The Bookman's Promise (12 page)

Eastern Avenue was the color of a Confederate uniform and just about as empty in the pale light before dawn. The Treadwells’ building squatted in the block like a brick fortress. At one time it might have been respectable, with its tiled portico and the leaded glass in its front door. Now the tiles were cracked and worn, the tiny glass pieces in the door replaced with glass that matched poorly or not at all. The sign said books, and just inside the portico another sign, equally peeling, equally faded, was mounted on the door.
ten a.m. to six p.m., seven days a week.
I had more than four hours to kill.

I cupped my hands against the one clear window, but I could see little more than the dim outline of the front counter, a rickety-looking bookcase with a sign hawking sale books at a dollar each, and just inside the door a poster advertising book fairs in Wilmington next week, Washington next month, and Baltimore later in the summer. Shadows of more substantial bookshelves loomed in the darkness beyond.

I walked back to South Broadway and went down toward the harbor. I was looking for a cafe that might be open that time of morning, and what I found was a dingy place across from the market, which even then was beginning to come to life. I ordered a plate of grease and sat over coffee with my
Baltimore Sun
untouched on the vacant chair beside me. I could feel the weariness in my bones: the payoff for a general lack of sleep, compounded by the bumpy evening flight from Denver and the loss of two hours over the Mountain to Eastern time zones. It had been after midnight when I checked into a hotel not far from the bookstore. The events of recent days still played in my head, but I slept almost four hours, waking just before dawn.

I heard Willie Paxton’s voice like a broken record:
smothered with the pillow
…
smothered with the pillow
…
smothered with the pillow
…

I saw Ralston’s despair and felt my own.

I never know quite what to do at a time like that. I knew I could find Ralston if he had actually gone to Vegas. A man like that stands out. Give him time to settle and he’d be no problem.

Denise was another matter. If Whiteside didn’t find her killer, and I didn’t think he would, I would have to give it a try. Brave thoughts for an ex-cop who had just burned most of his bridges downtown. Brave thoughts when in all likelihood my first hunch had been the right one, that some two-bit burglar had killed her when she’d walked in and found him there. A spider, maybe a transient: a stranger, in any case. Those guys can be hell to catch, even when you’ve got the resources of a big-city department behind you. Even when you get prints, who do you match them to?

The guy jumps a train and he’s in Pittsburgh tomorrow.

Or he stays pat, right under your nose, and you still can’t find him.

I knew I couldn’t expect any help from the cops. Cops stick together, and I’d be an outcast after news of my snit with Whiteside made its way through the department.

But two days after Denise’s death I had walked along Ralston’s block, knocked on every door, and talked to everyone I saw. In my own police career I had sometimes found that two-day wait productive. It gives talk time to ripple through the neighborhood; it can smoke out a reluctant witness and bring new facts to light. I know the theory of the trail gone cold and most of the time it’s true. But more than once I had found something forty-eight hours later, just by walking the same walk and talking to the same people. In the third house across and down from Ralston’s, I found a kid, about twelve years old, who had seen a man come out of the house just before dark. He didn’t remember much but he was sure of two things: the man was in a hurry and the man was white.

On Saturday night, after brooding about it for another two days, I called Whiteside and left the kid’s name and address on an answering machine.

Thus had the weekend passed. On Monday I had this flight to Baltimore, bought and paid for, so this was what I did.

I walked for a while, found a little park and settled on a bench, where I recovered an hour of sleep. At ten o’clock I walked back to Treadwell’s, timing my arrival well after they’d be open and thus, I hoped, I’d be inconspicuous. But the
closed
sign was still out and the place was still dark. I cursed Treadwell’s work ethic and waited some more.

Eventually, from the window of another cafe near the corner, I saw a young woman turn briskly into the block. She was the living, breathing manifestation of that telephone voice, a bleached blonde in her late twenties with skintight leather pants and a scandalously thin T-shirt glorifying the local ball club in scarlet letters. Her unhal-tered breasts held the Orioles scoreless at both ends, bouncing freely as she walked by.

I had more coffee and gave her time to open the store and get her act, whatever that might be, together; then I moseyed up the street and went into the store.

