The Bookman's Wake (17 page)

I
stood under a hot shower, put on dry clothes, lay on the
bed with the TV low, and waited uneasily.

She called just before eight.

“The cops on the case, Quintana and
Mallory…I know them both, not well, but maybe enough
to give you a reading. It’s not good news.”

“Of course not,” I said, sitting up on the
bed.

“You might be able to talk to Mallory if you could
get him alone. But it wouldn’t do much good,
he’d take it all to Quintana anyway.”

“It’s pretty hard to hold out on your
partner.”

“And then Quintana would be running it, and your
troubles would just begin. Mallory’s the weak sister
in this Mutt-and-Jeff show: you can’t ask him about
the weather with Quintana in the same room—you ask
him a question and Quintana answers it. Quintana’s an
overriding presence, extremely inhibiting. He is tough,
intelligent to the point of being cunning, and damned
condescending to women and other small animals. I
don’t think he’d look at a former cop with much
sympathy. People call him supercop, and not all of them
mean it the way he’d like to think.”

There’s one in every department, I thought.
I’d had one for a partner myself, before Hennessey.
It didn’t last long. Steed had had to split us up to
keep us from killing each other.

The prognosis was obvious. Grimly I moved on to the next
round of questions. Had the cops been able to make the
Rigby connection from the “Rigby” record?

“I haven’t been able to get into that with
them. They’re just not open with stuff like that, and
everybody’s wondering what I’m doing here
anyway. I told you I don’t do breaking stories.
We’ve got other people covering this, and I’m
bumping into them every time I turn around.”

“What’s your best guess?”

“About the record?…I can’t see them
linking it.”

I lost my temper, probably because I couldn’t see
them linking it either. “Goddammit, who does Seattle
put on these homicide jobs, Peter Sellers? What’s the
matter with these fucking cops, what does it take to get
their attention?”

“You asked me what I think and I told you. I could
be wrong. But I think they’ll figure the record as
noise, to cover up what was happening in that house. The
music will go right past them. A million people in this
town like Beatles music—it might as well have been
the Judds on that deck, or the Boston Pops. Why would the
police think twice about ‘Eleanor
Rigby’?”

“Because a woman by that name just went through
their stupid nitwit court system!”

“You’re assuming the right hand knows what
the left hand’s doing. In a system this big, you
should know better. Anything’s possible: I just think
it would take one brilliant cop or a stroke of luck for
that to happen.”

I heard an emergency vehicle pass in her background, the
siren fading as it went by on the way somewhere else.

“They’ll be putting a wrap on it
soon,” she said. “Are you coming in?”

I thought of supercop. It was almost more than I could
bear.

“Janeway…”

“I hear you. I’m just having a lot of
trouble with it.”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“What if I didn’t come in?”

“I think that would be a mistake.”

“What have I got to lose at this point,
supercop’s gonna have my ass for breakfast anyway.
They don’t need me, they’ve got you.”

“I think I’m still off the record. Did we
ever get that straight?”

“If we did, consider it inoperative.”

“What do you want me to tell them?”

“Everything. Anything that helps them find Rigby.
Tell them if they waste manpower looking for me,
they’re a bunch of losers.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Start from ground zero, go till I
drop.”

“Listen,” she said as if she had just made
up her mind about something. “We need to talk some
more. Don’t just disappear on me. Call me
tonight.”

“I’ll see where I am then.”

“I know some stuff I didn’t tell you
yet…things you need to hear. Will you call
me?”

“I’ll try.”

“It’s important.”

We seemed to have reached the end. But she was reluctant
to let me go.

“Cliff, is this really what you want?”

“No. But it’s what I’m going to
do.”

H
ow do you disappear in the other man’s town? I went
about it step by step, covering my tracks, playing the
odds, counting on what I knew of the supercop mentality to
help me along. Aandahl would be getting back to the scene
right about now, just as I was packing my stuff out of the
Hilton and loading up in Eleanor’s trunk. She’d
be starting to tell them now, as I turned into University
and hit the freeway. She’d probably start out talking
to the quiet one, Mallory: that was her nature, avoid the
supercops of the world as long as possible. It
wouldn’t be possible for long: Mallory would call in
supercop as soon as he realized what he had…just
about now, I thought. She’d be segregated in one of
the rooms away from the investigation and they’d
start on her slowly and work their way up to heat.
She’d have to repeat it all, everything she’d
told Mallory: supercop never settled for hearsay, even from
a partner. Again Mallory would ask the questions and she
would answer, and when it was time for the heat to come
down, supercop would take over and see if she scared. Maybe
she’d tell him where to shove it. I thought about her
and decided she just might. It would take an hour off the
clock for them to get to that point.

