“He does it on his own now.”
“What an asshole. Look, Cliff…this isn’t likely to cause Mr. Slater any grief, is it?”
“It might pinch his balls a little.”
“Then I’ll do it. Same ground rules as always. Give me a number, I’ll call you right back.”
Five minutes later Farrell called and, for my ears only, gave me Slater’s home number.
I placed the call.
It was answered by a recording, a woman’s voice. “Hi, this’s Tina. Me’n‘ Clyde are out now. We’ll call ya back.”
I hung up on the beep.
I lingered over breakfast in a downtown cafe. Read the high points in last night’s Times . Looked for her byline but it wasn’t there. Drank my third cup of coffee over the local homicide page.
Went back to the hotel. Took a shower and went upstairs to the lobby. My tickets had arrived. I slipped them into my inside jacket pocket with my court papers and went to the jail to see Eleanor.
It was still early, well before ten. They led her in and we sat with glass between us, talking through a bitch box.
“How’re you doing?” I said.
“Just wonderful.”
“I wanted to see you and say a few things.”
“You don’t have to.”
“What are you now, a mind reader?”
“I know what you’re gonna say, I can see it in your eyes. I know you’re bothered by all this. Don’t be…you don’t owe me a thing.”
“In a cold-blooded dog-eat-dog world, that would be one way to look at it.”
“Well, isn’t that what it is?”
“Only sometimes.”
“I’ll bet this was your big failing as a cop. People can look in your face and see what’s in your heart.”
“Would you believe nobody’s ever said that to me?…Not once. In some circles I’m known as a helluva poker player, impossible to read.”
“Amazing.”
We looked at each other.
“If you’re waiting for absolution, you already have it,” she said. “You were doing a job. You’ve got a strange way of doing it, but I’ve got no kick coming. If it makes you feel better, you’ve got my unqualified permission to deliver me up and get on with your life, forget I ever existed.”
“That’s not going to happen, Eleanor. That’s one promise I’m making you.”
“What can you do, tell me that…what can you do?”
“I don’t know. Did you do the burglary?”
“Yes, I did. So there you are.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Personal reasons.”
“Did you take a gun into the house?”
“Does it matter?”
“Does it matter? Hell, yes, it matters. It can be the difference between a first-time offender asking for probation and a gun moll doing heavy time.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You said something back in the restaurant when we were talking about your stalker. The subject of a gun came up. Do you remember what you said?”
She looked at me through the glass. “I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”
“Did the cops do a gunshot residue test?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“So I’ll ask you again. Did you take a gun into that house?”
“No. Believe it or not.”
“Okay, I believe it. Did you get a gun while you were in the house, maybe from the guy’s gun rack. Was it you that did the shooting?”
“I never shot at anyone. I was the one shot at. I’m lucky to be alive.”
“If we can prove that, you’ve got a fighting chance. You were still wrong to be there. You broke in, they had every right to shoot at you. But almost any judge would wonder why they’d lie about it.”
“I guess they want me to go to jail.”
“For a long time, apparently.” I leaned closer to the glass. “I’d still like to know why you broke in, what you were looking for.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you sometime. But not today; I don’t think I know you well enough to get into the wired-up hell of my life with you. When do we leave?”
“Late tonight. I’ll come for you around seven-thirty.”
“Lots of dead time for you to fill. What’ll you do, hit the bookstores?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s the only part of this that really surprises me. I never had a hint you were a book dealer. You played that card very well.”
I tried to smile at her. “I’d better go.” But something powerful held me there. Then, so quickly that I didn’t know how it happened, I stepped off the straight and narrow for the first time that day. I stepped all the way off and said something that could never be unsaid.
“How’d you like to get out of here?…go with me?…be my guide through the Seattle book jungle?”
She looked like a person half-drowned who had suddenly been brought back to life. “Can you do that?”
“Probably not. The jailer will look at my tickets and wonder what the hell I’m doing taking you out ten hours early. The judge’ll schedule a new hearing, I’ll get drawn and quartered, and you’ll end up riding back to Taos handcuffed to a deputy.”
I shrugged. “We could try.”
She reached out as if to touch my face. Her fingertips flattened against the glass.
“You’ve got to promise to behave.” I felt a sudden desperation, as if I’d taken a long step into the dark. “I’m taking a big chance, Eleanor. It’s my responsibility now. I’ll take the chance because I like you. I owe you one for the big lie. And it just occurs to me that you’d probably rather spend the day in bookstores than chained by your neck to the wall of some crummy jail cell. But you’ve got to behave.”
“Absolutely. Who wouldn’t love a deal like that?”
The jailer gave our tickets a cursory glance. He looked at my papers, read the judge’s order, and at half past ten Eleanor Rigby and I walked out into a drippy Seattle day.
13
It was a day of magic. The two of us were charmed: Seattle was our oyster and every stop coughed up a pearl. She took me to a place called Gregor Books on Southwest California Avenue. The books were crisp and fine and there were lots of high-end goodies. You don’t steal books out of a store like that—the owner is far too savvy ever to get caught sleeping on a live one, but Rita McKinley’s words echoed in my ear. You can double the price on anything if it’s fine enough . Gregor had the finest copy of Smoky I had ever seen. Signed Will James material is becoming scarce, and James had not only signed it but had drawn an original sketch on the half title. Gregor was asking $600, $480 after my dealer’s discount. I took it, figuring I could push it to $800 or more on the sketch and the world’s-best-copy assertion. I figured James was a hotter property in the real West, Colorado, than here in Seattle, and when the day came for me to go in the ground, I could rest just fine if they threw this book in the hole with me. Speaking of dying, Gregor had a dandy copy of If I Die in a Combat Zone , Tim O’Brien’s 1973 novel of the Vietnam War. He had marked it $450, but I was making his day and he bumped my discount to 25 percent for both items. I took it: the O’Brien is so damn scarce that I thought it was overdue for another price jump, and I left the store poorer but happier. Eleanor directed me downtown. We stopped at the Seattle Book Center, a lovely store on Second Avenue with half a dozen rooms on two floors. I bought a Zane Grey Thundering Herd in an immaculate 1919 dust jacket for $160.1 was flying high now. There were books everywhere we looked, and even if the Seattle boys weren’t giving them away, I saw decent margin in almost everything I touched. “This is one of those days, isn’t it?” Eleanor said. “I’ll bet if you went back there and flushed the toilet, books would come pouring out.” We went to a mystery specialist called Spade and Archer. It was in a bank building downtown, in a fifth-floor office that old Sam Spade himself might have occupied in the thirties. The owner was a young blond woman whose credo seemed to be “keep ‘em moving.” She had two of the three Edgar Box mysteries at a hundred apiece, cost to me, and I took them, figuring they’d be good $200 items in the catalog I was planning. As mysteries they’re just fair. But Gore Vidal had written them, hiding behind the Edgar Box moniker when he was starting out in the early fifties, and there’s always somebody for a curiosity like that.