The Sign of the Book (20 page)

I had no intention of buying it, but now I drew the book protectively back under my arm. “It's on an open shelf, it's gotta be for sale,” I said.

He took a step closer. “Maybe it's not for sale to
you.
”

I got my back up and reached for my checkbook.

“I don't think you hear so goddamned good, Janeway.”

“You don't think, period. What are you, some bush leaguer? That's a good way to get bounced out of here, not to mention blackballed at any legitimate book fair that hears about it. You really wanna push this? I've got a good grapevine and I can spread news fast.”

Suddenly the Preacher loomed over us. “What's going on here?”

“Your caveman doesn't want to sell me this book. It's marked seventy-five, here's my check for it.”

He looked disdainfully at the book and said, “Why would you want that?”

“Maybe 'cause I've got a jacket, maybe 'cause I'm crazy. But I'm a customer who's just written you a check after standing in your booth for an hour. Now the question is, are you going to sell me this book or do I really have to get annoyed over a stupid thing like this?”

The Preacher gave Wally one of his seriously frigid looks. “For gosh sakes, Wally, don't you know better than that? Of course we'll sell him the book.”

He took my check, bagged and sealed the book for clearance through security, and deposited it in my hands. “Enjoy it,” he said coldly.

Then suddenly he made a mighty effort to warm up. He smiled and said, “Wally's just annoyed, that's all. It's probably because you didn't tell us the truth back in Colorado. He'll get over it. We don't want any hard feelings.”

“Hey, that's cool, Preacher, I don't hold grudges.”

“That was quite a story you fed us back there. I don't know why you thought it was necessary, but people do things for all kinds of reasons. If we gave you any grief, let me apologize for both of us.”

“No need at all, we got it resolved, everybody's happy.”

Wally didn't look happy, and his unhappiness doubled when the Preacher said, “Will you be here till closing? Let us buy you a late dinner and make up for any annoyance we might have put you through.”

I wouldn't eat with these snakes for my pick of his books, but I didn't come twelve hundred miles to play it safe. I clapped Wally on the shoulder and said, “That's real decent of you boys. You don't have to do that, but if you insist, I'll be back.”

 

I drifted over to Pepper's booth. He was curious, as usual.

“So'd you buy anything from that tall guy?”

“I'll show you if you don't bug me about it.”

We opened the bag and he looked at the Frost. “Not much margin in this.”

“I know, I know. You're bugging me about it.”

“So what's the story?”

“His factotum got my dander up. Tried not to sell it to me before I even told them I wanted to buy it.”

“Now why would he do that?”

“Good question.”

He looked at it carefully now. “The signature doesn't look right.”

I looked at it over his shoulder. I had seen Frost's signature many times, not nearly as often as Pepper had, but it looked okay to me.

“There's something wrong with it,” he said more definitively. “You gonna leave it here for a while?”

“I can leave it all night if you want to read it.”

“Yeah, right. I was thinking more along the lines of, I take it to an autograph dealer I know over in Row Four. He can tell us right away if there's a problem with it.”

“I'd appreciate that, Jim.”

I drifted across the floor again. It was now well after eight and I still had most of two rows that I hadn't yet seen. But I worked them quickly, my mind no longer on books but on something far more serious. At ten minutes to nine I circled the room and returned to Pepper's booth.

“We think it's a fake,” he said. “It's a very good fake, but I'd take it back to him before we close up tonight and get that check back.”

“You hang on to it for me. I'll see you tomorrow, and thanks.”

He dropped the book in the bag, resealed it with his own sticker, and I drifted back toward the middle aisle again. I knew I'd have to watch my flank now. I was going unarmed into a hostile meeting, however friendly they might want it to seem at the moment; the odds were two to one, and there was a dead man in Colorado. At least I went knowing these things. I hadn't just fallen off the Kiowa County Bookmobile.

They were rolling a cloth covering over their books when I arrived. Wally had brightened his act, no doubt on orders from his boss: he gave me his signature grin, one of those crap-eaters that only his mother could have loved. “Hey, Cliff,” he said, “no hard feelings, huh?” I said no, hell no, we were fine, and he went into his charm mode, as charming as lung cancer. “I'm glad the Preach talked you into coming with us. Sometimes I forget my manners when I've got a hard-on for somebody else. I'm still pissed at Willie over the truck, that's all it is.”

He yakked it up and I asked politely about the truck. Willie was trying to get it towed into Alamosa, where the repair shop told him the tariff could amount to seven grand. “Might as well take the bastard out and shoot it,” he said, and I avoided saying the obvious, that he was the one who'd been driving that night.

