Foul Matter

by Martha Grimes

  Saul laughed. “Oh, come on, Sally. Why the hell are you so worried? This is Oz you’re talking about. So you pulled back the curtain and found some damned fool was pulling the strings—”

  Sally flashed at him. “Shut up, shut up!”

  Saul did a little dance backward, a boxer’s step, threw up his hands.

  Ned only shrugged and said, “How can they? It’s a contract for two more books, isn’t it?”

  “How can they? This is publishing, Ned! They can do whatever freak things they want. You know what it’s like—” Then she shook her head in a kind of hopeless way. “No, you don’t. You never pay any attention to them.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Saul.

  Ned only laughed. “Well, there’s a limit to even what they can do.”

  Sally, much shorter than Ned, who was over six feet, tried to shove her face into his by standing on her toes. “Didn’t I just say? This is publishing and there are no limits. They can do whatever the hell they want to.”

  “I doubt it,” said Saul, puffing on his cigar. “Come on, let’s go to Swill’s. Take the afternoon off.”

  “I can’t. I have to work for a living,” said Sally.

  Saul put his arm around her shoulders. “You call that ‘living,’ girl?”

  FOURTEEN

  Bobby Mackenzie sat at a table not in, but near the front window of Michael’s, with Giverney’s new book on the table beside him. Michael’s was packed as usual at lunchtime. Bobby delighted in seeing Damon Rich, publisher of Queeg and Hyde, sitting a dozen tables behind him, in the back room. He delighted even more in seeing Nancy Otis, high-powered editor, who had left Queeg and Hyde for Grunge, sitting at a table just barely visible around the corner of the back room, which was where they put the real nonstarters.

  When Clive had come up to the table an hour ago, Bobby had been eating bread sticks delicate as bird’s legs and was now rolling one of them across the back of his hand. He reminded Clive of a drum major sometimes; he moved through the corridors of Mackenzie-Haack as if he had a whistle in his mouth and was pointing the parade in the proper direction.

  Bobby kept craning his neck to see who was coming through Michael’s double doors. “Where are these guys?”

  Clive touched a napkin to the corner of his mouth. “They’ll be here.” He loved it that Bobby was kept waiting.

  “You told them two o’clock, right?”

  “No, they told me. They’ll be here, Bobby. It’s only a little past.”

  They wouldn’t want lunch, Danny Zito had said. A drink, maybe. Coffee and dessert, maybe? Bobby and Clive had already ordered and eaten. The remains of Bobby’s risotto lay on a big plate. Clive had ordered his usual salad. If he ate like Bobby, he’d be a blimp. Bobby’s metabolism hammered every calorie to its knees.

  “These them?” Bobby gestured toward the front.

  Clive nodded, sighed. These them. If Bobby’s articulation had leaned ever so slightly closer to gangland, it would have come out “Dese dem?” How could anyone who talked like that be president of one of the most prestigious literary publishers in New York?

  The two men at the front of the restaurant, quite decently dressed except for the Ray-Bans on the taller one, were pointed in the right direction by the maître d’. They made their way—carved their way, rather—through the flotilla of white-linen tables, every table taken, making no allowance for the strained space between. Elbows got jostled, scarves fluttered away, silk-lined furs slid halfway to the floor. Women gaped; men glared.

  Clive cringed.

  Could the two coming toward him care less?

  Bobby smiled. He loved any “fuck-you” attitude as long as it wasn’t directed at him.

  They arrived at the table. Odd the way they occupied space without seeming to be fully there. Or perhaps Clive was trying to divorce himself from the whole transaction. He wished Bobby had stayed at home. But, no, Bobby had to be in on everything, have a finger in every single pie. If Bobby’s kinetic energy was to travel down his arm to the hand he now extended, these two would fry where they stood.

  Clive was doing the introductions while the three shook hands, Bobby more enthusiastically than his guests. “Mr. Candy . . . Mr. Karl . . . (were these first names? last names?) Bobby Mackenzie of Mackenzie-Haack.”

