LITMIR.BIZ

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may have heard about it.”

      Anderson offered a look a bland inquiry.

      “Albert Crocker Vansittart.”

      Anderson waited.

      “His helicopter crashed in Lake Tahoe. The pilot survived, Mr. Vansittart was lost. They’re going to try and find the wreckage, the University of Nevada is sending a team with fiber-optic equipment.”

      Anderson closed his lips around the unlit match. “Right.” He nodded his massive head. “I heard something about that on the car radio.”

      Okay. At least the guy had some awareness of the outside world.

      “My company—International Surety—had issued a policy on Mr. Vansittart’s life. He hasn’t been formally declared dead as yet, that’s going to be a little problem. Who has jurisdiction, Placer County, California, or Washoe County, Nevada? And of course there’s no body as yet. If the fiber-optic scanner works, maybe we’ll have proof.”

      Anderson frowned. “This is all fascinating stuff, I guess. But what does it have to do with me?” He tilted his head like a dog hearing an unfamiliar sound. “You sure Lovisi didn’t send you to collect? Or to pressure me?”

      Lindsey sighed. “I promise you, Mr. Anderson, I haven’t an idea in the world who this Lovisi person is. And he certainly didn’t send me to do anything to you.”

      “Okay.” Anderson stood up. He must have weighed close to 300 pounds, and if he wasn’t exactly in muscle beach shape, he was far from flabby. “Okay,” he repeated, “if Lovisi didn’t send you, how do you know about Death in the Ditch?”

      “Vansittart. It was in Vansittart’s life policy. He was killed in the ’copter crash, at least it seems he was killed, and his insurance policy names his beneficiary as the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch.” Lindsey was going to say more, but the dawning light of comprehension had brightened Scotty Anderson’s face like an interior sun.

      “Poor Lovisi. I’m going to have to revise the article, I can see that.”

      This time Lindsey played the waiting game.

      “Gary Lovisi runs Paperback Parade. It’s a collector’s journal.”

      “For people who collect paperbacks,” Lindsey supplied.

      “You got it. Interesting character. I remember when he started out, his stuff was so crude I couldn’t believe it. Like he was the Ed Wood of publishing. But he kept at it and now he turns out beautiful stuff. Beautiful.”

      Good for him, Lindsey thought. But what does this have to do with me? He waited for Anderson to go on, and Anderson did.

      “I promised Lovisi an article for Paperback Parade on the legendary Paige Publications. Everybody in the hobby claims he knows somebody who has some Paige books, even claims he’s seen one, but none of them turn up at the shows, none of them turn up in dealers’ catalogs.”

      “Do they really exist?”

      Anderson’s pale blue eyes lost their wide innocence. They narrowed and darkened and flashed. Anderson reached an oversized hand and clasped Lindsey by one wrist. He leaned forward so the unlit match clenched in his teeth nearly scraped Lindsey’s cheek.

      Scotty Anderson cast a suspicious look to the left, then to the right. The match-head did scrape Lindsey’s face but Anderson ignored the contact.

      “I have one,” he whispered.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Anderson heaved his bulk out of his wooden chair and paced to the office door. He gestured to Lindsey, who followed him. They paraded through a warren of metal shelves until they came to a gunmetal door with a huge combination lock built into it. Anderson crouched, his bulk hiding the lock from Lindsey’s view.

      When Anderson straightened he swung the heavy door open to reveal a closet-sized safe. It was filled with metal boxes. He ran his finger across the rows of boxes; they were marked with index numbers that meant nothing to Lindsey but were obviously plain as day to Anderson.

      Finally he pulled down a box, opened it and extracted a transparent envelope containing a paperback book. He held the book toward Lindsey. “Hold this.” Lindsey did.

      What kind of person would maintain this level of security on what was obviously a treasure, yet hand it so casually to a stranger? Lindsey couldn’t figure it out, but he’d been working with collectors for years now, and nothing they did could surprise him any more.

      They made their way back to Anderson’s office. Anderson poked his head inside the room, muttered something like “Too stuffy,” and gestured Lindsey to follow him again. This must be the way Alice felt as she followed the white rabbit.

      They wound up in a living room, or what must pass for one in this bizarre apartment. There were actually a few square feet of wall space not covered with books. Instead, framed paintings had been hung. They were well executed, but they didn’t have the feel of gallery paintings. There were scenes of gangsters blasting at uniformed police, spaceships silhouetted against blazing, multicolored suns and planets, gorgeous women in low-cut gowns lounging against pianos, cowpokes galloping straight out of the frame.

      Anderson must have seen Lindsey’s expression. He beamed, “You like them? Originals!”

      “They look like movie posters. They’re, ah, very vivid.”

      “They’re paperback cover paintings. Look, that’s a Mitchell Hooks. That’s a Bob Maguire. And that beauty—” he pointed “—that’s a Robert McGinnis. You won’t see many of those. There’s a Jim Avati. A Stanley Meltzoff. And that red one—the one with the spaceman and the bat-creatures—that’s a Paul. Frank R. Paul. No, they don’t paint ’em the way they used to.”

      “They must be valuable.”

      “You wouldn’t believe it. Five or six figures. They used to throw them away back in the fifties. Listen, if I just had a time machine, what I couldn’t do!”

      Lindsey had to get the subject back to Death in the Ditch. “You said something about.…” He gestured to the book in Anderson’s hand.

      Anderson slid the envelope across his desk. “Please don’t open it. If you need to look at the book, I’ll get it out for you. It must be done just right or it can be damaged.”

      Lindsey leaned over the book. “Is it all right if I pick it up?”

      “The way porcupines make love.”

      “How’s that?”

      “Very carefully.”

      Lindsey managed a polite laugh. He’d thought that joke was hilarious when he was ten.

      The book was Buccaneer Blades. The author was Violet de la Yema. The cover illustration could have been straight out of a fifties pirate movie, maybe one starring Burt Lancaster and Maureen O’Hara, with Basil Rathbone as the evil Spanish governor of a Caribbean island and Akim Tamiroff as his comic aide.

      He turned the book over carefully. “No price?”

      “They were all a quarter. No need for a price back then. Did you catch the publisher’s logo?”

      “I see it there in the corner. Nice idea—the open book with all the pages, and the publisher’s name, Paige. Was there a Mr. Paige?”

      Anderson shrugged.

      Lindsey turned the book over. The spine was printed in black with the title and byline dropped out, in white. The Paige Publications logo was reproduced at the base of the spine, along with a serial number, 101. Lindsey raised his eyebrows.

      “Saw it, did you?” Anderson’s match-stick bobbed up and down.

      “You mean the serial number? Does 101 mean this was the very first Paige book?”

      “Apparently it does.

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