Читать книгу The Hemingway Caper - Eric Wright - Страница 12

I had no classes until three o’clock so I called Atkinson, my boss at the agency, to log the hours I was spending watching Tyler, then drove into the downtown area and found a place to park near the bookstore.

Across the street, a coffee shop with a ledge under the window and a row of stools gave me a chance to do a bit of surveillance in daylight. I’d never had a good look at Tyler, and I was keen to see inside his store, too. I’d made a few fake enquiries by telephone and established that if I wanted him to look over some books I wanted to sell, I would find him at the store anytime except between twelve and two.

This particular coffee shop makes good sandwiches, and I bought a salmon salad on whole wheat and a coffee, and got myself settled on a stool. Over the top of my newspaper I could watch the door of the bookshop across the street, as well as Tyler’s car, which was parked outside.

First, I had to deal with the salmon sandwich, because I had that morning put on a pair of pants just back from the dry cleaners. I took out the lettuce and tomato to eat separately. Then I put a napkin over each half of the sandwich, pressed down firmly, squeezing the surplus salmon mixture out and on to the plate, where I could eat it with my coffee spoon. Now I had a sandwich that was only mouth-thick and wouldn’t ooze its filling all over my pants when I tried to eat it.

A headline about a new step in the quest for cloning caught my eye. I allowed the usual thoughts about what Hitler would have made of this bit of science, musing once again on why there had been no reference in the reports to the Czech play, R.U.R., which had predicted the development of cloning and its consequences sixty years ago. I concluded that it was the result of schools of journalism having dropped education from the curriculum and substituting training in information retrieval.

I looked up only just in time to see Tyler standing in his doorway looking up at the sky. He was older than I had guessed from his clothes, which were those of a successful young playwright: authentic-looking tweed Brendan jacket; cream-coloured, thick wool, roll-necked sweater, grey leather trousers; and, red and black trainers. From the neck up, however, he showed the world a creased fifty-ish face set in a small, round head with scanty black hair worn long enough that it had to be making a statement, though I’m not sure what it was saying.

I finished my sandwich as Tyler finished looking at the sky and walked to his car, a yellow Volvo, which, like his costume, defied the observer to guess that its owner was anything as colourless as a book dealer. I ran out the door in time to see him drive over to Spadina and turn right. I crossed the street and walked into his shop.

The little bell above the door pinged, causing the young man sorting a pile of books to look up, and just as quickly, to look away to avoid eye contact. He would have been out of place anywhere else, but he did have just the look of an antique book dealer’s very underpaid assistant; someone who wanted no part of the world out there, wanted only to be left to handle books in silence. When I spoke to him he looked to the left and right of the pile of books, seeking a way to respond without looking up. I felt like an unwanted prison visitor. In response to my question, “May I look around?” he jerked his head up sharply and allowed it to sink slowly to a position of rest as if he never quite got the signal right. Then he ignored me, though I think he sneaked a quick look as I turned away.

The store was typical, thousands of books, many unreadable and unsaleable (Statutes of Ontario: 1898), grouped in categories on old warehouse shelving from floor to ceiling. The shelves were so close that a fat antiquarian would block the aisle, the upper shelves were out of reach, the whole the result of turning an old house into a mine of books complete with dimly lit tunnels.

I sidled along the rows for ten minutes, wondering professionally if there were any security cameras, and if there was any chance of finding a valuable book the owner hadn’t recognized. (“... it’s a first edition. There are only eleven known copies. I found it in the twenty-five cent bin outside a bookseller on College.”) I wondered, too, what sort of living it was; as with all those stores, all the time I was there only one other person walked in, and he left without buying anything. But rent had to be paid, surely, and some sort of wages to the furtive young gent behind the counter, though he didn’t look as if he needed much. I considered the owner’s not-cheap threads, though, and his fairly recent Volvo, and wondered if the store was a front. Front for what? Stolen antique books? Could you launder thug money through a second-hand bookstore?

I followed the tunnel of books to the back of the room where what was probably a fireplace in the corner had been boarded up and fronted with more shelving. In the other corner, a narrow flight of bare wooden stairs led me to a second floor with what I took to be a whimsical sign over the doorway, “Dollar Store”—a way of saying this was the cheap section of the second-hand paperback area, mainly crime fiction and romance.

The bell pinged downstairs. I looked out the window and saw the yellow Volvo outside again; Tyler was back, had probably forgotten something. I heard him speaking to the assistant whose replies were inaudible, then the bell pinged again and Tyler re-emerged on to the street and drove off. I picked up a copy of The Old Dick by L.R. Morse, a much under-appreciated novel I was always glad to pick up as a stocking-stuffer for people who hadn’t heard of it, and took it down to the desk with my dollar. “Did you see the yellow Volvo?” I asked him, cheerily, companionably. “Nice car.”

He put the book in an old paper bag and took my dollar.

“One of your customers?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows. “The owner,” he whispered, looking down again at whatever he was working at.

“You’re not the owner?” I asked, amazed.

He blinked, looked around his desk, said, “No,” and waited for me to go away.

Where do the proprietors of used bookstores find them?