The Book With No Name (27 page)

‘But what about getting a bodyguard?’

‘I’m goin’ off the idea. It’s too risky, I reckon. Everyone here seems to be chummy with everyone else. I say we lie low. Don’t reckon no one here can be trusted.’

‘Okay. I trust
you,
though, Dante. I’ll always trust you. You say let’s go, then let’s go.’

And they went. Right before the fight between Peto and Rodeo Rex was due to start. The paranoia brought on by all they had heard about the Eye of the Moon was really beginning to take effect. Dante was convinced that just about everyone in the boxing tent was surreptitiously watching them. It felt as though everyone knew what they were carrying on them. In his suspicious state of mind everyone seemed to be looking at Kacy to see what it was that she was wearing around her neck. Even though the Eye was concealed beneath her white T-shirt, both of them felt like it was out on show for everyone to see.

Fortunately, it wasn’t. They had already been warned that there were a number of people who would kill them to get their hands on the stone. On their way out of the boxing tent they passed by one such person, a hooded man who would have killed them in a second if he had laid eyes on it.

The Santa Mondega City Library was, quite simply, enormous, although why such a shit-hole of a place needed, or deserved, such a resource baffled Miles Jensen. For a start it had three floors but, more impressively, each floor was the size of an athletics track. There were aisle upon aisle of books stacked on shelves all the way up to the thirty-foot high ceilings. Each floor had a pleasant reading area set aside from the book stacks, with free coffee available from a group of extremely friendly waitresses who would be over in a flash if any customer should need a refill.

Jensen had given himself his own personal guided tour of the library. It had taken almost an hour, but as a lover of the written word he had found it no great hardship.

If only there were libraries like this everywhere,
he found himself thinking.

Finding an untitled book by an anonymous author was obviously going to be difficult, and the fact that he didn’t even know if it would be in the fiction or non-fiction section wasn’t going to help matters. In some respects, knowing that this Annabel de Frugyn character had already borrowed the book made his job easier. It meant that his only option was to ask at the information desk if they knew what the book was about, rather than go hunting for it himself unaided.

The woman at the reception desk was petite, blonde and in her late twenties. She wore a plain white blouse and an unfashionable pair of thick-rimmed spectacles. Her hair was scraped back tightly into a bun and she wore no makeup, but in Jensen’s opinion she looked like she would scrub up
pretty nicely. The old ‘Why, but … but you’re beautiful, Miss Carstairs’ routine, when the heroine takes of her glasses or lets her hair down, came to mind. Supermodel potential in the right hands, in fact. Maybe she knew this and was trying her best to hide it in order not to attract the wrong sort of attention in so august a place as a library. Maybe it was a library rule that she should hide her good looks, or maybe only Jensen could see how pretty she was. Unfortunately, beauty, as they say, is only skin deep, and this woman gave Jensen a frosty stare as he approached her, suggesting she didn’t welcome his presence.

She was sitting behind a teak-coloured desk in a reception area that looked like a bar, only instead of beer and spirits behind her, there were books and computers.

‘How can I help you, sir?’ she asked wearily, as if it was the thousandth time she had uttered the phrase that day. To be fair, it probably was.

‘I’m looking for a book,’ Jensen answered.

‘Have you tried the butcher on the corner of Dunn Street?’

Oh great. A comedian.

‘Yes. They didn’t have the particular book I was looking for, though, so after asking at a carpet store and a joke shop I decided to try the library.’

The lady (who according to the nameplate in front of her was called Ulrika Price) didn’t take too kindly to Jensen’s return of service. Sarcasm was the only form of attack she had against customers who asked stupid questions, so it galled her to have one respond in an equally irritating manner.

‘What’s the name of the book you’re looking for, sir?’

‘I don’t know, I’m afraid. You see it’s …’

‘Author’s name, please?’

‘Well, that’s just it, you see. It’s listed as being by an anonymous author.’

Ulrika Price raised her left eyebrow. She was clearly not amused, and for a few seconds she waited for Jensen to admit that he was joking and give her a sensible answer. He watched
her expression change from one of resentment at what she considered to be a bad joke, to one of great disappointment and frustration as it dawned on her that he was deadly serious.

‘Oh God,’ she sighed. ‘Is it fiction or non-fiction?’

Jensen smiled and shrugged. Ms Price closed her eyes and slowly put her head in her hands. This woman looked as though she had had a hard day and it was only now reaching its pinnacle.

‘Can you just check on your computer files? I believe a lady called Annabel de Frugyn currently has the book out.’

Ulrika Price looked up and her face lightened just a little.

‘So you’re not a total wiseguy, then?’ she quipped.

‘Not even a little,’ Jensen said, offering a smile that he hoped would be returned. To his surprise the previously agitated Ms Price grudgingly smiled back. Her eyes even betrayed a hint that she might be warming to Jensen’s calm assurance.
This chick’s into me,
he thought.
Could make things a little easier.

The librarian began tapping away on a keyboard positioned out of view beneath the desktop. She typed without looking at her hands, instead fixing her gaze on a monitor on the counter just to her right. Jensen was unable to see what was coming up on screen, but he hoped she would turn the screen around and reveal the results of her search. Alas, she did not. She obviously hadn’t warmed to him quite that much yet.

‘You’re right,’ she said, sounding unsurprised. ‘Annabel de Frugyn does have a book out at the moment, and it has no title on our records and no named author.’

‘Good, that’s what I thought,’ said Jensen. ‘So can you tell me what that book is? What section it would be in, or what category it would come under. Otherwise, is there anyone who works here that would know anything about it?’

