The Dirty Book Murder (7 page)

“That’s your point?” she said, smiling. It was a feigning, mocking smile; an empty smile in a cold face. So unlike the face she had presented to the boy who had run into her on his skateboard; so unlike the coy seductive smile that she gave to a has-been movie star. I wished that she was six years old and we could start over again.

“Come on,” I urged. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve changed my mind about staying with you. If you want to reach me, leave a message with Laura Dowell. She’s a production assistant on the movie who takes messages for Bob. Here’s her number.”

Then she was gone, leaving me with a silly grin on my face and a piece of shrapnel in my heart.

I finished the drink, turned out the lights, and was walking over to the door to lock it when Weston Preston appeared.

“You still here, honcho?”

“No, Weston. I left hours ago and am actually getting shit-faced at Fitzpatrick’s Galway Pub.”

“Hey, that’s funny. Wish I’d thought of it.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I forgot somethin’. You go on to your Hibernian hootenanny. I’ll close up.”

“All right. Check the bathroom towel dispenser before you go.”

I walked to my jeep, put in a CD, and listened to Chris Isaak wail “Diddley Daddy” while I drove two miles to the Country Club Plaza for a friendly pint or two.

Fitzpatrick’s was one of those “authentic” Irish theme bars that sprouted like shamrocks throughout the country in the late nineties. Despite its manufactured charm, it had the liveliest craic and the prettiest women between Denver and St. Louis on Saturday nights. People sat in comfortable snugs listening to The Pogues, Black 47, and the Clancy Brothers on the sound system while attentive barmen from Donegal and Kerry helped to lend a bit of authenticity.

So in I went, greeted by a charming hostess named Siobhan, who promptly told me the wait for dinner was an hour at least.

“Well, fine,” I said giving her my name, and made my way through the noisy, suds-gargling crowd to the smaller of the two bars in the second room where Ronan Gill was tending drinks.

Ronan was a fine fellow, three years off the boat and working during the day for Sprint as a computer analyst. I’d met him and his pretty Belfast-born wife at a few Celtic Fringe meetings.

I ordered my first Guinness.

“How are t’ings?” he asked as we waited for the stout to settle.

“Hundred percent.”

“To be sure. Every day a holiday. Every paycheck a fortune.”

“And every line a parade,” I said, laughing.

“Ah, you’re a good man, Mike. May your daughter grow up to be Pope.”

Ronan was full of blarney and a few other things but he always managed to make me smile. By the time my stout was presented, he was on to drawing more for others and I turned to the job at hand.

The first sip of the Guinness is the second best, followed by the second long pull, which is the best. By the end of the jar I was feeling much better. Black 47 was cranking out Irish reggae over the speakers, the girls were looking saucy, and I’d seen several old acquaintances from the days of practicing law who didn’t care that I’d been disbarred. I waved at them and ordered another pint.

I listened to a long, not-very-funny joke from a stranger at the bar and ordered a round for him and for me when it was over. An informal seisún began in a corner with a fiddler, a bodhran player, and a girl with a pennywhistle. They played “The Bold Fenian
Men” and followed that with “Black and Tan” to put the crowd in a fine rebel mood. Happy wars and sad love songs were the themes for the evening and so I ordered another pint to celebrate.

When the performers took a drink break, I chatted up the pennywhistler. She was dark-haired, sloe-eyed, slender, and pretty with a smile that made you remember Vermeer. She said her name was Sandra Epstein, played second-chair flute for the Kansas City Symphony, and could I buy her a whiskey soda as she was a little short of cash. So I did and sat with her for the next series of tunes and even chimed in with my voice which, when properly oiled, isn’t half bad. I was good for “Gypsy Rover” and “Finnegan’s Wake” and we all got friendly with everyone else, which is lovely and magical and not easily accomplished, and then I sang “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” a cappella:

The ladies were lining up for me by the time I’d finished, but my sights were on Ms. Epstein, whose hand had been on my thigh for the entire second verse. An unhappy day was settling into a pleasant evening and then the winds shifted again.

