In the night room Page 0,7

the next day to thank her, she found herself asking her friend about the man who had spoken to her about the Newbery and Millhaven. Molly knew very little about him.

A day later, Willy called to report that the unknown dinner guest had asked if they might get together for a cup of coffee or a drink, or anything.

—I’d go straight for the anything, Molly told her. What have you got to lose? I thought he was pretty cute. Besides, he isn’t a hundred years old.

—I don’t know anything about him, Willy said. And I don’t think I’m ready to start dating. I’m not even close.

—Willy, how long has it been?

—Two years. That’s nothing.

—So’s a cup of coffee.

—I’d have to tell him everything.

—If he works with Lanky, he knows everything already. These guys can find out whatever they want to, they can dig up anything. Lanky told me they’re better than the CIA, and they should be! They have about ten times the money!

—Ah, Willy said. So that’s how Mr. Faber found out about In the Night Room and Millhaven.

—He had Lanky!

—Lanky knows I won the Newbery? Excuse me, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.

Molly was laughing. —Of course Lanky knows. He even read Night Room.

Now Willy was stunned. —Lanky read my book? It’s a YA!

—YA novels are Lanky’s secret passion. When he was twenty-five years old, he read The Greengage Summer, and it changed his life. Now he’s an expert on Rumer Godden.

Willy tried to picture Molly’s gaunt, secretive, gray-haired husband in his blue pin-striped suit and gold watch, bending, in the light of a library lamp, over a copy of Miss Happiness and Miss Flower.

—He has a fabulous collection, Molly said. We’re talking about Lankford Harper now, remember. There’s a special vault with huge metal bookshelves. When you push this little button, they revolve. Thousands of books, most of them in great condition. When he gets a new one, he buys a bunch of copies, one to read and the rest to put in the vault. Philip Pullman—you wouldn’t believe how much those Philip Pullmans are worth.

Willy should have known that Lanky Harper’s interest in her fiction was primarily financial. —How many copies of In the Night Room are stashed away in that vault?

—Five. He bought three when it came out, and as soon as the Newbery was announced, he bought two more.

—Five copies? I guess he liked it a lot. Her mind had returned to Mitchell Faber, whose intrusiveness had contained an unexpected quantity of appeal. At least Faber had been unafraid actually to talk to the tragic widow, instead of swaddling her in clichés. Secretly, dark Mitchell Faber rather thrilled Willy Patrick: he was the kind of man for whom everyone else’s rules were merely guidelines.

7

So there he had been, Tim Underhill, in the good old Fireside, trying to act as though his hands weren’t shaking so badly that the mushrooms fell off his fork; and trying to look as absorbed in the crossword puzzle as he was every other morning. The words kept blurring on the page, and none of the clues made sense; above all, Underhill was trying simultaneously to figure out and ignore whatever his murdered nine-year-old sister had been shouting at him from the other side of West Broadway. Contradictory desires were difficult to fulfill, especially when wrapped in such urgency. April bending forward, shouting at him, bellowing, frantic to get her message across . . .

“Mr. Underhill?”

Tim turned to see the face of an eager black-haired man of forty or so, still boyish, and radiant with what looked like mingled pleasure and bravado. A fan. This kind of thing happened to him maybe three times a year.

“You got me,” he said, dropping his hands to his lap to conceal their trembling.

“Timothy Underhill is right here, right smack in the Fireside. Just like a normal person.”

“I am a normal person,” Tim said, stretching a point.

“I yam what I yam, hah! Didn’t you say that once? In print, I mean?”

He had quoted Popeye? It sounded remotely possible, but possible. Barely.

“Would you do a big favor for me? I’m a fan, obviously—who else would barge in on your little breakfast, right? But I’d really appreciate it if you signed some books for me. Would you do that, Mr. Underhill? Would you sign some books for me, Tim? Is it all right if I call you Tim?”

“You carry my books around with you?”

“Hey, that’s funny. You’re a funny guy, Tim! Ever think about