‘No thanks. Where’d you keep it?’
A heap of books had collapsed just near the top of the steps. He nudged them with his foot.
‘Right here.’
I went down the steps and came up. I could reach the spot by leaning forward, not getting closer than a body length to the room. I jigged-no creaking.
‘I thought at least it’d have to be lassoed through a window.’
He grinned. ‘Shit, it’s insured. It’s the aggravation I’m worried about. You don’t figure Maggie huh?’
I shook my head and prowled around the loft. The bed was neatly made, a few dishes were stacked by the sink. The windows were clean and overlooked O’Farrell Street. The sky was blue but there was some grey cloud out over the Bay. Swan pointed at it.
‘Rain. And I’ve got a tour today. All I need is rain.’
I went over everything I could think of with him-the lease on the building, competitors in the Hammett and book business, friends with senses of humour-nothing. Just before noon I had a beer, and as some noises began to drift up from below, a ray of sunshine cut through the window.
‘Maybe it won’t rain,’ Swan said shrugging into his trench coat. ‘Store’s open, want me to introduce you to Milt?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll just drift in like a customer.’
‘Okay. Jesus, I feel naked without the bird.’
We went out to the alley and he headed off to the Town Hall to pick up his tourists. I walked around to the front of the shop and pushed open the door which had the famous thin man photograph of Hammett, blown up to poster size, stuck to the inside.
The bookstore was like a cross between a junkyard and a library. The walls had books floor to ceiling with sliding ladders attached to the shelves. There were books on tables and in free-standing bookshelves. There were books and comics and magazines in bins and boxes. It was disorderly, paperbacks mixed with hardcovers and leaves were as likely to be facing outwards as spines.
But one corner of the big room was tidy. It had the best light through a high window and was handy to the clerk’s desk and the cash register. It had a big, neatly
printed sign hanging over a geometrically arranged table of glossy hardcovers- SCIENCE FICTION amp; FANTASY.
I drifted around checking this and that and resisting the impulse to straighten things up a little. In the Sci-Fi section a man was doing just that. He was small and pot-bellied with thin, sandy hair brushed across a pink, mottled skull. He moved books from a table to the floor, expanding the section. He dealt enthusiastically with customers for the fantasy corner, less so with others.
Maybe it was just that he was busy with the little green men, maybe he wasn’t really there at all, but he didn’t seem to notice the shoplifter who carried out an armful of books with a technique that could only be called brazen.
I selected a Robert B. Parker paperback and went up to the register.
‘I’ll take this, please.’
He grunted.
‘He’s good isn’t he, Parker?’
Another grunt. He rang it up and gave me change out of five.
‘Have you got A Canticle for Leibowitz?’
He brightened visibly. His pudgy hands clasped in a fleeting attitude of reverence. ‘No, we’re out of it right now, but I could get it in for you. If you’d like to leave your name and number?’ He pounced on a scribbling pad and pen, whipped them down in front of me. I wrote John Watson and my Sydney telephone number and left after thanking him.
It didn’t rain. I hung around looking in windows and watching the store. I bought a take-out coffee and drank it sitting on the bus stop seat opposite the store. When I dropped the container into a rubbish bin I looked inside for no good reason. I don’t think much of John D. MacDonald but I didn’t see why a brand new copy of his latest book should be sitting in the bottom of a rubbish bin. Along with it was a book about Agatha Christie by Robert Barnard, a Lew Archer omnibus and a fat biography of James M. Cain. I retrieved the books and went off to catch up with Swan on Market Street.
‘Any garbage today?’ I asked him.
‘Sure, same place. Came pelting down.’
I showed him the books and told him about how his 2IC ran the depot.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Milt’s hot for all that shit. He persuaded me to include a section and it’s done okay.’
‘I’m not surprised, he runs it like Tiffany’s.’
Swan hefted the books in his hands. ‘This is bad, maybe Milt’s eyesight is shot.’
‘He doesn’t wear glasses. He could tell an Asimov from a Zelazney at a hundred metres. Could he be trying to take you over and open the Six Rings of Uranus bookstore and brainwash?’
He laughed. ‘Milt? Come on?’
‘I’ll look into him just the same. When’s the next tour?’
‘Tomorrow. Why?’
‘I fancy a rooftop view. When you’re back at the shop act normal. Don’t shoot the shoplifters.’
He said okay and gave me his day’s takings again. I felt guilty grabbing the money he’d pounded the pavement and his tonsils for, but business is business. I went back to my hotel and read Early Autumn, in which Parker’s PI, Spenser, taught a kid how to run, pump iron, build a house and drink beer, all of which would be useful to him in later life.
That night I followed Milton-Smith to a place on Washington Street in Chinatown which you got into by giving twenty dollars to an old woman who wove cane baskets on the doorstep. I played blackjack and lost ten or twelve dollars. Milt played poker and lost a lot more. He signed things and had a serious talk with a Chinese gentleman in an English suit.
Two o’clock the next afternoon saw me on top of the computer games building. I looked down into the lane where Swan was due in about twenty minutes. The rooftop was flat with a rail around it; getting up to the fire escape was child’s play for a man who didn’t smoke and had once cleared five foot eight in the high jump. I hid behind a big box housing the building’s electrical system and waited.
He came ten minutes later: sneakers, jeans and jacket, knitted wool cap. At the roof edge he laid out the goodies from a supermarket sack-water-bag, tomatoes, a soggy-looking parcel wrapped in newspaper.
I stepped out and cleared my throat. ‘Conspiracy to litter,’ I said. ‘Ninety days.’
He spun around and I recognised him as the shoplifter. I took a couple of steps and he backed to the rail.
‘Shoplifting, too.’
He threw a slow right when I was out of range, and I stepped inside it and clipped him with my left. A fighter he wasn’t, he tripped on his own feet and flipped back over the rail. I jumped and grabbed his arm while his feet clawed at the sheer brick wall.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he sobbed. ‘Oh, Jesus.’
His jacket had a slick surface and I could feel my grip slipping.
‘Swing your arm up and grab the edge.’
He said something about Jesus again but he got three fingers over the edge. I reached down, grabbed his jacket and belt and hauled him back up under the rail like a net full of fish. The jacket tore and slipped up his back and off as he scraped skin from his fingers getting a hold.
I was lying prone on the roof and gasping when I saw Swan come into the lane with his group. There was heavy breathing behind me, a sound like a knuckle cracking and something slammed into the side of my head. I looked down and thought I was falling, but it was only oblivion reaching up for me.
A lucky kick, sneaky. I wasn’t out for long and when I saw my attacker’s bloody fingerprints on the roof I felt almost better. I was in better shape than him. Better dressed too; his torn jacket lay on the roof beside me. I laughed and sat up and then I didn’t feel good at all. I grabbed the jacket and lay down again.
A little later I looked down into the lane which was empty. I congratulated myself on protecting Swan from the garbage. That was why I was up on the roof wasn’t it? Good job, Cliff, I thought. Let’s have a drink. Then I looked at the jacket clutched in my hand and remembered that there was a little more to it than that.