“Aren’t you the jolly bloody Irishman, Mr. Bevan.”

I looked up at the staggering figure of Gareth Hughes. The broad face was bloated, the red eyes rheumy with yellow crusts in the corners. He was the last man in the world I wanted to see that night.

“Are you enjoying your book?”

The bloated face got harder. “What book might that be?”

I set Ms. Epstein’s pretty hand aside and reluctantly stood up. “The book you stole today.”

Hughes raised his right fist, thought better of it, and picked up a half-filled pint of stout off a stranger’s table. He chugged the contents, glared at the young man whose pint it had once been, then returned his attention to me.

“Buy me a pint,” he said.

“Buy your own.”

“I’m out of cash.”

“You did a damn stupid thing taking that book.”

“That man didn’t deserve a rare gem like that.”

“His sixty thousand dollars said he did.”

“It wasn’t his sixty thousand dollars.”

“He’ll know that book is missing soon enough and he’s a hard case. He’ll be calling on you.”

“The Dutchman wasn’t buying it for himself. Ever see him before when you were lawyering?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, I have. He works for a big shot. Major money.”

“Are you going to tell me who?”

“You didn’t buy me a pint.”

“And I’m not going to. It’s your problem, not mine.”

The seisún started up again and Sandra Epstein began singing “The Road to Mayo.” I had turned my back on Hughes to rejoin the group when I felt his hand grip my right shoulder.

Blame it on the beer or the bad mood he had suddenly put me back in. Or maybe it was a natural reaction for a former Marine who gets pushed too far. Whatever the reason, I dropped my shoulder, spun around, and introduced my left fist to his chin. He went down hard, pulling a table and pints of Guinness on top of him. The music stopped for a beat or two and a woman screamed. An Irish voice shouted back at her, “Ahh, hold your gob! It’s just two bloody arseholes looking to dance with their fists,” and then the music started up again.

Hughes got to his feet and swung at me, but he was too drunk and slow by nature to cause any damage. I took one of his wrists, spun him around into a bear hug and tried to reason with him. Before I could give my speech, however, the manager and a bouncer had me in their grips.

They weren’t in a mood to listen and that’s how I found myself on the curb outside of Fitzpatrick’s with Gareth Hughes instead of Sandra Epstein.

Nothing for it but to apologize. We had both knocked some sense into each other.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t crack it, did I?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Too much padding for that.”

“Do you need a lift?”

“No thanks, Mike. I live just past the creek at Plaza Point. The walk will see me
right.”

Hughes turned to go, then stopped and turned around.

“I just can’t stand it when someone with money shoves me around when it comes to books. I don’t mind losing a bid to a bookman like you. It’s when the idjits who don’t really care end up with the goods that bothers me.”

“I understand, Gareth.” And I did.

“You want to know who the foreigner works for?”

“Sure.”

“Martin Quist.”

“That’s the second time I’ve heard his name today.”

“Do you know him?”

“I heard he’s backing a motion picture. The family owns some banks in Lawrence or Salina, don’t they?”

“And Medicine Lodge, Goodland, and about fifteen other small towns. Their real fortune comes from their oil and gas leases. Martin’s the black sheep. He lets other family members take care of business while he lives off his trusts. About a year ago I sold him a first U.S. edition of
Mein Kampf
. He sent the South African to collect it. The fellow’s name is Kramm, Rolf Kramm.”

“That book isn’t particularly hard to come by. Is Quist a serious collector?”

“I don’t know any dealers who have worked with him. I think he just likes Hitler.”

“Given today’s purchase, we can add classic erotica,” I said. “Thanks for the tip. Now I owe you that beer.”

“Save it for another time.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Did you phone me earlier this evening?”

“No, why?”

“No reason,” Hughes said as he turned to walk away.

“Gareth?”

“Yes?”

“I understand why you wanted that Colette, but, one way or the other, you’re going to have to return it. It’s not worth the risk.”

His answering smile was about as smooth as a handful of tacks.

