Death at Charity's Point by William G. Tapply

into my car at the parking garage, dreading the three-hour round trip to Brewster, I noticed George Gresham’s library books on the back seat where I had left them. I stood there for a minute, then with a sigh I reached in and took them out. There were eight of them altogether. I stacked them up and clumsily closed the car door with my knee, holding the pile of books against my chest.
    I walked that way the several blocks to the Boston Public Library, a staid old stone and concrete edifice that frowned out on a modernistic park of fountains and pools in the middle of Copley Square. Around back is the new addition to the old building, lighter and airier and more twentieth-century. That’s where I took George’s books.
    I dumped them up on the high counter and stood waiting. Three or four young people behind the counter—college students, I surmised—paid no attention to me.
    I stood on one foot and then the other for a while, cleared my throat loudly, and finally declared “Ahem!” very clearly. The public servants behind the counter gleefully ignored me.
    I hate waiting. I am a prompt person. I keep my appointments. I would prefer to do without rather than wait in line to buy something I want. Gloria used to get furious when we had hired a babysitter so we could dine out, only to be greeted at the restaurant where we’d made a reservation with the news that we’d have a fifteen-minute wait, sir, which I knew translated to three-quarters of an hour to two hours, and won’t you visit our lounge—and I’d turn on my heel and walk out.
    “We’d have a drink anyway ,” Gloria would protest.
    “It’s the principle,” I’d tell her. “Rather go to Howard Johnson’s.”
    Which is what we usually did.
    Which helps to account for the fact that Gloria and I are divorced now. She never minded lines, she tolerated rudeness, and she detested Howard Johnson’s. We were quite incompatible.
    I fixed my gaze on the nearest boy who was shuffling papers behind the counter and whistling tunelessly through his teeth. He had watery blue eyes and a wispy blond mustache.
    “Hey! You, there. Yes, you, sonny.”
    The boy peered blankly at me, and as he did, a face popped up directly before me from behind the counter. The face belonged to a towering black man with a goatee and a tangle of gold chains around his neck. He looked like a young Wilt Chamberlain.
    “Help you?” he rumbled. I immediately regretted having used the word “sonny.”
    “Oh,” I smiled in what was intended to be a disarming manner. “Didn’t see you there.”
    “Puttin’ some stuff away,” said Wilt. “Whatcha got?”
    “These are overdue. I’d like to return them and pay the fine. They were taken out by a friend.”
    If Wilt wasn’t very, very tall, then there was a very high platform behind the counter for him to stand on. And if that was the case, then the college kids were very, very short. Wilt flipped open the books and studied the cards in the inside pockets.
    “Four-forty,” he said.
    I paid him the money.
    “How is George?” he asked.
    “You know George?”
    “Oh, sure. Always comes on Saturdays. Haven’t seen him for a few weeks. These were his books.”
    “Oh. Well, he’s dead.”
    Wilt glowered at me. “Don’t jive me, man. I like George.”
    “He is dead.”
    Wilt scowled, then slowly began to chuckle deep in his throat. “I told him he’d get into trouble,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Little joke between us. Listen—how’d George die, anyway? Heart or something?”
    “He drowned. They called it suicide.”
    He whistled. “George?”
    “So they say.”
    “Damn! Nice fella, George. Suicide! God damn.”
    “How did you remember these were his books? I mean, you must stamp out hundreds of books.”
    “Thousands. But, see, we don’t just stamp out books. We librarians know books. We help people.” He glanced at the college kids behind him. “Well, most of us do. George was doing research. I helped him