The Dirty Book Murder (5 page)

“If you think it’s all right.”

“She has bad breath.”

“No!” the lady shrieked. “Really?”

“Really. I’d rather kiss Rin Tin Tin.”

That brought plenty of laughs and calls for more Hollywood insights.

“Well, most scenes take eight hours to shoot,” Langston confided seriously. “But nothing is ever sustained. It’s like bad sex—all over in thirty seconds and it’s an hour before you can do it again. Doesn’t matter whether you’re with Miss Ashworth or Miss Piggy. After a while it’s just a rather common, silly little job.”

Nobody bought that, and Bob seemed pleased that we hadn’t.

“I suppose there are plenty of downsides to being so famous,” said Kiki Bates as she guided her wheelchair to his side.

“You mean ‘infamous,’ don’t ya, darlin’?”

Kiki blushed, a rarity for her, and continued: “Well, you
were
the favorite of the tabloids for a while.”

“A while?” he echoed, pretending to be insulted. “Hell, I’ve been king of the grocery store rags for three decades. I’m in the Mighty-Have-Fallen Hall of Fame. My Fruit of the Looms are hanging on the wall of the Smithsonian. I have my own butler at the Betty Ford clinic.”

The crowd loved it. He may have been a rascal who in the past couldn’t keep his pants up and his nose undusted, but he could laugh at his faults. Then he got serious and they loved him all the more for it.

“You know,” he said, sitting in a chair so he could look directly into Kiki’s eyes, “there’s no hiding place when a movie star makes mistakes. Even when we don’t. In the distant past, actors like Grant and Hepburn were considered sacred. Now … well, you know the public perception. We don’t pay our bills, we don’t bathe very often. We’re seen as silly grownups playing life as a child’s game.”

And we seduce your daughters
, I said to myself.

While we had yet to be introduced, I figured Anne had done a good job of describing me. Or perhaps I just had that puzzled, steamed look of a father concerned that his daughter doesn’t know what she’s getting into. At any rate, Langston looked at me and nodded as if he had read my thoughts. I acknowledged the greeting with a smile as genuine as a Robert Mugabe promise.

As concerned as I was for my daughter, I wondered if Langston knew what
he
was in for. Anne Bevan had yet to sink a battleship, but it was only a matter of time.

She was tall, blond, and leggy with a slightly oval face, a straight nose upturned at the end, a wide mouth with sparkling teeth that five thousand dollars’ worth of braces had set to perfection, and the bluest eyes this side of Iceland.

Her sorority sisters had nicknamed her “the Palomino.” The moniker was as much for her wild behavior as her thoroughbred looks. I learned this during the second semester of her freshman year when the Kappa Kappa Gamma housemother called me expressing concern for Anne following unbecoming antics at an off-campus barn party.

“It wasn’t that she drank cup after cup of schnapps and smoked a large marijuana cigarette,” Mother Morsbach had said. “I’m afraid such overindulgence is not uncommon anymore. But then she tore off her blouse and—”

The housemother carefully searched her vocabulary for the appropriate words but failing that, simply said, “Please suggest that she act more ladylike in future. She has become a bad influence on the other girls in her pledge class.”

That was my little girl all right. Anne might have toned things down by the end of her sophomore year, but I suspected she had just gotten better at covering up her transgressions.

After the initial excitement of the movie star’s appearance in Riverrun had run its course, my customers began to notice Anne. I doubt anyone realized that she was my daughter. She rarely visited the store when in town and, when she did, emphasized her upper-crust English accent as if to nullify any connection to me.

The looks came from her mother and the voice from living with her maternal grandparents in the ritzy London neighborhood of Holland Park. For nine years following Carol’s death I let them raise her. Mental demons haunted the child and I was in no state to be an effective parent. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. I needed her then as much as she needed me, but there was so much hurt and confusion at the time neither of us realized it.

So I shuttled her off to England where Malcolm and Elspeth Christie-Miller did the best they could. They taught her beautiful social manners and provided a first-rate primary education, but they never succeeded in taming her wild nature. When Anne turned fourteen they returned her to my care.

The day I met her at the airport she experienced her first period. Things didn’t get any better for us after that.

