“It’s here. In front of you. Have you forgotten how to read?”
“But your readers expect passion, romance. Nothing happens. The doctor doesn’t even fall in love with Clarissa.”
“Well, he does of course, but he keeps it to himself.” Roxanne picked up the manuscript and thumbed through it. She began reading aloud, clicking her rings against the chair arm for emphasis.
Clarissa put her hand trustingly in the older man’s. “You don’t know how much this means to me, doctor. To finally find someone who understands my life.”
Dr. Frohlich felt his flesh stir. His professional calm had never been pierced by any of his patients before, but this gamine-like waif, abused by father, constantly criticized by mother, so in need of trust and guidance, was different.
He longed to be able to say, “My dear, I wish you would not think of me as your doctor, but your dearest friend as well. I long for nothing more than to protect you from the blasts of the stormy world beyond these walls.” But if he spoke he would lose her trust forever. A psychiatrist must never violate the precious boundary between patient and doctor.
Roxanne dropped the pages with a thump, as though that settled the point.
“Well, why can’t he marry her?” Amy asked.
“Amy, you didn’t read it, did you? He’s already got a wife, only she’s in an institution for the criminally insane. But his compassion is so great he can’t bring himself to divorce her. Clarissa realizes that she’s been leading a shallow life, expecting fame and love and material rewards, but when she sees how self-sacrificing Dr. Frohlich is, she follows his example. She becomes a nun and spends the rest of her life working with a leper colony.”
Amy blinked. She didn’t think leper colonies still existed, but that was a minor point. “It seems a little downbeat for your readers, Roxanne. I wonder if—”
“Don’t wonder at me, Amy,” Roxanne snapped, her luminous eyes flashing magnificently. “Dr. Reindorf says happy endings are difficult to find.”
Dr. Reindorf was the psychiatrist Roxanne had been consulting; she had dedicated the book to him and assured Amy he was thrilled to be part of her literary and psychological evolution.
“Dr. Reindorf says if my readers keep expecting every book to be a panacea they’ll be just as bad off as me, expecting every man I fall in love with to solve all my problems.”
“I warned you,” Clay hissed. “Send her off to the fucking shrinks and what happens? We get cheap psychology about her readers and a book no one will buy. The woman can’t write, for Christ sake. If she loses her adolescent fantasy about true love she loses her audience.”
“Maybe Dr. Reindorf will betray her as badly as Gerardo and Kenny, and that surgeon, her first husband, who gave us A Clean Wound.”
“We can’t take that chance,” Clay said. “You’ve got to do something.”
“I’m sixty,” Amy said. “I can take early retirement. You’re the one who’s worried about it. You do something. Get the publicity department to plant a story in the National Enquirer that Roxanne is getting therapy from a child molester.”
She meant it as a joke, but Clay thought it was worth an effort. His publicity staff turned him down.
“We can’t plant stories about our own writers. Publishing is a community of gossips. Someone will know, they’ll leak it to someone else who hates you, and the next thing you know, Roxanne will be at Harper’s and you’ll be eating wiener-water soup.”
Clay began to lose sleep. Final Analysis, done in silver with a suggestive couch on the cover, came well out of the gate, but online reviews began killing it before the second printing was ready. It jumped onto the Times list in third place but stayed there only a week before plummeting to nineteenth. After two weeks, Final Analysis fell off the list into the black hole of overstock and remainders.
The emails from Brussels were hot enough to scorch the veneer from Clay Rossiter’s desktop, while Roxanne’s agent, Lila Trumbull, called daily to blame Clay for not marketing the book properly.
“But you can’t market long dull dreams and their interpretation,” Clay howled to his secretary. “As I told Amy.”
Clay fired Amy, to relieve his feelings, then had to rehire her the next morning: Roxanne had an editor clause in her contract. She could leave Gaudy if Amy did.
“Only if she’s going to keep turning out cheap psychology it won’t matter. Pretty soon even Harlequin won’t touch her. And, by the way, we won’t be able to afford you. How long has she been seeing this damned shrink?”
“About nine months. And the last time she was in New York she only stayed overnight so as not to miss a session. So it doesn’t seem to be following the course of her usual infatuations.”
“He’s not in New York? Where is he?”
“Santa Fe. This isn’t the only town with psychiatrists in it, Clay.”
“Yeah, they’re like rats: wherever you find a human population, there they’ll be, eating the garbage,” Clay grumbled. “Maybe he can fall off a mesa.”
When Amy left, he stared at the clock. It was eleven in New York. Nine a.m. in New Mexico. He got up abruptly and took his coat from behind the door.
“I have the flu,” he told his secretary. “If some moron calls from Brussels, tell him I’m running a high fever and can’t talk.”
