“I never touched her.”
Jamie stopped at the top of the stairs, leering down. “If you’d just be honest…” She whisked her head away, tears already emerging. He thought to chase her into the street, but he knew he’d probably make it worse. He retreated down the stairs and bumped into William, who’d been waiting.
“I’m sorry Jamie had to leave so soon,” William said, a soft laugh emerging from his throat.
“You goddamn son of a bitch!”
Kyle leaped at William, knocking him to the floor. People gasped and scattered out of their way as the two rolled around.
“You psychotic motherfucker!” Kyle yelled, slamming William’s head into the floor.
“Kyle, stop, please,” William choked out.
Kyle could feel someone trying to wrench him off of William, but he was out of control. He wrestled whoever it was away and directed a fist square into William’s nose, blood gushing from the guy’s nostrils, covering Kyle’s knuckles as he kept pummeling, each punch giving him life. Finally enough people were able to pull him away.
“I will fucking kill you for this,” Kyle said, aching to beat on William even more, but the group holding him back was too strong.
“What did I ever do to you, Kyle?” William asked, sounding feeble, struggling to get to his feet. Brett helped him.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Brett yelled, and to Kyle’s surprise everyone was staring at him as if he was the deranged one.
“Could someone get me some water?” William asked. He was shaking now. Delia shuffled off to the bar to fulfill his request.
“This man has pushed me too far,” Kyle said. “He broke into my home, he gutted my cat…”
Kyle stopped because the stares he received were far from sympathetic. The line had been drawn and sides had already been established. No one was on his team.
“This isn’t over,” he said, pointing at William, making sure the threat had been received. He tore away from his restrainers and flew up the stairs into the cold night, the wind bruising his face, the finest traces of snow flurrying in the glow of the streetlamps. His legs buckled and he collapsed to the pavement, feeling like he could melt into a puddle and wash away down the sewer drain.
In every passerby he saw William’s face. He wanted to kill all of them, until the very idea of William would be erased from existence.
18
KYLE NURSED HIS bruised fist on the way to Carter’s office. His boss had sent an “URGENT” e-mail that Tucker Noley would be showing up, so Kyle made sure to get to Burke & Burke before his infamous author arrived. Apparently, Tucker had resurfaced from whatever back alley brothel he’d been hiding in—Carter alluded to an opium den in Shanghai—but his boss also wanted a one-on-one before Tucker’s grandiose persona hijacked the meeting. Kyle managed to avoid Brett and anyone else for fear that word had spread about his behavior at Sierra’s party, but he was certain that Carter had been alerted.
“Oh, good,” Carter said when Kyle entered. “We should have about ten minutes before the freight train arrives. Sit.”
Carter took off his glasses and placed the frame’s temple between his lips. A lecture would follow.
“Before we even discuss Tucker—”
“I want to apologize for last night,” Kyle said.
“Your fist looks pretty mangled.”
“You should see the other guy.”
“I have.” Silence. “We live in a day and age where you can’t go flying off the handle like that. Brett showed me a video. Someone posted your fight on YouTube. That’s a connection Burke & Burke does not want.”
“Am I fired?”
“Call this a warning, but something else I’ve recently learned about you troubles me more.” He pushed a folder across the desk. “This was faxed to me last night.”
Kyle grabbed the folder, no idea what the contents could be. He opened it to find his jail record back in college and documents from a few nights in a psychiatric hospital.
“I know who sent you this,” Kyle said. “I warned you this person is after me.”
“That’s irrelevant. What’s more disturbing are the folder’s contents.”
“I was eighteen, I did some stupid stuff. They put me in the hospital because they were afraid of what I’d do to myself, but I was just high. I got into some bad shit and then I got it out of my system by the end of that year.”
“I believe HR requires you to list any incarcerations.”
“Look, I dealt some drugs my freshman year at college because I had no money, and I got caught. Didn’t you do anything dumb back when you were a kid?”
Carter gave him a look that told him not to push it.
“And now Brett wants to sign my old professor just to spite me. Have you read the manuscript yet?”
