“What is it, Ben? What happened? Please tell me what’s going on.”
She freed herself from my arms, grabbed my shoulders, and inventoried my face.
“Your collar is bloody. You’re bleeding. Ben, were you mugged?”
I threw the bolts on Amanda’s front door, put my hand at her back, and walked her to the small living room. I sat her down in the easy chair, took the rocker a few feet away.
“Start talking, okay?”
I didn’t know how to soften it, so I just told it plain and simple. “A guy came to my door with a gun. Said he’s a contract killer.”
“What?”
“He led me to believe that he killed all those people in Hawaii. Remember when I asked you to help me find Charlie Rollins from Talk Weekly magazine?”
“The Charlie Rollins who was the last one to see Julia Winkler? That’s who came to see you?”
I told Amanda about Henri’s other names and disguises, how I had met him not only as Rollins, but that he’d also masqueraded as the McDanielses’ driver, calling himself Marco Benevenuto.
I told her that he’d been sitting on my couch and pointing a gun, telling me that he was a professional assassin for hire and had killed many, many times.
“He wants me to write his autobiography. Wants Raven-Wofford to publish it.”
“This is unbelievable,” Amanda said.
“I know.”
“No, I mean, it’s really unbelievable. Who would confess to murders like that? You’ve got to call the police, Ben,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“He warned me not to.”
I handed Mandy the packet of pictures and watched the disbelief on her face change to shock and then anger.
“Okay, the bastard has a zoom lens,” she said, her mouth clamped into a straight line. “He took some pictures. Proves nothing.”
I took the flash drive out of my pocket, dangled it by the cord. “He gave me this. Said it’s a sales tool and that it will inspire me.”
Chapter 70
AMANDA LEFT THE LIVING ROOM, then came back with her laptop under her arm and holding two glasses and a bottle of Pinot. She booted up while I poured, and when her laptop was humming, I inserted Henri’s flash drive into the port.
A video started to roll.
For the next minute and a half, Amanda and I were in the grip of the most horrific and obscene images either of us had ever seen. Amanda clutched my arm so hard that she left bruises, and when it was finally over she threw herself back into the chair, tears flowing, sobbing.
“Oh, my God, Amanda, what an ass I am. I’m so sorry. I should have looked at it first.”
“You couldn’t have known. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”
“That goes for me, too.”
I put the media card into my back pocket and went down the hall to the bathroom, sluiced cold water over my face and the back of my scalp. When I looked up, Amanda was standing in the doorway. She said, “Take it all off.”
She helped me with my bloody shirt, undressed herself, and turned on the shower. I got into the tub and she got in behind me, put her arms around me as the hot water beat down on us both.
“Go to New York and talk to Zagami,” she said. “Do what Henri says. Zagami can’t turn this down.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. The thing to do is keep Henri happy while we figure out what to do.”
I turned to face her. “I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“I can take care of myself. I know, I know, famous last words. But really, I can.”
Mandy got out of the shower and disappeared for long enough that I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a bath towel, and went looking for her.
I found her in the bedroom, on her tiptoes, reaching up to the top shelf of her closet. She pulled down a shotgun and showed it to me.
I looked at her stupidly.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know how to use it.”
“And you’re going to carry it around with you in your purse?”
I took her shotgun and put it under the bed.
Then I used her phone.
I didn’t call the cops, because I knew that they couldn’t protect us. I had no fingerprint evidence, and my description of Henri would be useless. Six foot, brown hair, gray eyes, could be anyone.
After the cops watched my place and Mandy’s for a week or so, we’d be on our own again, vulnerable to a sniper’s bullet — or whatever Henri would or could use to silence us.
I saw him in my mind, crouched behind a car, or standing behind me at Starbucks, or watching Amanda’s apartment through a gun sight.
Mandy was right. We needed time to make a plan. If I worked with Henri, if he got comfortable with me, maybe he’d slip, give me convictable evidence, something the cops or the Feds could use to lock him up.
I left a voice-mail message for Leonard Zagami, saying it was urgent that we meet. Then I booked tickets for me and Mandy, round trip, Los Angeles to New York.
Chapter 71
WHEN LEONARD ZAGAMI TOOK ME on as one of his authors, I was twenty-five, he was forty, and Raven House was a high-class specialty press that put out a couple dozen books a year. Since then, Raven had merged with the gigantic Wofford Publishing, and the new Raven-Wofford had taken over the top six floors of a skyscraper overlooking Bloomingdale’s.
Leonard Zagami had moved up as well. He was now the CEO and president, the cr
me de la cheese, and the new house brought out two hundred books a year.
Like their competition, the bulk of RW’s list either lost money or broke even, but three authors — and I wasn’t one of them — brought in more revenue than the other 197 combined.
