The Bookman's Promise (27 page)

“I don’t want to talk about that. It was told to Lee in confidence. Nobody else knows, not even Miranda. I think you’ve got to ask Lee that question.”

I ate my breakfast and watched her think. Over coffee I asked what her strategy would be if Archer continued to stonewall. She shook her head. “Can’t talk about strategy. You’ll have to ask Lee that as well.”

“Then call him up.”

* * *

She called from the table. “Hi, it’s me. We’re just finishing breakfast and I’ve got a couple of sticky points. You know where. He asked if I knew the status of Archer’s new book. I still don’t want to talk about that, for obvious reasons.”

She looked directly into my eyes while she talked. “I know what you said, Lee, I just don’t like it. He also wants to know what we’ll do if Archer continues to be unreasonable.”

After a short silence, she said, “I’ve got to tell you again, I wouldn’t advise that.”

She said, “If he gives his word, yes, I do think we could trust him.”

I nodded superseriously.

“That’s not the point,” she said.

Lee said something and she shook her head. “I’m against it.”

She frowned. “You’re the boss, but I don’t think we need to tell anybody, including Mr. Janeway, what we might or might not do. Especially what we
won’t
do. That’s hardly pertinent to anything he’s doing, and it’s just not smart.”

She shook her head. “Well, I knew you’d say that. But I still don’t like it.”

She handed me the phone.

“Hi, Lee,” I said.

“Cliff.” Lee sounded tired. “I’m sorry you’ve been put in the middle of this mess. But it sounds like Erin’s giving you what you need.”

“She’s great. She does have a couple of concerns, which are probably reasonable.”

“She’s being lawyerly, covering my flank. You know how it is. But she’ll talk to you now.”

For a moment I listened to the phone noise: all the distance between us.

“Erin said you wanted to talk to me too,” I said.

“Just to make sure you get what you need and to tell you not to worry. Whatever you have to do, I understand. Your cause comes before mine.”

“Thanks for that.”

“We’ll see you when you get back. And good luck with it.”

I hung up the phone.

“I’ll answer your questions now,” Erin said, “but you’ve got to respect our confidence. This can go no further.”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

“You asked about Archer’s new book. When he was in Denver he got drunk, cried on Lee’s shoulder, and told him some things he probably wishes he hadn’t. Turns out the great one is suffering from the granddaddy of all writer’s blocks. In the years since he won the Pulitzer he hasn’t written a publishable line. Or if he has, he’s second-guessed himself into fits of depression and destroyed whatever he’s done. If the prize has done anything, it’s given him a sense that nothing he does can ever measure up to his own…you know.”

“Legend,” I said sourly, loathing that dumbest of all modern buzzwords.

She looked sad, as if Archer’s plight had suddenly touched her. “I told you writers are screwed up. Archer took a lot of money from his publisher on a two-page plan to produce a groundbreaking work in a specified period of time. That time has passed. Viking has been more than sympathetic: they even came through with more money. The Pulitzer is a powerful wedge and they really do want to publish him. But their patience will run out sometime, and as of now, six years later, Archer has nothing to show them.”

All I knew about writers and their hang-ups was what I’d read here and there. But it seemed strange to get stuck over a work of nonfiction when most writer’s blocks seemed to come over some creative lack of faith. “I wonder if he promised them more than he’s got,” I said. “He may still be doing that, only now Lee is the mark, not the Viking Press.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. Lee doesn’t worry about that nearly enough, but this journal will have to be meticulously examined before I allow him to give Archer a dime.”

“Even then you won’t like it.”

She shook her head. “I think Lee is putting a lot of money at risk. What would you advise him, as his friend?”

“Check the provenance, six times over.”

She leaned across the table and said, “Your turn, Janeway, talk to me,” and I had to tell her about Koko and Baltimore. Then, with deliberate understatement, I told her about Dante and what had brought us to Charleston: how stealth, not electronics, had given me such insight into her dealings with Archer. She shook her head and tried to look disgusted, but a small smile gave her away. The smile faded when I told her that Dante had burned Koko’s house.

“This is a bad man you’re playing tag with,” she said.

“I’ve been going on that assumption.”

“What can I do? As a lawyer maybe I can give him some grief.”

“Don’t even think about it. I don’t want you anywhere near this creep.”

“I don’t think you automatically get the final word on that.”

“The hell I don’t. I don’t want him to even hear your name.”

She looked angry but I cut her off with my own look. “Listen, goddammit, you make me more vulnerable, not less. I’ve got enough on my hands with Koko and myself.”

She made a little arch with her fingers and held them up to her face like a woman praying. I looked at her fiercely and said, “Don’t make me sorry I told you.”

“Nice try, but I’m not buying that.”

“You’d damned better buy it.”

She came straight up in her chair. “Or what’s gonna happen? Gonna take my dolls away?”

What I said next was stupid and false. “Erin, I appreciate your concern—”

She wadded up her napkin and bounced it off my head. “Don’t give me that imperious male baloney. If you want me out of your life, at least be man enough to say so in plain language. Is that what you want? Yes or no.”

“God, no.”

