The Dirty Book Murder (3 page)

A tall, wide-shouldered man dressed in a brown silk shirt and black linen trousers stepped from behind a post, tapping his fingers against the side of his pants impatiently. His long, narrow head, bookended by cauliflower ears, was completely bald. Take away the dark sunglasses he wore in the hazy light of the auction hall, he looked like the eraser end of a #2 pencil.

“Yes, I have a check to present in that amount. You will bring the sale of these books to an end.”

The newcomer spoke with a Dutch Afrikaner accent, one I’d heard often in my rugby career. As I pondered what a white South African was doing in Kansas City bidding on erotic books at Colonel Herl Bender’s flea market auction, Hughes piped up, refusing to accept defeat.

“Point of order!” he shouted. “These books weren’t offered as a lot. I’m prepared to offer five thousand dollars for one of the items. Just one book.”

The auctioneer, clearly out of his league, looked beseechingly at the stranger who slowly shook his head.

“This one,” Hughes insisted, holding up the Colette. “Just this one.”

“No,” the South African repeated. “All or nothing.”

Colonel Bender held out his palm seeking patience, then sat down to confer with a pinch-faced woman who looked ready to throw her calculator at him. After listening to her urgent advice, he rose red-faced to announce a decision.

“My wife says they were offered as erretatica … eroica … or somethin’. Ah, hell, them’s all the same, them dirty books.”

Mrs. Bender could stand it no more and rose, all five feet of her, to announce in a shrill voice that the books were not described individually in the newspaper, but rather as “erotic books” in general. Therefore, they could be sold as a lot.

The auctioneer shrugged his shoulders apologetically in response to Gareth’s impotent snarl.

“Going once, going twice 
…
”

“Eleven thousand five hundred,” I said quietly.

I was gambling with Anne’s college education. It cost that much for just one semester at C.U. But my bookman’s intuition had taken over. I didn’t want those beautiful Japanese scrolls and that piece of literary history to go to a bad home without a challenge.

“Twelff five,” sputtered the man in the brown shirt.

“Fourteen,” I countered with a nonchalant shrug, but my sphincter felt so tight I couldn’t have passed a raisin.

A long silence followed in which I ignored my competitor. Nonetheless, I felt his eyes boring into the back of my head.

“Fourteen thousand dollars,”
squeaked the colonel.
“Do I hear fourteen five?”

He didn’t.
“Awright then, goin’ once 
…
”

I turned for the second time to look at the man who continued to stare at me. He had taken off his dark shades, most likely to better size up his competition, and I noticed his eyelids had narrowed to slits. Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead.

I guessed that he wasn’t buying the books for himself and we were now beyond his employer’s authorized limit. What kind of person, I wondered, could put that kind of apprehension in such a hard man?

“Twenty thousand,” the man hissed as the colonel raised his gavel.

Now it was my turn to sweat. I glanced at Hughes, who quickly avoided my look. He would be good for ten thousand just to get the Colette, but he didn’t have the money for more at the prices being bid.

I was alone, betting my entire livelihood on a pile of paper and leather, discovering how focused one becomes when success or failure rests on nothing more than gut instinct and a momentary perusal of the goods. I could sell two hundred and fifty shares of inherited stock for $6,000, use a $10,000 line of credit at Midwest Bank, and unload a first-edition of
The Reivers
by Faulkner that I’d been saving for myself. But did I really want to risk that kind of money for books I hadn’t researched thoroughly?

“Twenty-five thousand,” I said.

The room erupted in applause.

Gareth Hughes barked a surprised laugh and the colonel performed a brief jig as if struggling to control his bladder. Even his wife emitted a constipated smile as she tallied up the commission on her calculator.

The Afrikaner leveled his porcine eyes at me as if I was the only person in the universe. His look confirmed that he would make up the difference out of his own pocket.

“Thirty-five thousand,” he said.

“Forty,” I countered blithely and totally beyond reason, except for my renewed belief that, up to a point, my opponent could not afford to let me win. The trick was to guess where that amount stopped.