“I have not, but Brett will be pitching it at the editorial meeting later today.”
“Just read a few pages, it’s terrible. There’s no way it can be published.”
“Are there any more skeletons I need to know about?”
“No, sir, that’s all of them.”
Carter continued chewing on his glasses, not entirely convinced. A knock on the door prevented him from prying any more.
“Come in,” he said, readjusting the glasses on the tip of his nose.
Tucker Noley barged in, carrying a cane that was more like a prop. For someone of such an undetermined advanced age, he retained the sturdiness and vigor of a man who lived like Hemingway in his younger years. Four wives in the can, a week once spent in a gulag, the loss of his pinkie during a game of five-finger fillet in Moscow. He had rounded into a snowman’s physique, with a beach-ball head and a larger beach-ball stomach. He took off his safari hat and pressed down the few strands of hair he had left.
“Tucker,” Carter said, rising to greet him. “Looking fit as ever.”
“Get a new pair of glasses,” Tucker said, and wedged himself into a chair. “I just returned from drying out in this place called Fortune Nookie. Pretty girls walking all over your back to get out the kinks with their feet. Then they flip you over—”
“So I made sure Kyle came in too,” Carter said, clearly not wanting to hear about any of Tucker’s dalliances. Tucker came from an outdated un-PC era and could even manage to offend Carter.
“Hrmph,” Tucker said, shifting in his seat.
Carter gave Kyle a confused look. “Something wrong, Tucker?”
Tucker took a moment to consider how to phrase his thoughts. White spittle collected around the edges of his mouth. Kyle pitied any of the girls at Fortune Nookie unfortunate enough to be handpicked by this beast.
“This one,” Tucker said, pointing at Kyle with his cane, “has not been reachable for the past few days.”
“What?” Kyle said, completely thrown off guard.
“I was ready to discuss the outline of the next Spade novel, but he wouldn’t return my calls.”
Kyle glanced down at his phone. Was he so distracted by everything with William that he hadn’t even noticed?
“I apologize,” Kyle said. “E-mail is always better.”
“Hrmph! So Big Brother can monitor my every word? And now that I’m deep into ISIS research, those radicals are probably monitoring me too. As a society, we’re gonna have to go back to the times of carrier pigeons if we want anything kept mum.”
“I apologize for this too, Tucker,” Carter said. “We’re all here now if you want to go over some of the plot.”
“Did you know that Random House approached me about Spade? They want to take the character into this millennium. I’m only contracted at Burke & Burke through this next book, you know.”
“I assure you we can handle the Spade books best, especially since we’ve been doing so for thirty years.”
“You pawned me off, Carter, on some young schmuck who’s more concerned about getting his dick wet than my next book.”
“Wait a second,” Kyle said. “I was contacting you all last month an
d you never returned any of my—”
Carter held up his hand to stop Kyle from making things worse.
“Your father was my first editor up until ’75,” Tucker began. “He even edited one of my early Spade books when I was over in Nam. Threw me a party when I got back with a ton of girls all dressed like Marilyn Monroe and coke on a silver platter like it was crudité. When was the last time Burke & Burke did that for me?”
“We’re in a different time than my father’s era,” Carter said.
Tucker put his safari hat back on with a pout. “You are gonna personally take on the Spade books, Carter. No more of your monkey boys whose mamas still need to wipe their little asses!”
Kyle heard Tucker’s knees pop as he rose.
“Okay, if that’s what you need to keep you on,” Carter said, holding out his hand to shake. Tucker looked at it with disdain.
“Expect a call from me later this week. And I want the most primo blow you’re capable of getting.”
Tucker knocked into Kyle with his cane and stepped on his foot as he passed by.
“Always a pleasure, Tucker,” Carter said. Tucker responded by slamming the door.
Kyle held up his hands in defense. “I swear I don’t remember getting any calls from him.”
Carter rubbed his forehead and patted his pocket for a cigarette. “These will be the death of me.”
“I’d love one too,” Kyle said.
