The Bookwoman's Last Fling (35 page)

“Not nearly enough, if what Cliff tells me is true. But I'll take what I can get.”

I didn't move—didn't want to attract his attention by even a breath or a bump.

“Well, then,” Sharon said. “Do you want to go down now?”

They were coming my way. I stepped back against the wall. Only a shadow here to hide in: no nooks or crannies, no convenient wall of books. I stepped back, knowing it was neither deep enough nor dark enough; it was just what I had. I held myself still as death, knowing that could never be still enough, and then they came through the narrow passage and he was just a few feet away. He saw me first as a bad vision, a dream perhaps that had dogged him across the country and was now here to rise up and bugger him. If I had yelled
boo
at the top of my voice I think he might have passed out from fright. Unfortunately I didn't do that: I waited for him to make the connection himself. This took only a few seconds on the long end.

“Janeway,” he said in a watery little-boy voice. “Jesus, what are you doing here?”

Sharon had stopped and waited for him at the end of the hall. He wavered. His eyes rolled back in his head. Softly, I said, “What do you think, Charlie? I hope we can…”

I never got to tell him what I was hoping. He screamed a long, mindless curse and brought out a small pearl-handled .32 and waved it in my face. But there was Billy, stepping out of the back room, forcing Charlie to retreat half a dozen steps away. Billy, forcing himself between us with my gun in his hand: Billy, in a textbook police stance, holding the gun out with both hands, yelling, “Freeze, motherfucker!” at the top of his lungs. But Charlie raised the gun and Billy shot him. He spun crazily and fell; his gun flew up and clattered violently off the ceiling, and Billy moved through the room, picked it up with a piece of cloth, and directed everybody to stay where they were. “I'd do what he says,” I told Rosemary. “Right now he's in charge.”

I looked in Billy's eyes and said, “Right now he's the man.”

Then, when he was ready to give it up, I took my gun from his trembling fingers, hugged him tight, and told him I would always owe him for saving my ass.

The bullet had shattered his shoulder and blown a fist-sized chunk out of his back. For a while it was touch and go, but for an even longer time I knew only what the Idaho Falls cops released to the press.

The motive apparently was greed. Long ago, when he had access to the house, Cameron had begun lifting the books and selling them to Charlie. This all escalated to murder when Cameron wanted more money and threatened him. But as theories went, this had some holes in it. Erin and I groped our way through it on the flight back to get my car in L.A., and we were still talking it over with mixed results on the long drive to Colorado.

I tried to keep up with the case from Denver. Sharon sent me all the newspaper accounts and I did some research on my own. One of the arcane nicknames for Carroll, I discovered, is Charlie, and soon I was able to follow Candice's logic to Lewis Carroll, creator of the Mad Hatter.

I began writing a journal of the case, which I would deliver to Sharon when I had all my facts in order. Some of it was still speculation. I did know Barbara had helped him get into the Blakely and had shepherded his rapid advance. She had used her money and her position on the board in hopes he'd find real books a sane alternative to the crazy stuff he had hoarded for years.

Charlie had thrived in the Blakely and had soon become its rising star. This much had come out in the press. He had rare and wonderful books to donate, and a few of them still had the enigmatic Candice bookplate. He saw the library's collection as his. I can see him now, walking at night through that dark mausoleum of treasure, holding the key, glorying in his new acquisitions, gloating over what he had.

At the same time he went crazily on, hoarding thousands of junk books as Charlie, sucking them up by the tens of thousands, stashing them in houses, then in warehouses, until Barbara was driven almost crazy by his obsession. She thought she knew what he was up to, but storage lockers and duffel bags are still being found, stuffed with Charlie's books. The count will run into millions.

An ironic postscript: One day Sharon called me. “Junior wants me to ask you if you'll still do the appraisal on HR's books?”

I laughed out loud. “I'd rather have lung cancer than go back to work for Junior.”

“Still, the estate's got to be settled. The appraisal's got to be done by someone we trust. This time I can make them pay you well.”

