Huckleberry Fiend (17 page)

“You heard me.”

“Pinkie! Let him go.”

Pinkie and Crusher unhanded each other. Now things looked like this: I was still on the floor, with Sardis standing over me, Lassie subduing us both. Pinkie and Crusher, slightly disheveled, stood to our left. All four humans (Lassie faced the other way) stared at Wolf, who now held the weapon.

Slowly and deliberately, he put it on the chair next to him. “Lassie,” he said, “come.” As friendly as if she’d just played a rousing round of Frisbee, the dog wriggled over to him, stump shimmying as if it counted. The atmosphere in the room had changed radically. We were no longer six beings bent on bloodshed, but five quiet humans watching a dog drive itself crazy trying to wag a tail it didn’t have. And frankly, five of us— if you counted Lassie— were a bit on the baffled side.

“I think,” said Wolf, “I might have overreacted. I’m very sorry, Miss Williams. Gentlemen. Will you stay for lunch?”

I was the one who recovered first. “Excuse me,” I said, “but did you just ask us to stay for lunch? Does this mean you’ve finally worked up an appetite threatening and assaulting us?”

Wolf patted his ballast. “I always have an appetite.” He looked up. “It means I’m sorry, okay? Pinkie, get us some drinks, will you?”

When the bodyguard had left, no doubt to claim his own sorely needed nip as well, Wolf said, “Look, Miss Williams, you call up about a manuscript, I offer to buy it, I don’t hear from you for almost two weeks, then all of a sudden you’re here without the manuscript, but with two guys. Count ’em. Two— one real big and the other named Crusher. What was I supposed to think?”

“You thought we were some sort of criminals?”

“You’re gettin’ warm.”

“What changed your mind?”

“You called the cops.” He shrugged. “What do you think?”

I said, “Do you usually greet your guests with an attack dog and a semiautomatic weapon?”

“I got things to protect. Listen. We got warm duck salad for lunch. Made with a selection of tender young lettuces. We got Sonoma-Cutrer Chardonnay, maybe some raspberries. What do you say?”

We said yes, of course.

Wolf said, “Sit down, sit down,” and we sat. Pinkie brought wine and served it as stylishly as the most elegant butler. “When Cynthia gets back, tell her we’ll be three more for lunch.” Wolf turned back to the three of us, catching me, for one, gulping rather than sipping. “There’s a reason I asked you to stay. I want to know who you are and what you’re up to.”

Sardis looked stunned. “Why, exactly as billed, Mr. Wolf.”

“Herb.” (The way he said it, it was almost “Hoib.”)

“Paul and I are business associates, dealing in rare manuscripts. And Crusher is our friend who was nice enough to fly us down for the day.”

“Just how are you and Paul associated?”

“Frankly,” I said, “sometimes Sarah’s work takes her to the homes of people she doesn’t know. She never knows what kind of dog they’ll have, for instance. So when she gets nervous, I come along.”

“I don’t get your game. I offered you almost a million for the manuscript. So I figure if you have it, you’d have brought it. But you didn’t, so you haven’t got it— like I said before. So what are you doing here? Even to you literary types, a manuscript’s not like a puppy— you haven’t got to make sure it gets a good home or anything.”

I said, “Herb, I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll give you a couple of answers if you’ll give us a couple.”

“Done. Why’re you here?”

“We get to go first. Do you know a woman named Isami Nakamura?”

“No. Why’re you here?”

“Well, actually, we’re— uh—”

“Hold it!” He started laughing, lustily, the watermelon he seemed to have swallowed rippling and rocking more like a waterbed. “Hold it, I got it.” But he couldn’t speak for three or four more sips— mine, not his. Finally, he said: “You’re
looking
for the manuscript, aren’t you? You think I’ve got it.”

“Do you?”

“No. My turn again. Why the hell did you think that?”

“Because your name was found in the home of the previous owner— who we think sometimes used the name Sarah Williams.” I paused. “But who was strangled to death a few days ago.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

I shook my head, looking very grave.

“Who was she?”

“Beverly Alexander.”

“Who the hell’s that?” Good. He’d denied knowing her without my having to ask him about her— I’d saved a question.

“A flight attendant for a small airline called Trans-America.”

“Never heard of it. How the hell did she get my name?” He was shaking his head with every evidence of genuine wonderment.

“We were wondering that too.”

“It’s my turn,” said Sardis. “Do you know a Linda McCormick? At the Bancroft Library?”