The two of them smoked and tapped the ashes in an ashtray shaped like a bull.
“I’m sorry about these last weeks, sir.”
Carter blew a smoke ring. “‘I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.’ Melville. ‘Bartleby the Scrivener.’”
Kyle took a final drag. “Meaning?”
“Meaning take that advice. Whatever is going on with your former mentor, you are the one choosing for it to continue.”
“But I’m not.”
Carter looked down at Kyle’s right hand. “I think your bloody knuckles would disagree. Take the next week off and get your shit together.”
“I’m fine. I’m ready to be here.”
“This isn’t a request, it’s an order.” He stubbed out his cigarette on the bull’s snout. “How the fuck am I going to get a Scarface-size pile of cocaine to keep this blowhard happy? You don’t have any contacts left from your Escobar days, do you?”
Kyle shook his head.
“Well, then, what are you good for, Kyle?” He turned around to gaze at his Rockefeller Center view. “Now give me some peace while I figure out how to open these windows so I can fling myself out one.”
19
AFTER THE EDITORIAL meeting later that day, Kyle walked out confused. He’d expected Brett to try to sell Carter on Devil’s Hopyard, but Brett had responded that he was no longer interested. Carter asked why and Brett was very vague in his answer. The next bit of business dealt with Carter taking on Tucker Noley, which left Shane Matthews’s Dead Can’t Hunt You Down available for another editor. Kyle was even more surprised when Brett suggested his name. Carter agreed to think about it while Kyle was on “vacation”—his boss actually made air quotes—and he would come to a decision when Kyle returned.
Outside the meeting, Brett cornered Kyle. “We need to talk.”
“So talk.”
Still in shock from what transpired at the meeting, Kyle was unsure how much to trust Brett.
“Not here,” Brett said. “Let’s go to Jimmy Malones. A double of whatever you want on me.”
As they got to Brett’s office, he popped inside and came out with a manuscript box that looked heavy in his hands.
“What’s that?”
“Devil’s Hopyard almost in its entirety,” Brett said, a twitch in his eye. “Pretty much a thousand pages of madness.”
Now Kyle knew why Brett was acting so strange. William had finally revealed his psychotic tendencies to someone else.
* * *
JIMMY MALONES WAS a mainstay of old New York. The place had been around since the 1800s and had a dumbwaiter and the best Buffalo wings outside of Buffalo, tongue-tingling hot and greasy as fuck. They also weren’t stingy with alcohol. Brett was two drinks in and already three sheets gone.
“So after the hullabaloo last night, I offer to take William back to where he’s staying,” Brett said. “The guy’s bleeding, since you might have broken his nose.”
The bartender came over, an old guy in suspenders.
“Give me four Kick in the Balls,” Brett said. “Cuervo Gold, Jack Daniel’s, and Yukon Jack. Actually, just keep them coming.”
The bartender poured the concoctions. Brett downed a shot without even toasting.
“So he’s subletting this place on the Upper West Side. We go back there and he disappears into the bathroom. For like a half an hour. Dude has an unfurnished place, just a couch and an old TV that has fucking bunny ears. Anyway, he comes out and this gash on his forehead has opened up, like blood everywhere.”
“I didn’t do that to him,” Kyle said, jumping in. “I punched him in the nose, man, that’s it. Well, maybe the back of his head hit the floor—”
“So the door to the bathroom is open and the mirror is covered in blood, like it’s dripping onto the sink. William sits down on the couch like nothing happened, like that was totally normal.”
“What did you do?”
“I got him some paper towels. We mopped it up because it was all over his shirt. It was even on my hands. So I go to wash it in the kitchen sink, and when I come back in the living room he’s holding onto Devil’s Hopyard.”
Brett hoisted the manuscript up on the bar.
“He tells me it’s so close to being finished. That he stayed up for twenty-four hours straight and it has been exorcized from his body, those were the exact words he used. So he wants me to read a passage out loud.”
Brett paused to down another shot and then flagged over the old bartender for a refill. He waited until it came and then continued.
“I’m like, do you want to go to the hospital, William? Because he was still bleeding. It had stopped some, but I figured he might want to check it out, right?”
Brett took a deep breath. His hand resting on the manuscript was trembling. He looked as if he might cry.
“So William shakes his head, turns to a page, and has me read it out loud.” Brett slowly opens the manuscript to a marked page. “You read it.” He shoved the book at Kyle, looking relieved that it was out of his hands. He slid over a shot for Kyle too. “You’ll need one of these before you begin.”
Kyle complied and knocked back the shot, the alcohol burning. He began to read page 774.
And nibble on her flesh, that tattoo. And chew, chew, chew as it breaks apart in my mouth. It sinks into my molars, its taste acidic and metallic, warming and wonderful. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. It’s not the heart yet, but it is a start, a part of her I can try without her dying. I want her to watch me devour her piece by piece till there is nothing left but my prize. And once I sink my teeth into her precious heart, I will be complete. We will join as one in my stomach.
Kyle closed the manuscript and tossed back his second shot.
“I don’t want to read any more,” he said. “It’s the same bullshit page after page.”
“Kyle, he’s writing about taking this girl into a shack, cutting out her tattoo, and then cooking it up in a fucking frying pan!”
Brett’s eye was twitching like crazy now, fluttering as fast as a hummingbird’s wing.
“But the whole manuscript is like that,” Kyle said. “Why did that passage freak you out so much?”
“I told you the place he’s subletting is unfurnished, right? Like I said, couch, crappy TV, and the kitchen was completely empty of anything except…”
“Except for what?”
“A frying pan, and I swear to motherfucking god it looked like it was corroded with dried blood, old blood, blackened blood, like he made
a roux with blood once.”
Brett pushed Devil’s Hopyard back toward Kyle. “I don’t want anything to do with William Lansing.”
“You shouldn’t have offered to sign him, then. You told me his manuscript was genius.”
“I was messing with you, Kyle. You come to Burke & Burke, and everyone just falls over you with your perfect hair.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Do you want me to admit I was jealous? I’ve been at Burke & Burke since college—yeah, over fifteen years. I’ve clawed my way up from being Carter Senior’s bitch boy, but I’ve never been able to give them something like you have with Sierra Raven. I’ve never been featured in a Times article.”
Brett’s face had turned red. He grappled another shot and poured it down his throat.
“I told you he was insane,” Kyle said. “I’ve told everyone, but no one seems to want to listen. Jamie’s not taking my side, Carter tells me I’m perpetuating it.”
“So he makes me read this fucking filth to him and I get to the part about cooking the girl’s tattooed flesh in a frying pan. I look over and the nutbar is licking his lips. He’s mouthing the same words I’m saying, and he’s salivating; I’ve never seen anything like it before. Blood is pouring from his forehead and he doesn’t give a shit, he’s lapping that up too. So I stop and…”
Kyle leaned closer. “And what?”
“He says that nothing gives him a bigger thrill than putting words on paper, and I’m like, dude, you know your words are kind of fucked-up, right?” Brett said, laughing now at the absurdity of it. “Then he asks me if I ever tasted human flesh? I’m flummoxed, like, I did not expect that to come out of his mouth. I tell him no, of course not. He goes, ‘Shouldn’t all fiction come from reality?’ Of course I was like, no, fiction is fiction, nothing more.”
“What did he say?”
Brett shook his head, sadly, as if he’d been through a war and returned to a different, unsettling world.
“He told me, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’ And then the guy starts chuckling, this Joker’s laugh that he has. He wipes away the blood from his face and slaps me on the knee, telling me he’s just kidding, that he got me, that I should see my face. But man, that shit was not funny. He starts talking about method actors and how they have to lose themselves to get into an intense role and how writers need to be the same, how he needs to laugh about his character to break up the seriousness of it. I’m not even listening anymore, like, I’m not publishing this fucking book, so why am I even dealing with him? I stood up and got the hell out of there.”
The Mentor Page 15