A Slepyng Hound to Wake

by Vincent McCaffrey

  Albert weaved in his chair a bit.

  “I’m busy enough. I’ll have to take the loss. She’s right. How would I explain it to the kids anyway?”

  Henry continued to take the devil’s part. “Say, ‘Here’s a new bike’?”

  “You know what I mean.” Resignation lowered Albert’s voice.

  Henry pressed at the sore spot. “Say, ‘Let’s take another week of vacation’?”

  “Get off it. …” Now there was a touch of irritation.

  “You’ll be the only trash collector in Boston who doesn’t take a little extra on the side.”

  “Let it be, then. Let it be.”

  “You’re a lucky man.” Henry relented, collecting the chess pieces left on the board and putting them back in the coffee can.

  “You know it.” Albert snapped the answer.

  Henry said, “Every guy needs an Alice.”

  Albert sat back again and gave Henry the steady stare.

  “What? You having problems keeping your accounts straight?”

  That was the real problem, wasn’t it?

  “Yeah.”

  “How? What’s up?”

  “The book I bought. From Eddy Perry. If I had said no, he’d be alive.”

  “You buy books. It’s your job. Why? Was it stolen?”

  “No. I told you. No. In fact, it once belonged to Hale Peabody. Eddy bought it at an auction years ago. After that it belonged to a guy named Ferris—an MIT computer whiz. He had to unload it because EMC Corp. cut its work force and he couldn’t pay all the bills he’d run up living large. He sold it back to Eddy for two hundred dollars.”

  “And the problem is?”

  “It’s all such a cycle of misery. Ferris is one of these geeks they turn out at MIT who has no social skills and no life outside the lab, and no moral compass—like if the Nazis were recruiting for brains, he’d be their pick. His ethics are all from movies and videos and Coca-Cola ads. In his best moments he lives in this sick fantasy world dreamed up by H. P. Lovecraft with its own mythos. Now, there is a real piece of work—Lovecraft’s a truly sad piece of human genius gone bad for lack of fresh air and sunlight and a female hand. … So, after this guy Ferris graduates and gets hired away by the big computer company, he invests all his money in what?” Henry looked directly at Albert. “New clothes? A dental program? Dance lessons? No. He buys first editions of H. P. Lovecraft and the rest of the Arkham House weird fantasy crew. So really, where does the money go? It goes to Eddy Perry—to a little guy who has no more control over his life than Ferris—an introverted little book dealer who lives from library sale to yard sale, lives in a barren little tenement in Central Square, dreams beautiful dreams about a rotten childhood, and finds what joy he can in—what is the fashion right now? Is it cocaine?”

  “I think I read in the papers that they’re back to heroin.”

  “Heroin. … And I buy the book from him knowing he’ll use it for heroin?”

  “Someone was going to buy it.”

  “It didn’t have to be me.”

  “It was book dealer to book dealer.”

  “I knew he was a addict. I was taking advantage.”

  “You told me you paid him what he expected.”

  “I could have paid more. He was probably desperate. I could have guessed that.”

  “It would have ended up with the person who killed him. You’re not obliged to pay people what they expect. You pay what you think you can afford and make a profit. You didn’t know he was going to get killed. You were doing him a favor just by going out in the middle of the night to look at a book and then going to get the money for him.”

  “Evening. It was still only the evening.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Your job is to pay low and sell high, otherwise you’re out of business. How many mistakes do you have to eat along the way? The week before that, you had nothing. You told me yourself you had nothing. How many books are in that closet of yours that you’ll have to sell at a loss. You pay fair. You play fair. Don’t start to second guess yourself. Don’t be a chump.”

  “I need an Alice.”

  “I got Alice. You get your own.”

  “Right.”

  Chapter Ten

  Her television was off, but it bothered him to see his own reflection on the darkened glass of the screen. With both of them sitting on the couch, he had to turn awkwardly as he sat back, in order to see her face.

  Sharon asked, “Why do you live alone?”

  It was an attack. He fumbled in his mind for the right answer. She did not wait for him to regroup.

  She said, “It has been so very difficult to be alone here since Jim died. I’ve cried myself to sleep too many times.… It’s not healthy for people to live alone.”

  Henry looked again around the periphery of the living room. There was no picture of James Frankowski for him to call attention to as a defensive measure. More surprising to him, the only bookcase in the room was small, relative to the size of the cabinet that held the TV and stereo. Most of the books in the case he had quickly scanned, out of habit, when he had first arrived. It was an odd collection of self-help and psychology books mixed with a few historical novels and a shelf of ancient history. One of the historical novels was Duggan’s Dreams of Bithynia. Henry noticed that Frankowski’s first book, Epaminondas, which was there as well, had been rebound in green leather.

  From tall speakers came the sound of some currently popular song he did not understand the lyric to. Sharon was looking at his eyes, as he refocused on her mouth. He resorted to old lines.

  “I like things the way they are. I do what I want. I enjoy the freedom.”

  One eyebrow went up in critical emphasis.

  “You broke Barbara’s heart, you know.”

  Henry shifted on the cushion without finding a more comfortable position. “That was my fault. I have always regretted that part. But she would have hated being married to a guy like me.”