“Hey, hon,” she said. “You need some help?”

I faced her breasts and fought back the urge to say,
I do now
. I shook my head and said, “Thanks, I’ll just look around,” and immediately she went back to whatever she wasn’t doing and forgot I was alive. I moved on into the store. It was dusty, dog-eared, and immense, everything I had imagined when I’d first heard about it that day on the telephone. In the lower front room someone had long ago made an attempt to classify, with sections marked off by possible fields of interest. Whoever had done that had probably been dead at least two generations, buried in the Treadwell graveyard with all the old bookpeople. There was a sign that said first editions, but if that was supposed to mean literature, the section had died or moved somewhere else years ago. I did find firsts of Marcia Davenport’s Mozart biography and the New York edition of
Zorba the Greek
mixed in with a bunch of thirties-era science and technology, but their condition was nonexistent and dust jackets weren’t even a fading memory.

I went upstairs and up yet another flight, moving from one dark row to another, ostensibly browsing but in fact getting the lay of the land. Sporadic lightbulbs hung in each row but most of the light came from the enormous windows that faced one another on each floor from opposite sides of the building. The floors creaked as I walked on them. The place had a musty, dusty smell to it from top to bottom.

Slowly I worked my way back downstairs and came out into the room where Blondie was holding the fort. I stayed behind the stacks, watching her through the bookshelves as she went about her work. This was mostly sand-sifting, marking the sale books and putting them out, putting others aside for the Man to see if and when he decided to come in. There was no business as yet: no customers, no telephone calls, no people lined up to sell their treasures. But it was Tuesday morning and that could be dead in any bookstore in any city. I walked along behind the shelves, mainly to keep my feet moving and my blood pumping. I tried to stay away from the creaking boards: if the lady had forgotten me, I wanted to keep it that way.

A few customers finally came in. Two books bought, one sold. Always more coming in than going out, and again, that was the way of the trade, the nature of things.

Dean arrived sometime before noon.

He was a big man, hulking and bearlike behind his thick red beard, impossible to read at first glance: the kind of guy who could be palsy, intimidating, or anything in between. Something had been missing from the descriptions I had collected of Dean Treadwell, and I had also missed it in his voice on the phone. On second glance I made a guess at it: Dean was an actor, a chameleon who never showed anyone his real nature.

He said nothing by way of greeting to the blonde and she went on pushing books around behind the counter as if he wasn’t there. He browsed his own shelves, looking critically at the dusty rows of books that stretched away toward the back of the room. Abruptly he said, “You ever think of straightenin‘ this fuckin’ place up, Paula? Maybe we’d sell a book once in a while if you did.”

“So where’m I s’posed to start?”

“Throw all this shit out in the street would be a good place.”

He came behind the counter and looked at the one receipt, then at the books she had bought. “
The Girl Scout’s Book of Dildos
,” he read. “Is this a goddamn joke?”

“I thought it might appeal to ya,” she said, smiling brightly.

He thumbed through the book, pausing over what seemed to be a triple-paneled foldout illustration. “How damn much money did you pay for this thing?”

“Buck and a half. I’ll keep it if you’re not int’rested.”

But he took the book and walked away, disappearing into a room that looked like a private office, deep in the back of the store.

Carl came along about forty minutes later and the blonde’s demeanor changed in a heartbeat. I saw her stiffen, craning her neck as he came to the door. From where I was I could see that he had stopped outside with a man who had been walking with him. They huddled together in the portico, as if what they had been discussing had to be finished now and kept strictly between themselves. Carl was about what I expected: a weasel. The guy with him had the hard look of a real hood, and he did most of the talking. My radar sensed the iron he carried under his coat and I knew this was a seriously bad dude. Not a pretender, not a man you could easily bluff. I knew this at once, from an old cop’s experience. Blondie was right to be wary.

They finished their talk and came into the store. Carl went straight back to the office and Capone drifted to the counter, where he could ogle the blonde’s tits. She looked up at him and tried to smile. “Need some help, hon?”

He leaned over the counter and his coat flopped open. “I dunno,
hon
,” he said. “What kinda help you givin‘?”

She saw the rod and chilled.

“I thought I asked you a question,” the hood said.

