“Meaning?” asked Briscoe.
“It didn’t even sell into the mid-list. That book,”
said Rosserman, “is literature. Any book Antoine Day Kwulu writes is literature. But literature isn’t always what people buy.”
“That happen often?”
Rosserman sighed. “Too often, I’m afraid. It’s a tough business. You can spend months of twelve-hour days looking for a manuscript that has it, and then you can spend hours upon hours working with a writer. When it’s just right, when you know that the 85
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manuscript is really on, it may nonetheless get tossed into the remainder bins like a day-old doughnut.”
“It really takes that kind of time, editing?” asked Briscoe. “Sounds like being a cop.”
“If editing isn’t your life, you shouldn’t be an editor.”
“Must be tough on your marriage.”
“I’m not married. Not anymore. We got out of college and she wanted to be an actress.” He smiled.
“The Apple was too big for her, but I stayed. Never remarried. It’s hard to meet the right kind of woman in this city.”
“Maybe you’re too picky,” said Briscoe. “Breathing was usually good enough for me.”
Rosserman looked a bit distant. “She’s now back in Topeka, married to the former quarterback who used to shove my head in the middle school toilet.
He sells cars and he’s no better at that than he was at quarterbacking. My daughter’s at Washington University, in St. Louis. It’s pretty expensive.”
“Well, if the quarterback ever wants to write his memoirs, you can shove his manuscript in the toilet.”
Rosserman scrutinized Briscoe as if to judge the intent of the remark. “It’s a shame a woman like Barbara had to be subjected to the realities of the market,”
he said seriously. “But there you are.” He lowered his eyes.
Green put the Kwulu novel on the desk.
“To tell you the truth,” said Rosserman, “from what I knew of her I liked Barbara. She was very intent on becoming a successful writer. She pursued her dream with all the intensity a person can muster. It’s sad, but it happens. It’s just that most aspiring writers don’t work so hard at it.”
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Green leaned forward on the desk.
Rosserman looked up at him. “You’re welcome to take The Walk to Djibouti with you, detective.”
“No thanks,” said Green. “We’re really just curious why you’re not being straight with us.”
Rosserman looked at Briscoe, then back at Green.
“I’ve told you all I know.”
“You’ve been referring to Barbara Chesko in the past tense.”
His eyes went back to Briscoe. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
Briscoe smirked. “A woman goes apeshit in your office and you have to be reminded of her name a week later?”
Rosserman tilted his head to the side. “I felt sorry for her. She really embarrassed herself.”
“And you, I imagine,” said Green. “The thing is, two detectives show up at my office, I’d want to know why they’re there. You’re not very curious, Mr.
Rosserman.”
Briscoe leaned in on him. “We generally don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out why somebody got her book rejected. The taxpayers would take a dim view of that. And you know it.”
“I thought you would tell me,” said Rosserman.
“But it wouldn’t be news to you, would it?” said Green.
Rosserman patted his fingers on the edge of his blotter.
“Would it?” said Briscoe.
Rosserman licked his lips. “All right. I knew she was dead.”
“You pushed her?” asked Green.
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“Pushed?” Rosserman turned pale. “No! That’s ridiculous!”
“Why were you in the Waterloo Hotel with her?”
“I wasn’t in the hotel with her!”
“Weren’t you?”
“No!”
“So how did you know she was dead?”
Rosserman blinked. “The news?”
“Try again,” said Green. “And don’t make me angry.”
“I wouldn’t make Ed angry,” said Briscoe. “Ed’s got a temper.”
“All right,” Rosserman said. “Yes, I knew she was dead. Someone called me Monday morning. She told me that Barbara had committed suicide and that I was responsible. It was very upsetting. I didn’t want the company involved.”
“What time was this call?”
“Ten. Ten-thirty. I’d just gotten in.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I don’t know,” said Rosserman. “She yelled it and hung up.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“She said, ‘I want you to know that you’re responsible.’ And I said, ‘For what?’ And she said, ‘For breaking Barbara’s heart, you bastard. She jumped off the Waterloo Hotel.’”
“Is that exactly what she said?”
“Not word for word. I can’t remember.”
“And what did you say back?”
“I was stunned. I said ‘what?’ I don’t know what I said. I think I asked who this was, but she didn’t say. She just repeated it and said I was as guilty as if I’d pushed her.”
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“Why didn’t you think it was a crank call?” asked Briscoe.
“I…It just sounded right. Barbara was very upset Tuesday. I knew she wasn’t altogether. I was worried about her.”
Green straightened up. “And you didn’t make any effort to find out if it was true?”
“I went through the papers.” He pointed at the trash can. There was a Times and Daily News in it. “I didn’t know how else to find out without getting Kirstner and Strawn into the picture. I thought I might try to telephone her apartment later, but if she was alive I didn’t really want to talk to her again.” He lowered his head. “She was very needy.”
“This caller, you don’t have any idea who it was?”
“No.”
“You don’t have caller ID?”
Rosserman pointed at a simple pushbutton telephone.
“And what did she want?”
Rosserman looked up. “Nothing. She just said she wanted me to know I was responsible.”
