“My sentiments exactly.”
The buzzer on my desk rang softly. I picked up the phone. “Yes, Hannah?”
“Lieutenant Hatcher would like to see you, Nick.”
“Not as presentable as Joe Scanlon, is he?” Scanlon was an NYPD detective, now on leave to write a book for Barlow & Company.
“Really, Nick! I’d rather not say.”
“Send him in, by all means.”
Hatcher came in briskly, all business, and got to the point at once. Hannah was right behind him. She turned to go, but I motioned her to stay.
“I’m going to need to talk to the members of your staff, Mr. Barlow. Could you—?”
“There’s a conference room down the hall, Lieutenant. Hannah, will you show Lieutenant Hatcher where it is? He may also want to ask you a few questions.”
“Right,” said Hatcher. “Then I’ll want to see the others, one by one.”
“Hannah will bring them to you.” I turned to Sidney. “You don’t mind leading the pack, do you?”
He shrugged.
I had a feeling little work was going to be done in the office this day. I flipped open the pages of my desk calendar to Wednesday, June 2. “2:00 BANK,” it read. I groaned silently, impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Lifting the phone, I dialed Mort Mandelbaum’s extension.
“The bank date, Morty,” I said.
“Two o’clock, right, Nick?”
“You’ll have to reschedule that appointment.”
“What? But—it’s an emergency.”
“I realize that. However, there’s the matter of Parker Foxcroft’s murder. I think the police ought to have first call on our attention. And, Morty?”
“Yes?”
“How’s your alibi?”
A shocked silence, a bit of sputtering, and the phone went dead.
My turn with the inquisitors came just after lunch.
“The lieutenant would like to see you now, Nick,” Hannah informed me. I cursed under my breath, straightened my tie, and headed for the conference room. Hatcher, appearing quite morose, was sitting at the head of the conference table, his chin resting on one hand, in the other a pencil poised over his notebook. He squinted up at me.
“Mr. Barlow.”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“You sure you’ve been completely candid with me?”
“I certainly thought so.”
“Isn’t it true that you were involved in a heated discussion with the deceased at”—he glanced at his notebook—“the ABA… the American Booksellers Association?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And isn’t it also true that you were… well, unhappy about Mr. Foxcroft’s situation at your firm?”
“Yes, I suppose I was.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
Hatcher rose from his chair and took a turn around the room. When he returned, he did not resume his chair, but positioned himself on the edge of the conference table. Moments passed.
“Mr. Barlow,” he said at last, “what was your business arrangement with Foxcroft? Your financial arrangement, I mean.”
“As an imprint publisher, he was under contract to me. Perhaps I ought to explain what an imprint publisher is…”
“Yeah,” said Hatcher. “Do. If you please.”
I gave him beady-eyed stare for beady-eyed stare. “I’ll do my best. An imprint publisher, as the name implies, has his own imprint—his own name on the books he brings in. Arrangements vary from house to house, of course.”
“I’m only interested in your house, and in his imprint.”
“Parker Foxcroft acquired and signed up his own authors and his own books. I financed his operation, provided the money he paid his authors in advances, and paid for the costs of manufacturing and marketing his books. In turn I gave him a drawing account—a salary, in effect—and performance bonuses when his books did well.”
Hatcher closed his notebook and rose from his chair. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Hold it there. It looks to me like you took all the risks and Foxcroft made out like a bandit.”
“Not quite,” I said. “There was no distribution of earnings on his books until his drawing account had been earned out. In effect, he was still an employee of my company, despite his imprint. He was not a partner, and he had no equity. If his books didn’t make money, neither did he. If his books lost money, well…”
“But you said he had a contract.” Hatcher was a bulldog, all right, and with a bone he wasn’t going to let go of. “And you couldn’t exactly fire him if his books didn’t earn money.”
I admitted it would be difficult.
“How long did his contract have to run?”
I hesitated, remembering how queasy I had felt about the possibility of having to buy Parker out. Hatcher waited me out, impassive, to me inscrutable. I only wished I could say the same for myself.
“A year and a half, Lieutenant.”
“A year and a half. Getting rid of him could have been costly, right?”
“Right.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
“Just how costly?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Hatcher’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”
“That’s privileged information,” I said.
Hatcher squared his shoulders and tucked his notebook in his inside jacket pocket. Apparently my interview was over.
“Lieutenant…”
“What, Mr. Barlow?”
“Did you learn anything from questioning the other members of my staff? If you don’t mind telling me, that is.”
“Sure, I learned a few things.”
“Like?”
“You were right, nobody cared much for the victim. The question is…”
“Yes?”
“Who didn’t care for him to go on publishing books?”
Having no answer to this, I fell back on the typical Irish response to a question: another question. “Is that all, Lieutenant?”
“Not quite. I’ve been fingerprinting all the members of your staff. I’d also appreciate yours.”
“Mine? Is that necessary? My prints are on file with the FBI.” Again the raised-eyebrows response. “I was in Air Force Intelligence in Washington a number of years ago, and I needed a security clearance.”
“That’s fine—but it would be more convenient if we could get them again now.”
