The Ross Forgery Page 8

  He walked over to the card file and pulled out a file. “See this number? That’s the type-stand number out there. And this other number is the case number, starting from the top drawer as number one. OK? There’s a bunch of old composing sticks up there in that cardboard box. Pick through the card system, then go out there and browse. If you don’t come back in five days, I’ll send the dogs for you. And if you don’t find a typeface that tickles the cockles of your heart, one of us needs help. OK? Go.”

  9

  The card file was a maze of blind alleys and misdirections. Many of the faces had been long sold. Some had even been sold and repurchased. Arty had cross-referenced many faces in pencil notations that led to other typefaces from other foundries. Commonly, the word Sold appeared.

  Gradually, Ross deciphered the system. To track Arty’s indexing method required a profound knowledge of typefaces. Ross found himself in an absorbing game of hare and hounds with Arty’s photographic memory.

  Over an hour later, Ross cornered Arty’s indexing for English foundries. And at last he pulled a drawer of cards out and uncovered a nest of cards indexed under SHANKS, M. P.—ENGLISH. Stand 235, Case 11.

  Purchased eighteen years ago. The year Arty began. Shanks, M. P., Red Lyon Square, Long Primer Number Twenty.

  God in heaven. There it was.

  But which one? With the kerns or without the kerns? His hands were soaked and his knees trembled.

  Ross headed for the type-stands.

  10

  The interior of the warehouse was incredible.

  Old presses stood in an underworld of permanent half-light. Ancient rotaries, huge dismantled flatbeds, wheels, platens, drums, rollers, ink fonts, gas ink-driers, antique offset machines, a vast charnel house of old printing bones. Through skylights, indirect light like in a cathedral glowed high above him. Somewhere nearby, the old presses of the Brooklyn Eagle might lie dismembered and scattered.

  Aisles and miles and piles of hulks.

  Eighteen years sitting there. One hundred thousand dollars. Yes or no?

  Ross passed through a great, sliding fire-door and into another sector of the warehouse.

  Metal type-stands higher than a man’s head, each with its complement of tray-shallow, wooden type drawers. Ross walked the aisles touching the drawers, feeling haunted. Watched.

  He found himself walking faster down an aisle. Stand 235 —where? Stand 210. The twenties. Stand 230. There: 235. Down eleven drawers. Typecase eleven. M. P. Shanks, England.

  He was trembling. And he needed a step-stand. Glancing about, he saw one down the aisle and hurried to it. All his defensive dignity was gone now. He felt terror. Terrible terror. He scurried back to Stand 235 with the step in both hands. He banged it on the floor urgently and stepped up.

  Case eleven. M. P. Shanks. Ross pulled on both metal handles and the case slid open. After eighteen years of darkness, light fell on the little compartments of type. From years of experience, Ross’s right hand went unerringly to the compartment containing the f’s.

  It was filled, and his fingers plucked one, feeling the telltale notch as he raised it. He held it to the pale light.

  It was from the right typeface. It was a lowercase f. And it had a broken kern.

  His hand darted to the j’s. And plucked up a bit of type to raise it to the light. J with a kern.

  Wrongfontwrongfontwrongfontwrongfont.Goddamnitgoddamnitgoddamnitohgoddamnohgoddamnohgoddamn.

  Ross seized a fistful of f’s, raised them and let them dribble back into their compartment.

  The road ended there, in a fistful of f’s, in a typecase in an aisle of type-stands in an old warehouse in Bayonne in the bleak semidarkness.

  He sat down on the step-stand.

  Edgar Ross was a defeated man.

  11

  Ross was half drunk by noon, and he sat up at the bar, watching through the barroom window the main entrance to the school. As the church tower clock chimed, he saw Michael Townsend cross the inner quadrangle of the school and approach through the long tunnel-like entrance.

