by John Dunning
“So what screwed him up?”
“Everything, starting with his grandfather. He was never good enough, either for his father or grandfather. His older brother was named after the father and grandfather. He was the one who was supposed to rule the estate, like some stupid progression in royalty, and he would have if he hadn’t been killed in an auto wreck. Hal’s first mistake was being born second; his second mistake was not wanting to be a lawyer.”
“So the Archers loved books but wouldn’t let their son write ‘em.” “I don’t think that’s so unusual. Would you want your son to be a writer? Or your daughter to marry one?”
“If that made them happy, why not?”
“Because most of the time it doesn’t make them happy. Most writers I know lead difficult, hand-to-mouth lives. In the first place the odds against selling a book are enormous. A big New York publishing house may get twenty thousand manuscripts in a year and publish two hundred. Most of those slush-pile books are horrible, so there’s an expectation of failure that’s tough to overcome even with decent work. Those first-readers can’t expect to find much, so they don’t.”
“And this is what you want to give up law for?”
“That’s probably exactly what Archer’s father said, in far stronger terms.” She shrugged. “At least I’ve got some money in the bank. I’m not going to starve and I can always go back to law, but I’m still a good case in point. I suppose I’m like every other wannabe writer with a huge ego. I believe my talent and sheer persistence will overcome the odds, even when I know what the odds are. I’m facing a long, uphill battle, but at least I know it. That’s why I can talk about Archer’s life with some understanding even if I don’t like him much as a man.”
“So Archer was estranged from his family fairly early.”
“To put it mildly. He was sent to the University of Virginia, the old man’s alma mater, in the hope it would straighten him out. But he was put on notice and given no money for anything. He dropped out after a year and the family made him an outcast. In effect he was on his own from then on. He went to New York, lived in a hole in the wall, and started to write stories.”
“And had a terrible time selling them.”
“Oh yeah. Miranda’s right: Archer’s a real bastard, but what a great talent. That should have been evident from the start, publishers should have been clamoring to get at his stuff. Instead he met a wall of indifference that broke his spirit and finished the job his family had started. Can you imagine what it’s like to write for years and get nowhere? To know in your heart that you’re something special and watch your books get rejected and rejected and rejected, over and over till the paper they were typed on begins to come apart. I’ll tell you what happens to writers like that. One day they wake up and they’re old. All that promise just seems to flush away overnight and they’ve got nothing to show for it except a wasted life. It comes faster than they could’ve imagined. Archer was in his forties when he published his first book. It had gone everywhere and finally David McKay bought it. McKay was a small house and the book sank like a lead balloon. Then they rejected his next book, and there he was, starting from scratch, looking for a publisher. His book had made him less than three thousand dollars, and that was spread over several years. Try to live anywhere on that. Try living in New York.”
She took some more coffee. “His next publisher was St. Martin’s Press, a real mixed bag. They’ll put money into a big book, but a lot of their fiction is nickel-and-dime, with half of a very modest print run going to libraries. Archer made nothing from them; he refused to send them his next one and they parted company in mutual anger. Archer had to start his hunt from scratch again and no one would touch him. He fired his agent, his agent fired him, or they each fired the other at the same moment. By then there may have been a grapevine at work, I don’t know. It would stand to reason that publishers hear things, and why would they publish someone whose books come with a bad attitude and don’t sell anyway? Those two factors will offset a whole bunch of literary excellence, even in the minds of dedicated editors. So Archer toiled away and began to lash out at everyone. Finally in pure desperation he let Walker have the book. You know about Walker.”
“Yeah, there’s a shaggy-dog joke in the trade about Walker and St. Martin’s. Their print runs sometimes are so small that some of their authors become instant rarities. Those books are only a few years old and they sell for hundreds of dollars.”
“What’s the joke?”
“How do you become a millionaire in the used book business? Buy five copies of everything St. Martin’s and Walker publish. How do you go broke in the book biz? Same answer.”
She smiled. “As you can imagine, then, nothing happened with Walker. Archer’s bitterness got deeper and he became even more unbearable. Hindsight may be twenty-twenty, but in fact he should’ve been published by Random House or Doubleday, with six-figure advances and book tours, the whole nine yards. But all he could see coming out of the big houses was trumped-up suspense junk and mindless bodice rippers.”
“You sound bitter yourself, Erin, and you haven’t even started yet. As if nothing good ever gets published. I know you know better than that.”
“I’m talking as Archer now. You asked how he got screwed up and I’m telling you.”
“So he turned to nonfiction and the Viking Press found him,” I said. “But apparently the Pulitzer did him no good at all.”
“Didn’t do much for his attitude, did it? If anything it made him angrier. Instead of being overjoyed that he’d finally made it, he felt only rage that his whole writing life had been spent getting there. The Pulitzer was confirmation of his greatness, and of the stupidity he saw everywhere he looked.”
“Hey, he’s not dead yet. What about his new book? Viking’s not chopped liver, I imagine they’ve given him a good advance.”
