urgent than it had at midnight, Nothing was open yet. Check-in at the Hilton wasn’t till three o’clock. The library, another of my scheduled stops, informed by recorded message that its Sunday hours were one to five p.m. I had time on my hands.

I sat on the bed and started my phone checks. It was ten o’clock in Taos.

I punched out the number and heard it ring.

“Hello?”

“Jonelle Jeffords?”

“Who are you?”

It didn’t seem to matter so I told her my real name, then began to improvise. “I’m a friend of the court. The judge in Seattle gave me the job of getting Miss Rigby back to New Mexico in the burglary of your house. I need to ask you a few questions.”

She expelled her breath like a hot radiator.

“Goddammit, can’t you people leave us alone?”

This was a strange attitude for a victim, but I already knew she was not the run of the mill victim. I put an official tone in my voice and said, “Most people who’ve been burglarized cooperate. I find your attitude a little unusual. Is there a reason for that?”

She hung there a moment, surprised, then said, “My husband is very upset by all this. It’s going to be bad enough having to go to court when they finally do bring that crazy girl back here. What can I tell you that hasn’t already been asked and answered fifty times?”

“I’m sure you’re tired of answering questions. But I’m in Seattle, I don’t have access to the files they’ve built in Taos, and I need to know more about what she stole from you. Otherwise I don’t know how you expect to get your property back.”

“I don’t want it back. I should’ve burned it years ago.”

“Burned what?”

“That book.”

“It was mainly a book, then, that she took from you?”

“If I’d just given it to her when she first came here, maybe she’d‘ve just gone away. Then none of this would’ve happened.”

“Where did you get the book?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. It’s personal business, very old business. It doesn’t have any bearing on this.”

“It might, if we have to determine who owns it.”

“What are you saying, that I stole the book?”

“I’m just asking a few questions, Mrs. Jeffords. If I seem to be going in a way you don’t like, it’s your attitude that’s leading me there. You’re going to have to answer these questions, you know, sooner or later.”

“Listen to me, sir, and understand what I’m telling you. My husband is extremely upset by all this. He’s outside now on the deck, he’ll be in here any minute, and the last thing I need is for him to find me talking to you about that crazy girl. It hasn’t been easy coping with this. She could’ve killed us. Charlie gets a little crazy himself just thinking about it. If you call here again, you’ll cause me a lot of trouble.”

“Can you describe the book?”

“No! Can’t I make you understand English? I haven’t even looked at it in twenty years.”

“Are you familiar with the names Slater or Pruitt?”

“No. Should I be?”

“Slater says you hired him to find your book.”

“He’s lying. I never heard of the man.”

“What about Pruitt?”

Her voice dropped off to a whisper. “Charlie’s coming. Charlie’s here. Go away, don’t call me again.”

She banged the phone down.

What a strange woman. I could just see her, scurry-ing across the room to distance herself from the telephone. Smoothing her dress, sitting primly, trying to look like a poster from Fascinating Womanhood as her big old bear came home from the hill.

Trying her damnedest to give away a book others would kill for.

I hadn’t gotten to the hard questions yet. Who really fired that gun, Mrs. Jeffords? What’s the link between you and the Rigby girl, and why do I get the feeling that it’s personal?

I knew, though, that I’d had my one shot at her. She was far away and she wouldn’t be picking up the telephone again without letting that recording screen it first.

I tried Trish and got nothing.

Decided to put Allan Huggins on hold for the moment.

Checked out of the motel and went looking for breakfast.

At eleven o’clock, I parked on the street outside the library and passed the time reading.

30

Suddenly it’s 1963. Gaston Rigby stands in North Bend at the dawn of his life, ready and waiting to be molded by the genius Darryl Grayson. Who would think that Grayson might hire him, even to sweep out the shop? Now there are days when every green kid with a yen to publish turns up on Grayson’s doorstep, hat in hand, begging for a chance to work for nothing. The mystique is in full bloom, and Grayson is still well on the sunny side of fifty. What is it that separates Rigby from the others?…How does he get to Grayson on that primal level, that place where the genius lives? Grayson leaves no clue. He is not one to talk of such things. The hunt for verbal profundity makes him uneasy and, if he’s pushed too hard, cross. Speaking of Rigby, Grayson will say only that he’s a good one. He’s willing to let it go at that, as if trying to isolate and define everything that goes into making a good one is beyond him. And this is Archie he’s talking to, and Archie knows a good one as well as he does.