“Then shape up. Behave yourself. Don’t talk down to me. Don’t try to protect me.”

I thought about what to say and settled on this: “In your world every conflict has a legal answer. You think you can just file a brief in Denver District Court and force him to become human, but it doesn’t work that way. Don’t take this personally, but you’re out of your league with this boy.”

“And you’re not?”

“I don’t know.”

She shook her head. “I can’t just stand by and do nothing.”

“Well, you’ve got to.”

“And if he kills you, and there’s no evidence, what am I supposed to do then?”

“Nothing. What can you do anyway but get killed yourself?”

“I can’t accept that.”

“What can you do about it?”

“I’ll hold him down while you cut him a new one.”

It was one of those crazy unexpected comments and at once we were convulsed. She dabbed her eyes and said, “Stop it, this isn’t funny,” and we laughed all the more. I said, “Listen, I’m going to handle this,” and we laughed like idiots. “Don’t you make it harder,” I said, and we laughed.

I coughed. “I’m sorry, was that too much imperious male baloney?”

“Yeah, it was, but the groveling tone helps.” She smiled at me from somewhere far behind her face. “How much time do you think you have before he finds you?”

“I don’t know that either. There’s no reason yet to assume he knows where we went.”

“You hope.”

I fiddled nervously with the saltshaker.

“Are you afraid of him?”

“I’m…wary. I’ve had enemies before, some of them real badasses. I just get the feeling there’s no limit with this guy. My biggest fear is I may never see it coming.”

She was sober now, the laughter of the moment gone and forgotten. “This makes our little rivalry pale by comparison, doesn’t it?” A moment later she said, “I want to tell Lee.”

“What good will that do?”

“I don’t know, maybe none.” She looked away, then back. “Three heads are better than two.”

“Tell him, then. If he’s got the good sense I think he has, he’ll tell you to stay out of it.”

“Lee doesn’t own me and neither do you. You really are annoying when things don’t go your way.”

“That’s why people want to kill me.”

She gave the waitress a high sign and took out a credit card. “I want you to think about something else while you’re still alive. The possibility that your old lady was a clever fraud.”

“I’ve always been aware of that. Why bring it up now?”

“I don’t know: just a feeling I have. Something’s not right there. Did you ever have the handwriting on your book checked?”

“Not personally. The auction house is reputable and I know what Burton’s handwriting looks like.”

“But you’re no expert.”

I shook my head, suddenly aware of how much of my business is taken on faith.

“That might be worth doing,” she said. “Something’s afoot there, I can smell it. Doesn’t it strike you as odd?”

“When you’ve been in the book business awhile, everything is odd.”

“But you were primed to believe it. Look, I know she was a sweet old gal and I don’t want to think bad things about her. But it’s not something we can dismiss.”

“She was in her nineties. That’s pretty old to be pulling a scam. And who pulls a scam when they’re dying? People who have lied all their lives tend to tell the truth on a deathbed. All she wanted was for the books to be put in a library in her grandfather’s name.”

“Maybe she was crazy, did you ever think of that? Maybe she heard that story years ago and transposed herself into it. Maybe Charlie became a grandfather in her mind.”

“She had the book.”

“She had
a
book. You don’t know where she really got it, or when, or how. Maybe getting the book is what started it all. She may have had Burton on the brain for a long time.”

“Koko checked a lot of this out.”

“That may be well and good, but I don’t know Koko from a sack of beans. She may have her own agenda, as the boys in the boardroom like to say. Don’t get defensive, just think about it.”

I controlled my imperious male baloney and let her pay the tab. “I guess I won’t see you again before you leave,” I said. “What’re you doing tonight?”

“I thought you’d never ask. I’m facing a miserably lonely hotel room.”

“Want to test Charleston’s restaurants?”

And that’s how we had our first date.

When I got back to the motel Koko was gone. I tracked her down at the library, where she was searching through old records for some evidence of the East Bay photographer’s existence. She had found nothing new since her discovery of the murdering innkeepers the day before and her mood was bleak. “I’m beginning to think this is all going to be a waste of time.”

I stayed with her, following her instructions, reading my share of old newspapers and documents. Occasionally she would powwow with one of the librarians, the librarian would bring out another folder or have a bound volume of newspapers brought up from the basement, and we would start in again. At noon she called her lawyer in Baltimore and got things moving on her house. We started in again after a quick lunch, but the work was frustrating and by four-thirty we had nothing. “A waste of time,” she said. “You got your head kicked in and my house got burned down, for what? And we’ll never be able to go home again.”

At the motel she showed me a chart she had made of the whole block where Burton and Charlie had supposedly been photographed. Every building along the street had a name written neatly in its square. “This is it,” she said: “every tenant on that stretch of East Bay in May 1860 accounted for, and I don’t see any photographers there.”

There was a cafe and a beer hall, a glass shop, a blacksmith, a druggist. Some used only personal names: Phillips, Jones, Kelleher, Wilcox. “Phillips turned out to be a dealer in rugs,” she said. “Jones was a butcher. Kelleher was a dentist and Wilcox owned a grocery store. If Burton and Charlie had their picture taken, where was the photographer?”

