A
my Harper had brushed out her long red hair and put on
her one good dress. She looked less all the time like the
doe-eyed schoolgirl I had rescued from Belltown. She had
found someone to stay with her children overnight: a good
thing, because this was going to run late.
She wouldn’t be doing any lifting and toting
today. She was going to sit in a chair and supervise
while a billionaire’s handyman did the work for
her.
We zipped along 1-90 in the Nash and I told her what
the game plan was. Somewhere on the road, ahead of us or
just behind, Scofield and Kenney were heading for the
same destination: I had called them from Amy’s room
and told them where to go. She listened to what I was
telling her and demanded nothing. She had a Spartan
nature, patient and gutsy and uncomplaining, and I liked
her better every time I saw her.
A kind of muted excitement filled the car as we flew
past Issaquah for the run into North Bend. I was anxious
without being nervous. I knew what we had: I knew the
power it would hold over Scofield, and even Amy felt the
strength of it as the day gained momentum. I had taken on
the role of Amy’s guardian, her agent, in the talks
to come. But a murder case was also on the fire: the fate
of another woman I cared about greatly was still in
doubt.
It’s not about money
, I thought again. I believed that now more than ever.
But money had become so mixed up in it that only the
moneyman could help me untangle it, and I wasn’t
above using the Grayson papers as a wedge on him.
It seemed impossible but it was still only one
o’clock. I thought about Trish and wondered how she
was doing with Pruitt. I had left Bowman’s truck at
her house and changed over to the Nash before meeting
Huggins at the Hilton.
Now I banked into the familiar North Bend off-ramp.
The day was lovely, chilly like a mountain pool, and the
wind swirled clouds behind the mountain in the distance.
For a moment I thought I saw the Indian in the mountain,
but when I blinked and looked again, he was gone. I
headed down toward the main street and turned into the
motel where I’d left the stash.
The black Cadillac was there in the yard.
“They’re here,” I said.
I got out, went to the office, and asked for Rodney
Scofield. Room four, the man said, and I walked up the
walk and knocked on the door.
Kenney opened it. He had a cocktail glass in his hand,
ice bobbing in amber liquid.
We went in. I drew up a chair and Amy sat on the foot
of the bed. “This is Miss Amy Harper. She’s
running this show. My name’s Cliff Janeway,
I’m a book dealer from Denver.”
“Leith Kenney.” He shook hands, first with
Amy, then with me.
“Where’s Scofield?” I asked.
“In the bathroom. He’ll be out. Want a
drink?”
“Sure. What’re we having?”
“Can you drink Scotch?”
“I’m a William Faulkner bourbon man. That
means between Scotch and nothing, I’ll take
Scotch.”
He smiled: he knew the quote. Suddenly we were two old
bookmen, hunkering down to bullshit. He looked at Amy and
said, “Miss Harper?”
“Got a Coke?”
“7-Up.”
“That’ll be cool.”
Kenney and I smiled at each other. He took a 7-Up out
of a bag, filled a glass with ice, and poured it for her.
He asked how I wanted my drink and I told him just like
they shipped it from Kentucky.
A door clicked open and Rodney Scofield came into the
room.
He was thin, with a pale, anemic look. His white hair
had held its ground up front, retreating into a half-moon
bald spot at the back of his head. His eyes were gray,
sharp, and alert: his handshake was firm. He sat at the
table, his own 7-Up awaiting his pleasure. He had a way
about him that drew everyone around to him, making
wherever he chose to sit the head of the class. He was a
tough old bird, accustomed to giving orders and having
people jump to his side. Now he would sit and listen and
take orders himself, from a girl barely out of her
teens.
It was up to me to set the stage, which I did quickly.
“Everything I told you in the restaurant is true.
Gentlemen, this is the Grayson score of your lifetime.
This young lady here owns it, and she’s asked me to
come and represent her interests.”
“Whatever you pay me,” Amy said to
Scofield, “Mr. Janeway gets half.”
I looked at her sharply and said, “No
way.”
“I won’t even discuss any other
arrangement.” She looked at Kenney and said,
“If it wasn’t for this man,
I’d‘ve given it away, maybe burned it all in
the dump.”
“Amy, listen to me. I couldn’t take your
money, it’d be unethical as hell, and Mr. Kenney
knows that.”
“Lawyers do it. They take half all the
time.”
“So do booksellers, but this is different. And
you’ve got two kids to think about.”
“Maybe I can help you resolve this little
dilemma,” Kenney said smoothly. “Let’s
assume for the moment that you’ve really got what
you think you’ve got. That remains to be seen, but
if it’s true, Mr. Janeway would have a legitimate
claim for a finder’s fee.”