Moon looks back at it many years later. At times he thinks Rigby took the place of the younger brother— almost but not quite. He thinks Grayson and Rigby were, almost but not quite, like father and son. That spiritual bond can be difficult to understand when you stand outside it: it goes deeper than anything Moon has ever seen between men of solidly heterosexual persuasion. He insists he felt no jealousy: he is secure in his own importance to Grayson, and if Rigby mattered as much on another level, why should it worry him? He was still Grayson’s best friend in life. They grew up together, they swam buck naked as kids, tramped woods and fields, hunted deer and birds, chased women as young hell-raisers, drank, dreamed and shared the same calling. When Grayson left the South after the war and wrote that he had found a promised land, Moon came along to see for himself. Moon still remembers the first words he spoke as he got off the train in Snoqualmie. What the hell is this little burg gonna do with two goddamn printers, for Christ’s sake ?

But Moon is a mechanic and Grayson is an artist. They coexist perfectly, perhaps the only friends in history—to hear Moon tell it—who never had a disparaging word between them. Moon does worry, especially in the beginning, that Grayson is chasing an impossible dream. Nobody ever made money doing small-press books. Put that in caps and say it again. NObody. If you can do it for twenty-five years and not lose your pants, you can call yourself blessed. Grayson never made a dime. His entire operation was bankrolled with family money. Eventually the boys came into hundreds of acres of prime Georgia planting land—peaches, corn, just about anything a man wanted to grow. But Darryl and Richard Grayson were not farmers. They sold the land and Grayson took his half and did what he did with it. His books made enough to keep most of his principal intact, and that’s all they ever made in his lifetime.

What is it about the book business anyway, Moon wonders. Sometimes it seems like nobody on any level of it makes any money. Maybe if you’re Random House and you can figure out how to publish nobody but James A. Michener, you can make a little money. Everybody else picks up peanuts.

Why do they do it? he wonders. But he knows why.

Now it’s 1963 and Rigby arrives, joining Grayson in the quest for the perfect book. Look at you, Darryl , Moon says over beer in the town bar, you’re launching a life . Grayson just nods in his cups. What has never been said—what Moon tells Trish Aandahl years after Grayson’s death—is how much influence Rigby had on Grayson. Rigby was truly remarkable for a kid: damn, he had the greatest hands , Moon says, he’da been a great doctor, delivering babies, coaxing ‘em into the world…he could coax butter out of a witch’s heart and his instincts for binding and design were almost as fine and fully formed as Grayson’s. Rigby offers his opinions timidly at first—a kid does not come in and tell a genius how to run his business— but he soon learns that Grayson has no ego in the heat of the work. Grayson will listen to the man in the moon if the guy can give him an idea, and Gaston Rigby is a fountain of ideas. Do you think, Darryl, that the center of the page is too dense?…Not by much, maybe, but listen to what the words are saying and look at it again . Grayson studies it. He walks away and looks from afar. More often than not, he decides that Rigby is right. Their talk runs nonstop through the day, every word germane to the work at hand. There is never a joke between them or a comment on the outside world or a reflection on womanhood. There are no calendar-girl pinups, no radios or newspapers, nothing that would take away Grayson’s concentration even for a moment. There are no clocks. Grayson comes down to the shop in the morning and Rigby is already there. They work until some inner clock tells Grayson that the day is done. In Grayson’s shop, time stands still. He alone knows when the work is through and he walks away, leaving Rigby to wash the press and tidy up the workbench and put everything back where it goes.

Rigby’s responsibilities grow along with his salary. By his second year he seems indispensable. His eye is uncanny: he catches things that might even escape the master in various stages of trial and error. Broken serifs, hairline cracks, typos: he spots them instantly. He checks each impression for indentation, uniformity of punch, blackness of ink (“needs a little more color here, Darryl”). His eye is so good that Grayson comes to depend on him in those final stages when the books are inspected and shipped. This gives him a sense of family, something he’s never known. Rigby lives upstairs, in the loft over the shop. He stands in darkness now, staring off through the black woods at the lights of the big house. He knows that sometimes the brother brings whores over from Seattle, but this too he sees as part of the process. If Grayson can be relaxed and made ready for tomorrow by the services of a whore, let him do it. They come and go, harmless fluff. Only near the end does the one called Nola Jean take on a major negative importance. She screws with Grayson’s head and is not good.

