Bookman's promise

minute, hon,” and I was put on hold.

I decided to play it by ear: I wouldn’t mention my deception if he didn’t and we’d see what happened. I sat listening to the hum on the line.

I heard the click of the phone on the other end. But the voice that answered wasn’t Dean Treadwell’s. It was a deep voice, and flat: the coldest voice I had ever heard.

“Yes?”

“I’m holding for Dean.”

“Dean’s not here.”

“I’ll call him back.”

“Who is this?” he snapped gruffly.

“Who are you?” I said with a smile in my voice. A quiet few seconds passed. I asked, “Is this Carl?” but he had hung up.

A real friendly boy. So far both Treadwells were living up to their advance billing.

That night I ate with the Ralstons and gave them a report. Denise was elated that I had found Koko so quickly and was hopeful that this might be an early break. “Now what?”

“I’ll fly back there next week, see Koko, rattle the Treadwell cage. See where that gets us.”

She put on her pleading face. “But next week seems so far away.”

“The woman who minds my store will be back then. I’ve got a flight out next Monday.”

We talked for a while longer. Denise had brought out the old woman’s book and she returned it to me now with a grand gesture. “You will note that there are no spots on the cover, I did not leave it out in the rain, or earmark any pages, or write my name inside with crayons, much as I wanted to.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said sheepishly. “I had to make the point.”

“Oh, you made it, Cliff. I’d liked to’ve kept it another day, but Michael was a nervous wreck just having it around the house.”

None of us had any brilliant new ideas and I left around eight. I went to bed early, knowing I had made some progress, even if I still didn’t know what I was progressing toward or how far I might have to go to get there.

CHAPTER 10

Just before noon Ralston came into the store and asked if it would bother me if he sat with some of my modern first editions and looked them over. When the morning trade petered out I joined him at the round table.

“You thinking of becoming a bookscout?”

“I’m thinking of getting a job, man. But between things, I don’t know…this might be fun.”

“Can I help you figure it out?”

“Tell me what this first edition stuff means. I see these are all marked ‘first edition,’ with your pencil mark, but the publishers don’t always say that.”

“Some do, some don’t. Most of ‘em are starting to put the chain of numbers on the copyright pages. But even then there are some pitfalls, and in the old days publishers all marched to their own drummers. Usually they were fairly consistent within their own houses, at least for a few years at a time, but with some it could vary from one book to the next.”

I asked if he wanted a rundown and for the next hour I led him publisher by publisher through the grotto. I showed him the vagaries of Harcourt-Brace and its lettering system, how the words first edition were almost always stated with an accompanying row of letters beginning with a B until 1982, when for some screwball reason they began adding an A. “Some significant books, like The Color Purple, came out during that crossover year,” I said. “It still began with a B, and there was a gap, as if there might have been an A in an earlier printing, only there’d never been one. This is important, because even some bookstore owners don’t know it. They assume, they get careless, and you can pick up a three-hundred-dollar book for six bucks.”

I told him about the usual dependability of Doubleday and Little Brown and Knopf, and how Random House stated “first edition” or “first printing” and had a chain of numbers beginning with 2— except for a few notables like Michener’s Bridges at Toko-Ri and Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun, which had nothing to designate them in any way. We looked at every book in my section and I talked about the eccentricities of each publisher. When we were done he said, “Okay, I think I’ve got it now. I’m goin‘ out and find you some books. Tell me where’s the best places to go.”

I gave him a junk-store itinerary and a warning. “Take it easy, Mike. Remember, there are days when there’s just nothing out there. You can waste a lot of money in this business, and it’ll be a while before you remember all these publishers.”

“Oh, I’ll remember ‘em,” he said with vast confidence.

Five hours later he pulled up to my front door and unloaded two boxes of books. I didn’t expect much for his first try and when I saw Sidney Sheldon and John Jakes on top of the pile, it didn’t look promising. He had bought twenty books. Ten were worthless but eight were decent stock, and two—nice firsts of The Aristos, by John Fowles, and John Irving’s Garp—made the day worthwhile.