another. By tomorrow it would be all over town.
I called three or four other dealers who might have bought books from Bobby. All of them had. I told them I’d want to see them, and would try to stop in in the next couple of days.
This was going to be a long haul.
I tried calling Carol, to tell her I’d be late tonight. She was out on the streets and I didn’t want to leave a message. The only world tighter than the world of books is the world of cops.
The locksmith had fixed Barbara’s back door and was installing a deadbolt in the front. Nobody was coming through that door once that baby was put in, the locksmith said. I wasn’t too sure of that, but I didn’t say anything.
I went back to Bobby’s place. The boys were gone, all but Hennessey. We sat and talked the case out, as it stood to now. It didn’t stand anywhere. We had nothing: we were shooting in the dark. We might be dealing with something totally outside Bobby’s book-dealing activity, and in that case it might never be solved.
Hennessey had talked to the coroner, and the guesswork of last night had been confirmed. Bobby was killed somewhere else, then dumped in the alley. Time of death was sometime between eleven o’clock and midnight. This told us nothing, as we had been going on that assumption anyway. “Let’s forget about it till morning,” Hennessey said. “Come on home with me, we’re having a big pot roast tonight.” I took a rain check: I wanted to get started on Bobby’s things, and I knew that I wouldn’t stop till the last scrap of paper had been sifted to the watermark. This is just the way I work. It made Hennessey feel guilty, but that’s life. “I should stay here and help you, Cliff,” he said. “I’d probably just get in your way. I don’t know from Shinola about this stuff.” I agreed and told him to go home. It was getting dark outside. I hadn’t eaten in more than twelve hours, so I asked Marty Zimmers to call Domino’s and have a deep pan pizza and a bucket of swill sent over. Then I got to work.
It was a long, thankless job. You wouldn’t believe the crap that accumulates in a bookscout’s den. Book after book came down from the pile and went into another pile that I had labeled “Junk” in my mind. I thumbed each piece carefully, I went page by page to make sure a $50,000 pamphlet wasn’t hidden inside a $2 book. It wasn’t. There were some real heartbreakers—a fine little Faulkner poem, original 1932 issue, paper wraps, a $250 piece that Bobby could’ve sold to me on the spot except that someone had lost his supper on the title page… an early Steinbeck, nice, except that somebody had ripped out the title page… Robert Frost’s first book, inscribed by Frost on the half title, very quaint except that a kid had been at the book with crayons. There were so many books eaten by mold that I had to wash my hands after handling them. My pizza came and I washed my hands again. I went munching and sorting my way into the early night. At nine-thirty I seemed to be about half through. I went downstairs and called Carol, told her I’d be another two or three hours, and said she’d better not wait up.
I chugged my swill, burped, and went back to it.
I was resigned by then to coming up zero. I took a break at ten-thirty and let my eyes skim over the books as a lot. If there was anything worthwhile in that mess, I sure couldn’t see it. I started on the books in the toilet. Nothing. I was mucking it out pretty good now. There were a few papers in the closet and some books in the kitchenette. No great secrets were hidden there that I could see. Nothing the Russians would kill for: nothing anybody would kill for. Slowly the one natural motive—that Bobby had found something valuable—was dwindling before my eyes. Of course, the killer might’ve taken it away with him: I was going on the slim, bare hope that he had killed Bobby and had failed to find what he had killed for. But I was beginning to believe it was something as simple, and insane, as an old grudge, or a sudden fight between rivals.
Then I found the good books.
There were two stacks of them in the cupboard in the kitchenette. They stood like sentinels, acting as bookends for the Cheerios and the Rice Chex. The first thing I noticed was the quality. There were some very good pieces, some real honeys. I took them into the living room and sat with them, browsing. There were fifteen titles, and I made a list, adding my own idea of what they were worth.
