The Bookman's Wake (2 page)

“If you’re such a ball of fire, how come you
didn’t solve it?”

“I
did
solve the goddamn thing, that’s why they want to do
it, you goddamn moron, as a follow-up to a story they did
last year about all the meatheads who
couldn’t
solve the damn thing. Get this straight,
Janeway—there is no case I can’t solve.
That’s why I’m cutting Denver a new rear end,
because I guarantee everything. I get results or I
don’t cash the check. You got a missing
person?…I’ll find the son of a bitch. If he
owes you money, I’ll drag his ass back here, and
before we’re through with him, he’ll wish
he’d never laid eyes on you, this town, and most of
all me. I can find anybody in a day or two—it’s
just a matter of knowing your guy and using the old noggin.
We’ve got a computer database with access to seventy
million names in every state in the union. If the
bastard’s got a MasterCard, works for a living, or
has ever subscribed to a magazine, I’ve got his ass
in my computer. I can tell you his home address, phone
number, the size of his jockstrap, and how many X-rated
videos he watched last week. I can tell you stuff about
yourself that you didn’t even know.”

“Clydell…”

“Okay, the point is, I can’t keep up with
it. I’ve got three legmen and three tracers on my
payroll full-time, and I still can’t keep up with all
the work. I could put on three more people right now and
we’d still be a month behind in our billings. I turn
down more jobs now than I take on: I take on any more, I
won’t be able to do the sexy ones myself. I’ll
just be a Paper man, shoveling shit and passing out
assignments. Not the life for your old buddy, if you know
what I mean. This is where you come in.”

“Uh-uh,” I said, shaking my head.

“You’d be second-in-command. Write your own
ticket. I guarantee you’d make fifty grand, rock
bottom, your first year. You’d have your pick of all
the interesting cases, you’d be the go-between
between me and the staff. You’d get a staff car and
all expenses paid. I’m telling you, old buddy, my
people go first-cabin all the way. My liquor cabinet opens
at four and the staff has all the privileges. And if
you’re lonely at night, we’ve got three
secretaries with world-class’t-and-a, and they do a
helluva lot more for a guy than take his dictation. I know
you’re not crazy about me, Janeway, I got eyes in my
head. But you ask anybody who works for me, they’ll
all tell you what a pussycat I am. A guy does it my way,
he’s got no problems. You’re gonna love this,
and you’ll love me too before it’s over. Even
if you don’t, nobody says we’ve gotta sleep
together.”

With that sorry premise, I excused myself and went to
the bathroom.

He was still there, though, when I came back.

“Think about it,” he said.

“I already have.”

“
Think
about it, you dumb schmuck.” He looked around
critically. “You’re like me, Janeway, a man of
action. What the hell are you doing here?”

I’ll give it one try, I thought, see if I can make
him understand the tiniest truth about the world he’s
blundered into. But I couldn’t find the words even
for that. You’ll never convince a doorknob that
there’s anything more to life than getting pushed,
pulled, and turned.

“I appreciate the thought,” I said,
“but I’ve got to pass.”

“This job’s tailor-made for you, it’s
got your name stamped all over it. You want
proof?…I’ll toss you a plum. Two days’
work, you pick up five grand. There’s even a book
angle, if you’re interested.”

I stared at him.

“Do I finally have your attention?” he said,
grinning. “Did I just say a magic word or
something?”

“You might’ve started with that, saved
yourself a lot of time.”

“Shut up and listen. I need somebody to go pick up
a skip. My staffs booked solid for the next two weeks;
I’m so tight right now I can’t even send the
janitor out there. This lady needs to be delivered back to
the district court in Taos, New Mexico, ten days from
tomorrow, absolute latest. The bondsman’s out fifty
grand and he’s willing to grease our cut to fifteen
percent for dragging her back. I’ve already done the
arithmetic: that’s seventy-five big ones, just for
taking a couple of plane rides. I pay your freight out
there, you go first-class all the way,
plus
I give you the big cut.”

“Where’s out there?”

