Written Off

by E. J. Copperman

  “Let me introduce you,” I said as I stood up. You can run better when you’re standing up. “Rita Mendham, this is Duffy Madison.”

  Brian unfolded his arms.

  Rita, however, has been working in retail for a long time, so nothing on Earth can faze her. She stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Madison,” she said. Not a flicker. Not a glance in my direction. Nothing. She knew she was meeting a massively deranged person, but from her manner, you’d think he was claiming to be a shoe salesman from Dubuque, Iowa.

  The crazy man took her hand in a professional manner. “Ms. Mendham,” he said.

  “Are you interested in buying one of Rachel’s books?” Rita asked. “I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but I do want to clear the register.” She pointed toward the counter.

  “Duffy” probably considered the idea that Rita had mentioned my books without noting that he was in them. Brian took the opportunity to move closer to my table, positioning himself between me and the lunatic on the left side, so I’d have a clear path on the right if I had to bolt. Brian was a very nice guy and a large one; if he had to place himself in harm’s way to protect me, I would make sure to tell his mother about it the next time I saw her.

  “I don’t think I’ll be buying a book tonight, Ms. Mendham,” the allegedly fictional character said. “Please feel free to clear out your system.”

  “In that case, Mr. Madison, I don’t want to be rude, but we were planning on closing the store.” Rita feinted slightly to her right side, toward the front of the store, indicating a direction in which the man might want to walk. Now.

  “I appreciate that, ma’am,” he answered. “But I am here on official business, and I am trying to persuade Ms. Goldman to cooperate in an investigation, a very urgent one. A woman’s life is at stake.”

  “Oh dear,” Rita said. “And Rachel has some information about it?” Wait. Whose side was she on?

  “Perhaps,” the fake Duffy said. “But it is of a somewhat confidential nature, and I will need to speak to her alone. I’m sure you understand.”

  “I don’t understand,” I volunteered. “Why should I believe a word you say? You walk in here and tell me you’re my fictional creation, that I made you up and so you exist, and you need to take me somewhere alone so we can talk it over? Exactly how stupid do you think I am, pal?” Well, somebody had to say it.

  “I don’t think you’re stupid. But you don’t understand.”

  Somewhere around the part where I said that Duffy believed I’d created him, Rita’s eyes had widened and her mouth opened slightly. Brian took a step directly in front of the determined nut job and said, “Rita said we were closing.”

  The man who claimed I had conjured him up took a step back, then looked at each of us in turn. He seemed to be assessing his situation. Much like Duffy Madison would do in one of my books. Damn, he was good!

  “Yes, she did,” he said to Brian. “I believe you’ve been more than polite about it.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket, and I saw the muscles in Brian’s upper arms tense. But the imposter slowed his movement and pulled out his hand slowly, then showed Brian that it held only a business card. He moved slowly toward me, noted Brian’s proximity again, and placed the card on the edge of the table.

  “Please think it over,” he said with an edge in his voice. “There is very little time.”

  Then he turned, nodded his head in farewell to Rita and Brian, and walked out the front door. Back straight, head held high. A purposeful stride.

  Like I’d noted on page sixty-seven of Olly Olly Oxen Free.

  The collective sigh of relief from Rita and me once the door closed and Brian locked it was not just audible but palpable. The level of carbon dioxide from our exhaled breath probably fed the six plants Rita had brought in to spruce the place up (almost literally).

  “What was that all about?” Rita finally asked.

  “Just what I said. The guy called yesterday, said he was Duffy, and he needs me to work on a case with him. Then tonight he tells me he really is Duffy, and that I created him when I started writing the books four years ago.”

  Brian kept his eye on the front window, to be sure the guy had left, but he still was listening to us. “That’s eight different kinds of crazy,” he said.

  “Newsflash,” I said.

  “Do you think we should call the police?” Rita asked.

  “And tell them what?” Brian responded. “He didn’t break any laws.”

