She looked at the clown fish on their sofa of pink anemone, at Gus on the bench, at the notebook on the table, the pages on the desk, Lulu in the car.
They had her at good-bye.
66
Three months later
We can’t exactly bolt him to a chair, Paul.”
“I know you can’t. I thought he’d last for six months, though. You don’t think you can, ah, persuade him?”
Johnny del Santos laughed. “Like with enhanced interrogation? Look, even novitiates who’ve had serious encounters with the Almighty sometimes pack it in after their year is up, right?”
Paul sat in his office, feet on the desk, staring at the old familiar wallpaper that Molly had sweet-talked the management into letting her hang, promising they would remove it and repaint when they left. How many years ago had that been? Would they ever leave?
“Paul? You there?”
“Sorry. Do you think you could keep him there for, say, another week?”
“Sure. I could concoct all sorts of reasons. I’ll tell you something, though. I can understand why you want this jerk out of people’s lives. He’s a real pain in the ass. I can’t find anyone here who doesn’t dislike him. Only one of the brothers found something positive in the experience: Brother Walter said that God sent him to test us. ‘To test our patience,’ he said. ‘To test our humility.’ God wouldn’t be that cruel, I told Brother Walter.”
Walter? Somehow that just didn’t go with “Brother.”
“Brother Walter is without doubt the most humble person in the place, and he said he discovered his own humility was false. False! I said, ‘That’s impossible, Walt. Of all of us, you’re the first out of the gate in humility.’ I’d make book on that.”
And damned well probably had, thought Paul. Johnny had always been addicted to gambling. Paul smiled. Vegas had been heaven to Johnny del Santos. Probably still was. “Brother Walter sounds like a real Christian.”
“Well, this is a monastery, more or less.”
“Johnny, ‘more or less’ just doesn’t do it for me. And aren’t you supposed to be the model for Brother Walter to follow? Sounds like he’s a lot more humble than you.”
“Me, the model for behavior? Since when?”
Paul held his phone away from his ear and looked at it: Was he hearing correctly? He brought it back to his ear. “Since you had that place built or restored or whatever the hell you did. You’re the leader. Or whatever. You’re making me stray from the point. So what’s Hess’s trouble? What’s he complaining about?”
“The food, the menial work he’s forced to do, the lack of entertainment. He roared into my office several days ago and said he was the victim of a giant scam, a huge swindle. He swears you tricked him into entering the monastery. I argued that nobody could make him do it against his will, that it had been his decision, the result of the visions he’d had, and blah blah blah, but he kept on about it. Somehow it was you who managed to set that bush on fire; you engineered that appearance at the junkyard of the woman in white; you plotted to get those horses up on that hill.” Johnny was laughing. “You never told me about the alligator, Paul. The Everglades gig. Damn, but I wish I’d witnessed that. There’s witness worth bearing. How the hell did you manage it?”
“I couldn’t have done it without the help of some extremely talented people.”
“Plus an alligator.” Johnny was laughing again.
The meeting was held once again in Bobby Mackenzie’s office. The same people: Candy and Karl, Clive Esterhaus, Bobby and Paul.
The only thing different was the brand of Scotch, a single-malt Benromach, like the Talisker, from the Isle of Islay (pronounced “Eye-la,” said Bobby, but nobody believed him).
“So the son of a bitch gets to come back and pick up his life,” said Candy testily. He tossed back a large swig of whiskey.
“We got Cindy Sella squared away okay, and that’s the main thing,” said Karl.
Sad to say, Paul reflected, it wasn’t. He’d almost forgotten about Cindy Sella along the way. The purpose of the mission had become the mission itself.
“Hess must have lost his clients when he shut down so suddenly. What’s he coming back to?” said Clive.
“Hell, he’s an agent, isn’t he? He’ll find new ones. Even if he has to bottom-feed. Out there”—Bobby swept his arm in the general direction of the window overlooking Madison—“there’s some innocent, misguided debut novelist who doesn’t know shit about publishing or agents or anything. L. Bass will probably ask for a twenty percent com—”
Bobby Mackenzie suddenly stopped talking and slammed down his tumbler of Benromach. He said, “I’ve got it! I know what we can do to completely neutralize the bastard!”
