The Bookman's Promise (16 page)

From across the street I could see the faint light far back in Tread-well’s. Just as I had figured: they were in there trying to dope out what they’d got. I hadn’t needed the brains of a Rhodes scholar to solve this one. One and one are two; two rats plus one rat equals three rats. There they were: Carl and Dante and some other rat.

“What if you’re wrong?” Koko said. “What if it wasn’t them?”

“Then I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

It was still well before the dawn: the deadest part of the early morning, when anyone on the street would be noticed a block away. I had parked out on Broadway and we had walked boldly up Eastern Avenue, finding a crack between the buildings across from Treadwell’s. We huddled there now, sharing our body heat just out of a cold predawn wind. I had draped the bloody gunnysack over my shoulder and it was an effective poncho in the wind. But I had a powerful do-unto-others streak in me, and I thought it might have another use before the dawn.

I had to hand it to Koko: not once had she tried to hide her horror at what I was about to do, nor had she mounted any kind of argument against it. She had only insisted on coming along, and that was her call. They had taken her stuff and slapped her around and that made it her call, as long as she understood the risks.

In the hour since Dante and his boys had left me battered and bleeding on the floor, I had made a good comeback. The double vision had not cleared up, but most of my dizziness had. My bones ached and so did my muscles, but nothing was broken. The old bones would perform well enough when the moment came. That pain would melt away and the stiffness would be gone, but I’d pay a helluva price later.

“Time to go.”

“What do we do if you’re wrong?” she asked again.

“I’ll tell you why I’m not wrong, Koko. They’re back there now, so full of arrogance they’re not even trying to hide from us. They’re so sure they put the fear of God in you, and their boy Dante knows he put it in me the first time we met. That boy plays hardball and if I don’t impress him or kill him, he’s going to be a danger to both of us forever. He holds grudges and he doesn’t forget.”

I gave her a hug and we split up. She went back for the car; I crossed the street to the front of the bookstore. I scrunched down inside the gunnysack and came into the foyer and peered in through the window. The light was coming from the same back room Carl had gone into when I’d first seen them yesterday. The door was closed but it had an old-fashioned transom, well lit and cracked open. I could see their shadows moving on the ceiling. Three distinct rat-shadows.

I walked down the block and around the corner to the back alley; groped through the dark till I could see that guiding light from Carl’s office. Two cars were parked there, a late-model Chevy and a new Ford. These boys bought American: true patriots, born on the Fourth of July, the sons of bitches.

I turned the doorknob. Talk about arrogance, they hadn’t even locked the door.

I had to take them by surprise. Lose that edge and I might as well just walk in, hand them my gun, and let Dante kill me. I had to strike first, fast and hard.

I stepped inside and heard their voices. I recognized Dante’s, then Carl’s, over the transom. The third guy was probably one of Dante’s sidekicks, some extra hired muscle. If I could get him out of the way fast, my attitude would improve. You can’t plan those things, but at that moment, almost eerily, I heard footsteps. I got back between two shelves just as the door opened and the third man came out. He walked past me, opened the back door, and went outside. No chance to get him from there, and a few seconds later I heard one of the cars start. He pulled into the alley and drove away. My common sense said never mind him, he’s just some dummy who does what he’s told. I wanted Edgar Bergen, not Charlie McCarthy. But I was angry that even one of them had escaped, and it took a minute for that craziness to go away.

He had left the door open and now I could see into the office. Dante and Carl were sitting at a table with a cassette player between them. I could hear Josephine’s voice droning in the room. Carl was listening intently and Dante with a look of impatience, as if he didn’t know quite what to do with this voice from the dead, this old lady who couldn’t be roughed up or intimidated to make her talk faster.

Dante was sitting across the table facing the door. That would make it tough to get any kind of jump on him. Maybe I could reach the door before he heard me but I doubted it; guys like Dante all seem to have some built-in radar as part of their defense systems. Even if I made it to the door there’d be a moment before I could get at him across that table: plenty of time for him to go after his gun. I could walk in with my own gun ready, but Dante might go for it against the odds, and a gun battle was not what I wanted. Or was it?