  Without obviously moving, perhaps it was the way her body was turned, she had somehow edged noticeably closer. With one finger she drew a crease in the fabric of the cushion between them, as if marking a line in the sand.

  “What’s so bad about a guy like you?”

  He had been so stupid. When she had asked him to sit down, he could just have easily chosen one of the side chairs. … No, he thought again. She had directed him to the couch, hadn’t she?

  He opted for self-disparagement as a defense. “I’m selfish. Much too—”

  She shook her head once in dismissal before he was finished. “We are all selfish. It’s human nature. That’s why love is so important. It overcomes all that selfishness.”

  She leaned toward him, her face even closer.

  It was not only because she was a good-looking woman that he was uncomfortable. It was because she seemed to have more of an idea why he was there than he did. He had managed to put the meeting off for a week. He had run out of excuses. They were supposed to be finding some way to make a case against Mr. Duggan. They were not getting much closer to that.

  The blood color of her lipgloss pulled at his eyes. Perfume thickened the air he was trying to breathe—breathe as slowly as possible. He searched for another defense.

  “When exactly did James finish the manuscript?” he asked.

  Her eyes shifted. Did they roll just a little?

  “Oh … About three years ago. We talked about that, didn’t we? … He wanted to finish it by the Millennium. That was his deadline.”

  She moved away again, slightly.

  “2000 or 2001?”

  “2001. James was very precise about things like that.”

  Henry rested the ankle of his right leg on his left knee as a kind of block, but that was even more uncomfortable.

  “How long was it after you finished your research?”

  She shrugged and made a face, excusing herself for not remembering exactly.

  “A year perhaps. … But I was correcting the manuscript right up
to the day he mailed it out the first time.”

  “And you’re sure he mailed it to the Tremont Press? When?”

  “Must have been March 2001.”

  “But you are not sure.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did he change it at all after he got it back?”

  “No. He was pretty unhappy about that rejection, and he put it away… . That was just like him. He wanted to think about it for awhile. I wanted him to send it out again immediately. I don’t see how a manuscript gains anything from aging inside a drawer. But Jim had his way. And then everything went bad with his death, and I forgot about it completely until I saw the advance copy of the Duggan book.”

  “But you are pretty sure that Tremont was the last place he sent it?”

  Her voice went flat. Perhaps with exasperation, he hoped. Woman never liked clueless guys.

  “Yes.”

  It was his advantage now.

  “When was the first time again?”

  “Well, he sent out a number of queries after Little, Brown declined to look at it. They were very unhappy about the lack of sales on his first book. I think someone lost a job over that, but I can’t say. I’m not sure. Perhaps Knopf or Viking. I’m sure it was one of them.”

  “And he never contacted an agent? I thought everyone used agents these days.”

  “He really didn’t know about all that. It was Little, Brown that contacted him first, you understand, about writing something, after hearing of him from one of the other people at Harvard. He was very happy with Little, Brown … until they declined.”

  “You did not type up the letter. It’s not on your computer now?” Henry looked over at the computer on a desk in an alcove.

  She shook her head. “I bought that one myself. I had to get rid of his old Mac. I had no reason to keep it after he died. It didn’t work well with the computer at the bookshop. Besides, it was filled with his personal notes. He was so disorganized. He had grocery lists in there next to notes about sheep herding in ancient Galatia. I couldn’t stand to look at it. I even had the apartment painted. Most of his personal books are gone now. I’m sorry. I didn’t know, when I did it, that they would matter. You don’t know what it’s like after you lose someone. I needed to start all over.”

  He could hear her taking breath as if her throat was tightening with emotion. Henry worried that the conversation may be going in another wrong direction.

  “Did he keep any of the rejection slips?”

  Her eyes searched Henry’s face. “No. That wasn’t like him. But I remember one, at least. It was a letter. I saw it briefly. It was from Knopf, I think. It said they liked it—thought it had promise. But it wasn’t right for them at the time. Just the usual kind of thing publishers say.”

  He pressed the thought. “How about the one from Viking?” She shook her head. “Do you remember the letter from Tremont Press?”

  Her head shook again as her eyes narrowed, as if the memory were lost.

  “Tremont said something like Knopf had. She might have said she liked the subject … I can’t remember exactly.”

  “She? Nora Lynch?”

  Sharon stared blankly at him for a moment, as if trying to understand some other motive in his questions. The robin’s egg blue was darker in the lower light of the apartment.

  “I suppose so.”

  “And the version on that computer—is it the last version?”

  She stared at him a moment longer, her eyes opening wider, then began to shake her head again.

  “No … no. That’s the version I put on a disk and transferred over. … Probably the week I bought it.”

  “When was that?”

  “Oh—after I got back.”

  “From where?”

  “From Europe. I went away just after Jim’s funeral. I needed some recovery time.”

  Henry paused. Her lips had thinned now with the tightness in her cheeks and she was staring down at her own hand on the cushion. He worried she might be getting close to a more emotional response.

  “Do you have any kind of notes at all from the editors? If we just had some confirmation from a third party about the content of the book, it might make a difference.”

