I slept five hours. No apologies, no bouts with
conscience. My tank was empty: I needed it.
I awoke at four o’clock in a state of anxiety. I
had heard a bump somewhere and had come to life thinking of
supercop. Dark shadows passed outside, beyond my window,
probably a SWAT team getting ready to crash the door.
But when I parted the curtains, it was just a family
checking in. The rain had stopped for the moment, but a
heavy cloud cover hung over the city, and the streets were
wet from a recent drenching. I took a hot shower and
dressed, thinking of my immediate future in terms of
moves.
My first move had to be to ditch Eleanor’s car. I
walked over to the lobby, giving the clerk a good look at
me in my old-man role. I used the cane well and was
satisfied when he gave me nothing more than a smile and a
passing glance.
I bought a
Seattle Times
from a box and sat in my room browsing the classifieds. I
found the car I wanted in less than a minute, but when I
called, the party had sold it. I tried again: there were
plenty more like that. All I wanted was something cheap
that would run for a week.
The one I found was twenty minutes away, in a ramshackle
garage behind a tenement house. It was a Nash from the
fifties, the oldest car I would ever own. The body was
consumed by rust but the engine sounded decent, rebuilt,
said the young man selling it, just three or four years
ago. He wanted four hundred: it was a classic, he said,
selling hard. I told him everything today was a classic and
offered him three. “This is a great make-out
car,” he said. “The seats fold back into a full
bed, with five different positions.” I gave him a
long gray stare and asked if I looked like a guy who needed
five different positions. He grinned and said, “Just
need wheels to get you to the ”VA, huh, pops?“
We settled on three-fifty with no further commentary.
The whole business took less than half an hour. He
brought out some papers and signed them over to my Raymond
Hodges alias and had one last-minute doubt about the
license plates. “I think you’re supposed to
pull those plates and go down to motor vehicles and get a
temporary.” I told him I’d take care of it and
he accepted this cheerfully. I left Eleanor’s car on
the street a block away, noting the address so I could call
the Rigbys to come pick it up. It was a quiet residential
neighborhood and I thought the car would be safe there for
a few days before somebody called in and reported it to the
city as abandoned.
Back in the motel, I made my phone checks again. Neither
Leith Kenney in L.A. or Charles and Jonelle Jeffords in
Taos were yet answering the telephone, but I reached Allan
Huggins on the sixth ring.
“Mr. Huggins?”
“Speaking.” He sounded out of breath, as if
he’d run some distance to catch the phone.
“My name’s Hodges, you don’t know me,
I’m a book dealer from Philadelphia. I’ve been
hired by a private investigator to track down a book and
I’m hoping it’s something you might be able to
help me with.”
His laughter was sudden and booming. “You’re
a card, aren’t you, sir?…A book dealer
who’s also a detective, you say? What’ll they
think of next?”
“I guess it’s that combination of skills
that makes me as good a bet as anybody to find a book that
nobody thinks is real.”
“Aha, you must be looking for the Grayson
Raven
…Darryl Grayson’s lost masterpiece.”
“How’d you know that?”
“It’s what everyone’s looking for. I
must get half a dozen calls a year on it, maybe more.
It’s one of those urban myths that got started just
after the Graysons died. It just won’t go away, and
it’s all preposterous, just total nonsense. Read my
bibliography.”
“I’ve done that.”
“Well, then…”
“It’s a great piece of work, but it
won’t answer the one question that keeps coming
up.”
“Which is…?”
“If there’s nothing to it, why do so many
people keep chasing it?”
“Now you’re asking me to be a psychologist,
and all I ever was, was a poor bibliographer. This is the
reason I stick to books. No matter how complicated they
become, bibliographically, their mysteries can always be
solved. With people, who knows? Have you ever solved the
mystery of anyone, sir—your brother, your son, the
woman you love?”
“Probably not. Maybe I could come see you, we
could put our heads together and solve the riddle of the
Graysons.”
“Not very damned likely.”
“I won’t take much of your time.”
