Bookman's wake

I leaned forward and looked in Amy’s face. “Trust me, it’s fine.”

“Let’s move on,” Kenney said. “Let’s assume we’re all dealing in good faith and everybody will be taken care of. Where’s the material?”

“It’s not far from here,” I said. “Before we get into it, though, I need to ask you some questions. I’d like to see that book you bought back in the restaurant.”

Kenney was immediately on guard. “Why?”

“If you humor me, we’ll get through this faster.”

“What you’re asking goes beyond good faith,” Kenney said. “You must know that. You’ve told us a fascinating story but you haven’t shown us anything. I’ve got to protect our interests. You’d do the same thing if you were me.”

I got up and moved around the bed. “Let’s you and me take a little walk.” I looked at Amy and said, “Sit tight, we’ll be right back.”

We went down the row to the room at the end. I opened the door and stood outside while he went in alone. When he came out, ten minutes later, his face was pale.

My first reaction to the Grayson Raven was disappointment. It’s been oversold as a great book , I thought as Kenney unwrapped it and I got my first real look. It was half- leather with silk-covered pictorial boards. Grayson had done the front-board design himself: his initial stood out in gilt in the lower corner. The leather had a still-fresh new look to it, but the fabric was much older and very fine, elegant to the touch. In the dim light of the motel room it gave off an appearance of antiquity. The boards were surprisingly thin: you could take it in your hands and flex it, it had a kind of whiplash suppleness, slender and tough like an old fly rod. The endpapers were marbled: the sheets again had the feel of another century. You don’t buy paper like that at Woolworth’s and you don’t buy books like this on chain-store sale tables. The slipcase was cut from the same material that had been used for the boards: the covering that same old silk. A variation of the book’s design, but simpler, serving only to suggest, was stamped into the front board of the slipcase. My first reaction passed and I felt the book’s deeper excellence setting in. The effect was of something whisked here untouched from another time. Exactly what Grayson intended, I thought.

I opened it carefully while Kenney stood watch. Scofield hadn’t moved from his chair, nor had Amy. I leafed to the title page where the date, 1969 , stood out boldly at the bottom. A plastic bag containing some handwritten notes had been laid in there: I picked it up and moved it aside so I could look at the type without breaking my thought. The pertinent letters looked the same. Later they could be blown up and compared microscopically and linked beyond any doubt, if we had to do that. For my purpose, now, I was convinced.

I flipped to the limitation page in the back of the book. It was a lettered copy, E , and was signed by Grayson.

E was New Orleans. Laura Warner’s book.

“Well,” I said to Scofield. “How do you like your book?”

“I like it fine.”

“Then you’re satisfied with it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” His eyes were steady, but there was something about him…a wavering, a lingering discontent.

“Are you satisfied you got what you paid for?…That’s what I’m asking.”

“It’s the McCoy,” Kenney said. “If it’s not, I’ll take up selling shoes for a living.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to do that, Mr. Kenney,” I said. “But something’s wrong and I can’t help wondering what.”

They didn’t say anything. Kenney moved away to the table and poured himself another drink.

“On the phone you told me something,” I said. “You said Scofield had touched the book and held it in his hands.”

I looked at Scofield. “What I seem to be hearing in all this silence is that this is not the book.”

“It’s not the one I saw,” Scofield said. “I don’t know what this is. It may be some early state or a variant, maybe some experiment that Grayson meant to destroy and never did.”

Kenney sipped his drink. “It’s a little disturbing because we know that Grayson didn’t do lettered books.”

“So the hunt goes on,” I said with a sly grin.

Scofield’s eyes lit up. This was what kept him alive as he headed into his seventh decade. The hunt, the quest, that same hot greed that sent Cortez packing through steamy jungles to plunder the Aztecs.

I fingered the plastic bag.

“That’s just some ephemera we found between the pages,” Kenney said.

I opened the bag and looked at the notes. One was from Laura Warner, an enigma unless you knew how to read it. Pyotr , she had written, don’t you dare scold me for teasing you when you