I peered through the window. “The black one?”
Courtney nodded.
“Well, thank you for your time . . . We’ll be in touch,” I said as I slipped out the door. I left Stephanie with her perpetual sneer in place, and Courtney’s doe-eyes imploring me to use all of my resources to find her friend.
And I would. Not just for their sakes, or Victoria’s, but for Johnny’s, Bud’s, and Mina’s.
Where you going, doll? said Jack as I began walking toward my car.
“I’m leaving,” I replied.
Oh, no you’re not. You haven’t given the place the up-and-down.
“The what?”
You haven’t cased the joint, baby.
“Cased the joint? You’ve got to be kidding. The police already searched the area.”
Jack laughed.
“Why are you laughing? What do you expect me to find?”
That’s easy, doll. You’ll find what they didn’t.
CHAPTER 15
Guesswork
Some time ago I read in a New York paper that fifty or sixty college graduates had been appointed to the metropolitan police force. . . . The news astonished me, for in my reportorial days, there was simply no such thing in America as a book-learned cop. . . .
—H. L. Mencken, 1942
I FOUND THE vending area easily enough. A short stroll past a dozen motel room doors took me to a recessed area under a wide orange-and-white striped awning that reminded me of the sherbet swirl bars Seymour sold out of his ice cream truck. I heard a humming before I turned the corner—but I rounded it so quickly, I walked right into seven feet of metal.
“Dammit!”
Whoa, baby, are you all right? What is that thing you just head-butted? asked Jack in my head.
“An ice machine.”
Excuse me?
“You’ve never heard of an ice machine? You just press the handle and freshly made ice comes tumbling out of a chute.”
The hell you say? I know a few bartenders would have loved that in their joints.
Next to the ice machine was a soft drink dispenser. “Five varieties,” I murmured, “Coke, diet Coke, iced tea, apple juice, and bottled water.”
Jack made a sigh of disgust. Bottled water, he muttered.
“Not again, Jack.” We’d had this discussion more times than I could count.
Really, baby, how much are they charging this time to resell you what’s free at every public drinking fountain?
“Let’s see . . . a dollar twenty-five.”
The biggest grift of your time yet.
Ignoring Jack, I continued to glance around. No food dispenser, no change machine, just a sign warning that the vending area was only for use by guests of the Comfy-Time Motel.
There wasn’t much to see beyond that. Smooth concrete floor mostly covered by a thick rubber mat so the customers didn’t call any slip-and-fall lawyers. There were also blobs of half-melted ice on the ground.
“The ice must come tumbling out so fast it sometimes misses the bucket,” I guessed.
Well, don’t you miss the bucket. You’ve got plenty of swift, so start casing the area.
“There’s nothing to case, but whatever you say,” I muttered, then bent low, trying to avoid contact with the melting ice on the rubber matting as I searched under the equipment for . . . what? I didn’t know.
A grill blocked any object larger than a dust mote from tumbling under the ice machine, but the soda dispenser was jacked up on three-inch legs. I saw dirt, gum wrappers, and bottle caps underneath. Far, far in the back, almost to the wall, a quarter twinkled. From its silvery gleam amid the filth, I deduced it had rolled there recently.
I rose and crossed the sidewalk. There was a three-inch drop from the paved concrete to a narrow swath of earth. On the ground I saw an outline of what looked to me like Eddie Franzetti’s size-twelve boot .
“If there was anything to be found here, Officer Franzetti found it,” I told Jack.
Don’t count on it. Buttons like him are aces when it comes to getting cats out of trees or grifting speeders, but as a rule, small-town copper’s don’t get enough action to stay sharp where the detection racket goes.
“But there’s nothing here, Jack. Absolutely nothing.”
After a long silence, Jack spoke.
Have you forgotten my advice, back when you needed a wise head?
I was hot, and not a little exasperated when I snapped back. “You make a lot of suggestions, Jack. Which one are you talking about?”
The one that netted you that goose who was wrecking your inventory list.
“I remember.”
A few months before, I was convinced our bookstore was being ripped off by a persistent and selective shoplifter. At that time, titles I should have had on hand kept disappearing, even though their ISBNs never turned up on daily sales summaries. Once in a while a missing book would magically reappear.
Think like a derrick, doll-face, Jack had advised. Ask yourself what kind of mug would snatch-and-grab, and why. Then put yourself into the grifter’s head.
As things turned out, Jack’s advice was sound. By thinking like the “grifter” I tried to figure out what logic there was behind stealing a book, then returning it—thereby risking getting caught twice. Finally it occurred to me that I might not be getting robbed at all. Instead, I began to suspect that some financially strapped reader was hiding a particular title among the stacks until he or she could return to the store and finish reading it. When they were done, they replaced the title right where it belonged—which explained why the title would reappear as mysteriously as it had vanished.
A close review of the shelves one evening revealed the guilty party’s hiding place: I’d discovered a new John Grisham hardcover tucked between the Yankee cookbooks, of which I kept a small collection, right next to the regional travel books I stocked for tourists passing through the area. Inside the book, the page was marked with a folded scrap of paper.
I placed the book back—with a small note written on the paper, telling the reader that he or she was causing me to worry about inventory and I would consider a solution to his or her book-buying difficulties if he or she would just step forward and identify him or herself.
A few days later, a widow from Pendleton Street approached me with red cheeks. “I got your note, dear. I’m terribly sorry if I caused you any difficulties.”
Eighty-two-year-old Ellie Brewster quietly admitted she was reading our hot new bestsellers a little at a time, in our Shaker rockers, without buying them or removing them from the premises.
I quickly assured her that she had every right in the world to do that, considering the way we’d set up the store. But I’d much rather give her a chance to take the book home with her. Since she was on a fixed income, and our public library always had an endless waiting list for only two or three copies, we struck a bargain. She would buy the book, take it home with her, and bring it back whenever she liked, and I would buy it back from her when she was finished with it. If it was in good enough condition, I would pay her almost the entire cover price—if not, I’d pay her at least half. Then I’d resell the book as gently used.
We shook, and our problem—mine and hers—was solved that afternoon. Not only that, she came the following week with a proposal on setting up a revolving lending library at the Peddleton Street Assisted Community Living Home, where she now lived. After speaking with the management there, we came up with a financial plan that wouldn’t break their budget, but would still allow the elderly, especially those who couldn’t easily leave the premises, a chance to read the hot new books.