“Watching a dress-up show to improve your career is out, but screwing an editor is okay.”
“Muriam was nearly four times my age.”
“Which editor?” Fenwick asked.
“Alvin Tilly. He’s their newest one.”
“How well did you know the other members of the writing group?”
“We’d met six times since I joined the group. We weren’t real chummy. We weren’t enemies. We were there to work with Muriam.”
Fenwick said, “Perhaps we have different definitions of work.”
“I know I’m a hypocrite. I wanted to be published. It’s been my dream. I had some chances based on my relationship with Muriam. I got to know this editor in the last day or so. I saw my chance. I took it.”
“Did you know Dennis Foublin?”
“I visited his web site once in a while. I agreed more than I disagreed with his reviews. I met him last night, and we talked for a few minutes. He was perfectly nice.”
They got his room number, and added it and his whereabouts and time frame to the charts.
When he was gone, Fenwick said, “This is kind of a randy bunch.”
“My guess is there are as many honorable people in the writing profession as any other. I bet pretty young men like Peter Damien who have the same scruples and who are willing to take advantage of the same kind of offers exist in any profession.”
Fenwick said, “At least we’ve got an explanation for the Xena stuff. I don’t get it.”
“I think it’s sad,” Turner said. “She must have been a lonely old woman.”
Fenwick said, “I bet she was a horny rich old babe who was having the time of her life.”
“Or that,” Turner said.
They found Alvin Tilly. He confirmed Damien’s story.
22
Sanchez entered with Ian Hume and a portly gentleman in a white beard. He wore a formal dark blue suit, white shirt, and dark blue tie with a hint of a beige stripe in it. The gentleman was Archie Kittleman. Introductions occurred. They all sat.
Kittleman said, “Ian, I don’t like this. I’ve never been involved with the police. I don’t know anything about murder.”
Ian said, “Relax, Archie. These guys are my friends. I think you might be able to help them.”
“I don’t see how.”
Turner said, “We’ve had people connected to Muriam Devers and Dennis Foublin to talk to. We need somebody not connected to all of them to give us a realistic perspective.”
“I can try. I’ve been to Foublin’s web site, but I’ve never met him. I was introduced to Devers once about ten years ago. She said hello, I said hello. That was the extent of our conversation. I’m sure she wouldn’t remember me.”
Turner said, “You only met her once, but what do you know about Muriam Devers—rumors, gossip, stray facts? We’re looking for anything.”
“Among the gay people in the SF world it was assumed that her writing group guys were all gay.”
“Were they?” Turner asked.
“I know at least one of them was.”
“How did you learn that?” Turner asked.
Kittleman looked from Ian to Turner to Fenwick. “Ahem.”
Ian said, “It’s perfectly safe.”
Turner said, “We need information. I have no desire to bring trouble to you.”
“The young man, David Hutter, seemed interested in furthering his career. At one time he seemed to think that I might be of some use to him. I thought he might be of some use to me in furthering my interest in studly young men. I’d just had the first volume of my trilogy published. His interest lasted about as long as he thought I could help his career. To be honest, my interest in him didn’t last much beyond my first orgasm with him. He wasn’t very good in bed.”
“How well did you get to know Hutter?” Turner asked.
“Well enough to know he was a money-grubbing shit. He wanted cab fare after we were done that first night. It was embarrassing.”
Fenwick said, “We found Ms. Dever in a Xena, Warrior Princess outfit. We were told she put on private shows for people whose butts she pinched. Would she do this for a group of gay guys? Wouldn’t she want straight guys?”
“I don’t know,” Kittleman said. “I don’t know anything about Xena or any other kinds of outfits. It sounds odd to me. Wasn’t she a bit old for that?”
Turner said, “I’m not sure our imaginations or fantasies have an age limit.”
Kittleman asked, “How does her writing group being made up of gay men help in solving the murder?”
“We don’t know,” Turner said. “Right now I need information. I don’t know these people or this world.”
“It’s closed world,” Kittleman said. “In many ways it’s like a small town. The million-selling authors are like the rich people who live up the hill who you don’t see much, but everybody gossips about. It’s also true that everybody knows everybody else’s business. And if they don’t know everybody else’s business, they want to know about it, or they make stuff up about it, or they pass along rumors with lots of embellishment.”
“Seems pretty normal to me,” Fenwick said.
“Exactly,” Kittleman replied. “Although it can approach the incestuous.”
“How so?” Turner asked.
“A lot of times these writers only see each other at conventions. Your basic writer is working by him or herself. They might call or e-mail each other, but actual face-to-face get-togethers are rare. How many SF writers live in Chicago? Only a few. There aren’t that many SF books published every year. So when these authors show up at a convention, they gossip and talk and reminisce about other conventions where they gossiped, talked, and reminisced.”
“What fights do they have?” Fenwick asked.
