Read Booked to Die for Free Online Page B

didn’t want to take a check and Ruby didn’t have the cash, so Bobby had left with the book. But that was the last time I had seen him and it seemed like a good starting place.
    Ruby and his partner, Emery Neff, were sorting books from a new buy when I came in: they were hunkered over with their asses facing the door and didn’t see me for a moment. The stuff looked pretty good: lots of fine modern firsts, some detective novels, a Faulkner or two. My eye caught the dark blue jacket of
Intruder in the Dust
. Carol’s birthday was coming up: maybe I’d buy it for her, see how she liked it when she actually owned a book like that. A $100 bill flitted through my mind. That’s what the book was worth, though I expected a good deal of preamble before we got to that point. I didn’t like haggling. I wasn’t one of those cheapskates always trying to pry a book away from a dealer for half its value, but I didn’t want to pay twice retail either. I knew how Seals & Neff operated. They tended to go high with stuff they’d just bought. That sometimes worked with pigeons and sucker books. But then the rent would come due or the sheriff would call for the sales tax, many months delinquent, and they’d scramble around, wholesaling their best books for pennies on the dollar in a mad effort to keep from being thrown out or padlocked.
    Ruby was dressed in his usual country club attire: jeans, a sweatshirt, and sandals. He wore a heavy black beard that was streaked with gray. His partner was neater. Emery Neff had blond hair and a mustache. Taken together, they were a strange pair of boys. Ruby was gritty, down-to-earth, real; Neff put on airs, oozed arrogance, and, until you passed muster, seemed aloof and cold. Ruby could sell birth control to a nun; Neff seemed reluctant to sell you a book, even at high retail. Neff wasn’t quite a horse’s ass, but he was close: I guess it was his deep well of knowledge that saved him. He really was a remarkable bookman, and I seemed to like him in spite of himself.
    They still hadn’t seen me: they were engrossed in the hypnotic, totally absorbing business of the bookman—sorting and pricing. I had seen the ritual before and had always found it interesting. Ruby would pick up a book and fondle it lovingly, then they’d bat the price back and forth and finally they’d settle on something, which Neff would write in light pencil on the flyleaf. They were just getting to the Faulkner when I leaned over their backs.
    “Buck and a half,” Neff said.
    “Too high,” Ruby said.
    “It’s a perfect copy, Ruby. I mean, look at the goddamn thing, it’s like it was published yesterday, for Christ’s sake.”
    “You never see this for more than a bill.”
    “You never see a copy like this either.”
    “Go ahead, if you want the son of a bitch to grow mold over there on the shelf.”
    “Buck and a quarter, then. That’s rock-friggin‘-bottom.”
    Neff penciled in the price. I cleared my throat and got their attention.
    “Well, Dr. Janeway, I do believe,” Ruby said, brightening. “We just got in some stuff for you.”
    “So I see. The masters of overcharge are already at work.”
    Neff gave me a pained look, as if the mere discussion of money was a blow to one’s dignity.
    “Always a deal for you, Dr. J,” Ruby said, and Neff’s pained look drifted his way.
    I put the Faulkner out of my mind for the moment. I never could split my concentration effectively.
    “I want to ask you boys a few questions.”
    “Jesus, Mr. Janeway,” Neff said seriously. “This sounds official. Let me guess what it is. Somebody knocked off the sheriff and right away you thought of us.”
    I gave him a mirthless little smile. “When was the last time you saw Bobby Westfall?”
    “Jeez, I don’t know,” Ruby said. “He ain’t been coming around much.”
    “What’s he done, rob a bank?” Neff said.
    “See if you can pin it down for me,” I said.
    “Well,” Ruby said, “he come in here maybe