The Preacher was busy with a last-minute customer, who surprised him and bought a $250 book. I could see it was signed and I eased closer to see what it might be. Wally kept talking, his voice droning like that of some perp trying to draw attention away from what really goes on, but I just nodded dumbly and kept moving slowly to the front. I saw a name, Larry McMurtry, and recognized the graphics: the guy was buying a copy of
The Desert Rose,
a common book unless signed, and this one had the impatient, almost-unreadable scrawl that McMurtry's signature was becoming. The Preacher bagged the book and sealed it. Behind me Wally chuckled, a halfhearted guffaw that telegraphs deep annoyance under false camaraderie. “I swear to God, Janeway,” he said, still forcing the silly laugh, “goddamned if you aren't the world's nosiest bastard.”

The Preacher looked back at me as he finished his deal, the guy walked away, and we three headed for the gates. “So what're you in the mood for?” the Preacher asked affably. “There's a good Moroccan restaurant I know of, but it's off the beaten trail and a bit of a drive.”

“Sounds great,” I said.

“You can ride in front with me. Plenty of room for those long legs of yours.”

This time I wouldn't even consider getting in a car with Wally at my back. I said, “I'll follow you,” but he tried to insist. “I'll bring you back,” he said, but I told him no, I wanted to go straight to my hotel after dinner. There was an awkward pause: we all stood indecisively in the parking lot as Pepper walked out with a couple of bookpals and came past, giving us no more than a brief glance. He moved on without saying a word.

“I'll follow you,” I said again, with no room for argument in my voice.

“Let's go then,” the Preacher said under that snaky smile.

My simmering suspicion came to a boil as we drove. Twice he stopped and reversed his direction as if he had lost his way. I bet myself a dollar that there was no Moroccan restaurant:
none that he knows about,
I thought. We were now in a grim part of town, dark and close, not at all typical of any part of Los Angeles I had ever seen. We had been driving almost haphazardly for twenty minutes when he pulled to the sidewalk and stopped. I could see in the glare of an oncoming car that they were talking earnestly. The car passed us and the block fell again into deep blackness, with only a dim and distant streetlight revealing the outlines of their heads through the glass.

They started off again but the same thing happened, down into some dim ghetto where the likelihood of any good restaurant diminished with each block. He stopped again and I pulled up behind him, wishing I had my gun.

He opened his door, got out, and came back to me. I rolled down my window and he leaned way over and looked in. “We seem to be lost. I've only been there once, thought I could find it again.”

“Do you remember the name of this place?”

He shook his head. “I'd know it if I saw it again, but I have no idea where we're at now. I think we'll have to find someplace else.”

“Well, I'm not particular, let's grope around. I don't know the town any better than you do, but I'll take what comes.”

He got back in the car but didn't move for another moment. They were still talking up a storm, and I'd bet myself another dollar it wasn't about the neighborhood, restaurants, or the kind of food we'd eat. We headed off to the west, and eventually we hit something that looked like it might lead to a main drag. The Preacher turned south and I stayed close on his tail. In one place he almost lost me—a traffic light that he took speeding up on a late yellow. Two cars were approaching the intersection on the crossing street and I had to stop. By then the Preacher was almost a block ahead.

I went across on the red but now I had a new hunch, that whatever he had planned for me, he was losing his nerve. Too much indecision, too much talk: his backbone's starting to ooze a little, I thought, maybe his taste for what had seemed good to him at a distance didn't look so good now. Maybe Mr. Kevin Simms would be just as happy to shake me and write it off with an apology tomorrow.

I closed the gap between us and we came to a wide boulevard with lights and motels and gas stations. He went past a couple of restaurants and I flashed my lights in his mirror. “Time to eat, boys,” I said to the back of their car. “Let's do something or get off the pot.” He turned around the block and came through the neighborhood again, stopping at the place with the deep, dark parking lot.

He pulled into the shadows at the far corner of the lot and I parked beside him.

“This wasn't what I had in mind,” he said when we stepped out.

I'll bet it wasn't.

But they were stuck with me now. The Preacher said, “Well, let's make the best of it,” and we started around the building to the front entrance. Inside, the place was about what I expected—a hash house, with an ancient cashier who doubled as the hostess and two harried-looking waitresses. The cashier said, “Be with you in a minute,” but she couldn't seem to unlock the cash drawer and she didn't seem to care. Meanwhile, people were standing in a growing line to pay their checks, we stood at a sign that said
PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED
, and I could see that the Preacher was getting impatient.

The old cashier had called one of the waitresses over and was getting detailed advice for working the till, repeating everything that was said to her and still not comprehending. “Say, can we ever get some help here?” the Preacher said loudly, and the people waiting in line stared at him darkly. At last the other waitress came and seated us. She was young, was having a bad night, looked strung out and near tears. The Preacher's opening salvo, “I hope the food in this place is better than the service,” brought the tears closer. “I am very sorry, sir,” she said softly. “Please, what can I get for you?” She had her order pad out and her pencil poised, and he stared at her in that cold way he had and said, “Would it be too much to ask for some napkins and place settings, a few of the niceties of civilization? What is this, your first night on this job?”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” She turned away and he shouted after her, loud enough for the cook to hear, “This table is dirty too.”