“I don’t want to talk about that. It was told to Lee in confidence. Nobody else knows, not even Miranda. I think you’ve got to ask Lee that question.”
I ate my breakfast and watched her think. Over coffee I asked what her strategy would be if Archer continued to stonewall. She shook her head. “Can’t talk about strategy. You’ll have to ask Lee that as well.”
“Then call him up.”
* * *
She called from the table. “Hi, it’s me. We’re just finishing breakfast and I’ve got a couple of sticky points. You know where. He asked if I knew the status of Archer’s new book. I still don’t want to talk about that, for obvious reasons.”
She looked directly into my eyes while she talked. “I know what you said, Lee, I just don’t like it. He also wants to know what we’ll do if Archer continues to be unreasonable.”
After a short silence, she said, “I’ve got to tell you again, I wouldn’t advise that.”
She said, “If he gives his word, yes, I do think we could trust him.”
I nodded superseriously.
“That’s not the point,” she said.
Lee said something and she shook her head. “I’m against it.”
She frowned. “You’re the boss, but I don’t think we need to tell anybody, including Mr. Janeway, what we might or might not do. Especially what we won’t do. That’s hardly pertinent to anything he’s doing, and it’s just not smart.”
She shook her head. “Well, I knew you’d say that. But I still don’t like it.”
She handed me the phone.
“Hi, Lee,” I said.
“Cliff.” Lee sounded tired. “I’m sorry you’ve been put in the middle of this mess. But it sounds like Erin’s giving you what you need.”
“She’s great. She does have a couple of concerns, which are probably reasonable.”
“She’s being lawyerly, covering my flank. You know how it is. But she’ll talk to you now.”
For a moment I listened to the phone noise: all the distance between us.
“Erin said you wanted to talk to me too,” I said.
“Just to make s
ure you get what you need and to tell you not to worry. Whatever you have to do, I understand. Your cause comes before mine.”
“Thanks for that.”
“We’ll see you when you get back. And good luck with it.”
I hung up the phone.
“I’ll answer your questions now,” Erin said, “but you’ve got to respect our confidence. This can go no further.”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
“You asked about Archer’s new book. When he was in Denver he got drunk, cried on Lee’s shoulder, and told him some things he probably wishes he hadn’t. Turns out the great one is suffering from the granddaddy of all writer’s blocks. In the years since he won the Pulitzer he hasn’t written a publishable line. Or if he has, he’s second-guessed himself into fits of depression and destroyed whatever he’s done. If the prize has done anything, it’s given him a sense that nothing he does can ever measure up to his own…you know.”
“Legend,” I said sourly, loathing that dumbest of all modern buzzwords.
She looked sad, as if Archer’s plight had suddenly touched her. “I told you writers are screwed up. Archer took a lot of money from his publisher on a two-page plan to produce a groundbreaking work in a specified period of time. That time has passed. Viking has been more than sympathetic: they even came through with more money. The Pulitzer is a powerful wedge and they really do want to publish him. But their patience will run out sometime, and as of now, six years later, Archer has nothing to show them.”
All I knew about writers and their hang-ups was what I’d read here and there. But it seemed strange to get stuck over a work of nonfiction when most writer’s blocks seemed to come over some creative lack of faith. “I wonder if he promised them more than he’s got,” I said. “He may still be doing that, only now Lee is the mark, not the Viking Press.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. Lee doesn’t worry about that nearly enough, but this journal will have to be meticulously examined before I allow him to give Archer a dime.”
“Even then you won’t like it.”
She shook her head. “I think Lee is putting a lot of money at risk. What would you advise him, as his friend?”
“Check the provenance, six times over.”
CHAPTER 28
She leaned across the table and said, “Your turn, Janeway, talk to me,” and I had to tell her about Koko and Baltimore. Then, with deliberate understatement, I told her about Dante and what had brought us to Charleston: how stealth, not electronics, had given me such insight into her dealings with Archer. She shook her head and tried to look disgusted, but a small smile gave her away. The smile faded when I told her that Dante had burned Koko’s house.
“This is a bad man you’re playing tag with,” she said.
“I’ve been going on that assumption.”
“What can I do? As a lawyer maybe I can give him some grief.”
“Don’t even think about it. I don’t want you anywhere near this creep.”
“I don’t think you automatically get the final word on that.”
“The hell I don’t. I don’t want him to even hear your name.”
She looked angry but I cut her off with my own look. “Listen, goddammit, you make me more vulnerable, not less. I’ve got enough on my hands with Koko and myself.”
She made a little arch with her fingers and held them up to her face like a woman praying. I looked at her fiercely and said, “Don’t make me sorry I told you.”
“Nice try, but I’m not buying that.”
“You’d damned better buy it.”
She came straight up in her chair. “Or what’s gonna happen? Gonna take my dolls away?”
What I said next was stupid and false. “Erin, I appreciate your concern—”
She wadded up her napkin and bounced it off my head. “Don’t give me that imperious male baloney. If you want me out of your life, at least be man enough to say so in plain language. Is that what you want? Yes or no.”
“God, no.”
“Then shape up. Behave yourself. Don’t talk down to me. Don’t try to protect me.”
I thought about what to say and settled on this: “In your world every conflict has a legal answer. You think you can just file a brief in Denver District Court and force him to become human, but it doesn’t work that way. Don’t take this personally, but you’re out of your league with this boy.”
“And you’re not?”
“I don’t know.”
She shook her head. “I can’t just stand by and do nothing.”
“Well, you’ve got to.”
“And if he kills you, and there’s no evidence, what am I supposed to do then?”
“Nothing. What can you do anyway but get killed yourself?”
“I can’t accept that.”
“What can you do about it?”
“I’ll hold him down while you cut him a new one.”
It was one of those crazy unexpected comments and at once we were convulsed. She dabbed her eyes and said, “Stop it, this isn’t funny,” and we laughed all the more. I said, “Listen, I’m going to handle this,” and we laughed like idiots. “Don’t you make it harder,” I said, and we laughed.
I coughed. “I’m sorry, was that too much imperious male baloney?”
“Yeah, it was, but the groveling tone helps.” She smiled at me from somewhere far behind her face. “How much time do you think you have before he finds you?”
“I don’t know that either. There’s no reason yet to assume he knows where we went.”
“You hope.”
I fiddled nervously with the saltshaker.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“I’m…wary. I’ve had enemies before, some of them real badasses. I just get the feeling there’s no limit with this guy. My biggest fear is I may never see it coming.”
She was sober now, the laughter of the moment gone and forgotten. “This makes our little rivalry pale by comparison, doesn’t it?” A moment later she said, “I want to tell Lee.”
“What good will that do?”
“I don’t know, maybe none.” She looked away, then back. “Three heads are better than two.”
“Tell him, then. If he’s got the good sense I think he has, he’ll tell you to stay out of it.”
“Lee doesn’t own me and neither do you. You really are annoying when things don’t go your way.”
“That’s why people want to kill me.”
She gave the waitress a high sign and took out a credit card. “I want you to think about something else while you’re still alive. The possibility that your old lady was a clever fraud.”
“I’ve always been aware of that. Why bring it up now?”
“I don’t know: just a feeling I have. Something’s not right there. Did you ever have the handwriting on your book checked?”
“Not personally. The auction house is reputable and I know what Burton’s handwriting looks like.”
“But you’re no expert.”
I shook my head, suddenly aware of how much of my business is taken on faith.
“That might be worth doing,” she said. “Something’s afoot there, I can smell it. Doesn’t it strike you as odd?”
“When you’ve been in the book business awhile, everything is odd.”
“But you were primed to believe it. Look, I know she was a sweet old gal and I don’t want to think bad things about her. But it’s not something we can dismiss.”
“She was in her nineties. That’s pretty old to be pulling a scam. And who pulls a scam when they’re dying? People who have lied all their lives tend to tell the truth on a deathbed. All she wanted was for the books to be put in a library in her grandfather’s name.”
“Maybe she was crazy, did you ever think of that? Maybe she heard that story years ago and transposed herself into it. Maybe Charlie became a grandfather in her mind.”
“She had the book.”
“She had a book. You don’t know where she real
ly got it, or when, or how. Maybe getting the book is what started it all. She may have had Burton on the brain for a long time.”
“Koko checked a lot of this out.”
“That may be well and good, but I don’t know Koko from a sack of beans. She may have her own agenda, as the boys in the boardroom like to say. Don’t get defensive, just think about it.”
I controlled my imperious male baloney and let her pay the tab. “I guess I won’t see you again before you leave,” I said. “What’re you doing tonight?”
“I thought you’d never ask. I’m facing a miserably lonely hotel room.”
“Want to test Charleston’s restaurants?”
And that’s how we had our first date.
When I got back to the motel Koko was gone. I tracked her down at the library, where she was searching through old records for some evidence of the East Bay photographer’s existence. She had found nothing new since her discovery of the murdering innkeepers the day before and her mood was bleak. “I’m beginning to think this is all going to be a waste of time.”
I stayed with her, following her instructions, reading my share of old newspapers and documents. Occasionally she would powwow with one of the librarians, the librarian would bring out another folder or have a bound volume of newspapers brought up from the basement, and we would start in again. At noon she called her lawyer in Baltimore and got things moving on her house. We started in again after a quick lunch, but the work was frustrating and by four-thirty we had nothing. “A waste of time,” she said. “You got your head kicked in and my house got burned down, for what? And we’ll never be able to go home again.”
At the motel she showed me a chart she had made of the whole block where Burton and Charlie had supposedly been photographed. Every building along the street had a name written neatly in its square. “This is it,” she said: “every tenant on that stretch of East Bay in May 1860 accounted for, and I don’t see any photographers there.”