by John Dunning
I pointed to her face and snapped my fingers. “Millie Farmer, the teaching bookscout.”
“Just bookscout, dad. I’m out of teaching forever. If I’m not going to make any money anyway, I might as well have fun doing it.”
“You’ve come to the right place,” I said.
I broke her in: walked her through the store and showed her what was what and how to find it. I gave her Miss Pride’s key to the front door and said I’d be in each day at four o’clock to be with her when she closed. There seemed to be nothing more to discuss, yet we all knew better. Painful, unfinished business lay between us. There had been a strain between Ruby and me, and now it extended to her. We had never talked about Neff. It made Ruby squirm, as if somehow he had shared the blame for what had happened. Emery Neff had touched us all in some basic, primal way, and none of us had been able to throw off his ghost.
Even now, getting into it wasn’t easy.
“Wonder what’s gonna happen to those books,” I said.
Ruby gave a fidgety shrug and looked out into the street.
“We’ll never see another collection like that.”
“Probably not,” he said.
I looked from one to the other. They said nothing.
“Hey, you want a job full-time?” I said to Millie.
“Hell yes.”
“You’re hired. Doesn’t pay much. Six an hour and all your books at twenty percent off.”
“Dad, I just died and went to heaven,” she said to Ruby.
I made another try at knocking down some walls. “The thing that beats me is how those books changed from club books to firsts. If I could get the answer to that, I’d die a happy man.”
“They never were club books,” Ruby said.
“It’s not that easy, Ruby. If it were just McKinley’s appraisal it would be simple. But I saw all the invoices, all the club flyers. On most of them he had written what he’d ordered and the date. Those damn books are there, the same books he ordered, only they’re first editions, not club copies. He was the most compulsive record-keeper you ever saw. When the books came in from the club, he wrote down the dates. Then he wrote what he thought of them after he’d read them. It’s all there, in Ballard’s own handwriting. Only somehow between now and then a genie got in his house and waved a wand and turned those books into gold.”
I could see Ruby wanted to leave but he couldn’t find an exit cue.
“What’s your answer?” I asked.
“Ain’t got no answer. Hell, Dr. J, I don’t know. I don’t even think it’s very interesting. Where the old man got his eye for books—that’s where the real mystery is. If we knew that we’d all be rich in no time. How do guys like old man Ballard start from scratch and build a library that just knocks people for a loop? I don’t know. Somehow they’re plugged into the universe in this queer kinda way. They know what’ll be valued, not just now but years from now.”
“And they don’t even think of value in terms of money,” I said. “They have a totally different agenda. And I guess it was a lot easier to build a library then, when the average cost of a book was two bucks.”
“It’s all relative. You of all people ought to know that. A book has always cost about what a meal in a good restaurant costs. Did then, still does. I get sick of hearing how expensive books are. Which would you rather have, a good book or a tender steak? I know what I’d take, seven days a week.”
He moved to the door: he was about to leave.
“That was a good move, hiring this lady,” he said. “She’ll be good for your business, just like the other one. She’s got a sassy mouth but you can handle her. Just give her the back of your hand two or three times a day.”
Millie stuck out her tongue.
“You need to unshackle your legs, get free again,” Ruby said. “You’re going through something, I can see it written all over you. It’s a growth spurt. All of a sudden you’re tired of retail. You’re starting to see where the real fun is in the book business. Usually it takes five years: you’ve gone through it all in three months. You came into this business almost whole, and now you’re ready to move on. The Zen Buddhists have a word for it. Satori. It means sudden enlightenment.”
“I don’t feel suddenly enlightened. I feel as dense as ever. I don’t think I’ll be able to rest till I know the answers to those two questions.”
“What questions?” Millie said.
“How did those books change into fine firsts… and who was the woman?”
“What woman?”
“The day Peter and Miss Pride were killed, a woman called and asked for Neff. Ruby talked to her.”
Millie Farmer blinked.
“Hell,” she said, “I believe that was me.”
54
I was out of my apartment in two hours.
I was surprised at how little I had. I wanted few things from that old life: my furniture, such as it was, was old and worn; the Salvation Army had been glad to come for it, and I was having new stuff delivered that afternoon. There had been some doubt about the bed arriving today, and I was prepared to bag it tonight on the floor. I arrived on Madison Street before noon. It was a warm day for December, but Denver is like that: it can have rain, snow, and a heat wave all in the same week.
Greenwald was sitting in a rocker reading a book when I drove up. He greeted me with a wave. I began to move my things in, arranging as I went. I gloried in the bookshelves: how many book dealers have room for ten thousand books at home? I looked through the front window and saw that Greenwald had fallen asleep with the book spread open across his chest. When I looked again, some minutes later, he was gone. But he was back again, wearing a sweater, when I made my last trip to the trailer.
“It’s going to snow tonight,” he said. “I just saw it on the weather. You can feel it coming already; there’s a chill in the air.”