Everyone in the room stared at me, including Gareth Hughes, who stepped forward and gave me a cool, one-sided smile accompanied by a shake of the head that made it clear I was not to count on him. Whether it was the stifling heat of the room or the insane position I had placed myself in from misplaced pride and an old-fashioned devotion to rare books, I felt dizzy and nauseous.

“Forty-five.”

“Damn,” I muttered under my breath.

Those near enough to hear my curse smiled sympathetically, assuming I was disappointed because I could bid no higher. But my small outburst was only for the effect it would have on the Afrikaner.

Sick as I was with worry, I knew with all my quavering heart that we had not yet reached the end sum. We were close, however, and I shed my poker face just long enough for him to see I was near the end of my challenges.

I waited for Herl Bender to threaten dropping the hammer before quietly upping the count by $2,500. To have raised the ante by another increment of $5,000 ran the risk of scaring away the competition, the last thing I wanted.

My opponent studied me long enough for mankind to evolve into something else. The colonel went through his by now well-practiced prolonging of the raised gavel, letting it quiver in the left hand he held high above his head, his patience bubble-gum stretched as he aimed his eyes at the man, urging the final bid to top mine.

But the stranger only continued to stare at me.

Outside Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day, I’m not a religious man, but my eyeballs shifted upward, seeking divine deliverance from owing a fortune I did not have for items I had inspected for less than two minutes. Add to this the miserable fact that they were offered by an auctioneer with about as much credibility handling rare books as Mike Tyson. Any wonder that during those milliseconds my bowels slipped into my Nikes?

If there was any consolation to be had, it was that the Afrikaner seemed as concerned as I at what was about to transpire, confirming that his boss was not a very understanding individual when it came to losing.

Except that he had nothing to worry about.

If I couldn’t honor the bid, which was extremely likely, he would get the books for the first price he bid before I originally countered.

Namely, $10,000.

Not only would I owe a substantial amount in damages to the auctioneer and face possible felony charges for fraud, my credibility as a book dealer would be ruined unless I could make good the $47,500.

I began to calculate the fair market value of my house (naturally, the economy was experiencing the worst recession in modern history) when I heard a quivering voice from the back of the room utter the magic words that renewed my faith in Catholicism.

“I bid fifty.”

The voice didn’t belong to the Afrikaner, but to Richard Chezik, that thieving book scout who wasn’t supposed to have a pot to piss in. On the other hand, the person at the other end of the cell phone that Richard held to his ear with his plastic prosthesis probably did. The sneaky bastard must have been reporting my bidding with the Afrikaner to his client, waiting for the right moment to jump in.

And thank Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for that.

For a few seconds you couldn’t have heard a mouse fart, then the room exploded in wild applause and laughter.

The Afrikaner appeared as startled as I, only now he had his own cell phone to his ear and the look of renewed interest. He didn’t hesitate to top Chezik’s bid by another $2,500 while I looked on in relief and wonder. Chezik reported the raise into his cell phone and raised the ante, which, in turn, was quickly countered by the person calling the shots on the Afrikaner’s phone.

Sixty grand is what Richard Chezik’s client and I cost the stranger’s boss that day.

After Colonel Bender slapped down the gavel, the crowd remained silent for a few moments before madly rushing toward the table to see what prizes had lain before their unschooled eyes. The pandemonium provided enough diversion for Gareth Hughes to sneak the Colette into his leather satchel and skulk out a side door.

I didn’t pursue him. My colleague was long past reason. It happens sometimes with bibliophiles; that “gentle madness” Nick Basbanes is always writing about.

If the stranger noticed that Gareth had fled with the Colette, he didn’t show it as he shoveled the books, far too carelessly for a true book lover, into four cardboard boxes. When they were filled, the colonel motioned for three of his helpers to pick them up, leaving the fourth on the floor.

“Are you ready to go?” Colonel Bender asked the man.

“I’m ready.”

“Well then, you’d best get that last one and show the boys to your car.”

The set of the big fella’s jaw made it clear he wasn’t doing any physical labor,
even though the remaining box weighed all of twenty-five pounds.

