Booked to Die

by John Dunning

  “Don’t need luck; just need to be there at seven o’clock. This is the biggest deal Denver’s ever seen, and nobody even knows about it.”

  “Good luck anyway.”

  This was the gist of the conversation between Bobby and Buckley, as Buckley told it to Hennessey.

  • • •

  “So,” Hennessey said, “what’s it mean?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Looks like a motive anyway.”

  “You mean simple robbery?”

  “Sure. The guy flashes a wad like that one time too many. There’s plenty of people who’ll kill you for a roll like that… especially out on the street where this guy worked.”

  “That might make sense if it had happened the same night,” I said. “But he was going somewhere just to spend that money. He was due there in two hours: all he was doing in Buckley’s was killing time. That’s why he didn’t buy any books there—he didn’t have any money to spend.”

  “You mean the big wad was spoken for.”

  “To the last dime. In real life, Bobby was still broke.”

  “What’s it mean, then?” Hennessey said again.

  “Let’s think about it. Where’d he get the clothes, for one thing? I went through his place, you know, and I didn’t see anything that looked like a necktie or a three-piece suit.”

  “You were looking for books. I’ve seen you lose track of time when you’re looking at books.”

  “Maybe. I’ll go back and look again, but if there’s a coat and tie anywhere in that apartment I’ll eat your shorts.”

  “Whether there is or whether there ain’t,” Hennessey said, “the question still remains, what does it mean?”

  “It means Bobby had a coat and tie for one night only. It means he either borrowed or rented it. It doesn’t sound like a rental—not formal enough. Buckley didn’t say he showed up in a tux, did he?”

  Hennessey gave a little laugh. “Suit and tie is what he said.”

  “I think we’d better ask Buckley how well the clothes fit. I think he borrowed that coat and tie, from someone who was just about his size.”

  “Could be anybody,” Hennessey said. “He was pretty average.”

  “It didn’t have to be a perfect fit for one night. My guess is he got the coat and tie from the same guy who gave him the money. And I think he was as broke as ever two hours after Buckley saw him. Three days later he was in Goddard’s store trying to sell something. Lambert says he didn’t have anything with him, but maybe it was something small. The fact was, he didn’t have that money anymore. He had given that to someone on Tuesday night, and they didn’t have to kill him for it. I think the fact that he wasn’t killed till Friday night rules out robbery as a motive.”

  “It might’ve still been robbery,” Hennessey said. “Maybe not for money. Maybe whoever did it took what Bobby got for the money.”

  “That makes it robbery of a different kind, though, doesn’t it? Not your garden-variety thug. The average thug would walk right past fifty thousand dollars’ worth of books to lift twenty bucks from the cash register. This would’ve been somebody with a fairly sophisticated span of knowledge. And a damn cold motive for what he was doing.”

  “Well,” Hennessey said, “there are guys like that.”

  “There are a lot of guys like that.”

  “I’ll tell you how it looks to me. Somebody pays Bobby to do a job. Say he was taking delivery of some literary masterpiece. At this point we don’t know how Bobby got involved—we don’t know why whoever hired him couldn’t’ve taken delivery himself instead of hiring a bookscout to do it for him. Maybe that part of it isn’t important. The bookscout gets hired, then does a double cross and keeps the merchandise. It takes the client three days to track him down.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “How small can something like that be?”

  I looked at him, not understanding the question.

  “Bobby had several thousand dollars on him the night he went to Buckley’s,” Hennessey said. “Presumably he was going to buy something at a wholesale price.”

  “Okay, I’m with you so far.”

  “What’s the retail valuation on something you’d pay up to five grand for?”

  “Hell, Neal, it could be anywhere from ten to twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Could it be more than that?”

  “If it gets to be much more than that, it stops being wholesale and starts being fraud. Most honorable book dealers figure 25 to 40 percent as a fair wholesale price. Twenty would be rock-bottom. But for a big-money piece, sometimes you have to go higher than forty percent. If you fall into a piece that’s worth a quarter mil, you might have to put up three-quarters, maybe even eighty percent. That’s still a lot of change for the book dealer.”

  “If he can sell it.”

  “On that level he can always sell it. The easiest thing in the world to sell is a truly rare book. The biggest problem would be getting the money to buy it.”

  I still didn’t see where his mind was going. Hennessey tends to plod in his thinking—that’s why we were a good team. I tend to leapfrog, and sometimes it takes a guy with a more fundamental approach to rein me in and make me see what’s been in front of my face all along.

  This time he didn’t seem to know where he was going. He was groping, trying to find a handle.

  “You said something a minute ago,” he said. “That most honorable dealers figure such-and-such. How honorable do these guys tend to be?”

  “As a group, they’re just like everybody else. There are some old gentlemen straight out of the last century. Fewer of those every day. There are egomaniacs… more of those every day. There are shysters, a few scumbags, a nut or two. There are some guys who’ll take your pants off if you don’t know anything. But I think as a group they have a pretty good standard of ethics. They’ll vary right up and down the scale.”

  Hennessey nodded.

