“I guess so,” he said. “This is 1117 Havilland, yeah?”
The smile faded. “Yes,” she said. Her tone had become more cautious.
“I … Look, this is going to sound weird. Do you know an Alfred Hill?”
“He’s my uncle.” She had been leaning lightly on the counter with her fingertips, but now she straightened up.
Carter wasn’t sure what to make of the present tense in that answer. Despite himself, his cop instincts were starting to nag.
“You’ve seen him recently?”
“What are you? An investigator? Debt collector?”
Carter looked around him. The shop was in pristine condition: the stock properly displayed, the interior neat, the exterior maintained. On a shelf behind the counter was a little cartoonish vinyl figure of some sort of monster, bright green, with tentacles dangling from its face and thin bat wings on its back.
Carter had been expecting a musty old house with maybe a few shingles missing and probably a few mice running around. A functioning bookstore with staff in it was nowhere in his plans.
“No. Well, yes, I am an investigator, but that’s not why I’m here.”
“No? Why all the questions, then?”
Carter knew this wasn’t going to go down well, but bit the bullet and said it anyway. He pointed vaguely around him. “This place. It’s mine.”
The woman’s face hardened. “What the actual fuck are you talking about?”
“You always talk to strangers like that?” She said nothing, but just glared at him. He figured she might throw a punch if he didn’t explain things quickly. “Your uncle’s been missing seven years, is that right? He’s been declared legally dead. Didn’t you know that?”
Her expression of surprise being quickly overwhelmed by anger indicated clearly that she had not known that at all. “This is the first I’ve heard about it. Who the hell…? How could that happen without them telling me? I work here. He’s my uncle, damn it! How is it…? Who told you?”
“Your uncle’s lawyer did.”
“He did what? How could he do that without warning me? Wait … why was he talking to you?”
“I’m the beneficiary of your uncle’s will.”
“I haven’t—”
“I’m the sole beneficiary.”
The anger left her as suddenly as it had come. She looked at him as if he’d just come in to tell her he was very sorry, but he’d just run over her dog. She sat down heavily on the stool.
“This isn’t right,” she said finally.
“I’m sorry,” said Carter, and he was. He knew there were plenty of people in the world who would be enjoying themselves in his situation. Thanks very much for all your hard work. Now fuck off while I strip this place of whatever it’s worth. He wasn’t one of them. “You’ve been working here for seven years without your uncle?”
“I dropped out of postgrad. He gave me the job.” She looked hopelessly at him. “Not even a year later he didn’t come down one day.” She nodded at the ceiling, and Carter understood her to mean there was an apartment above. “I went to check on him, but he wasn’t there. His car was still around the back, but no sign of him. He hadn’t come back by the evening, so I called the police. Yeah, it must be seven years. Yeah…”
She reached under the counter and pulled out several ledgers. She checked the covers where accounting years were written in ballpoint until she found the one she wanted. She flicked through the pages. “Son of a bitch,” she said, her finger on an entry. “Seven years ago today.” She looked up angrily at him. “You didn’t hang around, did you? Couldn’t wait to grab the place.”
“You’ve got me all wrong,” said Carter. “The lawyer came to me. I hadn’t even heard of your uncle before this morning. I don’t know why he named me in his will at all. This is as weird to me as it is to you. I came up here thinking I’d inherited some run-down, abandoned house. A working bookstore … I wasn’t expecting this at all.”
She was looking at him suspiciously. “You didn’t know Alfred?”
“Never even heard his name before.”
“So who are you?”
“I’m Dan Carter.”
There was a flicker in her face at that, but he couldn’t exactly identify what it meant. It wasn’t surprise or recognition nearly as much as it was realization, but the expression was gone in a moment.
The bell rang again, and the woman looked across at the entrance. This time she was startled. A man was making his way past the freestanding bookshelves to the counter. Carter sized him up very quickly. He knew a real Armani suit when he saw one, a pair of Salvatore Ferragamos that wouldn’t have left much change from a grand, and a shirt and tie that he suspected could well be Kiton. He looked at the man’s face—not movie star handsome, but self-assured and undeniably charismatic, blond and blue-eyed—and thought, Politician.