“What?” said Paul.
“What?” said Clive.
“What?” said Candy.
“What?” said Karl.
Bobby gulped down his Scotch and looked about to shake hands with himself but only rubbed the hands together gleefully. This pause was not meant to keep them on the edge of their seats but simply owing to his sheer delight in the plan. “The room down the hall.”
There was a brief silence into which Clive said, “The library?”
Bobby nodded. “The library.”
Everyone looked at everyone else, puzzled.
Paul Giverney started laughing. “Oh, that’s great, Bobby. I love it.”
Bobby got up, started for the door, and waved them to follow. “Come on, come on.”
“We have a week to set this up, Bobby,” said Paul, getting up. “That’s how long del Santos can stall him at the monastery.”
In the outer office, Bobby stopped by Dolly’s desk. “He’ll be opening up his office, so he’ll need a secretary. He fired Stephanie. Dolly—”
Dolly looked at him with round eyes. “What?”
“Go find Bunny Fogg for me.”
The five of them continued on their way to the room down the hall.
67
Bass Hess rarely sauntered, preferring a brisker, more no-nonsense gait.
Today, however, he sauntered down Broadway, then continued to saunter along Twenty-third, the way to his old familiar office building where his office was still his office, the rent having been paid until the middle of the present year in exchange for a lower rent. The building’s cleaning service wasn’t aware that no one was using the office and continued to clean it. Bass chortled at the thought of free cleaning.
Thus, nothing would be changed except the absence of his former receptionist, Stephanie, but he’d never liked her much anyway, had found her to be a silly, self-involved person.
The first thing he saw when he unlocked the door was the poster of Cindy Sella among the blow-ups of his clients.
Cindy Sella. Did she really think she’d get away with it? Did she think he’d dropped the matter? Just wait until the fresh brief landed in her doorway in the hands of a process server. He had spent the last month in the monastery reworking it. Every day he was supposed to be in the monastery garden weeding, hoeing, or plucking up lettuces, he was out there with his notebook and pen.
He looked at the dust-jacket blow-ups of his clients’ faces. Some had hired new agents; he hadn’t made any attempt to contact them. Now he walked slowly past their photographs and past the shelves of books he’d agented. He looked fondly even at Mia Pennyroyale, ghastly as she and her books were. For the most part, they weren’t books he’d want to have to read twice. He hadn’t wanted to read Creek Dawson even once. All of that sage and limitless land and horse shit. But he was too eager for their fat commissions to trouble himself about quality.
Indeed, the only books that were worth his time—and how it pained him to say it—were Cindy Sella’s. Which only made him want to strangle her all the more. How dare she walk out on him? Who did she think she was to leave the Hess Agency? It was with great effort that he drove her treasonable departure out of his mind.
But the restarting of his life as one of New York�
�s premier agents blotted out the face of Cindy Sella, and he strode to the door of his inner office.
And stopped dead.
Stepped back, then forward again.
What in God’s name had happened here?
What had been his walls of books were now walls full of stacks of paper. The hundreds of books that had rested on those shelves! Who had packed them up? Why? And what was that aquarium doing on a shelf between these stacks of paper?
Clearly, someone had come in and leased the space.
In a kind of stupor, he crossed the room, past the leather sofas, the coffee table.
The books that had lined these shelves had been separated and marked by genre, with small brass plates bearing the title “Mystery,” “Western,” “Science Fiction,” and so forth. The stacks of paper (which he was still afraid to look at) were also separated by genre, but there were additions: “Romance,” “Teen,” “Tween.” Tween, dear God, what was that? He was sweating profusely. This must be a dream, a nightmare; he must be back in his cell-like room on the narrow bed at the monastery.
To hold some awful reality at bay, he quickly ran to his desk and grabbed the phone. The service hadn’t been cut off. He hit the digits for the Big Applebaum Management Company.
