deal of my life,” Bobby said expansively.
That wouldn’t be much of a deal, Buckley thought, but he was too much of a gentleman to say it.
“I’m not gonna be a bookscout anymore, Buckley,” Bobby said. “Not gonna be anybody’s doormat.”
“What are you gonna do?” Buckley said.
Bobby grinned, a sly that’s-for-me-to-know look crossing his face. “You’ll see soon enough. I’ll tell you this much. After tonight I’ll be a book dealer, same as you guys. That’s all I ever needed, just a stake.”
That’s when he pulled the money out, just for effect.
“Well,” Buckley said, “looks like you got it.”
“This is just pocket money. I’ll be shopping here a lot from now on, Buckley. It kills me to see you selling books for a quarter on the dollar and I can’t buy them myself. That’s all gonna change.”
“Well,” Buckley said, “whatever’s happening tonight, I wish you luck.”
“Don’t need luck; just need to be there at seven o’clock. This is the biggest deal Denver’s ever seen, and nobody even knows about it.”
“Good luck anyway.”
This was the gist of the conversation between Bobby and Buckley, as Buckley told it to Hennessey.
* * *
“So,” Hennessey said, “what’s it mean?”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Looks like a motive anyway.”
“You mean simple robbery?”
“Sure. The guy flashes a wad like that one time too many. There’s plenty of people who’ll kill you for a roll like that… especially out on the street where this guy worked.”
“That might make sense if it had happened the same night,” I said. “But he was going somewhere just to spend that money. He was due there in two hours: all he was doing in Buckley’s was killing time. That’s why he didn’t buy any books there— he didn’t have any money to spend.”
“You mean the big wad was spoken for.”
“To the last dime. In real life, Bobby was still broke.”
“What’s it mean, then?” Hennessey said again.
“Let’s think about it. Where’d he get the clothes, for one thing? I went through his place, you know, and I didn’t see anything that looked like a necktie or a three-piece suit.”
“You were looking for books. I’ve seen you lose track of time when you’re looking at books.”
“Maybe. I’ll go back and look again, but if there’s a coat and tie anywhere in that apartment I’ll eat your shorts.”
“Whether there is or whether there ain’t,” Hennessey said, “the question still remains, what does it mean?”
“It means Bobby had a coat and tie for one night only. It means he either borrowed or rented it. It doesn’t sound like a rental—not formal enough. Buckley didn’t say he showed up in a tux, did he?”
Hennessey gave a little laugh. “Suit and tie is what he said.”
“I think we’d better ask Buckley how well the clothes fit. I think he borrowed that coat and tie, from someone who was just about his size.”
“Could be anybody,” Hennessey said. “He was pretty average.”
“It didn’t have to be a perfect fit for one night. My guess is he got the coat and tie from the same guy who gave him the money. And I think he was as broke as ever two hours after Buckley saw him. Three days later he was in Goddard’s store trying to sell something. Lambert says he didn’t have anything with him, but maybe it was something small. The fact was, he didn’t have that money anymore. He had given that to someone on Tuesday night, and they didn’t have to kill him for it. I think the fact that he wasn’t killed till Friday night rules out robbery as a motive.”
“It might’ve still been robbery,” Hennessey said. “Maybe not for money. Maybe whoever did it took what Bobby
“That makes it robbery of a different kind, though, doesn’t it? Not your garden-variety thug. The average thug would walk right past fifty thousand dollars’ worth of books to lift twenty bucks from the cash register. This would’ve been somebody with a fairly sophisticated span of knowledge. And a damn cold motive for what he was doing.”
“Well,” Hennessey said, “there are guys like that.”
“There are a lot of guys like that.”
“I’ll tell you how it looks to me. Somebody pays Bobby to do a job. Say he was taking delivery of some literary masterpiece. At this point we don’t know how Bobby got involved—we don’t know why whoever hired him couldn’t‘ve taken delivery himself instead of hiring a bookscout to do it for him. Maybe that part of it isn’t important. The bookscout gets hired, then does a double cross and keeps the merchandise. It takes the client three days to