I put aside those memories and locked eyes with my daughter’s seducer, who then raised his hand for silence in order to make an announcement.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to meet the owner of this fine establishment.”

The crowd dispersed very gradually and reluctantly as he and Anne made their way to the counter. A few of the men shook his hand, a teenage girl jumped up and kissed him on the cheek, and Kiki wheeled back to the coffee cart to order another espresso
from Weston Preston.

“Hello,” Anne said with cut-glass diction as she gave me a Princess Diana mwah-mwah air kiss. “Father, Robert. Robert, my father, Michael Bevan.”

Langston smiled broadly and his eyes twinkled just like in
The Last Man
when he stood on that barren hill after the battle of Culloden to shout with his dying breath “Bastards all!!!”

Well, maybe “twinkle” isn’t the right word, but his eyes seemed to catch the light from somewhere and reflect it back. He was a star, no doubt about it, and his handshake, featuring fingers thick as Wisconsin brats, was firm and dry.

“Anne tells me you played rugby,” he said.

“A bit,” I answered, trying not to look pleased.

“You must have been good to have started for the Eagles.”

“Canada beat us forty to fifteen in ’92 and the Welsh tour was pure disaster. We weren’t exactly New Zealand’s All Blacks.”

“Still, capped for your country is no small thing.”

He knew the way to my heart.

“Did you play?” I asked.

“A little,” the hero of
Red Tide Running
answered. “When I was at Northwestern in ’82 I played for the Chicago Lions RFC.”

“Well, up you old Zulu warrior! Did you know Mick Daily?”

“Of course.” He laughed, and it was a beautiful laugh, full of manly bonhomie and Falstaffian cheer. “Mickey was our scrum-half; a great guy but slow with the pass to the standoff and best remembered for singing ‘Sweet Mary of Knock’ after every match.”

“I suspect you played second row,” I said, eager to avoid the subject of rugby parties. The moronic escapades of young athletes fueled by testosterone and buckets of beer do not weather well in the retelling.

“Actually, I was a strong-side wing.”

I arched an eyebrow. You don’t see many running backs outside of New Zealand or the NFL who are six feet six inches and 250 pounds.

“I clocked a 9.8 hundred-yard dash before the knee blew out,” he continued. “I missed playing in the national tournament, but, with nothing better to do, I auditioned and got a part in the Toronto production of
Camelot
.”

Anne gave him a sideways look with a frown as cold as January, unhappy to be frozen out of a conversation between two old ruggers.

“We’d better be going, Bob,” she said, stifling a yawn. “You have the meeting with your producer.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said. “At three-thirty.”

Like a chastised boy, he nervously checked his watch.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He frowned, checked himself, and, flashing that gap-toothed grin, answered with the catchphrase from the film that had garnered him an Oscar nomination.

“No worries, mate.”

Anne took his hand. For an instant she seemed the older of the two, the mother of the child, as Langston’s smile faded behind a blank mask.

“He’s been working awfully hard. Shooting begins tomorrow.”

“I understand,” I said. “When will you be coming home, Anne? I’d like to catch up on things.”

“We’ll try.”

“I thought you were staying with me.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“They wouldn’t let us in,” Langston muttered, waking from his semi-trance. “The bastards denied us lunch.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That damn Stable Club. The manager showed us the door. Apparently, they don’t care for actors.”

“You aren’t a member,” I said feebly.

“But he was with a member,” Anne explained quietly. “A very nice fellow named Martin Quist who has put quite a lot of money into the picture. They still wouldn’t let him enter. It was quite humiliating.”

“I won’t forget it,” Langston said bitterly. “The Hotel Ritz barred Laurence Olivier back in the fifties. Even today the L.A. Country Club is thought to set a quota for actors. I just didn’t expect it in this neck of the woods.”

He sighed before going on.

“You know what Olivier did the first time he was in Paris after receiving his knighthood? He returned to the Ritz where they made a special point of welcoming him. In the bar, with a fawning manager attending him, he ordered a glass of tap water, took two sips, and left, never to return.”

“Nice touch,” I said.

