“As in, ‘What an embarrassing ass that guy Mallory is’?”
She shrugged. “Some of it runs like that.”
“Well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Wait till this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “When I publicly announce Roscoe Kane ghosted the Hammett book.”
16
I knocked on Mae Kane’s door. Kathy was with me, feeling a little awkward, she said, about meeting Roscoe Kane’s recent widow. We were about to go out for some lunch, but I dragged her along with me to room 714, first. I needed to check in with Mae, as I’d promised Tom Sardini I would; had to make sure she’d be at the PWA awards ceremony at two o’clock.
Of course she didn’t answer right away; the do-not-disturb sign still hung on the knob, and she’d told me herself she’d gotten gun-shy from media people and well-meaning fans bugging her—and Tom had said she wasn’t answering her phone for anybody.
But I knew she was in there, so I kept at it.
“Mae, it’s Mal,” I said as I knocked.
And finally she cracked the door open; the Joan Crawford eyes were perfectly mascaraed and the red filigree largely gone. She smiled at me over the nightlatch chain, and she said, huskily, “Mal... I’d hoped you’d come by. But it’s a bad time....”
Then she noticed Kathy and her expression turned cool. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. To neither one of us in particular; just to the air.
“This is Kathy Wickman,” I said. “A good friend of mine. Kathy, this is Mae Kane.”
Kathy stepped forward and held out her hand, but with the door still only cracked open, nightlatch chain still in place, the well-intentioned gesture fell flat.
Kathy withdrew the hand, smiled sympathetically and said, “I’m very sorry about your husband. He’ll be missed.”
“Well, I’ll miss him,” Mae said, defensively, as if Kathy had implied she wouldn’t.
“Mae,” I said, wondering if she’d been hitting the gin, “are you all right?”
She found a warm smile for me. “Fine. Just kind of... tied up. Can you stop by later?” Kathy was obviously excluded from the latter invitation.
“Sure,” I said, and then Mae looked startled, and suddenly her face disappeared from the cracked door, which closed, abruptly, and the sound of the nightlatch being unchained hastily was followed by the door opening wide.
And Gregg Gorman was standing there.
Wearing, ironically enough, a black Noir T-shirt.
He pointed a finger at Kathy, thrust a finger at Kathy.
“What are you doing with him?” he demanded.
He meant me, of course; he sounded like a Ku Klux Klan kleagle who found his daughter Ellie Lou listening to Johnny Mathis records.
Kathy raised her eyebrows in that equivalent of a shrug and said, “Just along for the ride. We were on our way to lunch.”
“Care to join us, Gregg?” I asked. “We’ll find a place with a trough.”
Some ’con attendees (badges pinned to chests) came wandering down the hall, talking about how terrific G. Roger Donaldson was. Mindful of a scene, Gorman made a hurried gesture toward Mae’s room. Mae was in there somewhere, presumably; she had disappeared from view.
We didn’t heed his gesture.
He tried again. “Step in,” he said. Forcing a civil tone into his thin, unpleasant voice. “I want to talk to you two.”
I looked at Kathy and she made a shrugging face at me again and I made one back, and we walked into Mae’s room.
Mae was standing in the bathroom, her face ashen; standing next to the tub where Roscoe drowned.
“Well, Gorman,” I said, “visiting the scene of the crime, I see. Morbid curiosity, or a return trip?”
He held two vaguely dirty palms up, like a referee. “I had nothing to do with that. I swear.”
“What are you doing here, Gorman? What’s he doing here, Mae?”
She stepped out of the bathroom; the arcs of silver hair swung with the rhythm of her body. Her supple body, as Gat Garson would say. Which today was sheathed in black, a clingy, attractive black; widow’s weeds weren’t what they used to be.
“Mal,” she said. “I know how you feel about Gregg. I wanted to avoid a confrontation...”
“What’s he doing here, Mae? What are you doing here, Gorman?”
Gorman shrugged; he was like a kid caught cheating on a test in school. “Business.”