It is now 1968. Rigby is twenty-two. He has been with Grayson five years and life is sweet. He has a woman of his own, a relationship nurtured slowly like a courtship from another time. This is Crystal, Moon’s teenage niece, who ran away from her home in Georgia and now finds work in the North Bend bakery. Crystal loves Rigby’s shyness, his brilliance, his teddy-bear presence. He is the first solid man in her life, always the young gentleman. Rigby has none of the stormy impatience that runs rampant through his generation. Politics bores him: even the Kennedy assassination, he tells her, struck him as little more than another TV show. Crystal marvels at this. She is seventeen, and in love.

31

I reread the last chapter, which told of the fire. The facts rolled out like an epilogue. On the night of October 14, 1969, the shop had caught fire and gone up like a torch. A fire investigator had come out from Seattle, poking through the ashes for days before calling it, officially, an accident. But I knew from my own experience that these things are often vague. At least one hundred thousand fires a year are written off to unknown causes, Aandahl pointed out, and the presumption in law is that these are accidents. Arson must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt: a fireman’s suspicion, however strong, doesn’t cut it. An old-fashioned printshop like Grayson’s was a firebomb waiting to go off.

In the first place, there is paper everywhere. There are rags, often soaked with solvents or ink. The printer must work with fine papers and keep them in pristine condition, but he also works with ink, which gets on his hands, under his fingernails, and on his tools. Everything must be washed, many times a day. A working printer might go through 150 gallons of solvents a year. Kerosene was the stuff of choice for many shops. Grayson liked gasoline because it was harder and faster. He kept it in a fifty-gallon drum behind the shop. The drum sat upright in a wooden frame, with a spigot at the bottom where the squirt guns could be filled.

The fire broke out in the main part of the shop— the fire investigator was able to figure that out by the pattern of the wood charring. It had quickly consumed that room, spread up to the loft, then to the little storeroom in back. By the time it was seen from the road, flames had broken through the ceiling and back wall. The gas drum caught on fire and exploded, sending a fireball a hundred feet in the air. The remains of Richard Grayson were found in the shop: he had been drinking and had apparently passed out in a chair. His brother was in the back room. He too was drunk, and the fireman theorized that he had gone back to lie down on a cot that was kept there for just that purpose, when he’d had too much booze to walk himself back up the dark path to the main house.

Gaston Rigby had gone to town. It was for him a rare night out. He had taken his girl, Crystal, to dinner in Seattle and arrived home at midnight to find his world in ruins.

I was standing at the door when the library opened. It didn’t take long to dope out Rodney Scofield. I looked through periodical and newspaper indexes, and in half an hour I had come up with all the applicable buzzwords.

Oilman…manufacturer…eccentric…

Billionaire, with a b .

Recluse. Twenty years ago, when Scofield was in his late forties, he had taken a page from Howard Hughes and disappeared from the public eye. He had been written about but seldom seen since 1970. His business deals were conducted and closed by the battalion of toadies and grunts who worked for him. Nowhere in the general press was his hobby, books, given a line.

I went to AB/Bookman’s Weekly , which publishes its own yearly index.

I found nothing on Scofield, but Leith Kenney was prominent in the magazine’s index of advertisers. He had been a bookseller, with a store in San Francisco.

He had been a notable bookseller, with membership in the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. This is not an easy group for flakes and fly-by-nights to get into. They nose around in your credit, they check your bank references and take a long look at your stock before admitting you to the club. People who bounce checks and cheat little old ladies get a quick brush-off from ABAA.

Kenney was a past president. His field was fine-press books.

But he had not run an ad in the magazine since 1986. I found out why in that year’s December issue, in a news column headlined “Kenney to Close S.F. Bookstore.” No, he laughed, he was not going broke. He had been offered a job that was simply too lucrative and challenging to pass up. He was going to create a world-class library on the career of Darryl Grayson. He would be looking for anything that pertained to the man’s life or work—ephemera, photographs, correspondence, business records, and, of course, the books, in any quantity. Multiple copies were eagerly sought. The work of Richard Grayson was also of interest, Kenney said, but it was clear from the tone that he was considered an association figure. As far as posterity was concerned, there was only one Grayson.

