The Way of All Fish

by Martha Grimes

  Paul thought the smile merely looked fake, and the “wonderful books” sounded faker. Who the hell did Hess think he was patronizing?

  Bass went on. “I believe your present agent is James McKinney? That isn’t working for you?”

  “Jimmy’s a great agent. He just hasn’t got the time.”

  The time? For Paul Giverney? Was McKinney insane? “I don’t understand. How can he not?”

  “Jimmy’s more interested in representing good writers who haven’t broken out yet, or haven’t been published right, or need someone with vision.” Vision. In the publishing industry? Oddly enough, one person who did have it was Bobby Mackenzie. If only he weren’t such a bastard. “A writer like Joe Moss or—” He was dying to say Cindy Sella, but that might tip Hess off, even though he didn’t seem to be operating on a fully charged battery.

  “A noble calling for Jimmy.” To avoid going along with nobility himself, Bass said, “I screen potential clients carefully. That’s why I have only eight or nine.” Actually, it was six or seven, and he badly needed more, screened or unscreened.

  As if disturbed by Hess’s apparent unpopularity, Paul looked at the door, giving the impression that he might make a break for it. He said, frowning deeply, “That’s not very many.”

  Quickly, Bass said, “I want to be able to give my full attention to each one.”

  “You couldn’t do that with twenty writers? What would you be giving them? Your half-attention?”

  “No, that’s not exactly what—”

  “So what are your criteria?”

  A blank look. “Criteria?”

  “You said you screen carefully.”

  “Oh, yes. I would be looking for writers who were, say, on the same wavelength as myself.”

  As I. Or even me. People were always saying “myself” instead of “me” because they were so damned afraid of sounding like they hadn’t graduated from high school. Why was Hess representing writers?

  “I have no idea what that means, the same wavelength. You mean temperamentally twinned or something like that?”

  “Beautifully put!”

  Oh, Christ. This guy would be chewing his cuffs in a minute.

  Hess went on, without the chew: “A suitable temperament, nonmercurial, you know what I’m saying . . .”

  As Hess droned on, Paul rose and walked over to the bookshelves against the wall, stuck his hands in his pockets, and studied the titles, not listening. There was a framed photo between two Don DeLillo novels of Hess lounging against a Mustang. How un-Hess-like, thought Paul. He could not imagine Hess in a Mustang. He noticed one of the quarter panels was deeply dented.

  “. . . but what I mean about temperament is, I really don’t want, you know, any of your highly volatile, easily upset writers.”

  Paul turned reluctantly from the books. “Bass—” He held up his hands, pushing back this absurdity, and said with as much condescension as he could muster, “This is the publishing world we’re talking about. These are writers. Volatility is the order of the day all around. Levelheadedness is not what you get unless you’re looking for an astronaut or Obi-Wan Kenobi or Michael Jordan. Or—” It was fun, trying to think of guys who had it so together that even taking an ax to them wouldn’t separate flesh and bone, but he guessed he should stop. Hess was looking pretty limp. He nodded toward the photo of the Mustang. “That your car? Nice.” Cars bored Paul.

  “It’s a ’64. It was in a small accident. Needs a new partial panel. But you know how hard it is to find parts for a ’64 Mustang. Naturally, I park it in Connecticut.”

  Naturally. I park mine in front of 30 Rock. “I don’t have a car.” Paul sat down again, leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Maybe I should just handle my own books.”

  That got a quick response. With a look of near-wild desperation, Bass inched forward in his chair. “Paul, that could spell disaster. There are too many different things to handle. You’ve got subsidiary rights, which grow more complicated almost daily. Then there are the foreign rights and spin-offs from them. Film, TV, not to mention electronic . . .”

  He went on to pile right after right, searching for as many as he could come up with. He was stepping all over squishy ground in moorland rumored to be full of quicksand. Oh, for the hound of the Baskervilles! L. Bass on his back, throat ripped open. Paul’s imagination was hotfooting it all over Dartmoor when he decided to break the subrights spell. “What sort of agency clause is written into the contract?” he asked suddenly.

