which this was, under an interesting page-long inscription, also in Truman’s hand—call it $800 easy;
If it was that easy, everybody’d be doing it. Usually Bobby Westfall led a bleak, lonely life. He took in cats, never could stand to pass up a homeless kitty. Sometimes he slept in unwashed clothes, and on days when pickings weren’t so good, he didn’t eat. He spent his $900 quickly and was soon back to basics. He had a ragged appearance and a chronic cough. There were days when he hurt inside: his eyes would go wide and he’d clutch himself, a sudden pain streaking across his insides like a comet tearing up the summer sky. He was thirty-four years old, already an old man at an age when life should just begin.
He didn’t drive. He packed his books from place to place on his back, looking for a score and a dealer who’d treat him right. Some of the stores were miles apart, and often you’d see Bobby trudging up East Colfax Avenue, his knees buckling under the weight. His turf was the Goodwill store on Colfax and Havana, the DAV thrift shop on Montview Boulevard, and the dim-lit antique stores along South Broadway, where people think they know books. Heaven to Bobby the Book-scout was finding a sucker who thought he knew more than he knew, a furniture peddler or a dealer in glass who also thought he knew books. On South Broadway, in that particular mind-set, the equation goes like this: old + bulk = value. An antique dealer would slap $50 on a worthless etiquette book from the 1880s and let a true $150 collectible like Anne Tyler’s
Like all bookscouts, Bobby could be a pain in the ass. He was a born-again Christian: he’d tell you about Christ all day long if you’d stand still and listen. There was gossip that he’d been into dope years ago, that he’d done some hard time. People said that’s where he found the Lord, doing five-to-ten at Canon City. None of that mattered now. He was a piece of the Denver book world, part of the landscape, and the trade was a little poorer for his death.
He had been bludgeoned, battered into the bookscout’s hereafter by a heavy metal object. According to the coroner, Bobby had felt no pain: he never knew what hit him. The body was found facedown in the alley, about three blocks from the old
This is the story of a dead man, how he got that way, and what happened to some other people because of his death.
He was a gentle man, quiet, a human mystery.
He had no relatives, no next of kin to notify. He had no close friends, but no enemies either.
His cats would miss him.
No one could think of a reason why anyone would kill Bobby. Who would murder a harmless man like that?
I’ll tell you why. Then I’ll tell you who.
BOOK ONE
The phone rang. It was 2:30 a.m.
Normally I am a light sleeper, but that night I was down among the dead. I had just finished a thirteen-hour shift, my fourth day running of heavy overtime, and I hadn’t been sleeping well until tonight. A guy named Jackie Newton was haunting my dreams. He was my enemy and I thought that someday I would probably have to kill him. When the bell went off, I was dreaming about Jackie Newton and our final showdown. For some reason—logic is never the strong point of a dream like that—Jackie and I were in the hallway at East High School. The bell brought the kids out for the change of classes; Jackie started shooting and the kids began to drop, and that hell kept ringing as if it couldn’t stop.
In the bed beside me, Carol stirred.
“Oh, Cliff,” she groaned. “Would somebody please get that goddamn telephone?”
I groped for the night table, felt the phone, and knocked the damn thing to the floor. From some distant galaxy I could hear the midget voice of Neal Hennessey, saying, “Cliff?… Cliff?… Hey, Clifford!” I reached along the black floor and found the phone, but it was still many seconds later before Hennessey took on his bearlike image in my mind.
“Looks like we got another one,” Hennessey said without preamble.
I struggled to sit up, trying to get used to the idea that Jackie Newton hadn’t shot me after all.
“Hey, Cliffie… you alive yet?”
“Yeah, Neal, sure. First time I been sound asleep in a week.”
He didn’t apologize; he just waited.
“Where you at?” I said.
