“Will you compromise with, say, a four-month bestseller list as opposed to the three-month?”
“Sure.” Paul yawned, checked his watch. “It’s after seven. You going home?” It would be dark soon.
“Yes, in a minute. I’d like to get this settled.”
“Nah, leave it. Don’t you live somewhere off Central Park?”
Bass nodded. “East Seventies.”
“Listen, I’m going to meet a friend at the Boathouse. Why don’t you join us?”
“No, but thank you. I’ve a very tight schedule. I do like to take my constitutional before going home. I never have a heavy meal in the evening.”
“Let’s take a cab to the park and walk through it. I’ve always liked the Ramble.” Which was the path that Hess took every evening, like clockwork, according to Karl and Candy. “Maybe we can hammer out a few of the details.” He held up the contract.
Bass rose, adjusted his tie, and said, “I’ll be with you in a minute. I just have to give Stephanie a few instructions.”
“Fine. I need to call this fellow to let him know I’ll be there around eight o’clock.”
When Bass left the office, Paul made his call. “Graeme. It’s Paul. Listen, how much time do you need to set up? We’re leaving Hess’s office probably in ten minutes. The ride’ll take maybe twenty minutes, depending on the cabbie’s mood. Then there’s the walk. Is that enough time?”
“Sure. We’re completely ready. We’ve been here for an hour. It’s keeping people away for that one minute that’s tricky. But Monty and Molloy and me, we figured that out. Anyway, it doesn’t work the first time, we just do it again. You go through the Ramble, then there’s a path off to the right with a great hedge that might work.”
“No, a hedge doesn’t send the right message, Graeme. The road to Damascus wasn’t lined with hedges.”
“Yeah? How do you know?”
“I don’t. It’s just a guess.”
“Whatever you say, Saint Paul.” Graeme sniggered. “Okay, there’s a bush, a holly bush.” Graeme gave him several landmarks—bench, fountain, statue, oak tree—asked him had he got that right? When Paul said he had, Graeme rang off.
37
The cab stopped and shoveled them out at the entrance on Seventy-second Street, dumped them in the way New York City taxis almost literally do, seeming to begrudge the ride to every fare they pick up.
“I always take this route,” said Bass, turning to his right. “It’ll take us across the bridge and around the lake. So you can get to the Boathouse.”
The route was imprinted upon Paul’s mind. He’d found out more about Central Park in the last three days than he had in his whole New York lifetime. The next time he took Hannah to the Central Park Zoo, she’d be happy that he wasn’t wandering around like a blind man.
“Let me just walk you through this,” said Bass. He was talking not about the walk they were on but about the pending contract with Mackenzie.
If there was anywhere Paul didn’t want to walk, it was in and out of the boring contract. Besides, the condescension and the suggestion that Paul needed a guide gave him the urge to shove L. Bass Hess off Bow Bridge and into the water. He paid no attention to Hess ticking off contract points; he himself was ticking off landmarks along the way. Massive oak. Stone bench. Water fountain, stone base. Two oaks. Statue. Holly bush (wrong one). Park bench, wood and iron. This grew more difficult in the descending darkness.
L. Bass’s voice kept grinding on. “. . . and the point of this clause is . . .”
Nothing. Birdbath. Maple. Bench. They’d been walking for fifteen minutes when they came upon the half-moon curve. This bend was manned on the near end by Molloy, with his NYC park-works-like orange reflecting jacket; and twenty-some feet on by Monty, same gear. Both had furnished themselves with sawhorses. Fortunately, Hess’s route wasn’t as much used by city folk as the one that looped around on the other side of the Boathouse.
Third bench, regular park bench.
“. . . and the payout, Mackenzie’s agreed to ten instead of twelve, which I still think is . . .”
Molloy walking toward them with his sawhorse, passing, winking at Paul.
Okay, don’t be so damned obvious with your thumbs-up sign. Had Hess noticed? Of course not. Molloy disappearing around the bend. Monty up ahead, the other end of the bend. Graeme? Who knew? Concealed somewhere.
And there was the bush at last, and . . . Woooosh!