I didn’t want to park in the Hilton garage: my rust bucket was a little too prominent for a class hotel like that. I put on my raincoat and carried my bag, leaving the car parked on the street.

I rode up the elevator to the lobby on the ninth floor. Paid cash for two nights and told them I might be longer. I asked for a quiet room on a high floor, where I could see the city.

The clerk had rooms on fifteen, seventeen, and twenty.

Seventeen would be fine, I said. I was given a key to 1715.

I rode the elevator up and walked along the hall. The door to my old room was open. I walked past and looked in.

Two men were there, going through the wastebas-ket. The big one with the pale olive skin stood up and turned as I came by. I turned as he did, letting him see the back of my tired gray head.

I opened the door and went into my new room. Couldn’t help gloating just a little as my door clicked shut.

Score one for old dad in the game of guts football.

Up yours, supercop.

32

I sat on the bed and called Leith Kenney in Los Angeles. This time I had no trouble getting through to him.

He had had a dozen hours to think about it and decide how he wanted to handle it. He gave me the direct frontal approach, which I liked. We were two bookmen talking the same language, even if only one of us knew it.

If the material was genuine, he wanted it. If there were questions of ownership or provenance, he would still pay top money for possession and would hash out the legality when the thing went to court. This to him was a foregone conclusion. We were talking about a substantial sum of money, and people tend to bicker when money arises. At the same time, Kenney had no doubt where The Raven would end up, where it should end up. He was prepared to top any offer, many times over. He was prepared to fly to Seattle at a moment’s notice or fly me to Los Angeles in Scofield’s private jet. He was prepared for just about anything.

“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “If you’ve got something you even think might be the genuine article, we want to see it and we’ll pay you for that privilege no matter how it turns out. We’ve been looking for this item for a very long time.”

“That’s pretty good, for a book the bibliographer swears was never made.”

“We know it was made. Mr. Scofield has seen it. He’s held it in his hands. Maybe Allan Huggins wouldn’t be quite so smug if he had done that.”

Before I could ask, he said, “It was a long time ago, and that’s all I want to say about it until I know more about you. You’ve got to appreciate my position, sir. I don’t even know your name. Mr. Scofield may be the only man alive who has actually touched this book, and we don’t want to be put in the position of giving away what we know about it.”

That was fair enough. I didn’t like it, but I had to live with it.

“Remember one thing,” Kenney said. “If you do turn it up, people like Huggins will be all over you. Don’t make any deals on it without giving us a chance to top their bids. We will top them, you’ll be shocked at how much. And you’ll be doing yourself or your client a terrible disservice if you sell it anywhere else.”

At last we were down to bedrock. The big question.

“How much money are we really talking about here, Mr. Kenney?”

“Whatever you’d like.”

33

I didn’t move for a while: just sat on the bed listening to my inner voice. It drew my mind back across the hall to the room where Eleanor and I had spent our last few hours together.

Homework’s finished, said the muse. One more phone call, maybe two, and you can hit the street.

In the room across the hall, Eleanor had mailed a letter. Against my better judgment, I had watched her write it and then I had let her send it off.

What was it, who got it, where had it gone?

Questions with no answers, but sometimes the muse will give you a hint. Her nearest and dearest was one obvious call, a risky one I’d rather not make on this telephone. Still the letter had to be chased—if it deadended, at least it would lead up an alley that had to be checked anyway.

And then there was Trish, a source of growing discontent. I seemed to have lost her in the heat of the moment. She faded to black while I scrambled around covering my tracks, and now, suddenly, my need to hear her voice was urgent.

The muse played it back to me.

Call me, she said. Don’t disappear, I have some things to tell you.

Having said that, she herself had dropped off the earth.

So the nightwork was there. Chase the letter, track down Aandahl.

I called her home, wherever that was, but the telephone still played to an empty house. I tried her desk at the paper, without much hope. At the end of three rings there was a half-ring, indicating a shift to another line.

A recording came on, a woman’s voice.

“Hi, this’s Judy Maples, I’ll be running interference for Trish Aandahl for a few days. If it’s vital, you can reach me through the main switchboard, four six four, two one one one.”