“If you think it’ll help, come ahead. But I
can tell you right now, you won’t get any
encouragement from me in this Grayson
Raven
business. If you ask me was Grayson planning another
Raven
, my answer would have to be yes. I’ve alluded to
that much in my bibliography. But there’ve been no
major changes in the Grayson Press bibliography since my
book was published. Some poems by Richard have turned up,
and maybe fifty significant broadsides. But in my humble
opinion, the
Raven
project never got off the ground. If you want to ask me why
foolish people keep chasing that myth, I have no
idea.”
“Maybe you could show me some of their books.
I’ve heard you have the biggest collection in the
world.”
My compliment fell strangely flat: he didn’t seem
unusually proud of the fact, if it was a fact. But he said,
“When will you come? I’m not doing anything
wonderful right now.”
“Now is fine.”
I took down his address. He lived on the sound, in
Richmond Beach. Five minutes later, I banked the Nash into
1-5, heading north.
H
uggins lived in a two-story brick house on a large wooded
lot facing the water. It was well back from the street,
hidden from the world. In the last light of the day I could
see the water gleaming off in the distance as I drove into
his yard. I saw a curtain flutter: a door opened and he
came out on an upper deck.
He had a shock of white hair and a curly white beard, a
big belly, and burly, powerful arms. Santa Claus in
coveralls and a flannel shirt, I thought as I came toward
him. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows: he looked
like a working man waiting for some wood to chop. We shook
hands and he welcomed me to his home. There was a spate of
polite talk as we went inside. I asked if he’d been
here long and he said yes, twenty-six years in this house
this coming November. His wife had died a few years ago and
for a while he had considered selling it—lots of old
memories, you know, lots of ghosts—but he had kept it
and now he was glad he had. It was home, after all:
everything he had was here, and the thought of moving it
all, of winnowing down, was…well, it was just too
much. Then about a year ago all the pain had begun melting
away. He had begun taking comfort in these nooks and
crannies and in all the thousands of days and nights he had
lived here.
We went through the living area and into his kitchen,
where he had just brewed a pot of coffee. The window looked
down a rocky hillside to Puget Sound, which stretched away
like an ocean into a wall of coming darkness.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said,
“I’m terrible with names.”
I fed him my alias again and he repeated it in an effort
to remember. The coffeepot gushed its last orgasmic perks
and he poured two huge mugs without waiting for it to end.
“I like it strong,” he said, and I nodded
agreeably, waving off the sugar and cream.
“So,” he said, getting down to cases,
“you want to know about the Gray sons. Where do you
want to start? I’m afraid you must be the guide here,
sir—I don’t mean to brag, but my knowledge of
the Grayson Press is so extensive that we could be here for
days.” He gave a helpless-looking shrug.
“I’m not sure where to start either. I said
I wouldn’t take up much of your time, but I’m
just beginning to realize what a deep subject this
is.”
“Oh, my dear,” he said, rolling his
eyes.
“Even the Aandahl biography is a monster.
It’ll take me a week to read it.”
He made a derisive motion with his hand. Santa was
suddenly cross. “The woman’s a
maniac.”
“Who, Aandahl?”
“Journalists,” he sneered. “All they
ever want is the garbage in a man’s life. Gossip.
Bedroom stories. Lurid sex. But what can you expect from a
newspaper reporter?”
“I guess I won’t know that till I’ve
read it.”
“Don’t waste your time, you won’t
learn anything about the books, Mr. Hodges, and isn’t
that what we’re here to discuss? Listen, if Darryl
Grayson himself were sitting with us at this table,
he’d tell you the same thing. A man is nothing. All
that matters is his work.”
I had never been able to swallow that notion, but I
didn’t want to push him on it. It seemed to be a sore
spot that he had nurtured for a long time.
“I don’t mean to be harsh,” he said in
a kinder tone. “It’s easy to like Trish:
she’s witty and quick and God knows she does turn a
phrase. I’m sure she can be delightful when
she’s not chasing off to Venus or obsessing over the
Grayson brothers. But get her on that subject and
she’s crazy. I don’t know how else to put
it.”
He gulped his coffee hot. “I’ll tell you how
crazy Trish Aandahl is. She thinks Darryl and Richard
Grayson were murdered.”
I stared at him as if I had not heard the same words
from Trish herself. “Is she serious?”
“Damn right she is. She gets her teeth into
something and never lets go of it. She’s like a
bulldog.”
“I guess I’m at a disadvantage here. I just
got her book and I’ve barely had time to look at
it.”