Mae chimed in brightly. “It’s about Roscoe’s books. He wants to do a boxed set of Roscoe’s first six Gat Garsons. I suggested you for the introductions—”
“But,” Gorman said, picking up the ball, “I told her you’d probably turn me down. ’Cause you hate my guts.”
“I don’t hate your guts. I’m not that selective.”
Gorman’s face turned beet red, everywhere that wasn’t covered by his unsanitary goatee; oddly, his drinker’s nose seemed a lighter shade of red than the rest of his face.
But the anger I’d generated—or thought I’d generated—didn’t get vented on me.
Instead, he whirled toward Kathy and pointed a finger gunlike at her and said, “You little bitch, what’s the idea of—”
I took him by the small of the arm and walked him a couple of steps like a friend I was counseling; he looked at me with big eyes and open mouth, wondering what the hell.
“I’m having a bad weekend, Gregg,” I said, calmly. “I think I’m having a nervous breakdown or something. I’m punching people in the stomach, hitting people with garbage can lids, walking off panels in a huff—in a minute and a huff, as Groucho would say. I’m feeling so out-of-sorts, I’m liable to start breaking you up into kindling if you continue going ’round calling people ‘bitch’ and ‘asshole’ and the like.”
And I smiled and let him go, and he pulled away from me, gave me an indignant look. “You are cracking up. Do you know who you’re fooling with? Do you know?”
“I know,” I said. “I was in the alley last night, with your angels who deal in dirty pictures. They’re mob-dirty, too, but I don’t think anybody’s going to kill me just because I’m not nice to you, Gregg.”
“Don’t be too sure,” he said. “Don’t be too sure.”
Mae’s Joan Crawford eyes went ultra-wide. “Gregg! What are you saying! I won’t have you talking to Mal that way—he’s my friend, and he was my husband’s protégé, and—”
“Sorry, Mae,” Gorman said, the anger still pulsing in his red face. “Just lost my temper a second.”
Kathy, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet, probably because she was scared out of her skin, found the presence to say, in clipped tones, “You wanted to ask me something, Mr. Gorman. What is it?”
Gorman smiled, pretending to swallow his anger; but there was too much of it to take in in one gulp. He was wholly unconvincing when he went to her and patted her shoulder, paternally, saying, “Mr. Gorman. What nonsense is that? We’re friends, we been friends for years. I’m sorry I snapped at you, baby.”
“Don’t call me ‘baby,’ ” Kathy said. Through her teeth.
“Kathy. Look, darlin’. I just want to ask you something. You lied to me, didn’t ya? You said you and Mallory weren’t seeing each other.”
“Is that the question?”
“No, hon. It’s... something else. You, uh, didn’t... last night, when you borrowed that... you didn’t give it to...”
I smiled cheerfully and said, “I think The Secret Emperor is a hell of a book. Really I do. It’s just too bad Dashiell Hammett didn’t write it.”
“Shit!” Gorman said, his rage-red mask returning, frustration mixed in with the anger. “Shit.” He turned and walked away from us, pacing in the area between the bed and the wall.
Mae came up to me and said, “I don’t understand, Mal. Are you talking about the newly discovered—”
“Save it, Mae. I think I know the business you and Gregg we
re discussing.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“Roscoe Kane wrote the Hammett book. I read it last night. It’s wonderful. It’s perhaps Roscoe’s masterpiece—the only thing that makes me say ‘perhaps’ is that it’s not a Gat Garson book, but a Continental Op story. A pastiche. Which makes it automatically a lesser work, but...”
Gorman turned and with two raised fists shaking in the air said, “Go to hell!” Then he lowered the fists and looked at the floor and said, “Go to hell.”
I moved away from Mae and toward Gorman; Kathy stood quietly, nervously by the door.
I said, “I meant no sarcasm by what I said, Gorman. I really do think the book is a remarkable work. Where mystery writers are concerned, Hammett was the best. And Roscoe Kane was second-best. I’ve always felt that way; I always ranked him above Chandler and the rest—though most people have told me I’m nuts for having that opinion. But you and I have something in common, Gorman. A common bond, yessir.”