  “Agency? It’s merely the standard—”

  “Show me.”

  “Now?”

  “Of course.”

  There was no spring in L. Bass’s step as he rose and went to his desk. He shuttled drawers in and out, found a contract, and handed it to Paul.

  Paul zipped to the last page, read it. “This right to see the next manuscript is going to have to come out.”

  “That? Oh, but that’s just routine, a matter of form. Means nothing.”

  “If it means nothing, why is it in here? Standard? Routine? Matter of form? You know as well as I do the other guy’s lawyers are just waiting for the defendant to invoke ‘standard’ and ‘routine.’ No way.” Paul got up with the air of one about to leave.

  Bass got up like a shot, wild-eyed, as if he had just viewed the hound coming over the hill. “Paul, I’m sure that clause could be reworded to your satisfaction.”

  Paul smiled. “Then reword it and call me.”

  He thanked Stephanie and walked to the door, which he would have continued walking through, except he saw the big photos of writers lined up on screens.

  Cindy Sella. The bastard was suing her and using her to advertise at the same time.

  17

  The provenance of the woman who answered the door was not the Bronx or South Jersey.

  They were expecting a small woman, wrinkled and nutlike. This one was tall, onyx-eyed, dark-haired, the hair pulled back so tightly it had the finish of mahogany. She wore a jade-green dress of some damask-like silk whose small covered buttons went up to the neck.

  Very Asian, thought Karl. Well, that’s what she was—Malaysian, wasn’t she?

  Candy stuck out his hand, then withdrew it, unsure. She gave no sign that she’d noticed the withdrawal or that she did or didn’t mind the appearance of two strangers at her door who were probably neither CIA nor FBI operatives.

  “Miss—” said Candy.

  “Madam bin Musah—” said Karl.

  “That would be ‘bint’ for a female,” she said. “ ‘Bin’ is the male form.”

  Before Karl could step on his foot, Candy said, “Like bin Laden.”

  Her smile was ironic. “An unfortunate example, but that is correct. And you are?” She made a very small sweep of her hand to take them in.

  What surprised Karl was the excessive politeness in her tone and in the little gesture. They introduced themselves, Candy adding, “Danny Zito, uh, recommended you.”

  “Ah. Mr. Zito.”

  They could not remember ever hearing Danny referred to as “Mr.”

  Another sweep of her hand, somewhat broader, gesturing them in. Her fingers were long and slim and ended in tapered nails with colorless polish. “Then I infer you’re in the same line of work?”

  “As Danny? You could say that,” said Karl.

  She smiled. They entered. The elaborate formality made Karl feel like he was walking on stilts.

  They moved from a dimly lit foyer into a dimly lit living room that would have served well as a stage set for Miss Saigon, or what he imagined it must have been like, never having seen it. It was all dark reds, dark golds, and browns, and the whole of it seemed to shimmer in the lowered lights beneath silky-looking shades and in the glow of the even silkier fire.

  “Please sit. Would you care for a little espresso? I was just having some.”

  They both nodded, Candy thinking she could have offered a cup of poison and he’d have accepted. Some dame. As she poured int
o two little cups that had appeared miraculously from a drawer-like enclosure in the coffee table, he said, his memory tumbling over something that ended in “-pore” that Danny had mentioned, “You’re from Singapore, right?”

  “No, not quite. I believe you mean Kuala Lumpur. Singapore has always been in China, very close to Malaysia’s border. Many people make that mistake.”

  Jesus, thought Karl, this dame should be secretary of state. She knows fucking well “many people” didn’t make that mistake, because “many people” knew where Singapore was but didn’t trot out Kuala Lumpur at a moment’s notice. Until he’d looked in the Eyewitness guide, he hadn’t even known where the hell Malaysia was.

  A thin brown cigarette, smoke pleasantly pungent, burned in a bronze ashtray beside a small soapstone Buddha. She picked up the cigarette, tapped off the ash, and lifted a silver-plated box from the table. This she passed to them. “Smoke? These are quite good, much more interesting than the usual.”