“Oh, very well—if I must, I must.” I made sure that Hatcher took careful note of my displeasure. As it turned out, it was Sergeant Falco who did the dirty work of taking my prints. Once I’d cleaned up, I returned to the conference room and said to Hatcher: “Now is that all?”
“For now.”
Dismissed from my own conference room, for God’s sweet sake, that was one hell of a note!
I was quite certain now that this was going to be a day when little or no business would be done in the offices of Barlow & Company.
However, I didn’t reckon on the tenacity, the fierce concentration, of my editor in chief. Not long after I returned to my office, slammed the door, and lay back on my couch, hands locked behind my head, I heard a soft knock from the adjoining office.
“Come in, Sidney.”
He peered around the edge of the door, hesitating to come all the way in. “You’re sh-sure you duh-don’t mind, Nick?”
“I don’t mind, Sidney. Not you, anyway.”
“It’s hell having the cuh-cuh-cops all over the place, no?”
I did not feel his question needed a reply. Sidney had always been sensitive to my changes of temper and forgiving of my occasional moodiness. He merely nodded and pressed on.
“I’ve guh-got something that might interest you, NuhNick.”
“What is it, Sidney?” I said, sounding, I supposed, rather like Eeyore conversing with Christopher Robin.
“A promising nuh-new author,” he said. “Nick, it’s your cup of tea, not muh-mine. A puh-private eye. Fuh-female.”
“Tell me more, Sidney.”
“Well, Nick, it cuh-came over the fuh-fucking… over the fuh-fucking…”
“Transom?”
“Right!”
That meant it was submitted by the author directly, and not through an agent. Better and better. One of my colleagues has a sampler behind his desk which reads: “An agent to a publisher is as a knife to the throat.” I think most of us in the trade would applaud that sentiment.
“Who’s the author?” I said.
“A wuh-woman—”
“I would hope so.”
He ignored my feeble jest. “—nuh-named Sarah Goodall.”
“What do we have, Sidney? Outline and chapters? A complete manuscript?”
“Muh-manuscript,” he said with a deep sigh. For Sidney, speaking at any length must be like what running a marathon would be for most of us. And I know for a fact that Sidney has run the New York Marathon.
“Give it to me, please, Sidney,” I said, “before I break down and cry.”
He did, and I didn’t. Instead, I packed a manuscript of comforting heft into my attaché case and headed for home, knowing I would not want for bedtime reading.
Hope lived once again in my mercenary publisher’s heart.
Chapter 10
Home for me is a town house, number 2 Gramercy Park. The house is located on the western side of the park. The block is not altogether pristine, that is, not all the houses are original historic landmark buildings, but mine certainly is, built sometime around 1885. Walking there from my office, I stopped again outside to admire its lines. The front stoop that I’m sure once fronted the street has been replaced by a recessed entryway, but the rest of the façade remains as it originally was; I know this because I have seen early photographs. Like The Players, number 2 was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White fame. The façade is limestone, peach in color, with two large windows on the second floor, two on the third, and an oxeye on the top story, where there is also a small terrace. The roof I altered by adding a deck for sunbathing and for cocktails or brunch in fine weather. Despite the naysayers, there are glorious days in New York City. Someone once wrote that if it had not been such a superb natural seaport, consequently a center of trade and commerce, the climate might have made Manhattan Island a playground on the order of Hilton Head or Fire Island. Alas, there are days when it is windier than Chicago ever was, rendering my rooftop aerie unusable.
Inside, I also find much to admire, beginning with a long hallway covered with white-and-black-checked ceramic tile, a steep hardwood staircase, the original white brick wall on the left, and immediately on the right, a long, wide, high-ceilinged living room. This room I created when I bought the house, by having a wall knocked down between two nineteenth-century parlors, one no doubt for the gentlemen, in which they could smoke their cigars, sip their brandy, and talk politics, and the other for the ladies, to gossip and do needlepoint or whatever nineteenth-century ladies did. Two sliding doors led into a large formal dining room, which, like the living room, has a wood-burning fireplace. Then comes the kitchen—completely contemporary, of course, but with brass plumbing, a butcher-block carving table in the center, with copper pots hanging overhead, two deep ovens, and a microwave. Here my cook, Pepita, holds sway, her wonders to perform. Out back a walled-in formal garden with a fountain, a pool stocked with Japanese carp and goldfish, and a sundial. Upstairs… well, the upstairs rooms are what might be expected: bedrooms, a suite for Pepita and her husband, Oscar, a sitting room, bathrooms, the usual.
I realize that all this might sound pretentious, even ostentatious, but it is not, really. I have been in Manhattan town houses that are equipped with gymnasiums, movie theaters, and indoor swimming pools; me, I prefer a dwelling place that might have survived untouched from the Victorian period, fine antiques and all, except with all the modern conveniences.
Oscar, my houseman cum chauffeur, met me at the door and relieved me of my hat and stick. In a brass salver on a side table in the hallway were several messages Oscar or Pepita had collected for me. I pocketed them and headed upstairs.
