Booked to die

salable Styron. There was an Out of Africa in the same condition, and a great copy of Pynchon’s V.

“God damn it, you’re wholesaling the heart of this goddamn collection,” Neff said.

“There’ll be another collection, but not if we don’t get the sheriff paid. This gentleman is gonna help us get well again.”

“Oh, we’re never gonna get well,” Neff groaned.

“That’s because you guys’ve got too many bad habits,” I said.

“Yeah,” Ruby said, “we like to eat.”

I took the Styron, the Dinesen, the Pynchon. I took the Kings, too, and wrote them a check for $1,000.

“Don’t it feel great to buy good books?” Ruby said.

“Yeah,” I said, and it did.

“So when are you opening your place?” Neff said suddenly.

“Why the hell would I do that? Maybe I’ll stake somebody, just to get my hand in.”

“You want to stake somebody, stake us,” Ruby said. “We are, after all, the most knowledgeable sons of bitches we know. Besides, I know where there’s twenty thousand good books just waiting to be picked up for pin money.”

“What kind of pin money?”

“Twenty-five grand. You might even get ‘em for a buck a book, cash money.”

Twenty thousand dollars was just about all 1 had in savings. Such a coincidence.

“Why don’t you tell me where those books are, Ruby? You know, for old time’s sake.”

Ruby grinned through his beard and waved at me with his most prominent finger.

Neff, from on high, said, “The books are in a very safe place, Mr. Janeway. They’ll be there when we’ve got the means to go get them.”

“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” 1 said. “Who knows when somebody else will come along with twenty grand?”

“Not… very… likely.” Neff peered through his glasses at a cracked hinge he was gluing, then smiled at me without much humor.

“Not where these books are hidden,” Ruby said. “You couldn’t root out these babies if you had the Lost Dutchman himself to lead you there.”

“Must be in Arizona,” I said. “You know… Lost Dutchman… Arizona?”

“Dammit, Ruby, don’t screw around with this,” Neff said. “This man is a detective, for Christ’s sake.”

But Ruby was enjoying the game. “Arizona’s a big state.”

“With not much going on in the empty spaces,” I said. “There can’t be many places to hide twenty thousand books in the Petrified Forest, so we must be talking about… ah, Phoenix.”

Ruby chuckled.

“Tucson,” 1 said, watching his eyes. “Tucson, Phoenix…or Flagstaff.”

“Guess,” Ruby said.

“Tucson.”

Neff sighed with disgust.

“Your eyes moved when I said Tucson,” I said. “Just a little, but it was enough.”

“They’re sittin‘ in a Tucson warehouse where they’ve been the last twenty years. There’s nothing startling in there, just new blood; fresh faces that people in Denver haven’t seen over and over for the past hundred years. Damn good stockers that you’d price in the seven-to-ten-buck range. Biography, his-tory, some scholarly religion, some anthropology. I’ve known about ’em since the day they were put in there and never had the money to do anything about it. If you can spring those books, Dr. J, more power to you.”

“I think I’ll quit this business and take up something easy, like rolling queers in the park,” Neff said.

“Em, it just don’t make any difference. You see us ever having twenty grand? Why shouldn’t somebody make use of those books, and why shouldn’t it be a good guy we both like? I hate to see good books sit. And I think Dr. J would treat us right. Hell, I know an honest cop when I see one.”

Neff’s mind was shifting to that place where Ruby’s had already gone. “I suppose we could release any claim we’d have on first dibs,” he said, “for a finder’s fee.”

“What would you want?” I asked. “Assuming I’d be interested and the books could be sprung.”

“Oh, I think a thousand dollars would be fair.”