  I picked up the business card on the table and examined it. “He said he worked in consultation with the Bergen County prosecutor,” I said, mostly to myself.

  “But Duffy works in Morris County in the books,” Rita pointed out, as if I wasn’t aware of that.

  “All true. I know people in Morris. I did a few ride-alongs when I was researching the first two books, and I got to know a couple of the investigators there. And I know the chief of police in Morristown. This guy couldn’t claim to be working for them because it would be too easy for me to prove that he was lying.”

  “But in Bergen?” Brian asked.

  “In Bergen I don’t know anybody,” I admitted. “But I get the feeling I’m going to be doing some checking tomorrow.”

  “How can you check if you don’t know who to ask?” Brian said.

  I smiled. “I do research on all the books, Brian. I make cold phone calls all the time. Believe me, I know how to do it. And now I have a brand-new contact at the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.”

  I handed him the business card “Duffy” had left on the table. He glanced at it and looked puzzled. “I thought this was his card,” he said.

  “So did I, at first,” I answered. “And for all we know, that might be his real name. I’ll check in the morning.”

  Brian handed the business card to Rita. She read it and looked at me. “Chief Investigator William Petrosky?” she asked. “Who’s that?”

  “According to him, that’s Duffy Madison’s boss.”

  Chapter 5

  “Bill Petrosky is a real investigator with the real Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.” Martin Dugan, who held a similar position with the equally nonfictitious Morris County prosecutor, grinned a little at me as he spoke. Marty thinks I’m a riot, trying to find out what it’s like to be a “real cop,” even while cooking up my preposterous (his opinion) little stories. “Are you writing about a guy who pretends to be an investigator?”

  “This is not for a book,” I told him. I sat drinking an iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. I’d brought one for Marty, too, knowing that his office didn’t have a coffee pot and he had a serious caffeine habit. The poor guy had to get up from his desk six or seven times a day and trudge all the way down the street to a bodega just to keep himself right.

  It’s a dirty, rotten job, but somebody’s got to do it.

  I practically had to take a solemn oath to be careful before Brian had let me out of his sight the night before. I think he would have insisted on spending the night at my house, but his girlfriend Cathy back at his place would have thought that was odd. I had indeed kept watching for cars following me on the way to Marty’s office this morning.

  “If it’s not for a book, why are you asking about whether Petrosky is a real guy?” Marty said, draining the large drink I’d gotten him (mine was a medium, and I was about a third of the way through it). “Why not call him up and ask him if he’s real?”

  Marty’s cubicle was less messy than some but still messier than others. He was not like those cops who speak like they’re in the military, always call you “ma’am” (which can be a little disconcerting), have flattop haircuts, and crack a smile once a year on J. Edgar Hoover’s birthday. He was a real person, and when I was researching the first Duffy book, he had welcomed me in, even if he couldn’t resist the urge to needle me about my complete ignorance of police procedures.

  “I got this business card from a man I met last night,” I said, and showed him the specimen, which was no
ne the worse for the sixteen hours of wear it had endured in my purse.

  “Got picked up in a bar by a Bergen County investigator?” Marty’s eyes twinkled joyfully. He thinks the fact that I’m female is hilarious. Cops.

  “That’s a riot, Marty. Truly. I’m going to write it down when I get home and repeat it the next time I get together with my girlfriends.”

  “Ooh, touchy.” Marty’s eyes got a little more serious. “So you got a business card from a cop. If you met Petrosky last night, you know he’s real. Do you have some reason to believe the guy you met wasn’t Bill Petrosky?”

  “I know for a fact he wasn’t; he didn’t claim to be,” I answered. “He said he was Duffy Madison.”

  Bill sucked a little on the straw in his iced coffee, which couldn’t have given him more than a few droplets of melted ice at this point. He was thinking. I half expected smoke to waft out of his ears. “So you met a nut case last night, and he gave you Petrosky’s business card. Why?”