I ran my tongue along my split lip and I thought, Kill the son of a bitch now and worry no more. But I waited, God knows why.

Josephine’s voice was the only sound in the room. Then Dante’s voice rose from nowhere. “Man, this is bullshit. What the hell are we doing with this stuff? We’re wasting our time.”

I couldn’t see Carl’s face, couldn’t tell if he agreed or begged to differ. A moment later he said, “We’ve been through her things. There’s nothing else there. Whatever she’s got, the answer’s got to be on these tapes. Why else would they get ready to haul freight out of there and just take this box?”

“It’s all bullshit: just some cock-and-bull travelogue from a hundred years ago.”

“There’s a lot of tape here,” Carl said. “It’ll take time to hear it all and know what’s here.”

“For
you
to hear it all. Me, I got better things to do.”

“That’s okay, I’ll take it home and spend the day with it.”

“Don’t you get it yet? This is all it is, there’s nothing else to hear.”

“Maybe, but it’s got to be done. Anyway, I got a feeling all of a sudden, like we’d better not sit around here too long. Where the hell did Harlow go for that coffee?”

Dante laughed. “What, are you afraid they’ll sic the cops on us? Those two ain’t callin‘ nobody, pal; I made sure of that.”

“Still, there’s no sense taking a chance.”

Carl began putting things away: the tape player in its case, the notes and cassettes in their cardboard box. Dante got up from his chair and came around the table. I had less than twenty seconds to make my move. If you wait long enough for something to get better, it doesn’t, but it happens to you anyway.

I slipped around the bookcase toward the office door. Dante’s radar, if he had it, was off tonight: he had turned toward the far wall, looking up at a clock that I could now see said quarter to five. Dawn must be breaking, I thought irrelevantly. All over town people are getting up, taking showers, getting dressed, making love. That’s what all the normal people are doing. In those two seconds I saw a parade of women from my life: Rita McKinley…Trish Aan-dahl…Erin. The ones I had and the ones I hadn’t.

I had to get his gun: my top priority. He wore it inside his coat, well back on the left side. That’s how I remembered it and I hoped I was right.

Carl came through the door and walked right past me. I couldn’t see it but I knew he’d be carrying Koko’s box and I had to get that too before he had a chance to run with it. The gun and the box, with no time-outs in between for a Tennessee waltz with Dante.

It took Dante hours to clear the door. In real time he was just two steps behind Carl, I was standing to his right, and in that half second I think he saw me. If he did, his reaction was lost between darkness and disbelief. He never broke stride till I hit him. I threw the hardest right I had, a jawbreaker. He was still standing as my hand frisked along his belt for the gun. He tried to lurch forward with his hands up and I got him on the other side with a good left. I jerked his gun free and it slipped, clattering on the floor as he went down. I let his face say hello to my kneecap in his free fall and I pivoted and kicked the gun away and ripped the box out of Carl’s hand.

“Hello, asshole,” I said seductively. “Welcome to hell.”

Carl made a pitiful whimpering noise. “W-wait a minute,” he croaked.

“Y-you w-wait a minute. Here’s something to suck on while you wait.” I hit him in the mouth and he joined Dante on the floor.

I shivered. That was way too easy.

Then I heard the car door slam. This would be Dante Jr., the one named Harlow coming back from wherever he’d gone, just when they were about to give up on him. I felt a wild surge of crazy elation as I stepped up to meet him.

He opened the door. I could see by the moonlight that he was carrying three giant Styrofoam coffee cups in a little cardboard tray.

“Hi, Harlow, make mine black,” I said, and I clobbered him.

Coffee flew everywhere. Its first stop was on Harlow’s face, but he never felt it.

I stood trembling. “Sons of bitches.”

Dante groaned. I turned on the light and saw him trying to get to his feet. I threw the gunnysack over his head and kicked his legs out from under him, banging his head on the floor.

Prudence told me to get the hell out of there. I had what I’d come for but the elation was gone. There hadn’t been much satisfaction in the love taps I’d given them, not after what they’d done to me. Besides, I had a blood enemy now and I should at least try to impress him.