  Bit of a priss, too neat, too thorough, too damned scholarly —it all annoyed Ross today. Never shot craps, pinched a rear end, never, never got gloriously drunk and sang dirty songs in somebody’s cellar. Never unhappy, damn his face, never happy. Bland as oatmeal.

  Townsend smiled when he saw Ross. But the smile turned to a wry, doubtful grin as he approached. “You look unhappy.”

  “You bet your blue booties I’m unhappy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. No Long Primer Number Twenty. That Shanks face is long gone from the face of the earth.”

  “Oh.” Townsend sat down on a stool and leaned his back on the bar. “Well ….”

  “Goddamn it.” Ross sighed deeply, unhappily, in great frustration.

  “That font’s nowhere to be found, eh?”

  Ross sat up and drew in his chin. “When I say it can’t be found, what do you think that means?”

  “It means you haven’t been able to find it anywhere.”

  “So there’s your answer.”

  Townsend ordered a sandwich and a glass of beer. He chewed thoughtfully. Ross watched him with disgust and ordered another drink.

  Townsend eyed him speculatively. “What’s involved in casting the Shanks face new?”

  Ross looked at him astonished. “Casting? You mean designing and making molds and a punch for each letter, and—and then punching out whole fonts?” Ross shook a limp hand at him and snorted. “You’re out of your jar. That would take forever. And a bundle, a real bundle. You have any idea what kind of a fall a typefounder takes financially when he introduces a new face?”

  “Depends on how he does it. Suppose he uses cold type?”

  “Cold type? Photolettering?” Gradually, the furious expression on Ross’s face melted, and he looked at Townsend doubtfully, then with surprise. “You mean make a phototype font of Shank’s face?”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  Ross swallowed his entire drink, then fearfully put a hand over his mouth. Possible? Obvious, so obvious. He turned to Townsend again. “Where would we get a repro proof of the original typeface?”

  “There’s the rub.”

  Ross grabbed Townsend’s coat by the lapel and pulled. “Listen, baby, it’s possible, it’s very possible. But I’m going to go berserk right here, right now, if I get my hopes up again only to find I got the cracked bat again. Can you or can’t you find some repro of the original?”

  Townsend studied Ross’s face for a long time. “If we can get a specimen of the original typeset, we can make our own repro.”

  “What? How?”

  “We’ll do it photographically. Make negative blow-ups. Paint them clean and sharp then reduce them in the camera into whatever type size we need and then make a cold-type font.”

  Ross half smiled. “Yeah. We can do that. I can do that. But we can’t print offset. Any hack can tell offset from letter-press.”

  “We won’t, Edgar. We’ll make copper engravings of the typeset repro. We can burnish the copper and deep-etch them to imitate old-fashioned surface irregularities, and we can put them on a hand press to get old-fashioned inking irregularities.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Ross scratched his beard, sure there was a flaw in it somewhere. “Where do we get type specimen to make it from?”

  “I only know one place.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “From an original Wise forgery.”

  12

  The October issue of Biblos was given over entirely to manuscripts of Restoration Drama. Indeed, the lead article by a noted British collector was titled “The Classical Unities as Applied to Restoration Revisions of Shakespeare’s Plays.” Another was on the delicate art of dating based on internal evidence of the plays themselves.

  The November issue of Biblos was on Bible translations and the method of authenticating first editions. The lead article was on the writing and editing of the King James
version.

  December’s Biblos was a mixed bag. Articles on paper and watermarks on book gifts during the time of Chaucer. A badly written article covered Spenser’s manuscripts on The Faerie Queene. January discussed the Boswell papers found in Ireland. February and March were also mixed bags.

  There was, however, a very informative exchange of correspondence in the Letters to the Editor column that had begun in September and carried through seven issues. The subject of the letters was methods of preserving texts in the private library. Each letter was signed, and under the sender’s name, the editor had indicated the sender’s specialty.

  A rather long letter in December had fascinated Michael Townsend. It was a very articulate and knowing summary of various dehumidifying units, and included a discussion of the effect of various humidity levels on paper and bindings. The author also recommended in closing, that the private library room be periodically subjected to an atomized spray with a sporocide, a fungicide, and an insecticide.

