Bookman's wake

waltzing in here to show off his togs and tell me about Tina.

He lit a cigarette and looked at the bookshelves critically, the way a scientist might look at a bug under a microscope.

“Is there any money in this racket?”

I shook my head. “But it’s so much fun we don’t care.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” he said dryly.

I felt my temperature rising. Slater had about twenty seconds left on his ticket and he must’ve known it. Abruptly, he switched directions.

“Y’know, there are some jobs where you can have fun and still make a buck or two. Maybe you’ve heard.”

I think I knew what he was going to say in that half second before he said it. It was crazy, but I was almost ready for him when he said, “I could use a good man if you’re ever inclined to get back in the real world.”

I let the full impact of what he was saying settle between us. He raised his eyebrows and turned up his palms, pushing the sincere look. It probably worked like a charm on children and widows and one-celled organisms like Tina.

“Let me get this straight, Clydell…you’re offering me a job?”

“More than a job, Clime…a lot more than that.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t jump too fast, old buddy, till you hear me out.” He took a long drag and blew smoke into the air. “Last year I paid tax on a quarter of a million dollars.”

“Somebody’s gotta pay for those two-hundred-dollar toilet seats the Pentagon keeps buying.”

“Listen, you asshole, just shut up and listen. The best thing I ever did was take early retirement and go out on my own. Right now I’m the hottest thing Denver’s ever seen. I may branch out into radio. I was on two shows last week and the program director at KOA says I took to it like nobody she ever saw. Are you listening to me, Janeway? I could make a second career out of this if I wanted to. It’s so easy it oughta be against the law. None of those guys work more than two or three hours a day, and I’m just gettin‘ warmed up then. It’s all bullshit. I can bullshit my way out of anything, and that’s all you need in radio. I found that out after the first five minutes. It ain’t what you know, it’s what you got between your legs. You hear what I’m saying?”

“Clydell, what’s this got to do with me?”

“Keep your pants on, I’m getting to it. This is all by way of saying that your old buddy is leading a very full life. They invite me on to talk about the detective business and find out I can hold my own on anything. I’m filling in for the morning drive-time host next week. Denver Magazine is doing a piece on me, a fullblown profile. They’re picking me as one of Denver’s ten sexiest men over fifty. Can you dig that?”

I could dig it. Any magazine that would come up with a horse’s-ass idea like that deserved Slater and would leave no stone unturned in the big effort to find him. I hoped they’d shoot their pictures in the morning, before the town’s sexiest man got his hair off the hat rack and his teeth out of the water glass.

Slater said, “On radio they’re thinking of billing me as the talking dick.”

“This also figures.”

“I can talk about any damn thing. Politics?…Hell, I’m a walking statistical abstract. Ask me something. Go ahead, ask me a question…about anything, I don’t care.”

“Oh, hell,” I said wearily.

“ I’ve got an answer for everything and you can’t even come up with a fuckin‘ question.”

I looked at him numbly.

“Here’s something you didn’t know. They skew those microphones in my favor. If I get any shit from a caller, all I’ve gotta do is lean a little closer and raise my voice and he just goes away.” He gave me a grin and a palms-up gesture, like a magician who’d just made the rabbit disappear. “I’ll tell you, Cliff, I’m really hot as a pistol right now. I’m at the top of my game. There’s even talk about them doing one of my cases on the network, on Unsolved Mysteries .”

“If you’re such a ball of fire, how come you didn’t solve it?”

“I did solve the goddamn thing, that’s why they want to do it, you goddamn moron, as a follow-up to a story they did last year about all the meatheads who couldn’t solve the damn thing. Get this straight, Janeway—there is no case I can’t solve. That’s why I’m cutting Denver a new rear end, because I guarantee everything. I get results or I don’t cash the check. You got a missing person?…I’ll find the son of a bitch. If he owes you money, I’ll drag his ass back here, and before we’re through with him, he’ll wish he’d never laid eyes on you, this town, and most of all me. I can find anybody in a day or two—it’s just a matter of knowing your guy and using the old noggin. We’ve got a computer database with access to seventy million names in every state in the union. If the bastard’s got a MasterCard, works for a living, or has ever subscribed to a magazine, I’ve got his ass in my computer. I can tell you his home address, phone number, the size of his jockstrap, and how many X-rated videos he watched last week. I can tell you stuff about yourself that you didn’t even know.”

“Clydell…”

“Okay, the point is, I can’t keep up with it. I’ve got three legmen and three tracers on my payroll full-time, and I still can’t keep up with all the work. I could put on three more people right now and we’d still be a month behind in