“A little. I guess being so hungry took my mind off it, or maybe they gave me some kind of dope and it’s getting weaker now. I imagine I’ll be going around like you, with a cane, for a while.”
As soon as I was finished, I was sorry. I could see the hurt in his eyes. He said, “You are wondering whether my own trouble is permanent or temporary. It is permanent.”
“How’d it happen?”
“That doesn’t matter now.”
He was getting set to stand up, so I yelled at him. “Hey, don’t go, I promise not to talk about it anymore. I thought you wouldn’t mind, since I’ve paid dues myself.” All the time I was feeling around inside my head for something that would keep him where he was and not make him mad. “Where do you live?”
He stopped pushing on the handle of his stick. “In South Barton. I own an old farmhouse.”
“A farm, huh? That’s nice.”
“Most of the land has been sold off, but there are still a few acres of woods left. The house was built during the Civil War, and I suppose nine out of ten people who see it think it abandoned.”
I said, “I’d like to come by and take a look, when I’m up and around again. Listen, I’m not keeping you from anything, am I? It’s just that I like your company.”
“You’re afraid of your uncle. That’s very understandable, but I’ll have to go soon.”
Those blue Blue eyes could see right through me; that was scarier, almost, than thinking about Uncle Herbert.
Blue continued, “If it’s of any comfort to you, I think you tend to exaggerate the threat posed by your uncle. As I’ve told you before, psychotics rarely harm anyone except themselves; and from what the judge has passed along to me, it’s been ten years or more since Herbert Hollander posed a problem to the staff at Garden Meadow.”
“Going over the wall isn’t a problem?”
“It certainly doesn’t indicate a propensity for violence.”
“Let’s change the subject. Do you know Megan Lief? Was she hurt? Nobody’ll tell me.”
“I don’t believe so,” Blue said. He reeled off the names of the other casualties. I didn’t recognize any of them.
I said, “I sort of expected that Uncle Dee would come up to see me.”
“I didn’t know you had another uncle.”
“Not a real uncle. Uncle Dee is De Witte Sinclair—do you know him?”
Blue was smiling. “I’ve scouted books for him a few times.”
“Scouted?”
“A book scout is to a rare-book dealer what a jackal is to a tiger. He buys books cheaply and sells them to the dealer for what they’re worth. Then the dealer locates a customer willing to pay a great deal more than they’re worth, and resells them to him. That, at least, is the way we book scouts tell it. Have you considered that if De Witte tried to see you they wouldn’t let him come up? At least, not unless he told the kind of fib I did.”
That made me feel better. “No,” I said, “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe he came after all, huh? But you know, I’ll bet he’s too busy trying to straighten up the book sale—that would be just like him. What do you suppose they’ll do with all those books now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Save them for next year, I guess—if there’s a Fair next year at all. Do you think it was those guys who were bothering Larry?”
Blue shook his head.
“Why not? That Lieutenant Sandoz did. Don’t you think he’s a good cop?”
“Yes,” Blue answered slowly. “Yes, I think he’s a good cop.”
“You’re holding something back.” (Sometimes I’m damned insightful myself.)
Blue said, “Holly, you have to understand that, at least in nine cases out of ten, the police are not actually interested in arresting the guilty party. Under the law, the determination of guilt isn’t even their responsibility. What they want and need is someone who can plausibly be brought before a judge. A good cop—and I agree, I think Sandoz is probably one—still has that urge, sometimes at least, to discover what really happened. But even a good cop cannot help being influenced by his training and pressure exerted by his superiors.”
“So the people who were phoning Larry could just be babies to throw to the wolves? How do you know?”
“You heard me tell Sandoz that I knew him. That was how I came to meet him. A mutual friend suggested I might be able to help him.”
“Who were they? Did he give you their names?”
“I think he knew more than he told me. But I learned that they objected—if that is the word—to something he had done in Vietnam. When Larry applied for a loan to set up his business, they had sent an anonymous letter to one of the officers of the bank, accusing Lief of unspecified crimes against humanity. If their objective was to sour the loan, as I suppose it was, they failed. I would not imagine that an unsigned letter would have much effect on a bank unless its accusations concerned financial malfeasance. The officers are not generally the sort of men who view crimes against humanity with severity. I spent some time trying to locate that letter—it was the only tangible clue in sight—but it had been destroyed. Then this happened.”
“In other words, they got him.” My leg was hurting pretty bad by then, and I was feeling sorry for myself.
“I doubt it. That’s why I didn’t tell my little story to Lieutenant Sandoz.”