“Yeah, but Sir Larry knew what it took me a long time to learn. People don’t trust people who can fool them. Actors are just tricksters, and anyone who can become another person must be lacking a proper self. Peter Sellers was a master at inhabiting personalities, but never knew his true identity. Like him, I honestly don’t know anymore
how much of me is real.”

I wondered, too.

A
Time
magazine article featuring Langston reported that he grew up in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a prison guard who would beat young Bobby’s mother, then tell the boy he’d been conceived by another man. Years later, when the old man lay dying of emphysema, Bob whispered in his father’s ear to remind him of those words, adding that he hoped they were true.

Back in the bookstore, Langston’s face had become a shimmering canvas of mood and feeling.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I feel that I’m on the verge of committing real violence. Acting is my way of staying out of the asylum.”

“And you’re in love with my daughter? Gee, that’s reassuring.”

Langston’s laughter broke the somber mood.

“You’re my kind of guy,” he said slapping me on the back. “You want to be in my movie?”

“Not if I have to sleep with you.”

It just came out; a sarcastic line from a peeved father who wished to make a point. Naturally, without my intending it, the comment insulted not only the supersensitive Mr. Hollywood, but my daughter as well.

Suddenly, Long Bob and I weren’t rugby buddies anymore. We weren’t even on the same team. He and Anne stomped out of the store, followed by most of my customers.

I spent the next two hours in the storage room sorting and pricing recent trade-ins. It’s a job that usually takes no more than thirty minutes, but I was in no mood to chat. When I finally felt calm enough to emerge, Violet greeted me with a sneer.

“I hope you didn’t buy any junk at the auction this morning.”

“Nope,” I said, settling into my chair behind the counter. “All I got were ugly looks from an unpleasant man who outbid me on what may be the finest stock of books I’ll ever have the chance to obtain in my lifetime.”

Violet looked up from the computer. Her green eyes studied my face for an instant then looked back to the screen.

“Did you know him?” she asked as she resumed tapping on the keyboard, scrolling down our inventory list.

“He wasn’t from these parts, but Gareth Hughes and Richard Chezik joined in the bidding as well.”

“Hughes I can understand, up to a point. But Chezik? That miserable creature who suffers from petrified adolescence? What could he have possibly afforded?”

“He was bidding for someone else, someone interested enough to offer fifty thousand dollars over the phone. Richard didn’t stick around long enough for me to find out who.”

Violet glanced back at me before standing.

“Tough day, huh?”

“Yeah, you might say that. I’d just as soon not discuss all the reasons.”

“Given your present attitude,” she said, gathering her purse, “I think it’s in both our interests that I take the rest of the afternoon off.”

“I’m sorry, Vi,” I said, rising from my chair. “It’s just …”

She placed her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t get up. And stop worrying about Anne. She’s infatuated with that Hollywood coot for now, but she’s strong and has enough horse sense not to get carried away.”

I found no comfort in her words and told her.

“All right, have it your way,” she said sharply. “You men know so much about women, why don’t you try screwing yourselves?” She headed to the front door, waved her hand in dismissal, and marched out.

So much for “let us not be vulgar.”

Weston Preston’s eyes followed Violet closely as she exited the store. He expelled steam from the espresso machine, wiped his hands on the plaid apron he always wore, and walked over to me. A T-shirt and cutoff jeans covered the rest of him, leaving exposed a hairless chest, knobby knees, and, in testament to ten years in the Merchant Marine, an anchor tattoo on a skinny right biceps.

“A long nose is a lady’s liking.” He leaned over the counter and exhaled stale coffee breath into my face.

“You can take off as well, Weston.”

“But I’ve only put in ten hours.”

He wasn’t being sarcastic. He averaged twelve hours a day during the week and more on Saturday and Sunday. The long hours were his choice. It wasn’t just the money. The coffee customers and the shop constituted Weston’s entire social life. His goofiness delighted the children as well as their mothers, who found him harmlessly amusing. I could never get a handle on him, but he was a terrific barista.

More important, Violet, who considered coffee in the shop an unnecessary hazard to the inventory, was surprisingly tolerant toward him. That alone seemed enough to keep him on.