Chaney film.
“What happened to you?”
I had flattened against the wall so I could see both ways. Slater came toward me, shuffling in pain. His leg was stiff and he held his arm in a frozen crook, suspended as if by an invisible sling.
“Pruitt,” he rasped, livid. “Fucking bastard Pruitt.”
I just looked at him, unable to imagine what might have gone down between them. He came closer and I saw what had caused that pufnness in his voice. His dentures were gone—smashed, I guessed, along with the rest of him— and he talked like a toothless old man.
“Goddammit, I’ll rip that fucker’s guts out.”
“What happened?” I said again.
“Bastard son of a bitch sapped me, damn near took my head off. I went down and he did the rest of it with his feet.”
He did it well, I thought.
“He’ll pay, though, he’ll pay for this in ways I haven’t even thought up yet. Even if he doesn’t know it was me, I’ll know, and that’ll be enough.” He took a little step to the side and held on to the wall for support. “And it starts today. I’m gonna tell you something, Janeway, and then it’s your baby. Pruitt will kill you if he has to.”
“He should play the lottery, his odds are better.”
“Don’t you underestimate that fucker, that’s what I’m telling you.”
“I’m reading that. Now why don’t you tell me what he wants.”
“The book, stupid, haven’t you figured that out yet? He’s been after it for years.”
“Tell me something real. Grayson couldn’t make a book worth this much trouble if he used uncut sheets of thousand-dollar bills for endpapers.”
“That’s what you think. Forget what you thought you knew and maybe you’ll learn something. Your little friend in there’s got the answer, and Pruitt’s gonna take her away from you and get it out of her if he’s got to tear out her fingernails.”
“Say something that makes sense. Pruitt had her and you two handed her to me. Now he’s ready to kill me to get her back?”
He started to say something but a click in the hall brought him up short. We both tensed. I gripped the gun under my coat.
The door swung in and Eleanor peeped into the hall.
She didn’t say anything. She was looking past me, at Slater, and he was looking at her. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide with fright.
“Eleanor,” I said, “go back in the room and sit down.”
She backed away and closed the door.
“She knows you,” I said to Slater. “She recognized you just then.”
He tried to move past me. I stepped out and blocked his way.
“What do you want from me, Janeway? I’m doing you a favor here, maybe you should remember that. I didn’t have to tell you anything.”
“You haven’t told me anything yet. Pick up where you left off. Make it make sense.”
“Goddammit, I’m hurting, I need to lie down.”
“Talk to me. Give me the short version, then you can lie down.”
He grimaced and held his side. But I wasn’t going to let him pass until he told me what I wanted to know.
“Me and Pruitt grew up together. Southside Chicago, early fifties. You want my life story?”
“The short version, Slater. We haven’t got all night here, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
They were kids together, birds of a feather. Nobody could stand either of them, I thought, so they hung together.
“He called me for a few favors when I was a cop. We’d have a beer or two whenever he passed through Denver. Four years ago, on one of his trips through, he told me about this book.”
He coughed. “He’d been chasing it for a long time even then. He was trying to track down a woman he was sure had taken it, but he never could find her. He’d run every lead up a blind alley.”
“What’s the big attraction?”
“Pruitt knows where he can sell it. For more money than any of us ever saw.”
