Tuesdays were always slow. Marty Blake had no idea why. He was behind the front counter, catching up on paperwork—printing out mailing labels, updating the catalog and the database—when he heard the jingle of the bell over the door.
Foot traffic was better since he’d moved to his new location. Not that there hadn’t been plenty of people on the streets of the Tenderloin, just not the clientele he wanted. Martin Blake Rare Books was a tiny shop, and the rent was astronomical, but only a few blocks from Union Square, so chances were excellent that any customers could afford whatever they fancied.
He looked up to see an elderly Asian woman step softly inside. One hand gripped the head of an antique cane; the other held a large Neiman Marcus shopping bag. She wore black silk trousers and blouse under a cream jacket with lapels embroidered in a deep red that matched her lipstick.
This one had money, all right. On the far side of eighty—he couldn’t tell at a glance just how far—her face was wizened and her hair was thin, but still inky black, shot with a few strands of white. She wasn’t stooped or hunched, and although the hand on the cane was spotted with age, her eyes were bright bits of jet behind thick silver-rimmed glasses.
He straightened his own jacket and ran a quick finger through his goatee as she approached. “May I help you?”
“Your specialty is twentieth-century ephemera.” It was not a question.
He shrugged. “One of my areas of expertise. Are you looking for something in particular?”
“Perhaps. May I leave this here?” She eased her bag onto a table.
“Be my guest.”
She nodded her thanks, and Marty returned to his accounts. No need to keep a shoplifting eye out for this one.
Fifteen minutes passed, punctuated only by the tappings of her cane on the hardwood floor and his fingers on the keyboard. Marty looked up occasionally, watching her peruse the shelves, trying to get an idea of what she was drawn to. Much of his business was online, and the bulk of his inventory was in storage. He only had room to display his most select pieces.
In locked golden-oak cases and shallow, glass-topped tables, illuminated by tasteful halogen spots, were fewer than a hundred items. First editions, signed prints, and a few original manuscripts and drawings filled the front of the house. Some less respectable items—early paperbacks, erotica, some golden-age comics—still rare and valuable, but not to everyone’s taste, were in secure cabinets that lined the back wall.
One held a dozen pulp magazines from the ’20s and ’30s—garish covers, lurid scenes of murder and torture featuring scantily clad women with eyes like snake-filled pits, bound or chained and menaced by hunchbacked fiends, Oriental villains, mad scientists. Every issue was in pristine condition. They’d been packed away in boxes for years, but in the last decade, the market had skyrocketed enough to justify the display space.
The old lady had returned to the back wall twice now. The Christie mapback, maybe? He didn’t see her as a pulp fan. Those were usually geeky men buying up their fantasies with Silicon Valley start-up money that had blossomed into stock options.
Finally she turned and pointed. “May I see this one?”
Damn. Really? You never knew in this business. It was a pulp, and the best one of the lot, but the last thing he’d have thought she’d like—a 1936 Weird Menace whose cover was legendary for its grotesquerie.
He kept the surprise out of his voice. “Certainly.” He unlocked the cabinet, removing the tray case and setting it on a nearby table. He adjusted a rheostat and a halogen circle brightened for close inspection.
She sat, leaning her cane against the side of her chair, and gazed at the magazine in front of her with an expression Marty couldn’t read. Reverence? Longing? A bit of excitement, but mixed with—what? She looked almost homesick. He sat down across from her.
“Tell me about this,” she said.
“Well, as you can see, it’s in superb condition. White pages, crisp spine, as if it were fresh off the newsstand.” He slid a hand beneath the mylar sleeve and tilted the magazine slightly. “It’s an excellent issue, stories by both Clark Ashton Smith and Manly Wade Wellman, which alone makes it quite collectible, since—”
She held up a hand. “I have no interest in those stories,” she said. “What about that cover?”
It was a violent scene with a dark, abstract background. The subject was a pale woman, her eyes wide with fear, naked except for a wisp of nearly flesh-toned silk, a nest of green-scaled vipers coiled around her feet. Looming over her, a leering hooded figure in scarlet brandished a whip. It was a terrifying, erotic illustration, one that left nothing—and at the same time, everything—to the viewer’s imagination.
“Ah.” The art. Marty smoothly changed his sales pitch. “The artist is, of course, Haskel. The signature’s at the bottom right, there.” He pointed to an angular H, the crossbar a rising slash with ASKEL underneath. “He did close to a hundred covers, not just for Weird Menace, but for several of the other—” He groped for the word. “—unconventional—magazines. A lot of output for a short career—just seven years. No one really knows why he stopped.” He thought back to the reference books in his office. “His last cover was in 1940. October or November, I think.”
“Nothing after that?”
“Not a trace. It’s like he disappeared off the face of the earth.” He recalled conversations he’d had with other dealers over the years. “There are rumors,” he said slowly, “that he did do one last cover, but it was never published. No one even knows what house it was for. I’ve heard guys at Pulpcon sit in the bar and talk about it like it was the Holy Grail, the one piece any collector would hock his grandmother for.” He stopped, remembering who he was talking to. “No offense, ma’am.”
“None taken. What do you think happened?”
“The war, probably. Might have been killed, but there’s no service record.”
She nodded. “My husband was a pilot. His plane was never found.”
“I’m sorry. But, for Haskel, there’s no paperwork of any kind, other than a few invoices. No photos, either. He’s a bit of a mystery.”
“I see. And—?” She looked at him expectantly.
Marty thought back to the few articles that had been published about Haskel. “He worked almost exclusively in chalk pastels, not oils, which make his paintings smoother and softer, with an almost—” What had that reviewer said? Marty drummed his fingers. Ah, yes. “—an almost Technicolor glow. His style is unmistakable, and this is considered one of his finest covers.”
He lifted the magazine once more, this time placing it into the old woman’s hands. “The detail is exquisite.”
“If you like that sort of thing.” The woman arched an eyebrow. “How much?”
He thought quickly. The catalog listing was eight hundred, but he’d seen the look on her face. “In this condition, twelve hundred.”
“That seems reasonable,” she said.
Marty breathed a sigh of relief. Was she even going to try and haggle? If not, it would be an excellent Tuesday after all.
“But I’m afraid my interest lies in the original artwork.” The old woman returned the magazine to the tray case.
Marty sputtered, then coughed in surprise. “An original Haskel? Almost impossible.” He shook his head. “I’ve only seen one, at an exhibition. There are five, maybe six known to exist.”
“You claimed there were nearly a hundred covers,” the woman said in an imperious, indignant tone.
“That’s what he painted, yes. But—” Marty produced a handkerchief and wiped his dampening forehead. “You see, back then, the pulp market was the lowest of the low. As soon as the magazine was on the stands, the art was destroyed. It had no value to anyone, including the artists. Besides, chalk pastels aren’t as—sturdy—as oil paint. Delicate as a butterfly wing.”
“There are originals for sale?”
“Not often. They’re all in private collections. The last one that came up at auction was five years ago, and it went for $60,000. One might go for double that, now.”
“Really?” She tapped a finger to her lips, thinking, and then smiled with an expression so expansive it pleated her entire face. “I’ll just fetch my shopping bag, young man. I believe I have something that will interest you.”