‘Yes, sir, I can. But only if you are a member of this library, and I don’t believe you are. I’ve been working here for ten years. I know almost all the customers, and I’ve never seen you before.’

‘Well, I can assure you
I am
a member Ms Price, My name is John Creasy, and I borrowed two books only last week.’

The smile disappeared from her face. She tapped away at her keyboard a little more and then began to frown at her screen. If things were going according to plan she would be seeing the library records for John W. Creasy, a fictional character Jensen had entered into the library’s database from his own laptop the night before, just in case he received any resistance such as this. He had borrowed the name from the character played by Denzel Washington in the film
Man On Fire.
It was one of the aliases that Jensen sometimes used, and he had all the identification to back it up, including a library card.

‘Do you have any identification? And your library card?’ Ms Price asked.

‘I sure do, Ms Price.’

Jensen pulled out a wallet from the inside pocket of his blazer. He extracted a library card and driver’s licence from it and handed them to the librarian, who was now looking disgruntled again. She snatched them away, studied them for less than a second and then dropped them back on the counter.

‘Funny,’ she said. ‘Aside from being black, you look nothing like Denzel Washington.’

Her manner implied that she too had seen
Man On Fire
and that she knew Jensen was lying about who he was. Even so, he mused, why should a librarian be so suspicious of a man who could prove who he was? Maybe he needed to stop using the name John Creasy. It would be a pity because he rather liked it, but if a librarian could see through his fake identification, then any criminal genius could certainly do so.

‘So what do you know of this book?’ he asked again.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. She had traded her sour look for a smug smile. ‘Except that a lady named Annabel de Frugyn took it out recently.’

‘You said you know almost all the customers, right? Me apart, that is.’

‘Yes.’

‘So can you tell me where Annabel de Frugyn lives?’

‘Her address isn’t listed.’

‘I didn’t ask if it was listed,’ Jensen’s voice suddenly acquired a more authoritative tone. ‘I asked if you knew where she lived.’

‘She’s a gypsy. She doesn’t live anywhere.’

‘And you loan books to someone with no address?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I can.’ She held his gaze, her face expressionless.

Jensen leaned forward and placed both hands on the reception desk. He brought his face close enough to Ulrika Price’s to make it clear that he was trying to intimidate her.

‘Take a guess at where I might find her,’ he said coolly. ‘Her life is in danger. If I don’t find her and she’s murdered, I’m going to hold you responsible.’

‘You’re a cop, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. I am. And it’s your public duty as an upstanding librarian in this shitty town to help me out. Now where can I find Annabel de Frugyn?’

‘She lives in a trailer, but she never stays in the same place two nights running. That’s all I know.’

‘That’s all you know?’ Jensen was sceptical, and it showed.

‘Well, not quite,’ sighed Ms Price. Then she took a deep breath and said, ‘There is something else that you might be interested in.’

‘Go on.’

‘Another man came in asking about her and the book this morning.’

‘What man? What did he look like?’

Ulrika Price suddenly seemed to become distressed. She even shivered slightly. Her cold stare and air of absolute rectitude had evaporated.

‘It was him. The man with no face.’

‘No face? What the f— … What do you mean, no face? Was he wearing a mask, or what?’

‘He never shows his face,’ she answered, very softly. Her voice was trembling and her eyes began to well up. Jensen began to feel slightly guilty for having tried to intimidate her and moved his head back a little to give her more space. ‘It was the hooded man,’ she went on. ‘We’ve not seen him in Santa Mondega since just before the last eclipse. Now he’s been in here twice.’

‘What hooded man? Was it the Bourbon Kid? You’ve heard of the Bourbon Kid, right?’ His excitement was palpable.

‘Yes, I’ve heard of him. Everyone has. But like I said, I never saw this man’s face so I couldn’t tell you if it was him or not. Not that I ever saw … that other man’s face.’

Jensen began to drum his fingers on the counter. This was something he often did when thinking on his feet. The drumming set a tempo that somehow made his mind sharper. It was time to step up the pace of the questioning.

‘Okay, okay. So what did you tell this hooded man?’ he asked, with considerable urgency.

‘I did something a little bit stupid.’ Again the low, soft voice.

‘What do you mean? What did you do?’
Get a goddam move on,
he thought to himself.

‘I gave him an address for Annabel de Frugyn.’

‘But you just said she didn’t have an address.’

‘She doesn’t. I gave him the address of a local gang boss. A man named El Santino.’

‘El Santino? I don’t understand. Why would you want to do that?’

‘Because if this hooded man
is
the Bourbon Kid, then he killed my husband five years ago. I figured if I sent him to El Santino’s house they might get into a fight. El Santino is the only man who could kill the Bourbon Kid. If he did, then I’d have revenge for what he took from me five years ago.’

Jensen stepped back from the desk. This woman really had caught him on the hop. The meddlesome bitch. She had
given him some useful information, but now he had to figure out what to do with it all. First thing would be to get hold of Somers and concoct a plan together. He had one last question for Ulrika Price, though.

‘You said this hooded man had been in twice, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened the time before?’

‘It was a couple of weeks ago. It cleared everyone out in a second. Everyone was scared. Only the staff stayed in here. He came up to my desk and asked me to let him use my computer.’

‘And you let him … right?’

‘Well, what else could I do? I was petrified.’

‘So what did he use the computer for?’

‘He was only on it for a minute. He wrote down a list of names and then he was gone.’

‘Did you see the list of names?’

The librarian sniffed, as if the tears that were glistening in the corners of her eyes were close to getting the better of her.

‘No, but when he’d gone I checked what he’d been looking at. He’d been checking out the names of all the people who had read the book without a name.’