The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [4]
This point I find a little confusing. It hasn’t actually occurred to me that I am the man to tell the story, but I don’t much like the statement that I couldn’t be. Seems to imply something.
Hoping I’ve taken his meaning wrong, I ask straight out just what’s to prevent me from relating the terrible saga of Libby Hatch, if I so desire. Much to my disappointment, Mr. Moore answers that I haven’t got the education and I haven’t got the training. “What do you think?” he says, his stock of injured pride still not tapped out, “that writing a book’s like doing up a sales receipt? That there’s nothing more to the author’s craft than there is to peddling tobacco?”
At this point, I become a little less amused by the inebriate next to me; but I’m going to give him one last chance.
“Are you forgetting,” I ask quietly, “that Doctor Kreizler himself saw to my education after I went to live with him?”
“A few years of informal training,” huffs Mr. Editorial Page. “Nothing to compare to a Harvard education.”
“Well, you just catch me where I go wrong,” I shoot back, “but a Harvard education hasn’t done much to get your little manuscript out to the world.” His eyes go narrow at that. “Of course,” I continue, rubbing the salt in, “I’ve never taken to liquor, which seems to be the main requirement for gentlemen in your trade. But other than that, I figure I measure up okay against you scribblers.”
That last word gets some emphasis, being an insult my companion is particularly sensitive to. But I don’t overplay it. It’s a remark designed not so much to pierce as to sting, and it succeeds: Mr. Moore doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and when he does open his mouth again, I know it’s going to be something to equal or outdo my slap. Like two dogs in a pit down in my old neighborhood, we’ve barked and nipped and sized each other up enough—it’s time to go for an ear.
“The cowardice and stupidity of New York publishers and the American reading public have nothing to do with any lack of ability on my part in telling the tale,” Mr. Moore seethes firmly. “And when the day comes that I can learn something about writing, about Kreizler’s work, or, for that matter, about anything other than tobacco leaves from you, Taggert, I’ll be happy to put on an apron and work your counter for one solid week!”
Now, you need to know something here: Mr. Moore and me, we are both betting men. I ran my first faro racket when I was eight, for other kids in my neighborhood, and Mr. Moore’s always been one to take a flutter on just about any interesting game of chance. Why, it was gambling that formed the first basis of our friendship: the man taught me everything I know about the ponies, and I’ll acknowledge as much, even with all his patronizing. So when he makes that last challenge, I don’t laugh; I don’t shrug it off; I don’t do anything but stare him in the eye and say: “Done.”
And we spit on the wager, which I taught him, and we shake on the wager, which he taught me. And we both know that’s that. He stands, takes a last drag off his butt, and says, “Good night, Stevie,” pretty near pleasantly, like none of our earlier conversation ever happened. The whole thing’s moved to another level: it’s not what he’d call an intellectual exercise anymore, it’s a wager, and further talk would only desecrate it. From this point on there’ll just be the playing out of the game, the run to the wire, with one of us ending up a winner and the other a loser; and likely I won’t see him much or at all ’til we know which of us is going to be what.
Which leaves me alone for tonight (and, I’m guessing, for many nights to come) with my memories of the Hatch case: of the people what gave us a hand and what got in our way, of the friends (and more than friends) what were lost to us during the pursuit, of the peculiar places we were led to—and of Libby Hatch herself. And I don’t mind saying, now that Mr. Moore’s gone and I’ve had a chance to think it over some, that most of his statements were square on the mark: in many ways, the tale of Libby Hatch was more frightening and