“There wasn’t any hint of blackmail, she’d be calling again, anything like that?” asked Green.
“She didn’t threaten to place you in that hotel room?”
“No!”
“Because she knew you were there?”
Rosserman slapped his desk and shot to his feet.
“I wasn’t there! If you’ve got something you want to accuse me of, you accuse me. But until then, I’ve got nothing to say. What kind of crap is this?”
Green held up his handcuffs. “Maybe you’d like to continue this conversation at the precinct house?”
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Rosserman paled and seemed to sag. “Please,” he said, “this is ridiculous. The woman killed herself.
There’s no reason to drag me and Kirstner and Strawn into it. I feel bad enough as it is.”
“How do you know she killed herself?” asked Briscoe.
“I told you,” said Rosserman. “She was needy. She was distraught. It seems obvious. If you had known her…”
“So why’d you tell her she had talent?” asked Green.
“Look,” said Rosserman, “I never promised to publish her. Never. Talent isn’t everything. She had a long way to go.”
“Your letters don’t say anything about having a long way to go.”
“I encouraged her, that’s all.”
“And when you met her at the hotel,” asked Briscoe,
“what did she say?”
“As God is my witness,” said Rosserman, “I didn’t meet her on Wednesday. I was here until nearly eleven, then went home to a b
ottle of El Presidente.”
Briscoe eyed him and nodded slowly. He exchanged a glance with Green. “You’d better be telling the truth this time,” he said. “If we find out otherwise….”
“I swear,” said Rosserman raising his right hand.
“I had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry for her, but it wasn’t my fault.”
“If we need anything, we’ll get in touch,” said Briscoe.
They had just stepped out of the tiny office when Rosserman called out. “Detective!” He came out into the corridor with a copy of The Walk to Djibouti and handed it to Green. “Here, take a copy.” He turned 90
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toward Briscoe at the end of the corridor. “Take anything you want, as well.”
Briscoe stared past the books at the area in which Barbara Chesko had waited. Folding chairs, a coffee urn and a copier. Behind the desk, a woman glared up from her keyboard. She had so much makeup on, it looked like her face would crack if she smiled. He figured she’d managed to avoid smiling for a decade.
He gave her a nod. “It must have been fun to sit with her for two and a half hours,” he muttered. “It looks like the room outside the principal’s office.”
“That’s Jenna Marshak,” said Rosserman quietly.
“She’s been here since both Kirstner and Strawn were alive.”
“I think I married her ugly stepsister,” said Briscoe, moving toward her. “Say, Jenna,” he said, “do you remember when Barbara Chesko was here Tuesday?”
She glanced through the top of her bifocals at Rosserman.
“These are policemen,” he said.
“I couldn’t help but hear,” she said. She pointed to a chair. “She sat there from around two something to after four and then packed up and left.”
“She say anything?”
“Just went over her manuscript with a pencil. Wrote notes on her laptop. Asked for Mr. Rosserman several times. He was on the phone. I went to take minutes at the marketing meeting at three, she was still here when I got back.”
“Wednesday,” said Green. “When did Mr. Rosserman leave the office?”
“I told you…” began Rosserman. He was silenced by Green’s hand on his chest.
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“For lunch?” said Jenna. “He was back about one forty-five. After that he was here all afternoon.”
“Until when?”
“Four-thirty or so, a little after. He came back, well, it was almost seven. I left about eight. He was still here.” She glanced at Rosserman.
“You work that late normally?”
“The new catalog was out of format,” she said.
“Computer problems. The odd pages were off center and the fonts—”
Briscoe interrupted. “When Barbara Chesko was here, can you tell me how she seemed? Was she upset? Angry?”
“She was doing a slow burn. She was no worse than most.”
“Most of them?”
“Writers are volatile,” said Jenna. “They’re not always stable. They’re not realistic about the publishing business.”
“And she wasn’t realistic?”
“I only read the published ones,” said Jenna. “Mr.
Kirstner used to say the great, unpublished author is a myth.”
“That makes it tough for the raw talent,” said Briscoe.
She shrugged. “Good is good and bad is bad,” she said. “This is not a charity. It’s a business.”
“We’ll find our way out,” said Briscoe.
The outer door clacked behind them. “How splen-did are the offices of the publishing world,” said Briscoe, pushing the elevator button.
“I smell a lot of fish on that guy,” said Green. “If there wasn’t something wrong, why spend so much effort to avoid answering us?”
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“We could drag him down to the precinct and watch him flop, but we’ve wasted enough time. She towered out of this world.”
The elevator creaked open. “My head says yes, but…”
“Look,” said Briscoe. “He shtupped her. Maybe not Wednesday, but sometime. She was ‘needy,’ and ‘it’s hard to meet the right kind of women in this city.’
That made her more needy and it still proves nothing.
Why would he toss her out the window? Breaking up’s not that hard to do. He spends all day turning people down. And if he pushed her, how are we going to prove it?”
“I hate to let a murderer walk,” said Green. “If he is one.”
“I can’t get the scratch marks on the window frame out of my head,” said Briscoe. He gave a little shiver.