I found a bank that was open on Saturday, half-day
walkup-window service. My paper trail would end here, it
was cash-and-carry from now on. The paper I had already
left would soon take them through Slater to the Hilton.
Supercop would also know that I’d been driving an
Alamo rental, but he’d be annoyed to find it disabled
in the Hilton garage. How long a leap would it be until he
had me driving Rigby’s car? It could be half a day or
it might be done with two two-minute phone calls. A lot
depended on luck—his and mine—and on how super
the asshole really was.

I drew a $3,000 cash advance on my MasterCard. There was
more where that came from, an untapped balance maybe half
again as much. In the other pocket of my wallet I had a
Visa, which I seldom used: the line of credit on that was
$2,000. I never maxed out on these cards: I always paid it
off and the jackals kept bumping my line upward, hoping
I’d have a stroke of bad luck and they could suck me
into slavery at 18 percent along with the rest of the
world’s chumps. It was good strategy, finally about
to pay off for them.

I took the cash in hundreds, two hundred in twenties. It
made a fat wad in my wallet.

I stopped in a store and bought some hair dye,
senior-citizen variety, guaranteed to turn me into a silver
panther. I’d have to do it in two stages, bleach my
dark hair white and then dye it gray with an ash toner.
I’d be an old man till I dyed it back or it grew out.
I bought a good grease pencil with a fine point and a hat
that came down to my ears. I bought some sealing tape,
shipping cartons, a marking pen, and a roll of bubblewrap.
I doubled back toward town. In the Goodwill on Dearborn I
bought a cane and an old raincoat. For once in my life I
left a thrift store without looking at the books.

I sat in the car with the windows frosting up and did my
face. I gave myself a skin blemish under my right eye,
added some dirty-looking crow’s-feet to the real ones
I was getting through hard living, and headed out again. I
looked at myself in the glass. It wasn’t very good,
but maybe it didn’t have to be. All I needed now was
to pass in a rush for an old duffer with the hurts, when I
talked to the man at the check-in counter.

I chose a motel not far from the Hilton, the Ramada on
Fifth just off Bell Street. I pulled my hat down and leaned
into the cane as I walked into the lobby. For now I would
be Mr. Raymond Hodges, a name I pulled out of thin air. I
also pulled off a pretty good limp, painful without
overdoing it. I gave a half-sigh, just audible with each
step down on my right foot. The guy behind the desk
didn’t seem to notice me beyond the bare fact of my
presence, a sure sign that he had taken me at face value.
There’s nobody in that room but an old guy who
can barely walk
, he’d tell anybody who wanted to know. It
wouldn’t fool supercop if he got this far, but if
they were checking around by phone, it might discourage
them from coming out for the personal look.

It was still only midmorning: registration for the night
wouldn’t be opening for another four or five hours,
but the man let me in when I told him I was tired. The only
thing that seemed to throw him momentarily was the sight of
cash. In the age of plastic, a man with cash is almost as
suspicious as a man with a gun.

For my own peace of mind, I had to get rid of Otto
Murdoch’s books, and it was Saturday and the post
office was on a banker’s schedule. In my room I
sealed the books in the bubblewrap and packed them tight,
with the other books I’d bought all around them. I
sealed the boxes and addressed them to myself in Denver. I
called the desk for directions and he sent me to the main
post office at Third and Union. I insured the boxes to the
limit—not nearly enough— and felt a thousand
pounds lighter when they disappeared into the postal
system.

The library was just a few blocks away, and I stopped
there to look at a copy of
The Raven
. The most accessible Poe was the Modern Library edition,
on an open shelf in the fiction section. I sat at a table
and browsed it, looking for the words
still
and
whisp
, printed diagonally one above the other. I found them in
the fifth stanza, partial words but strong as a
fingerprint.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood

there, wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared

to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness

gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered

word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the

word, “Lenore!”

