Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

The deal that had me hanging involved, as usual, surplus electronic equipment of the kind used by the military all over the world. Three years ago I opened an office in Geneva, for those reasons correctly associated in the public mind with conducting a business from there rather than, say, Cleveland, Ohio. I signed my first contract there on my twenty-ninth birthday, and it is my recollection that I fully expected to be a millionaire at thirty. That didn’t happen — but one never knows, of course, about the future. Contrary to what Max told Anna, I am not a gun runner, and when I denied it, I told the truth. I do, however, sell equipment to governments you and I wouldn’t vote for. But then, so does the U.S. government, so I make no apologies.

I had flown into New York that morning to wind up a business deal, but nothing was right and nothing was ready. Contracts and equipment were promised again, this time for the thirtieth, and I was left with a week to kill. Cash was low and nothing urgent called me back so I decided to wait it out. There was one stroke of luck — my old friend Hal Pierce handed me the key to his apartment. Hal’s quarters occupy the front half of a reamed-out brown-stone. You know the kind of place — bare brick walls, dying house plants, chrome, glass, last week’s bread crumbs. The usual. Why do they do it? Why can’t they at least leave the plaster on the walls?

Hal was on vacation, headed for Cape Cod. As soon as he took off I got busy with the telephone.

Two years can make a difference. Hedi Blume now had an unlisted phone, and so did Mary Bell. John Fischer, whose gallery handles paintings for me, was in Canada. George Becker’s British secretary informed me in cutting tones that Mr. Becker was at the Vineyard. Toni Warren (female) didn’t answer. Tony Marano (male) didn’t answer. The whole world was out of town. Aggrieved, I walked out into the afternoon glare and into a place called Volstead’s Retreat — it’s a cute neighborhood — and picked up a bottle.

I was putting my change away when my eyes hit on a display of fine Holland gin — Bols Genever, in its brown earthen crocks — and I remembered Max Klinck.

There was someone to talk to after all.

Max is an incunabulist — for those of you not in the trade, a dealer in rare books and manuscripts. He is a towering, red-bearded Dutchman with blazing blue eyes and a wooden leg of the best bird’s-eye maple — which is, he assures me, much handsomer than the other. Max was a war casualty after the war ended. One day while playing with other children on the sandy beach of Oostmahom on the North Sea, he had the misfortune to trigger off a buried land mine. He was eight or nine at the time.

I find Max a genial man with no illusions about the world — it’s a bad place, he says, and he’s lucky to be in it. I was first introduced to him a couple of years ago in John Fischer’s gallery on one of his rare ventures away from East 74th Street, where, in the ordinary course of work, he handles some of the rarest and most beautiful books in the world. I can imagine, perhaps foolishly, no more satisfying life.

Max is clumsy on his crutches, and attracts every eye. It is no pleasure for him to go out in the world and he rarely leaves his desk. And that, at the end of a fast hot walk up Lexington Avenue, is where I found him — but only after a brief and curious episode which barely caught my attention at the time.

Reaching 74th Street, I paused in front of Max’s establishment to mop my forehead and collect myself for a moment before going in. The place is, like Hal’s, an old brownstone, but its antique and rotting splendor has so far escaped improvement. Max calls himself, for business purposes, “Barbarossa” — the name had been fixed beside the doorway in small bronze letters. I was taken aback a little to see that the letters had gone and in their place was a sign that said “Barbarossa and Company.” I shook my head. Was Max about to vanish too?

I was frowning at the words when the heavy door at the top of the steps flew open and a small man hurried down to the sidewalk. I’d have paid no attention to him if he hadn’t paid attention to me, attempting, as he brushed past, to conceal his face with a sudden, awkward lift of his hand.

I looked after him, curious. A little past middle age, heavy-featured, expensively tailored, vaguely familiar: not someone known to me, but someone well known. The name escaped me. No matter. What mattered was if Max was in.

I climbed the stairs, rang, and was admitted. The first floor is devoted to the sale of fine and rare books, and is presided over by staff. Max’s private domain, where treasures change hands, is up a flight of stairs. One of the first floor flunkeys rang ahead to announce my name and unlocked an iron gate toward the rear of the place. I mounted the mahogany-railed flight into Max’s worm-eaten paradise and there he was, behind his desk, beaming, bellowing a welcome, his eyes sparkling, the same old Max.