“But, it wouldn’t be the first time the bad guy walks free.”
“Maybe it isn’t the first time. For him, I mean.”
“It’s worth a look,” said Briscoe, “but that’s about it, don’t you think?”
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27TH PRECINCT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 3:56 P.M.
The only legal action against Rosserman was a ticket for parking a rental car in front of a hydrant near the Port Authority Terminal in 1999. But that wasn’t the only mention of him in the records.
Roughly two years ago, he had been attacked on the subway by an elderly man with a cane. According to the brief assault report, Harold Rauch, 72, had followed Rosserman into the 51st Street subway station, shouting that Rosserman owed him money. As Rosserman tried to flee through the turnstile, Rauch grabbed him. Rosserman shoved back and Rauch whacked him. He received six stitches on the forehead, but after Rauch’s arrest, he declined to press charges.
“Just another day in the city,” said Briscoe.
“Who was Rauch?” asked Green. “He filed suit against Rosserman, but dropped it.” The editor had been a codefendant in two civil suits: Rauch’s in 2002
and another a year later. In both cases, the judge ruled he was not a party to the action. His co-defendants made a sealed settlement in the second suit.
Briscoe scanned to the bottom of the assault report and dialed the home number. A woman answered.
“Yes?”
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“Is this the Rauch residence?”
“I’m Berman now. I used to be Rauch.”
“This is Detective Briscoe from the police department. Is Mr. Harold Rauch in?”
“Papa died sixteen months ago. What is this about?”
“I’m sorry to hear it, Mrs. Berman. We were follow-ing up on some old records, and there was a report of Mr. Rauch’s altercation in the subway two years ago.”
The woman’s mood changed. She seemed to be speaking between grinding teeth. “He should have killed him.”
“Killed who?”
“Roseman!”
“Rosserman?”
“The bastard breaks Papa’s heart, cheats him, and it’s Papa who gets arrested. What are you bringing that thing up for? Papa never did a wrong thing in his life!”
“According to this, your father struck him with a cane.”
“Not hard enough! All that bad karma, the mental agony, you don’t think that can’t unleash cancer? I saw it! My father was totally vital until then. He survived Korea and Vietnam. Six months after this, the cancer.”
“I see,” said Briscoe, clearing his throat. “We’re just checking on some things. The officer didn’t write down the nature of your father’s disagreement with Mr. Rosserman.”
“He robbed him!” she shouted. “He told Papa that his book could be a best-seller, then he told him it wasn’t good enough.”
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Briscoe raised his eyebrows. “Your dad wrote a book?”
Green looked up from Barbara Chesko’s papers.
“He was career Army. He was at Inchon and was one of the first advisors to South Vietnam. He trained some of the Bay of Pigs soldiers. He had a fabulous life. He wanted to let people see the things he’d seen, to know what it was like.�
��
“And he wrote a book and sent it to Rosserman?”
“Not just Rosserman, he sent it to about a dozen publishers. But Rosserman was the one who built up his hopes.”
“How’s that?”
The woman spoke as if trying to communicate with an idiot. “He told him his book just needed a little editing. He gets Papa all hepped up and then won’t even answer his phone calls.”
“So Mr. Rauch attacked him?”
“He didn’t go there to do that.”
“I understand. But he did hit him.”
“He caught Rosserman sneaking out of the building and tried to reason with him down the block to the subway. The man wouldn’t talk. Papa reached out for the bastard’s coat and Rosserman shoved Papa.
If he’d have fallen he could’ve broke his hip! He swung the cane to protect himself.”
“I see.”
“My Papa was a man of action. He didn’t take guff.”
Briscoe made eye contact with Green. “So your dad was angry about how Rosserman handled his book?
But you’re saying he was robbed. What do you mean by that?”
“Besides his life?” snapped Mrs. Berman. “The editing money! Forty-five hundred dollars.”
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“Rosserman got paid to edit your dad’s book?”
“No, but he sent Papa to those people in New Jersey. The McDonalds. They marked all over the book, but when Papa had the whole thing retyped according to their directions, Rosserman just said it needed more work. Well, Papa wanted to know what work.
Rosserman just said ‘It lacks coherence,’ or something like that. As if Papa was senile. As if he was born yesterday. He wanted him to get more editing. They were just trying to get more money. So Papa went to see him and that’s what happened.”
Briscoe scratched his ear. “I’m not clear on the money.”
“That was what the McDonalds charged.”
“But Mr. Rauch didn’t give any money to Rosserman?”
“You think he didn’t get his share? Baloney. I wasn’t born yesterday, either, you know. That crook never had the slightest intention of publishing Papa’s book.”
“Maybe he just didn’t like it,” said Briscoe. “I don’t mean to run down your dad’s book or anything…”
“Look, fella, if Rosserman had just said it wasn’t good enough, Papa wouldn’t have cared. He talked about paying for publishing it with one of those companies that do that, but after those crooks took his money, he didn’t think he could spare what was left. He was afraid he’d end up ninety-five years old and warehoused in a V.A. hospital. That’s how healthy he was.”
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