Book Deal

by Les Standiford

  “We open tomorrow at ten,” Arch said, trying to be polite. That was the Gables for you. People like these two could be holed up in a secluded bungalow in the woodsy Miami suburb, have their groceries delivered, watch the Nickelodeon channel on cable, pretend time had stopped right about the time The Brady Bunch went into syndication.

  “We’re from Nebraska,” the man said finally. He stared at Arch as if it explained everything.

  “We’re flying home tonight,” the woman chimed in. “We can’t come back tomorrow.”

  “Well, there’s a good bookstore in the airport,” Arch said. “We don’t stock so many bestsellers, anyway.”

  “Oh, but that’s just it,” the woman said. She had a white handkerchief out of her purse, was pulling it anxiously from hand to hand. “We took a tour over on Miami Beach earlier today. We just fell in love with all those Art Decoupage buildings. The lady who was taking us around said you had a wonderful book we could take home and put on our coffee table, didn’t she, hon?”

  “Art Deco,” the man said.

  “What?” she said, turning to him.

  “Art Deco,” the man repeated, clearly out of patience with her. “For God’s sake, Iris. At least get the words right.”

  “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” the woman said, turning back to Arch. “We wanted to get that book, Mr. Dolan. The lady said you’d be the only one to have it.”

  Arch hesitated. It was true that his was one of the few stores around to stock much in the way of architecture. And there were actually a couple of new books featuring the Beach’s Deco district. One sold for seventy dollars; the other, a slipcased edition, went for a hundred. He took another look at the pair.

  “These are fairly expensive books…” he began.

  “We could pay cash,” the woman said. “If you’ve closed up your register and all, I mean.” The man stared at her as if the suggestion outraged him, but finally he nodded his agreement.

  Arch took a deep breath. What the hell, it hadn’t been such a great day. He could help these folks out, ring everything up in the morning. “Just a minute,” he said finally, pushing the door closed so he could slide the chain lock free.

  He swung the door wide open then, and motioned the couple inside. He had turned to lead them through the cluttered foyer when he saw a band of something white flash past his eyes. In the next instant he was face down on the gritty floor, a knee driving painfully into his back, something digging tightly at his throat.

  The handkerchief, he found himself thinking, his hands flailing helplessly at his sides. There’s a fat woman on my back and she’s trying to kill me with her goddamned hankie.

  ***

  Els had been dreaming when the noise awakened him, and it hadn’t been a pleasant dream, either. It had started off well enough, him selling a first edition of Huckleberry Finn for $700, one of a pair he’d picked up at an estate sale in Mount Dora a couple of years ago. Then the same fellow had returned later for the other copy and, when Els had hesitated, offered a thousand for it. When Els had given in, the man handed over the cash, snatched up the book, and waved it in Els’s face, cackling madly. The man revealed himself as a rival rare books dealer, and wanted Els to know the books he’d just sold were so-called devil’s apprentice editions, each with its final plate defaced by a renegade printer: Huck arrived at the Phelps farm, Ma Phelps staring down at Huck, and by her side, Farmer Phelps, only in this case, with an erection the size of a silo bursting from his drawers. Though 250 were estimated to have run before the “joke” was discovered, none had ever surfaced. Until this moment in his dream, that is. The man flipped the book open to the final plate and Els found himself staring at Farmer Phelps’ massive penis that in fact turned a $1,000 book into one worth half a million. The rival dealer’s laughter echoed so loudly that the walls of the bookstore reverberated and shelves full of books came crashing down…

  Els came gasping up out of his Morris chair, his hand already digging in his pocket for the key to the Americana case. He blinked awake, saw that it was dusk—good Lord, he’d slept through the entire afternoon—and couldn’t help but glance at the case, where the two copies of Huckleberry Finn were still nestled safely on the top shelf, pressed tightly between a set of crystal bookends cast in the shape of planets. He’d bought the bookends in another estate sale, and the inscription etched into the base of each had served as the inspiration for their store’s name: A World of Books.

