Foul Matter

by Martha Grimes

  Candy was smiling. “All we want to do is have a little talk with you, Mr. Giverney. Actually, we just have a couple of questions. Could we come in, do you think?”

  “By all means,” said Paul, bowing fractionally and extending his arm. “My study’s just down the hall, there.”

  They followed him. The room was small, but there were two chairs in addition to Paul’s own swivel chair—a club chair and a chair with fancy scrolled woodwork that had always struck Paul as vaguely Oriental. They all sat down and, for a moment, made a study of one another.

  Candy said, “Listen, before we have that little talk, I just want to say I think your book’s terrific. Don’t Go There?” Candy added, as if Paul might have forgotten what book Candy was talking about.

  Paul was so surprised he lurched back in his chair as if the gun had gone off near his head. “I’m . . . uh . . . glad you liked it.”

  “Maybe you’d sign my copy?” Candy held up the book he’d been carrying.

  Paul wanted to laugh out loud, but didn’t know how safe that would be. “How about I sign it after you tell me what it is you want?” It was nice to have a bargaining chip, even one so slight as an autograph.

  Candy tucked the book between himself and the chair arm. He had taken the club chair, Karl the Oriental-looking one whose woodwork he kept inspecting as if he were valuing it. “This is one fuckin’ chair, Mr. G.”

  “Mr. G.”? Was this to be the sobriquet he was hence to be known by? And after he was dead? He said, “Late Fung dynasty. A good example.”

  Karl frowned and looked at Paul almost with suspicion, as if Paul were pushing baby powder and calling it cocaine. “I never heard of that period.”

  I know you idiot; that’s because I made it up.

  “Karl reads a lot. And he likes antiques. You should see his place.”

  “Well, that’s what I was told,” said Paul. “I’m no expert on Chinese artifacts. Or periods.”

  Karl said, “I just hope you didn’t get ripped off.”

  “Me too.” Paul was beyond irritated. “Look, why are you here?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Candy. “That.”

  “That”?

  “We wanted to talk about Ned Isaly. Ned had an accident. He’s in the hospital—”

  Paul cut in. “Yes, I know about that. We have the same agent and the agent called me right away. It’s too bad, but I don’t think it’s life threatening.” Like you two are.

  “Why’d he have this ‘accident’?”

  “Why? Am I supposed to know?”

  Karl said, “We thought you might know something. It was a hit-and-run.”

  Suddenly, Paul’s adrenaline shot through him like a bolt of lightning. “I know it was, but what’s that have to do with me?”

  “Could be a lot, Paul. See, here’s Ned, who just managed to escape getting shot in Pittsburgh by assailant or assailants unknown—”

  Paul was shaking his head and clearing the air with his hands, “Hold it, hold it. This Arthur Mordred is a friend of yours, right?”

  “Right, but what’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, didn’t he tell you?”

  “Tell us what?”

  “That I hired him to watch Ned Isaly. As a bodyguard, not an assassin!”

  Candy looked at Karl and Karl at Candy as if neither of them could believe his ears. “No, he didn’t tell us. You think we go around discussing our work?” said Candy.

  “You think we meet up and high-five each other and say, ‘Yo! I just took on a job to whack Ned Isaly. So how’s your day?’ ” Karl put in. “What we do, what we take on is done in the strictest confidence. We can’t go around comparing dicks, for God’s sakes.”

  Paul shot his hands out, scrubbing at air again. “Okay, okay, I get the idea. Nevertheless, I hired Arthur to see no harm came to Ned. That’s the truth. You can certainly ask Arthur. If you want we can all meet and he’ll back me up.”

  They were both silent, studying Paul.

  Then Karl said, “Thing is, we don’t like coincidences. Don’t it seem to you that a hit-and-run coming right on top of the Pittsburgh thing—”

  “ ‘The Pittsburgh thing’? You think I forced Ned to go to Pittsburgh?”

  “No, no. But don’t you think it’s a hell of a coincidence we’re hired to cap Ned and don’t do it and then he’s hit by a car?”

  Paul leaned forward; indeed he rolled his swivel chair toward them as if they might see sense if he sat closer. “Now, listen: first of all, it was not my idea to hire you two—(‘goons’ was bitten off just in time) guys to kill off Ned. Of course, I didn’t! You two were hired by crazy Bobby Mackenzie because he couldn’t figure out any other way to get me to sign a contract with Mackenzie-Haack.”

  “Yeah, we figured that had something to do with it,” said Karl, wagging his finger at Paul. “But it’s still your fault; you’re the one started this whole thing. What in hell do you have against Ned Isaly?”

  Paul started to reply, but Karl enjoyed being in a speculative mood and continued: “We thought maybe, seeing both of you come from Pittsburgh, that maybe you and Ned were in school together? And he did something to you when you were kids? Something real horrible?”

  It was clear Karl wanted the something real horrible to have happened, not just to clear up the mystery, but horrible for its own sake. Paul sighed. We’re all such sentimentalists, even these men with guns shoved down into their belts, even they go for the easy explanation, the quick fix, the uncomplicated motive, with no ambiguity, no play of light and darkness, no shading, no nuance.

  Paul smiled. “Like maybe I ratted him out for something? Made him take a blame he didn’t deserve? Got him kicked off the team? Stole his girl or fucked his mother?”

