Butcher's Moon

Six

“Very nice library you have here,” Grofield said.

The girl walking through the stacks ahead of him turned her head to twinkle over her shoulder in his direction. “Well, thank you,” she said, as though he’d told her she had good legs, which she had.

They went through a section of reading tables, all unoccupied. “You don’t seem to get much of a business,” he said.

She gave a dramatic sigh and an elaborate shrug. “I suppose it’s all you can expect from a town like this,” she said.

Oh ho, thought Grofield, one of those. Self-image: a rose growing on a dungheap. A rose worth plucking? “What other attractions are there in a town like this?” he asked.

“Hardly anything. Here we are.”

A small alcove held a battered microfilm reader on a table, with a wooden chair in front of it. Smiling at it, Grofield said, “Elegant. Very nice.”

She smiled broadly in appreciation, and he knew she knew they were artistic soulmates. “You should see the room with the LPs,” she said.

“Should I?”

“It’s ghastly.”

He looked at her, unsure for just a second, but her expression told him she hadn’t after all been suggesting a quiet corner in which they could bump about together. The idea, in fact, hadn’t occurred to her; she was really a very simple straightforward girl, appropriate to the town and the library.

Out of habit, and not to offend the child’s feelings, he went on with the routine, pitching it slow and simple and without double meanings. “There must be something to do around here after the sun goes down.”

She pursed her lips to show disgust; all her movements and expressions were a little too heavily done, as though she hadn’t figured out the fine tuning of her personality yet. “Everybody just watches television,” she said.

He said, “I tell you what. I don’t know if I’ll be tied up with business tonight or not, but give me your phone number and if I can get free I’ll call you. We’ll see what good old Tyler has to offer.”

“Oh, I can’t tonight,” she said, and this time came on too heavy with the disappointment.

Just as well, he thought. “Maybe later in the week,” he said.

“All right. Fine.” Very eager. “You want to write it down?”

He couldn’t think what she wanted him to write down. “Eh?”

“My number.”

“Oh! Of course.” He produced the memo book and ballpoint pen, and stood like a reporter in Front Page. “Fire away.”

She told him seven numbers and he wrote them down, and she said, “I really am sorry about tonight.”

“Well, you’re a good-looking girl,” he said. “I could hardly expect you to be free at a moment’s notice. Especially on a Friday night.”

She twinkled again. “What a sweet thing to say.”

“I can’t tell a lie in a library,” he said, to make a transition, and looked around, adding, “About the newspapers . . .”

“Oh, yes!” She became suddenly efficient, but again the effect was too heavy. Pointing with large arm movements, she said, “They’re right there, on those shelves. The newest are on the top, and then the older ones are below. And the indexes are those books on the bottom shelves.”

“Fine. Thanks a lot.”

“Well,” she said, and flashed a meaningless smile, and made a couple of awkward hand movements. “I’d better let you get to your work.”

“See you later.” He gave her a nod and a friendly smile, and waited for her to leave.

She bounced away, more emphatically than necessary, and Grofield turned his attention to the microfilm files of the Tyler Times-Chronicle, the city’s only remaining morning newspaper. The most recent bound index gave him three references to Lozini himself, and half a dozen promising-sounding references to organized crime. He took the proper boxes of microfilm from the top shelf, lined them up next to the reader, threaded one in the machine, and sat down to start reading.

Alan Grofield was an actor: always and everywhere, not merely in a play on a stage. Movie background music played in his head as he moved through his life, accenting and heightening everything he did, altering everything to melodrama—even the melodrama. Sometimes he was a bomber pilot, World War Two, bringing the crippled bird home over the Channel, the rest of the crew dead or dying at their posts. Sometimes he was the same pilot, downed in France, being hidden by the beautiful farm girl in the low-ceilinged, dirt-walled basement with the stone archways. Sometimes he was the foreign spy, on his way to the meeting where he would turn over the plans for the new submarine. And always the appropriate music played in his mind, giving him a rhythm to move to, so that he gave an effect of unconscious grace and catlike sinuousness—charged, dynamic and utterly artificial.

The sound track running through his mind right now, though, was not exactly music. He was in a Dennis O’Keefe movie at the moment, made around 1950; a federal agent, he had volunteered to pretend to be a crook and thus to work his way into the inner circle of the counterfeiting ring. So here he was at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.—the dome of the Capitol would have been visible in the background in the establishing shot showing him trotting up wide stone steps—studying the files on the known members of the gang, preparing himself for the infiltration. And instead of background music, the sound track was filled with the stern tones of an off-screen narrator. “Agent Kilroy studied the men he would soon—” The rest was fuzzed, the voice without the words but ringing with authority.

For two hours Agent Kilroy studied the men. Adolf Lozini. Frank Faran. Louis “Dutch” Buenadella. Nathan Simms. John W. Walters. Ernest Dulare. Joseph “Cal” Caliato, from whom much had been expected until his mysterious disappearance two years ago. And the names of businesses, linked with the men. Three Brothers Trucking. Entertainment Enterprises, a vending-machine company. The New York Room, a local nightclub. Ace Beverage Distributors. Each name led to the next, back and forth through five years of local newspapers, until at last a pretty good general layout of the local mob was spread out before him. His notebook was full, his eyes were tired, and his back was sore from bending for so long into the opening of the microfilm reader.

He got to his feet, put the final microfilm spool back in its box and the box back on its shelf, rubbed his eyes, rubbed his back, pocketed his memo book and pen, and headed for the exit.

The girl was on the lookout for him, and came tripping out from behind the main desk as he was going by. She gave violent hand signals to attract his attention, and when he stopped she hurried over and whispered, “It turns out I’m free tonight after all.”

She’d broken her date; headache, no doubt. Feeling vaguely sorry for the young man, and both irritated and guilty toward the girl, Grofield said, “That’s wonderful.”

“So if you’re free—”

“I certainly hope I am,” he said, and suddenly realized that although he now had her phone number, he didn’t have her name. “I’ll call you the second I know,” he said. “My name’s Alan, by the way. Alan Green.”

“Hi, Alan. I’m Dori Neevin.”

“I’ll call you, Dori.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He grinned into her big-girl smile, and left the library, and went back to the hotel, where Parker was standing at his room window, looking down at the mayoral banner flapping over the street. He turned when Grofield walked in, and said, “Lozini says no.”

Grofield tossed the memo book on the bed. “Pick a number,” he said.