  Els was fighting the urge to unlock the doors, pull the two volumes down, double-check the final plate of each—but that was ridiculous. Dream or no dream, he knew they were standard first editions, and whatever he got for them, if he could ever be persuaded to part with them, would be a hell of a sight more than the two hundred dollars he had paid.

  Still, the dream had seemed so real, the cackle of the rival dealer’s laugh so similar to Marion Eberhart’s, a real dealer from Fernandina Beach whom he knew and despised, that Els thought that it couldn’t hurt to check…which was when he heard another crash from down below and realized that he hadn’t dreamed everything, not at all.

  He hurried to the top of the stairs, heard violent cursing, stopped when he realized it was a woman’s voice.

  Els stopped, looked about the darkened landing at the top of the stairs. Could he still be dreaming? He ducked down, craned his neck past the cranny where the top of the staircase joined the landing, but it was too dark to see much below.

  He thought he saw Arch’s shape dart from the passageway that led from the reading room—someone tall and thin, at least—and angry shouts coming down the passageway after him…and then Arch, if that was who it was, had turned and hesitated, leaning his weight against one of the tall freestanding bookcases that housed hardcover fiction and shoved, toppling it toward the mouth of the passageway.

  There was a heartrending cracking noise, the top of the shelf meeting the wall, the weight of the books splintering the wood, then books cascading to the floor in a mountainous pile. Oak, Els thought. Red oak. That section of shelving had cost a fortune all by itself, but they’d wanted to be free to move things about, change the arrangement of the room as circumstances might dictate.

  Els glanced frantically over his shoulder, knowing he was not dreaming now, but wishing fervently that he were. He felt a breathtaking thudding in his heart, the noise from below and the hammering within his own body too much for him suddenly. He sat heavily on the landing, his fingers going numb, his lips, his tongue numb too, his mouth gaping open, popping closed, stupidly, automatically, as if he were some beached fish.

  He could see clearly down into the store. Arch was at the front door now, his features clearly outlined by the light drifting in from a street-light outside. He was yanking frantically at the deadlocked doors, cursing under his breath, glancing over his shoulder at the passageway where there was the sound of wood grinding and books thudding as whoever it was tried to make way into the front.

  Els knew what the problem was. He’d mentioned it to Arch more than once. “What’s going to happen when there’s a fire?” he’d wanted to know. “You deadbolt yourself inside and forget where you put the key, you’ll burn to a crisp.” Little consolation that he’d been right, Els thought. Someone down there whom his nephew was running desperately from, himself with a front-row seat, dying of a heart attack.

  He tried to call out to Arch, felt a strangled cry escape his throat, but it was nothing that could carry over the tumult of splintering wood, the angry curses, the rattle of the unyielding doors. Els had a thought then and stared down at his feet: one leg was splayed out on the landing, out of reach, out of the question; but the other had tucked itself up under him. He willed his hands to move, stared in some surprise as one hand obeyed. He grasped his leather moccasin, pulled, flung the shoe down the steps in one backhanded motion.

  The shoe struck Arch on the shoulder. He started to ignore it, glanced down in the light from the street, then up the stair
case at Els.

  “Good God,” Arch said. He glanced back at the commotion by the toppled bookcase, then cursed again and bounded up the stairs.

  “Els,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Asleep,” Els said, or tried to. He felt Arch’s hands circle under his shoulders, lift him up. Arch was dragging him back up into the reading room, he realized. He waved the hand that still seemed to work in the direction of his desk. “Phone,” he said. “Nine-one-one. Nine-one-one!”

  Arch propped him in the Morris chair, stared in the direction of Els’s gesture. He shook his head abruptly. “They’ve cut the wires, Els.”

  Els stared at him mournfully. More splintering sounds from downstairs, more thuds of books flying about.

  Arch stared about wildly, then seemed to think of something. He ran to Els’s desk, swept the top clean, dragged it into a corner of the room.