I felt my heart turn over at the implication. I had
come here chasing five thousand dollars, and now that
jackpot was beginning to look small.
“What does that mean?” Amy said.
“It’s a principle in bookselling,” I
told her. “If one dealer steers another onto
something good, the first dealer gets a finder’s
fee.” I looked at Kenney and arched an eyebrow.
“Usually that’s ten percent of the purchase
price.”
“That doesn’t sound like much,” Amy
said.
“In this case it could he a bit more than
that,” Kenney said.
I leaned forward and looked in Amy’s face.
“Trust me, it’s fine.”
“Let’s move on,” Kenney said.
“Let’s assume we’re all dealing in good
faith and everybody will be taken care of. Where’s
the material?”
“It’s not far from here,” I said.
“Before we get into it, though, I need to ask you
some questions. I’d like to see that book you
bought back in the restaurant.”
Kenney was immediately on guard.
“Why?”
“If you humor me, we’ll get through this
faster.”
“What you’re asking goes beyond good
faith,” Kenney said. “You must know that.
You’ve told us a fascinating story but you
haven’t shown us anything. I’ve got to
protect our interests. You’d do the same thing if
you were me.”
I got up and moved around the bed. “Let’s
you and me take a little walk.” I looked at Amy and
said, “Sit tight, we’ll be right
back.”
We went down the row to the room at the end. I opened
the door and stood outside while he went in alone. When
he came out, ten minutes later, his face was pale.
My first reaction to the Grayson
Raven
was disappointment.
It’s been oversold as a great book
, I thought as Kenney unwrapped it and I got my first
real look. It was half-leather with silk-covered
pictorial boards. Grayson had done the front-board design
himself: his initial stood out in gilt in the lower
corner. The leather had a still-fresh new look to it, but
the fabric was much older and very fine, elegant to the
touch. In the dim light of the motel room it gave off an
appearance of antiquity. The boards were surprisingly
thin: you could take it in your hands and flex it, it had
a kind of whiplash suppleness, slender and tough like an
old fly rod. The endpapers were marbled: the sheets again
had the feel of another century. You don’t buy
paper like that at Woolworth’s and you don’t
buy books like this on chain-store sale tables. The
slipcase was cut from the same material that had been
used for the boards: the covering that same old silk. A
variation of the book’s design, but simpler,
serving only to suggest, was stamped into the front board
of the slipcase. My first reaction passed and I felt the
book’s deeper excellence setting in. The effect was
of something whisked here untouched from another time.
Exactly what Grayson intended, I thought.
I opened it carefully while Kenney stood watch.
Scofield hadn’t moved from his chair, nor had Amy.
I leafed to the title page where the date,
1969
, stood out boldly at the bottom. A plastic bag
containing some handwritten notes had been laid in there:
I picked it up and moved it aside so I could look at the
type without breaking my thought. The pertinent letters
looked the same. Later they could be blown up and
compared microscopically and linked beyond any doubt, if
we had to do that. For my purpose, now, I was
convinced.
I flipped to the limitation page in the back of the
book. It was a lettered copy,
E
, and was signed by Grayson.
E
was New Orleans. Laura Warner’s book.
“Well,” I said to Scofield. “How do
you like your book?”
“I like it fine.”
“Then you’re satisfied with it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” His
eyes were steady, but there was something about
him…a wavering, a lingering discontent.
“Are you satisfied you got what you paid
for?…That’s what I’m asking.”
“It’s the McCoy,” Kenney said.
“If it’s not, I’ll take up selling
shoes for a living.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to do
that, Mr. Kenney,” I said. “But
something’s wrong and I can’t help wondering
what.”
They didn’t say anything. Kenney moved away to
the table and poured himself another drink.
“On the phone you told me something,” I
said. “You said Scofield had touched the book and
held it in his hands.”
I looked at Scofield. “What I seem to be hearing
in all this silence is that this is not the
book.”
“It’s not the one I saw,” Scofield
said. “I don’t know what this is. It may be
some early state or a variant, maybe some experiment that
Grayson meant to destroy and never did.”
Kenney sipped his drink. “It’s a little
disturbing because we know that Grayson didn’t do
lettered books.”
“So the hunt goes on,” I said with a sly
grin.
Scofield’s eyes lit up. This was what kept him
alive as he headed into his seventh decade. The hunt, the
quest, that same hot greed that sent Cortez packing
through steamy jungles to plunder the Aztecs.
I fingered the plastic bag.
“That’s just some ephemera we found
between the pages,” Kenney said.
I opened the bag and looked at the notes. One was from
Laura Warner, an enigma unless you knew how to read it.