“No, sir, no one has been in your office that we know of. No, we didn’t sublease the space.”
“Where’s Applebaum? I insist on speaking to him. He must know something about this mess!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hess, but Mr. Applebaum is out of town.”
Hess slammed down the receiver.
“I feel like fucking Popeye,” said Karl, who’d been leaning against the side of a deli.
Bobby Mackenzie pushed away from the building. “Ratso Rizzo, that’s who I feel like, following you around.”
Karl was now leaning through the passenger window of the SUV where the others sat. Candy and Paul just looked at him, uncomprehending. “Popeye?”
“The French Connection, Gene Hackman and his partner across the street from the hotel.” Seeing their expressions, three people acting as if they’d never set foot in a moviehouse, he slapped the car and said, “Fuck, never mind.”
Joe Blythe was never-minding behind Leica Duovid binoculars. They had been passing them around since Joe had picked out Hess walking up the street toward his building. They were sitting in Joe’s Land Rover, which he said was handy to haul feed for the pigs and other farm stuff.
“He’s on the phone,” said Joe.
“Who’d he be calling?”
“Cops?” Joe smiled.
“Publishers Weekly,” said Karl with a snicker.
“Anyway, he’s in his office, so he’s seen everything. Let’s go.”
They all piled out of the Land Rover, except Karl, who was already out. Taking their lives in their hands, they crossed Twenty-third Street as the light turned green and the tsunami of yellow cabs made for them.
68
What he feared was, of course, all too true.
The shelves were full of manuscripts. How in God’s name they had gotten there, and what did it mean? It had to be that bastard Paul Giverney! That snake in the grass, that—
L. Bass made a fist of one hand and slammed it into the other, which hurt like hell.
He was about to pick up a manuscript from the top of one stack when he heard voices. He hadn’t locked the door behind him, and the owners of the voices were walking through the outer office toward the inner.
Paul Giverney and Bobby Mackenzie walked in, stood, and smiled. “Hello, Bass,” said Paul, who was carrying a couple of big brown envelopes.
“You—!” What would have followed was cut off by the entrance of Candy, Karl, and Joe Blythe.
Hess looked as if he’d just been shot but was stubbornly standing.
Joe smiled and took a seat on the corner of the desk. The same corner he’d sat on before.
“Where are my books?” Bass fastened on Paul. He knew the books were the least of his worries. He just wanted to stave off the most.
“Don’t worry. They’re safely in storage. We made sure the movers were careful.”
Karl and Bobby were lounging on the leather love seats.
Candy stood at the aquarium, inspecting the fish. A brilliant yellow tang, some really smashing angelfish—a platinum, a veiled black, one with a tiger design—and a couple of clown fish. “You like your fish, Bass. We figured it would brighten up the place.”
“I hate fish.” Bass drew himself up as much as he could and said, “I’m calling security.” He was reluctant to make a move toward the phone, since Joe Blythe was sitting by it.
“Why bother?” said Paul. “We’ll be out of here as soon as we explain things.” He went on: “All of these manuscripts. We assume your old clients will have gone looking for a new agent, except maybe that cowboy, what’s his name? Creek? That sounds authentic.”
“Yeah,” said Candy, turning from the aquarium. “We heard even ol’ Dwight Staines jumped ship. That must be a hell of a commission lost.”
“So you’ll be looking for new clients.” Paul nodded toward the shelves.
“What? You think I’m going to read these stacks of paper?” Bass’s contemptuous tone wasn’t convincing. “This slush?”
“Ah,” said Bobby. “Music to my ears.”
“Sure you will,” said Paul. “Because there’s nothing else to read here.” He walked over to the shelf, pulled out a manuscript. “Here’s a memoir. On Your Toes. Writer used to be a ballerina with the Austin City Ballet. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?”
Hess squinted his eyes shut. “You’re insane if you think I’m going to waste my time on this fodder.”