By then I was getting damned tired of the Preacher. I said, “You really shouldn't do that, you know.”

“Do what, demand just a modicum of decent service?”

“Abuse the waitress. You should never abuse a waitress, Preacher, that's not in sync with the Golden Rule. Imagine if she were your daughter.”

Before he could reply, I said, “How old do you think she is, seventeen? Maybe she's not very good but this is probably her first job, so let's cut her some slack.”

I pushed his buttons again. “And maybe you can tell me before things truly go to hell why we're really here.”

“What on earth is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, what do you guys really want from me? Why bring me way out here when there's obviously no Moroccan restaurant closer than Rick's Café in Casablanca? Why the hail-fellow routine all of a sudden until now, when your real colors begin to come through? I'm really curious about that, Preacher, why the pretense of a night on the town when the fact is you don't like me any more than I like you?”

The waitress returned with the table settings and a steaming towel to wash off the tabletop. “I'm sorry,” she whispered again. “I'm very sorry.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “We're probably not going to stay, but that's not your fault.”

She left us and the Preacher said, “I was right about you the first time I saw you.”

“You probably were.”

“A troublemaker. I knew it then and I can see it now.”

“Yeah, but I was right about you too.”

“And what might that bold assessment have been?”

“Not a preacher at all, just a crooked two-bit book shyster who'd better hope there really isn't any God.”

“Man, you better watch your mouth,” Wally seethed.

“Oh, yeah, I wouldn't want to get
you
mad at me. Jesus, I quake at the thought.”

“I'll make you quake, pal. You wanna step outside?”

I laughed and said, “No,” still laughing.

“I didn't think so. C'mon, Preacher, let's get out of here. I told you this guy was bad news.”

“Oh, Wally, I'm much worse news than you know. I'll tell you what bad news I am, I am wise to your book scam. I know the Frost I bought had a fake signature, probably that McMurtry as well, and I can't help wondering how many more fakes you're selling as the real thing.”

The Preacher paled. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Then try this. How well did you know Bobby Marshall? Well enough to kill him, maybe? Did you boys have a falling-out over the money?”

“You're crazy. You really are a crazy man. I don't know any Bobby Marshall. If there's something wrong with that book, bring it by in the morning and I'll give you your money back, no questions asked.
No
questions asked.”

“I might do that. Maybe I'll have a few questions for you while I'm there.”

“Never mind your questions, you bring that book back. In fact I insist on it.”

“You can't insist on anything, Preacher, it's my book now. That means I can keep it, give it to the cops for evidence, or run it through a paper shredder.”

“Evidence of what? What cops are you talking about?”

“Keep on playing that role. I'll call ahead to Cañon City and tell 'em to have their tailor make a set of jailhouse threads, extra tall.”

They got up and left, slamming their way through the door.

I sat there, and in a while the waitress came timidly by. I apologized for my companions and said, “On second thought, miss, I think I will eat. I've just been working up an appetite.”

The food was actually worse than the service, but I had survived the East Colfax Roadrunner and I still believed I could eat anything. I left the waitress a sawbuck, the second-best thing about this lousy night. That look on the Preacher's face had been the best. That had been worth the trip.

 

I walked casually across the blacker-than-hell parking lot, aware of a growing unease that might have nothing to do with the Preacher or his lowlife sidekick. I was thinking about the case now, about dead Bobby Marshall and his guns, his loner ways and his books. As much as I wanted it to make sense, it didn't.

I had to go almost to the wall before I could see my car. The Preacher's car was gone, but I remained on full alert. I scanned the area and made my approach slowly, looking first to starboard, then to port, whistling softly, jingling my keys in my pocket. I didn't expect any real trouble now but I was ready for it. That was Wally's bad luck when he leaped out of the shadows and came at me with a pipe wrench in his hand.

His first swing grazed my shoulder as I ducked under it. His second grazed nothing but air. He never got off the third swing.

I belly-punched him hard and he flopped on the ground with a pathetic whooshing sound, a sorry grunt, and a little cry of pure misery. I heard the wrench hit the pavement.

“Hi, Wally,” I said. “I think you dropped your wallet.”

He managed to croak out three words. I thought they were “Oh, you asshole,” but I couldn't be sure. He wavered for a moment on the cheeks of his ass, listed sideways, and toppled on his back. He looked up briefly at the terrible swirling universe, then he rolled over and tried to suck up all the gravel in the parking lot.

I got in my car and picked my way back to Burbank.