Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer
Page 14
I turned to Walter. “Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll be running along. I’m sure you two will have a lot to talk over. I won’t bother calling the police. You can do that. Maybe you can even fix this whole thing up. I don’t know how, but you’re pretty good at fixing things. I’ll be interested to see how it all comes out, however.”
“Richard,” Walter said. “What about our deal?”
I laughed.
“May I take it then that you are not going to publish the book?”
“I’m not going to publish your book,” I said. “I’m going to publish Anstruther’s.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I haven’t got time to go into it now,” I said. “You can read all about it in the New York Times Book Review.”
I turned, unlocked the door, and left quickly.
I sat in the bar on West Forty-eighth Street looking at the autographed picture of Martin and Lewis.
On the table in front of me were two things.
My fifth drink and Jean Dahl’s lipstick.
I looked across the room at the booth on the other side and I noticed something. A new picture.
I picked up my drink and the lipstick and moved to the booth across the way.
I had two more drinks. I drank them slowly and deliberately. Then I looked up at the picture and said, “Hey, baby, want to see something?”
I pulled the cap off Jean Dahl’s lipstick and turned it upside down. The roll of microfilm fell out in my hand. “There it is, baby,” I said to the picture. “Microfilm. No wonder Jean was willing to sell you her copy of the book so cheap. She had it all on microfilm, right here. I guess this is what Maxie’s boys were looking for in my apartment the other night. I guess a lot of things. I guess I’ll have another drink.”
Chapter Fifteen
I walked into Pat’s office two days later and (in reality, not in a daydream) casually tossed the manuscript, all three hundred and forty-seven photostated pages of it, on his desk.
“What’s this?” Pat asked.
“Oh,” I said. “A book.”
“What book?”
“The new Anstruther,” I said casually. “If we rush it into galleys we can have it for late spring.”
Pat was aghast.
“You’re drunk,” he said.
“You’re right,” I said. “But there’s the book.”
“Come back here,” he said. “Where are you going? You’re drunk. You look terrible.”
“You’re right,” I said. “And now I’m going to get drunker and look worse.”
I left the office and went for a long walk. Then I went to the movies. I spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening in the moldy theatre on Sixth Avenue, watching the movie over and over again.
Then I walked back up Sixth Avenue, stopping in each bar along the way.
The last place I went into was the one on Forty-eighth Street.
I wanted to take a last look at the new photograph.
But I was too late.
They’d already taken it down.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Acclaim For the Work of George Axelrod
Excerpt
Other Hard Case Crime Books
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
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