He sat, on the edge of Mae’s bed; he looked up at me with empty eyes. The hate had drained out; he seemed tired, slumped there on the edge of the bed. Even his goatee looked limp.
I said, “You and I, we both knew. We both knew just how good Roscoe was. We both knew how thoroughly he admired Hammett, how much he’d studied him. And we both know he may have been the only writer alive who could convincingly, seamlessly, pick up the ball for ol’ Dash.”
And Gorman started to smile. Just a little.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, lightly.
“Oh? That’s your stand, is it? Just going to tough it out. You figure I can’t prove it; it’s an allegation I can make, but can’t prove, and since Roscoe Kane’s so underestimated a writer, even so maligned a writer, my allegation will seem foolish. ‘Roscoe Kane pass for Dashiell Hammett? Don’t be absurd!’ That what you expect?”
“You’ll look the fool you are, Mallory.” He didn’t look as tired now.
“I think you’re wrong,” I said. “I think I can prove Kane wrote The Secret Emperor. I can certainly raise enough doubt to cause you a lot of trouble. You see, you know Kane’s work well, but not as well as I do. He gave me something, once. An unpublished early novel of his. He said it was a darling he should’ve killed. Never mind what he meant by that. Suffice to say it was a book no publisher had wanted but that he’d always had a fondness for. And rather than throw it out, he gave it to me, his fan, his ‘protégé,’ if you will.”
Gorman, not following this, smiled uneasily and said, “So?”
“So, it isn’t a terrific book—but it’s a nice book. And four of the major characters and one subplot from that unpublished novel found their way into his Hammett pastiche, the novel you’re passing off as The Secret Emperor.”
Gorman’s face went white; he exchanged quick glances with an equally white Mae Kane.
“He did that on purpose,” I said. “At least that’s my instinct. He wanted to leave a clue for somebody—specifically me—so that one day his authorship would be established. You see, I think he agreed to go along with your hoax—complete the five-thousand word manuscript of Hammett’s that’s sitting down in the University of Texas collection, even as we speak—for his own purposes.”
Mae said, “Mal, if Roscoe ghosted that book, it’s news to me....”
I turned and looked at her. “That’s what you wanted me to think; that’s why you told me about Roscoe being troubled about something in recent months, something he hadn’t shared with you. If I stumbled onto the truth, you didn’t want to seem to be a part of it. Did you, Mae?”
“Mal, you’re wrong—so wrong....”
“No, Mae, I’m right. This has you written all over it. Your greed. Your shrewdness. My guess is Gorman here approached you first. And you sold Roscoe on it. But that’s only a guess.”
She said, “It’s a bad guess, Mal. I had nothing to do with this hoax. If indeed it is a hoax....”
“It’s a hoax. I can prove it. And I’m going to prove it before your precious book comes out.”
Gorman stood; cleared his throat, smiled patronizingly. Laughed: heh-heh-heh. Said: “Look, Mallory. Let’s explore some possibilities. First, I’m protected on this thing. If you want to get my ass in a jam, you’re not gonna.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Let’s keep this hypothetical. Let’s hypothetically say I talked Roscoe Kane into hypothetically faking this Hammett book.”
“Yeah. Let’s hypothetically say that.”
“Suppose I hypothetically set things up so it looks like I’m an innocent party.”
“How could you have done that?”
He smiled and shrugged.
And then Mae came clean.
She walked up to me, looked right at me, so close I could smell her; she smelled good—jasmine, soap or perfume, I don’t know what. But jasmine.
And she said, “Mal, it’s true. Gregg’s covered himself. He planted the manuscript among legitimate materials he acquired.”
“From that rental library in California he bought out?”
“Yes. And the person who previously owned those materials was a publisher who Roscoe had done work for; and that man, who Roscoe was linked to, died of natural causes two years ago. So if this should all... come to light, Gregg Gorman will come out unblemished.”
