“Nobody believed in him then, nobody but me. And I had no doubt at all.”
Dean was Archer’s first cold audience. By then Archer had begun to drift away from his few boyhood friends, even the one who later became a judge: “I think he became afraid of Huxley’s judgment; they had been too close, they went back too far, and Huxley was always too kind. What Archer hated most was being patronized, damned by faint praise. Me, I had no reason to care whether his stuff was any good or not. I was the unwashed reader he craved, and right from the start I knew he was a good one.”
Archer began coming to the store with pages of manuscript. He didn’t want any so-called constructive criticism; what he was dying for was hero worship, adulation: he wanted to be someone’s idol, and Dean was simply in awe of his talent.
“I gave him something he needed and he gave me something I loved. He never doubted my sincerity; he had no reason to because it was real. You couldn’t fool him, I knew he would sense any lie right away, but I never had to lie. He had an ability to create a world, he was like God, I never got tired of hearing him read. I loved seeing him come into the store. I loved every line he wrote. Still do.
“We had to hide from my old man. He was a mean son of a bitch about slackers; if he caught me dreaming or slacking off, he’d whip my ass good. So we went way upstairs, Archer and me, where the old man couldn’t go. He had asthma, he couldn’t climb those stairs, and sometimes on Saturdays when the store got busy the old bastard just forgot I was alive.
“I could kill the whole afternoon, dreaming with Archer.”
As time went on, Archer found it difficult and finally intolerable to be with Lee. It wasn’t that Lee ever did anything to make him feel that way. “It’s just that the judge had done everything right in his life and it seemed like Hal had fucked up his own six ways from Sunday.”
He raised an eyebrow at Erin and she smiled, waving off the language.
“Hal needed me. I think he still does. He never got a break from anybody.”
“And by the time he did get a real break…”
“He was full of anger. He even wanted to tell the Pulitzer committee to keep their fuckin‘ prize, shove it up their pretentious asses.” He coughed. “I talked him out of that.”
“Best thing you ever did for him.”
“The best thing I ever did was just believe in him. He sure hasn’t had a happy life. He thinks everybody who came along after the prize was a fair-weather friend.”
“He had Lee. He always had Lee. Lee always wanted the best for him, even if Archer didn’t know or believe it. Now look what’s happening to them.”
“I think there’s some old bitterness there. The judge never took a wrong step. While Archer was scratching to keep body and soul together, Huxley’s legal career was upwardly mobile all the way, always on the fast track.”
“That wasn’t Lee’s fault.”
“Did I say it was? But it does get old if you’re on the opposite end of the stick.”
Erin paused, then said, “Tell me about the book.”
“Nothin‘ to tell. Hal says it’s his and I believe him.”
“Did he ever tell you where he got it?”
“No, and I wouldn’t ask. Tell you this much: I don’t think he stole it.”
“Deny it if you want to, but don’t take that too far, it might come back and bite you.”
“I don’t know anything about it and I don’t want to hear it. Put that down on your paper: Dean Treadwell’s heard every story ever floated about what a bastard Hal Archer is—I don’t need yours too. Look, can we get out of this goddamn place? If I don’t get me a smoke I’m gonna start punching something.”
Out on the street, Dean lit up and we watched him smoke his weed in three mighty drags. “That’s all I got for you, lady,” he said. “If you don’t like it, go ahead and sue me.”
“Thank you. I think I’m done for now.”
“I’ve got a couple of questions,” I said. “Tell me about your brother.”
“Carl’s a flaming asshole but that’s got nothing to do with me. We each inherited fifty percent of the store, but in real life we don’t have much to do with each other.”
“He’s got some bad friends. One of them burned this lady’s house down. You know anything about that?”
“Hell no, but it doesn’t surprise me. That’s why I stay away from him. Ten years ago he started gambling and going around with those hoods. He won big one year but he squandered that trying to impress a pack of thugs. Now he’s got no money left and that gun-sel is calling the shots. Frankly, I don’t give a damn what they do to him, the little bastard deserves everything he gets. I’d get out of the store and let him have it, if I just knew what else to do.”
He lit a new smoke from the old and threw the butt into the gutter. “I’ve been in the book business since I was twelve years old. I’m fifty-five now and I’m tired of bullshit. This used to be a great way to make a living. Now it’s like everything else, polluted with bullshit and fast-buck artists. You’re a bookman, Janeway, but you’re fairly young yet. What’ll you do when the life goes sour?”
He took another massive drag and two contrails of smoke poured out of his nose, obliterating his face. “Your silence says it all, pal. For a bookman there isn’t anything else.”
At the car, Erin said, “That wasn’t exactly what we expected, was it?”
“I don’t know. What did you expect?”
“Almost anything but for Archer to turn into some deity.”
“What about Archer? You didn’t have time for much of an audience with him.”
“They broke his jaw. His face was all wired up and he couldn’t talk. Looks like they broke some of his fingers and his collarbone. He’s in a lot of pain. He got pretty agitated when he saw me, and the nurse asked me to leave.”
“I wonder what the motive was.”
“With Archer, who needs a motive?”
“Yeah, but he’s been a jerk for a long time, why beat him up now? I’m wondering if they just found out about his book. And if they did, whether they took it from him.”
“I don’t know. That was on my list of things to ask.”
We sat at the curb for a while and I watched the traffic fore and aft. A cooling breeze blew through the open car and there was no real incentive to move, no rush to get anywhere. It was just noon and I was trying to figure out what we’d do and how. For some reason Dean’s words kept playing in my head, interrupting my thought pattern. I began playing the What-If Game, something I had done many times as a cop. The game had only one rule: you throw stuff at a mental wall and nothing is sacred; no crazy notion is too crazy to consider.
“Looks like another great day of solitaire coming up,” Koko said. “Whoop-de-do.”
I heard her words but I was only listening with half a brain. She and Erin began talking about tomorrow and Fort Sumter. “We’ve still got sleeping bags to buy,” Koko said. “We’ll need three now.” Absently I nodded yes, we would need three, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Dean Treadwell and his strange lifelong friendship with the man everybody loved to hate.
Only later did I begin pondering our escape from Charleston. That afternoon we drove in an apparently aimless circle around greater Charleston till I spotted what I wanted—a sporting goods store in the north area, with parking lots on both sides of the building. I didn’t stop but I noted the landmarks as I drove past. I made a slow loop and headed back downtown.
CHAPTER 35
How do you give people the slip when you don’t know where they are, when you’re not even sure they’re really there and you have no idea how many they might be or what they look like? Sitting in Erin’s room that night, we considered and rejected everything three times over. Go to the police? “With what?” I asked. “Some cock-and-bull story about a Baltimore gangster who we think might have followed us here?” Tell the cops about Archer? “Tell them what?” I said. “That these thugs who beat Archer half to death, we think, are coming after us next?” This might not be half-bad if Archer would corroborate our story; maybe then we could get some police protection long enough to blend into the Southern landscape and give them the slip. Maybe we could get on that boat for Fort Sumter without being seen, return the next day and get out of town. Once we were on the road, we could disappear upstate.