She made a “too bad” motion with her eyes. “Then I guess we’ve got nothing more to say to each other.”
He fished for his cigarettes but I pointed to a no smoking sign just above his head. “That stuff’ll kill you, Dean. Stinks up your books too. I had a guy bring in Hemingway’s signed limited one time and I couldn’t even buy it. He was a chain-smoker and you could smell his book clear across the room.”
“Yeah, yeah, spare me the fucking lecture. And you.” He nodded at Erin. “Why don’t you try saying what you’ve got to say in plain English?”
“Your friend Archer has a hot book. We have good reason to believe you’re mixed up in it. Is that plain enough for you?”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“With what? I thought you didn’t know what we were talking about.”
“I had nothing to do with any theft that either did occur or might have occurred.”
“I’ve had enough of this bird,” I said. “Let’s stick a fork in him.”
“Just calm down,” Erin said. “Give the man a chance. If I can’t persuade him to be reasonable, we’ll see him in court.”
“What court?” Dean said.
“That’s a question of jurisdiction, isn’t it? Depends on where a theft occurred and where the hot goods are disposed. Doesn’t matter to me, I’ll go after you wherever I can.”
“Let’s get one thing straight. I never did anything illegal.”
“You don’t get anything straight just by saying it. You can tell it to a judge, but I doubt if your word will meet any rules of evidence. No offense, Dean, I know you mean well.”
They all sat quietly. I commented on the rain, the heat, the touristy things: the houses along Rainbow Row, the fact that we had missed Charleston’s fabled azaleas at the peak of their glory. Erin finished her coffee and Koko drank her carrot stuff.
“We’re leaving,” Erin said. “This was your chance and it’s slipping away.”
“I’m not worried,” Dean said. “Archer says the book is his.”
“Archer lies.”
“Well, I believe him. I was never told anything about any theft.”
“That could be a mitigating factor. If you cooperate.”
“Cooperate in what? You’re no goddamn prosecutor; who the hell are you?”
“This is who I am. I represent the injured party. My recommendation in any proceeding will carry some weight, maybe a lot. Are you going to help us or not?”
“Depends on what you want.”
She took out a notebook and a ballpoint pen. “Answer my questions. Then read what I’ve written and sign it; we’ll get a copy made and you get to keep that.”
He didn’t like it. He shook his head and sat coughing.
“Dean?”
“I’ll tell you right now, you won’t like what I’ve got to say. I’ve got nothing that puts Archer in any kind of bad light.”
“Just tell the truth. That’s all I want.”
“Yeah, right. You’re like everybody else. You can’t get along with him so you want to sandbag him.”
A moment later he said, “You’ve got to understand something. Archer’s special. He’s not like you and me. There’s no use talking if you don’t understand that.”
“I do understand it,” Erin said. “I’ve read his books.”
He looked at her for most of a minute. Then he began to talk.
Long before he had moved to South Carolina, Hal Archer had discovered Treadwell’s. As a teenager in the late forties, he had spent time at his parents’ summer home in Baltimore and had bought books from Dean’s father.
Carl and Dean were kids then, working in the store, stocking the shelves, moving stuff, whatever needed doing. One day Archer said something to Dean and that’s how it started. They were about the same age, and whenever he came in they’d pass the time of day. Sometimes Archer would sit on one of the chairs upstairs and tell young Dean Treadwell what a great writer he was going to be.
“Nobody believed in him then, nobody but me. And I had no doubt at all.”
Dean was Archer’s first cold audience. By then Archer had begun to drift away from his few boyhood friends, even the one who later became a judge: “I think he became afraid of Huxley’s judgment; they had been too close, they went back too far, and Huxley was always too kind. What Archer hated most was being patronized, damned by faint praise. Me, I had no reason to care whether his stuff was any good or not. I was the unwashed reader he craved,