  Whatever was going on in the minds of these two, Clive couldn’t say. Their faces were twinned, both expressionless as store-window mannequins. They looked amazingly alike despite their obvious differences: one tall, the other short; one stocky, the other angular and thin. They sat down.

  Bobby’s enthusiasm was pumping. Clive couldn’t believe it, not in these circumstances. But Bobby got excited over anything rich and new: new writer, new failure of another publishing house, new lawsuit, new hit men.

  Karl’s head swiveled around, looking for a waiter, saw one, crooked his finger. The waiter came. “One Scotch rocks, one bourbon rocks, double.”

  “Doubles, sir?”

  “Doubles.”

  “Toil and trouble,” said Clive, smiling. They all looked at Clive, including Bobby, as if Bobby had come in with them. They might have been measuring Clive for a side of beef, one eye on the cold locker. Clive was annoyed, largely with himself. It was, after all, his show. He shot his cuffs, fiddled one of the gold links. He spent so much time in Façonnable and the menswear section of Bergdorf’s reinventing himself that he had become especially attuned to designers’ garments, masterly at identifying them. The suits these two wore, with their strange shades of browns and grays like remembered soft autumns: Armani, clearly. Did they all wear them, then, the men in Danny’s line of work, for the jackets’ roominess? Still, for some reason, their taste in clothes relieved him, gave him some confidence.

  The waiter set the drinks before the two men. Bobby looked at them, ordered another for himself. He’d blitzed the first and second. “Scotch. No rocks.”

  He had to be different while being the same. Clive sighed. “Gentlemen—”

  Candy looked behind him as if Clive were addressing someone as yet unseen. Then Candy said, “Nice restaurant you got here. Classy. Where’s this place stand in Zagat’s?”

  “This place is Zagat’s,” said Bobby, with his usual passion for hyperbole.

  “Yeah. Look at the paintings. It’s like a whole fucking gallery.”

  “Contemporary art. Jasper Johns, Jim Dine—”

  Danny Zito, thought Clive.

  Bobby went on nodding around the room: “—Robert Graham—”

  Candy swelled the list, saying, “You got your David Honkey, your—”

  “Hockney,” said Clive. He really had to.

  “Huh?”

  “David Hockney.”

  “Right. You like him, too? The place is a lot bigger than it looks. We oughtta come here more, right K?”

  “Food good?” asked Karl.

  “Excellent,” said Bobby. He pointed at his plate. “The Cobb salad is a knockout. Best in New York.”

  Karl looked at him, singularly unimpressed.

  Clive said, “Shall we get down to business?” When no one said not to, he went on: “The, uh, deposition of this man—”

  Now Karl did interrupt. “ ‘Deposition’? Interesting choice of word. As in ‘depose’? Does that fit, though? You got to be more careful of your word choices; words can do a lot of things. That old rhyme we used to say as kiddies—‘Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me’? What a bunch of suckers we were back then, right?” Karl skidded the heel of his palm off his temple in some larking “Oy” gesture.

  Probably a neo-Nazi, Clive thought, removing a photograph from the pocket of his Burberry. It was a glossy four by six. “This man.” He slid it beneath his hand across the table.

  Without touching it, Candy and Karl looked down.

  “Waiter’s coming,” said Bobby, with a curt warning nod, as if he were already hip to the ways of gangland.

  Candy flipped the photo over as the waiter set Bobby’s d
rink before him. Behind the waiter, Mortimer Durban was sitting down at the next table where two women Clive didn’t know were seated. Apparently finished working his own table, Mort had come to work somebody else’s. Mort Durban gave them a nod, checked out the two strangers in a wondering way. He was a powerful agent. You had to nod back. Clive did. You hardly had time to eat in Michael’s, you were so busy checking things out.

  After he’d gulped down some wine, Clive asked, “What . . . advance are you looking for?” He liked putting it this way. If anyone overheard (and the other diners were all too busy with checking out the room front and rear to focus for more than three seconds), it would be thought just the old familiar publishing argot.

  “You mean total?” asked Candy.

  Bobby nodded.

  “A mil.”

  “That’s a steep advance,” said Bobby.

