man named Louis L’Amour. Amazing to find two such in a single day, but I take Luck where I find her. These cost me $4 each and were worth around $250.1 razzed Eleanor for not knowing. We headed north and I said, for at least the fifth time, “I thought
It was the damnedest day, full of sorrow and joy and undercut with that sweet slice of tension. I’ll blink and she’ll be gone, I thought at least a dozen times: I’ll turn my head for a second and when I look up, she’ll be two blocks away, running like hell. But I had set my course and the day was waning, and still there had been nothing between us but the most cheerful camaraderie. Out of the blue, in midafter-noon, she said, “I guess it’s a good thing you turned into an asshole when you did: I may’ve been on the verge of falling in love with you and then where would we be?” Coming from nowhere like that, it put me on the floor. It also brought to a critical point a problem I had failed to consider—I had to pee in the worst possible way. I told her to stay put, disappeared into the rest room, and found her still there, working the shelves, when I came hustling out a minute later. I didn’t worry much about her after that.
She took me to a place near the university called Half Price Books. It nestled modestly on a street named Roosevelt Way, a cornucopia of books on two floors. There were no real high spots, but I could’ve spent two hundred on stock, it was that kind of place. I bought only what I couldn’t leave and got out for less than eighty. We were going out the door when Eleanor spied a copy of Trish Aandahl’s book on the Gray-sons. “You oughta buy this,” she said. “It’s a helluva read.”
She was a little curious at how fast I did buy it. I still hadn’t told her about my interest in Grayson and probably wouldn’t now until we were on the airplane and well away from here. “You drive,” I said, throwing her the keys. “I want to fondle my stuff.” But all I did as she wove through the crowded, narrow streets was browse through Aandahl. The jacket was an art deco design, with elegant curlicues and old-style fringe decorations. It was dominated by black-and-white photographs of the Grayson brothers, a little out of focus and solving none of the mystery of the men. The art director had overlapped the pictures and then pulled them apart, leaving parts of each infringed upon the other, the ragged gulf between them suggesting disruption and conflict. The title,
The only negative was that it was a remainder copy, savagely slashed across the top pages with a felt-tip marker. I hated that: it’s a terrible way to remainder books, and Viking is the worst offender in the publishing industry. “Look at this,” I griped. “These bastards must hire morons right off the street with a spray can. I can’t believe they’d do that to a book.”
“It’s just merchandise to them,” she said. “Nobody cares, only freaks like you and me. It is a fine-looking book, except for the remainder mark.”
“I saw a woman once who would’ve been a beauty queen, if you could just forget the fact that somebody had shot her in the face with a .45.”
We were stopped at a red light about a block from the freeway. She was looking at me in a different way now, as if I had suddenly revealed a facet of my character that she had been unable to guess before. “Are you interested in the Graysons? If you are, I know a guy who used to have the best collection of Grayson books in the universe. Maybe he’s still got a few of them. His store’s not far from here.”
“I think we’ve got time for that. Lead on.”
Otto Murdock was an old-time Seattle book dealer who had seen better days. Twenty years of hard drinking had reduced him to this—a shabby-looking storefront in a ramshackle building in a run-down section on the north side. “This man used to be Seattle’s finest,” Eleanor said, “till bad habits did him in. For a long time he was partners with Gregory Morrice. You ever hear of Morrice and Murdock?”
“Should I have?”
“If Seattle ever had an answer to Pepper and Stern, they were it. Only the best of the best, you know what I mean? But they had a falling-out years ago over Otto’s drinking. Morrice does it alone now—he’s got a book showplace down in Pioneer Square, and Otto wound up here. I hear he ekes out a living, but it can’t be much…he wholesales all his good stuff. They call him In-and-Out Murdock now. A good book means nothing but another bottle to him.”
She pulled to the curb at the door of the grimiest bookstore I had seen in a long time. The windows were caked with dirt. Inside, I could see the ghostly outlines of hundreds of books, stacked ends-out against the glass. The lettering on the hand-painted sign had begun to flake, leaving what had once said books now reading boo. The interior was dark and getting darker by the moment. It was a quarter to five, and already night was coming. A block away, a streetlight flicked on.
“He looks closed for the night,” I said.
“He’s still got his open sign out.”
I knew that didn’t mean much, especially with an alcoholic who might not know at any given time what year it was. We sat at the curb and the rain was a steady hum.
“I’ll check him out,” Eleanor said. “No sense both of us getting wet.”
She jumped out and ran to the door. It pushed open at her touch and she waved to me as she went inside. I came along behind her, walking into a veritable cave of books. There were no lights: it was even darker inside than it had looked from the street, and for a moment I couldn’t see Eleanor at all. Then I heard her voice: “Mr. Murdock…Mr.