“There were endemic fights. At the conventions themselves there’s all kinds of silly nonsense. Mildly famous mid-list authors expect to be lionized. First-time authors with one-hit wonders expect their paths to be strewn with rushes. They aren’t all like that, but you get a lot of ego. Like the panels at these conventions. Some people want to pick the panel they will be on and pick the people they will be on with. Then there are those who are not famous enough who want to be assigned to prime panels with even more famous authors to assure themselves of some kind of audience. Then there are the assholes who call at the last minute and beg to be on prize panels.”
“There are prize panels?” Fenwick asked. “Who honestly cares?”
“Some of these people care very much. You’d have to ask them why they care so much. There are myriad SF and fantasy organizations. At any one time half of them are fighting over whether their mission should be to serve established writers or whether they should have outreach to people who are trying to break into the profession, or should they serve only fans. Should they concentrate on agents and editors or some other stratum of the hangers-on? You get that in a lot of the genre groups.”
“Why fight about that?” Fenwick asked.
“The fight isn’t necessarily about the exact subject. Often it’s about who has power and influence. Sometimes it’s old guard versus new. Or sometimes a rich, new author wants to throw his or her weight around. Or a first-time author who thinks his ten-thousand-dollar advance entitles him to honor and glory beyond imagining. Or sometimes it’s someone who thinks he or she is a tenured university professor who can straighten out all the peons.”
“Did Devers or Foublin fit those descriptions?”
“Foublin always leaned toward the snotty-professor end of the spectrum. His bestseller list was a joke.”
“Did people really take it seriously?” Fenwick asked.
“Well, not like it was Publishers Weekly or the New York Times, but he was listened to by some dolts.”
“What was wrong with the list?” Fenwick asked.
“You had to be paying close attention to what he listed to figure out what was wrong. I didn’t notice until somebody pointed it out to me. It was most often
in what he didn’t write. Like, if he put that your book was a sure-fire bestseller, then, sure fire, it was on his list. It might not make anybody else’s list, but it was on his. He claimed to be in contact with more stores than anyone else. I think he just made his list up.”
“Did people get mad about that?” Turner asked. “Anybody try to point it out to him, get even?”
“He had clout. You didn’t mess with clout. The vast majority of people thought he was this saintly guy. Everybody always claims writers are grousing about being mistreated. When you actually are mistreated, then it’s very much the boy who bitched problem. If you’re always a victim then when you really are a victim, nobody can tell the difference. There were no confrontations where people threw drinks, if that’s what you mean. In this world you followed the rules or you went nowhere. It took me ten years to get the first volume of my space opera published.”
“Because it had gay characters?” Ian asked.
“It’s a hard world to break into, period. It probably didn’t help that the characters were gay. Although Foublin was a homophobic son of a bitch.”
“He was?” Ian asked. “You have proof?” His pencil came out.
“I didn’t think this was a newspaper interview,” Kittleman said.
“It’s not,” Turner said. Ian subsided.
Kittleman said, “The proof was in what he left out. I went back through the logs of his web magazine. No book with gay characters, not a one, ever got reviewed. No openly gay authors ever got reviewed. My first book came out ten years ago. The second volume five years ago. The silence in general was deafening, but many small magazines and web sites at least mentioned my work. There were more SF and fantasy bookstores back then. Most of the owners were incredibly kind. Foublin wasn’t cruel. He was silent, which can be the most damning thing of all.”
Fenwick said, “He was one guy with a web site.”
“Who I resented for his homophobia. Look back through all his work. There aren’t a lot of gay characters in science fiction and fantasy. If you read Foublin, you wouldn’t know there were any.”
“Were there angry gay authors who wanted to take him on?”
“There aren’t enough of us around to take anyone on. It was just something we noticed. I wouldn’t have known Foublin to talk to. I know of him. Some of us were suspicious about reviews that appeared on the bigger web sites. The gay authors thought that sometimes homophobic creeps would write nasty reviews just to bring down the average the site gave you.”
“Would Foublin do this?” Turner asked.
“I have no proof, only suspicions.”
Turner said, “We were told some people claimed he had trouble getting his facts precisely right.”
“It was a constant problem. One writer had a particular kind of poison figure prominently in his book as well as right in the title. Foublin screwed it up and said the dénouement hinged on someone being strangled. How can a conscientious reviewer screw up so completely?”
“Oona Murkle said his getting facts wrong was an accusation from a faction that was disgruntled and that it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Poor Oona. She really is a nice person. She bit off way more than she could chew when she began organizing the drive to get the convention to Chicago. She’s a very well-meaning, very sweet fan, a nice old lady. She’s been around since dirt. She’s familiar with everybody and such a help, but I’m not sure she has any real friends in the SF world. She’s kind of sad. She’s the one who doesn’t get things right.”
“How’s that?” Fenwick asked.
“Oona is a dear. She had sense to turn over this operation to a committee a year ago. She’d been trying to do it all herself. It takes an army of volunteers to make a convention this big work. Here’s one example. She had the notion that it was necessary to hide all the panel assignments from the people on the panels. How absurd. People want to know what they’re doing. Some, although a very few, want to actually prepare for their panels.”
“Don’t they always prepare something?” Turner asked.