“You look healthy to me,” she said.
“It’s the hectic flush of fever.”
He was out of the office before she could chide him further. He flagged a cab, then changed his mind. The cops were forever questioning cabdrivers. He took the long slow bus ride to Queens. At LaGuardia he found a man who looked like one of his self-important young Belgian masters, with a laptop, a garment bag, and his sports jacket slung over his arm. It was pathetically simple to remove his driver’s license and a credit card and to buy a ticket to Albuquerque. On the long flight to Albuquerque, Clay went through his seat-mate’s jacket pockets when the man got up to use the bathroom. According to his driver’s license, the man’s home was in New Mexico. He wouldn’t miss his license until after Clay mailed it back to him, with cash for the price of the rental, of course.
Hey-ho for a life of crime, he grinned to himself at the car rental counter. If the Belgians fired him, he’d become an airline pickpocket.
The rest of his mission turned out to be just as simple. He called Dr. Reindorf and told him the truth, that he was Roxanne’s publisher, that they were all worried about her, and could he have a word in confidence. Someplace quiet, remote, where they wouldn’t run the risk of Roxanne seeing Clay and feeling spied upon. Reindorf suggested a mesa with a view of Santa Fe below it when he’d finished seeing patients for the day.
Clay made the red-eye back to New York with an hour to spare. The next morning Amy stuck her head around his door. She started to ask him something but decided he really did have the flu, his eyes were so puffy. It wasn’t until later in the day that Roxanne called her, distraught at Reindorf’s death.
“She somehow ended up going to the morgue to look at the body. Don’t ask me why,” Amy told Clay’s secretary, since Clay had gone home sick again. “It had been run over by a car several times before being thrown from the mesa. The cops hauled her ex-gardener in for questioning but they don’t seem to have any suspects.”
“The news should revive Clay,” his secretary said.
Ancilla’s hands fluttered at her sides like captive birds. “You don’t understand, Karl. Papa is dead. His work—I never valued it properly, but I must try to carry it on.”
“But, darling girl, it’s too heavy a burden for you. It’s just not a suitable job for a woman.”
“Ah, if you knew what I felt, when I saw him—had to identify his body after the jackals had been at it—no burden could be too big for me now.”
Karl felt pride stir within him. He had loved Ancilla when she had been a beautiful, willful girl, the toast of Vienna. But now, prepared to assume a woman’s role in life—to shoulder a load most men would turn from—
the spoiled child lines dropped from her cherry lips, giving her the mouth of a woman, firm, ripe, desirable.
“I love it,” Clay said. “I’m ecstatic. And you’re calling it Life’s Work? You got her to change it from An Unsuitable Job for a Woman? Good going. It’s been only seventeen weeks since that shrink died and she’s already cured. We ought to be able to print a million, a million-five, easy. I’ll text Brussels. We’ll go out to celebrate.”
“I’d rather celebrate right here.” Amy shut his office door. “We have a chance to sign a really brilliant new writer. Her name is Lisa Hazen, and she’s written an extraordinary novel about life in western Kansas during the 1960s. She’s going to be the next Willa Cather.”
“No, Amy. Hispanic experience is good. Indian experience is outstanding; African is possible. But rural Kansas is of no interest to anyone these days except you. I’m certainly not going to pitch it to Brussels.”
Amy leaned over the desk. “Clay, Lila Trumbull called me seventeen weeks ago. The day after you went home sick with the flu.”
“She’s always calling. How can you know what day it was?”
“Because that was when Roxanne’s shrink’s body was found.” Amy smiled and spoke softly, as if to Roxanne herself. “Lila thought she saw you on the Albuquerque flight the day before. She was in first class and thought it was funny you were flying coach. She says she tried to talk to you but you didn’t hear her.”
Clay shifted in his chair. When he spoke his voice came out in a croak.
“I couldn’t have been there. I was home with the flu.”
“That’s what I told her, Clay. You were home sick—she must have been mistaken. And that’s what I’ll tell anyone else who asks. . . . I’ll call Lisa Hazen’s agent and tell her fifty thousand, okay?”
Clay stared at her glassily, like a stuffed owl. “Sure, Amy. You do that.”
Amy stood up. “Oh—and, Clay, in case you’re thinking how good I’d look at the bottom of a mesa—or under a Seventh Avenue train—I hope you remember Roxanne’s contract. She’s made it clear a dozen different ways that she won’t work with you.”
Clay’s secretary came down to Amy’s office a few minutes later. “Can you talk to old Mr. Jambon in Brussels? Clay’s gone home sick again. I hope there isn’t anything serious wrong with him.”
Amy smiled. “He’s fine. He just got a little overexcited this morning about Roxanne’s new book.”
