remains, today, the only known copy. An occasional piece might be sent to a childhood friend in Atlanta, a girl he once knew in Hollywood, an old enemy in Reno who, inexplicably, kept it, only to learn later that it was worth real money. These would arrive out of the blue, the North Bend postmark the only hint of a return address. In an apologia, Huggins described the bibliographer’s nightmare of trying to include it all—there was simply no telling how many had been done and completely destroyed, and new scraps were turning up all the time. At least one Grayson collector had assembled more than two hundred unpublished poems and bits of prose, set in type by Richard in his odd moments. There had been talk of getting these writings published, if rights could be determined and the heirs could ever agree. A dual biography had been published three years ago: titled Crossfire with the subtitle The Tragedies and Triumphs of Darryl and Richard Grayson , it had been written by a woman named Trish Aandahl and brought out by the Viking Press. The Graysons died together in a fire that destroyed the printshop on October 14, 1969. Both had been drinking and apparently never knew what happened to them. Aandahl was cited by Huggins as the chief source of information on Grayson’s final project, which had been destroyed in the fire. It had engaged him for years, off and on around other work. Reportedly he had designed two intricate, separate-though-compatible alphabets for the two parts, English and French. Based on a few surviving letters and the recollections of people who knew him, Huggins was able to pinpoint the French volume as Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil .

I remembered that Baudelaire had been one of Poe’s biggest fans in his lifetime. In fact, Baudelaire had translated Poe’s works into French.

4

I flew to Seattle the same afternoon. The job was a piece of cake, Slater said at the airport. The kid had no priors and had offered no resistance to the deputy who arrested her in the woods. No weapon had been found, either in Rigby’s possession or in a search of the vicinity. The shooting was believed to be an act of panic, and Rigby had ditched the gun immediately afterward. At the bond hearing her lip had described her as a sweet kid committed to nonviolence. She was either Mother Teresa or Belle Starr, take your pick. I took my gun along for the ride. I wasn’t about to shoot the kid, but when you’ve been a cop as long as I was, you don’t leave home without it. I cleared it through the airline and tucked it in my bag, which I checked through luggage. I was also carrying a certified copy of the bench warrant and an affidavit describing in detail the Rigby woman’s crime. I read it all through again on a bumpy two-hour flight.

Slater had arranged everything. I had a car waiting and a room at the Hilton downtown. My plan was short and sweet: I would bust the Rigby woman, park her for safekeeping in the Seattle jail, cut a swath through the Seattle bookstores tomorrow, and deliver her to New Mexico tomorrow night. The ghosts of Poe and Baudelaire were my companions, but I shook them off. I was not going to get into that, I promised myself. Poe sat beside me as the plane circled Seattle: the gaunt little son of a bitch just wouldn’t go away. The hell with you, I thought: I’m taking this woman back to New Mexico. Poe gave a crooked little smile and fastened his seat belt, and the plane dropped into the dense cloud cover and rumbled its way downward.

My contact was a guy named Ruel Pruitt. Slater had used him on several cases with Seattle angles and found him to be “a good guy at what he does. He hates the world,” Slater said, “but he’s like the damn invisible man, and there’s nobody better at this cloak-and-dagger shit.” I was to check into my hotel and wait in my room until Pruitt called, then go pick up the girl. After that I was on my own. I had never done any bounty-hunter work, but I knew the routine because I had cooperated with enough of them when I was a Denver cop. Some were okay, highly professional: then there were the goofballs right out of a Chuck Norris movie. All I needed for this job, Slater assured me, was a sturdy pair of handcuffs, and he had given me a set of good ones from the trunk of his car.

I got into Seattle at three-thirty Pacific time. Of course it was raining. Perry Como might think the bluest skies you ever saw were in Seattle, but all I’ve ever seen there is rain. I almost missed the hotel—the Seattle Hilton has its check-in lobby on the ninth floor, and only a garage entrance and elevator at street level. By four-thirty I was settled in my room, on the seventeenth floor with a window into rain-swept Sixth Avenue. At 5:05 the telephone rang. A velvety voice said, “Janeway?” and I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “I’m in a bar near the Kingdome.” He gave me an address and said he’d be outside in a blue Pontiac. He read off his plate number and I got it down the first time. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” he said. “I got no idea how long this little dyke’s gonna sit still.”

Wonderful, I thought, listening to the dead connection—just the kind of charmer I’d expect to find working for Slater. I slipped the cuffs into my jacket pocket and ten minutes later I pulled up behind the Pontiac on First Avenue. The plate matched the number he’d given me, and I could see two people sitting inside. One of them, I thought, was a woman. The bar nestled at the foot of an elevated double-decker viaduct, looking like a cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde. It was triangular, squeezed in where the street slashed through on a kitty-corner layout. The rain was heavy now. I sat waiting for a break, but the rain in Seattle isn’t like the rain in Denver: a guy could grow a long white beard waiting for it to slack off here. At 5:45 by the digital in my car, I decided to run for it. I flicked up my parking lights, got his attention, hopped out, and ran to his car. The doors were locked. Pruitt and his ladyfriend sat smoking, chatting as if I weren’t there. I rapped on the backseat doorglass and Pruitt looked around, annoyed, and pointed to his custom seatcovers. I stood with water running down my nose and looked at them through the glass, said, “Son of a bitch,” and hoped they could read my lips. Eventually he got the message: he leaned over the seat, found an old blanket, and spread it over his seatcovers. By the time he was ready to open the door, I was drenched.

I pushed the blanket roughly out of the way and flopped down on the backseat.

“Hey, cowboy,” Pruitt said, “are you trying to piss me off?”

The woman giggled and we all looked at each other. Pruitt was an ugly pockmarked man. His face had been badly pitted long ago, the way you used to see on smallpox victims, and it gave him a look of rank decay. He smelled of cedarwood aftershave and peppermint, which on him had a faintly sickening effect.

He was in his late forties: his girlfriend was younger, a brassy-looking blonde. But it was Pruitt who commanded the attention. His coat was open so I could see the gun he wore. He was an intimidator, I knew the type well, it had crossed my path often enough when I was a cop in Denver. Give him an inch and he’ll walk all over you. He’ll bully and embarrass you and make life miserable. I never give guys like him an inch, not even when I could see, like now, the eyes of a killer.

“Where the hell did Slater dig you up?” he said.

“He used to date my mother. I hear he found you the same way.”

The blonde gave a small gasp: one didn’t, I was supposed to believe, talk to the man in that tone of voice. Pruitt’s eyes burned holes in my head. “We’ve got a real smart-ass here, Olga. Ten thousand guys in Denver and Slater

Вы читаете Bookman's wake
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату