We got out. A streak of light had appeared in the east and we began to see each other not as dim shapes but as people, faces, types. The thug, the brittle beauty, and me. What type was I? What type was I?
I gave Barbara my keys. “Here. Take the car and get out of here. Park in your spot behind the house. Lock it up. I’ve got an extra set of keys… I’ll come by for it later.”
She looked reluctant, suddenly unwilling to leave. “What are you gonna do?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“How will you get back?”
“Barbara,” I said, anger rising in my voice, “get out of here, right now.”
She got in the car and drove away. Jackie Newton and I stood alone on the empty prairie and looked at each other.
I pushed him down toward the river. He was trying to talk again—“Listen, Janeway,” he said—but I told him to keep walking and shut up. We came to a little grove of trees. Daylight was coming fast: I could see the fear working at him. I took off my coat. Jackie Newton watched every move I made. I folded my coat and put it on the ground. “What are you doing?” he said, his voice suddenly shrill. I was taking off my gun, unstrapping the holster from under my arm. I draped it over a low-hanging branch. “Head down that way,” I said, pushing Newton along a path by the river. We went about thirty yards. He turned and his eyes went past me, to the gun hanging from the tree. It drooped like a piece of deadly black fruit.
He began to grin as he realized that I wasn’t going to shoot him.
Slowly, he understood.
I had circled him a couple of times. The last time, I came in close and unlocked the cuffs.
All that stood between Jackie Newton and the gun was me.
“Okay, tough guy,” I said. “There’s the gun. Why don’t you go get it?”
He took a deep breath. The old arrogance came rippling back. He flexed his hands, rubbing the circulation into his chafed wrists. He threw the handcuffs to the ground and stood up tall.
“That’s the biggest mistake you ever made,” he said.
I walked up through the trees, alone. I had come with a question and was going home with an answer.
What type was I?
You’re a killer, Janeway. Oh, what a killer you are. I knew what Kong felt like after the big tyrannosaurus fight, how the soul of David must’ve soared when he cut down Goliath. I felt the joy of victorious underdogs everywhere. It was a crummy fight, if I have to hang a label on it. Jackie hit me with everything he had: when I didn’t go down, that was the end of it. His little chicken heart crumbled and broke into a thousand pieces. I ducked under his next punch and pounded his guts on the inside. He exploded in a hurricane of bad breath. I came up fast and got him on the button. He tottered and 1 punched him again and he went down. He sat on his ass in the dirt and I knew he wanted to quit but he couldn’t. 1 let him get up in his own time and I moved in and let him hit me. I started to talk to him. Fuck you, Jackie, I thought you had some balls. I punched his stomach into great swollen slabs of meat, then went upstairs, for his eyes and chin. He toppled and went down. He rolled in the dirt and I waited for him to get up. Three more times he got up, just enough to salvage some pride and get his face caved in. I punched him with both hands, butted him with my head, and put him down for the count.
Hallelujah, brother. I had no illusions about what this would cost me, and it felt great.
I looked back once. He was still lying in the dirt. I thought he had a broken nose and two or three cracked ribs. I had the skin peeled off my knuckles and a mouse under one eye. It didn’t hurt a bit.
A killer. God, I shoulda stayed in the ring.
The thug, the beaut, the killer.
Me.
I was finished as a cop. I strapped my gun on and threw my coat over my shoulder.
Soon I was on the highway, heading west. The morning rush hour was getting started and there was a steady flow of traffic into Denver.
I walked for a while, not wanting company.
My police career was over. I didn’t need a mystic to tell me that. A line kept running through my head, that famous speech of Lou Gehrig’s when he was losing not only the job he loved but also his life. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
For the first time in years, 1 knew where I was going.
I flagged a state cop, showed him my badge, and let him drive me home.
16
Ruby seals and Emery Neff were working late, still pricing books from their big score.
They hadn’t been listening to the radio. The newspaper accounts were still twelve hours away, but the TV and radio guys already had it.
I wanted to buy something I couldn’t begin to afford.
“What’s the best piece of fiction in the store?” I asked.
Ruby showed me a Catcher in the Rye, crisp, lovely in its first-state jacket. I stared into the impenetrable eyes of J. D. Salinger and bought it.
Four hundred dollars, a steal.
“What else’ve you got?”
Ruby looked at Neff and Neff looked back at Ruby. They cleared their throats and went to work.
“Got some King, but I know you don’t care about that,” Neff said.
“Which ones?”
“Carrie, The Stand, and that book of stories…ah, Night Shift.”
“I’ll buy ‘em if you want to wholesale ’em,” I said.
“We’d consider that,” said Ruby, his face a wall of dignity. “Yes sir, I believe we would. We bought these right, didn’t we, Em? 1 think we could do a little wholesaling and still come out on top.”
I gave a little laugh. “I’ll bet you could.”
“Screwed a little old lady out of her life savings, kicked her shins and took her books away,” Ruby said.
“Now 1 don’t feel so bad, offering you three-fifty for the three of ‘em.”
“We’ll take it,” Ruby said in a heartbeat.
“Not so goddamn fast,” Neff said. “Ruby, these books don’t just walk in here every day.”
“Do I need to remind you again that the Greeks are at the gate?” Ruby said. “That’s not a wooden horse they’re knocking with, that’s a battering ram. And that’s not Helen of fucking Troy I hear calling my name.”
Neff just stared.
“Sold to American,” Ruby said. “Now, Dr. J, since you’re in such a buying mood, take a look at these.” He pushed a Lie Down in Darkness at me, the most beautiful copy I’ve ever seen of the only salable Styron. There was an Out of Africa in the same condition, and a great copy of Pynchon’s V.
“God damn it, you’re wholesaling the heart of this goddamn collection,” Neff said.
“There’ll be another collection, but not if we don’t get the sheriff paid. This gentleman is gonna help us get well again.”
“Oh, we’re never gonna get well,” Neff groaned.
“That’s because you guys’ve got too many bad habits,” I said.
“Yeah,” Ruby said, “we like to eat.”
I took the Styron, the Dinesen, the Pynchon. I took the Kings, too, and wrote them a check for $1,000.
“Don’t it feel great to buy good books?” Ruby said.
“Yeah,” I said, and it did.
“So when are you opening your place?” Neff said suddenly.
“Why the hell would I do that? Maybe I’ll stake somebody, just to get my hand in.”
“You want to stake somebody, stake us,” Ruby said. “We are, after all, the most knowledgeable sons of bitches we know. Besides, I know where there’s twenty thousand good books just waiting to be picked up for pin money.”
“What kind of pin money?”