  “Neal, I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  He blinked and brought himself back to his premise. “Robbery. Bobby bought something and somebody brained him and took it away from him. That idea works, Cliff, if it was something small enough for him to carry it around with him. I think this is going to be a very stupid question, but does it sound feasible for something that small to cost so much money?”

  “Hell yes. Why would you think otherwise?”

  “It just seems like, for five g’s, you ought to get something more than a booklet.”

  I told him the Tamerlane story—how some guy had found one in a bookstore for fifteen bucks and sold it at auction for two hundred grand.

  “I hate to say it, but I don’t know what Tamerlane is.”

  “Poe’s first book. Just a booklet, like you said, but some of the most expensive stuff in the world is very small. Broadsides, pamphlets, papers…”

  “Stuff you could put in a pocket.”

  “Sure. That’s the first thing a dealer or a bookscout has to learn. Always look at the little stuff.”

  “So it’s not far-fetched to think that the bookscout might have been carrying something that somebody would kill him for.”

  “Not at all. Just imagine that somebody had found a little piece of scroll signed by Jesus Christ. A silly example—I don’t know who the hell they’d get to authenticate it—but for the sake of argument, okay? How much do you think something like that would be worth?”

  “I get your point. And I guess that’s what I’ve been trying to pin down… a motive for robbery. Something so tiny he could carry it in his pocket, but worth big bucks. That’s what he was sent to buy, and somebody killed him and took it away from him.”

  “If that’s true, it points back to the book trade. It wasn’t a sudden fight or an old enemy. The answer is in the money. Where did the money go, where did it come from? If we can follow the money, we’ll know a lot more than we know now.”

  “There’s one more thing we could check,” Hennessey said. “How ab
out the religion angle?”

  I saw it suddenly, what Neal had been pushing around in his head all day.

  “They say our boy was religious,” Hennessey said. “Found the Lord in prison a few years ago. That means he went to church somewhere. That means he had a life outside the book business. Maybe friends on a whole different level. Maybe a minister he’d confide in. You only see one side of him when you see him in a bookstore.”

  I sat up straight in my chair. “How the hell could I miss something like that?”

  “You’re too busy looking at the books,” Hennessey said.

  13

  The body of Bobby Westfall lay unclaimed in the morgue: if there was a church in Bobby’s life, it had not yet made its presence known. No one had stepped forward and offered Bobby a Decent Christian Burial. The coroner had done more for Bobby in death than most people had in life: his office had spent many man-hours on a long and fruitless search for next of kin. They had found a rumor of a sister living in Salt Lake City, but that had not checked out. Bobby had told people that his mother was dead and he never knew his father. He had mentioned Pennsylvania to several people, but that had not checked out. At seventeen, he had once said, he had been in the army: medical discharge, flat feet. Amazingly, that had not checked out. The army had no record of a Robert Westfall in its service at the time and place that Bobby would have been there. This was important, the coroner said, because if military service could be established Bobby would qualify for burial at Fort Logan. They still had a few leads to check: sometimes a body had to be kept on ice for weeks, until everything petered out. Lacking everything—church, service, next of kin—Bobby would go to an unmarked pauper’s grave at Riverside, and have the earth plowed over him by a bulldozer.

  In the morning, I went back to the bookstore beat and Hennessey began checking churches around the neighborhood where Bobby lived. I visited some new stores and went back to the old ones with new questions. Did Bobby ever mention what church he attended? Did he ever mention any names of ministers or people he knew outside the book world? I talked to Ruby Seals, Emery Neff, Jerry Harkness, and Sean Buckley. I went back to Cherry Creek and talked to Roland Goddard and Julian Lambert. It was a wasted morning. Even two bookscouts in Ruby’s store didn’t know much about Bobby. One of them had seen him a few times with the scout called Peter, but no one knew where Peter lived or what his last name was. I wrote down some stuff in my notebook, but I had a feeling that none of it meant anything.

  Meanwhile, Hennessey found the church before noon. We thought it likely that Bobby would go to church in his own neighborhood. He didn’t have a car, and probably wouldn’t want to spend Sundays doing what he did every other day of the week—walking or riding a bus. We looked closely at churches that would appeal to born-again types rather than older establishment religions. Ruby remembered that Bobby had once referred to Catholicism disparagingly—“not a true faith,” he had called it—so he wouldn’t like the Episcopal church any better. He probably wasn’t a Lutheran, and anything from the outer limits, such as Unitarianism, was unlikely. No, Bobby was probably caught up in some evangelical splinter group formed by a diploma mill preacher with a slick tongue and a ready supply of hellfire. It was easy: Hennessey found the church on the fifth try. It was one of those little chapels off University Boulevard, the Universal Church of God, it called itself. The preacher recognized Bobby’s picture at once. Yes, Bob was a regular: he seldom missed a Sunday and usually came to Bible studies on Wednesday nights as well. He always came with a fellow named Jefferson or Johnson, good friend of his. They were always together. Hennessey asked if they had come last Wednesday. As a matter of fact they had, the preacher said. Suddenly Jefferson or Johnson became the last known man, except Julian Lambert, to have seen Bobby Westfall alive.