“I don't think so, Sharon. I'll send him some names.”

 

More than two months after he was shot, Charlie spoke his first words. Once they began the words gushed out of him.

“He wants to see you,” said the man on the telephone.

I had to go, I still had a job unfinished. The Blakely was eager to cooperate: They offered to pick up my tab, however long it took to put things straight, but Sharon said no. “You work for me.”

This wasn't the library's fault, she said. They were victims too.

Yeah,
I thought. Victims like any library that's blinded by treasure and too willing to acquire it without getting all the provenance, all the proof of where it had been.

I left Denver in March, prepared to stay a month: more if I had to.

First I had to see Charlie. He held the answers to Sharon's books and until I talked to him I would never really know this case. By then I had read all the classic texts on bibliomania: If there are experts on such a bizarre topic, I suppose I was becoming one.

Still I had no real handle on extreme cases like Charlie. Maybe nobody does. Some people believe there is a mysterious current at work between a bibliomaniac and his stash of books, as if having them gives him an almost mystical connection to all the knowledge they contain. This empowers him: he absorbs it through his pores and into his heart and bones. He believes this without conscious thought, but the feeling builds as his books grow in number and depth. It feeds his spirit and makes him connect with untold thousands of scholars and writers he will never read.

They had Charlie in California by then, so I drove up to the hospital where he was being held. They showed me into a room where he sat in plain white clothes behind a wire screen. He sat up straight when I came in.

“Cliff!” he boomed.

As if we were old buddies. As if nothing had happened.

We stood looking at each other a room apart, and I knew this was a man who would kill me in a heartbeat. I greeted him coolly. “Charlie,” I said. He recoiled from the name as if I had slapped him. “Carroll's my name,” he said. “You of all people should know that.”

I pulled up a chair near the cage and we sat talking.

“Barbara's leaving me,” he said.

Why did that not surprise me?

“Whatever happens, I'll have to go it alone.”

What did he want from me? But I knew even then.

“Turns out she's just like all of them,” he said. “In the end she's a taker.”

“Is that what Candice was?”

“No!” He recoiled from the question, shriveling behind the wire cage and growing smaller for a moment. “Candice was the sweetest girl. Goddammit, you know better than that.”

I shrugged an apology.

“I'm sure you've heard from others how wonderful Candice was.”

I nodded.

“A finer woman never drew a breath of air.”

“Then why did you do it?”

He shook his head vigorously and retreated from the question. “Candice was a superb woman. I never would have hurt her. She was a lady.”

She was the great love of his life. She was all he could think about from the first time he saw her. This went on for quite a while and his voice settled into a soft droning. An hour later I said, “Carroll,” and he nodded. “I know,” he said. “I know, I know.”

We sat through several quiet minutes. Then he said, “I've got a deal for you. Something you can't refuse.”

I put both hands in my pockets, a gesture that was lost on him.

“I've got a deal,” he said again.

I nodded and he got to it in time, in his own way.

In exchange for certain favors, he would answer my questions. But I had to be willing to understand his side of it. I had to listen with an open mind.

I had conditions of my own. “I want a list, every book you ever got from Cameron, anything that might even remotely be connected to Candice.”

That would be easy, he said: He remembered them all in detail, he knew each title intimately, and he had them all stored in one place in the library's new acquisitions room. I knew it would not be quite that simple: Many other books would have to be examined, but his list would be an essential starting point. And this is how, late that first afternoon, we began to talk.

 

I stayed there two days. And at night I studied his list and reconstructed what he'd said in my notebook. There was a sameness to it, a gush of words that amounted to a few important facts, the rest justification, babble, and occasionally the crazy hope that I would still be his bookscout when he got back to work at the library. “You always were my best pair of eyes, Cliff.”

I tried to smile. Didn't quite make it.

“For what it's worth, you were the only one I could count on to buy me a book and I knew sight unseen that it would be a beauty.”

“Trust goes a long way in this business, Carroll.”