“But minus six figures from Random House,” I said.
“A good share of that money went to Roscoe,” Mae said, “so you’d be taking it from me, Mal. And at what expense?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d be tarnishing Roscoe’s name; you’d brand him forever in the public consciousness as a fraud. A criminal, even. Can you do that to my husband’s memory?”
“As someone once said, Mae—you’re good. You’re very good.”
“Please, Mal.”
“Please what?”
“Please think of Roscoe. It... was weak of me, of him, to get involved in this. But you know what his situation was; you know he couldn’t publish anything in this country, hadn’t published anything in years. It was a second chance for us. And Gregg was going to publish Roscoe’s own books, and... it was a new start.”
“Only it made him depressed.”
Sadness fell across her face like a veil. “Yes. He began to drink. Heavily. You know that.”
“He lost his self-respect,” I said, “getting involved in this scam. Didn’t you know that would happen?”
She laughed. Bitter little laugh. “He didn’t have any self-respect left. Not until he finished writing Hammett’s book....”
“And reminded himself how good he was.”
She laughed again. Sardonic little laugh. “That’s right. The Secret Emperor gave him his self-respect back....”
“And took it away, at the same time.”
Mae sighed. “I loved him, Mal. I didn’t mean for it to go this way.”
“What way?”
“For him to... drink himself to death.”
“Oh. You mean get drunk and drown himself in the tub. Accidentally.”
“Or whatever. It was suicide, in a way.”
“You were convinced it was murder, yesterday.”
“I... I don’t think it was. I’ve been thinking. Having second thoughts. I just don’t think those wet towels mean anything. We were clutching at straws....”
“Or damp towels.”
Firmly, resolutely, she said, “I think we were wrong, Mal. I think Roscoe just... died. Hard to accept, I know. Probably hard for you to accept your hero being involved in a... scam, as you call this. But he was. He was. Life doesn’t work out like it does in books... does it, Mal?”
“Rarely,” I said.
“Do you think less of Roscoe, for what he did?”
“No.”
“Do you... think less of me?”
“Mae,” I said, “I hardly think of you at all.”
Tears ran down her cheeks. She bit her lip and turned and went into the
bathroom and sat on the stool and wept.
Suddenly Gorman’s hand was on my shoulder. The last time he did that, I punched him in the stomach.
This time I just turned and looked into his grinning face; it gave me a much closer look at that food-flecked goatee and those yellow teeth than I ever hoped to have. The beady buglike eyes were moving back and forth. He was smiling. He’d had a revelation.
“How’d you like a piece of the action?” he said.
I smiled and shook my head. Unbelievable.
“How ’bout some action?” he went on. “Then you can keep your idol’s name clean and make a few bucks on the deal, to boot. Why not. Let’s say ten grand now, and another ten six months after the book’s published—assuming everything’s goin’ as planned.”
“Is this hypothetical?”
“Yeah, sure. You want ten hypothetical grand or not?”
I looked at his nervous, grinning countenance, and then at Mae, sitting on the stool in the bathroom looking up now, tear-streaked face otherwise blank, but the eyes were appraising me. Kathy was standing by the door; frozen.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Good,” Gorman said.
“Good,” Mae said, smiling bravely.
“The awards ceremony is at two,” I said to her. “Don’t forget.”
She nodded. “I won’t forget.”
I turned back to Gorman. “You going to be there?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’m a speaker.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. PWA asked me to say a few words about this important Hammett book we discovered.” And he smiled at me buddy-buddy and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Even if I take your ten grand, don’t do that.”
His smile disappeared and he backed off. “You got no soul, Mallory. No heart and soul.”
“I had ’em removed in childhood,” I said, “along with my scruples.”
From the bathroom, Mae in a monotone said, “Gat Garson. Chapter Four, Trouble Wears a Skirt.”
“Correct, Mae,” I nodded to her, and took Kathy by the arm and got the hell out of there.
Kill Your Darlings (A Mallory Mystery) Page 15