Once I had changed into slacks and a sport shirt, I buzzed Oscar and asked him to bring me a vodka and tonic. When that had been safely placed on the coffee table in my sitting room, along with a wedge of Camembert and rice crackers, I leafed through the messages.
Neither Oscar nor Pepita is an adept of our mother tongue, and their interpretations of my callers’ names in particular were somewhat garbled; however, I was able to make out all but one; and for that one I would have to rely on the phone number. One of the messages was from Margo. I decided to call her first.
“Nick,” she said when I got her on the line, “are you all right?”
“Absolutely. After all, murder is an everyday affair around my office.”
“You must be serious, Nick.”
“When was I ever otherwise?”
I had not spoken to Margo since my call from Washington, and I suddenly felt a compelling need to see her again.
“Margo…”
“Yes?”
“I feel a compelling need to see you.”
“When?”
“Tonight.” Realizing that I might sound somewhat peremptory, I added: “If you’re not otherwise occupied, that is.”
“Well…”
“Yes?”
“Come on over, Nick. I’ll whip up something—an omelet and a salad, maybe. Bring something from your cellar, okay?”
“I’ll be there within the hour,” I said, and hung up.
The second message was from my brother, Tim, and his calls were infrequent and almost always important. He picked up his phone almost before it had started to ring.
“Nick,” he said. “Buddy. I thought you ought to know.
Mother has been carrying on something ferocious.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s your man Mandelbaum. He’s got Gertrude convinced that you’re on the verge of bankruptcy. Not you, I mean Barlow and Company.”
“Oh, beautiful. Just what I need. Shit! Sheeit.”
“I hope you’re planning a trip out to Weston this weekend.”
“I wasn’t, but—”
“You will.”
“I will indeed.”
“Some excitement, isn’t there?”
“I see you watch the five o’clock news,” I said.
“Faithfully. The outside of your office building is quite photogenic, you know, Nick?”
“So is the interior. Anyway, no matter what they say, I didn’t do it.”
“I want to hear all about it.”
I bet you do, I thought. Tim is the nearest thing I know to an armchair detective. In his case the armchair has wheels, it is true, but in it, he reigns like a monarch of the cerebral, seldom more than a few paces from his Macintosh and his modem, his library of several thousand volumes, his fax machine. I do believe that if Tim reads something once, he will remember it for at least a year, and if he reads it twice, he will remember it forever.
“Do your best to calm Mother down,” I said, “and I’ll see you on Friday evening.”
“D’accord.”
My last message was the one I couldn’t decipher, so I dialed the number.
“Seven eight seven four two hundred,” a voice chirped. If there’s one telephone practice I detest, it is hearing someone answer with a number instead of a name. I know the number I’m calling, damn it, I just don’t know whose number it is!
It was a struggle to keep my tone of voice civil, but I did my best. “Whom have I reached, please?”
“Kay McIntire and Associates.”
“This is Nicholas Barlow. I believe Ms. McIntire called and left a message for me.”
“Just a moment
, Mr. Barlow.” I waited while vaguely symphonic music played tinnily in my ear. I continue to wonder why people resort to telephone music, which is merely elevator music of poorer sound quality, when silence is so much simpler and more soothing to the ear. I realize I sound like a curmudgeon, but then, that is precisely the reputation I have and must steadfastly uphold.
“Hello, Nick. Thanks for getting back so promptly.” The voice of Kay McIntire was the real telephone music: husky and warm.
“You’re working late, aren’t you, Kay?”
“An agent’s day is never done.”
“Or a publisher’s, either. You called.”
“Yes. I have pleasant news for you.”
“Oh? I’m glad. It’s been only unpleasant since yesterday evening.”
“I know. I heard about Parker on ‘Good Day, New York.’ What can we say, Nick?”
“Only that now he knows something we don’t know.”
Her laugh, like her voice, was throaty and soft. “You never liked him much, did you?”
“I liked his credits,” I said. “But it’s too soon to figure out what his epitaph ought to be, isn’t it?”
“The editor’s editor?”
“Surely,” I hastened to say, “you didn’t call to praise Parker?”
“No, you’re right. Nor to bury him, either. I called to tell you that Herbert Poole wants to talk book with you. Mystery novel.”
“That’s welcome news indeed, Kay. Like when?”
“Can you fit him in this week?”
“Lunch on Friday, perhaps? Just the three of us.”
“Let me look.” I waited with my own pocket diary at the ready. She was back almost immediately. “That’ll be fine. You say where.”
“The Century,” I suggested. “Twelve-thirty.” We murmured our goodbyes and rang off.
Herbert Poole, best-selling author, I said to myself. He had written three losers and then, with his fourth novel, Big Casino! Welcome to Barlow and Company, Herbert—I hope. My motto had proved out again, hadn’t it? “Something will turn up.”
With two bottles of 1990 Nuits-St.-Georges in a canvas book bag with the inscription “TEMPUS VITA LIBRI” on its flank—a souvenir of the recent ABA Convention—I cabbed to Margo’s apartment on the Upper East Side. The doorman greeted me by name, which startled me slightly, because I had not been there all that often; Margo cherishes her privacy rather more than I do mine. “Evening, Henry,” I said, and headed for the elevator.
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