“But in the end you’re just what I feared most…Scofield’s man.”
“Not quite that. I wasn’t lying to you, I didn’t know who Scofield was.”
“But you do now, and that’s where you’ll go. I don’t blame you, understand, but I can’t help fretting over it and wishing money didn’t rule the world.”
We seemed to be finished. Then he said, “How did you find it? Was it Otto Murdock?”
I sat up straight. “What about Murdock?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Obviously you know the name.”
“How does he figure into it?”
“The same way everyone else does. He’s been chasing it.”
“You mean the Grayson Raven ?”
“That, or anything else that’ll keep him in potato water for the rest of his life.”
“I understand he was a pretty good Grayson man once.”
“Second only to yours truly,” he said with a sad little smile. “Otto really had the bug, fifteen, twenty years ago.”
“And had a helluva collection to prove it, I’ve been led to believe.”
“Until he started selling it off piece by bloody piece to pay the whiskey man.”
“Where’d he sell it?”
He gave a little laugh. “That shouldn’t be hard to guess.”
“You bought it.”
“As much of it as I could. Otto was going through periods of trying to straighten himself out. Then he’d fall off the wagon and have to sell something. He sold all the minor stuff first. Then, just about the time he was getting to the gold-star items, along came Scofield with all the money in the world to buy them from him. I was like a duck shot right out of the water. Scofield paid him fifteen thousand dollars for a Ben-ton Christmas Carol that wouldn’t get fifteen hundred at auction. How do you compete with somebody like that?”
I let a couple of heartbeats pass, then I said, “Have you seen Murdock recently?”
“Hadn’t seen him for years, till about a month ago.”
“What happened then?”
“He called me up one night and asked if I could get some money together.”
“Was he trying to sell you something?”
“That’s what it sounded like. I never could get him to be specific. All he’d say was that he was working on the Grayson deal of a lifetime. Stuff he’d known about for years but had never been able to get at it. Whoever owned it was unapproachable. But that person had died and now somebody else had come into it, somebody who didn’t know as much or care as much about it. He needed some money to approach her with.”
“How much money?”
“He wasn’t sure. He had seen this person once and he couldn’t tell if she was as naive as she seemed or was just taking him for a ride. My impression was, she wasn’t a heavyweight, but you only get one shot at something like that. Misjudge her and you lose it. Pay too little, lose it. Pay too much, you still lose it. What he asked for was five thousand.”
“He was going to try to steal it.”
“I figured as much. If he was going to pay five, it had to be worth fifty. God knows what a madman like Scofield would pay.”
“Why wouldn’t Murdock go to Scofield for the money in the first place?”
“Who knows what Otto was thinking? If this really was a once-in-a-lifetime Grayson score, you’d want to try to buy it yourself and then sell it to Scofield. That’s how I’d do it, if I was Otto and had a little larceny in my heart.”
“So when he came to you for the five, what’d you tell him?”
“What do you think I told him? I said I’d need to know exactly what I’d be getting for my money. You don’t just hand over five thousand dollars to a man who’s fully capable of drinking it up in a lost weekend.”
Now he wavered. “I made a mistake. I can see it in your face.”
“You both did. He could’ve bought it all for a hundred dollars. She might’ve given it to him just for hauling it out of there.”
He looked ready to cry. He didn’t want to ask, didn’t dare ask, but in the end he had to.
“What the hell are we talking about?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“No,” he said dryly. “I probably don’t.”
“So Murdock came and went. Was that the last time you saw him?”
“Saw him, yes.”
“But you heard from him again.”
“He called me about ten days ago. He had been drinking, I could tell that immediately. He was babbling.”
“About what?”
“He was raving about some limited series of Grayson books that I had missed in my bibliography. He seemed to think Grayson had made a special set, just a few copies of each title, at least since the midfifties.”
“What did you tell him?”
“To find a good hangover cure and go to bed.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“They’re all dead. That’s what he said, they’re all dead, all five of ‘em.”
“What did you make of that?”
“Nothing. He was hallucinating.”
“Was that the end of it?”
“Just about. He rambled on for a while longer. Talked about getting himself together, becoming a real bookman again. Said he was going to write the real story of Darryl Grayson: said it had never been told but he was going to tell it, and when he did, the book world would sit up and take notice. It was all drunken balderdash.”
He looked weary, suddenly older. “If you want to chase down a drunk’s pink elephants, be my guest. Archie Moon and the Rigbys might know something. Otto said he’d gone out to North Bend and talked to them about it.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t take any more.”
He was ready to leave now. As he pushed back his chair, I said, “By the way, did you know Murdock was dead?”
He blinked once and said, “No, I didn’t know that.”
“I’m sure it’s been on the news by now.”
“I don’t read newspapers and I never watch anything but network news on television. I can’t stand these local fools.”
“Anyway, he’s dead.”
“How?…What happened?”
“Murder.”
He blinked again. “What the hell’s happening here?”
“Good question, Mr. Huggins. I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out.”
47
A my Harper had brushed out her long red hair and put on her one good dress. She looked less all the time like the doe-eyed schoolgirl I had rescued from Belltown. She had found someone to stay with her children overnight: a good thing, because this was going to run late.
She wouldn’t be doing any lifting and toting today. She was going to sit in a chair and supervise while a billionaire’s handyman did the work for her.
We zipped along 1-90 in the Nash and I told her what the game plan was. Somewhere on the road, ahead of us or just behind, Scofield and Kenney were heading for the same destination: I had called them from Amy’s room and told them where to go. She listened to what I was telling her and demanded nothing. She had a Spartan nature, patient and gutsy and uncomplaining, and I liked her better every time I saw her.
A kind of muted excitement filled the car as we flew past Issaquah for the run into North Bend. I was anxious without being nervous. I knew what we had: I knew the power it would hold over Scofield, and even Amy felt the strength of it as the day gained momentum. I had taken on the role of Amy’s guardian, her agent, in the talks to come. But a murder case was also on the fire: the fate of another woman I cared about greatly was still in doubt. It’s not about money , I thought again. I believed that now more than ever. But money had become so mixed up in it that only the moneyman could help me untangle it, and I wasn’t above using the Grayson papers as a wedge on him.
It seemed impossible but it was still only one o’clock. I thought about Trish and wondered how she was doing with Pruitt. I had left Bowman’s truck at her house and changed over to the Nash before meeting Huggins at the Hilton.