I leaned over him. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure. Cliff Janeway from Denver. We haven’t been introduced, but I’m the poor, shivering bastard you scared half to death in here yesterday. And you would be the rough-and-tough Mr. Dante.”

He tried to roll over again and I kicked him hard enough to break his hip. “Don’t do that, Dante. Not unless you want a lot more pain than you pricks gave me.”

I leaned over and talked to him through the burlap. “I’ll bet you’re thinking right now how much fun it’ll be when you kill me. Big mistake if you are, because two things will happen if you try it. First, / will kill
you
if I ever see your face again. I will kill you the minute I see you, in a dark alley or a Pizza Hut or in a crowd at Rockefeller Center.”

I cocked the gun and put it against his head. “How do you like this? Do you like the feel of it?”

I cracked him on the temple, hard enough to sting. “Just in case you do manage to kill me, here’s the other thing you can look forward to. A pal of mine—a fellow I won’t name but he’s way tougher than I am—has already been put on your case. If anything happens to me—
anything
, Dante—your ass is grass. If I get a hangnail and get hit by a truck while I’m standing in the street trying to chew it, you can assume the fetal position right then and kiss your ass goodbye. You’ll be dead in twenty-four hours.”

I breathed down at him. “You’d better hope I live a good, long life, Elmer.”

I stuck the gun in my belt, grabbed a handful of burlap, and hauled him to his feet. “That goes for Koko as well.”

Suddenly in a new fit of rage I ripped off the gunnysack and got him with a brutal open-hander that slammed him into the wall. “That’s for Koko. Touch her again and I’ll cut your heart out.”

We stood two feet apart, seething primal hatred. Slowly I backed to the door. “Remember, you only get one warning and this was it.”

I picked up the box, slipped out of the room, and hustled down the alley, where Koko waited with the motor running.

She listened to my account with her eyes wide open and I gave it to her straight. She touched my battered face and said my name. “Oh Cliff. Oh God, Cliff, what a night.” Almost a full minute later, she said, “May I call you Cliff?”

I laughed painfully. “You really are a piece of work, Ms. Bujak.”

We were sitting in some common breakfast joint well away from downtown. She had struggled mightily to find something she could eat and I had eaten whatever came out of the dingy-looking kitchen. I was working on my third cup of real coffee.

“I thought you were a bookseller. I thought you were a scholar. Then you come out here and turn into some warrior straight from the Middle Ages.”

I smiled and she said, “I meant that in a good way.”

“I know how you meant it.”

“Does it make you uneasy, being a hero?”

“Nah. My favorite song is ‘The Impossible Dream.’ But it’s got to be sung in a deep baritone, not some wimpy tenor. I heard a tenor try to do it once. Disgraceful performance. Comical, in fact.” I drank some coffee. “A good bass could really do it up right.”

She smiled, almost lovingly, I thought, and said, “Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“A comedy routine whenever someone tries to say nice things about you?”

I shrugged. “You haven’t even seen my old bullet wounds yet.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about.”

It was fun being her hero but the fun soon went away. She still didn’t understand what had just happened. To her the story was over. We had won.

So I told her. “I wasn’t trying to impress you, Koko. You need to know what you’re up against. Everything I did to Dante was calculated for an effect.”

“Sounds like you’re not sure it’ll work.”

I didn’t have a quick-and-easy answer for that. I sipped my coffee.

“Like maybe you’re afraid you’ve put me at some kind of risk.”

“You were already at risk. I just hope I didn’t make it worse.”

“What choice did we have?”

“Slink away in the night and let them keep your stuff.”

She flushed and shook her head. “No way.”

I liked her decisiveness but Boot Hill is full of decisive heroes. Vast new questions yawned before us.

“They may try to kill us. Does that change your mind?”

She shook her head, this time a little tentatively. But a no is a no, I thought. I said, “I don’t think you should go home. Not till I have a better read on it.”

She looked solemn at this news. I had her focused now.

“Where will I go?” Almost in the same breath she said, “Maybe I’ll go to Charleston. Sooner or later I’ll have to, I told you that. Maybe this would be a good time.”

