Booking In. Jack Batten
had dropped out of the antiquarian book business and opened a fishing guide operation in northern Manitoba. Both were unlikely to be still dealing in books, forged or otherwise.
“What I thought earlier,” Ms. Berrigan said, “was that you could take some kind of action, whereas all of us at the library can only gossip. That’s why I decided on the spot to be frank with you.”
“I get the impression you library people don’t kid around when you figure someone’s playing fast and loose with the subject of your life’s work.”
“Treating books without respect — is that what you mean?”
“It is.”
“People think of librarians as milquetoast characters.”
“But that’s not the whole story.”
“Under the surface,” Ms. Berrigan said, “in certain circumstances, as with book fraudsters, we’re seething with total vexation.”
There seemed nothing more to discuss after Ms. Berrigan’s small explosion. She stood up and told me to follow her downstairs to her office. She said she had a present to give me before I left. I was glad to obey her every wish. Under the peaches-and-cream complexion, Ms. Berrigan possessed an iron in her character that I didn’t intend to challenge in any way.
Besides, I loved receiving presents, especially the kind that were unexpected.
Chapter Nine
Thursday morning, I was sitting in my office reading a book titled A Long Way from the Armstrong Beer Parlour: A Life in Rare Books, a collection of essays by Richard Landon. The book was the gift that Ms. Berrigan had pressed on me, and from what I had read so far, it was a treasure.
My office was on the third floor of a badly aging commercial high-rise on the west side of Spadina Avenue, half a block south of Bloor. For a view, the office looked across bustling Spadina to a dandy little parkette on the opposite corner. On most summer days I left the office door open and jacked up the front window. The place had feeble air conditioning, and the combination of open door and jacked-up window gave me a hope of catching the cross breeze. As for physical space, I’d recently smartened up the office. I painted the walls a pleasing shade the manufacturer called Reading Room Red. The furniture was likewise new, made of a medium-brown wood with comfortable built-in cushions, and on one wall I hung a Matisse poster of a woman in a dress of many colours, all bright, a view of the blue Mediterranean through the window behind her.
“Literary Forgery and Mystifications” was the title of the chapter I was reading in the Landon book. I’d already learned from the book’s introduction that Landon had been with the Fisher from 1967 until his death in 2011, the last thirty of those years as the Fisher’s head person. It was Landon who had led the way in making the Fisher into the great library it came to be. He did what it took in gathering the papers of important Canadian writers and wooing donors for their collections of obscure works of prose and poetry from all countries and sources. The papers and several hundred thousand books were stored on the Fisher’s shelves. Reading the essays of the man responsible for much of this massive collection, I decided that Richard Landon had known more than anyone I’d ever heard of about books and the people who wrote them.
I was deep into his stories from the “Literary Forgery” chapter when someone tapped on the frame of my office’s open door. I looked up from the essay, not happy to be deflected from Richard Landon’s anecdotes, and recognized the woman in the doorway. She was Fletcher Marshall’s assistant, Charlotte Watson, known to everybody as Charlie.
“My apologies, Mr. Crang,” she said, sounding tentative. “I don’t have an appointment.”
“You might notice my client chairs are empty,” I said. I marked my place in the Landon book, stood up from my chair, and made welcoming gestures.
Charlie Watson was a smallish woman, at least in height, short and trim, but she had a figure that included plenty of bosom. She was probably in her midthirties but looked younger. Charlie had honey-brown hair, green eyes, and a pert nose. Her clothes were casual, a plain black shirt and tight black jeans, the kind of thing to wear if you spent your days heaving books around.
“Coffee?” I said. “Fresh-made, sugar and cream on offer.”
“Black would be nice,” Charlie said. She had a pleasant alto, though it hadn’t yet lost its tentative tone.
I held out a client chair for Charlie, poured her a cup of coffee from the Cuisinart coffeemaker on the table beside the window, and returned to my own chair on the business side of the desk.
“You’re wondering why I’m here,” she said.
“At a guess,” I said, “I’d say it’s about the break-in at your boss’s store.”
“Fletcher said you’d want to talk to me.”
“And you prefer to hold our chat out of Fletcher’s earshot.”
“The thing is, my boss is a sensitive man.”
“About what?”
“Pardon?”
“A guy’s not usually sensitive in the abstract,” I said. “His sensitivity is likely to be generated by a specific source in his everyday life.”
“Well, all right, in Fletcher’s case right now, it’s money more than anything else.”
“Quite a lot of it?”
“You do get right down to business, Mr. Crang.”
“Saves time.”
“In money, I’d say the total value of the store.”
“Is this your way of saying Fletcher’s business is on the rocks?”
“Totally, unless he stops doing stupid things.”
“How stupid are the things he’s doing?”
“Fletcher would kill me if he knew what I’m telling you.”
“You haven’t told me much yet.”
Charlie wriggled a little in her chair. It was a movement not without its charm. “I get the impression he’s in hock up to his eyeballs,” she said.
“To whom?”
“That’s the trouble. I haven’t a clue what he owes or who he owes it to, but from his attitude around the store, all the worrying and penny-pinching he does, moaning and groaning, complaining about getting a decent night’s sleep, the man is a wreck.”
I shook my head a little. “You know I’ve seen Fletcher a little bit lately, Charlie?”
“That’s partly why I chose to come here.”
“Fletcher strikes me as just the same unyielding guy as ever.”
“I was pretty sure you’d say that,” Charlie said. “But if you were in my shoes, working alongside Fletcher practically every day, you’d know the man is definitely in some kind of trouble. Almost for sure financial.”
“In the store the other day,” I said, “the place looked kind of swell. Fresh paint job, for starters. New digital safe. Pretty spiffy item.”
Charlie shook her head, “That stuff’s all the tip of the iceberg.”
“We’re not talking big bucks?”
“Something like fifteen thousand all told, paint job and everything, that’d be my guess.”
“Too few dollars to qualify as a major worry?”
“Just enough to spruce up the building. That’s how Fletcher phrased what it cost. The new look, the painting, plus replacing the old counters in the front room. And the most expensive thing, that stupid damn safe.”
“You don’t see a need for the safe?”