As if he hadn’t spoken at all, Bobby Mackenzie said, “What you’ll be looking for is some new writer who might just be the next Salinger or Updike or Thomas Harris.”
Bass gave a bark of laughter. “You think in that pile of slush—”
“Ah, but that’s the point,” said Bobby. “There used to be slush piles; assistants were paid to go through manuscripts, and a writer could actually wrap one up and send it in, unagented. Occasionally, one of the readers would send a manuscript worthy of notice to an editor. It might’ve turned out to be The Catcher in the Rye or Catch-22 or maybe another Silence of the Lambs. That didn’t happen often, true, but how often does it have to happen to make it worth your while? Now, with all of the crap that’s out there, unstrained and unsieved, you could say; stuff that’s never come under the cold eye of an editor or the restraining hand of a publisher, that’ll publish for a price; that or some of the self-published swill I see—is there anyone more arrogant than a bad writer?—there’ll come a time when, after we’ve all been forced to read that stuff for so long, we wouldn’t know the next Salinger if we fell over him. So go on, Bass, find him. Find it. The next big thing, the next great novel. It’s there somewhere.” Bobby stopped and lit a cigar.
The face of L. Bass Hess had been flashing pink and going pale like a neon sign. Blood suffused his face and drained away. He was being lectured by one of the most arrogant, amoral, powerful sons of bitches in the industry. “You think I’m going to take orders from you, Mackenzie?”
Bobby shrugged, exhaled a bale of smoke. “From all of us. Yeah, I do.”
Bass grunted. Then he picked up his jacket and put it on. To give him credit, he also picked up his briefcase, as one does if one intends to leave the scene. “I’ll be going now. Before I go to the police, I suggest you get rid of this pig’s breakfast of—”
Wrong word. Wrong, wrong word.
There was barely a movement before the air whistled by Hess’s ear and the knife landed directly behind him, vibrating where its point had hit the wood shelf.
Bass yelled, jumped back, felt the top of his head. Bloodless.
Joe Blythe smiled pleasantly.
Karl said, “I think maybe what Joe’s trying to tell you is your workday’s not over. It’s hardly noon, so you might just as well put down the briefcase
.”
In the midst of this drama, Paul had walked over to the right-hand wall, picked up a random manuscript, leafed through it for five seconds, and said, “This looks promising. A Lock and a Hard Place. It’s about a safecracker. Don’t you just love the punning titles they think up these days?” He dropped it back on the pile. He removed the contents of the brown envelopes and stacked those pages on top of yet another stack. “Clive thought you’d get a kick out of this.” He smiled.
Ignoring Clive’s offering, Hess said, “How am I supposed to give time to my clients if it’s all to be used up in reading this pig”—quickly, he glanced at Joe Blythe—“I mean horse shit?”
“You won’t be, will you? I mean, there’s just Creek Dawson and that crazy woman, Myra or Mia. You won’t be bothering with new clients.”
If he could look any more disconcerted, Bass did. “What?” He started to move from behind his desk, saw Joe had returned to sit on it, and stopped moving. “I’m supposed to read this entire wall of junk scripts?”
Paul shoved away from the shelves, having positioned Robot Redux second down on the second shelf over. Not obviously on top nor deeply buried. “No, we’re not unreasonable.”
“Ha!” Bass sneered again, as much as a sneer as he could muster with Joe on the corner of his desk, playing with a letter opener.
Bobby ignored the sneer. “Not all of them, Bass. The deal is, after you manage to sell, say, six or seven of these manuscripts to reputable New York publishers like me”—he flashed a grin—“you’re off the hook.”
Bass sent his arm in such a wide arc that it looked meant to take in the whole wide world. “Are you mad? Sell? Sell this tripe! These have already been tossed in the can, and probably more than once.”
“No, no. A lot of them have just been passed over. Some have probably never been read. Most have been read by some benighted editorial assistant and then been put on the reject pile. Some might have gotten to an editor and then been rejected. Hell, Bass, in all that slush, there could be the Great American Novel.” Bobby relit his cigar.
The Way of All Fish Page 31