“Hi,” said the man to the woman behind the counter, but his gaze slid over Carter. “Not interrupting business, am I?”
“Ken, I—” The woman seemed more flustered now than she had at the discovery that the bookstore belonged to Carter. “I wasn’t expecting you for an hour. It’s—” She shook her head hopelessly. Carter felt sorry for her. It wasn’t a good day.
“What’s going on?” said Ken, with the half smile of somebody whose instinct is to be friendly, but who will tear off your head if you turn out to be a problem. He looked curiously at Carter. “Is there a problem?”
“No. Yes. Yes, there’s a problem. Alfred’s been declared legally dead.”
“Alfred…”
“My uncle, Ken! Hill’s Books?” She ran her hand distractedly through her hair, black drizzled with red. “My uncle.”
“I’m sorry, Emily. I know it must be a shock, but it can’t be a complete one, surely? You’ve always known the day was going to come.”
“Yes, but…” She looked at Ken and sagged with defeat. “I kinda thought I’d get this place.”
Ken raised an eyebrow. “The will’s been read so soon?” Emily nodded. “Then what’s happening to it?”
There seemed no point in dragging it out. “I’ve inherited it,” said Carter.
Ken squared up to him, no longer smiling at all. “And who are you?”
Dan decided he didn’t like Ken. It wasn’t a great revelation; he disliked people who wore suits worth more than his car. It wasn’t envy so much as irritation with the sense of entitlement that came with such lifestyles. He could put up with most things, but arrogance—whether from some gangbanger or this Ivy League fuck—he had no time for.
“What’s your interest?”
“Emily is my girlfriend,” said Ken, indicating Emily with a backward jerk of his thumb. He didn’t look at her as he did it. “I have an interest.”
Carter looked at him, then her, and back to Ken. It wasn’t an obvious pairing. In the movie, she would be played by Zoë Kravitz and he would be played by Aaron Eckhart. It wouldn’t be perfect casting, but that was the gist of it.
“I’m Daniel Carter,” said Carter, and extended his hand. It was a measured gesture. Ken could ignore it and look an asshole, or he could accept it and lose the wind from his sails. Carter knew he would go for the political option, and he did.
He took Carter’s hand and shook it one of those firm, dry handshakes, delivering a squeezing pressure of a precise number of Newtons decided upon by focus groups that politicians practice. Carter still didn’t like him, and couldn’t see that changing anytime soon.
“Ken Rothwell.”
The Rothwells. Of course. It would be.
“How are you related to Alfred?” asked Rothwell.
“As far as I know, I’m not. This is as big a surprise to me as it was to…” He looked to the woman. “Emily, was it? We never really got around to introducing ourselves properly.”
She nodded.
“As big a surprise as it was to Emily,” Carter continued. “Out of the blue.”
“So, what are you going to do with the p
lace?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t know there was a store at the address, a going concern. I’ll have to think about it.” He looked past Rothwell to Emily. “Maybe I can just sell it to you. I don’t know what to do with a bookstore.”
She shook her head quickly. “I can’t. I couldn’t afford it. Some of the stock, it’s worth a lot, never mind the building itself.”
So get your rich boyfriend to buy it for you, thought Carter.
“Emily, we need to get moving,” said Rothwell. “One of the donors can’t stay for the fund-raiser, so I need to talk to her before it starts. That’s why I’m here early.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll lock up.”
Carter had been intending to drive back to Red Hook the same evening, but the idea seemed less appealing now. “What time are you in tomorrow?” he asked Emily. “We can plan what to do with this place.”
“Plan?”
“You’re invested in this store, I’m not. You have to get a say in what happens to it; it’s only right.”
“Oh.” The thought that the store wasn’t just going to be taken away from her had clearly not crossed her mind. This small revelation seemed to put some heart back into her. “I’ll be in by half past eight.”