It was all Paul could do to keep from jumping, and he knew it was coming, so it was hardly surprising that L. Bass Hess yelled, “My God!” and fell back, breathing hard.
“Bass, what’s wrong?” Paul moved quickly toward him. “What is it?”
“Wrong? You saw it! That bush went up in flames!”
Paul looked along the length of Bass’s outthrust arm, hand, finger. He squinted. “What bush?”
White-faced, Bass stared at the holly bush. One of its little berries plopped to the ground. “You didn’t see the fire? You must have. You didn’t see the flames?”
A couple strolled by and looked at the bush that Bass’s eyes and index finger were trained on. They looked at Paul, then Bass, then each other. They obviously could not understand why Bass was looking at them in that beseeching manner. “You saw it, didn’t you? You must have! You were just walking past it.” A voice like weeping. The couple picked up their pace and walked on.
Paul marveled at the fact that after the barriers came down (the temporarily placed sawhorses and park attendants now removed), all of Manhattan appeared to have chosen this elusive little route for their evening ramble.
An old guy bent nearly in half with two canes plied the path beneath his feet, shouting, “End of days!” as he passed or didn’t pass. He was sharing his message with whomever he saw, but he must have thought Hess, given his pale face and frightened look, was the person most likely to listen with an ear cocked. “End of days!” the old man yelled smack into Hess’s face.
As Paul moved to intervene, two youngish men, their fingers intertwined, shoveled by with what looked like one wolfhound each—dogs almost as big as ponies—greeting everyone as if the party were in full swing. Hess shouted at them, “Have you seen it?”
“Practically everything, dear.” They looked, they laughed, they walked on.
Hess had a handkerchief pressed to his face and seemed frozen in place.
Paul yanked at his arm. “Come on, Bass. The Boathouse is right up there. I see the lights.”
Indeed it was, and indeed Paul had chosen it because it would be. Paul bet his timing was up there with Jay-Z or Chris Rock or Stephen Strasburg.
He manhandled Hess into the restaurant’s bar and sat him down at a table. He ordered two double whiskies, and to the waiter’s question about brand, he said, “Hundred proof.” He went on, “Now Bass—”
L. Bass was mopping his sweatless face with the immaculately, precisely squared handkerchief, murmuring, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand. You had your back to it, that must be it.”
“The bush?”
“That’s why you didn’t see the conflagration; it must be.”
“I was kind of angled away, but I think I’d’ve seen, well, something go up in flames, Bass.” Paul snorted.
“The vagrant! The tramp must have seen it. That’s why he was shouting ‘End of days!’ ”
“Yeah, but wait: Something on fire has to die out. You’re saying you saw it in flames for two or three seconds, and then it just—stopped.”
“It did.”
The waiter set down the drinks.
Bass tossed back half of his whiskey and still looked sober-white. He ran his finger around inside a collar that looked too big for his throat.
Paul could swear Bass Hess was shrinking. The collar stood out around his neck, his jacket sleeves looked too long for his arms. Shrinking before Paul’s very eyes. Henry James could have done wonders with the subject, better than Jules Verne. “You’ve been working too hard—�
��
“Every day of my life! I’ve always worked hard; hard work is a point of pride. Frankly, I’m sick of listening to whining writers tell me how hard it is to write a book!” He slammed his glass on the table. The couple sitting near them turned. “I’m sick of writers like Cindy Sella.” It came out like a cat’s hiss. Once he got started on Cindy Sella, Hess might even manage to set aside the burning bush.
“That’s very stressful,” said Paul. “That and all of your other work, like this contract of mine. Dealing with Mackenzie is no picnic. You need some sleep, Bass. Then we’ll talk. Are you okay with going home?”
Bass nodded and clutched his drink with all the fervor of someone who was going to shout “End of days!” He finished his drink. “Something strange is happening. First the alligator. Now the burning bush.”
That’s about the size of it, Paul didn’t say.
“I’ve got to go to my séance group.”
Paul quickly checked the level of whiskey in his glass and wondered if he was totally smashed. “Your, ah, what?”