“The Bancroft Library.” He was looking pensive, trying to remember. “Yeah. Sure. The Bancroft Library. She’s the gal I talked to.”

“About what?”

“My turn, remember? Listen, I’ll stop this whole stupid charade and tell you everything I know, if you’ll just answer one thing straight: Who the hell are you guys and what are you up to?”

Sardis spoke quickly. “I’m an artist. I mean, I paint.” She shrugged, and I knew the pain behind the simple gesture. “But one doesn’t make a living from that. So I work part-time for a manuscript dealer— a very important dealer in another state. What we’re doing here, frankly, is we’re looking for a manuscript we lost.”

“It was stolen?”

“I’m afraid so.” (At least that part was true.)

Wolf turned to Crusher. “What’s your story?”

“I work for Union American National.”

“Wait a minute! Donald Wilcox, right? You’re a vice-president.”

“Have we met somewhere?”

“No, but my brother works with you. Dan Wolf. Know him?”

Crusher nodded.

“He tells stories about you all the time. You’re a pilot, right?”

“I think we mentioned that.”

“How about you, Paul? Private dick, right?”

“Close.”

“Oh, hell, never mind. This
is
a pleasure. Donald Wilcox! Dan says you’d rather fly than eat or sleep.”

Crusher looked at me reproachfully.

“Well, all right, then! All right! Now that I know you’re legit, I’ve got a real treat in store for you— and I don’t mean the duck salad. But I almost forgot. Just one thing. Do any of you have an I.D.?” Crusher and I pulled out our driver’s licenses.

“Sarah,” I said, as if I were the hired dick speaking for the client, “wishes to remain incognito.” Wolf nodded absently— all he really wanted to know was whether Crusher’s first name was really Donald.

“Okay,” I said, assuming control now that I was officially the dick on the case, “let’s pool our information. Herb, you said you talked to Linda McCormick at the Bancroft Library. May I ask what about?”

“Mark Twain, of course. The Bancroft is the highest authority, and that’s where I always go— straight to the top. I wanted the Huck Finn manuscript, so I called them to find out where it was. Linda said part of it was lost, and the rest was in the Buffalo Library, which probably wouldn’t sell it no matter what I offered. I said everybody had their price, and I’d send her a case of champagne when I got it.”

“However,” I said, “they wouldn’t sell, I take it.”

“They got their price— everybody does. But they weren’t ready to negotiate. So I put the word out I wanted something really special— not anything
ordinary
— but something really
hot
in the Mark Twain line.”

“Put the word out to whom?”

“I got agents— lots of them. They work through dealers, I guess. Whoever.”

Suddenly I had a brainstorm. “How about Rick Debay?”

“Who’s he? A dealer?”

I nodded.

“Never heard of him. But if he’s big enough, somebody probably talked to him— I told ’em to make blanket inquiries.”

“What did you have in mind, exactly? I mean, after you couldn’t get Huck?”

“I didn’t know, to tell you the truth. But— you’re not going to believe this— I wasn’t surprised when that ‘lost’ manuscript turned up. Not at all.”

“You weren’t?”

“I’ll tell you something, Paul. You do what I do, you find out a lot of things— one of them’s that everyone’s got his price and another’s this: an awful lot of ‘lost’ things aren’t missing. They’re somewhere. And they turn up eventually, if you know how to ask. You know what I mean?”

“Not exactly. I don’t even know what you do. I thought you were a movie producer.”

“Oh, that. That’s like Sarah working for that dealer. Sure, I make movies— a man’s got to live, right? But that’s not what I
do
.”

“Do you mind if I ask what exactly it is that you do?”

“Not at all. I’m gonna show you. And I’ll tell you something you’re not gonna believe. You’re not ever going to be the same again.”

Wolf grew ever more expansive under the influence of the wine, of which we had quite a bit before his wife had picked their daughter up from gymnastics. (All but Crusher, that is— he was driving.) When at last we staggered down the handsome stairway, he waxed positively sentimental: “You know, you’re probably three of the only people who’ve ever been in this house that can really appreciate it.”

“It’s wonderful,” said Sardis. “A Greene and Greene, isn’t it?”

“See? You know your stuff. I restored it from a junkpile.”

It looked like a museum and to my mind was about as comfortable. Some say the work of the brothers Greene is the ultimate expression of the American Craftsman movement in architecture, and Wolf’s house was a spectacular example— absolutely top of the line. The cavernous living room showed off a lot of handsome dark wood and what looked like the original stained-glass lanterns for which the Greenes were so highly renowned.