“Great, I’ll see you then. Are there any good hotels around here?”
“Not really. You’d have to drive a ways.” She considered. “There’s a sports shop across the street. If you get yourself a sleeping bag, you could sleep here. In the apartment. There’s a bed, so you wouldn’t be on the floor, but the bedding’s been in the cupboard all this time. Sleeping bag would be best. Yeah, I’d need to see your papers before I can let you do that, though.”
Carter nodded. He wanted to look the place over anyway, and there was still some daylight. He couldn’t imagine wanting to sleep in a musty apartment, but he was curious to see what was up there. If it was all spiders and Miss Havisham’s wedding feast, he’d go to a hotel.
“You need to get ready,” warned Rothwell. “You go, I’ll check Mr. Carter’s papers.” Emily looked like she was going to protest, but he was having none of it. “C’mon! Grab your stuff and go. I’ll pick you up in half an hour. Can you be ready by then?”
“My hair—”
“Looks great. Go!”
She allowed herself to be cajoled to the door, where he relieved her of the store’s keys, kissed her, and shooed her out into the street.
The door closed, and she was gone.
Rothwell came back, and Carter made a guess from his body language that they were heading into all guys together territory.
“Okay,” said Ken, smiling a smile he’d gotten out of a can, “let’s get this cleared up. You’ve got the documentation on you, yeah?”
He leaned on the counter as he spoke and grazed Carter’s personal space without intruding into it. It was the sort of trick they taught at half-assed “being a people person” workshops. Carter knew the next move would be to attempt to form intimacy by finding common ground. He wasn’t sure why Rothwell cared so much about being in Carter’s good books. He probably could have bought Carter a dozen times over without scratching his fortune.
At times like this, Carter felt a small and brutal comfort in the weight of his Glock 19 sitting in its Blackhawk paddle holster at his waist. It was a stupid source of confidence, he knew. He could hardly draw on somebody just for being a dick—the gun would hardly ever be holstered if that were the case—but just having the option kept him calm at times like this, because he didn’t want to be the guy who drew on somebody just for being a dick.
Instead, he took the wad of documents from his inside pocket and spread them on the countertop. He even managed to smile while doing it.
Rothwell didn’t spend very long going through them. He had already decided Carter’s claim was probably legitimate, it was plain. He was just going through them for appearances, and to cull a few facts.
“Came up from Red Hook, huh? How were the roads?”
Carter considered saying he had no idea; he’d come in his personal Learjet. Instead he said the drive was uneventful.
“What do you do, Mr. Carter?”
“Private investigator” was one of those job titles people hesitate before saying. It carries baggage, and both sides of a conversation know it. The only thing the PI doesn’t know is whether the other side is going to think Sam Spade or some low-life bail-tracer.
“I’m an investigator,” said Carter. Leaving “private” out covered a multitude of sins, real and imaginary.
Rothwell gave him a curious glance. “Hard job, from what I’ve heard. Not great money.”
“It’s okay,” said Carter, recognizing it as the standard euphemism for “barely okay” as soon as it was out of his mouth.
Rothwell finished gathering whatever bits of information he wanted from the papers. Proving Carter’s bona fides seemed almost an afterthought. He didn’t ask for anything that might actually prove that the “Daniel Carter” mentioned in them was the same person who was standing in front of him.
“You want to sell it?”
“Maybe. I’ll work something out with Emily.”
Rothwell laughed. “No. I mean to me. I’ll take it off your hands.”
Carter said nothing.
“I can give it to Emily.”
Carter still said nothing.
“As a present.”
Carter knew enough about the landed gentry of New York and New England not to show even a flicker of surprise. Kenneth Rothwell was, for example, a lawyer in the family white shoe firm or, at least, he had a law degree and a salary. How much actual legal work he did was moot. Sinecure or real job, he was where he was because it was the right place for him, for he was a Rothwell, and a kindly and entirely partisan God blessed his every step. Yeah, buying a little indie bookstore was not such a big deal for Ken Rothwell.