“Séance.” Bass drained his glass, looked for a waiter. “I attend a bimonthly séance.”
Paul stuck out his foot and nearly tripped the waiter without taking his eyes off Hess. He circled the two glasses in a “refill” signal, and the waiter walked briskly away. Only L. Bass Hess could combine “séance” and the time parsing of “bimonthly.”
All Paul knew about séances was one on a wet afternoon with Richard Attenborough. The psychic, his medium-wife, was crazy as a bedbug. Good starting point. “That’s . . . interesting. Now, is there, you know, someone you’re trying to, well, get in touch with?” It was hard to ask the question.
The waiter was back, God bless him, with fresh drinks.
Bass drank. Glug. “My father. I’ve been trying for some time now. I get . . . soundings.”
Paul chewed his lip. He wondered why in hell just not use a cell phone. They seemed to be good for everything else. Paul was not a believer in the cell phone culture.
L. Bass was moving on. “The thing is—Simone, my aunt. You know, the one I just visited. She’s been baiting me for years about my father and her will and her money. Changing her will. She’s been forcing me to go there and see her, to listen to her chatter about the ruination of the Everglades by men like Flagler and developers and politicians back in the twenties and thirties. On and on and on. Endless talk from her and that goddamned parrot!” The voice, rising, settled into a whisper. “My father disliked him—her—intensely. Hated her. And I know, I know”—the fist came down on the table—“that he can tell me something I can use, something that she wouldn’t want known.”
Aunt Simone didn’t strike Paul as in any danger of further revelations. But Hess’s line of talk was interesting.
“I could shut her up, just get the damned will revised in my favor.”
Paul sat back. There were times he thought (along with Molly) that he himself was kind of crazy; but hell, he was a writer. And nothing he had done, nothing he had thought of, not alligators nor burning bushes nor junkyard antics (coming up), nor horsemen (maybe) could outperform this new wrinkle in the mind’s fabric: L. Bass Hess at a séance, trying to get in touch with his dead dad, not to tell him how much he missed him but to get blackmail material from the astral body.
Leverage from a dead man.
Life was just too fucking thrilling to be believed.
It went down on the mental list.
38
Paul sat in his office, staring once again at the Facebook page of Johnny del Santos. Hard to believe. Handsome Johnny, the most popular kid in high school, the great mugger of local 7-Elevens, rip-off artist, and darling of juvie detention, this guy was now in a monastery somewhere near Sewickley, PA. He rocked in his swivel chair. He picked up Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Well, well, well.
The only other pieces of furniture besides his desk and chair were a beat-up armchair and a rococo wing chair that resembled a dragon, with its cobalt blue and green upholstery, its scrolled arms and legs. Paul wouldn’t have been surprised to see the Draggonier sitting there some evening.
He set the book aside. He studied his revised list, smiled at “Cathedral.” Everglades, check; Central Park bush, check. He had been about to add “#7: Séance,” when he heard, “Is that one of your lists?”
He jumped a bit at Molly’s voice. “This? No. Just some notes. I guess you could say the notes are listed, if you want.”
“What are you up to?”
“I’m not up to anything.”
“You were two hours late for dinner last night.”
“I know. I got to talking to Bass Hess about this damned contract with Mackenzie.”
As if she hadn’t heard, she said, “I don’t like your lists. The last one was a list of publishers and writers. And we know what happened there.”
Paul tossed his pencil on the desk. “Am I never to be allowed to forget that?”
“No.”
“No.”
The second “no” came from Hannah, who was standing by her mother. Sometimes the two of them together made a gang.
“How often,” asked Paul, “do I have to remind people that it was Bobby Mackenzie who hired the hit men? That was never my idea.”
Hannah glanced up at her mom for guidance.
Molly said, “But it was you who set the wheels in motion.”
Paul was sick of that phrase.
“Yes,” said Hannah. “You put the wheels—” She frowned and looked up at Molly.
“In motion.”
“The wheels in motion,” said Hannah.
Oh, it was a playlet they’d rehearsed.
