The collected works of George Lincoln Rockwell; erotic aromatherapy; A History of Natural Disasters; The Thinking Man's Guide to Idol Worship.
The organizing criterion seemed to be Stuff Other Stores Won't Carry.
Nothing on DVLL.
On the last rack was a collection of solemn-looking hardcovers from a well-respected scientific publishing house: forensic pathology, homicide and rape investigation, gunshot wounds, crime-scene techniques, toxicology.
Densely worded manuals for police detectives, eighty bucks each.
Had someone considered them primers, as well?
I pictured Wilson Tenney or some other cruel loner up here, browsing, maybe even buying.
I opened the book on homicide procedure.
The usual cop mix of detached writing and close-up views of the destruction visited upon human flesh by shotgun, blade, blunt instrument, strangulation. Toxicology and lividity charts. Rates of putrefaction. Victims, sexually posed, mutilated; the blank, helpless face of death.
The modus operandi section said that while some serial killers traveled the highways, most tended to work within circumscribed areas.
Patterns to be broken?
Replacing the book, I returned downstairs. The clerk had switched to a cigar and was trying to create his own toxic cloud.
He stared at me for a second, leaned forward, twisted something, and Stravinsky blared well above the ear-bleed range.
Not into user-friendly.
I used, anyway.
The first floor started off as more of the same brutal eclecticism and I skimmed, trying to look casual.
Then I found the eugenics books and slowed down.
The Collected Essays of Galton. Desktop publishing by New Dominion Press- why did that sound familiar?
The publisher's address, St. Croix. The Virgin Islands.
Another Loomis venture?
The book was nothing more than what it claimed to be.
Next came Dr. Charles Davenport's 1919 report to the Cold Springs Eugenics Society. Hereditary charts of patients whose “degenerative spawn” had been curtailed by sterilization.
Annotations at the bottom by Dr. Arthur Haldane, resident scholar at the Loomis Institute.
I checked this one out carefully.
Published five years before The Brain Drain. Haldane's pre-best-seller days.
In it, Haldane remarked upon the relative unsophistication of turn-of-the-century science but reaffirmed Davenport's thesis: society was doomed unless “genetic restructuring utilizing advanced technology” became public policy.
I flipped to the index.
Still no DVLL.
Nothing on Meta, either.
I found six more books on selective breeding and quality-of-life issues, one by the Australian ethnicist who'd recommended killing retarded babies. Same old crap, nothing new.
The stench of the clerk's cigar had enveloped me and I looked up and realized I was fifteen feet from the register. No insights, no Zena Lambert. Mr. Tattoo was reading something called Wet Bandage.
Then, just as I was about to give up, I found one more nugget: a fifty-page pamphlet, that same laser-printer look under brown paper covers.
Humanness: New Perspectives
by Farley Sanger, attorney-at-law
An expanded version of the article from The Pathfinder, supplemented by charts and graphs, government statistics on crime, race, unemployment, out-of-wedlock births, DNA testing, the Human Genome Project and how it could be used to “cleanse the dross.”
Dry as a legal brief.
Lawsuit against the disadvantaged…
Sanger ended with a call for “the brutally efficient elimination of mind-set censorship of indisputably valid areas of research simply because certain elements with vested interests are offended or justifiably frightened of what can only be regarded as the logical conclusions of carefully tested hypotheses.”
Golden prose. Pity the poor judges who had to read his work-product.
Twenty-two-dollar price tag. I tucked the book under my arm, returned to the Galton book, and took that, too.
The door at the back of the store opened and Zena Lambert came out.
46
She'd dyed her hair black and grown it to shoulder length, with thick bangs that covered her brow and a Doris Day flip. But the face was the same, narrow and pale. The same black eyeliner. In real life, less Kabuki than bone china. Clean, balanced features, the nose small and straight, the lips narrow but full, glossed pink. Prettier than in the photo.
The kind of guileless, all-American face favored by casting directors for detergent commercials.
Sally Branch had said she was small but that was an understatement. Maybe five feet, no more than ninety pounds, she was a child-woman with small, sharp breasts and thin but supple-looking arms exposed by a sleeveless pink polyester top.
Tight black jeans covered trim hips. Tiny waist. Proportionately long legs for someone so small.
She wore black plastic earrings and pink high-heeled sandals with clear plastic bows on the instep.
Even with the lift, she was tiny. Twenty-eight years old but she could have passed for a college sophomore.
Hips-swiveling walk. Black, pink, black, pink.
Both of us in costume?
Hers appeared to be fifties retro. Nostalgia for the good old days when men were men and women were women and defectives knew their place?
She'd assembled herself to attract attention, might very well be looking for stares. I hid my face behind a book on dwarfs, trying to observe inconspicuously.
She noticed.
“Hi,” she said in a high, bright voice. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
I gave her Andrew's best surly headshake, put the book back, and returned my attention to the rack.
“Happy browsing.” She swayed up to the register. Before she got there, Mr. Cigar left the booth without comment and exited the store.
“Stinky!” she called after him as the door closed. Climbing atop the stool, she lowered Stravinsky to a tolerable level, made her own twisting motion, and switched to a harpsichord fugue.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Welcome,” she chirped. “Being a reader means never having to herniate your tympanic membranes.”
I turned back to the book I'd selected randomly- a quarterly called Earthquake Sex, and stole glances at her. She picked up the copy of Wet Bandage left on the counter, put it aside, and took out what looked like an accounting ledger. Holding it on her lap, she began writing.
I brought Sanger's pamphlet and the Galton book up to the booth.
Columns of figures; definitely a ledger. She slid it out of sight and smiled. “Cash or charge?”
“Charge.”
Before I got my hand on my wallet, she said, “Thirty-two sixty-four.”
My surprised look was genuine.
She laughed. White teeth, one frontal incisor chipped. A speck of lipstick on another. “Don't trust my addition?”
I shrugged. “I'm sure you're right but that was rather quick.”
“Mental arithmetic,” she said. “Intellectual calisthenics. Use it or lose it. But if you're skeptical…”
Laughing again, she snatched both books off the counter and punched the register.
Ding. Thirty-two sixty-four.
She licked her lips with a tiny pink tongue.
“A-plus,” I said. I gave her Andrew's new MasterCard.
She glanced at it and said, “Are you a teacher?”
“No. Why?”
“Teachers love to grade.”
“I seldom grade.”
She put the books in an unmarked paper bag and handed them to me. “The nonjudgmental type?”
I shrugged.
“Well, enjoy the books, A. Desmond.”
I started for the door.
“Not looking forward to it?” she said.
I stopped. “To what?”
“Reading what you just bought. You look positively sullen. It's not for pleasure?”
I stopped and gave her my best downbeat smile. “Until I read, I won't know that, will I?”