The Bookman's Promise (28 page)

I remembered half a dozen moments in my life, crossroads where everything would be different if I had gone the other way. I could tick them off in no particular order. When I became a cop. When I stopped being a cop. When I discovered Hemingway and Fowles and those three lovely books by Maugham, all in the same month. When I became a bookseller. When I found, won, and lost an unforgettable woman. Now this. Suddenly my world was shaken. Everything in it was different.

We met again at dawn. My telephone rang in the darkness and when I lifted it she said, “You sound awake, I hope.” I said, “I am awake.” She said, “Have you had any sleep?” Not much, I admitted: not enough to matter. She asked for the time; I looked at the clock and told her it was four twenty-seven. That’s what hers said too, as if clocks were suddenly untrustworthy. “Meet me on the Battery,” she said. I told her I’d pick her up, I had to come past her hotel anyway, but she wanted to be met at dawn at the top of the steps where the rivers join and the wall gets higher. “It’ll be so much more dramatic that way.”

The wind of last night had blown dark clouds over the city and the day promised rain. I walked over, arriving at first light after a fifteen-minute hike. She stood looking out to sea like the French lieutenant’s woman. She heard me coming: didn’t turn but wiggled her ringers in an endearing “hi, there” gesture. I climbed the steps to the high wall and wrapped my arms around her. She sank against me and I kissed her neck. “How are we doing?” I said.

“So far, so good. Thank you for not pitching a fit last night.”

I thought the jury was still out on that. Then she said, “Our lives are changing, old man,” and I heard the jury coming back early.

“It looks like there are two of us now,” she said. “That takes some getting used to.”

“Yes, it does.”

“I’ve been on my own forever.”

“Never a guy to answer to. Never somebody to lay down the law.”

“I’ve been way too career-minded. Maybe now I’ve got to be more…what’s the word?”

“The word is reasonable,” I said dryly. I spelled it for her, enunciating each letter clearly.

“You’re a regular walking dictionary. What can this mean?”

“You talk tough and you make a lot of noise. You set your mind on something and that’s it.” I gave her arm a squeeze. “You’ve got a few good points as well.”

“Do I tell you what to do?”

“Not in so many words.”

“How, then? I expect you to make your own decisions. But once you’ve done that, then I get to decide what I’m going to do.”

I could have said,
That’s the same thing
, but didn’t. I still had the feeling she was somewhere between loving me madly and walking the hell out of my life.

“This is why I actually believe in the forty days and forty nights,” she said.

“That seems like a long time in these wild, permissive days.”

“Does to me too. But it’s a good, honest test. Separates the wheat from the chaff.”

“Then it’s a good thing. I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for chaff.”

“Never fear. I’m a little self-conscious saying it, but right now I feel…glorious.”

“That’s good,” I said. “That’s good.”

“It is good, and don’t look so troubled about it all.”

“You know why. It’s this business with Dante. Can we talk about that?”

“Of course. See how reasonable I am?”

“I want you to leave. And it’s got to be soon, before anyone knows you’re here.”

“Now see, that’s a dictator talking. How am I supposed to respond to that?”

“Let’s start again from a more tactful place. Will you
please
go back to Denver?”

“Certainly. Shall I book a flight for two or will Koko be coming with us?”

I stood at the railing and stared despondently out to sea. Somewhere in that gray void, Fort Sumter would be showing off her ruins for the new day. Right here, Charlie Warren had walked up to Richard Burton and asked what he was drawing in his notebook. Erin put an arm over my shoulder and tousled my heavy head. “Cheer up. Interesting days lie ahead.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“I’m giving up law,” she said a moment later. “I plan to stay current and take on a case if it speaks to me, but my days working for a big law firm are over. I gave notice on Monday.”

“What are you going to do, then? Aside from writing; I mean in real life.”

“I thought we’d settled that. I’m going to buy half an interest in your bookstore.” She tugged at my sleeve. “I’ve got a feeling there’s a world of books out there at a whole different level than where you’ve been playing.”

“Half a dozen levels, and they all take lots of money.”

“I’ve got some money. If we can get past this bump in the road, ‘ life could be fun again. Will you teach me the book business?”

“From the ground up. So to speak.”

Out on the harbor the sun had broken through and the fort appeared, a tiny black dot in a psychedelic mist.

“Koko’s going out to Fort Sumter today.”

“Have you told her about me?” “Yes, I have.”

“That’s a pretty dreary-sounding yes. I take it she wasn’t thrilled.”

“She’s a funny woman. Sometimes it takes her a while to figure out what she thinks.”

“Tell me about her.”

I told her and she said, “God, she hates me already.”

“How could she hate you? She doesn’t even know you.”

“She’s probably heard how unreasonable I am.”

I pushed at her arm and pulled her back again.