Kittleman looked amused. “Far too many of the panelists think because they’ve made a movie deal, had a book published, or had their name in the paper, that makes them an expert on whatever panel they are on. Whether or not they even know anything about the panel topic.”
Fenwick said, “They don’t match expertise to the panel you’re on?”
“Usually. Not always. You might be on panel about dogs in SF and your books might have had one dog in one obscure chapter. She was lucky she got Devers and that movie premiere early on. Oona is a dear, but I’m afraid she’s also a dope.”
“How so?”
“She’s an awful writer. She’s been trying to get published for years. She writes these one-thousand-page epics. Word is, the dialogue is endless, the plots convoluted, the characters wooden. She keeps sending them out, bless her heart.”
“How do you know about her writing?” Fenwick asked.
“She tried to publish it on the Internet. There’s a scam. It’s so feeble and pathetic. All those wannabes putting out these thousands of pages that no one is ever going to want to read.”
“No one ever called Foublin on his imprecision?” Fenwick asked.
“A few people tried to, but most of the people would rush to defend him.”
“Is this infighting really serious?” Fenwick asked.
“In an incestuous, college-English-department kind of way, yeah. People can get worked up about little stuff.”
“But enough for murder?” Fenwick asked.
“Obviously somebody was upset enough about something,” Kittleman replied.
“Were the fights about who was in charge serious?” Fenwick asked.
“To those involved, yes.”
“We got a lot of sweetness and light about Devers,” Fenwick said.
“That’s Oona and her crowd. They are always cheerful. They worked hard setting up this convention. I’ll give them that. They busted their butts to make this thing the biggest and best.”
“Who was Foublin an old-fashioned nasty professor to?” Fenwick asked.
“He had a way of condescending, as if you weren’t quite clean enough. His reviews never got nasty, but if you paid attention long enough, you could tell which ones he didn’t like.”
“How so?” Turner asked.
“If he didn’t like your book, all he would do is summarize the plot and not mention one thing remotely approaching an opinion.”
“Isn’t that good?” Fenwick asked. “At least you get mentioned.”
“But he never mentioned any gay writer.”
“What about these Hollywood people?” Turner asked. “Samuel Chadwick, Arnold Rackwill, Lorenzo Cavali, and Louis Eitel.”
Kittleman waved a dismissive hand. “Who really cares about that Hollywood crowd?”
“You got turned down,” Fenwick said.
“Yes.”
“That bother you?”
“Yes. I’d be happy to take Hollywood money. Anybody would. Anybody who says they wouldn’t is lying.”
“Did Foublin and Devers have trouble with Hollywood money?” Fenwick asked.
“Foublin never got offered any, that I know of. Devers made a pile.”
“Can you tell us anything about the Hollywood crowd?”
“From what I’ve heard, Rackwill is a shit. I know for sure he’s at the end of his time with Chadwick.”
“How’s that?” Fenwick asked.
“They met five years ago. Chadwick is notorious for dumping his paid pretty boys after five years. Rackwill’s at his limit. Rackwill is such a jerk, I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“Including murder?” Fenwick asked.
Kittleman sat up straighter. “I’m not ready to make that kind of accusation.”
“Does Rackwill know his time is probably almost up?”
Kittleman said, “Everybody else does. Why wouldn’t he? One rumor said Rackwill was screwing at least one of the g
uys in Devers’ writing group. Hell, I was having sex with one of them. I’d have done it with as many of them as I could and just about anybody else if I thought it might get me a deal.”
“Isn’t that kind of crass?” Turner asked.
“I’d say everybody does it, but they don’t. I justify it with my ambition. Sleeping with Hutter didn’t hurt anybody. It might have gotten me a deal. It didn’t harm the man I was sleeping with.”
“Who did Rackwill sleep with?”
“Hutter.”
“That cause you problems?” Turner asked.
“If I’d been in a relationship with him, yeah, it would have. But I wasn’t. Hutter left the group a month or so after we had sex.”
“Did one cause the other?”
“Not that I ever heard of. All gay people are supposed to be in love with Rackwill and Chadwick because they kissed at one of those lesser award shows. You know, on stage after Chadwick won some second-tier award. Now, if you want real emotion, Chadwick and Cavali hate each other. Rackwill is a shit.”
“How is Rackwill a shit?”
“If there’s double-dealing, Rackwill will be dealing the doubles. He’s trouble.”
“Why do Chadwick and Cavali hate each other?” Turner asked.
“Business rivals. Who can get a getter deal, a bigger star, all that ego-stabbing which is lifeblood to Hollywood insiders.”
“What about Melissa Bentworth and Sandra Berenking, her editor and publicist at Galactic Books?”
“The once and current editor,” Kittleman said. “I know Melissa from her helping run this convention. She did everything she could for me when my books came out. Melissa is a hard-working woman. It is not easy running a small press. It is even harder to make a profit with one. She has done so. I heard Devers was pissed about that.”
“Why?”
“Muriam was a grudge collector, so I’ve been told. She carried lots of grudges against anyone who ever said something negative about her books.”
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