Leonard Zagami didn’t see me as a moneymaker anymore, but he liked me and it cost him nothing to keep me on board. I hoped that after our meeting he’d see me another way, that he’d hear cash registers ringing from Bangor to Yakima.
And that Henri would remove his death threat.
I had my pitch ready when I arrived in RW’s spiffy modern waiting room at nine. At noon, Leonard’s assistant came across the jaguar-print carpet to say that Mr. Zagami had fifteen minutes for me, to please follow her.
When I crossed his threshold, Leonard got to his feet, shook my hand, patted my back, and told me it was good to see me but that I looked like crap.
I thanked him, told him I’d aged a couple of years while waiting for our nine o’clock meeting.
Len laughed, apologized, said he’d done his best to squeeze me in, and offered me a chair across from his desk. At five feet six, almost child-sized behind the huge desk, Leonard Zagami still radiated power and a no-bullshit canniness.
I took my seat.
“What’s this book about, Ben? When last we spoke, you had nothing cooking.”
“Have you been following the Kim McDaniels case?”
“The Sporting Life model? Sure. She and some other people were killed in Hawaii a few… Hey. You were covering that story? Oh. I see.”
“I was very close to some of the victims —”
“Look, Ben,” Zagami interrupted me. “Until the killer is caught, this is still tabloid fodder. It’s not a book, not yet.”
“It’s not what you’re thinking, Len. This is a first-person tell-all.”
“Who’s the first person? You?”
I made my pitch like my life depended on it.
“The killer approached me incognito,” I said. “He’s a very cool and clever maniac who wants to do a book about the murders, and he wants me to write it. He won’t reveal his identity, but he’ll tell how he did the killings and why.”
I expected Zagami to say something, but his expression was flat. I crossed my arms over his leather-topped desk, made sure my old friend was looking me in the eyes.
“Len, did you hear me? This guy could be the most-wanted man in America. He’s smart. He’s at liberty. And he kills with his hands. He s
ays he wants me to write about what he’s done because he wants the money and the notoriety. Yeah. He wants some kind of credit for a job well done. And if I won’t write the book, he’ll kill me. Might kill Amanda, too.
“So I need a simple yes or no, Len. Are you interested or not?”
Chapter 72
LEONARD ZAGAMI LEANED back in his chair, rocked a couple of times, smoothed back what remained of his white hair, then turned to face me. When he spoke, it was with heartbreaking sincerity, and that’s what really hurt.
“You know how much I like you, Ben. We’ve been together for what, twelve years?”
“Almost fifteen.”
“Fifteen good years. So, as your friend, I’m not going to bullshit you. You deserve the truth.”
“Agreed,” I said, but my pulse was booming so loudly that I could hardly hear what Len said.
“I’m verbalizing what any good businessman would be thinking, so don’t take this wrong, Ben. You’ve had a promising but quiet career. So now you think you’ve got a breakout book that’ll raise your profile here at RW and in the industry. Am I right?”
“You think this is a stunt? You think I’m that desperate? Are you kidding?”
“Let me finish. You know what happened when Fritz Keller brought out Randolph Graham’s so-called true story.”
“It blew up, yeah.”
“First the ‘startling reviews,’ then Matt Lauer and Larry King. Oprah puts Graham in her book club — and then the truth starts leaking out. Graham wasn’t a killer. He was a petty thug and a pretty good writer who embellished the hell out of his life story. And when it exploded, it exploded all over Fritz Keller.”
Zagami went on to say that Keller got late-night threats at home, TV producers calling his cell phone. His company’s stock went down the toilet, and Keller had a heart attack.
My own heart was starting to fibrillate. Leonard thought that either Henri was lying or I was stretching a newspaper article beyond reality.
Either way, he was turning me down.
Hadn’t Leonard heard what I said? Henri had threatened to kill me and Amanda. Len took a breath, so I seized the moment.
“Len, I’m going to say something very important.”
“Go ahead, because unfortunately, I only have five more minutes.”
“I questioned it, too. Wondered if Henri was really a killer, or if he’s a talented con man, seeing in me the grift of a lifetime.”
“Exactly,” Len said.
“Well, Henri is for real. And I can prove it to you.”
I put the media card on the desk.
“What’s that?”
“Everything you need to know and more. I want you to meet Henri for yourself.”
Len inserted the flash drive, and his computer screen went from black to a shot of a dusky yellow room, candles burning, a bed centered on a wall. The camera zoomed in on a slender young woman lying belly-down on the bed. She had long, pale blond hair, wore a red bikini and black shoes with red soles. She was hog-tied with intricately knotted ropes. She seemed drugged or sleeping, but when the man entered the frame she began crying.