“One of the boys will come back and get it,” the colonel said diplomatically.

“I want ’em taken out togetter. Now.”

Bender’s crimson face puffed up like a blowfish. He still held the check for $60,000 in his right hand and, for an instant, I thought hillbilly pride would prevail over common sense.

No such luck.

“I’ll get this one, Colonel,” I said, picking up the box. “Go ahead with the rest of your business.”

“Why, thank you, son. That’s mighty decent of you.”

I figure it never hurts to protect another man’s dignity, especially if there’s no threat to my own in doing it, and, as I’d have some questions for the colonel later, I thought it wise to get on his good side.

“Show us the way, Shakespeare,” I said to the Afrikaner.

He snorted contemptuously, aiming those piggy eyes at me again until satisfied he had stored my features in his memory bank. Then the other three book haulers and I followed him out of the building.

His black Lincoln Continental sat in a no-parking zone near the front door. He opened the trunk with an electric key and watched in silence as we put the books in place. Then, showing a two-inch smile that promised to drain my liver sometime soon, he got into the car and sped away, the tires spraying gravel against our kneecaps.

I barely had time to jot down the personalized license plate.

It read
2 L 8
.

After the auction, I headed for Riverrun Books, my shop located in the heart of Brookside.

It’s a middle-class urban neighborhood where people glide away summer afternoons on porch swings, nodding friendly greetings to strollers on shaded sidewalks under the canopies of hardwood trees four and five stories high. Although well tended, the lawns are not particularly wide or deep so that the houses lie close to the street, expressing their owners’ trust in the outside world and pride in their handsome oak doors and exterior walls of native stone.

The soft, fresh air after the heat of the River Market warehouse lightened my mood. I counted my blessings, such as they were, while I drove to what many considered the best used bookstore in town.

After all, I’d narrowly escaped owing Colonel Bender’s client an amount I couldn’t possibly have raised in the foreseeable future; my health was excellent after years of trying to destroy it; and the used-book trade, like movie theaters and liquor sales, was proving to be recession-proof, picked up by ever-increasing sales on the Internet. Even last week’s shock of learning that my twenty-year-old daughter was having an affair with a notorious celebrity nearly three times her age had retreated to the back of my consciousness, hovering like a faintly disagreeable odor.

At least she was coming home for a while.

Riverrun Books anchors the middle of a quaint shopping center built in 1924. It is bordered by a tailor shop to its south and a bakery to the north. An inside open door connects the bakery with the bookstore so that the smell of baking bread and brewing coffee permeates the place.

As I approached Fifty-fifth Street in my jeep, I saw customers sitting outside my shop at green bistro tables under a broad awning drinking caffe lattes and reading
The New York Times
. A dog, lazing at the feet of a young couple, chewed on a leather bone while a little boy sat on crossed legs contentedly reading a picture book.

I pulled into my regular space in a church lot across the street, turned off the engine, and set the automatic lock before exiting it. Three paces from the car I realized I’d left the keys in the ignition. Returning to the jeep, hoping against hope that I hadn’t really locked myself out, I reached for the door latch hesitantly, preferring empty
uncertainty to the confirmation of a locked door.

I jiggled the handle.

Locked.

I jiggled the handle again.

Same result.

I cursed under my breath and looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had noticed my predicament. Only the boy with the picture book seemed concerned.

I gazed at the asphalt and, finding no answers there, decided to swallow my pride and seek help in the shop. But first I had to do the manly thing and slam my fist against the offending door.

The car alarm went off, scattering pigeons and causing Father Patrick Doogan’s cup of hot chocolate, propelled by his startled knees under the café table, to spill onto the virginal laps of Sister Mary Catherine Browne and her cousin, Mary Margaret Scanlon.

While I scuttled across the street to the bookstore, apologizing to what seemed like half of St. Peter’s parish, Weston Preston, towel in hand, leaped from behind his coffee cart and darted outside.

“You’d best turn that noise off, boss,” he said unnecessarily in his southern Missouri drawl as he sponged the steaming mess off the nun’s habit.