She received the news about Erin deadpan, but over the next hour her mood darkened. “I’m going out to Fort Sumter tomorrow,” she said, “take a break from this monotony and let you have fun with your friend.” She apologized reluctantly for the catty remark and tried to look ahead. “Don’t mind me. If she’s a lawyer, maybe she’ll have some idea how we can get out of this mess.” “I think she wants to take on Dante in a bare-knuckles brawl.” “You already did that and look where it got us.” She tried to turn the talk back to Fort Sumter. “One of the librarians told me there’s a ranger out there who knows something about Burton. Maybe he can shed some light.” I didn’t say anything but I doubted it. I asked her about tonight. “I’ll be fine,” she said. She had found a health food store and she planned to lock herself in, eat in her room, meditate, exercise, go nowhere, and not answer the phone. “Don’t bother me unless there’s an earthquake.”

At six o’clock I retrieved my car and drove the three blocks to the Mills House. Erin came down looking lovely and I told her so. I was on my best behavior, somewhere between smarmy and suave, decked out in my dark coat and tie. I held the door for her and took her hand as she sank into the car, and for the moment there were no wisecracks between us. I had found a seafood place on Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant. We were early enough to get a spectacular table near a window facing a sweeping marsh. The food was good, fishing boats passed beneath us, and the setting sun turned the creek into a ribbon of fire.

It was the pleasantest evening I’d had in a long time and there were long, casual moments when the specter of Dante and his thugs seemed very far away. Outside, she said, “You know what I’d like to do? Take off my shoes and walk on a beach somewhere, without much risk of running into Archer.” I consulted my map and a few minutes later we were heading back through the city, over the Ashley River and out to the coast. It was a good drive across miles of marshlands dotted with small wooded islands, and I could imagine what it had been like before growth, the scourge of our time, had turned too much of it into a long, continuous suburb.

Folly Beach is a little town with a few flashing neon blocks, a shooting gallery, a game room, pavilion, and rides. The carnival atmosphere disappeared at once as I turned south into the night. I found a place to park and we kicked off our shoes and went barefoot in the moonlight along the edge of the surf. The wind was strong and a little cold for the season; Erin curled her hand into mine and drew herself close. I draped my coat around us like a cocoon, she snuggled against me, we stood wrapped together like that, and at some point I lifted her chin and kissed her. She pulled us tighter and I buried my face in her hair. My old heart was going a mile a minute.

“Now look what you’ve done,” she said. “We can never be friendly antagonists again.”

“I thought that was pretty friendly, actually.”

“Yes, but now what are we going to do about it?”

“That’s a tough one. The answers can range all the way from nothing…”

“…to everything.”

“The prospects boggle the mind.”

“But how to decide? Do we take a vote?”

“That would be pointless without some way of breaking a tie.”

“I’ve never been much for casual sex,” she volunteered airily.

“At the same time, I’m not getting any younger.”

“Are you having trouble with your, uh…”

“No, I’m fine as of today. But the male body was not made for endless periods of celibacy. Deep, unexpected flabbiness can occur.”

“Maybe I’d better talk faster.”

I had to laugh at that.

She said, “If we eliminate casual sex, where are we?”

“Sounds almost like we’d have to get serious.”

“If that turned out to be the case, what would you say?”

“What do you want me to say, I love you?”

“Not unless it’s true.”

“That’s my point. If I did say that…”

“Yes?”

“How would you know it’s not just some scuzzy male ploy to get my way with you?”

“I’ve got pretty good vibes.”

“Experience will give you that.”

“I
beg
your pardon! I don’t just fall down for every dude I meet.”

“Still, you must have some way of—”

“Forty days and forty nights.”

I took that under advisement, then said, “I’ll bet there’s a clue there somewhere.”

“Once we reach a certain point, we take forty days and forty nights to get to know each other. But back to the original question: If you did say ‘I love you,’ how would
you
know? Have you ever been in love?”

“Sure. Once.”

“What was she like?”

“A lot like you, actually. Not as crazy but very quick. Smart as a whip.”

“What happened?”

“My performance left something to be desired.”

“Well, since we’ve already established that you’re not physically challenged, I take it you were being your usual boorish and dictatorial self.”

“Okay.”

“That’s not something you can answer okay to, Janeway. Either you were or you weren’t.”

“I didn’t trust her.”

“That’s a biggie. Oh, that’s very big. You don’t ever want to let that happen again.”

“I’ll try,” I said, but I couldn’t help thinking how often history repeats itself.

She burrowed closer than I thought possible. I felt her fingernails through my shirt.

“You’ve got to give up your need to run things,” she said. “I don’t do well with that.”

“Maybe I could work on it.”

“Would you really?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“We’ll see. I’m about to tell you something that will test you severely. Are you ready?”

I wasn’t but she told me anyway. “I canceled my plane reservation this afternoon. I’m not going back to Denver, I’m staying with you. God help Mr. Dante if he bothers us.”

She unwound herself, spun away, and stood shivering in the wind. “So what do you say, Janeway? You lost once because of your attitude—are you going to blow it again?”

She squinted at her watch. “Hey, I think our forty days and forty nights just began.”