  “He says that he’s the real Duffy Madison, that he’s investigating a disappearance for the Bergen prosecutor, and that your pal Bill is his supervisor. He wants me to call to verify, and I figured I’d check with you before I did.”

  “Why? Why not just call Petrosky?”

  It’s scary that some people with “investigator” in their job titles ask questions Encyclopedia Brown could answer without blinking. “Anybody can pick up a phone and say they work for Bergen County,” I said. “I wanted to be sure William Petrosky was an actual employee of the government. You’d know.”

  “So would the Internet,” Marty pointed out.

  “The Internet will tell you that a zombie apocalypse has already begun,” I said. “Besides, you’re so much more personable, and I can’t buy the Internet iced coffee.”

  “All true.” He leaned back in his chair. “So you have your confirmation. Do you want me to call Bill and check this guy out?”

  I considered that but shook my head. “I think I want to hear his voice when he answers and maybe have a few follow-up questions depending on what he says. The man I met last night—and it was at a book signing, before you say anything else—was really kind of disturbing.”

  Marty looked concerned. “Scary?” he asked.

  “No. Exactly not. And that’s what was unsettling about him—he seemed so reasonable. And he acted, I swear, Marty, just like the Duffy Madison I’ve been writing for four years.”

  Marty shrugged. “He’s studied the books.”

  “He says he’s never read them.”

  “And I say I’m a captain when I meet a woman in the supermarket,” he answered. “Guys say things, Rachel.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “It’s never like that. Especially when it’s like that.”

  I looked at him, living somewhere between rumpled and elegant, in his cubicle, being a cop who wasn’t exactly a cop. “You always think everything’s about sex,” I said.

  “Name something that’s not.” He gave another pull on the straw and got that “Hey, I’m empty” sound that a cup makes when you’ve done all the damage you can do.

  “Iced coffee,” I said.

  Marty leaned back and closed his eyes, smiling. “That’s more about sex than sex,” he said.

  * * *

  The next logical step would be to call William Petrosky from my office. So I didn’t do that. I drove from Marty’s office in Morristown to Caffeinated, the local coffee bar in Adamstown. Having just had coffee, I ordered a piece of Ruthie’s crumb cake, which is better than anyone else’s, and a glass of milk. Ruthie smiled with the left side of her mouth, acknowledging the nuttiness of the local author, and said she’d bring my order out to me once I had set up.

  I took a seat on a stuffed (not overstuffed) chair in the corner and placed my computer bag on the ottoman in front of it. By the time Ruthie brought over my order, I had gotten the laptop out of the bag and was ready to start revising the book I had been sure was completely finished two days before.

  Revisions, you should know, are an absolute necessity. I break into a cold sweat at the very notion that a first draft of anything I wrote would ever be seen by anyone who can actually read. Paula doesn’t get to read my first drafts. Neither of my parents gets to read my first drafts. If I had a husband, he probably wouldn’t get a look until about the third draft. Revisions are the process through which the drivel that falls out of my brain becomes a coherent piece of work that I am proud to call my own when someone sends me an e-mail or meets me at a book conference.

  The other thing you should know is that I hate doing my revisions. Hate, hate, hate. With every fiber in my being. It is a tedious, brain-aching, emotionally crippling process that makes me believe I should certainly have gone into the bagel business rather than take up a word processing program and try to express myself. I would rather clean my entire house, do six loads of laundry, and actually reorganize my linen closet than do revisions.

  So you can imagine my intense relief when I opened the file for the new book and my cell phone immediately rang. Even if this were someone who wanted to connect me personally with the world’s most long-winded insurance salesperson, I would listen to every word and ask questions to keep the conversation going for the longest possible amount of time.

  Instead, it was my agent. Win-win. I get to procrastinate and feel like I’m doing something related to my work at the same time. Just to reward myself, I took a sip of milk before hitting the “talk” button.

  “Hey, Adam! What’s shakin’, dude?”

  There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. “Doing revisions, Rachel?” Adam Resnick asked.

