Death by the Book - Lenny Bartulin [9]
He always wore tracksuit pants that sagged under the weight of keys, wallet, mobile phone and God knows what else. Sometimes he wore leather lace-up shoes with the tracksuit pants, the elastic cuffs gripping high up his ankles, revealing white socks that had turned grey with despair. He was in his forties, tall but soft in the gut. He had wispy blonde hair that curled a little around his ears and gave him a boyish look. Combined with his blue eyes, there was a suggestion that he might have surfed once upon a time, though this was very far from the truth. He was pale like an unripe strawberry and sweaty all over. And always grinning, always smiling, like he knew something that you were dying to know and there was no way he was ever going to tell you what it was. He was cheap and would not hesitate to confuse old ladies with their change. He never wrote prices on his books but made them up at the counter after he had sized up the customer. He did not possess a healthy aura.
Jack’s worry was that Chester would sniff out that the Kass books might be worth something. With the right kind of breeze, the man could smell Monopoly money buried at the South Pole.
Jack and the Bookstalk was located in an old warehouse building just off Glebe Point Road, its grey rendered façade peeling with fifty years’ worth of advertising posters. It had once been a smash repair business: oil stains were still visible on the concrete floor. The musty, damp air carried a whiff of resin and paint and petrol. Inside was chaos. There was a ground floor and mezzanine level, both sick with books. They were crammed onto exhausted shelves and piled on the floor like war dead after an offensive. Everything blended into the colour of mulch. It was a place where you could easily go insane.
It was colder inside than out on the street. Jack saw Chester at the front counter, sorting through papers. He wore a pink, long-sleeve polo top and a navy blue muffler, the collar up high around his neck. Jack could hear a fan blowing air. Music drifted softly from a radio somewhere.
‘Here he is,’ said Chester when he saw Jack. ‘The man himself.’
Jack nodded. ‘Mr Sinclair.’
‘Taking the afternoon off, I see.’
‘Nothing gets by you. You’re amazing.’
Chester shook his head and tapped a bundle of papers on the counter. He had soft, pale hands, with fingers that started wide at the base but then tapered into thin ends, crowned with long, narrow fingernails. He put the papers down and reached under the counter for a tube of moisturiser. He squirted a good amount in the palm of his hand and proceeded to rub the moisturiser in. His hands writhed together obscenely.
Jack tried not to listen to the sound they made. ‘Did you get my message?’ he asked.
‘Yes I did. And I found a few copies, too. Four in fact. That make you happy?’
‘How did you find them in all this?’
‘There’s a system in operation here, compadre. Just ’cause you can’t see it.’ Chester looked down at his hands as he massaged in between his fingers with his thumb.
‘I wouldn’t want to go blind with the brilliance of it,’ said Jack.
‘Genius is like that.’ Chester’s grin tucked into his right cheek. ‘So, who’s this Edward Kass then?’
Jack picked up a book from the counter: The Book of Miracles — How to get to Heaven AND make a Profit! ‘He’s a poet,’ he answered, dropping the book.
‘Famous?’
‘Unhappy.’
‘But, of course. There’s no money in poetry.’ Chester began searching under the counter. ‘They’re down here somewhere, hang on.’
A young guy came in the front door. He wore black jeans, a black denim jacket, a red-and-black striped scarf and a tight black knitted beanie. A dark green knapsack was hooked over his shoulder. He was as skinny as an incense stick. Jack guessed a university student: his face was white and pimply and wore all the burden of global injustices