He had made us some lunch. “Just come over when you’re ready,” he said. I went into my bathroom to wash. The floor had two small smooth spots where Stanley Ballard had stood every morning. Untold numbers of shaves he had had, standing at this same glass. Scraping his face with an old-fashioned straight razor (the hook for the strop was still there, fastened to the wall). Looking in his own eyes and seeing no mystery there. Knowing himself thoroughly.
Satori, I thought.
Maybe I’ll become a Buddhist.
I knew things I hadn’t known before. I could see Emery Neff sitting in his store that day. Ruby had walked up the street for a cup of coffee. Pinky had just called to say that she’d be closing up alone. But Peter was coming in, so everything would be fine.
He knew then what he was going to do. He picked up the phone and dialed a number he had called often in the past few months.
I want to see you… today, this afternoon… I need you.
And Millie, who thought she’d come to love him, could never say no.
The problem is, I’ve been gone from the store a lot. Ruby’s starting to think I’m not pulling my weight. So here’s what we’ll do. You call back in ten minutes. I’ll see that he answers the phone. Don’t tell him who you are, just ask for me. Be formal… cool and distant. Call me Mr. Neff. He’ll think I’m coming over on a buy, and we’ll spend the afternoon together.
But he never came. Millie sat by the phone and it rang an hour later.
Sorry, hon, it’s not gonna work… not feeling well… think I’ve got the flu. Going home to lie down… no, don’t come up, you’ll just get what I’ve got. I’ll make it up to you….
An illusion, like one of his old magic tricks. Now you see him, now you don’t.
Like that illusion of death he had performed for me alone: two cold capsules popped into his mouth, and you were ready to believe anything.
So simple, so easy, once you knew how it was done.
• • •
I tried to call Rita, without much hope. There had been no answer up there for weeks, and there was none now.
Then I remembered that o
ther number. Bobby Westfall had written it down and dropped the paper when he’d been in talking to Harkness. It took me a few minutes to find it, and another few minutes to figure it out.
An out-of-state exchange.
I tried it with a Los Angeles area code and got the intercept operator.
San Francisco.
Intercept.
It rang through to New York. A woman answered.
“Greenpeace Action.”
“Is this Greenpeace… International?”
“We’re part of it.”
“Uh… is Rita McKinley there?”
“She was here yesterday.”
Now what the hell was this about? What had Bobby been doing with a number for Greenpeace?
“Do you know if she’s coming back?”
“I don’t know, sir. I believe she was going to Europe.”
He had been trying to reach Rita, just before he was killed. About the time she was off saving whales.
She had been on NBC. Was it not possible that he had seen her Brokaw interview?
Which would mean… what?
Could it be Bobby’s Christian conscience at work? He and Neff had just pulled off the literary heist of the decade, and you could bet that something was at work.
The woman on the phone was talking.
“Is there a message, sir… in case we do hear from her?”
“Just tell her Janeway called.”
And please, please call back.
55
Now I sit with old Mr. Greenwald and I know the end is coming. I think I may even know what it is. Satori is working overtime, and my enlightenment is both sudden and overwhelming. It comes in waves, like a tide pushed up by a hurricane.
“So the house is finally yours—the deal, as they say these days, is truly finished.”
“It’s truly finished, Mr. Greenwald.”
“Have some more coffee.”
This is how it is in Greenwald’s world: civilized society comes first and business is done in its own good time.
Being among the newly enlightened, I don’t push him.
And eventually he does get to it. “Things have been preying on my mind since Stan died. I only wanted to do right by him, to do what he wanted done.”
“I think you’ve done that, sir.”
He gives me a little smile, gratitude and appreciation, but laced with doubt. Four people, after all, have died. It’s hard to know what to do when you don’t come equipped with a crystal ball.
“Oscar Wilde once said that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Judith and Val have become cynics in just that definition of the word.”
“I’d agree with that.”
“They have not turned out to be good people.”
“No one’s responsible for that but them.”
“Stan felt responsible. He was also horrified. He had a dream one night, not long before he died. They were fighting over his books, tearing them apart. The next morning he told me about it. He said, ‘I don’t care about the house, don’t care about any of it… I just don’t want them to have my books. Give them away, throw them away, I don’t care, but I won’t rest easy unless I know they won’t get them.’”
“He had no idea what they were worth, did he?”
“I think he knew, toward the end, that they were worth some money. Enough, at least, that there would be a squabble over them. But you’re right—he had no real idea. He’d be mortified if he knew.”
“He could’ve saved a lot of trouble and just left them to you.”
“Where would I put them? I have my own books, my house is full of books, most of them the same titles he had. Where would I put them?”
“So he figured it the way he always figured—that his library would do the most good by being broken up and given away.”
“Sure: give them to the people. Stan gave away books by the carload. He used the book club as his first line of reading, and gave those books away. Gave them to nursing homes, hospitals, people he knew and people he barely knew. He was especially interested in helping young people discover the world of books. So he gave them away, but the ones he liked he kept for himself. Gave away the club books and bought his own copies in the stores downtown.”