I felt nothing but relief at this news. “Maybe it would. Maybe I’ll even go with you.”

She brightened. “Do that,” she said. “Please do.”

“Why not? It looks like I’m finished in Baltimore. I think my cover has been blown.”

“If I find what I hope to find down there, it might help you as well.”

“Want to give me a hint?”

“You can listen on the plane. Charlie tells it better than I do.”

I paid the tab and we retrieved her car.

“Can’t I even go home for some clothes?”

“I wouldn’t. Not just yet.”

“How long am I supposed to hide out like this?”

“Not forever. If something doesn’t happen after a while, I’ll force his hand.”

We made a quick swing by my hotel, got my stuff, and headed toward the airport.

“Is the tape player still in the box?”

“Yep. It’s even got earphones.”

We didn’t say any more till the unmistakable signs of runways and aviation rose up around us. She went to long-term parking and we got a shuttle to the terminal.

“What do you really think they’ll do about us?”

“I don’t know. Dante’s an animal. I gave him my best shot.”

“What do you think, though?”

In the end I still didn’t know. “Maybe it’s fifty-fifty. If I had to lay money…I don’t know. I’m just glad you’re getting out of here.”

We got on standby to Atlanta. From there we could get passage on Soapbox Airways to the coast.

“You must put on the world’s greatest bluff,” she said at some point.

But my silence told another story.

“You weren’t bluffing.”

“You don’t bluff a guy like Dante.”

“You would kill him.”

“He’s lucky he’s still alive and I hope he knows it.”

“What about your other promise?”

“He’d better believe that one too.” I looked at her sadly, hating the notion that I was becoming a tarnished hero. “Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to know the answers, Koko.”

“How do you know people like that? People you can just call up and order someone killed?”

“Please,” I said impatiently. “I am not a friend of killers. We’re talking about an old boyhood chum. He went his way, I went mine, but he still thinks he owes me. Something that happened long ago when we were kids. Maybe now I’ll let him get that off his chest.”

After a while I said, “I’m not ordering Dante killed. He’ll be fine as long as we’re fine. If anything happens to him, he does it to himself.”

But I still didn’t call Vinnie. Something in my heart wouldn’t let me.

Instead I called Erin and got her answering machine. “Hi,” I said. “I’m out of town. Not sure when I’ll be back, but we need to talk. Leave a message on my machine.”

No jokes this time around.

An hour later Koko and I looked down on the East Coast from 35,000 feet. She got out the player and rigged me up, picking among half a dozen fat folders and two dozen recorded tapes until she found what she wanted. “This is the best one. This is Charlie. All we’ll ever have of him.”

The tape began to play—an old man’s voice, recounting the times of his life. An old man’s voice, but as I listened the tone sounded vaguely familiar.

“Is that…
Josephine
?”

“Just listen. She’s trying to tell us what he told her—and what she read in his journal years ago.”

I looked at her.

“There’s nothing supernatural about this. Jo was in a deep trance that day. And this is what he told her. This is it, word for word. It’s been stored there in her head for eighty years. She’s even trying to tell it in his voice.”

“What’d she say when you played it back for her?”

“Nothing. She just cried.”

She pushed the rewind button and ran it back to the beginning.

“You’ll hear me on here, asking a few questions. All the rest is Charlie. Just forget me and listen. Just sit and listen and keep an open mind.”

A hissing sound came through the earphones; then, Koko’s voice.

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

There was a pause, followed by the high-pitched voice of a child.

“Josephine.”

“Josephine who?”

“Josephine Crane. My friends call me Jo.
J-o
, like in
Little Women
.”

“That’s a good, strong name. May I call you Jo?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How old are you, Jo?”

“It’s my birthday. I’m nine years old.”

“What day is this?”

“September third, nineteen hundred and four.”

“You sound
very
grown-up for your age.”

“Thank you.”

Another pause. Then Koko said, “Do you want to tell me about your grandfather?”

“What do you want to know?”

“What’s his name? We can start there.”

“Charles. Charles Edward Warren.”

“Tell me a little about his life.”

Now came a long pause. The tape went on hissing for two or three minutes. At that point there was a click followed by several bumps, then Koko’s voice came across in a whisper.

