She considered it for a moment, as if she might turn it down. But she said, “I guess I deserve it.”
I heard a laugh from the back room. It had a familiar ring, like something from an old dream. I heard the two guys talking in low voices, and again one of them laughed.
Then they came up front.
It was Jackie Newton, with some gunsel straight out of old Chicago. Jackie wasn’t carrying anything, but the enforcer was packing a big gun. You learn to spot things like that. My own gun was on my belt, in the small of my back. I couldn’t get it easily, but I’d get it quick enough if something started— probably a lot faster than Jackie would believe.
The gunsel was a bodyguard, a bonecrusher, a cheap hood. They circled the store together and pretended to look at books. I fought down the urge to say something cute (“No coloring books in here, boys” would be a nice touch) and let them do their thing. Miss Pride inched close to the counter and I saw her pluck the scissors out of our supply box.
She was no dummy, Miss Pride.
I looked in her eyes and said, “Why don’t you go home now?”
“Uh-uh. Harkness, remember?”
“Go home, Miss Pride.”
She didn’t move. Jackie turned and looked at her and she stared back at him.
“Wanna go for a ride in a big car?” he said.
She shook her head.
He started coming toward her, looking at me all the time.
“How ya doin‘, fuckhead?” he said.
It was the opposite of our little meeting the day I had flattened his tire. Now I was playing it mute and Jackie was doing the talking. “I sure wouldn’t want to have a place like this…all these valuable books… such a rough part of town. I hear there’re gangs who don’t do anything but go around smashing up places like this.”
When he was three feet away, he stopped and said, “There’s always a scumbag waiting to tear off a piece of your life.”
He was doing all the talking.
“Broken window… somebody throws a gallon of gas in at midnight. Poof!”
Then he opened his bag and took out the two books he had bought. I knew what was coming and couldn’t stop it. He had paid for the books: he had a receipt; the books were his.
He opened the Stephens, ripped out the 140-year-old map and blew his nose in it.
He ripped out two pages of the second volume and did it again.
He tore a page out of the $800 Maxfield Parrish, set it on fire, and lit the cigar the gunsel had been chewing.
“No smoking in here,” I said calmly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see your sign,” Jackie Newton said. He dropped the flickering page on the floor and stepped on it. Then he opened the Parrish and held it out, and the gunsel dropped his soggy cigar inside it. Jackie rolled the book up in his hands and passed it to me over the counter.
“You got a trash can?”
I took the book with two fingers and dropped it into the can.
They headed toward the door.
“Come again,” I said.
Jackie laughed as they went out. Miss Pride let out her breath. The scissors slipped out of her fingers and clattered on the floor.
“I recognized him too late,” she said. “I didn’t know who he was until I remembered his picture just now.”
“It’s okay.”
“Pretty expensive way to show his contempt, wouldn’t you say?”
“Depends on your perspective. He can afford it.”
“What a terrible way to use your money, though.”
I saw Jerry Harkness come to the window. Go away, I thought, I’m not in the mood for this.
But of course he wasn’t going away. He opened the door and came in. He had slicked his hair and put on a tie and he wore an electric blue blazer. He looked like the well-dressed man of Greenwich Village, Mr. Cool of 1968.
“You ready?”
Miss Pride got her coat and wrapped her neck in a scarf. Harkness shifted his weight back and forth. His eyes met mine and the cool image melted and flushed. He looked uneasy.
“Okay with you, Janeway?”
“Hey, I’m not her guardian. Just watch your step.”
We looked at each other again. What passed between us didn’t need words: it was sharp and unmistakable. We were both years away from puberty: we had those years and that experience and a male viewpoint in common. I knew what he wanted and he knew I knew, and I was saying Don’t try it, pal, don’t even think about it, and my voice was as clear as a slap. Only Miss Pride didn’t hear it.
I faced a bleak evening alone. Happy Halloween, Janeway. A light snow had begun falling. Tomorrow, I thought, I’d mosey up the block and have a little visit with Mr. Harkness. I shelved that plan at once. Mind your own business, I thought: make her mad and she may just quit and go to work for him. But the night was dark and so was I. Newton had put me on the defensive, Miss Pride had put me on edge, and I didn’t know where to go to get a shot of instant light. I didn’t want to read, work, go home, or stay where I was. I was at one of those depressed times when nothing seems to help.
It was then that the door popped open and Rita McKinley walked into my life.
24
I knew it was her. I had this vision of her in my head, and she seemed to fit it. Weeks ago I had received a package of photostats from the AB, but they contained straight news articles with no pictures; I had read the material through once and passed it on to Hennessey. It wasn’t my job anymore, and yet, at odd times of the day or night I’d find myself thinking about her. Somehow she was at the crux of what had happened to Bobby Westfall. We had damn few hard facts, but my gut told me that. Almost everything about her fit the picture I’d had: she was damn good-looking, with dark hair and hazel eyes. I had been told that much by those who knew her, but my mind had filled in the blanks with amazing accuracy until the vision formed that now stood there in the flesh. The only thing I hadn’t got right was the wardrobe: I had seen her in furs and jewels and she wore neither. What I could see of her dress under the old and rather plain coat looked common and conservative. She wore a little hat, tilted back on her head. It couldn’t‘ve been much protection against the wind. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold. In her hand she carried a cloth bag (I had pictured her with leather) that opened and closed by a frayed cord that looped through it. She was everything, and nothing, that I had imagined her to be.
“Are you Mr. Janeway?”
I said I was.
“I’m Rita McKinley.”
I felt at once what others had felt in her presence—small and insignificant in the bookseller’s cosmos. I’d like to know how she does that, I thought: I’ll bet it’s a helluvan advantage in certain situations. Then I did know. She projected an aura that was totallv real. You could look in her face and see it: not an ounce of bullshit anywhere. She came to the counter and said, “That was a blunt message you left on my machine a while back.”
“I tend to get blunt when I don’t seem to be having any effect. Don’t you ever return calls?”
“I’m very good about returning calls. This time there was a mix-up. I’ve been out of town.”
“You’ve been out of town a long time.”
“I’ve been out of touch almost six months. I’m supposed to be able to get my messages when I call in, but it didn’t work.”
“What’d you do, take a world cruise?”
I didn’t expect an answer to that, and I didn’t get one. She went right to the point. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, now.”
“The phone said something about a murder.”
“I thought you didn’t get the message.”
“My machine recorded it, I just didn’t get it when I called in. Now what’s this about a murder?”
“I’m not in the murder business anymore.”
“So I see.”