Along one wall were tiny-paned casement windows, the dark wood of the lattice pattern barely letting any light in. Underneath was a built-in window seat. On a far wall was a built-in sideboard. The walls were painted a color I could only call avocado.

“You shoulda seen this place,” cried Wolf. “The previous owners did it up French Provincial. Can you beat that? But the contractor must have been sick about it. He just covered the walls with canvas and papered over with some flowered stuff. So when we took the paper off, we could see the original colors.”

God! Had the brothers chosen the avocado? It blended beautifully with the dark wood— at night the room was probably sensational— but now it made me feel as if I were inside an uncommonly stifling closet. The fireplace, however, was spectacular (“the original Grueby tiles”). In front of it was an arrangement of Stickley furniture the very sight of which could send you howling to a chiropractor— what passed, in the Craftsman tradition, for an armchair (oh, well, it did have arms), a Morris chair, and facing the two chairs a settle boasting all the graceful abandon and hedonistic comfort of a church pew. Wolf could, of course, have filled it with deep pillows, but that wouldn’t have been traditional, and of course he hadn’t done it. The two pillows it did have, plus the rug and the long scarf on the library table behind the settle, had been painstakingly reproduced from a Stickley catalogue, Wolf told us.

The dining room, on the other hand, was a surprise, the table and chairs a good deal less severe, more graceful even, than the Stickley stuff. “Greene and Greene,” noted the proud owner. “Maybe you didn’t know they made furniture.”

“I’m starting to figure out,” said Crusher, “that if they did, you’d know where to find it.”

Wolf actually clapped him on the back. “Crusher! That’s my boy!”

Cynthia and Samantha were already seated. I’d half expected Cynthia to have a Mayflower pedigree, which would be recited to us, generation by generation, over the duck salad. She’d be blonde and sturdy, I thought, with the kind of foot-long face they grow in Massachusetts. Maiden name Cunningham. Rosy-cheeked and cheerful.

In fact, she looked like a nice girl from the Central Valley— sturdy, rosy, and cheerful, yes, but brown-haired and unmistakably middle class. Samantha’s hair was crinkly, almost wiry, like Wolf’s, and pulled back in a ponytail. She was thin and graceful, in a kidlike way, but a little awkward too. She must have been about eight, and seemed pleasant enough for a young person.

Wolf’s whole manner changed with his wife and child. The bombast disappeared, the seemingly constant need to dominate. He seemed relaxed— tender, Sardis said later, and it came close to being true.

For several courses, we heard quite a lot about Samantha’s gymnastics, Samantha’s ballet, Samantha’s French, Samantha’s summer camp, and Samantha’s very special private school. Wolf asked her a lot of questions about her progress (excellent, naturally), which she answered obediently and with a minimum of smugness. When he’d finally had his fill of the world’s chief wonder, he put a hand on the back of her head, squeezed as one would a melon, and told her she could be excused. She was out of there like a shot, off no doubt to pull the legs off some beetles or Cabbage Patch Kids. I figured a kid with a dad as pushy as this one had to release tension somehow.

“Isn’t she something, though?” asked Papa Dearest. Rhetorically, of course. “You know, I come from a good family. Perfectly good family.” Pinkie passed around Cuban cigars. “But we didn’t have class.” He looked at Crusher. “Oh, sure, Dan works over at Union American, but tell me something— has he got any class?”

Crusher looked mightily uncomfortable, but I couldn’t tell if he really thought Dan had no class, or was embarrassed for him on his brother’s account.

Wolf didn’t wait for an answer. “My daughter’s got more class in her little finger than the rest of her family put together. Except for Cynthia, I mean. When she was born, I said to myself, ‘I might not have class, but my daughter’s going to.’ She’s going to the best schools, eating the best food, staying at the best hotels, riding in the best cars if I have a goddam thing to say about it. And she’s going to be surrounded by class. And beauty. And literature. And things no kid her age ever saw before. Cultural stuff, you know what I mean? The best of everything. The greatest. And it’s not so she’ll grow up to be president or anything like that. I don’t care if she never lifts a finger in her life. I just want her to grow up to know she’s the greatest, that’s all. Look at this house— it’s like a museum. Do you see this in Malibu? Ha! And you don’t know the half of it.”