Bookman's promise

She turned south off the bridge onto Meeting Street. For a few moments it looked like we might be staying at the same hotel: she kept going that way and I stayed close on her tail. We reached Cal-houn Street just a few car lengths apart and I stopped behind her at a red light on Wentworth.

The light changed. She went on past the Heart of Charleston and across Queen Street to the Mills House, a classy old-world hotel rebuilt in its antebellum excellence, where, according to Koko’s guidebook, Robert E. Lee had stood on the original balcony and watched the city burn.

She handed her keys to a valet and disappeared inside. I parked on the street and hurried up to the door. She was standing in the marbled surroundings just a few feet inside, reading some brochure on a table. From the street I could see no sign of a front desk; just a small room off to my right and a hint of a lobby around the corner to the left. What now? I knew if I let her disappear I might not see her again till I got back to Denver, but how would I confront her? I made the following decisions, all within seconds. I would speak to her now; act as if I had encountered her here by the most incredible chance. She would know better but that didn’t matter; at the moment I was looking only to break the ice and get us going.

This wasn’t great but in another moment she would go upstairs and the opportunity would be lost. I opened the door and followed her around to the desk. The clerk saw me at once: a street person, he’d be thinking, surely not one of ours. His eye went up, looking for the bellboy or the concierge.

“May I help you, sir?”

“I’m just the ghost of Robert E. Lee. Have you seen my horse?”

His scrutiny turned to alarm: not only was I a street person, I was a crazy one. But Erin had also turned at the sound of my voice. Her face showed a flash of surprise, which she bypassed at once. Deadpan, she said, “I saw a horse outside. What’s his name?”

“Traveller. He’s a big ugly stud with an attitude.”

“Can’t help you. The one I saw was a gentle sweetie named Buttermilk.”

“I scorn such horses! That horse belongs to Dale Evans—only lets herself be ridden sidesaddle. Can you imagine what would happen if I rode sidesaddle into Gettysburg?”

“The North would win in one day instead of three.”

She was quick but I knew that. She was also tense: I couldn’t see that on her but I sensed it. She cocked her head and said in a soft voice, barely audible, “Six thousand lives would be saved.”

The voice of the clerk cut across the room. “Do you know this gentleman, Ms. D’Angelo?” he said, and she smiled with a kind of comic disdain. “I’m afraid so. Don’t throw him out yet, let’s hear what he has to say for himself.” She came toward me but stopped after a couple of steps. “What are you doing here, Janeway? What happened to your face?”

“I break out like this once in a while. Where can we find a place to talk?”

“Our lounge is still open for a while yet.” The clerk looked immediately sorry that he had volunteered that but she thanked him and we settled in the lounge. The game began again.

“So what’re you doing here?” I said.

“I asked you first.”

“I needed a change of scenery after you dumped me and told me that fib about going off into the wilderness. I stuck a pin in a map and this is where I came.”

“I didn’t dump you and I didn’t fib. Something else came up.”

“A better offer,” I sniffed. “So you went to the mountains where there isn’t even a honey bucket to pee in, you planned to be gone at least a week, yet somebody managed to track you down and drop a bunch of new work on you.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

I shook my head. “You really need to quit that job.”

“I won’t argue with you about that. But there’s no way Water-ford, Brownwell or God would’ve lured me down after the agonies of Rock Springs. I’m on a mission for a friend.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Can’t talk about it. The friend is also a client.”

“And you don’t talk about a client’s affairs.”

“Especially not to very strange people who wander in off the street. Besides being ethically shaky, it’s not a good idea for practical reasons.”

“Oh, I do understand. I’m here for a client as well, so I can’t talk about it either.”

“You have clients?”

“Sure. You’re not the only one who knows how to pad an expense account.”

“Well, shucks,” she said. “That doesn’t leave us much to talk about.”

In other words, the ball was in my court. I said, “Maybe we can still find some area of mutual interest. Something that violates everybody’s confidence but nobody knows where it came from. How about Richard Burton and his trip through here just before the Civil War?”