  Steep? wondered Clive. After a three-million advance to that eminent true crime writer Barry Shooter, who, despite his name (not to mention his speciality), couldn’t tell a gun from a corncob?

  Karl gave a tiny shrug. Take-it-or-leave-it.

  Bobby said, “Okay, but is that the actual advance money or is it half on signing, half on completion?” Bobby grinned.

  “Divvied up, right. Only, fellas—” Karl chuckled “—Candy and me. We don’t sign nothing, surprise, surprise.”

  Bobby took another gulp of his Scotch. He was loving this. In another moment he’d be chewing a chair. “Okay, a handshake’s good as a signature.”

  Clive hoped Mort Durban didn’t hear that, for God’s sakes. But Mort was too deep in studying the cleavage of the women on either side of him.

  “So when can we expect, you know, the first installment?” Bobby asked.

  “That depends,” said Karl, “on whether we, ah, undertake the project. You know, whether we go for the idea.” He was rolling an expensive cigar in his mouth, as yet unlit.

  Clive wondered how Karl would respond if the waiter told him about the no-smoking rule. Clive was glad he wasn’t the waiter.

  Bobby was confused. His brow furrowed into rows you could plant beans in. “ ‘Take on the project’? But that’s why we’re talking in the first place. I mean, I assumed you’d already decided—”

  Closing his eyes as if against the blatherings of a child, Karl said, “Depends on this.” Eyes open again, he tapped the upside-down photo of Ned Isaly. “We have to find out more about—” He tapped the photo again. “We have to research it; otherwise we’d be, you know, writing this project blind.” He gave them a scimitar smile.

  What was this contract killer talking about, for God’s sakes? Clive asked, “Are you saying you have to get close to the subject? You’re saying you want to get to know the subject?”

  Candy, who’d been busy sussing out the room, waded into the conversation. “We have rules: one is we never, I mean never, take on anything without we get to know the, uh, subject.”

  Bobby and Clive looked at each other, for once equally at a loss. They shook their heads. “Mackenzie-Haack,” said Bobby, “pays out half a million on spec? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “So what’d’ya want, Bobby? An ear?” Candy’s laugh was like a rasping cough.

  Karl’s was more of a snort.

  Bobby looked quickly around, shoving his palms down on air, motioning them to keep their voices down. “Then what about the advance?” Bobby asked. “I mean if you decide not to, uh, you know, write it?”

  “Return it, obviously.” Karl rolled the cigar. “Why do you want this thing done, anyway?” he asked.

  Crossing his arms in front of his chest, sealing himself in, as it were, Bobby shook his head gravely, as if what he knew would never pass his lips; it was too solemn to be disclosed. He said, “Can’t help you there. Can’t talk about it.” Bobby was boss again; Bobby was in control of the situation.

  Karl and Candy looked at each other as if someone at the table were crazy and it wasn’t them. Karl turned to Bobby. “Well, if you can’t help us here, I guess we can’t help you there. Ready C?”

  “Yeah, we’re outta here.” They got up.

  “Just a minute!” said Bobby. “Come on, sit down.” They did. He said, “It’s a very volatile subject, see.” Bobby slid Don’t Go There carefully across the table, the photo on the back face up. “It’s him, he’s the reason.”

  Clive had been getting increasingly more nervous and now was utterly astounded. Surely, he wasn’t going to tell them . . . “Bobby, let’s just drop it. The whole thing.”

  The look Bobby thought twice about turning on Karl and Candy he didn’t even think once about turning on Clive.

  Clive threw up his hands. “Okay, okay!”

  Bobby continued, with relish, leaning across the table, across the smiling face of Paul Giverney, and keeping his voice to a whisper so that the two men had to lean toward him, too.

  Clive looked at the three of them, heads nearly touching. The Three Stooge Conspirators. He shook his head and looked away.

  Bobby said, “It’s this guy, this writer. We can’t sign him unless we get rid of Isaly. His idea”—Bobby tapped the dust jacket—“his, not mine.”

  “So,” said Candy, “he told you to cap the guy.”