  The letter was signed by Mr. Ajax Matthews III, of Westchester County, New York. His specialties were Victorian monographs and Thomas Wise forgeries.

  Townsend found no other references to Thomas Wise collections except for an eccentric millionaire in Texas. His name was Thomas Long Pickett.

  13

  Townsend looked around the library room for a phone book. Darkness had fallen. Ross was asleep waiting in a barroom booth somewhere. The librarian was studying an old graphic arts directory on the librarian’s desk. No Matthews. An unlisted telephone. Townsend drummed his fingers on the desk thoughtfully. The librarian looked up from the microfilm projector and pointed questioningly at himself.

  Townsend shook his head. “It’s OK.” He watched the librarian turn back to the projector. He strolled over to the reference books. Should be Ref. 090 series. Let’s see. Dictionary of National Biography. Who’s Who in America. Literary Market Place. Who’s who in—in just about everything. Volumes. Graphic Arts Personalities. National Book Collector’s Directory—Membership List. And there, under lifetime members: Ajax Matthews III, Rye, New York. Rye?

  Townsend stood before the Ref. 080 Dewey Decimal System volumes. Scanning. Then he tried Ref. 090. Index to Articles for Biblos, 1935 to date, with Annual Supplements. Under authors, he found Matthews, Ajax, III, “Authenticating Watermarks on Victorian Monographs.” And then, under contributing editors (alphabetically coded by topical categories), he found what he sought.

  MATTHEWS, AJAX, III (A, C, D, L)

  Member, American Bibliographic Union

  Past Chrmn: Society of Rare Books

  Life Membr: Incunabula Union

  11110 Winding Way

  Rye, New York

  914-795-4142

  14

  Ross’s eyes hurt. His voice was as dry as desert gravel. And his neck was kinked from sleeping in the saloon booth. He picked up the foaming, dripping glass of beer and eagerly drank. The cool carbonation washed away the painful thirst. He followed the beer with a large tumbler of cold water.

  Townsend watched the ritual. Ross was beginning to irritate him a little, leaping around like a heedless madman or sagging into a defeated bag of soup bones, sucking up puddles of booze when he was frustrated. Drowning in a sea of self-pity. He drank too much, smoked too much, talked too much, and his enthusiasm and discipline were as evanescent as a prairie wind. He also argued too much.

  “Why,” he demanded, “can’t we use a specimen sheet from Shanks’s type specimen book?”

  “You know why, Ross. Now, let’s cut the crap.”

  Ross flapped a hand at him. “I know why better than you, Mickey-cakes. You may be a graphic arts detective of the first water, but I’m a typographic expert of the first first water. I know more about type than that deHaven cat will ever know. If the Archangel Michael came down to earth tonight and stuffed deHaven with information on typography from nose to toes; if—if his brain extended from his hair to his heels, he still couldn’t know what I know.”

  Townsend nodded. “Do you know how to get one of Ajax Matthews’s Wise forgeries?”

  Ross took two aspirin and chased them with another glass of beer and half a glass of water.

  Townsend sat waiting.

  Ross finally looked at him. “If you are entertaining any thoughts of us doing an encore to that act we did in Philadelphia, forget it. Remove it from your mind. Include me out. I’d rather try to talk a dog off a meat wagon than burglarize that house.”

  Townsend nodded. “You’re not exactly the type I’d like to burglarize a house with.”

  Ross saluted him with the dripping beer glass. “Up yours, too, buddy.”

  “This isn’t getting us the type specimen we need.”

  “OK, OK,” said Ross. “You located the paper and you located the Wise forgery. It’s my turn to make a contribution. I know just the guy to get that forgery for us.”

  15

  “How do you know the house is closed up until June?” asked Bobby Denoy.