“She’s in Seattle.”

“How do you know that?”

“I went to Madame Houdini and looked in a crystal
ball, you fuckin‘ schlemiel. I play the odds,
that’s how. This gal comes from there, she’s
still got people there, where else is she gonna go? I
called a guy I know and put him on her case. Just sit and
watch, you know the routine. Yesterday, around four
o’clock, there she comes, bingo, we got her. My guy
just gives her plenty of rope, and after a while she leads
him to the Y, where she’s staying.”

“Where’s your guy now?”

“Still on her tail. He called me from a phone
booth an hour ago, while she was getting her breakfast at
the bus station lunch counter.”

“Why not just have him pick her up? Seems to me
that’d be the easy way.”

“It’s not him I’m trying to impress,
meatball. Let me level with you, Janeway: I don’t
give a rat’s ass about this case, it’s just a
way for you to make some quick and easy dough and see how
much fun workin‘ for your old buddy really is. I
swear to God, when I thought of you last night, it was like
the answer to some prayer. I’ve been needing somebody
like you as a ramrod in my office for at least a year now,
but nobody I talked to seemed right for the job. Then this
Eleanor Rigby thing popped and it came to me in one fell
swoop. Cliff Janeway! What a natural.”

“What Eleanor Rigby thing?”

“That’s the skip’s name.”

I blinked. “Eleanor
Rigby
?”

“Just like the song,” Slater said in the
same tone of voice. But his eyes had suddenly narrowed and
I sensed him watching me keenly, as if, perhaps, I might
know Eleanor Rigby as something other than a song of my
youth.

“Eleanor Rigby,” I said, staring back at
him.

“Yeah, but this little baby’s not wasting
away to a fast old age.”

I blinked again, this time at the picture he showed
me.

“Not bad, huh? You make five big ones and you get
to ride all the way home handcuffed to
that
. I’d do this one myself, old buddy, if it
wasn’t for a radio date and
Denver Magazine
.”

Then, very much against all my better judgment, I said,
“Tell me about it.”

E
leanor Rigby had gone to Taos to steal a book: that, at
least, was how the betting line was running. On the night
of September 14, four weeks ago, she had by her own account
arrived in New Mexico. Five nights later she had
burglarized the country home of Charles and Jonelle
Jeffords. While tossing the house, she was surprised by the
Jeffordses sudden return; a struggle ensued and shots were
fired. According to a statement by Mrs. Jeffords, the Rigby
woman had shot up the place in a panic and escaped the
house. The law came quickly and Rigby was flushed out of
the surrounding woods. She had initially been charged with
aggravated burglary, a violation of New Mexico statute
30-16-4: then, after further interviews with the victims,
the DA had added the more serious business—aggravated
assault, assault with a deadly weapon, and attempted
murder. I didn’t know what the penalties were in New
Mexico, but it probably wasn’t much different from
Colorado. The whole package could get her ten years in the
state penitentiary. The judge had set a standard bail: the
DA had probably argued that Rigby had no ties to the
community and was not a good risk, but judges, even in the
punitive era we seem to be heading into, are reluctant to
throw away the key before a defendant has had her day in
court. Bail was $50,000: Rigby had put up as collateral a
property she owned, a wooded tract near Atlanta that had
been left her by her grandfather. The bondsman had posted
the cash bond and had taken title to the property as a
guarantee that she’d appear for her court date.

But Rigby did not appear. She returned to the
Jeffordses’ house, broke in again, stole some papers
and a book, and this time got away.

“That’s where we come in,” Slater
said. “The Jeffords woman wants her book back;
it’s one of those things, you know how people get
over their stuff. A few days later she heard from the cops
that Rigby had been seen in Denver; Jeffords got pipelined
to me. It didn’t take us long to figure out that
Rigby had been here for one night only, just passing
through on her way to Seattle. The rest is history. My
guy’s got a bead on her and she’s sittin‘
in the bus station, waiting for one of us to come pick her
up. That’s when I thought of you, old buddy.
I’m sittin’ at my desk thinking about this
crazy dame and her book, and all of a sudden it hits me
like a bolt of lightning right in the ass.
Janeway
! And I wonder where the hell my head’s been the last
two years. I didn’t give a damn about the case
anymore, I’ve got bigger problems than that on my
mind, and you, my good old buddy, are the answer to all of
‘em.”