  Clive watched, disbelievingly, as Bobby made a movement of his hand and head that would have been completely ambiguous if anyone in this business knew what ambiguity was. “Bobby—”

  This earned Clive a kick beneath the table. “So you see the problem,” Bobby said, leaning back with a satisfied air.

  Candy and Karl both stared at him. Karl said, “Yeah, yeah, we see the problem. This is one shitty business you guys are in.”

  Candy asked, “You all like this? I mean is all publishing this fucked up?”

  The face of Paul Giverney seemed to grin up at them. “No,” it would have said, “it’s even more fucked up.”

  Bobby said, smiling. “Listen: have you two ever thought of writing a memoir? It’d be big. I guarantee it.”

  Until now, Clive had never realized just how much Bobby (the son of a bitch) was in the right business.

  FIFTEEN

  What’s the deal on this guy?” Candy inclined his head toward the plate glass of Barnes & Noble, which today was full—swamped, really—with Don’t Go There.

  Karl considered. “Giverney’s really hot. The way those two acted—” Karl motioned vaguely back downtown in the direction of Michael’s. “You’d think he was the only waiter around. You never read one of his books?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  His eyes still on the window, Karl shook his head. “You read a book and don’t remember?”

  “Well, have you? I see you with books sometimes. Me, I ain’t got the time.”

  Karl extracted a fresh slice of gum from his Doublemint gum packet, then put the packet away and considered the Barnes & Noble window as he folded the fresh piece into his mouth. “He sells almost as much as Stephen King. He doesn’t write straight horror though, I don’t think. Maybe psychological horror.”

  “With a display like that, I bet he’s number one on the list.”

  “The what?” Karl was surprised.

  “New York Times best-sellers. They call it ‘the list.’ I been doing my homework. After all, we don’t want to be completely clueless about this game, do we?”

  “We are clueless. I mean, one big clue is you never heard of Paul Giverney.” Karl nodded toward the window. “I think maybe we better stop in, look around.”

  Candy looked indecisive. “I dunno. We might not even decide to take this job. This Ned Isaly might be someone we don’t much want to whack. Then we’ll have wasted the look around.”

  Karl stepped up to the door, motioned to Candy. “Come on.” For a few moments, they simply stood, looking around at the stacks and shelves of books, books on tables, on counters, and stretching along the walls, back as far as they could see.

  “Jesus,” said Candy. “What did we let ourselves in for?”

&n
bsp; “You don’t have to fucking read them all.”

  “Yeah, I know; all the same, it’s like another world in here, and it ain’t ours.”

  Karl ignored this. “Here’s what I think we ought to do—you listening?”

  Candy nodded, his eyes narrowed as if he were caught in a white water of books, swirling around in his vulnerable little kayak.

  “We buy these two books. I’ll look for Isaly’s—”

  “And me, I get this Givenchy’s, right?” Candy was on top of it.

  “Right, except it’s Giverney, not Givenchy.” There was a stack right in front of them and another stack on the counter. This in addition to the book’s having been given another key place in the store, a separate display across one entire section of the wall. Karl gave a low whistle. “Wow. This guy gets a lot of play.” He turned to Candy. “You okay with this idea, C?”

  Worriedly, Candy said, “Yeah, only the book looks thick as hell.” He reached down to the stack that was still high enough to topple. He took up the book and straightened the stack a little. Don’t Go There had a murky jacket, gray and black and kind of watery, as if it had been left out in the rain. Candy didn’t like the jacket and said, “This bodes ill.”

  Karl rolled his eyes. Candy loved this expression, had picked it up from a cretinous screenwriter in L.A. who said it with his back against the wall, looking at two gun muzzles. “This bodes ill” he’d said just before they shot him. It boded ill, all right. But Candy had been full of a rather grudging admiration for the screenwriter. He’d said so.

  “He’s a screenwriter, for fuck’s sake,” Karl had said. “We should have shot him for that alone. What did you expect him to say? ‘Don’t’? That strike you as a Hollywood ending? ‘Oh, please, don’t’?”

  Karl thought if he ignored the “bodes ill,” Candy would give it up sooner. “It’s not a bad jacket. It’s atmospheric.”

  “It’s raining. I don’t like books like that.”