“What happened to you?”
I had flattened against the wall so I could see both ways. Slater came toward me, shuffling in pain. His leg was stiff and he held his arm in a frozen crook, suspended as if by an invisible sling.
“Pruitt,” he rasped, livid. “Fucking bastard Pruitt.”
I just looked at him, unable to imagine what might have gone down between them. He came closer and I saw what had caused that pufnness in his voice. His dentures were gone—smashed, I guessed, along with the rest of him—and he talked like a toothless old man.
“Goddammit, I’ll rip that fucker’s guts out.”
“What happened?” I said again.
“Bastard son of a bitch sapped me, damn near took my head off. I went down and he did the rest of it with his feet.”
He did it well, I thought.
“He’ll pay, though, he’ll pay for this in ways I haven’t even thought up yet. Even if he doesn’t know it was me, I’ll know, and that’ll be enough.” He took a little step to the side and held on to the wall for support. “And it starts today. I’m gonna tell you something, Janeway, and then it’s your baby. Pruitt will kill you if he has to.”
“He should play the lottery, his odds are better.”
“Don’t you underestimate that fucker, that’s what I’m telling you.”
“I’m reading that. Now why don’t you tell me what he wants.”
“The book, stupid, haven’t you figured that out yet? He’s been after it for years.”
“Tell me something real. Grayson couldn’t make a book worth this much trouble if he used uncut sheets of thousand-dollar bills for endpapers.”
“That’s what you think. Forget what you thought you knew and maybe you’ll learn something. Your little friend in there’s got the answer, and Pruitt’s gonna take her away from you and get it out of her if he’s got to tear out her fingernails.”
“Say something that makes sense. Pruitt had her and you two handed her to me. Now he’s ready to kill me to get her back?”
He started to say something but a click in the hall brought him up short. We both tensed. I gripped the gun under my coat.
The door swung in and Eleanor peeped into the hall.
She didn’t say anything. She was looking past me, at Slater, and he was looking at her. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide with fright.
“Eleanor,” I said, “go back in the room and sit down.”
She backed away and closed the door.
“She knows you,” I said to Slater. “She recognized you just then.”
He tried to move past me. I stepped out and blocked his way.
“What do you want from me, Janeway? I’m doing you a favor here, maybe you should remember that. I didn’t have to tell you anything.”
“You haven’t told me anything yet. Pick up where you left off. Make it make sense.”
“Goddammit, I’m hurting, I need to lie down.”
“Talk to me. Give me the short version, then you can lie down.”
He grimaced and held his side. But I wasn’t going to let him pass until he told me what I wanted to know.
“Me and Pruitt grew up together. Southside Chicago, early fifties. You want my life story?”
“The short version, Slater. We haven’t got all night here, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
They were kids together, birds of a feather. Nobody could stand either of them, I thought, so they hung together.
“He called me for a few favors when I was a cop. We’d have a beer or two whenever he passed through Denver. Four years ago, on one of his trips through, he told me about this book.”
He coughed. “He’d been chasing it for a long time even then. He was trying to track down a woman he was sure had taken it, but he never could find her. He’d run every lead up a blind alley.”
“What’s the big attraction?”
“Pruitt knows where he can sell it. For more money than any of us ever saw.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Then fuck you. Do you want to hear this or not?…I can’t stand up in this hall forever. I’ll tell you this, he convinced the hell out of me. That night I wrote out the stuff he told me on that paper you read, but nothing ever came of it…until last month. Then I get a call from Seattle and it’s Pruitt. It’s all hitting the fan over this book he’s after. There’s a woman named Rigby in the Taos jail and Pruitt thinks she’s got it.”
“Why didn’t he go down himself?”
“Later on he did: he had some Seattle angles to work out first. He thought the girl’s parents might know about it, might even know where she’d hidden it; maybe she’d even mailed it to ‘em. So he sent me to Taos to nose around, see what was what. I’d barely got there when she came up for bail. Pruitt came in the next day.”
“And did what?”
“Made her wish she’d never been born. That was just the beginning of what he had up his sleeve for her. The book’s been like a monkey on his back, I could see it driving him closer to the edge every day. I started thinking he might even kill her for it. But she wouldn’t give it up.”
“Probably because she didn’t have it.”
“But she went back to get it, didn’t she?”
“She went back for something. Weren’t you boys on her tail?”
“You’re not gonna believe this, Janeway. She slipped us.”
I just stared at him.
“She’s cute, all right, a little too cute for her own damn good. The next thing we knew she’d skipped the state. Pruitt went nuclear.”
“This must be when you got the bright idea of dragging me into it.”
“Our time was running out. She could be picked up by the cops anywhere and we’d be up the creek. Pruitt thought she’d head for Seattle: he put out some people he knew to watch her haunts. And it didn’t take long to spot her: she turned up in North Bend a few days later. I didn’t know what to do. I sure didn’t want to let it go. Pruitt had promised me a piece of it, if I helped him reel it in. I’m talking about more money than you’ll believe, so don’t even ask.”
“I thought money didn’t matter to you, Clydell. What about the radio job? What about Denver magazine?“
“All bullshit. I owe more federal income tax than I’ve got coming in. I do a weekend gig on radio, not enough to pay my water bill. The magazine piece’ll be lining birdcages before the ink’s even dry. Business sucks; I’m almost broke. What more do you need to know? And besides all that, I really was afraid of what he’d do to that kid.”
He took a long, painful breath. “So if you’re looking for a good guy in this, it’s probably me. That same night I told Pruitt about you. I thought I could tempt you with the bail money, it was easy to get the papers from the bondsman; hell, he doesn’t care who brings her in. But the bail was just bait. I knew you’d never bust Rigby for that bail money, not once you had that book in your mind.”
He touched his face. “I really thought you might get the book from her. You might have, too, if the cops hadn’t busted her and messed everything up. I sold you to Pruitt as a bookhunter. He didn’t like it but I talked hard and late that night he decided to try it.”
“And that’s what finally got your face kicked in. Pruitt didn’t like the way it turned out.”
“I had to try something. She knows us both on sight, and Pruitt’s her worst nightmare. She’s right to be scared of him: he’s over the edge now. He’s your problem, you and that poor kid in there. Me, I’m out of it, I’ve had enough. I’m goin‘ back to Denver.”
He pushed his way past. Stopped at his door; looked back at me. “I’ll give you two free pieces of advice. Pruitt didn’t get to be called the invisible man for nothing. He can fade into a crowd and you can’t see him even when you know he’s there. He’s great with makeup—wigs, beards, glasses—he can make himself over while you’re scratching your ass wonder-ing where he went. And he’s always got people around him, scumbags who owe him favors. One of’em’s a fat man, but there may be others. Don’t trust anybody. Don’t let ‘em get close and sucker punch you.”