chapter 5

Back on the boulevard I went into a drugstore phone booth and looked up Mr. Arthur Gwynn Geiger's residence. He lived on Laverne Terrace, a hillside street off Laurel Canyon Boulevard. I dropped my nickel and dialed his number just for fun. Nobody answered. I turned to the classified section and noted a couple of bookstores within blocks of where I was. The first I came to was on the north side, a large lower floor devoted to stationery and office supplies, a mass of books on the mezzanine. It didn't look the right place. I crossed the street and walked two blocks east to the other one. This was more like it, a narrowed cluttered little shop stacked with books from floor to ceiling and four or five browsers taking their time putting thumb marks on the new jackets. Nobody paid any attention to them. I shoved on back into the store, passed through a partition and found a small dark woman reading a law book at a desk. I flipped my wallet open on her desk and let her look at the buzzer pinned to the flap. She looked at it, took her glasses off and leaned back in her chair. I put the wallet away. She had the fine-drawn face of an intelligent Jewess. She stared at me and said nothing. I said: "Would you do me a favor, a very small favor?" "I don't know. What is it?" She had a smoothly husky voice. "You know Geiger's store across the street, two blocks west?" "I think I may have passed it." "It's a bookstore," I said. "Not your kind of a bookstore. You know darn well." She curled her lip slightly and said nothing. "You know Geiger by sight?" I asked. "I'm sorry. I don't know Mr. Geiger." "Then you couldn't tell me what he looks like?" Her lip curled some more. "Why should I?" "No reason at all. If you don't want to, I can't make you." She looked out through the partition door and leaned back again. "That was a sheriff's star, wasn't it?" "Honorary deputy. Doesn't mean a thing. It's worth a dime cigar." "I see." She reached for a pack of cigarettes and shook one loose and reached for it with her lips. I held a match for her. She thanked me, leaned back again and regarded me through smoke. She said carefully: "You wish to know what he looks like and you don't want to interview him?""He's not there," I said. "I presume he will be. After all, it's his store." "I don't want to interview him just yet," I said. She looked out through the open doorway again. I said: "Know anything about rare books?" "You could try me." "Would you have a Ben Hur, 1860, Third Edition, the one with the duplicated line on page 116?" She pushed her yellow law book to one side and reached a fat volume up on the desk, leafed it through, found her page, and studied it. "Nobody would," she said without looking up. "There isn't one." "Right." "What in the world are you driving at?" "The girl in Geiger's store didn't know that." She looked up. "I see. You interest me. Rather vaguely." "I'm a private dick on a case. Perhaps I ask too much. It didn't seem much to me somehow." She blew a soft gray smoke ring and poked her finger through. It came to pieces in frail wisps. She spoke smoothly, indifferently. "In his early forties, I should judge. Medium height, fattish. Would weigh about a hundred and sixty pounds. Fat face, Charlie Chan moustache, thick soft neck. Soft all over. Well dressed, goes without a hat, affects a knowledge of antiques and hasn't any. Oh yes. His left eye is glass." "You'd make a good cop," I said. She put the reference book back on an open shelf at the end of her desk, and opened the law book in front of her again. "I hope not," she said. She put her glasses on. I thanked her and left. The rain had started. I ran for it, with the wrapped book under my arm. My car was on a side street pointing at the boulevard almost opposite Geiger's store. I was well sprinkled before I got there. I tumbled into the car and ran both windows up and wiped my parcel off with my handkerchief. Then I opened it up. I knew about what it would be, of course. A heavy book, well bound, handsomely printed in handset type on fine paper. Larded with full-page arty photographs. Photos and letterpress were alike of an indescribable filth. The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut. I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like that, out in the open on the bouleyard, seemed to mean plenty of protection. I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it.