I called it. The operator wouldn’t give me a number for Maples, but did offer to patch me through to her at home. The phone rang in some other place.

“Hello.”

“Judy, please.”

“This is she.”

“I’m a friend of Irish.”

“Aha. What friend would you be?”

“One who’s a little worried about her.”

“She’s fine. Something came up suddenly and she had to go out of town.”

“When will she be back?”

“Not sure, couple of days maybe.” There was a kind of groping pause. “Trish left a package for a friend, if you happen to be the one.”

“What’s in it?”

“Can’t tell, it’s sealed up in a little Jiffy bag. Do you think it’s for you?”

“Is there a name on it?”

“Initials.”

I took a long breath. “How about C.J.?”

“You got it. Trish didn’t know if you’d get this far or not. For the record, I have no idea what this is about. I’m just the messenger gal. She told me to say that. It’s true. I left your package with the guard at the paper. If you want to go pick it up, I’ll call him and tell him to release it to you.”

I said okay, though nothing about it felt okay.

I walked out past my old room. The cops were gone and the place was closed tight. I rode the elevator down, drew my raincoat tight, pulled my hat down to my eyebrows. The day was going fast as I went out into the timeless, endless rain. Everything in the world was gray, black, or dark green.

I fetched my car, went to the Times , and got my package.

It was a cassette tape, wrapped in a single piece of copy paper. A cryptic four-line note was handwritten on the paper.

If you’d like to stay at my house, consider it yours. I have no reason to believe you’d be unsafe there. The key’s in the flowerpot. Don’t mind the dogs, they’re both big babies.

Trish

A postscript told her address, on Ninetieth Avenue Southeast, Mercer Island.

I put it back in the bag and slipped it under my seat, then moved on to the main business of the evening.

I wanted to be well out of the downtown area when I made this call. I drove south, got off the freeway near Boeing, and looked for a telephone. Phones are like cops: there’s never one when you need it.

At last I stood at a little lean-in booth and made the call. It was a hard quarter to drop.

I heard it ring three times in North Bend.

“Hello.”

“Crystal?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Janeway.”

You could eat the silence, it was that heavy. I didn’t know how to begin, so I began by telling her that. But she already knew.

“The police were here. They’ve been here off and on since noon.”

Good for the cops, I thought: good for them, not so hot for me.

I was getting nervous. It already seemed I’d been on that telephone a long time.

“Are the police there now?”

“No. They may come back tonight.”

The funny thing was, she never once stated the obvious: she never said, “They’re looking for you, you know,” or anything like that. Still, she wasn’t going to give me what I needed unless I could move her that way.

“I’m going to ask you for something. I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to go to hell. I haven’t done much right so far.”

She was listening.

“I guess I’m asking you to trust me. I’d like you to believe that everything I’ve done, at least after that first night, I’ve done for Eleanor.”

She punished me with silence. I endured it till I couldn’t anymore.

“Crystal”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

“I’m trying io find your daughter.”

“I guess I knew that. And I don’t know why, but I do believe it.”

The wall between us crumbled. Whatever she’d been telling herself with the logical part of her brain gave way to instinct.

“Even when we were talking to the police, I kept thinking of you,” she said. “Kind of like an ace in the hole.”

“That’s what I am. It may not be much…”

“I get feelings from people. Not psychic, nothing like that, but people hit me either warm or cold. When I hugged your neck on the porch that first night, I felt the warm between us. Sometimes people just connect, you know what I mean? I could see that between you and Ellie right from the start. It was warm, but not the kinda thing a mother needs to worry about…except maybe on her side.”

She gave a little laugh. “That’s why I never really gave up on it, even when it came out why you were really here.”

“I’m going to find her if I can. I don’t know how and I’m starting pretty far back. I need your help.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“Are the cops taping this call?”

“They talked about doing that. There was some doubt about whether it’d be productive. Just a minute.” She put the phone down and blew her nose. Then she said, “They’re not exactly expecting a ransom demand.”

“When will you know?”

“They may come back tonight and put it on. Or they may not.”

“If they do and I call back, could you let me know?”

“How?”

“Clear your throat when you answer the phone. I’ll try to find a way to let you know if I’ve got anything new.”

“Or you could call Archie. He wants what we all want.” “A couple of questions. Do you know a guy named Pruitt?“