Merely this and nothing more.

I took the charred scrap from my wallet and looked for
the letters
ange
. It was there, twice, in the sixteenth stanza, reference
to the sainted, radiant maiden Lenore, who had been named
by the angels.

I made photocopies of the three pages and headed back to
the Ramada.

In my room I did my hair, watching with some amazement
as the black became white and then gray and by degrees I
took on the appearance of my father. I quit when it seemed
right. When it dried, I hit it with the grease pencil,
giving myself a slightly speckled look.

I redid my face and made a better job of it.

There was a kind of fatalistic rhythm to my movements. I
was doing what I had to do and time no longer mattered.
Eleanor was either dead or alive: if she still lived, I
rather liked her chances for the immediate future. He
wasn’t about to kill her, not after all this grief,
till he had what he wanted. Never mind the ashes:
appearances could be deceiving, and the feeling persisted
that what I wanted was still out there somewhere, alive and
well. If I could find it first, I’d have a strong
bargaining chip, and there was a fair chance we’d
even converge in the hunt. I didn’t know Seattle, I
had no idea where Pruitt or the fat man’s kid might
do their drinking, but I did know books. I’d let the
cops do the legwork—the job I’d set them on at
no small personal risk to myself, the work they had the
manpower and the skill to pull off—and I’d go
after the book.

It was now after ten-thirty. Supercop would be finished
with Trish, at least for the moment, and he’d be on
the phone to Denver, going after my mug shot and stats. I
pictured the looks on Hennessey and Steed and almost
laughed at the thought. It would go against Steed’s
grain, but he’d have to honor supercop’s
request and wonder to himself if I had finally popped my
buttons and started cutting out paper dolls. As for
Hennessey, I’d have some serious fences to mend
there, but what else was new?

I knew I was tired—the last real sleep I could
remember was the Rigby loft, more than forty-eight hours
ago—but I didn’t want to stop. I sat on the bed
and began working the phone. I opened Eleanor’s
little address book to the Grayson page and decided to
start with Allan Huggins, the man who knew more about the
Graysons than they had known about each other. I punched in
the number, but there was no answer.

I kept going. I called Jonelle Jeffords in Taos. A
machine answered. “Hi, this’s where Charlie and
Jo live. If you’ve got something to say that I might
want to hear, leave a number, maybe I’ll call you
back.”

No bullshit there: old Charlie cut right to the short
strokes. I hung up on the beep.

I sat for a while looking at the name Rodney Scofield.
It seemed vaguely familiar, like something I’d heard
once and should’ve remembered. Finally I called his
number cold, a Los Angeles exchange.

A recording came on. I wondered if it’s possible
in this day and age to punch out a phone number and
actually speak to a living human being.

I hung on through the entire recording, hoping for some
hint of what Scofield was about. A female voice began by
telling me I had reached the business offices of Scofield
Plastics on Melrose Avenue. Their hours were nine
a.m.
to five
p.m.
, Monday through Friday. At the end was a menu of punch
codes: if I wanted to reach the voice mail of various
department heads, I should punch one, two, three, and so
on. Finally, there was this:

“If you have business pertaining to the Grayson
Press, please press number eight, now.”

I punched it.

The phone rang.

A recording began on the other end.

“This is Leith Kenney. I’m not here but I do
want to talk to you. If you have Grayson books for sale, or
information about single books or collections, please call
me back or leave a number where you may be reached. You may
also reach me at home, at any hour of the day or night. We
are interested in any primary Grayson material, including
letters, photographs, business records, broadsides, and
even incomplete projects and partial layouts. We pay top
cash money, well above auction rates. We will match any
offer for important material, and we pay equally well for
information that results in major acquisitions.”

He gave a home number and I called it. Again came that
scratchy, unmistakable sound of a recording machine. There
again was Kenney’s voice, apologizing. He had stepped
out but would return soon. Would I please leave a
number?

No, I would not.

I had a hunch I had found Pruitt’s moneyman, and I
wanted to catch him cold.