Then I found the good books.
There were two stacks of them in the cupboard in the kitchenette. They stood like sentinels, acting as bookends for the Cheerios and the Rice Chex. The first thing I noticed was the quality. There were some very good pieces, some real honeys. I took them into the living room and sat with them, browsing. There were fifteen titles, and I made a list, adding my own idea of what they were worth.
Gardner, Erie Stanley. Case of Dangerous Dowager. $200.
Finney, Jack. Time & Again. $150.
Uris, Leon. Battle Cry. $150.
Kennedy, William. The Ink Truck. $200-250.
McMurtry, Larry. Last Picture Show. $200.
Heinlein, Robert A. Glory Road. $250.
Cain, James M. Postman. A biggie—maybe a grand.
Bellow, Saul. Augie March. Buck and a quarter.
Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery. $150.
Bradbury, Ray. Illustrated Man. $200.
Miller, Henry. Books in My Life. $100.
Isherwood, Christopher. Berlin Stories, signed by C.I. $150.
Irving, John. 150-Pound Marriage. $200.
Bloch, Robert. Psycho. $200.
Rawlings, Marjorie. The Yearling. $150.
I did a quick tally. Call it three grand retail and put me down as momentarily confused. When we last saw Bobby Westfall, through the eyes of Jerry Harkness, Ruby Seals, et cetera, he was broke, pissed off, and without hope. Books had been drying up: Harkness doubted that Bobby even had bus fare back downtown. That was two weeks ago, and now I had discovered a stash of books, extremely wholesalable at a thousand dollars. There was simply no way for this stack to have been scouted in two weeks, probably not in two years. I looked at it again. No way, I thought. Even a titan of bookscouts couldn’t‘ve done it piecemeal. So where did they come from and what did it mean? Here were the possibilities that initially occurred to me.
Bobby had come upon them as a lot, sometime within the past ten days, and had stolen them from some ignorant soul for pennies.
He had literally stolen them.
He had been hoarding them for a long time.
It was possible, I guessed, though not likely, that he had been hoarding books. There are people like that, guys who pigeonhole things for a specific reason and then have the will-power—no matter how bad the times are—never to touch the stash. Say Bobby had been building this pile for three or four years. When he found a book he particularly liked, it went into the Good Pile marked NFS, not for sale. Sometimes he had to sell books that he’d like to’ve put there, but once a book actually went in the cupboard he never, ever took it out again.
That made sense, didn’t it?
I looked at the books again, singly and as a group. Hoarding was possible, but thievery was likely. Bobby had shafted someone; then that someone had found out what the books were really worth and had come after Bobby with a crescent wrench. Maybe, maybe. I stared at the books and let my mind play with them. Common denominators, I thought. For one thing, they were all modern lit. They were all easily disposable—any bookstore worth the name would buy any or all at forty percent. I revised my estimate of condition upward. These were uniformly pristine. There wasn’t a tear anywhere: even on the Cain and Gardner and Rawlings, the three oldest, the jackets were fresh and bright and had minimal sun fading to the spines. Three grand might actually be very low retail for stuff this nice: books don’t come along every day in this condition. So Bobby had a standard, if I wanted to go back to the hoarding theory, and that was another common denominator. Nothing went in here unless it was damn near perfect. One hundred retail seemed to be the cutoff point on the low end. There was a healthy mix of mainstream and genre fiction, but you had to keep going back to one sure thing: the books were all desirable, all eminently salable.
Now I began to examine them page by page. Tucked into a back page of The Last Picture Show, I found the sheath of notes.
They were figures, chicken scratches, columns of multiplication like a kid might have to do for homework. There were lots of figures on four separate sheets. The sheets were small, the kind you might tear off of a memo pad. At the top of each was a printed name: Rita McKinley. She had signed each with scribbled initials. One had some writing at the bottom. It said:
“These are the good ones. Not much gold, I’m afraid, for all the mining. R.M.” I took the papers, handling them carefully, and dropped them into an envelope. Then I put the books back in the cupboard, closed the door on them, and turned off the kitchen light. I felt an almost physical pain leaving them there.
Good thing I’m an honest cop.
I drank the last of my swill, and that pretty well threw a wrap on it.
I picked up Bobby’s little address book and put it in my pocket along with the Rita McKinley notes. I turned off the light in the bathroom and felt the first wave of weariness wash over my aging bones.
Then I heard a noise, a creaking sound, like a man trying to be quiet.
I waited. It came again, then died and went away.
I listened.
Rats, maybe?
Rats with two legs.
I took out my gun and eased up to the door. I put my head against it and in a minute I heard it again. Someone had come up the steps and was standing just outside in the hallway.
I leveled the gun and ripped open the door.
He let out a yell and cringed back against the stairwell.
“Jesus Christ, Dr. J! God Almighty, don’t shoot me!”
I sighed and put the gun away. “Ruby, what the hell are you doing here?”
He held up his hand and with the other hand clutched his heart. “Jesus, you scared me out of ten years’ growth. You better let me come in and take a leak before I lose it right here in the hall.”
“Not in here you don’t. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I came up to see if I could help.”
I looked at him.
“Swear to God, Dr. J. I was over to some friends, shootin‘ the shit and listenin’ to some old Dylan records. We just broke up. I drove by and saw the light on and I figured it was you. Thought you might be able to use a hand, you know, from somebody who’s been around the Cape and knows his books.“
“You know better than that. Look, I appreciate the thought, but you can’t come in here. I thought I made that clear this afternoon.”
“Yeah, but the cops’ve already gone through the place. What do I know about po-lice procedure. I just thought a question might pop up that you couldn’t pin down for yourself. The last thing I want to do is get in the way. I want you to catch the prick that did this, that’s all I want.”
“All right, Ruby. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Took ten years off my goddamn life is all.”
“Just stay away from here. Don’t even think of stopping here again. If I need any help, I’ll come to you.”
“That’s all I want, just to help out. You know how tricky this stuff can be, trying to figure out what’s what in books. I know you’re pretty good, Dr. J, but a real bookman could maybe help you knock some time off the clock.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
“You think it’d be okay if I took a leak? I got a sudden urgent need, Dr. J, and that’s no lie.”