Bookman's wake

stud to her left was already hitting on her. In happier times she might’ve been thrilled, but now she just looked tired and bored. The bartender drifted down and asked if I wanted another brew. I said I was okay, I’d send up a flare when the need became great. At the front table the Seahawks flap was still raging, a real-life commercial for Miller Lite. Across the way, Mr. America said something and gestured to her drink. She shook her head and tried to go on with her life, but he remained doggedly in her face. She swished her ice and sipped the watery remains while her hero worked his way through the first twelve chapters of his life story. He was one of those loud farts, the kind you can’t insult: he probably couldn’t be killed, except with a silver bullet. He was halfway to his first million and nobody to share it with. I couldn’t imagine any interesting woman falling for that line, but interesting probably wasn’t what he was after. The guy was a moron, either that or I was. I didn’t have time to dwell on it because just then Eleanor Rigby got up and left him flat, halfway between the big deal he had just pulled off and all the bigger ones coming down the pike.

I liked her for that. In a way it was a shame I was going to have to bust her. I left two bills on the bar and followed her down the hall to the Johns. She disappeared into the ladies‘. I checked to make sure there was no other way out, then I drifted back into the bar and took up a position where I couldn’t miss her. I was standing near the only window, which looked out into the street. Heavy black drapes were closed over it, but I parted them slightly so I could see out. I was staring at her car, my hand suspended between the curtains. Someone was sitting behind the wheel. I saw a light, very faint: he was looking for something, rummaging through the glove compartment. He put on his hat and got out in the rain. Pruitt. He stood for a moment, oblivious to the rain that had bothered him so much before. He gave her door a vicious kick, leaving a dent six inches across. I saw the snap of a blade, a wicked stiletto, and he bent over and poked a hole in her tire. Then he walked away and I watched the car go flat.

Just then she came out of the hallway. She walked past, so close I could’ve touched her. I let her go, following her out through the narrow foyer. By the time I got to the door she had run to her car. I stood watching her through the tiny pane of glass. Yes, she had seen the flat tire: she was sitting in her car doing nothing. I could imagine her disgust. Time for Loch-invar to appear, as if by magic: a knight with a bouquet in one hand and a set of shackles in the other. Bust her now, I thought, walking out into the rain: bust her, Janeway, don’t be an idiot. But there was Poe, grim and pasty-faced, lurking in the dark places under the viaduct.

I stopped at the curb and pointed to her tire. She cracked the window ever so slightly.

“You got a flat.”

“No kidding.”

“Hey,” I said in my kindest, gentlest voice. “I can’t get any wetter than this. Gimme your keys, I’ll get out your jack and change it for you.”

5

She sat in the car while I changed her tire. I jiggled her up, took off her lugs, and hummed a few bars of “Singin‘ in the Rain.” Her spare tire was like the others: it had been badly used in at least three wars, the alleged tread frequently disappearing into snarls of frayed steel. I hauled it out of the trunk and put it gently on the curb. The street was as deserted as a scene from some midfifties end-of-the-world flick, but it fooled me not. Pruitt, I thought, was still out there somewhere, I just couldn’t see him. If this were Singiri in the Rain , he’d come on down and we’d do a little soft-shoe routine. I’d be Gene Kelly and we’d get Eleanor Rigby out of the car to play Debbie Reynolds. Pruitt would be Donald O’Connor, tap-dancing his way up the side of the viaduct and out onto the highway, where he’d get flattened by a semi. Suddenly I knew, and I didn’t know how, that there was a joker in the deck: Slater hadn’t hired me for my good looks after all. A far greater purpose was hidden under the surface: what had been presented as an interesting side dish was in fact the main course, and the big question was why the camouflage ? I was told to play lead in Singin’ in the Rain , and now, well into the opening number, I learned it was really West Side Story we were doing. In a minute Pruitt would come down and we’d do one of those crazy numbers where the good guys sing and dance with the hoods, just before they all yank out their zip guns and start zipping each other into hoodlum heaven. I scanned the street again, searching for some sign of life, but even Poe had disappeared into the murky shadows from whence he’d come.

I tossed Rigby’s flat tire into her trunk and contemplated the spare. I resisted the inclination to laugh, but it was a close call: she must’ve searched the world to’ve found five tires that bad. I’ll take your four worst tires and save the best of my old ones for a spare . You gotta be kidding, lady, there ain’t no best one. Oh. Then throw away the three worst and give me whatever’s left . You know the routine, Jack Nicholson did it in a restaurant in Five Easy Pieces : four over well, cooked to a frazzle, and hold the tread. Pruitt didn’t need a knife, a hairpin would’ve done it for him. I hummed “I Feel Pretty” in a grotesque falsetto as I fitted the tire onto the wheel, but it didn’t seem to brighten the moment. Crunch time was coming, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do. It was that goddamned Poe, the wily little bastard: he had cast his lot with Slater and was waxing me good. That one line about Baudelaire in the Huggins bibliography had been the hook, and I was too much the bookman to shake it free.

Was it possible that Darryl Grayson had been working on a two-book set, Poe and Baudelaire, English and French, at the time of his death, and that one copy of the Poe had been completed and had survived? If you read “Dear Abby” faithfully, as I do, you know that anything is possible. What would such a book be worth, quote-unquote, in today’s marketplace?…A unique piece with a direct link to the deaths of two famous bookmen, snatched from the blaze just as the burning roof caved in. Was it truly the best and the brightest that Darryl Grayson could make? If so, it was worth a fair piece of change. Ten thousand, I thought, Slater even had that right: it was worth just about ten grand on the high end. But with one-of-a-kind pieces, you never know. I could envision an auction with all the half-mad Grayson freaks in attendance. If two or three of them had deep pockets, there was no telling how high such a book might go.

I tightened the last of the lugs with my fingers. Not much time left now, and it wasn’t going to end with the whole company out in the street singing “Maria.” I needed some quick inspiration and got it—the thin point of my filing- cabinet key shoved into her air valve brought the spare hissing down flat. She didn’t hear a thing: the rain was drumming on her roof and her window was up. I got up and walked around the car, looking at her through the glass. She cracked the window and gave me a hopeful smile.

“The news is not good. Your spare’s flat too.

”She didn’t say anything: just took a deep breath and stared at her knuckles as she gripped the wheel. I fished for a legitimate opening, any bit of business that might make her trust a half-drowned stranger on a dark and rainy night. “I could call you a cab,” I said, and my luck was holding—she shook her head and said, “I don’t have enough money left for a cab.” That was a cue, but I didn’t leap at it like a sex-starved schoolboy, I let it play out in a long moment of silence. “I could loan you the money,” I said cheerfully, and I thought I saw her doubts begin to vanish in the rain. “Hey, you can mail it back to me when you’re flush again.” She gave a dry little laugh and said, “That’ll probably be never.” I shrugged and said, “You’re on a bad roll, that’s all Look, I don’t want you to get any wrong ideas, but I’ve got a car right across the street. I could drive you home…as long as you don’t live in Portland or