  “How could you tell?”

  “You sounded positively giddy to hear from me,” Adam answered. “I know you love me, but you never sound that happy to hear from anybody unless the call is taking you away from a first draft.”

  “Revisions kill pieces of my soul, Adam.” Downside to the call: I couldn’t eat any crumb cake while talking on the phone. It sounds disgusting to the other person, and I didn’t hate Adam nearly enough to subject him to that.

  “I know, Rach. I know. Just think how proud you’ll be when the book is ten times better.”

  “You think the book is bad now? Who have you been talking to?” I was kidding. Mostly. You hear about hackers. I’m just saying.

  A man and a woman seated at a far table, possibly in a close and personal relationship, shared some beverage or another together yet were both so engrossed on their smart phones that they never made eye contact or spoke a word to each other. For this they left the house and came here.

  “Easy, tiger,” Adam said. “I’m calling about movie rights.”

  That got my attention. Getting your book sold is the Holy Grail for a midlist author like me. It can catapult your sales into the stratosphere and give your work the kind of exposure that is truly mind-boggling—and best of all, you get lots of money without having to do anything at all.

  Adam had been doing the usual rounds of production companies (we call them “prodcos” in the business, except that we really don’t) since Olly Olly came out four years ago and had been roundly rejected at every turn for various reasons: people didn’t want to deal with kidnapping stories; Duffy wasn’t a believable character (although I could contradict that one now!); there was no sexual tension between him and Lt. Antonio; it was too soon after 9/11 (it was more than eleven years later, and what did that have to do with Duffy?); and so on.

  So news of possible interest in Duffy on the big screen shot me full of adrenaline much faster than the coffee I didn’t order.

  “What’s going on, Adam?” I asked. Agents usually call only when they have some news to report, that there’s been some interest if not an offer.

  “I’m not sure yet,” he answered. “I don’t want to get your hopes up too high. But Hugh Ventnor wants to see it, and he wants to see it right away.” Adam thinks I remember the name of producers in Hollywood as well as ev
ery editor at every publishing house in the world. I’m lucky I remember Sol’s name, and he’s edited all the books I’ve published to this day.

  “Which one is Hugh Ventnor, Adam?” I asked.

  There was something of a sigh from my agent. He believes I’m a terrible businesswoman, a sentiment I share, by the way, and I think he’s the one who’s supposed to keep track of all this stuff, a sentiment I’m willing to believe he shares. He just likes to put on a show.

  “He’s the executive producer at Monarch, Rachel,” he said in a tone clearly intended to make me feel stupid. “And he called me, out of the blue, to ask about Little Boy Lost.”

  That sounded strange. “Not the first book in the series? And he called you? You hadn’t submitted it to him?”

  “I never submit to Hugh,” Adam said. “I submit to one of the readers in his acquisitions area, and they pass on the ones they like to him. I submitted it to Sheila York, but it was just yesterday. There’s no way she read through it and recommended it to Hugh that fast.”

  I was really considering that crumb cake. If I could get Adam to talk for a long time, I might be able to get a bite in, anyway. And since I really am not one to buy in on his dramatic crescendos, I had only been moderately interested, not enthralled, at what he’d been saying. “So what does that mean?” I asked. That should get a lengthy response. I grabbed the crumb cake and took a mammoth bite.

  “I’m not sure what it means,” Adam said. And then he stopped talking.

  Dammit! Now he expected me to say something, and I had enough delicious carbohydrate in my mouth to keep me chewing for a good—no, a fantastic—half minute. Maybe if I just kept chewing . . .

  Sure enough. Adam must have thought I was putting him to the test, so he went on. “I mean, if he’s just calling because he’s heard about you and wants to see if there’s something there, that’s great,” Adam said, speaking a little too quickly while I concentrated on chewing. “Maybe he’s checked your sales numbers and thinks you have a chance at the list next time out, which would help justify an option at least with his partners.”