This man had run cops off the force for stealing trinkets from crime scenes. If Heller developed a case for tampering with evidence, he would prosecute in a New York heartbeat, no exceptions for friendships that spanned twenty years. They stared at one another, and the silence went on for too long.
‘After Warwick left,’ said Heller, ‘I went back to the lab and sifted through ashes and fragments. Some of the magazines were intact, but no sign of a paperback. Now that’s strange – even with the age of the book, the brittle paper. You’d think the core would’ve survived, a good chunk of pressed pages. There are tests I could run. You want me to keep on looking?’
Riker slowly shook his head, and this must have passed for a confession.
Heller nodded, then ripped the sheet from his notebook and dropped it into a wastebasket. ‘Well, I guess that’s the end of it.’ With no goodbye, he rose from his chair and crossed the squad room to the stairwell door.
Riker knew he would keep his badge for lack of physical evidence to hang him – but this man was no longer his friend. And that was what Heller had dropped by to tell him.
Cafe Regio on MacDougal Street was filled with the metropolitan babble of foreign languages. Charles Butler looked around the large single dining area crammed with people, paintings and eclectic furnishings. He spied an acquaintance at a corner table.
Anthony Herman was a child’s idea of a pixie, not quite five feet tall, with a small bulbous nose and pancake ears sticking out at right angles. His light brown hair was swept back to display a pronounced widow’s peak, a sure sign of witchcraft, though his true profession would seem rather boring to most. The little man nervously adjusted a red bow tie while doing his best to hide behind a menu, though it was long past the dinner hour.
When Charles sat down at the table, the antiquarian book dealer handed him a package wrapped in brown paper and said, ‘That’s the whole set. Don’t open it here.’
A very generous check crossed the table and found its way into Herman’s pocket. The little man looked around, as if the other late night diners might be watching this exchange and making notes or taking blackmail photographs. His toes just barely reached the floor to tap it, and his fingers rapped the table. ‘If you ever tell anyone I was tracing those – ’
‘I know,’ said Charles. ‘You’ll hunt me down and kill me. Your reputation is safe.’ He set the package of books on the table. ‘How did you find them so fast?’
‘There’s a collector,’ said Herman. ‘Well, hardly that – not at all discriminating, but the man’s a repository of every western ever written. I had to go to Colorado. That’s why the bill is so high. The books didn’t cost a dime. I won them shooting pool with a rancher who thinks that crap is high art.’
While Charles was grappling with the odd idea of Anthony Herman as a pool hustler, the man added, ‘The rancher also has first editions from the penny-dreadful era. If you want them, you go shoot pool with the old bastard.’
‘I don’t suppose you read any of these novels?’ Charles watched Herman’s eyes grow a tad fearful. ‘You did read them, didn’t you?’
‘I might’ve glanced at one on the plane.’ The little man’s mouth dipped down at the corners, silently intoning, What a question, making it clear that he was hardly the type to read this sort of trash, and his client should know better.
Charles opened the package, despite the book detective’s sudden violent shaking of the head, begging that he not do this in public. After leafing through a chapter of the first volume, he smiled at Herman, another great speed reader, for this was a talent that went along with the trade of manuscript comparisons. ‘Light stuff, isn’t it? Lots of white space. How long was the plane trip? Three or four hours?’
‘All right.’ Herman bowed his head. ‘I read them. All twelve.’
‘I’m sure you had other reading material with – ’
‘It’s your fault, Charles. I just had to know why you wanted them so badly. Then I got caught up in the whole thing.’
‘They’re not very good, are they?’
‘No. The writing is awful, the plots are thin. Very bad – very – all of them.’
‘But you read the entire series.’
‘Don’t do this to me.’
‘So what did you think of the resolution to the ambush?’
‘Oh, that was the best.’ Herman’s sarcasm was surprisingly light, and his face had gone suddenly sly. ‘No, wait. The best one starts in The Cabin at the Edge of the World. In the previous book, the Wichita Kid was bitten by a mad wolf. The animal was frothing at the mouth, the whole nine yards.’
‘But there was no rabies vaccine in Wichita’s century.’
‘I know that,’ said Herman, no dilettante in the field of history. ‘Rabies was a death sentence in that period.’
‘So he’s cured with a folk remedy,’ said Charles. ‘Something like that?’
The little man’s smile was coy. ‘No, that’s not it.’
‘Well, I know he’s alive in the last book, so he can’t possibly die of – ’ Charles leaned back in his chair and smiled, for he had just exposed himself as another victim of Jake Swain. ‘Touche.’
And now – a turnabout.
He spread the books over the table for all to see, then studied the lurid covers of smoke and guns and rearing horses, much to the discomfort of Anthony Herman. ‘I know someone who thought the world of these novels. She read them over and over. Now that you’ve had a chance to evaluate the lot of them – any helpful insight?’
‘Well, no.’ Herman seemed honestly mystified. ‘The only reason for reading any of them is to find out what happens next. I assure you there’s no reason to read them more than once.’
‘There has to be more to it than that.’ Charles gathered the westerns into a stack, then looked up at the book detective. ‘So what’s it all about?’
‘Ultimately,’ said Herman, ‘it’s about the redemption of the Wichita Kid.’
Riker had finished his first drink by the time he came to the end of the written interview. The detail was fanatical, right down to Alan Parris’s dirty toenails. ‘And all this conversation – this is word for word?’
‘I take shorthand.’ Deluthe sipped his beer, then tried to make his voice sound casual when he asked, ‘So what’re my chances for getting a permanent assignment to Special Crimes Unit?’
‘Today? Slim and none. You got no experience, kid.’ Only a handful of detectives were ever promoted to first-grade, and ten of them were in Special Crimes Unit. ‘We don’t take whiteshields. And you’re what – twenty-five, twenty-six? Most of the guys are in their thirties and forties. We only got one cop your age.’
‘And coincidentally Mallory is the daughter of the former commander of – ’
‘You’re out of line, Deluthe. She grew up in Special Crimes Unit. When she was still in grammar school, she logged more time on the job than you’ve got.’
‘He’s right.’ Their bartender had been introduced to Deluthe as Riker’s former partner from younger days. Peg Baily leaned into the conversation to replace Riker’s empty glass with a fresh bourbon and water. ‘That kid was our only technical support. In those days, we had crappy secondhand computers. Didn’t work half the time. The kid got the whole system up and running when she was thirteen years old.’ Peg set down a beer for Deluthe. ‘But you’re wondering how Mallory got the rank of detective first-grade. She chased down the perp who murdered her old man. Highest-priority case in New York City. That’s getting ahead the hard way.’
Peg Baily wandered down the bar to fill another glass, and Riker completed the trainee’s education, giving equal weight to every word, ‘Nobody ever questioned Mallory’s right to a place in Special Crimes.’ As he leaned toward the younger man, his face relaxed into a smile. ‘Now, as the son-in-law of a deputy commissioner, you’ve got a lot more to overcome.’