by James, Terry
4
BEFORE HEADING BACK to Palladian Hills the next morning for my rendezvous with the Sphinx, I stopped by the library. I wouldn’t say I was a regular patron, but every now and then some niggling detail on a case would stymie me and I would swing by the main branch to avail myself of the reference section. Built in 1917 with Carnegie money, it was a monumental Beaux Arts building set back from Lincoln Avenue on a broad landscaped terrace, façaded with half a mountain of Calaveras marble. Two massive greyhounds, affectionately known as Hope and Despair, guarded the entrance, above which rose, as if in doubt of the allegiance of the dogs, four colossal pairs of Ionic columns flanked by life-size statues of local deities. From the steps of the library, exiting book lovers enjoyed an unimpeded view of the verdigrised dome of City Hall towering above its inverted twin in the Pool of Remembrance, the favored watering hole of the city’s indigent and insane.
I took the stairs up to the catalog room on the second floor, where I waited ten minutes amidst the murals of ancient scriveners for an elderly gentleman with shaky hands to conclude his investigations in the Authors Cl-Cz drawer. There was only one card under “Conway, Baxter”: a novel called Guttersnipe. I wrote down the call number—for good measure I also checked under Walter Morris, but it seemed unlikely that the three books on the North American firefly were by the same author—and continued my journey upwards to the third floor.
The main reading room, which a brass plaque at the threshold informed me had recently been renamed the Helen A. Griffith Reading Room as a token of gratitude for the sugar magnate’s widow’s generous support, was so vast it produced its own atmosphere, a compound equal parts sloughed-off paper molecules, binding glue and dust mites, which judging by the number of drowsing heads had a decidedly narcotic effect on its inhabitants. I say inhabitants because at least half of the regulars were homeless people who took advantage of the only place in the city where they could sit all day in peace and dignity. Gut the Titanic and line its hull with books and you would get a fair approximation of the magnitude of the Reading Room.
As I made my way up the broad central gangway towards the information and retrievals desk, the echoes of my footfalls rained gently down from the painted sky, accompanied by the dry rustle of turning pages, the muted clearing of throats, the thunder of thoughtlessly scooted chairs. The morning sunshine streaming through the high eastern windows spread sheets of blinding light across the enormous oak tables that spanned the room widthwise fore and aft, each table massive enough to have hosted a Habsburg marriage banquet. Eventually I did arrive at the counter, where I handed my slip to the prim middle-aged woman in a tartan skirt suit who, upon checking my selection for accuracy, smiled faintly to herself before sending it down the tube to one of the denizens who roamed the miles of stacks below.
I took a seat at a nearby table and wondered as I waited for the book what the librarian’s little smirk was all about. Was she familiar with the novel, tickled by some recollected scene? Was there something inherently comic in me requesting that particular book? Gazing up at the painted ceiling, I felt as though I were floating upwards, drifting past the rosy-hued clouds that rimmed the portal, out into pure robin’s egg blue, native domain of cherubs and seraphs.
Five minutes later the book arrived. It was a yellow clothbound hardback. No dust jacket or cover art. Black lettering on the spine: Guttersnipe. Baxter Conway. I opened it. On the title page, between the author’s name and the title, was a small woodcut of a smoking pistol. I glanced over at the librarian, half-expecting her to be smirking at me, but she was lost in private contemplations.
I turned to chapter one and read a bit of it. About halfway down the first page I had the peculiar sensation that I had read this novel before, all the more peculiar as I don’t read detective novels. Maybe it was the jaunty tone of the narrator, the clipped, hardboiled style that even an illiterate child can imitate. I read on, surprised to encounter on page two a fairly accurate description of West Grand Avenue, which the Mandrake Building happens to be on. I read some more, and lo and behold if on the very next page a man didn’t enter my building and take the elevator to the third floor.
Then came this: “Stenciled onto the pebbled glass of the office door was his name and profession: Edward King, Private Detective.”
“Sonofabitch,” I muttered, a little too loudly. I glanced up. A woman with a face like a deflated football was glaring at me. I lowered my eyes back to the page and read some more.
My indignation at finding my name and business address published in a third-rate novel turned to something altogether more disconcerting when Conway proceeded to describe the contents of my office, down to the brown leather cap that had been hanging on the coat rack when I moved in and has remained there unperturbed ever since. I looked up from the book with the eerie sensation that I was being watched. I peered around me, didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, then lowered my eyes back to the page. I reread the description of my office, telling myself that it had to be a coincidence. I read on. Then, in the middle of page three, I read the following passage:
The man was built like a linebacker. He clasped King’s outstretched hand in his iron grip. ‘Lester Griswold,’ he scowled. King offered him a seat and a glass of bourbon. Griswold took both. ‘We buried my brother Max yesterday,’ he said. ‘Car accident.’ He took a drink, swallowing hard. ‘So they say.’