“I think you should go to the fort with her,” she said. “I’ll stay here.”

“What’s that going to accomplish?”

“Archer may call, and you can pave the way for me with Koko. Do you like her?”

“Yeah, I do. She can be difficult, like somebody else I know. But she’s got character.”

“I think she likes you too. If you know what I mean.”

“Erin, she’s twenty-five years older than me.”

“Just a hunch I have.” She smiled wisely. “Anyway, do what you can. The three of us are going to be together for a while and it’ll help if we can tolerate each other.”

The threat of rain blew away and by noon the day was sunny. We caught the two-thirty boat, taking seats on the upper deck in a warm sea breeze. It was a thirty-minute ride, sweeping us past the city’s most elegant waterfront homes and on across the harbor to Fort Sumter. Koko had called her lawyer and her insurance company. The wheels were in motion on her house; there was nothing to do but push ahead. Our pilot droned into the PA system about the notable places we were passing in the city and pointed out sites of Civil War action to the west, but I didn’t hear much of it. I was thinking of the days to come, and where our trail might lead if everything here petered out.

Koko wanted to go north, to Florence. She was hoping some record might be found of the Wheeler family, where Burton and Charlie had spent those few days 127 years ago. Charleston had disappointed her. “I didn’t think it would be this hard,” she said. “These people put so much stock in their history, they keep records of everything, that’s why I knew we’d find at least some evidence of that photographer. Now that doesn’t look so good, does it?”

I told her to cheer up, we weren’t dead yet. But that choice of words cast a harbinger across my path and I saw the Reaper’s face in the white, billowing clouds. Whatever was coming between Dante and me was inevitable now, like a river pushing everything out of its path. If he didn’t find me, I’d find him.

Today the harbor held a deceptive sense of tranquillity. Hard to imagine it filled with gunboats and bursting shells on this quiet day 120-odd years later; harder yet to understand the national lunacy that had led us there. For a moment I wondered what those Rebels, strutting around like peacocks, would have done if they’d known what a disaster they were bringing upon themselves and their sons, but I knew. Destroying themselves was just in their nature.

The fortress rose out of the water and took on color and life, a pentagon of red bricks turning pale with age. The boat made a circle and eased in toward the dock. It had a full load of passengers with both decks crowded, and we sat in the sun until most of the people were off. Two rangers met us on the pier. Koko told them she was looking for Luke Robinson, and we were directed inside the fort, where we found a uniformed man giving the tour.

What remained of Fort Sumter was the outer wall, and under it the shadowy gun rooms with vintage cannons, dark passages that went into black places under the wall, and the brick ruins of the officers’ quarters. Running down the length of the old parade ground was a black battery, a fort within a fort that was obviously of a different era. The ranger was explaining it as we came in. It was called Battery Huger, built as part of the coastal defense system during the Spanish American War. Today it housed the museum, rest rooms, and a small living space for him and his wife. Nearby were the remains of a small-arms magazine that had exploded in 1863, killing eleven men and wounding forty, leaving the wall still blackened and leaning from the force of it.

We waited through the tour, about twenty minutes, then the crowd was sent off to explore on its own. Koko approached the ranger, a lanky man in his thirties with a grand mustache.

“Mr. Robinson?”

“Yes, ma’am, at your service.”

Koko introduced us. “I was told you might know about the time Richard Burton spent in Charleston.”

“Oh, wow, where’d you hear that?”

“In town, at the Library Society.”

“I didn’t know librarians talked about people’s private research projects.”

“I’m a librarian myself. I promised her it wouldn’t go any further without your consent. We’re looking for proof that Burton was here in May of 1860.“

“Good luck. You’re chasing a real will-o‘-the-wisp. We haven’t found a single thing you can take to the bank.”

“You seem to believe it anyway.”

“Whatever I believe, it’s just my own opinion—mine and Libby’s. She’s my wife.”

“Would you mind telling us why you believe it?”

He laughed lightly. “How much time you got? Never mind, I know when the boat leaves. It’s just not something I can answer in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

“Come on upstairs.”

We climbed a narrow staircase to the upper level of the battery. There, in the smallest imaginable living space—a bed, a bookcase, a microwave oven, a table, two chairs, a small dresser and a closet, all in one tiny room—we met his wife. She was dark-haired and pretty in a crisp uniform, with a ranger hat in her hand, as if she had been about to go out. Instinctively my eyes scanned their books and found all the Burton biographies on the top shelf.

“Libby, this is Ms. Bujak and Mr. Janeway. They’re interested in Burton.“

She brightened at once and we had to go through it all again: how we got their names, what we hoped to find. It turned out that Libby had been the instigator of their Burton research, and only later had her enthusiasm spread to her husband. She was like a pixie, warm and giving, immediately likable. She said, “Sit down, stay awhile,” and we all laughed. Outside, people were already moving back toward the dock. Our time was short.