I looked at him, wondering how much of this bullshit I
was expected to swallow at one time.

“Think of it this way, Clime. You got nothing to
lose, and you can buy a helluva lot of books for five
grand.”

It was almost uncanny: that’s exactly what I was
thinking, almost to the word. It was as if Slater had
drilled a hole in my head and it had come spilling out.

“And while you’re up there, you can double
your money if you happen to stumble over that little book
that Jeffords wants back so bad. Best deal you’ve had
in a month of Sundays. You get five grand guaranteed, just
for getting on the airplane. Get lucky and make yourself
another five.”

“What’s the name of this book you’re
looking for?”

He got out his wallet and unfolded a paper. “You
familiar with a thing called
The Raven
?”

“Seems like I’ve heard of it once or twice.
It’s a poem. Written by Edgar Allan Poe.”

“This one was by some guy named Grayson. Does that
make any sense to you?”

“Not so far.”

“All I can tell you is what the client told me. I
wrote it down real careful, went back over it half a dozen
times, and it’s still Greek.”

“Can I see the paper?”

He gave it up reluctantly, like a father giving away a
daughter at a wedding. The paper was fragile: it was
already beginning to wear thin at the creases. I
didn’t say anything about that, just unfolded it
gingerly and looked at what he had written.
“Actually, I do know the book,” I said.
“It’s a special edition of
The Raven
, published by the Grayson Press.”

I sensed a sudden tension in the room, as if I had
caught him stealing something. Our eyes met, but he looked
away. “I don’t understand this stuff,” he
said.

“What about it don’t you
understand?”

“What makes these things valuable…why
one’s worth more than the others. You’re the
expert, you tell me.”

“Supply and demand,” I said in a masterpiece
of simplicity.

Slater was probably a lifelong Republican who was born
knowing the law of supply and demand. It’s the
American way. If you want something I’ve got, the
price will be everything the traffic will bear. If
I’ve got the only known copy, you’d better get
ready to mortgage the homestead, especially if a lot of
other people want it too. What he didn’t understand
was the quirk of modern life that has inflated ordinary
objects and hack talents into a class with Shakespeare,
Don Quixote
, and the Bible. But that was okay, because I didn’t
understand it either.

But I told him what I did know, what almost any good
bookman would know. And felt, strangely, even as I was
telling it, that Slater knew it too.

“The Grayson Press was a small publishing house
that dealt in limited editions. I’ve heard they made
some fabulous books, though I’ve never had one
myself. Grayson was a master book designer who hand made
everything, including his own type. He’d take a
classic, something in the public domain like

The Raven
, and commission a great artist to illustrate it. Then
he’d publish it in a limited run, usually just a few
hundred copies, numbered and signed by himself and the
artist. In the trade these books are called instant
rarities. They can be pretty nice collector’s items,
though purists have mixed feelings about them.“

“Mixed feelings how?”

“Well, it’s obvious they’ll never take
the place of the first edition. Poe’s work becomes
incidental to this whole modern process. The books become
entities of their own: they’re bought mainly by
people who collect that publisher, or by people who just
love owning elegant things.”

He gave me a nod, as if waiting for elaboration.

“It’s not an impossible book to find,
Clydell, that’s what I’m telling you. I think I
could find your client one fairly easily. It might take a
month or two, but I could find it, assuming the
client’s willing to spend the money.”

“The client’s willing to spend ten
grand…which I’d be inclined to split with you
fifty-fifty.”

“The client’s crazy. I could find her half a
dozen copies for that and still give her half her money
back.” “Don’t bullshit me, Janeway. How
do you find half a dozen copies of a rare book like
that?”