“Life isn’t a book where you can do whatever you want with your characters.” Molly liked this analogy, so she repeated it. “Life is not a novel.”
Hannah chewed that over. “Except maybe The Hunted Gardens. That’s real life.”
Paul crossed his arms and sat back. “That’s real life, is it? With the dragons and the Dragonnier?”
Hannah nodded but seemed puzzled by his pronouncement. “Most of the time.” She was covering her bases.
Molly said, “I hope that’s not a list.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Molly. Here, have a look.” He held the page out to her.
Molly took it and looked it over and lowered it for Hannah to read. Then she said, “Everglades? I thought your new book was set in New York. Here.” She pointed down as if the floor were New York.
“People do travel. And it is set in New York. See points two and three.” Smugly, he smiled.
“Cathedral and Central Park bush.”
“Yeah. Last I heard, New York had a St. Patrick’s Cathedral and a Central Park.”
“What’s the bush?”
Paul shrugged. “Just a detail. Maybe someone’s hiding behind it.”
Hannah looked suspicious. “Like the Dragonnier?”
“Good grief, no.” Seeing that Hannah seemed to be taking this disclaimer as a criticism of the Dragonnier, he added, “The Dragonnier is a hero; he’s brave and smart. And young. The person in my book will be old and shambling and in the last stages of dementia. He’ll be yelling, ‘End of days! End of days!’ ”
“What’s ‘end of day’? You mean, like, sunset?”
“ ‘Days,’ plural. It’s an expression that means end of the evil and the world. Like the apocalypse.”
Came Molly’s relentless voice: “Who are the horsemen?”
Shit. “What?”
“The sixth thing on your not-list: horsemen.”
Paul’s brain rattled away and came up with “No, no, no. Not ‘horsemen.’ ‘Norsemen.’ You know, Vikings.”
Molly frowned. “Why would they be in New York?”
“I’m not about to sit here and tell you the plot of this book.”
“Who’s Joe Blight?”
“Blythe. Just a character I may or may not use; hence the question mark.” Paul drew one in air. “Molly, you know how
I hate talking about what I’m writing.”
“All right. What about ‘car parts, junkyard’?”
“It’s just a setting. Junkyard at night. Full moon.” Paul raised both hands, rounding the fingers in case they didn’t know what a moon looked like, full. This was to kill time. “Now, the fella who takes care of the junkyard finds this big diamond kind of hammered in the hubcap of a tire from an Alfa Romeo. The diamond used to be in the head of a sacred statue—”
“Wait,” said Molly, her tone suspicious. “That sounds like The Moonstone.”
“What, you think I’m plagiarizing Wilkie Collins now?”
“What’s that mean?” said Hannah, her forehead puckering.
“Stealing another writer’s work,” said Paul.
“A moonstone?” said Hannah.
“It’s the title of a book by Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone,” Paul said helpfully. “It was probably the first psychological suspense novel. Very influential, very famous.”
“The Moonstone.” Hannah was thoughtful. She drew her latest chapter of The Hunted Gardens close to her chest, as if plagiarism were rampant in the room.
“I just don’t like you getting up to stuff and targeting some poor soul for one of your ‘experiments,’ ” said Molly.
“You make me sound like Dr. Frankenstein. My Lord, Molly, I’m not targeting anybody. It’s my new book.” He looked from one to the other. “Now, are both of you quite through? Might I get on with my work?” he added self-righteously.
“All right. But I still think you’re up to something.” Molly turned and walked back to the kitchen.
Hannah hovered. “Are you sure you didn’t steal from Willy Collins?”
“I do not steal other writers’ stuff, Hannah.”
Hannah left.
But I could, heh-heh. He wrote, “#8: The Woman in White.”
39
Jackson Sprague, Mackenzie-Haack’s chief counsel, was having a pickup lunch with Robson Jolt and Barry Weiss, lawyers from the firm representing Mackenzie-Haack in the matter of Cindy Sella; and the D and D attorney next in standing to Jackson, Bryce Reams. Jackson rose from the conference table where they were eating their deli sandwiches and went to the aquarium installed against one wall.
The Way of All Fish Page 19