I pulled my handkerchief from my back pocket and wiped the chilly sweat from my upper lip and quickly skimmed ahead. There I was in Prospect Park, tailing Tiffany Griswold on her rendezvous with the airline pilot. There I was, being harassed by Hicks and Stiles at Sam’s Joint while trying to sip my Old Grand-Dad in peace. There I was, being beaten to a pulp by Lester Griswold’s muscle for getting too close to the truth.
I turned back to the beginning of the book and read the opening scene again, as if maybe I hadn’t read it right the first time. Nothing had changed.
I turned to the copyright page. The novel had been published twelve years ago. I couldn’t remember the exact year of the Griswold case, but it didn’t seem that long ago.
I closed the book and sat there trying to think, but the sting of violation made it impossible to concentrate. My heart was thumping hard against my sternum. I got up and took the book with me back to the librarian, whose reproachful glare—she must have heard my expletive after all—made me feel like the class troublemaker.
“Do you have any more of this guy’s novels?” I asked her. She glanced at the spine of the book, as if she had already forgotten who had written it.
“Did you search the card catalog?” she asked with perfect condescension.
“Yes,” I said. “This was the only one listed.”
“Then I’m afraid that’s all we have.”
“How about some kind of Who’s Who of American Authors?”
She exited her bunker through the hinged partition and bade me without uttering a word to follow her. We walked a good distance to a wall of reference books where she pointed out three fat volumes. I found the entry on Baxter Conway: “The pseudonym of Walter Morris, a writer of crime fiction best known for his series of novels featuring the detective Eddie King.”
My blood pressure rocketed as I scanned down the titles.
Guttersnipe
Blinded by the Sun
Due Diligence
Murder at the Crossroads
All but the Chorus
Blood City
Dying to Know
King’s Ransom
King at Arms
Murder on Consignment
Drop Dead Date
Fair Market Murder
King’s Gambit
I closed the book and stood before the shelf for some time, telling myself to keep calm.
I returned to my friend at the information desk and asked her how one went about getting a library card.
“Circulation,” she mumbled without bothering to look up. “Second floor.”
There I
was informed by a pallid, bespectacled young man with a shaving nick on his right cheek that I needed to show proof of identification and address. I handed him my driver’s license.
“And do you have a bank statement, utility bill, or a letter from your landlord?” he cheerfully asked.
“What for?”
“Proof of address.”
“It’s there on the license.”
“I’m afraid I can’t use your license.”
“Why not?”
“It needs to be a current bill, a bank statement, or a letter from your landlord,” he repeated. “Something with a recent date on it.”
“I renewed my license two months ago. The date’s right there.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s library policy.”
“You accept the license as proof of identity but not proof of address? I’d say there’s a contradiction there.”
“No,” he replied. “The photo verifies that you are who you say you are.”
“All the photo verifies is that my face can be photographed. How do you know it’s not a fake ID?”
“I can’t imagine anyone going to all that trouble for a library card.”
“Then you have a poor imagination.”
“Insults do not improve your chances of obtaining a library card, sir.”
I opened my wallet and removed a five dollar bill and placed it on the counter.
“Does that?”
He gave me a snide smile. “Are you for real?”
I left the library, novel in hand, promising myself I would return it when I was done.
5
OVER THE COURSE of the rest of the morning and afternoon, as I tailed and waited for Mrs. Fletcher, I read the entirety of that infuriating novel. Never in my life had I felt so violated. Someone, either Walter Morris, who unfortunately was not available for questioning, or a hired hand, had either copied or stolen my file on the Griswold case. There was no other way he could have acquired such precise information: the names and addresses of the key players, the exact sequence of events, from my first meeting with Lester Griswold to the shootout with the cops that ended his life, my various telephone exchanges with the police detectives, etc. Most troubling of all were the personal details: descriptions of me, my suits, my hat; descriptions of my apartment, including the name of the building and my apartment number; the make and model of my car; the places I frequent (Sam’s Joint, the diner, the newsstand on Harcourt Street).
Back in the office, I went straight to the filing cabinet. To my surprise, the Griswold file was still there. I pulled it out and opened it. Everything, as far as I could tell, was there: the photographs, my daily notes, the affidavits, all the various and sundry documents Lester Griswold had given me. As I went through the folder page by page, combing every document, every receipt, every scribbled note for correspondences with the novel, it quickly became evident that no one but me could have reconstructed the case from the file alone. Nothing was in order. The only papers with any dates on them were the affidavits and other official documents, which were few and far between, and there was no clear relationship between those documents and my notes, which I rarely bother to date. Nor were the notes as thorough as I had remembered them to be. Most of them were incomprehensible even to me. It would have been easier to assemble a jigsaw puzzle of a blizzard than produce a chronological narrative from that jumble of pages.
So how had this bastard done it? I sat thinking for a while then picked up the telephone receiver and unscrewed the cap on the mouthpiece and gave the wiring a thorough inspection. I did the same with the earpiece. I pulled out the drawers of the desk and examined every inch of them. I felt around inside the cavity of the desk. I looked under the chair, on the lamp, in the filing cabinet, around the window blinds. I climbed on top of the desk and had a look at the hub of the ceiling fan. The density of the dust up there was astonishing. If there was a bug in my office, it was beyond my powers of observation.