I was looking in his eyes when I said that, but he looked away.

“We'll do it again, you watch and see if we won't,” he said. “When I get out of this goddam hole, we'll be the greatest team since Batman and what's-his-face.”

“Robin,” I said.

“Yeah.” He laughed and finally, in that moment, Charlie fused into Carroll.

“You know I never meant to hurt anybody.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

That night I wrote his words in Sharon's journal. A short entry: two pages of dialogue.

You know I never meant to hurt anybody. Especially not Candice.

I loved her.

Why couldn't she understand that? All I ever wanted was for her to let me love her.

But as time went on, I could see I was losing her. What had started in such joy had become frightening to both of us. Maybe sometimes I did become too possessive but I was always afraid she would leave me. She was afraid as well, but of what?

Me? How could she be afraid of me? I only wanted what was best for her, always.

Always.

At least now she's beyond all that hurt. I gave her that. I set her free. Wherever she is, you can bet she's thanking me.

She was never happy.

Never.

Candice was born with a broken heart.

I could have helped her, but she said she was leaving me. On that last day I ground the peanuts into a pulpy mush and worked it carefully into her cereal. She was helpless after one bite.

I sat beside her and held her hand, and watched her die.

Then I cried. Don't suppose you'll understand that but I loved her. It's important that you understand how much I loved her. And she loved me too; I know she did. But she was mixed up. All her life she was tortured and confused.

Now you know what I did and why I did it. Don't forget your promise. Don't betray me.

She's better off, that's why I did it. I did it for her.

Because I loved her.

She's better off.

She's better…

…better…happier…

She is so much happier now.

 

I was at the Blakely four days. It's easy when you have a list and the books are all in one place, but I took my time and looked through the entire library anyway.

When I was satisfied I drove out to Golden Gate, where the spring season was going strong. I looked up Cappy Wilson and we had coffee in the kitchen.

Rick had died one morning in February. “He just never got up,” Cappy said. “The poor bastard never got out to work. What a sad way to end a sad life.”

I felt deeply diminished by this news. “You did what you could for him, Cap,” I said, but I knew how he felt.

Rick's spirit followed me across the desert.

I stopped in Idaho on the long trip home. Sharon was sitting on her porch half asleep when I pulled into the yard. I shut the car door and her eyes fluttered open; she smiled and began stirring on her chair.

She was alone. Martha had stayed with her three weeks and had reluctantly left for racetracks in Florida, where there wasn't much chance of running into people. “She doesn't ever want to see Baxter again after calling him a killer.”

Bob and Louie had gone to Montana to pick up some sick horses. “I think Bob wants to stay here,” Sharon said. “At least for a while.”

“You're an easier boss than Sandy.”

“Sandy turned out strange, didn't he?” she said. “He still hasn't called me.”

“He's not going to, now.”

“So what do you think? Is he my father?”

“There's no way to tell if he won't cooperate.”

“The hell with him,” she said, suddenly angry. “He knows where I'm at.”

A moment later: “I'm never gonna hear from him, am I?”

I shrugged.
Probably not.

Sandy had returned to Golden Gate. He had run eight of Barbara's horses in Santa Anita stakes races and had done no better than one fading fourth-place finish. But the final blow had come when he entered his own horse in a $50,000 claimer and had won pulling up by twelve lengths. Barbara fired him loudly that same afternoon.

Sharon took this news with quiet amusement. “Junior and Damon aren't setting the world on fire either,” she said. “Five starts, zilch to show.”

“Time wounds all heels,” I said and she laughed sadly.

“Here's a question for you,” she said later. “What am I gonna do with Bob?”

“I don't know, Sharon. What do you want to do?”

“He's a good hand. Works hard. Likes it here.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head back at the blue Idaho sky. “He's in love with me. A girl can tell.”

“So where does that lead?”

“Not where he wants it to. He's way too young.”

“He's not that young.”

“How old do you think?”

“As a guess…mid-twenties maybe.”