In the morning we had a quiet breakfast in the cafe. Lee had already called Erin and they had discussed air passage. “We can get a flight to Atlanta at seven o’clock tonight. It’ll be tight, but we should just make the connecting flight to Denver. Lee wants me to put all three fares on my credit card and he’ll reimburse me.”
“No,” I said. “You cover your own, I’ll take care of Koko and me.”
She insisted. “Cliff, he wants to do this.”
“Well, he can’t.”
We went into Charlotte and found Orrin Wilcox. Libby had been painfully accurate in her description of the ghoulish old bookscout and the incredible clutter of his store. He gave the impression of a guy who didn’t give much of a damn about anything, but he responded eagerly enough to the sight of my money.
“I believe you quoted Mrs. Robinson a thousand dollars,” I said.
“She should’ve taken it then. It’s fifteen hundred now. I got overhead, y’know.”
“Two prints,” I said.
“Two-fifty for the second print. Plus lab expenses.”
We went to a studio not far from his store. I wanted my continuity unbroken; I needed to keep that glass plate in my sight and see the prints being made. The photographer liked the color of my money and I stood at his side in the darkroom and watched Burton and Charlie come to life in the soup. Slowly Burton materialized…first the vague shape of him, then the street and a tree and some kids beyond them. Burton’s scars appeared suddenly like two cuts slashed on the paper. Then came the hat, then the eyes…and there was Charlie beside him, the man I had never seen but had always imagined looking just about like that. The contrasts were stark, the clarity superb. They stood on the street enjoying a day long vanished but now immortalized, the affection between them almost palpable. Burton had a look of amused tolerance, Charlie one of happy friendship. Two black children stood near the palmetto tree on the walk, gawking at the photographer and his strange apparatus, and half a block away a dog was crossing the street. In the distance a horse was pulling a wagon toward us, and people were coming and going, in and out of the Exchange Building. I saw all this but my eyes kept coming back to Burton. His face was as clear as if it had been photographed only yesterday. And in his hand, draped over Charlie’s shoulder, was the notebook I had just been reading.
I put one of the prints in an envelope and addressed it to Libby Robinson at Fort Sumter. A few hours later we dropped off our rental car, I paid the extra tariff, and we caught a plane for Atlanta, hoping to get on a 9:38 flight to Denver.
Denver
CHAPTER 40
The plane was crowded and we felt lucky to squeeze in from standby. Our seating was scattered: I sat three rows behind Erin, mashed against the window by a bad-tempered fat woman who sprawled across all three seats, and Koko was out of sight, somewhere near the front. Once we were in the air Erin spent ten minutes on the airline telephone, talking to Lee again, I learned later. “He wants to see us all tonight if you’re up to it,” she said as we worked our way through the crowded Denver terminal. “It’s nothing urgent, so please don’t think of it as a command performance. He just wants to say thanks and offer us a drink. And maybe convince you to let him pay for the trip.”
“A drink would be good,” I said.
A bumpy three-hour flight had put us into Stapleton Airport at half-past eleven, Mountain Time. We caught a cab and arrived in Park Hill just after midnight. I looked at familiar houses drifting past and at shady familiar streets, and somehow they all seemed different. I rolled down the window and tasted the dry air. Home: it felt like a long time since I’d been here.
I paid the cabbie over Erin’s objections and we walked up the path to the judge’s front door. I could see his silhouette in the doorway. He opened the door as the night-light came on, illuminating the front yard, and he met us at the top step of his porch.
“God, it’s good to see you people.” He hugged Erin and gripped my hand fiercely. I introduced him to Koko and we were shuffled into his library, taking soft chairs in the friendly environment of great books. He moved to the bar and asked our pleasure. Erin took something sweet, Koko asked for water, and I had bourbon on the rocks.
“Miranda’s sorry she had to miss you,” Lee said. “We had an old friend here late last night and she was dead tired. Our timing was lousy but it had been planned for weeks. No rest for me these days: I’m still mired in a case that’s testing all my patience, and I think—I hope—she’ll be happy to have me back again when it’s over. Then we can all get together.”
Erin took Burton’s journal out of her bag and gave it to him.
“Well, you did it,” he said. “I can’t imagine how you persuaded him.”
“It wasn’t us,” I said. “Dante beat him up pretty badly. Didn’t Erin tell you?”
“Yes, of course. I still find it all hard to believe.”
We socialized for a while. Lee and I talked books, while Erin showed Koko the library.
“You’re a good detective, Cliff. I always knew that.”
“I was pretty good,” I said with my usual modesty. “I had good juice, a good feel for the work. Maybe I still have. Maybe I haven’t left it all between the bookshelves.”
“I’m not sure what that means exactly, but if it’s a requirement for—”
“It means you get a hunch. You keep after it even when the facts you’ve gathered won’t quite support your hunch. Even when you don’t like what you’re finding.”
