LITMIR.BIZ

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by Dorothy Parker, for some reason they only did 7,600. But they’re scarcer than hen’s teeth. People must have read ’em and threw ’em away. Or the LA Bantams. If you could get hold of The Shadow and the Voice of Murder or Tarzan in the Forbidden City.…”

      Lindsey shook his head. “I’ve worked on collectibles cases before, but this field is new to me.”

      “The first—oh, there’s too much of this. You ought to read one of the books on the subject. Thom Bonn’s, or Piet Schreuders’. Anyway, if you know anything about collectibles, you know that their intrinsic value doesn’t really matter. What’s the difference between two identical books, only one of them has a minor typo in it and the other doesn’t, and we know that the typo was only in the true first edition and corrected after that?”

      “I—” Lindsey tried to answer, but Anderson wasn’t stopping.

      “You wouldn’t think there was a difference, but it makes all the difference in the world. It’s the difference between a treasure and a reading copy. It’s the difference between a book to kill for and one you can pick up at any lawn sale for a nickel.”

      Anderson’s predatory grin returned. When he was relaxed, his eyes were a bland, pale blue. Now they regained their deep intensity.

      “Matter of fact, I got my Paige at a garage sale in Lafayette. Just cruising, stopped to see what they had. All the usual junk, last season’s Robert Ludlum, fifteenth printing, couple of Agatha Christies and Ellery Queens, zillionth editions, and…and a Paige!”

      Lindsey nodded. He understood collectors as well as anyone could who was not himself a collector.

      “I asked where the book came from,” Anderson continued, “after I’d bought it, of course. Nobody knew. Maybe Grandma read it when she was a girl. She always kept it, the old dear. But she’s gone to Valhalla now, and they were cleaning out her room, and nobody in the family really wanted Grandma’s old paperbacks, so—out they went. For a nickel apiece.” Anderson cackled gleefully at the thought of his great coup.

      “One thing that I haven’t been able to verify, though.”

      “What’s that?”

      “The book is autographed. That is, somebody wrote a message in it. No, don’t open it up, please. I remember exactly what it says. To my Comrade with thanks. Salud y suerte. Violeta. That’s health and luck in Spanish. Salud y suerte. But nobody knows what Violet de la Yema’s handwriting looks like. And why ‘Violeta’ instead of ‘Violet’ or “Vi?” So—is it an authentic inscription?” Anderson shrugged his massive shoulders. “I hope it is. I like to think it is. But nobody can tell me. Nobody.”

      Lindsey let his eye settle on the deep cleavage of the model on the front of Buccaneer Blades, then turned the book over. He could feel his heart shift into overdrive. The back cover of Buccaneer Blades was not devoted to a blurb extolling the virtues of the book, or a paragraph lifted from a particularly seamy scene, as he’d expected. Instead, it featured an ad for another Paige book. It was an ad for Death in the Ditch.

      The copy read like a standard hardboiled mystery—a struggling, penniless private eye (“he was down to his last sawbuck and he knew the check wasn’t in the mail”), a one-armed bar-tender (“he’d left his grenade-hurling wing on the bloody coral of Tarawa”), a gorgeous babe (“smoldering eyes and gams like Grable’s”), murderous mobsters (“the Big Guy was gone and they were ready to kill for a piece of his empire”) and corrupt cops (“they were there to enforce the law, but the law they enforced was written in dollars—and hot lead”).

      It sounded like something written in the late 1940s rather than the early 50s. That one-armed bar-tender was the giveaway. By the early 50s, Tarawa was yesterday’s story, along with Iwo Jima and Saipan and Guadalcanal and the rest of the island-hopping battles of the Pacific campaign. The Cold War was under way, General MacArthur was commanding UN forces in Korea, and World War II was stale news.

      Still, Michener and Jones and Mailer were writing their great novels. Why not—Lindsey had to squint to make out the by-line on the miniature cover of Death in the Ditch—Del Marston?

      Del Marston.

      All right.

      It looked as if finding Albert Crocker Vansittart’s beneficiary was going to take some serious detecting. Maybe old Del Marston, the author of Death in the Ditch, would have had his hero solve the puzzle with a gat and a few slugs of bourbon, but Lindsey didn’t work that way. The job could be laborious and time-consuming, but eventually Lindsey’s patient, methodical efforts would bring him to his destination.

      Unless somebody else had got there first and erased all the clues. Lindsey was a good investigator, but he was no magician.

      He asked Scotty Anderson, “Would you take the book out of the envelope for me? I know you don’t want me to—”

      Anderson’s huge hand took back the book. The big man’s face took on a look of concentration, the unlighted match pointing straight down. He peeled back a strip of tape, opened a transparent flap and slid the book gently from its reliquary. He held it toward Lindsey, but his expression made it clear that Lindsey was to look not touch.

      “Have you actually read Buccaneer Blades?”

      Anderson shook his head, smiling again as if Lindsey had asked, “Have you ever taken tea on Mars?”

      “No way. Much too fragile. Don’t want to crack the binding. I did open it far enough to shoot the indicia and front matter, and the first couple of pages. It’s routine Spanish Main stuff.”

      “I figured as much. Do you think you could open it for me? So I could copy down the publisher’s address, and the like.”

      Anderson shook his head again, slowly. “Don’t want to risk it. But you can have copies of my printouts. I’ll get ’em for you before you leave.” He slid the book back into its transparent envelope, sealed the envelope with tape once more and laid it on a low table. He leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. He’d shown his treasure, his visitor had been clearly and suitably impressed, it was a good day for Scotty.

      “The thing is, you see, I only found this Paige a couple of months ago. Nobody has one. I went to the Library of Congress to check on it, and they don’t have any Paiges that they knew of.”

      That surprised Lindsey. “I thought—you know, for copyright registration, especially under the old law—wouldn’t they have sent copies to the Library?”

      Anderson nodded. The match-stick was tilted at a jaunty angle, like FDR’s cigarette holder back in the days when it was okay for a politician to be photographed smoking.

      “The books were registered, okay. That’s why I have a list of all the Paiges, or at least all the ones that they registered. The serial numbers jibe, though, so I think that’s all. But they don’t have any copies. A lot of old paperbacks and magazines just got shoved in a back room and they’re still there. They’ll shelve them when they get a chance, they say, but they never get around to it. But how’s this—it looks as if some Congressmen were pretty interested in the Paige books and they leaned on the library staff to log ’em in so they could check ’em out. They were checked out by a HUAC staffer—you know about HUAC?”

      “Uh—”

      “House Committee on Un-American Activities. Run by a couple of Congressional lice named Martin Dies and J. Parnell Thomas. Sort of premature Joe McCarthyites. Tricky Dickie Nixon got his start with HUAC.”

      Lindsey wasn’t going to talk about Richard Nixon. Instead he asked, “Why would they want these particular books?”

      “That’s what I wondered. I think I have a good clue, although it might take some more digging in the Congressional Record to find out for sure.”

      “But if the books were in the Library of Congress, aren’t they still there?”

      Anderson grinned. “You’d be amazed how many books get checked

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