Booked to die

together without having to punch a time clock. There are lots of customers for cheap books, and a junkman in almost any kind of junk will usually make a living.

He had a deceptive manner: he could ooze charm and in the same moment turn on you like a snake. People who had never seen his bad side thought of him as a nice man; the rest of us knew better. Fix had been busted half a dozen times for disturbing the peace, and Traffic had pulled him in a few times for speeding. He always argued with the cop. He was his own worst enemy. Once, I knew, he had talked himself from a simple taillight violation to creating a disturbance and ultimately resisting arrest. Cops have a lot of discretion in things like that.

My interview was a short one. Fix was hostile, as I knew he would be, and he wouldn’t give me much. He didn’t seem to know or care that Bobby Westfall was dead. “Why should I worry over that fool? That’s just one less fool out there working my territory.”

“Where’s your territory?” I asked.

“Wherever the hell I say it is.”

I knew that mentality well. Beat me to a book and you’re my enemy for life. Turn over all your best books to me. Sell that to me for ten cents on the dollar, and don’t give me any damn guff about it either. Fix would intimidate if he could, cheat if he could do that. He’d buy a $ 1,000 book for a quarter, then laugh all year at the sucker who’d sold it to him.

It occurred to me suddenly that there was a lot of latent anger in the Denver book world. I could easily see Clyde Fix bashing Bobby’s head in. But with Fix it wouldn’t be calculated: more likely it would be a spur-of-the-moment thing, in broad daylight with fifteen witnesses looking on. They had had one run-in last year: the story had gone through the trade like a shot and quickly taken on the characteristics of an urban legend. I remembered it now and could almost see it: Bobby and Fix at the Goodwill store, both spotting a treasure nestled among the junk. James Crumley’s One to Count Cadence, a $100 book then, two or three times that now. The mutual lunge, the struggle, the tumble into a counter of glassware, Fix coming up with the book, whirling and knocking a little old lady flat. The cops arrived, but Fix and Bobby were gone. So was the book.

I hassled him for a while: it was good for my constitution. Where were you last night, Fix? Anybody there with you? Can you prove where you were between ten o’clock and midnight? You didn’t like Bobby much… did you kill him?

Pleasantries like that help get me through a dull day. If only I had something to do with my hands.

I moseyed back up the street. It was a quiet day on Book Row. At Seals & Neff a few customers had come and gone and the day was quickly settling into its inevitable, uneventful course. There was a young woman in the store, who had brought in a bag of books. Bookscouts, like dealers, come in all sizes, colors, and sexes. This one was a cut above the others I had seen, at least in the category of looks, but it was clear from what was being said that she had more than a smattering of ignorance when it came to books.

Neff was explaining to her why her as-new copy of Faulkner’s The Reivers wasn’t a first edition. “But it says first edition,” she protested. “Right here on the copyright page… look. First edition. How much clearer can it be than that? Random House always states first edition, right? You told me that yourself the last time I was in here. Now I’ve got a first edition and you’re telling me it isn’t a first edition. I don’t know what to believe.”

“Believe this, honey,” Neff said. “I don’t need the grief. If you think I’m trying to steal your book…”

“I didn’t say that. I’m not accusing you, I just want to know.”

“It’s a Book-of-the-Month Club first,” Neff said, enunci-ating each word with chilly distinction. “It’s printed from the same plates as the first, or maybe the same sheets are ever used; that’s why it says first edition. But the binding is different, there’s no price on the jacket, and the book has a blind stamp on the back board.”

“What’s a blind stamp?”

“A little dent, pressed right into the cloth. Look, I’ll show you. You see that little stamp? That means it’s a book club book. Whenever you see that, it came from a book club, even if it’s written ‘I’m a first edition’ in Christ’s own blood inside. Okay?”

She sighed. “I’ll never learn this stuff. How much is it worth?”

“This book? Five bucks tops. There are eight million copies of this in the naked city.”

“I paid more than that for it. Didn’t I come in here last week and ask you what it was worth? You said fifty dollars. That’s why I went and bought it.”

“We’re talking about two different animals. You asked me a question, I answered you. How was I supposed to know you couldn’t tell one from the other?”

“I paid seven-fifty,” she said sadly.

“You got rooked.”

“Damn shit,” she said.

“You tell her, Mr. Janeway,” Neff said. “Lady, this guy is a Denver cop. Would a cop lie to you? He’s a cop and he’s also a damn good bookman. Show him the book.”

She handed it to me. I looked at it and told her Neff was right. It was a $5 book and you had to pray mighty hard to ever get the five.

“Let me see your badge,” she said. “You don’t look like a cop to me.”

I showed her my badge. She sagged in final defeat.