  They each took one, and she closed the lid and replaced it. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “We need someone to pose as an importer of exotic fish,” said Karl. He lit his cigarette and sat back, slightly light-headed.

  “An illegal,” Candy added.

  “Illegal fish?” she said, her black eyes moving from one to the other.

  “No, wait,” said Karl. “What we’re looking for, see, is information. The ‘importer’ pose, that’s just a cover to get you into their offices.”

  “Or their good graces,” she said. “Interesting. What lies behind this?”

  Candy and Karl took turns telling the story.

  “Good heavens,” she said, and exhaled a stream of pungent smoke. “How banal.”

  Candy wondered about banal. That was a new take on the situation. Anyway, the cigarette was getting into his bloodstream, and the effect was not unpleasant. He was melting into his chair. He studied the soapstone Buddha and wondered if he was becoming One with the universe. He preferred to remain Two. Hadn’t Woody Allen said something like that?

  Fortunately, Karl was still on the SoHo side of enlightenment, and he carried on. “This agent is nuts; he wants revenge; he wants to ruin Ms. Sella.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment,” said Lena bint Musah. “The lawyers, the publisher, the agent—sound like a convention of dunces.” She paused. “No, actually, the lawyers sound like lawyers. But is the publishing world fraught with idiots? It’s quite extraordinary. So. You need information, you say.” She inhaled deeply but went on smoking with no visible sign of departing this earth’s ether.

  “Okay.” Candy was back. “Okay. What we need is some kind of proof these shit-faced lawyers—pardon the language—” He waved his cigarette by way of explaining such verbal freedom.

  She smiled. “I took it merely literally.”

  Candy laughed and tried to repeat “merely literally” and wound up almost swallowing his tongue. “Yeah. What we need is evidence these guys are working both sides of the street. Hess was giving them stuff about Cindy Sella.”

  “We can’t be sure who’s the guilty party, correct?” said Lena. “It could be the lawyers, it could be the agent, it could be all of them. What was in the documents that the agent mistakenly handed over to you?”

  “Stuff about her character. He said he was making it part of the complaint. But there’s no way to prove a connection with Hale and this Reeves guy. The name of the firm—Snelling, Snelling, Borax, and Snelling—isn’t in these papers. Now that we’ve told this story about the fish importer, and a lot of stuff about illegal imports, we have to go along with it.”

  An old dog wandered into the room, a hound of some sort who very delicately sniffed around their pants legs then left them in order to sit quietly by her. The dog was probably smoking these fun cigarettes, thought Candy, dropping ash, sorry to see the ash go.

  “What about the fish? I know very little. I do know cyanide fishing is carried out in Malaysia. What about coral reefs? It’s illegal to import coral.” She paused and stubbed out her cigarette. “There is a fish native to Malaysia and Indochina, the Asian arowana, which is much sought after by aquarists. I understand such a fish can bring in ten thousand dollars.”

  Karl whistled. Candy got himself another cigarette. “There’s a platinum one worth a shitload more.” He laughed, and smoke blew out of his nose.

  “Really? How astonishing. May I suggest we find two or three others of similar value for export-import?”

  “And similarly illegal,” offered Candy. The “similarly” came out bristling with more L’s than necessary.

  She nodded, pretending not to notice the cigarette behind his ear. “And research those and become, or at least manage to sound, expert.”

  “Candy’ll research it. He’s really into fish.”

  “Well, then,” said Lena, concluding the discussion by rising. “We should be able to go forward in a few days.”

  “You can do it that soon?”

  “Oh, I think so.”

  “Hey,” said Candy. “Listen, thanks for the coffee and smokes.”

  As she walked them to the door, Karl said, “Wait. We didn’t ask you, how much do you charge for a gig like this?”

  “I’ve never taken on a gig like this. Usually, my fee is five thousand. If I get the results the client wants, of course. If I don’t”—she shrugged—“you don’t pay.”

