“Thinking about what?”
“Her.”
He looked at me with sad eyes that had aged immeasurably since the last time I had seen him. He said, “I know what you think, Janeway, but you’re wrong. She was a kid. I knew that. But there was something about her that got me down deep. I couldn’t shake her. You know what that feels like?”
I thought of Rita McKinley, but I didn’t say anything.
“I knew it was all wrong… man my age, screwing around with a girl her age. But what can you do? When they get you they get you. So I ate a cheap supper and walked around killing time, just thinking about it. Then I came back here. Unloaded my stuff. Worked here till ten o’clock. Went home.”
“You didn’t see anything?”
“What was to see by then?”
Clyde Fix, as usual, was no help. He had not seen Peter in months. He didn’t like the son of a bitch. Peter wasn’t welcome in his store. I asked Fix if he’d seen anyone resembling the man Emery Neff had described. He hadn’t seen anyone and wouldn’t tell me if he had. I wasn’t a cop anymore: he knew that. He didn’t have to tell me anything.
I sat in my store and called Motor Vehicles: told them I was Detective Cameron and needed a rundown on a murder victim. Impersonating a cop is against the law and, strictly speaking, it wasn’t necessary. Motor vehicle records are open to everybody, but being a cop speeds the process. Current driver’s licenses had been issued to two Peter Bonnemas in Denver. One lived in Cherry Hills Village, a posh country club neigh-borhood, the other in a rooming house on the fringe of Five Points. It wasn’t hard to choose: ten minutes later I pulled up at a rambling old brick tenement near 22nd and Arapahoe. I took a small pouch of tools out of my trunk, slipped it into my coat, and went inside. It wasn’t the Brown Palace: there was no security door and some of the mailboxes in the stale- smelling foyer looked like they had never borne a name. Peter’s name had been scrawled in pencil on a small white card and Scotchtaped to the mailbox for apartment 310. There was a letter inside. I took out my pouch and got a tool and picked open the box. It was really no lock at all, just a simple latch. I lifted the slim envelope out and closed the mailbox. It was handwritten and postmarked Portland, Oregon. The return address said “Mrs. Peter Bonnema, 12335 SW 123rd, Portland.” I took it without a second thought, slipped it into my coat, and went upstairs.
The lock on Peter’s door was almost as simple as the one on the mailbox. It’s a real wonder more of these guys don’t get murdered, I thought as I went in. I let out a long breath. Bobby Westfall’s so-called apartment had been a cradle of luxury compared with this. There was a dank smell about it, like curdled milk. The bed was a rollaway, layered with old dirt that had worn itself slick: there was no sign that the bed had ever worn a sheet. I saw empty cans on the floor, rat droppings in the corner, and everywhere, of course, the inevitable books. There were two small rooms and a toilet, and books were piled in every crack and corner. There were books on the sills of both windows and piled high in the middle of the floor. I knew I had little time; Cameron and Hennessey would be here before the day was done. I pulled on a pair of gloves and went to work. I handled the books carefully, so as not to destroy any prints, and it was the same as before— almost one hundred percent junk. It was so much like Westfall that I wasn’t surprised when I found, pushed away in the back of a closet, a two-foot stack of good books.
Very good books.
It was about the equivalent of the stack I had found at Bobby’s: great titles, all modern lit, first editions, perfect condition, a healthy mix of mainstream and genre. I didn’t bother making a list this time—I knew at once that when I walked out, these were going with me. I looked at the mysteries and actually felt my mouth water, like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Early Rex Stout… Ross Macdonald… Cornell Woolrich in his real name and both pseudonyms: a nice little stack adding up to at least four grand retail. I didn’t know yet how to assess it, didn’t know what to do with it, but I wasn’t leaving it here. Rats eat books, you know.
There was nothing else of any possible value: I was finished here as a bookman and now I went through the place with the eyes of a cop. The main room was depressingly bare, a bleak testament to the way some people live today. There was no desk where papers might be stored, no cabinet, no table with drawers. There were some trinkets, some Indian turquoise, probably mid-twenties Navajo that Peter had scouted at a flea market. I pushed it aside and left it there. Under the bed I found a bundle of letters held together by a rubber band. They looked like the same cheap stationery as the one from the mailbox. I thumbed through them and noticed the obvious common denominators. All were signed “Mumsy.” Each began with the same line: “Your big box of books arrived today.” There had been one letter every two weeks for the last three months. Mumsy was a lean, sparse writer: she got right to the point and didn’t linger over flowery sunsets. There was no return address inside because Peter would undoubtedly know it. She had put a return address on the envelope in case the letter, for some reason, had to be returned. Mumsy was a practical soul who didn’t write extra words and Peter didn’t save envelopes. I had probably fished the only Mumsy envelope in existence out of the mailbox. It had probably been delivered only this morning.
I didn’t open it till I got home. It was just like all the others. “Your big box of books arrived today and I put it with all the others.” Not much chitchat. “Went over to Dadsy’s grave today… Your friend Junie Sykes is expecting again, this makes six she’s had with five different men. I said at the time and I say again, you are well out of that. You can’t eat your heart out forever… Why don’t you come home?” A sudden image of Peter wafted up, a vision of the bleak and solitary road he had chosen becoming so clear in the half-dark room. A young man then with little verbal ability, crushed by love. Junie Sykes had eaten him alive and sent him on his way, banished to this. Getting by on fifty-cent books and bummed cigarettes, still carrying the faint hope of the Big Score, the $10 million map found in a Salvation Army store for six bucks. In his mind, Peter Bonnema drove home to Portland in a solid gold Cadillac and snatched Junie Sykes from all that. He would come on like Gary Cooper, tall and lean and silent, infinitely ready to forgive. Life was sooooo good, in that dream, and it was only one… god… damn… score… away! Just that moment in time when something wonderful was put out by someone stupid, and he was there. He’d go home vindicated,
I opened the drapes and read again through all the letters. It never varied. Mumsy acknowledged the books, wrote a line or two about Dadsy or Dadsy’s grave or what Dadsy would think of the world today, and slipped in a stinger about Junie Sykes. It was always “your friend Junie Sykes,” slapped on the page like an indictment. Mumsy’s apron strings snaked across the country, dooming her son to the life he led, sealing him in squalor.