They insisted that we take the chairs. Libby sat cross-legged on the floor and Luke leaned against the bookcase. “I’ve been interested in Burton all my life,” she said. “Even when I was a child I thought he was the world’s most romantic figure. It was only by accident that I heard he’d been here.”

“How’d you hear that?” Koko said.

“There’s a Burton club here.”

“You mean like a fan club for a dead man?”

“You could call it that. There are Burton clubs all over the world. That’s one of the first things I did when we got assigned here, I went to the Burton club and we got friendly with some of the people. You know how it is: there are always a few in any group who have offbeat ideas. Most of it’s folklore, theory, hot air. There was one old man in the Burton club named Rulon Whaley who was just like that. Very loud and opinionated, but there was so much energy in him that he made me listen. He’d been fascinated by the Burton myth for years. Rulon not only believed Burton had been here but that he spied on us for England. He was determined to prove it but he never did. He died this year.”

“Do you know where he got that idea?”

“Heard it from another old gent long ago, I think. Once he got something in his head, he was almost impossible to defeat.”

Most of the talk that followed was historical rehash, things we all knew. Koko and Libby talked, the ranger and I watched. I especially watched Libby. A certain tone had come into her voice. A look I had seen many times had come into her eyes. As a cop I called it the knows-more-than-she’s-telling look. Koko had missed it because she had spent her life answering questions and I had spent mine asking them.

I asked one now. “Did you ever learn who the other man was?”

Libby shook her head. “He died years ago, so it always seemed rather hopeless.”

“Maybe he left some papers, or some record.”

“No way of knowing now. If he did, I guess I dropped the football.”

Koko stood and said, “Well, thank you for talking to us.”

I glared at her and my look said,
Keep still
.

“This is awful,” Libby said. “There’s not even enough time to offer you a cup of coffee. I’d love to sit around with you and kick at it for a while.”

“Maybe we should do that,” I said.

“Like when?” Robinson said. “The boat’s going to leave them, Lib.”

“Maybe they could come back.”

“They’d have the same time problem. And none of us really knows anything.” He looked at me apologetically. “You’re certainly welcome to come back but I’m afraid it would just be a waste of your time.”

“You could come back anyway,” Libby said. “If you wanted to you could stay the night. We’d have plenty of time to talk then.”

“Is that allowed?”

“Oh, sure. You’d have to bring sleeping bags. We’re not exactly the Holiday Inn here.”

I had a hunch and so did Libby: I could feel it, like some energy field growing between us. “What do you think he was doing here?” she said.

“Well, we know he wanted to see the States.”

“Do you really believe he came only as a tourist?”

“No.”

She smiled quixotically and I felt Koko stiffen beside me. Koko had come here for information, not to talk too much, and I knew she wouldn’t like the way this was going. Stiffly, she said, “Of course that’s just conjecture. We don’t know any more than you do.”

But Libby was looking at me, not Koko. I said, “Maybe together we’ll all discover stuff we didn’t know we knew. Sometimes you’ve got to give a little to get a lot.”

“What stuff?” Libby said. “Do you actually know something?”

“He used to be a detective,” Koko said dismissively. “Thinks he still is.”

“Really?” Libby smiled at me as if she liked that idea.

“We think Burton came here with someone,” I said.

“Oh, don’t tell them that,” Koko said. “My God, there’s no proof of that at all.”

“Then it doesn’t hurt to tell them, does it? As an unproved theory.”

“Tell us what?” Libby said.

“We think he met a man in Washington and traveled with him. They came through here in May of 1860 and went to New Orleans together. They became close friends.”

Koko’s face was red with anger. She turned away and looked out over the fort.

Libby said, “Do you know what his friend looked like?”

Now there’s a strange question, I thought. I might have expected her to ask whether we knew his name, but who asks about the appearance of a man from a time when photography was so new that few had ever had their pictures taken?

“Do we know what he looked like, Koko?”

“Don’t ask me. How would I know?”

Again Libby made eye contact. I shrugged and Robinson said, “You’re going to miss your boat.” Mischievously, Libby said, “Then they wouldn’t have to worry about the time.”

“That’s her way of saying she wants you to come back,” Robinson said.

“When?”

“Can’t be tomorrow or the next day,” Libby said. “I’m going to school. I’m writing a paper and I’ve got to study for a wicked test. It all hits at once.”

“What about Tuesday?”

“Tuesday would work. Bring good sleeping gear. The ground here’s hard.”

They walked us down to the dock. At the pier we all shook hands. Again they apologized for the hectic schedule. At the very end Libby asked the question I had expected in the beginning. “Do you know the name of the man who came with Burton?”

Before I could answer, she answered it herself. “It wouldn’t be Charlie, would it?”