She paled then, so visibly I could see it from across the room. “You know,” she said. “Books and stuff.”

“Oh, books and stuff,” he said. “Do I look like I need books and stuff?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not? You think I can’t read?”

“No, sir. I mean yes, sir. I’m sure you can read.”

“You don’t know what the hell you mean, do you?”

“No, sir.”

Then she looked up over his shoulder. That spooked him and he turned away from the counter like a cat had crossed behind him. Our eyes met through the stacks. I looked away, too late. I heard his footsteps coming. I took a deep breath.

“Hey, you.”

I turned and looked at him down the row of books.

“Yeah, you. What the hell are
you
lookin‘ at?”

“Nothing.”

“Is that right? Am I nothing?”

“I wasn’t looking at you.”

He took a couple of steps into the aisle and I felt my gut tighten.
Here we go
.

“What am I, a liar?”

“I was looking at the books. I just happened to glance up.”

“I don’t think so,” he said in a singsong voice.

“Well,” I said. “Sorry if I offended you.”

“You better be. And you better keep your fuckin‘ eyes to yourself unless you wanna go around with a cane and a seein’-eye dog. You got me?”

“I got you.”

He took another step forward as if he hadn’t liked the tone of my voice.

“I don’t think you got me at ail.”

“Yeah, I did.” I made a slight laughing sound, hoping to put a layer of respectful unease into it. “I really got you.”

We looked at each other. It could have gone either way in those few seconds but then Carl came up from the back room. “Dante?”

He turned his head slightly. “Yeah, I’m comin‘.”

He pointed a finger at my face, then he turned and the two of them left the store.

I came out from behind the stacks. The blonde had sunk onto a chair and had a white-knuckle grip on the arms as if she feared falling out on the floor. She looked at me and in a trembly voice said, “I’m gonna quit this goddamn job.”

“You okay?”

“Hell no, I’m not okay. Did you get a look at that guy? Did you see his eyes? Did you see that goddamn gun?” She blinked. “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with him?”

“He just likes scaring people. He likes to watch ‘em cringe, that’s how he gets his kicks. His shtick is to always take offense no matter what you say.”

“I’m not talking about
that
guy. I mean what’s wrong with Carl, bringing people like that around?”

“I guess you’ll have to ask Carl that,” I said. Then I nodded a silent
good afternoon
and left the store before Dean could come out and find me there.

Out on the street I stopped for a minute and took stock. A dark mood followed me down the block and into the same café as before, where I sat at the same window so I could look back at the block and the bookstore. I ordered a light lunch and took stock again. The last time I had backed away from a bully like that I had been in grammar school, about to learn one of the great guiding lessons of my life:
never blink first, never let the bastards intimidate you
. But I hadn’t come all the way from Denver to get in a deadly brawl at Treadwell’s on my first day in town.

Deadly was right. You don’t take on a guy like that unless it’s for keeps. And once it starts, you’ve got to be willing to do anything.

Dante
.

You and I will see each other again, Dante
.

I hoped not. But I had a hunch.

I ate my sandwich, then went to the phone booth and tried calling Koko Bujak. No answer. I went back to my table for some real coffee, strong and black, none of that decaf crap after the night I’d had. I sipped my way through three cups, took stock for the third time, and pronounced myself okay.

Business at Treadwell’s had improved by early afternoon and now they had a steady stream of book-toting traffic going in and out. A bookscout with a heavy backpack came out with his load no lighter. Things were the same all over.

Dean appeared at two o’clock. He stood on the street and scratched his balls for a moment; then he came on down the block, passed my window, and hustled himself across Broadway. I left three dollars on the table and hustled on after him.

He walked north a couple of blocks, went west on Gough, and on into a lively section of Italian restaurants and bars. He turned into one of the bars. I waited outside but that soon lost its charm so I went in, lingering in the dark place just inside the door. The room was crowded with afternoon boozers and I didn’t see Dean anywhere. I started to move deeper into the room, but suddenly I stopped and jerked back against the wall. I had seen someone sitting at a table just a few feet away, someone who couldn’t be here but was, who would know me on sight. I eased myself out and took another quick look.

It was Hal Archer.