“And the easiest way to break up the library…”
“… was to leave a document proving that the books had no money value. Done by an expert no one would challenge. Only Stan and I knew, and he asked me to keep that secret until the last of his estate was disposed of. The house was the last of it.”
And now we all know. Ballard left the appraisal among his papers but tucked a copy for good measure among his books. Emery Neff found that appraisal, scanned it, and jumped to the logical conclusion: that McKinley was a crook, lowballing so she could buy the books for a song. But Bobby had taken the time to actually read the appraisal. He alone knew the truth, that McKinley had been duped. That’s why he was trying to reach McKinley when the deal between Neff and himself had begun to go sour. Maybe a better deal could be struck with McKinley.
Greenwald offers more coffee, served with a sad little smile.
“Stan got the appraisal he wanted. We traded houses the night the appraiser came out. The books she looked at were mine.”
© Gary Isaaks
JOHN DUNNING is the national and New York Times bestselling author of Booked to Die, which won the prestigious Nero Wolfe award, The Bookman’s Wake (a New York Times Notable Book of 1995), the Edgar Award—nominated Deadline, The Holland Suggestions, and Two O’Clock, Eastern Wartime. An expert on rare and collectible books, he owned the Old Algonquin Bookstore in Denver for many years. He is also an expert on American radio history, authoring On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. His latest Cliff Janeway novel, The Bookman’s Promise, is forthcoming in hardcover from Scribner. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
Books by John Dunning
FICTION
The Holland Suggestions*
Looking for Ginger North
Denver
Deadline*
Booked to Die*
The Bookman’s Wake*
Two O’Clock, Eastern Wartime**
NONFICTION
Tune in Yesterday
On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio
*Published by POCKET BOOKS
**Published in hardcover by SCRIBNER
SCRIBNER PROUDLY PRESENTS
TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME
JOHN DUNNING
Available as an eBook from Scribner
Turn the page for a preview of Two O’Clock, Eastern Wartime….
1
Dulaney dreamed there was no war. A thousand years had passed and he had come to the end of an endless journey, closing an infinite circle in time and space. But when he opened his eyes it was still Sunday, May 3, 1942.
He had slept less than two hours. The sky outside his window had just gone dark but the moon was up, shrinking his world to a small silver square on the floor, this eight-by-ten room with bars. His eyes probed the shadows beyond his cell—the dark hallway, the line of light on the far side of the bullpen where the office was. He had come awake thinking of Holly.
His peace had been shaken. The steadiness born in his soul now drained away, leaving a growing sense of unease. He heard the radio droning in the outer office. Charlie McCarthy had given way to Walter Winchell with no loss of comedy, but even when the jailer laughed at something Winchell had said, even with the sound of another human voice in close proximity, Dulaney felt isolated, alone on an alien planet in a time he barely knew.
Winchell had a name for Hitler’s gang. The Ratzis had struck again. Exeter had been bombed in retaliation for RAF raids on Lübeck and Rostock. There was an almost imperceptible lull as Winchell hit a word beyond his grade-school vocabulary. Baedeker raids, Dulaney thought as if coaching. They were called Baedeker raids because they were aimed at the guidebook towns that symbolized British antiquity.
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sp; Winchell blew the word, but by then Dulaney was only half listening. He was thinking about Holly and the last time he had seen her, almost two years ago in New York. He had collected his pay and gone back to his apartment to clear out his stuff, and there she was waiting for him. She had been sitting on the floor all night, in the hallway outside his door. They walked through Central Park and the air was clear and cold, the trees stripped bare in the third week of autumn and the leaves rustling under their feet. The skyline loomed over the trees and at last she made the effort to say her piece. She looped her arm in his and drew him close. “These things happen, Jack. It’s nobody’s fault, least of all yours.” But he wouldn’t let her get into it any deeper than that, and it was the only time they had touched even the edges of what they both knew had always been between them.
She understood then the hopelessness of it. They walked out of the park and stood self-consciously outside the apartment house that in another hour would be his former address. Dulaney offered coffee but she said no, she’d rather just say good-bye here on the street. She took his hand. “It’s all right, Jack. Everything’s fine.”
Just before she walked away she said one last thing to him. “You told me something once and I can’t get it out of my mind. A man needs something that’s bigger than life, something he’d die for. I’ve been thinking about that all night.”
“That sounds like me. Sounds a little silly now, doesn’t it?”
She shook her head, impatient at his attempt to belittle it. “Good-bye, Jack. I wish only good things for you. I hope you find whatever life holds that makes you feel that way.”
But he had already found it. He knew it then, in New York; knew it now, sitting alone in a California jail cell. This thought sank into silence. Then, from the darkness beyond the bullpen, he heard Winchell’s announcer, recapturing the moment for the makers of Jergens lotion.
2
Today, if she should by some trick materialize in the jail beside him, he could do a better job explaining it to her. It began with the fact that his lifelong pal had seen her first. He would always think of them as a couple, even if the stars weren’t working and they never actually married. She knew this, of course, but there are shades of truth. He and Tom had been closer than brothers.