“I’ve moved the microphone back from Josephine’s presence to add a footnote and a description of what’s happening. She seems to be trying to gather her thoughts. Her face is very relaxed, more so than when I have asked this question in the past. Today I will ask her to tell me more about her grandfather’s life, but she can’t go outside her own persona unless she is relating something she personally has heard or read. I would expect her to be limited to what she knew about him at that age, but at times she seems to go far beyond her stated age. She has knowledge and uses words that I would not expect her to know at nine. I think what she’s giving me here are things she has heard him say about himself, coupled with what she read in his own diary after his death.”

From some distance I could hear the child’s voice. There was more scurrying as Koko moved the microphone closer.

“I’m sorry…I missed that.”

“I asked where you went,” Jo said.

“Nowhere, I just needed to move something. Can you tell me about Charlie now?”

There was a pause. I heard a labored breath.

“He’s retired now. When he was younger he was a draftsman. That’s a mapmaker, you know. He says it was a good trade then, there was so much expansion. He worked as a cartographer in and around Baltimore all his life.”

“For a time he worked for the government in Washington, is that correct?”

“Yes.” Another long pause. “He was in the War Department during the administration of President James Buchanan.”

“What were his interests?”

“In his youth…long ago…he liked opera and history, philosophy, nature. He was a bird fancier. Eventually he became an accomplished ornithologist—good enough to write a book and several scientific pamphlets. He liked playing card games. Poker with his pocket money and whist for fun.”

“His picture reminds me of a college professor.”

“He is often told that. My mother sometimes says so.”

“What else can you tell me about him?”

“Ummm…he’s a book collector.”

“Is that how he discovered Richard Burton?”

“Yes. He knew about Mr. Burton long before they met. Even then he had copies of Richard’s earliest books. Some of them went through many editions and lots of revision, but Grandfather always wanted the first British editions. When there were reprints with textual changes, he collected both. We have all those books, with notations in Mr. Burton’s own hand. Grandfather also kept a thirty-year correspondence. The letters referred to the texts, to Mr. Burton’s problems with his publishers, and to his joys and frustrations in writing his books. From 1861 onward, Grandfather had a standing order, with a request that Mr. Burton himself send two copies of each new work as it came off the press, or as soon thereafter as possible. This he did for more than twenty-five years.”

“Can you tell me how he met Mr. Burton and what they did in May of 1860?”

There was another long breath. “They went to Charleston.”

“Yes, but would you share the story of that trip with us?”

There was another long silence. Again came the bumping: more clicks. Again Koko’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I expect, based on earlier sessions, that this story of their trip south will emerge in a stronger, less hesitant voice than what we have just heard. I should note that we have done this identical experiment several times, and it’s always the same, almost to the word. Comparisons can be made with the tapes numbered seven, twelve, and thirteen.

“In all these sessions, Jo displays adult knowledge that may taint the proceeding for a skeptic. Charlie seems to tell her things—such as Burton’s carnal interlude with the inn girl named Marion—that a grandfather of that era would hardly relate to this nine-year-old child. Burton swears at one point and Charlie reports it, another place where he’d surely censor himself if he were talking to a child. When I asked her about it—find tape ten—she confessed that she had read those passages in her grandfather’s journal of the trip. So what we’re probably getting is a mix of what he told her and what he wrote. His own journal was unfortunately lost in the plunder of their library after Charlie’s death.”

More bumps. More clicks.

“I’m back,” Koko said in full voice. “Are you comfortable now?”

“Yes. Thank you for the water.”

“Can you tell us about Charlie now?”

“What he told me, you mean? Or what’s in his journal?”

“Whatever feels right to you. Can you tell me in his own words? As you read it? As he told it to you?”

“Maybe.”

When the voice began again, almost a minute later, it was the old man’s voice.

“It started on a warm day in May 1860.1 was thirty-three years old. The world was a brighter, more exciting place then. I was young and there were so many things yet to do…”

I closed my eyes and Koko let me listen.

“I was thirty-three,” the voice said. “I was six years younger than Burton when we met. This is how it happened…”