“You won’t find any of this in there. The
publisher made her take it out.”
“Why?”
“The obvious reason—she couldn’t prove
any of it. It was all conjecture. As a reporter you’d
think she’d know better. But I hear she fought with
her editor tooth and nail, really took it to the wall. It
almost jeopardized the book’s publication. If she
hadn’t listened to her agent’s advice, the
whole deal might’ve fallen through.”
“What advice?”
“To take what she could get now—publish the
biography without all the trumped-up mystery. To keep
working the other angle if she believed it that strongly.
If she could ever prove it, it might make a book in itself,
but as it was, it just undercut the credibility of the book
she’d written.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Of course it’s reasonable. But a reasonable
person also knows when to stop. What’s it been now,
three or four years since her book was published? Four
years, and I don’t think she knows anything more
today than she did then. But she’s still out there
digging. Or so I hear.”
“I take it you and she are not bosom
buddies.”
He smiled, struggling to mellow. “We’re
certainly not enemies. It’s just her book I
don’t like: I don’t like it even without the
epilogue, or whatever she called the murder chapter. Who
cares
how many prostitutes Richard Grayson knew in Seattle, or
that even poor Darryl never could keep his own pants
zipped? I just don’t like that kind of business.
I’m not a prude, I’m just suspicious of it.
Trish will tell you she did more than three hundred
interviews for her book. I say so what. How can we be
certain that even Archie Moon, who was Darryl
Grayson’s friend for life, was telling her the
truth?”
“People usually tell the truth when they know
they’re being quoted in a published record of their
best friend’s life.”
“That’s what you think. You’ll pardon
me if I remain a skeptic. I’m not saying Moon would
lie—I just know that people do put their own spin on
things. It’s human nature. How can anyone know what
really went on between Grayson and Moon over a forty-year
friendship, when one of them’s dead and the other
might have an ax to grind? Moon’s agenda might be
nothing more devious than to have Grayson viewed well by
posterity. So he might not tell you something that would
undercut that, even though it might well contribute to a
better understanding of Grayson’s genius and how he
made his books.”
“It sounds like you’re saying that
Grayson’s genius had a dark side.”
“Can you imagine any genius that doesn’t? It
comes with the territory, as people say these days.
You’ll hardly ever find a truly brilliant man who
isn’t a little sick in some way. But what difference
does it make? The Graysons are of general interest only
because of the books they produced. If they hadn’t
done the books, they’d be nothing but a pair of
swaggering cocksmen, forgotten by everybody including Ms.
Trish Aandahl. Anyone can lie down with whores, but only
one man could have done the Thomas Hart Benton
Christmas Carol
. Only one. That book was a
creation
, you see, and that’s what I choose to focus on. I
don’t do interviews for my work, I’m not
interested in what people
say
about the Graysons, all I want to know is what really
happened. My disciplines are rigid, precise, verifiable,
true. If that sounds like bragging, so be it. I don’t
report rumors or pillow talk.”
He held my eyes for a long moment, then said, “You
look like you disagree with everything I’ve just
said.”
“I’m absorbing it.”
He poured me another cup, got a third for himself, and
sat down again. “Very diplomatic, sir. But look, tell
the truth—as a bookman—do you actually
like
biography?”
“It’s like anything else, a lot of
it’s slipshod and crummy. I don’t like the
Mommie Dearest
crap. But I guess I believe there’s a need for
biographies of people like the Graysons, done by a writer
who’s a real writer, if you know what I mean. No
offense to you— what you do is indispensable,
but…”
“But I’m not a writer and Trish is. You
won’t get any argument from me on that point. The
woman is just a sorceress when it comes to words.
There’s a seductive quality to her writing that hooks
you by the neck and just drags you through it. Just wait
till you get started reading her book—you won’t
be able to leave it alone. You’ll wake up in the
night thinking about Darryl and Richard Grayson, their
times and the lives they led. Trish is just brilliant when
it comes to conveying emotions with images and words. She
could’ve been a great fiction writer, done the world
a favor and left the Graysons alone.”
“What about you? Did Aandahl interview
you?”
