The bookstore where Dworkin worked was called Eldritch Tomes and was only a few blocks away. Ashna had not been successful in finding his work schedule. She said the bookstore didn’t appear to even have an internet connection. The owner probably wrote the schedule out by hand and tacked it to a bulletin board in the stock room. I would have to stake the shop out if I wanted to nail down Dworkin.
I walked slowly down Chestnut Street, sauntering in the heat, until I reached the old city with its eighteenth century row houses and historic buildings. Eldritch Tomes occupied the bottom floor of a narrow, two-story building on a cobbled street just wide enough for two cars to pass in opposite directions. Brick sidewalks rose in waves like ribbons around the roots of big old zelkova and ginkgo trees. I paused for a moment, scoping out the neighborhood. A four story tenement squatted atop a coffee shop across the street from the bookshop. They had a chalkboard sign advertising sandwiches and smoothies and a few tables out on the sidewalk. I was hungry so I decided to sit, eat lunch, and watch the store for a while.
I had just found a table outside and set my iced coffee and plate down on it when I heard a tinkling of bells and glanced across the street to see the door of the bookstore open and a man emerge. I knew immediately that he was Dworkin. Ashna had shown me his social media profile photo. A tall and paunchy guy, with big, heavy limbs, sloping shoulders and curly, sandy-blond hair cut short, he walked with a kind of side to side amble. He wore all black despite the heat—a long sleeved button up and jeans, a wide belt with two rows of silver grommets, black combat boots with the cuffs of his jeans tucked in. He looked like an aging punk whose heyday was in the nineties. I watched him lumber across the street and enter the café. Through the open patio doors that let out onto the sidewalk seating I saw him order, wait for his food, then collect it. He walked back across the street carrying his lunch in a brown paper sack. The underarms and back of his shirt were soaked with sweat. The front door of the shop banged shut behind him.
I left the second half of my desultory sandwich and crossed to the bookstore. From the outside, it looked ragged around the edges. The sign—perhaps painted sometime in the nineteen-seventies—was faded and dirty. I couldn’t see much through the one large window but vague piles of books stacked on a counter. Inside it was dim, oppressively warm, and filled with the musty, mildew odor of old pages and leather bindings. Eldritch tomes indeed. A wooden counter supported what looked like a hundred year old cash register made of tarnished brass and ebony. Dworkin sat behind it, eating his lunch and drinking a sweating can of soda. Another worker lurked behind the counter too—a shorter guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts. They both had open books and barely glanced up when I entered. A small boom box on the counter played The Pixies at low volume while a slow fly orbited the geographic center of the shop in senseless circles. I wandered toward the back and began to browse, taking random books from the shelves and pretending to peruse them. They had sections for science fiction, fantasy, occult, some classic literature, and rare books in glass cases near the front. After a couple of minutes Hawaiian shirt guy raised his head.
“Les. Did you decide whether or not you’re going to the Boston book fair? Klein wants to know.”
Dworkin raised his head and focused his eyes on his co-worker. “Yes. I’m going,” he answered in a deep voice. “Of course I’m going. I’m the buyer.”
“I know you’re the buyer. I was just asking.”
“You don’t know any of the vendors. I’ve been dealing with them for years. They respect my knowledge.”
“Fine. I was just asking.”
They both went back to reading their books. I didn’t want to try to speak with Dworkin in front of the other guy so I put down the volume I was pretending to read and slipped out the front door. Hawaiian shirt looked up as I left, an expression of mild surprise pinching his eyebrows as if he had completely forgotten that I was in the store.
Outside, I wandered down to the end of the block where there was a sports bar on one corner and a mini-mart on the other. It was almost one PM. Eldritch Tomes closed at six. My guess was that one of the workers opened the shop and one closed it, overlapping shifts in the middle. That meant one of them would probably leave around three PM. I didn’t know which one so I would have to be watching. I wanted to approach Dworkin when he was alone. So, I needed to either wait until Hawaiian shirt guy left or, if Dworkin left first, be there so I could follow him.
Instead of waiting around until three, I walked back to my hotel for a quick shower, and a change of clothes. It was just after two-thirty when I got back. I strolled slowly past the book shop and glanced in the window. Dworkin and Hawaiian shirt were both still at the counter, reading. I bought another iced coffee and sat down again outside the café. At
