“And then he died.”
“Yeah. The first thing I thought was, now it’ll get out. Somebody’ll go in there and find it and it’ll make a major story. The AB’ll carry it, it’s that big. Imagine my surprise when nothing happened. I couldn’t believe it when those two idiots started to put it in an estate sale. I actually stood outside in the rain one night and watched them through the window. And I went wild with hope. My God, I went crazy. I had to get it, but it had to be done in such a way that it would never be tied to me. I knew there’d be trouble if it became known later that I had bought it. The courts are very consistent on this. They always return valuables to an original owner if someone with specialized knowledge buys it too cheap. And Christ, we were talking less than pennies on the dollar. We were talking nothing!”
“So you hired Bobby to do it.”
“The books needed to simply disappear. I needed for them to be swallowed up by someone anonymous. I thought he could keep his mouth shut…he seemed perfect.”
“Except for one thing. He had no driver’s license.”
“Two things,” Neff said. “I didn’t count on him getting so bitter about it. I thought he’d be happy with a few hundred for a hard night’s work. But right from the beginning we were bickering, and after a while there was a threat implied in everything he said to me. That one night he just pushed it too far. I picked up the crowbar and before I knew it he was on the floor at my feet. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I wrapped him in an old blanket and dumped him downtown. Then I burned the blanket. And of course, you’re right, the son of a bitch never did tell me he had no license.”
“Of course not. Why would he want to screw things for himself? By then Bobby smelled a big score too. He went to a friend of his, Peter, and got him to rent the truck. By then Peter smelled a score. He followed Bobby to Ballard’s house and waited up the block while Bobby carried out the books. In the morning he followed Bobby again, and Bobby led him straight here. Then Bobby was killed and Peter put two and two together and started bleeding you for the books. He sucked your blood out, first book by book, then by the box.”
“It took me months to find out who he was. He was so careful—made me box them up and leave them at a place in the country, and he’d go pick them up later, when he knew I wasn’t watching. I might never’ve found out, but he got too cocky. He sold you a book from Ballard’s and I saw it in your store and knew where it had come from…“
“…and you started following him.”
“I was in the gas station across from the DAV. Didn’t think he could see me there but the bastard had eyes like a hawk. I thought then it was all over; I thought he’d tell you right there on the street.”
“He was too scared—too scared to think.”
“Yeah, but that wouldn’t last. Once he had time to think, I knew he’d be back. I had to get him before that happened.”
“He tried to call me that night, in fact, but luck was still breaking your way. He got my recording. He tried the next day too, but I was up in the mountains, at McKinley’s place. Finally he had to make a choice: hole up, leave town, or come to me. He knew I was always there at closing time. If he arrived exactly at five, got off the bus right at the store and came straight inside, he’d be fine. He figured I’d protect him. So he called Pinky and told her he was coming in. A few minutes later I called Pinky and told her I wouldn’t be there. At that point we didn’t know what he wanted or how to reach him: I just assumed he needed money, and I told Pinky to give it to him. I also told her to let you boys know she’d be closing alone, so you could watch out for her. She followed my orders after all, and got herself killed for it. She told you, didn’t she? Didn’t she, Neff?”
He stared at his hands and said nothing.
“She told you her silly boss was worried about her, but it would probably be okay because Peter was coming in. Peter would be there at five. That’s when you knew you had to do it: that’s when the whole bloody mess got planned. Peter got there at five, and instead of finding me waiting for him, he found you. You came in right on his heels. What vou didn’t know was that Pinky was talking to Rita McKinley’s recorder. And what she said puts it all on you, as clearly as if she’d told us your name. She said, ‘Hi, everything’s okay.’ I thought about that for a long time after the lab boys got it out of the recording. Why would she say that? It didn’t make any sense. She was in the middle of saying good-bye: she was telling me someone had just come in and she’d have to call me back. Why would she suddenly say, ‘Hi, everything’s okay,’ in the middle of hanging up? The only thing that makes sense is that she was talking to the guy who had just walked in. Couldn’t be anybody but Harkness, Ruby, or you. Pinky still thought she was talking to a friend, the nice man from the store up the street who had come in to check on her at closing. It’s okay, she was saying, Peter’s here, I’m not alone. But Peter was already screaming. He knew what was happening. A minute later, so did she.”
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say: nothing except, for me, the most important thing.
“I’ve actually come to hate those books,” Neff said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take ‘em off your hands.”
“Yeah.”
I held my breath, afraid to ask, scared silly of what the answer would bring.
“Who was the woman, Neff?”
He looked at me and didn’t answer.
“I need to know that. Was it Rita?”
His lip curled up in a sneer. “Rita,” he said. “The big-time book dealer. The biggest thief of all.”
“What’re you talking about? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He smiled and reached into his shirt pocket. I cocked the gun but he only laughed in that faint, sad way. When he opened his fist, he had two tiny capsules in his hand.
“What’s that stuff?”
“Guess.”
We looked at each other: a long, searching moment. Barbara Crowell flitted through my mind, along with a hundred suicides and suicide attempts I had known over the years.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
But he popped them into his mouth and swallowed.
“I knew you’d get me,” he said. “Knew it that first day, when they put you on Bobby’s case. So I had these ready.
He doubled up and fell out of the chair.
“Neff,” I said weakly.
I looked for the phone, but you can’t do much with cyanide. It works in a minute.
He went into the shakes and groaned, a long cry of agony.
His pulse slowed, and I could almost see his heart giving up.
I got down beside him and opened his shirt.
Biggest mistake I ever made.
He moved like a snake. I didn’t know what had hit me. Suddenly I was down and he was up and through the haze I knew he had kicked me in the head. He had caught me in the temple with the point of his shoe: the hardest kick he could muster. I spun around and he was on my back. He had a rope: I don’t know where it came from, but he was a magician and there it was, twisted around my neck. He cut my windpipe, and the next twenty seconds were so desperate that I couldn’t think of anything but my heaving lungs. I know the gun felclass="underline" it skittered across the floor and slammed into the wall. I was up on one knee with this thing on my back, and I couldn’t shake it and if I didn’t shake it I was going to die.
I tried to buck him and couldn’t. We slammed into the wall. He held on, stuck to me like we’d been born that way, grotesque Siamese twins bent on killing each other. The world turned red. I was losing consciousness…
I heard a scream, then a shot, and the rope went slack.
God, I could breathe again!
But I still had to struggle for it, and for at least a minute 1 had the heaves.
When the world cleared, I saw Rita standing over Neff’s body. She was staring at the mess she’d made, clutching my gun with both hands.