  “Because I called the house, and the answering service told me the family’s away until June.” Townsend felt Denoy’s eye study him frankly. It was nearly 2 A.M. and they were deep in Brooklyn in a Flatbush Avenue taproom. Ross socialized and conducted business exclusively in bars, it seemed.

  Townsend watched Denoy’s eyes return to Ross’s face.

  “You been hitting the bottle, Ross?” asked Denoy.

  “Nah. Just a good time.”

  “Yeah? You in trouble?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I hear you took a fall for a big number over in Jersey the other night. I hear you were betting like some crazy school kid. Word is Moose owns you right down to the toenails.”

  “Ah. It was my birthday. I dropped a little. Nothing I can’t take care of.” Townsend felt Ross glance sideways at him.

  Denoy nodded. “When we were eleven years old, I told you you’d never make a good crapshooter. I’m telling you again. You’re a lousy crapshooter. Dummy up.” He looked from face to face again. “I figure you two guys are up against something, and you want to use my hands to get your chestnuts out of the fire.”

  “Nah, Bobby, it’s not like that at all. We want to make a copy of something this guy has—”

  “Yeah, you explained that to me. It still sounds like something from the funny papers. You want me to get in there to this guy’s house, bring this thing to you, you take a picture of it, and I put it back.” Denoy’s practical eyes went from Ross’s silent face to Townsend’s. They rested on Townsend’s. “You don’t look the part,” said Denoy. “You don’t go with him.” He pointed at Ross. “What business are you in?”

  “Teacher.”

  “Teacher!” Denoy snorted.

  “Come on, Bobby,” said Ross. “He’s one of the leading experts in the country on printing and books. He’s a literary detective.”

  Bobby sat back and swizzled the straw in his drink, spinning the ice cubes rapidly. “Look. If anyone else came to me with this proposition, I’d tell them to go pee off the end of the dock into the wind. For old times’ sake, Ross, I’m going to sit and listen to you explain this to me once more. If it doesn’t make any sense the second time, I’m going to walk out of here.”

  Ross sighed. “OK. We’re ready to put one grand on the table for you, or someone you recommend, to go into a certain house in Rye, New York, get a rare book, bring it to my brother’s engraving plant in downtown Manhattan, let us make a photocopy of it, then put it back.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “We’re going to make an authentic copy of the lettering.”

  “The lettering.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mean like a counterfeit? You mean you’re going to make counterfeit copies of it and peddle them?”

  “Well, in a way, yeah. It’s a little more complicated than that. But that’s the general idea.”

  Denoy sat and looked sourly at Townsend. He looked at Townsend’s hands, his nec
ktie, his haircut. He shook his head and flipped a hand.

  “You setting me up, Edgar?”

  Ross threw his hands up in horror. “What do you think I am? Hey, this is me—Eddie Ross, from the neighborhood. I’d set my own mother up before I’d do such a thing.” Ross reached out and patted Denoy’s hand. “Look. We need this piece of paper. It’s got to be done professionally—we don’t want this guy to know we handled it. So I ask you. Who else would I turn to? Hey, Bobby, how could you think such a thing? You and me, we go back, way back, together.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So does Vince go back, and Legs, and Tommy John.” Denoy bowed his head, thinking. He looked again at Townsend. “Where you from?”

  “Right here.”

  “Right where?”

  “Brooklyn,” said Townsend.

  “Bobby, Bobby—” interposed Ross.

  “Bobbybobbymyass. Look. What you’re talking about is a long way back down the road. I’m OK, my own business. Clean. I sleep good. Business is good. I don’t need this.”

  Ross leaned over the booth table. “Bobby. This man is very rich. His house is standing there in the dark right now. Nobody in it. It must be loaded with all kinds of goodies. You can have anything you want in there except from his library. There’s one grand for you guaranteed in cash, plus anything else you find. You could make a haul.”

  Bobby Denoy turned his head down sideways and scowled at the barroom floor.

  “Bobby,” said Ross softly. “If business is so good, why are you listening?”