“Oh, I think it is, Mike. And, just so you know, it wasn’t the only Hemingway prize I rescued from that pile at the auction. Are you familiar with
in our time
?”

“Sure. It’s considered his earliest published work. You stole that, too?”

Another smile. “The ghost of Dr. Guffey would never forgive me if I’d let it fall
in the hands of a man like Quist. There’s more to this than you can imagine. Maybe I’ll tell you some day. Yes, for sure I will. Some day in our time.”

“Dr. Guffey? Who in the hell is he?”

But Gareth had already gone, lumbering down the street toward the Wornall Bridge like a fat French goose which, as it turned out, he’d be just as lucky as. It was the last time I saw him alive.

Returning to Fitzpatrick’s and the loving arms of the symphony’s second-chair flautist wasn’t an option after that fight with Gareth.

It was just as well since pretty Ms. Epstein was considerably younger than I. The last thing I needed was to give my daughter additional ammunition to use against my position that Langston was too old for her. Anne didn’t respect me for a number of reasons—some valid, some not—but, so far, hypocrisy hadn’t been one of them.

It was starting to rain as I walked past half a dozen hand-holding couples to my jeep. Five minutes later I arrived home to a hungry cat and an empty bed.

I awoke early the next morning to a beautiful day. The heat of the previous week had broken and a cool breeze blew in from the south, bringing a hint of rain. I put on my running gear and went outside filled with enough positive thoughts to make Norman Vincent Peale blush, determined to come up with a solution for Anne’s misguided infatuation with Bob Langston.

After jogging for a mile and a half, nothing had come to mind (nothing legal anyway) and as I approached Brush Creek the old funk that comes with parental helplessness settled in.

Heading west toward the low skyline of the Country Club Plaza, I descended to the concrete path that runs parallel to the man-made canyon containing the waterway. I paused to catch my breath under the Main Street Bridge, then jogged into the sunshine again.

To my left, a stone wall hunkered below a gently sloping hillside covered with flowers and prairie grass. A series of stately apartment buildings designed and built in the 1920s, when Art Deco meant something, towered above the slope. Brush Creek flowed lazily on my right, fifty feet wide and ten feet deep, bordered by another hill and the shops, restaurants, and tennis courts of the Plaza shopping district.

The tangy scent of barbecue wafted from a restaurant and the carillon bells from a campanile tower played a Haydn concerto. Flocks of pretty girls dressed like Easter trinkets in shorts and halter tops sat on marble steps leading down to the creek or lounged on grass as they watched wiry college athletes exchange volleys on the tennis courts. Gaudy banners promoting blue jeans, cologne, and Boulevard Beer festooned the juniper trees and wire fences surrounding the courts. A voice on a loudspeaker announced a match and politely called for a player from the University of Kansas to report to the head referee’s chair.

On such a perfect morning it occurred to me that given any sort of good weather at all, it’s hard to beat a Midwest city in its scrubbed-up places.

The water matched the color of the bluebird sky, the breeze creating tiny whitecaps on its otherwise clear surface. A meadowlark on a branch cocked its head. A
pair of chattering beauties, their faces bright as sunflowers and their bodies shaped like reeds, waved from the street above.

I felt flattered to warrant such attention until I realized the girls weren’t looking at me at all, but at something over my shoulder in the distance.

I followed their stares downstream where two pontoon boats floated next to the dock just past the Wornall Bridge. A man dressed in white overalls stood in the center of the first boat gazing at an object directly across from him. An ambulance slowly drove across the bridge, followed by a police car.

I jogged toward the scene, curiosity picking up my pace, until I joined the crowd of gawkers gathered on the hillside above a bend of the creek.

A yellow plastic police tape hung across the path. Thirty feet beyond it, emergency medical technicians and policemen stood in grim anticipation watching two men in a flat-bottomed fishing boat struggle to pull a body from the water. While one held the collar behind the neck, the other placed a blunt-edged grappling hook underneath the torso.

Once they had the body secured to the side of the boat, a police officer on the bank pulled a rope drawing the craft to the side of the creek bed. Another used a grappling hook to haul the corpse onto the path.