Book Deal (7 page)
Arch was staring at the phone, about to dial again, when he heard the knock at the rear door of the store. He glanced at his watch, puzzled. The rear entrance was deliveries only. He kept his own car in a tiny space back there; his accountant sometimes used that door; and a few of the staff who opened might come in that way in the mornings. But it was a narrow pass that led in from the alley in back, past assorted detritus and the foul Dumpsters of a restaurant that fronted the other side of the block, nothing a customer would want to use.
Could it be Janice back for something she’d forgotten? Maybe she’d tried the front door and he hadn’t heard. Or maybe it was Deal, back to drag him off to the Colombian Superparty. The knock came again, more insistent this time, and he hesitated, put the phone back in the cradle. He needed to think about that next call for a moment, anyway.
He came out of the windowless office into the room where he and Deal had been talking, noted that the sun was a red ball sinking behind the buildings to the west. Maybe it was the mood he was in, but he could swear the fiery light bounced from the deserted bus station windows like megastore neon already installed.
The knock came again and he called out, “All right! I’m coming.” He’d see who this was, head on home, try his sister from there. The more he thought about it, the person who’d answered Sara’s phone must have meant she was in her office. But still, who was it who’d answered? Not the Reverend Willis, certainly. Not even a smidgen of that man’s suffocating ebullience. A friend? But they all tended to be members of the congregation. And if she was at work, it seemed a bit too intimate for one of the anointed to be hanging out in her house unattended.
Given what he’d just read, he was concerned, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. If it was Deal at the back door, he thought, pushing into the tiny rear foyer, maybe he could take up the matter with him, make sure he wasn’t overreacting.
He flipped on the bare overhead light, found the knob, pulled the heavy steel door open as far as the safety chain would allow. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust; then he realized there were two people standing there in the narrow passage, a tall, dour-looking older man in a suit that seemed a size too small, and a sturdy woman, a head shorter, wearing white gloves and a veiled hat, a patent leather bag clutched under her arm.
These are not Miami people
, he found himself thinking.
“Mr. Dolan?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Arch said, puzzled.
“Is this the bookstore?” she continued, trying to peer over his shoulder.
“The House of Books,” he said, nodding. “We’re closed, though.”
“Oh, darn it,” she said, turning to her husband in despair. “I told you.”
She turned back to Arch. “Dexter was hungry,” she explained, a mournful expression squeezing her round face. “So of course we had to eat.” The man glanced at her neutrally, as if she might be speaking some foreign tongue.
“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 staircase 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.