  It had the ring of the sort of operation the two of them handled. Karl liked it.

  She went on, “But in this case, it would be expenses only.”

  Karl’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Candy felt to see if the cigarette was there and said, “You’re kiddin’. How come?”

  “I find it such an interesting situation. Here is a young woman who has done nothing at all and is then beset by a dozen people insisting she pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lawyers, agents, publishers. And who is it who’s ‘got her back’? A couple of contract killers.” She smiled. “I like it. Call me.”

  18

  Paul Giverney was plucking the mussels out of their shells and, at the same time, feeling sorry for them, wondering if he’d read “Jabberwocky” one too many times to Hannah. “ ‘The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things,’ ” he said aloud, and then fell silent.

  Bobby Mackenzie noted the silence and filled it in. “ ‘Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—Of cabbages and kings.’ ”

  “ ‘And why the sea is boiling hot—and whether pigs have wings.’ ” Paul smiled.

  “Is that why we’re here? Well, damn.” While Paul ate mussels, Bobby drank his single-malt whiskey and ignored his Caesar salad. “How come this place?”

  They were having lunch at the Clownfish Café. Bobby was already there when Paul walked in and interrupted Bobby’s Bluetooth conversation about another book jacket.

  Paul looked around and smiled. “Friend of mine told me about it. There was a little fracas in here last week.”

  “Ah. What kind of fracas?”

  “It seems a couple of killers walked in and shot up the fish tank.”

  Bobby looked across the room at the huge aquarium. “A Hemingway moment.” He drank his whiskey. “Why did they do it?”

  “What I heard was Bass Hess was sitting on the other side of it.”

  “That works for me.” Bobby pounded his glass on the table. A few of the other customers looked their way. Through the tank, they could see the watery outline of the two present diners seated on the other side.

  “Why are we having this lunch, Paul? Not that I’m complaining, only I know you don’t ‘do lunch.’ ”

  “Just to talk.”

  “I know you don’t do talk, either.”

  “Cindy Sella.”

  Bobby took a long look at Paul and a long slug of his Scotch. “My God. Her again? I was recently paid a visit by two goons who wanted me to do something about Cindy Sella.”

  “Two goons who were not strangers to you, Bobby.
”

  Bobby cut him a thin smile. “What I had a hard time making them understand is that I am not Ms. Sella’s publisher, hence I could hardly step in on her behalf.”

  “What a dodge.”

  “You’ve got that right. Dubai and Dodge. Heh heh. What do you mean, a dodge?”

  “That you can’t stick your mug into Harbor Books.” Paul pushed his mussel bowl out of the way and leaned across the table. “Before this D and D conglomerate came along, Bella was eating out of your hand, like everybody else at your goddamned place.”

  “Hey! The goddamned place publishes you well, doesn’t it?”

  “No, but that’s not the point. You could at least get Harbor to stand behind her. And what the hell’s wrong with her editor? He hasn’t as much as said, ‘Gee, tough luck, Cindy.’ These people maintain an arctic silence.”

  “Of course they do. They’re all scared shitless. You know how houses are closing, how people are being laid off.”

  “You’re not scared.”

  “Me? Don’t make me laugh. I’m too good at what I do. Everything’s changed, Paul. Remember when there used to be the greatest publishing houses in Boston? In old brownstones where the wooden stairwells creaked and the Oriental carpeting was as thin as vapor? Beacon Hill? The Back Bay?”

  “You’re making me tired, Bobby, pedaling that bike down memory lane. You of all people, the most cynical man I’ve ever known and a brilliant publisher. You are not averse to the use of force. I’ve seen evidence of that.”

  “You have, since you were the instigator, my friend.”

  Paul shook his head. “I set you a problem. You chose the way to solve it.”

  “The problem was pretty damned cold-blooded.”

  “I agree. Are we two of a kind? No, we are not. We’re one of two kinds.”

  “With witty repartee like that, no wonder you sell books.” Bobby gave a whiskeyed-up laugh.