on my raincoat and carried my bag, leaving the car parked on the street.
I rode up the elevator to the lobby on the ninth floor. Paid cash for two nights and told them I might be longer. I asked for a quiet room on a high floor, where I could see the city.
The clerk had rooms on fifteen, seventeen, and twenty.
Seventeen would be fine, I said. I was given a key to 1715.
I rode the elevator up and walked along the hall. The door to my old room was open. I walked past and looked in.
Two men were there, going through the wastebas-ket. The big one with the pale olive skin stood up and turned as I came by. I turned as he did, letting him see the back of my tired gray head.
I opened the door and went into my new room. Couldn’t help gloating just a little as my door clicked shut.
Score one for old dad in the game of guts football.
Up yours, supercop.
32
I sat on the bed and called Leith Kenney in Los Angeles. This time I had no trouble getting through to him.
He had had a dozen hours to think about it and decide how he wanted to handle it. He gave me the direct frontal approach, which I liked. We were two bookmen talking the same language, even if only one of us knew it.
If the material was genuine, he wanted it. If there were questions of ownership or provenance, he would still pay top money for possession and would hash out the legality when the thing went to court. This to him was a foregone conclusion. We were talking about a substantial sum of money, and people tend to bicker when money arises. At the same time, Kenney had no doubt where
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “If you’ve got something you even
“That’s pretty good, for a book the bibliographer swears was never made.”
“We know it was made. Mr. Scofield has seen it. He’s held it in his hands. Maybe Allan Huggins wouldn’t be quite so smug if he had done that.”
Before I could ask, he said, “It was a long time ago, and that’s all I want to say about it until I know more about you. You’ve got to appreciate my position, sir. I don’t even know your name. Mr. Scofield may be the only man alive who has actually touched this book, and we don’t want to be put in the position of giving away what we know about it.”
That was fair enough. I didn’t like it, but I had to live with it.
“Remember one thing,” Kenney said. “If you do turn it up, people like Huggins will be all over you. Don’t make any deals on it without giving us a chance to top their bids. We
At last we were down to bedrock. The big question.
“How much money are we really talking about here, Mr. Kenney?”
“Whatever you’d like.”
33
I didn’t move for a while: just sat on the bed listening to my inner voice. It drew my mind back across the hall to the room where Eleanor and I had spent our last few hours together.
Homework’s finished, said the muse. One more phone call, maybe two, and you can hit the street.
In the room across the hall, Eleanor had mailed a letter. Against my better judgment, I had watched her write it and then I had let her send it off.
What was it, who got it, where had it gone?
Questions with no answers, but sometimes the muse will give you a hint. Her nearest and dearest was one obvious call, a risky one I’d rather not make on this telephone. Still the letter had to be chased—if it deadended, at least it would lead up an alley that had to be checked anyway.
And then there was Trish, a source of growing discontent. I seemed to have lost her in the heat of the moment. She faded to black while I scrambled around covering my tracks, and now, suddenly, my need to hear her voice was urgent.