The man was naked except for a plastic mask and blue latex gloves.
I didn’t want to see the video again. I walked to the glass wall that looked straight down the well of the atrium, from the forty-third floor to the tiny people who crossed the plaza on the ground floor below.
I heard the voices coming from the computer, heard Leonard gag. I turned to see him make a run for the door. When he returned a few minutes later, Leonard was as pale as a sheet of paper, and he was changed.
Chapter 73
LEONARD DROPPED BACK into the seat behind his desk, yanked out the flash drive, stared at it like it was the snake in the Garden of Eden.
“Take this back,” he said. “Let’s agree that I never saw it. I don’t want to be any kind of accessory after the fact or God knows what. Have you told the police? The FBI?”
“Henri said that if I did, he’d kill me, kill Amanda, too. I can’t take that chance.”
“I understand now. You’re sure that the girl in that video is Kim McDaniels?”
“Yeah. That’s Kim.”
Len picked up the phone, canceled his twelve-thirty meeting, and cleared the rest of his afternoon. He ordered sandwiches from the kitchen, and we moved to the seating area at the far side of his office.
Len said, “Okay, start at the beginning. Don’t leave out a bloody period or comma.”
So I did. I told Len about the last-minute Hawaiian boondoggle that had turned out to be a murder mystery times five. I told him about becoming friends with Barbara and Levon McDaniels and about being deceived by Henri’s alter egos, Marco Benevenuto and Charlie Rollins.
Emotion jammed up my voice box when I talked about the dead bodies, and also when I told Len how Henri had forced me into my apartment at gunpoint, then showed me the pictures he’d taken of Amanda.
“How much does Henri want for his story? Did he give you a number?”
I told Len that Henri was talking about multimillions, and my editor didn’t flinch. In the past half hour, he had gone from skeptic to inside bidder. From the light in his eyes, I thought he’d sized up the market for this book and saw his budget gap being overwhelmed by a mountain of cash.
“What’s the next step?” he asked me.
“Henri said he’d be in touch. I’m certain he will be. That’s all I know so far.”
Len called Eric Zohn, Raven-Wofford’s chief legal counsel, and soon a tall, thin, nervous man in his forties joined our meeting.
Len and I briefed Eric on “the assassin’s legacy,” and Zohn threw up objections.
Zohn cited the “Son of Sam” law that held that a killer can’t profit from his crimes. He and Len discussed Jeffrey MacDonald, who had sued his ghostwriter, and then the O.J. book, since the Goldman family had claimed the book’s earnings to satisfy their civil suit against the author.
Zohn said, “I worry that we’ll be financially responsible to each and every one of the victims’ families.”
I was the forgotten person in the room, as loopholes and angles were discussed, but I saw that Len was fighting for the book.
He said to Zohn, “Eric, I don’t say this lightly. This is a guaranteed monster bestseller in the making. Everyone wants to know what’s actually in the mind of a killer, and this killer will talk about crimes that are current and unsolved. What Ben’s got isn’t If I Did It. It’s I Damn Well Did It.”
Zohn wanted more time to explore the ramifications, but Leonard used his executive prerogative.
“Ben, for now, you’re Henri’s anonymous ghostwriter. If anyone says they saw you in my office, say you came to pitch a new novel. That I turned it down.
“When Henri contacts you, tell him that we’re fine-tuning an offer I think he’ll like.”
“That’s a yes?”
“That’s a yes. You have a deal. This is the scariest book I’ve ever taken on, and I can’t wait to publish it.”
Chapter 74
THE NEXT EVENING, in L.A., the unreality was still settling in. Amanda was cooking a four-star dinner in her minuscule kitchen while I sat at her desk working the Internet. I had indelible pictures in my mind of the execution of Kim McDaniels, and that led me to multiple Web sites that discussed personality disorders. I quickly homed in on the description of serial killers.
A half-dozen experts agreed that serial killers almost always learn from their mistakes. They evolve. They compartmentalize and don’t feel their victims’ pain. They keep upping the danger and increasing the thrill.
I could see why Henri was so happy and self-satisfied. He was being paid for doing what he loved to do, and now a book about his passion would be a kind of victory lap.
I called out to Mandy, who came into the living room with a wooden spoon in her hand.
“The sauce is going to burn.”
“I want to read you something. This is from a psychiatrist, a form
er Viet Nam vet who’s written extensively on serial killers. Here. Listen, please.
“ ‘All of us have some of the killer in us, but when you get to the proverbial edge of the abyss, you have to be able to take a step back. These guys who kill and kill again have jumped right into the abyss and have lived in it for years.’ ”
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