“People call them instant rarities: that
doesn’t mean they’re truly rare. My guess is
that this Grayson
Raven
is becoming a fairly scarce piece, but I still think it can
be smoked out.”

“You guys talk in riddles. Rare, scarce…what
the hell’s the difference?”

“A scarce book is one that a dealer might see
across his counter once every five or ten years. A rare
book— well, you might spend your life in books and
never see it. None of the Grayson books are really rare in
that sense. They’re scarce just by the fact that they
were all limited to begin with. But they’re all
recent books, all done within the last forty years, so
it’s probably safe to say that most of them are still
out there. We haven’t lost them to fire, flood, war,
and pestilence. As a matter of fact, I can tell you exactly
how many copies there were—I’ve got a Grayson
bibliography in my reference section.”

I got the book and opened it, thumbing until I found
what I wanted.

“
‘The Raven and Other Poems
, by Edgar Allen Poe,’” I read:
“‘published by Darryl Grayson in North Bend,
Washington, October 1949. Four hundred copies
printed.’ It was one of Grayson’s first books.
The last time I saw one in a catalog…I’m trying
to think…it seems like the dealer was asking around
five hundred dollars. That’s pretty steep, actually,
for a book like that, but I guess this Grayson was a pretty
special bookman.”

“And you really think you could get your mitts on
half a dozen of these?”

“Well,” I hedged, “I could find her
one, I’m sure enough of that.”

“How do you go about it? I mean, you just said
you’d only get to see one of these every five or ten
years.”

“Across my counter. But I won’t wait for
that, I’ll run an ad in the
AB
. That’s a booksellers’ magazine that goes to
bookstores all over the country. Somebody’s bound to
have the damn thing: if they do, they’ll drop me a
postcard with a quote. I might get one quote or half a
dozen: the quotes might range from two hundred up. I take
the best deal, figure in a fair profit for myself, your
client pays me, she’s got her book.”

“What if I decide to run this ad myself and cut
you out of the action? Not that I would, you know,
I’m just wondering what’s to prevent
it.”

“Not a damn thing, except that
AB
doesn’t take ads from individuals, just book dealers.
So you’re stuck with me.
Old buddy
,” I added, a fairly nice jab.

It was lost on him: his head was in another world
somewhere and he was plodding toward some distant goal line
that he could only half see and I couldn’t
imagine.

“My client wants the book, only the one she wants
ain’t the one you’re talking about.”

“I’m not following you.”

“This Grayson dude was supposed to’ve done
another one in 1969.”

“Another what?”

“Raven.”

“Another edition of the same book? That
doesn’t sound right to me.”

I thumbed through the bibliography, searching it
out.

“There’s no such book,” I said after a
while.

“How do you know that?”

“It would be in the bibliography.”

“Maybe they missed it.”

“They don’t miss things like that. The guy
who put this together was probably the top expert in the
world on the Grayson Press. He spent years studying it: he
collected everything they published. There’s no way
Grayson could’ve published a second
Raven
without this guy knowing about it.”

“My client says he did.”

“Your client’s wrong, Clydell, what else can
I tell you? This kind of stuff happens in the book
world…somebody transposes a digit taking notes, 1949
becomes 1969, and suddenly people think they’ve got
something that never existed in the first place.”

“Maybe,” he said, lighting another
smoke.

A long moment passed. “So go get Rigby,” he
said at the end of it. “Pick her up and cash your
chips. At least we know that’s real.”

“Jesus. I can’t believe I’m about to
do this.”

“Easiest money you ever made.”

“You better understand one thing, Slater, and
I’m tempted to put it in writing so there won’t
be any pissing and moaning later on. I’m gonna take
your money and run. You remember I said that. I’m
happier than I’ve been in years. I wouldn’t go
back to DPD for the chiefs job and ten times the dough, and
listen, don’t take this personally, but I’d
rather be a sex slave for Saddam Hussein than come to work
for you. Can I make it any clearer than that?”

“Janeway, we’re gonna love each other. This
could be the start of something great.”