  Her index finger continued to work the trough she had made in the loose fabric of the cushion.

  “I wondered about that, of course. I wrote to Knopf. But there have been so many changes over there, the last few years. They had no record. No one remembered it.”

  Somewhere there must be an editor or a slush pile reader who read Hannibal’s Dance and liked it as much as Henry did. It was not a story that would easily fade from the mind, but more than that, it was good. Good stories were not easily forgotten.

  “What did Viking have to say? No one has a record there either?”

  A frown dipped the corners of her eyebrows in a plea of mercy. Her voice sounded weary of his questions.

  “Well, there were only a few. Just two or three publishers before Jim gave up.”

  “And Little, Brown—they have no record?”

  “But remember, they declined to even read it. It was very unusual because they had the option from the previous book.”

  Henry looked back at the reflection on the television which now included them both within the frame. “Barbara thinks Nora Lynch is the key to all this. She thinks Lynch passed the idea on to Duggan. He might not have had any idea where it came from.”

  She answered weakly. “I know. I thought of that.”

  Was there resignation in her voice?

  Knowing Barbara’s doggedness, Henry wondered how many times she had gone over this with Sharon before. The first time he had actually met with Sharon, at the café, he had thought she was a little cold. The second time, the fiasco at Barbara’s apartment, had made him think she was a good sport with a quick sense of humor, which was something he had always liked. Life was full of human error, folly, and mischief. A lack of humor was deadly.

  On that occasion, it was Barbara’s idea that they meet for dinner. Barbara had made her great spaghetti—something she had learned to do originally for him, to please him, back when they were going together. Sharon had worn a thin yellow dress that made Henry think of daffodils. The color was striking in Barbara’s dark apartment.

  Barbara’s bookshelves had spread since Henry had been there last, encrusting the last remaining wall space in the living room, and now much of the dining room. Their conversation had been quiet, muffled further by the books. Sharon had spoken of first meeting Jim when she was still a student at Boston University and had gone across the river to Harvard to apply for a job as a research assistant to earn a little extra money. The affair, which had started then, had evolved to their living together the year after she graduated. It had been Sharon who had first suggested that the professor of ancient history turn to writing historical novels to increase his income and as a way of exploring some of his ideas about the odd chances of history. The interest from Little, Brown had come then, at just the right moment. James Frankowski’s first novel had been accepted for publication almost immediately.

  It was then that the light in the fixture above them at the table had gone out, darkening the room. Barbara had wanted to light candles. Henry had objected. He had long since learned to be wary of women lighting candles. Afterwards, Henry wondered if the warnings of Sharon’s temper had been exaggerated.

  By chance, he had glimpsed Sharon’s face as he fell. Barbara had just moved a dish of grated cheese so that he could put one foot out to balance himself at the center of the table, while he replaced the light bulb in the high old fixture close to the ceiling. He had been turned away from Barbara and remembered thinking he was glad he had not been facing her as the table collapsed.

  Sharon first put a hand to her mouth in surprise. By the time his back had found the floor, the plates, catapulted from the end of the table where they had been moved for safety, had found him. Sharon had begun to laugh. It had been Sharon’s laughter that he remembe
red afterward.

  Sharon had said, almost immediately, “Don’t move. It hasn’t touched the floor. We can eat it right off the top of you if you stay still.”

  He smiled at the thought now, and looked back to Sharon on the couch. Had she moved closer to him again?

  He said, “It’s too bad the first book didn’t sell a little better. Everything would have been different.”

  Her eyes widened again. “It was such a good book. Epaminondas is such a wonderful character. Did you ever read it? You’d like it. Jim started the story after the great victory at Leuctra and the successful campaigns for the Arcadian league in the Peloponnesus. It begins as Epaminondas has been broken by political adversaries and has taken refuge under an assumed name as a common soldier with an army in Thessaly. He witnesses the very same pettiness in the ranks there that kept the Greeks forever at war with themselves. He realized then that there was no escaping human frailty or responsibility. Jim recreated the second act of Epaminondas’ life, the triumph over politics and armies, right to his death at Mantinea, predicting what would happen with the eventual rise of Philip and Alexander. It was a fine book. But no one could pronounce the name. Epaminondas. The publisher called us and said booksellers were afraid of mispronouncing the name and avoided saying it out loud—everyone is so afraid of appearing foolish—so they just avoided it all together.”

  “Hannibal rolls off the tongue a bit easier.”

  “But you see, it’s the same story. Epaminondas turned away from the corruption of power as well. He might have been ruler of Thebes when Philip made his move. He would have stopped the Macedonians. There never would have been an Alexander. Turning away from power can be as deadly as taking it on.”

  An idle thought occurred. “Did James know that Epaminondas was not selling well when he started writing Hannibal’s Dance?”

  The robin’s egg eyes stared blankly at him again a moment too long before answering. What was she thinking?

  “He couldn’t have. He saw it all as one work, really—one theme. I remember him talking about the second book before he had even finished the first. But he rewrote so much. I’m sure the failure of the first book influenced the way he decided to tell the story in the second. It must have. But he never let me read chapters until he was done with them. He did not appreciate my comments on his style.”