“Several times. I had to overcome a good deal of
reluctance to sit still for it. In the end, I’m no
better than anyone else, which only proves my point all the
more. I’m a ham, Mr. Hodges. I was fascinated with
her subject, with the things she was finding out, and I was
flattered that she considered me an indispensable source.
There’s no getting around it, I did want to know what
she was doing.”
“Did she quote you accurately?”
“I didn’t give her much choice. I insisted
on reviewing her material—at least the parts where I
was mentioned.”
“Did you find any errors when you read
it?”
“No.”
I raised an eyebrow and cocked my head slightly.
“She had a
tape
recorder, sir, how can you misquote someone when you record
every syllable and grunt? Look, I’m not saying she
isn’t a good reporter —she may very well be the
greatest newspaperwoman since Nellie Bly. And if she keeps
digging at it, who knows what she might uncover? Maybe
she’ll prove that Richard Grayson was in league with
Lee Harvey Oswald and her work will go down in history.
Pardon me in the meantime if I doubt it. We’re going
around in circles—I have my opinion, Trish has hers,
and I’m sure you have yours. Where do you want to
start?”
I didn’t know. “It’s a little like
jumping into a sea. All I know about the Graysons so far is
what I got from that capsule biography in your
book.“
He fidgeted. “I hated to do even that much. But
the requirements of the book…the publisher demanded
it, it was felt that readers would want at least the
essentials of their lives. So I did it, but I kept it
short—only what could be absolutely verified.
It’s still the part of the book that I’m least
proud of.”
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t know the
lurid details.”
“I know
all
the lurid details. I’ve read everything that’s
ever been published on the Graysons. I can touch the paper
a Grayson book is printed on and tell you whether
it’s the regular run or one of his variants. In a
sense, every book he made was a variant. Did you know
that?”
I shook my head no.
“It was one of his trademarks, one of his
eccentricities. That’s what makes the man so
endlessly interesting. Try to get a grip on him by looking
at his work— you’ll end up in a rubber room
talking to men in white coats. I can spend days with his
books, and I’m talking about different copies of the
same title, and I’ll find some little variation in
every one of them. Every time I look!
I’m
supposed to be the Grayson expert, I’m supposed to
know everything there is to know about these things, and I
can still sit down with five copies of his
Christmas Carol
and find new things in every one of them. Sometimes
they’re subtle little things in the inks or the
spacing of words. Can you imagine such a thing in this day
of mass production? —Grayson made every copy in some
way unique. It was a trademark, like Alfred Hitchcock
appearing somewhere in all his films. Only what Grayson did
was far more difficult than anything Hitchcock ever dreamed
of. Try to imagine it—the chore of produc-ing an
exquisite book in a run of five hundred copies, and making
many copies different from the others without messing
anything up. It would drive a normal man nuts. He
must’ve worked around the clock when he had a book
coming out. The binding alone would’ve taken anyone
else six months to a year, full-time. Grayson did it in a
gush.”
“He had Rigby to help him.”
“But not until 1963.”
“Before that there was Richard.”
“Who was a pretty fair binder, as it turned out.
I’m sure these people helped out, but I don’t
think anything ever went out of that shop that Grayson
himself didn’t do. This is partly where the mystique
comes from. Grayson did things that to other printers look
superhuman, and once he decided
what
he was going to do, he did it with a speed that defies
belief. He’d fiddle and change things in the process:
then, for reasons no one understands, he’d toss in a
real variant. It’s as if he suddenly got a notion in
the middle of the night, and he’d change the paper or
the binding, for that one book only. If the book passed
muster when he’d finished it, he’d go ahead and
ship it. People on his subscription list were always
thrilled when they discovered they had a
variant—though it was sometimes years later that they
found out.”
“Some of them probably never found out.”
“That’s an excellent assumption. You can bet
there are still many Grayson books sitting on the shelves
of people who have no idea what they’ve
got.”
“The original owner dies, leaves them to his
children…”
“Who don’t understand or care.”
“Is there any way of tracing these
books?”
“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to
me…and to one or two other people. You’d think
it would be simple—Grayson must’ve kept a
master list of his subscribers, but it’s never been
found. Some of the books have come to light on their own.
They’ll pop up in the damnedest places…last
year I got a card from a woman in Mexico City. Her husband
had been a subscriber. He had just died and she had all the
books, still in their shipping boxes.”