The publisher, according to the copyright page, was an outfit called Pegasus Editions. PO Box 24124. Minneapolis, Minnesota. I picked up the receiver and dialed directory assistance for Minnesota and asked for the number of Pegasus Editions, Minneapolis. The operator patched me through. A woman answered. I asked for someone in editorial. I got a guy named Daniel Geary, an assistant editor. He sounded young. I passed myself off as a West Coast journalist named Robert Justice doing an obituary on Walter Morris. He didn’t know who Walter Morris was.
“Oh, my God,” he said when I told him. “Baxter Conway is dead?”
I pretended to share his lament. He asked how, and I told him an apparent suicide. That shook young Mr. Geary up. I told him I was trying to get in touch with Conway’s editor, the person he would have worked most closely with on his books.
“That would be Howard Stapleton,” he told me, and without pausing for breath he went on about how much everyone in editorial loved Baxter Conway because his manuscripts always came in so polished. According to Mr. Geary, Howard Stapleton may have been Conway’s editor, but he literally had had nothing to do when a new Baxter Conway manuscript landed on his desk but pass it on to the typesetters. Six commas, two hyphens, a misspelled “the,” and an inexplicable blank line between two paragraphs—this was the sum total of all the editorial intervention that had ever been necessary over the course of the Eddie King series. Baxter Conway was legendary in Minneapolis editing circles. I asked Mr. Geary if I could speak with Mr. Stapleton. Mr. Geary informed me that Mr. Stapleton had already gone home for the day; it was past seven o’clock in Minneapolis. I asked Mr. Geary if Mr. Stapleton was the man whom Baxter Conway would have bounced his ideas off of. Mr. Geary was almost certain that Mr. Stapleton had never once been consulted by Baxter Conway on anything to do with the content of his novels, but if anyone in editorial had indeed fielded a rare request for input from Baxter Conway, it would most certainly have been Mr. Stapleton. Mr. Geary asked me if he could take a message for Mr. Stapleton. I told him that wasn’t necessary, I would try again in the morning. We spoke a little about our respective climates then wished each other a good evening before hanging up.
I opened the drawer and pulled out the bottle and glass and poured myself a drink, every motion now accompanied by an annoying self-consciousness. I couldn’t raise the glass to my lips without feeling that someone was standing behind me, observing my every action and jotting it down in a notebook.
At a quarter after five I opened the door and looked down the hall. Ramona was at the janitor’s closet getting her supplies. I stepped back into the office, leaving the door open a few inches. When I heard her nearing, I opened the door as if I were about to step out on my way home.
“Oh, hey, Ramona,” I casually greeted her from the doorway. “Keeping busy?”
“Yes, Mr. King.”
I had long since given up on trying to get her to call me Eddie.
“Good, good.”
I was pretty sure Ramona was older than me, though I never would have guessed it had she not mentioned once when we were chatting after a minor earthquake that she had been seven years old at the time of the San Gregorio quake. I always behaved as if we were old friends, when in truth I knew virtually nothing about her. The fact of the matter is that I had never been interested, never had any reason to inquire about her private life. Nor had she ever given me the impression that she had any desire to step out of the prescribed role of deferential Mexican cleaning woman, at least around me.
“Could you spare a few minutes?” I asked her.
“Yes, Mr. King?”
I gestured to my office. “Here, come on in.”
Her sixth sense for the slightest atmospheric turbulence in the workplace far more acute than my own, she leaned her mop against the wall outside and warily stepped in. I closed the door behind her. I knew better than to suggest she have a seat. Strangely, I began to feel nervous myself.
I smiled. “I just wanted to say I appreciate the quality of your work.”
No
response.
I tried another tack. “Are you happy with what they pay you here?”
“Yes, Mr. King.”
“If you’re not, I could have a word with Mr. Schwartz.”
“No, Mr. King.”
She was standing with her arms straight down at her sides, diligently keeping eye contact.
“How long have you worked here?” I asked.
She thought for a moment.
“Twelve years.”
“You must have started the same year I set up,” I said. “How time flies.”
Her expression did not change.
“Is there anything I can do to make your job easier?” I asked. “I know I’m not the cleanest person. Sometimes I leave the office in a mess, files strewn everywhere.”
“No, Mr. King.”
“You would tell me, wouldn’t you? I know I’m a bit messy when it comes to my papers and stuff.”
I watched her carefully, studying her eyes for the slightest flicker of fear or contrition, but I saw nothing more than eagerness to return to her mop.
“You would tell me, wouldn’t you?” I persisted. “I’d hate to think you would be concerned about offending me.”
“Oh no, Mr. King.”
There was no way around her wariness of anyone remotely affiliated with the law. If she herself wasn’t illegal, surely someone in her family or her neighbor’s family was.
Seeing that this was going nowhere, I thanked her and said I’d see her around. She turned and left my office, shutting the door gently behind her.
I sat there for a while, thinking. I picked up the receiver and dialed Hicks’s line in Homicide.
“Hicks,” he answered.