  Els watched as his nephew clambered onto the shaky nineteenth-century piece, another artifact he’d carted home from the estate sale in Mount Dora. Arch groped about the molding where the shelves met in the corner, pulled. He staggered back, jumped down from the desk, bringing a spindly attic ladder down out of a hidden ceiling panel with him.

  In seconds he was back, lifting Els under one arm, pulling them up the rickety ladder with the other. There was a pause and Els felt himself being boosted up through the ceiling panel into musty darkness. Arch gave a final heave and Els felt himself go wholly into the darkness. His shoulder crunched down onto the ridge of a rafter, and his face buried itself in a scratchy pillow of insulation. He expected Arch to join him, but instead felt the ladder spring back into place, banging his legs, levering his face up out of the insulation momentarily before it fell back against the ladder framework with a painful crack, and he knew he was alone again.

  He heard angry shouts, the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs, then more splintering of wood and another crash from the room immediately below him. A bolt of light struck him then, and his instinct was to recoil in fear. All he managed was a slight lolling of his head, however. In a moment, he’d flopped back to his original position, found himself peering through a seam where the attic stairs had not quite realigned when their spring-loaded mechanism snapped closed.

  Someone had snapped on the overhead light in the rare books room. One narrow shaft of light leaked into the attic just in front of his nose, another rose straight up into the dusty air from the back of the light fixture, a truncated cylinder that projected into the attic a few feet away. He used his chin to lever himself forward a fraction of an inch, blinked away the tears in his eyes, stared down to see Arch, a good part of him, anyway, backing away from someone, a leg of the broken desk upraised in one hand, his Swiss Army knife in the other. There was a vague blur of motion just out of Els’s range of sight, and Arch swung the table leg, and staggered back.

  There was an unfamiliar cry, a smashing of glass, and Els knew that it was the Americana case, gone. Someone, or something, gone through those panes. He saw another blur of motion, heard Arch cry out terribly, felt a pain inside him that went deeper than anything physical. He heard thudding sounds, saw a fluttering of brilliant color plates fill the air below: the first-issue Audubon? The N.C. Wyeth folios? Impossible to know, and tears filled his eyes anyway, and not for any book, no matter how rare, how irreplaceable.

  He heard a heavier thud then. Heard a gasp unlike any sound he’d ever heard before. More heavy blows, each one ending with an awful sound like a heavy stone falling into mud, until finally there was silence. Something hit the floor then, and tumbled, and Els realized that he was staring down through the crack in the staircase at one of the crystal bookends from his Americana case. Half its heavy globe sheared away now. The other half bathed in blood.

  “All these goddamned books,” he heard a voice say. And then the lights went out.

  Chapter 5

  It was Monday morning when Deal got the call. He was back on site in Gables-by-the-Sea, going over yet another series of changes on the house he was building there, this time with the architect.

  “We decided we want to go with marble out here on the portico floor,” the architect was saying, pointing at a spot on the plans. For lack of a better place to work, they’d unrolled them on the hood of the Hog. There was a breeze coming in off nearby Biscayne Bay, and Deal had tucked one corner of the thick sheaf of prints under a windshield wiper.

  He stared down at the elevation sheets, which were rattling in the rush of the wind. He had one hand braced on the hood, could feel the heat of the engine seeping up through the metal. “Marble,” Deal repeated. “On the floor of the porch.”

  The architect nodded without meeting his gaze, staring off over the skinned half-acre before them, as if he could see the portico already in place. Deal straightened, surveyed the site himself. It was situated on a narrow spit of land that jutted out into Biscayne Bay, had an amazing view. You could see six miles or more south along the ragged coastline, all the way to the stacks of the nuclear power plant at Turkey Point. To the east, across five miles of bay, was Key Biscayne, its low-lying silhouette punctuated here and there by condo towers and, at its tip, in Bill Baggs Park, the old lighthouse, a structure that looked as though it might have been plucked from a site somewhere off the coast of Maine, tossed to stick like a dart from the distant coral outcroppings of a tropical paradise. To the north of the Key, another mile or farther, lay the skyline of Miami and the glistening half-moon of the bridge on the Rickenbacker Causeway. The bridge connected the mainland and the Key in a graceful arc that seemed at this distance about what a marlin running at full tilt might manage.