Note
I wrote “Heartbreak House” for an anthology called Murder for Love, ed. Otto Penzler (Dell, 1996). I had enormous fun creating over-the-top scenarios for a series of romance novels, and even more fun imagining the inner workings of the Gaudy Press. Whenever I need a publishing company in my work, I use Gaudy. They publish Murray Ryerson’s biography of Boom-Boom Warshawski in Brush Back, and in this collection they publish Lisa Macauley’s books in the story “Publicity Stunts.”
I wrote “Heartbreak House” in 1996, when publishing was beginning to change in ways that completely altered the industry. Big conglomerates began acquiring publishing houses, and often the parent company might know next to nothing about the book business. In Gaudy’s case, they’ve been bought by Jambon et Cie—i.e., Ham and Company, in Brussels.
Although Amazon existed in 1996, they were a fringe player. The sales behemoths of that era were the big-box stores, as well as the big chains, of which Barnes & Noble was the largest. Again, for all the books that I write, when I need a big-box store I turn to By-Smart, a company I created for Fire Sale. (Their motto: “Be Smart, By-Smart.” I worked in advertising and sales promotion for thirteen years, and every now and then I like to flex those old muscles.)
About the Author
Hailed by P. D. James as the “most remarkable” of modern crime writers, SARA PARETSKY is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-two novels, including the renowned V.I. Warshawski series. She is one of only four living writers to have received both the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. She lives in Chicago.
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Endorsements
“Sara Paretsky is a legend. . . . If you haven’t read her yet, now is the time.”
—Harlan Coben
“Writing advance praise for Sara Paretsky is like writing a job recommendation for Bill Gates. Paretsky is the gold standard for novels dealing with crime and its consequences.”
—Charlaine Harris
“As long as Paretsky’s hotheaded, quick-witted sleuth is on the job, imperiled young women . . . will always have a champion.”
—New York Times Book Review
“An author of matchless intelligence, craft, and power . . . Sara Paretsky reigns as one of the all-time greats.”
—Karin Slaughter
“I’m a fanboy. . . . When I was teaching myself to write thrillers, I closely studied Sara Paretsky’s detective V.I. Warshawski.”
—John Sandford
“Wonderful company and a rich discovery awaiting those who have yet to meet her.”
—Los Angeles Times
“[Paretsky] is at the top of her crime novel game.”
—C. J. Box
“Sara Paretsky’s legendary P.I. is at the top of her game. Everyone will want to go along for this ride.”
—Tess Gerritsen
Also by Sara Paretsky
Dead Land
Shell Game
Fallout
Brush Back
Critical Mass
Breakdown
Body Work
Hardball
Bleeding Kansas
Fire Sale
Blacklist
Total Recall
Hard Time
Ghost Country
Windy City Blues
Tunnel Vision
Guardian Angel
Burn Marks
Blood Shot
Bitter Medicine
Killing Orders
Deadlock
Indemnity Only
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
These stories first appeared in the following publications: “Miss Bianca,” Ice Cold: Tales of Intrigue from the Cold War, ed. Jeffery Deaver and Raymond Benson (2014); “Is It Justice?” Suspense Magazine (2013); “Flash Point,” first published as “A Family Affair” in Fifty Shades of Grey Fedora, ed. Bob Randisi (2015); “Acid Test,” Deadly Housewives, ed. Christine Matthews (2006); “Safety First,” It Occurs to Me That I Am America, ed. Jonathan Santlofer (2018); “Trial by Fire,” From Sea to Stormy Sea, ed. Lawrence Block (2019); “Murder at the Century of Progress,” Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine (1999); “The Curious Affair of the Italian Art Dealer,” In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, eds. Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger (2014); “Wildcat,” first published as “A Family Sunday in the Park,” Sisters on the Case, ed. Sara Paretsky (2007); “Death on the Edge” was first published as an e-book original by William Morrow (2018); “Photo Finish,” Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine (2001); “Publicity Stunts,” Women on the Case, ed. Sara Paretsky (1996); “Heartbreak House,” Murder for Love, ed. Otto Penzler (1996); “Love & Other Crimes” is original to this collection.
love & other crimes © 2020 by Sara Paretsky. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or h
ereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Richard L. Aquan
Cover photograph © Elena Dijour/Shutterstock (lock and fence); © Varintip Sudhiphongse/Shutterstock (city)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition JUNE 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-291556-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-291554-2
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* NB: Bobby Mallory is the only person who is ever allowed to call V.I. Warshawski “Vicki.” To everyone else, she’s Vic, V.I., Victoria or, when they’re annoyed, “Warshawski.”
Love & Other Crimes Page 36