  The preacher got the man’s name from the church registry. Jarvis Jackson lived on Gaylord Street, just a few blocks away. The preacher didn’t know either Jackson or Bobby well. They kept to themselves and were quiet and reflective in church. The preacher looked a lot like those birds you see on TV Sunday mornings: sharp and cunning, and dressed in an expensive tailored suit. Hennessey didn’t like him much.

  “What does the church do about burying its members?” Hennessey asked.

  “That all depends,” the preacher said.

  “On what?”

  “On whether they’ve made arrangements.”

  “In other words, on whether they’ve got any money.”

  “Money runs the world, Mr. Hennessey.”

  “It looks like old Bob’s headed for a potter’s field funeral, unless somebody stands the tab,” Hennessey said.

  The preacher cocked his head and tried to look sympathetic.

  Riverside loomed a little larger for dear old Bob.

  • • •

  We met at Ruby’s bookstore and went to talk to Jarvis Jackson together. Jackson lived in the south half of a shabby little duplex. He lived alone except for half a dozen cats. The cats, he explained, were what first drew him and Bob together. The place smelled strongly of sour milk and well-used kitty litter. There was a case of books in the front room and I gravitated toward them and let my eye run over the titles while Hennessey and Jackson went through the preliminaries. There wasn’t anything in the bookcase—some condensed books and other assorted junk. The bottom shelf was well stained with cat piss, the books all fused together. I would’ve cried if there’d been a Faulkner first in there.

  Jackson and Bobby had met a year ago at the church. They had sat on a bench after the service and talked cats. After that riveting conversation, Jackson had invited Bobby home for some lemonade and lunch. They had soon become friends. Jackson thought of himself as Bobby’s best friend. He was fifteen years older, but age doesn’t matter when the chemistry’s right. They liked the same things, shared the same philosophy. They liked the Lord, books, and the smell of cat poop, in approximately that order. They never ran out of things to talk about. Twice a week they would meet in a café on East Seventeenth and eat together. They discussed the Lord and the Lord’s work. Bobby had an idea that the Lord had something in mind for him. It was probably a surprise, I thought, when he found out what it was. Bobby had always wanted to do missionary work, but he’d spent all his life putting out brushfires. Jackson had heard of Bob’s death only this morning, when he’d read about it in the paper.

  “When did you see him last?” I said.

  “Wednesday night. He always came by here. We’d eat something, then walk over to church. Neither of us drove. We always walked together.”

  “Did you talk about anything?”

  “We discussed the Lord’s work over dinner.”

  “Anything other than that?”

  “Not then, no.”

  “Some other time, then?”

  “After church we came back here and talked some more. Bob didn’t seem to want to go home. Me, I’m retired… I don’t mind staying up late to talk things over.”

  “What did you talk about that night?”

  “He said he’d done a big book deal. But it wasn’t working out like he’d thought.”

  “When had he done this?”

  “The night before. He had been up all night.”

  “Did he tell you what the deal was?”

  “Not exactly. He did say it involved a lot of money. But it wasn’t working out.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “He didn’t go into any details. Just said things never seemed to work out right for him, somehow it just never went right. He couldn’t understand why the Lord always wanted him to fail. The only thing he could figure out was that the Lord was still angry from the things he’d done as a young man. That’s why he wanted to talk to me—he needed reassurance that the Lord is good, not vengeful, that the Lord doesn’t always work in ways we can understand. He doesn’t do things for our convenience or personal glory. There’s a bigger purpose to His acts. We all need to be reminded of that on occasion.”

&n
bsp; “Yes sir.”

  “So I listened and we talked. It seemed to help him to talk about it. I think he was trying to make up his mind.”

  “About what, sir?”

  “What to do about it. He was angry. I think he was even angry at the Lord until we talked about it. I think I got him to focus that anger where it really belonged.”

  “Where’s that, Mr. Jackson?”

  “At himself. At his failings and weaknesses.”

  “Or maybe at someone else?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t tell him to do that. It would never be any advice of mine that one man should hate another.”

  “Did he say he hated somebody?”

  “He was angry. He felt he’d been lied to and cheated. And I think he was trying to make up his mind what to do about it.”

  “But he never mentioned any names?”

  He shook his head.

  “Maybe a name you’ve half forgotten.”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “Did he give you any idea where he’d gotten the money for the deal?”

  “I assume someone gave it to him. I know he didn’t have any money of his own.”

  “Did he say anything that might indicate where the deal was done?”

  “No… nothing.”

  I looked at Hennessey. He gave a frown and turned his palms up.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a dead end,” Jackson said. “I want to help if I can. It’s an awful thing, what happened to Bob. I want to help, but it was his business and I just didn’t pry. All I know is that he worked all night on it. He borrowed a coat and tie from me… he wanted to make a good impression… said it was to be the first day of his new life. He was sorry later that he hadn’t gone in his old clothes. There was too much work for him to be dressed like that. He brought the suit back in pretty bad shape.”

  “Could we see that suit?”

  “It’s right back here in the closet.”

  He went into a back room and returned a moment later with the coat and tie. The pants hung loosely under the coat. It had a vest, as Buckley had said, and it looked worn and limp in the light of day.