  With this view, you were talking land value about a million, maybe a mil and a quarter, Deal thought, as he simultaneously felt an urge to be out there, cutting a wake across the cobalt water, trailing that grand imaginary fish. Add another million and a quarter for the house, and that estimate going up every time he and the architect met.

  Of course there had been a perfectly good house here, until a month or so ago. One of the first built out this far on the point maybe thirty years ago, it had taken a direct hit from Hurricane Andrew, seven feet of tidal surge that came in through the front doors and windows and went straight out the back, sweeping everything inside along with it. Though the structure itself had held fast, the owners had not. They’d ventured back from whatever refuge they’d found inland, had one look at their doorless, windowless, newly-divested-of-furnishings place, then taken their insurance settlement and lit out for the mountains of North Carolina, well above the storm-surge line. The house had sat boarded up and untended ever since, until it finally sold to a South American distributor of tapes and CDs, and the architect had called Deal out to estimate a redo of the original.

  Though no work had been done since the storm, the place had been sealed up dry, and Deal had thought the concrete-block shell salvageable. But the new owners, a childless couple in their fifties, had somehow determined that they were in need of more room, so the original three-bedroom, two-bath Bahamian-styled bungalow had been razed (add another thirty-five thousand just for demolition) and was going to become the six-bedroom, six-bath colossus laid out on the plans heating up on the hood of the Hog. Not what Deal would have done, but then he was about two million and a half shy of the price tag for the project, so what did it matter what he thought? He was going to build this house, and put a nice chunk of the proceeds into his daughter Isabel’s college fund, and then he was going to go on to the next project, that is, if they ever got off ground zero here.

  Fonseca was the architect’s name. A slender kid in his late twenties, thin little mustache, manicured nails, drove a three-year-old Buick that looked like it had come off the showroom floor yesterday. Just standing next to him made Deal feel untidy. Still, he wasn’t a bad kid, never gave Deal that supercilious attitude some architects liked to hand builders, as if they were brain surgeons patiently explaining things to a scrub nurse.
r />   “This wasn’t your suggestion, was it?” Deal said finally.

  Fonseca shook his head, still staring off.

  “First time it rains,” Deal said, “that marble porch floor is going to turn into a skating rink. Did you mention that to the missus?”

  Fonseca turned back to him. “I pointed that out.”

  Deal took a deep breath. “But she likes the look of marble.”

  Fonseca nodded. “She thought maybe we could put some kind of coating on it, something nonskid.”

  Deal stared at him. “Right,” he said. “We could cover it with a couple inches of roofing tar. Of course, that’d take something away from the appearance.”

  Fonseca shrugged. They’d already had a half-dozen of these change conferences and the footings for the house hadn’t been poured yet.

  “Okay,” Deal sighed. “I’ll refigure it for marble. But why don’t you suggest shellstone or something. Plant the suggestion, anyway. Marble is never going to work. First person that sails on through the stained-glass entryway is going to be suing you and me both.”

  Fonseca nodded. “We’re five months away from the tile work. I figure we’ll have worked our way well beyond marble by that time.”

  There was a pause and they shared a smile then, and Deal was about to ask him what other changes were on the agenda when he felt the chirping of the beeper at his belt. He checked the number on the read-out, wondering if it mightn’t be one of the men he had waiting for materials to be delivered to the endless Terrence Terrell project in the Grove this morning, but this series of digits didn’t register. Someone to get back to later, he was thinking, and in fact had turned to Fonseca, was about to make some wisecrack about the burden this job had turned out to be for them both, when it finally sank in.

  He checked the beeper again, and this time saw what he’d nearly passed over before. An unfamiliar Gables exchange, all right, but preceded by the three-digit code he had formulated to identify emergencies. He’d shared the code with only two people, and one of them was dead.