Pyotr
, she had written,
don’t you dare scold me for teasing you when
you yourself tease so. It does please me that you can
laugh at yourself now. Was this a test to see if
I’d notice? How could you doubt one who hangs on
your every word? I’m returning your little trick,
lovely though it is, and I await the real book with
joyful anticipation
.
None of us rehashed the words, though the last line
hung heavy in the room. I opened the second note, a
single line scratched out on notebook paper.
Hang on to this for me, it’ll probably be worth
some money. Nola
.
“What do you make of it?” I said.
“Obviously it’s passed through several
hands,” Kenney said. “People do leave things
in books.”
I turned the pages looking for the poem “Annabel
Lee.” I found it quickly, with the misspelled word
again misspelled.
Kenney had noticed it too. “Strange, isn’t
it?”
I held the page between my ringers and felt the paper.
I thought of something Huggins had said: there’s no
such thing as a perfect book. If you look with a keen
eye, you can always find something. I pressed the page
flat against the others and saw that the top edge trim
was slightly uneven. There’s always something.
“Just a few more things and we can get
started,” I said. “I know you boys are dying
to get into this stuff, but you have to help me a little
first.”
“What do you want?” Scofield said.
“I want to know everything that happened when
you saw that other
Raven
and held it in your hands. I want to know when it
happened, how, where, who was involved, and what happened
after that. And I want to know about Pruitt and where he
came from.”
“I don’t understand what any of this has
to do with you.”
“I’ve got a hunt of my own going, Mr.
Scofield. I’m hunting a killer and I’ve got a
hunch you boys are sitting on the answers I’ve been
looking for.”
T
welve years ago, Pruitt had been a hired gun for Scofield
Industries. He was a roving troubleshoot-er whose job
took him regularly into fifteen states, the District of
Columbia, Europe, South America, and the Far East. Within
the company he was known as the Hoo-Man, an inside joke
that had two cutting edges.
HOO
was short for his unofficial title, head of operations,
but in private memos that floated between department
heads it was often spelled
WHO
. Pruitt knew who to see, who to avoid, who would bend,
who would bribe. In third-world countries, Scofield said
without apology, bribery was a way of life. If you wanted
to do business in Mexico, it was grease that got you
through the doors. You could play the same game in the
Philippines, as long as you played by the Filipino rule
book.
The remarkable thing about Pruitt was his ability to
function in foreign countries without a smattering of
language. There were always translators, and Pruitt knew
who to ask and how to ask it. He was fluent in a
universal tongue, the whole of which derived from half a
dozen root words.
Love and hate. Sex. Life and death. Fear. Money and
politics.
The stuff that gets you where you want to go, in
far-flung places that only seem different from the town
you grew up in. A military junta has a familiar look to a
guy who’s gone before a mom-and-pop city council in
Ohio, asking for a liquor license.
Grease rules the day, from Alabama to Argentina.
This was a big job and Pruitt was good at it. He was
always at the top of his game when the specs called for
double-dealing and mischief. He was a shadow man whose
best work could never be preplanned or monitored. He was
judged strictly on the big result, success, while the
boss insulated himself in a glass tower high over Melrose
Avenue, never to know the particulars of how a deal had
been set up.
“I wasn’t supposed to know these
things,” Scofield said. “But I didn’t
get where I am by not knowing what’s going on. I
have a remarkable set of ears and I learned sixty years
ago how to split my concentration.”
Pruitt had witnessed Scofield’s Grayson fetish
from the beginning. He watched it sprout like
Jack’s beanstalk, exploding in a passion that was
almost sexual. Pruitt knew, without ever understanding
that attraction himself, that this spelled money.
With cool eyes he saw Scofield’s collection
outstrip itself ten times during the first year. By the
end of year two it resembled a small library, with the
end nowhere in sight. Scofield was no green kid, to burn
bright and burn out when his whim of the day withered and
left him dry. Scofield knew what he wanted for the rest
of his life. He was a serious player in the Grayson game.
Pruitt may have been the first of the Scofield associates
to understand the old man’s real goal: to be not
just a player but the only player.
By the middle of the third year, Scofield had acquired
many of the choice one-of-a-kind items that push their
owners into paranoia. He had moved the collection from
the office to his mansion in the Hollywood hills, where
it was given an entire room in a wing on the second
floor. Scofield was nervous. He summoned his security
people, discussed plans for a new system, impregnable,
state-of-the-art. Pruitt, who was expert in such things,
was brought in to consult and was there to help supervise
the installation.
Thus sealed in artificial safety, Scofield breathed
easier. But no system is better than the men who create
it.
Pruitt waited and watched, biding his time.