“That’s sweet,” said Carter. He meant, That’s sickening. Just a few minutes earlier he’d thought of Rothwell doing exactly this, and discarded the thought as too cynical. Now here was Ken, living down to expectations. “Let me think about it. I’m still kind of surprised about how this is all shaking out.”
“Sure, sure,” said Rothwell. He was all smiles and nods, but his eyes were cold. He held out the keys and dropped them into Carter’s hand. “I’ll leave these with you, Dan.”
“Thanks,” said Carter. He was going to say, “Thanks, Ken,” but remembered in time that he was no longer in grade school. He didn’t bother to mention that he already had a set of the keys. Now he had both, and that suited him fine.
“I don’t know the alarm code,” said Rothwell. He walked to the door, paused with his hand on the handle. “If you’re staying the night, I guess that’s unimportant.”
Carter nodded, and Rothwell left.
The bell over the door struck its plangent little note as the door opened and closed. The tone seemed to hang in the air for a long time. It seemed very quiet in the bookstore. His bookstore.
Chapter 5
THE OUTSIDER
That morning he hadn’t owned a bookstore, and now he did. He picked up the abandoned documents from the counter, felt the paper between his fingers, reassuring himself that they were real. He refolded them and put them back in his jacket. It was time to survey his domain.
He flipped the sign on the door to Closed and released the bolts on the Yales. Satisfied that the door was secure, he walked back into the body of the shop and looked at the shelves. He would have to take Emily’s word for it that some of the books were worth something; he could tell Dante from Dan Brown, but that was about his limit. There were shelves of old, old encyclopedias, books on theology, philosophy, mathematics, botany. Biographies of people he’d never heard of, autobiographies of people who were interesting in their own minds, books on gardening, boating, and all kinds of other stuff he didn’t care about. He found the fiction shelves and a whole section of vintage detective stories.
He ran his eye over the Ham
metts and Chandlers, the Latimers and Thompsons, tales of hardboiled dicks in naked cities. There was still a mild kick to it, being in the same trade, but it was fading. Maybe one day he wouldn’t feel anything at all, or just irritation at how it wasn’t like that, it was never like that.
Carter didn’t read so much anymore. He wished he did, but he never had the time, or he could never find a book that really grabbed him. Owning a bookstore was not a good fit with him. Rothwell would give him a good price, he was sure. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to go that way, though. Part of it was personal dislike, true, but he also wondered what would actually happen. Rothwell would just hand the place over to Emily like he said he would? Or maybe he’d just quietly dismantle it to take it away from Emily. Either way—a patronizing “little pastime for the little lady” or getting rid of it so he was her only focus—Carter didn’t like it. The more he thought about it, the more it appealed to him to keep the place a going concern. Maybe give Emily a 10 percent stake in the place to keep her involved, a bonus on top of her wages. Yeah, she’d like that. Even better, it would irritate the fuck out of Ken.
Cool.
The stairs to the second floor were in a combined kitchen/storage area at the back of the store behind a door. Carter stood on the lowest step and inhaled. The air did not seem especially musty. He went up.
The staircase rose directly into Alfred Hill’s apartment, performing a right-hand turn to come out into a notional line that separated the front bedroom end of things from the rear bathroom and kitchenette. It felt claustrophobic there, not least because the walls were as dense with bookshelves as the store below. Dark wood and a dull rainbow of book spines served to eat most of the light coming through the small front window. By it was a double bed, stripped of bedding and the mattress wrapped in plastic. The room smelled fresh. Carter realized that the building’s only toilet was upstairs, so Emily must have had to come up here a few times a day. She had kept the place dusted and aired.
The mattress looked clean, and the idea of sleeping here no longer seemed so unreasonable. He made up his mind to go across the street and buy a sleeping bag. It probably wasn’t very adult of him, but he liked the sense of this small adventure. He wouldn’t eat there, but he would get some basic stuff while he was out.
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