  They liked that last alternative, Paul thought, as their lips pursed and their eyes narrowed. Yes, that would really be an act demanding retribution. Paul was almost disappointed that he couldn’t give them the easy out, the clear and undiluted reason he’d done what he’d done. One problem was that he was no longer sure of the motive himself.

  He said, “Let me show you something.” And he rolled himself and the chair back and left it bouncing as he opened a desk drawer. He had kept the page on which he’d set down his shortlist of publishers and authors. Now he handed it to Karl, saying, “On that you’ve got a list of three publishers and three writers. Now, you know I could go to any of those houses—”

  Candy nodded, rather proud of himself for having picked up a lot of publishing arcana. “Sure, because you’re a guarantee of a million-copy sell-through.”

  Paul looked at him oddly, shrugged. “So given I think publishers these days are so full of shit—not all of them, mind you; there are still one or two good ones—but I think most of them greedy, grasping, immoral, and vicious. Certainly those three. I was curious—no, more than curious: I wanted to see how far they’d go to get me into their stable. What a ghastly expression. Now, come the three writers, all of them very good and with real integrity that keeps their heads above the publishing swamp. Those three very good writers—”

  “But Ned’s the best,” Karl put in, wanting their candidate to win.

  “Yes, he is. But the question remained: which of those three, if any of them, could be threatened with a terrible blow to his career, could be having his contract canceled, or rumors spread his wife really wrote his books, or people in the trade otherwise firing away at his reputation? Which of them wouldn’t panic? Which wouldn’t hire a brace of lawyers and sue? And which—in some very real sense—just wouldn’t give a good goddamn?”

  Paul went on. “That’s a quality I think all of us might have had once, but a quality that went south when the first book got published.” Paul rocked himself in his chair, back and forth, back and forth, looking out of the little window at a skinny tree branch as if he were comforting himself. “After that first book which we were deliriously happy to see published, and the hell with whatever the
‘publication process’ was, after that there was an almost constant nattering away about how much publicity and promotion do I get. How much money up front—? What? I’m not getting as much as King or Grisham? Go screw yourself. I’m not getting a book tour? Screw yourself twice. What about that snotty review in Kirkus? That starred review in Publishers Weekly? Reviews, reviews, reviews—tearing our hair out, plagued by jealousy over that one’s or this one’s reception, arguments over screen rights, reprint rights, foreign rights, electronic rights, and on and on.

  “It used to be writing we cared about; now it’s whether we get our own dumps, what kind of placement at Barnes and Noble. Now it’s the two-day laydown. Now it’s the TBR list.” Paul had picked up a pencil and was rolling it back and forth over his chair arm, still rocking. “Writers rail against the trash that turns up regularly on the best-seller lists and keeps on hanging around for weeks, months, effectively blocking the appearance of their books. But you know what amazes me? Not that dreck appears on the list, but—think of it—only fifteen books hit that list on any given Sunday out of thousands. Tens of thousands—so what gets me is the pure arrogance of any writer’s thinking his book should be on that list.”

  Candy and Karl listened with interest. They nodded right along, as if Paul were recounting their own history.

  Karl said, “Man, it’s a cutthroat business. You know, it’s disillusioning, isn’t it, that all that would creep into the book world? At least the book world, you’d think they’d be more, I dunno, idealistic.”

  Paul looked at him. He supposed he’d better not tack on that they’d crept into the book world. Instead, he sighed. Say good-bye, he thought, sadly.

  Candy said, “So you’re sayin’ what you wanted to find out was how bad a publisher could be?”

  Paul nodded. “That, and how good a writer can be.”

  “Like Ned Isaly. Some guy that’s like what you were talking about before all of the shit publishing splatters around happens. Maybe you miss it, the old days of writing; maybe you wanted to see them again.” Candy cocked his head. “Maybe instead of the bastard we think you are, you’re like leading a charge. Something like that. Know what I mean?”

  Paul tilted back in his chair, eyes on the ceiling because the eyes seemed to be filling up and if they did too much, the tears could run backward. “Yeah. Not leading a charge; I never did anything courageous in my life. But the old days of writing? I know what you mean.”

  There was a silence almost sepulchral in its heaviness as if they were gathered around a grave.

  “On a cheerier note,” said Candy, “we had a little talk with Bobby this morning. Hell, K”—Candy turned to his partner—“and we kind of wonder if it ain’t Bobby involved in that hit-and-run.” He and Karl, finding this idea humorous, started to laugh.

  Paul leaned forward, scarcely able to contain his joy. “You ‘had a little talk with’ Bobby?”

  “We just wanted to get a few things straight about how Ned’s book was going to be published. You know, the stuff you were just talking about. To guarantee Ned’ll be in the top ten. Starting in the top fifteen then moving up.”

  Paul laughed. “That’s hysterical. But how could he guarantee it?”

  Candy raised his eyebrows. “Ain’t that being a tad naïve, Paul? I mean you’re the first person I’d think would figure a publisher can guarantee just about anything, as long as he spends the money, and we just wanted to make sure Bobby’s going to spend a lot of money. Yeah, Bobby’s going to see to that book’s being a huge success.”

  Paul laughed again.

  “And Bobby’s taking a six-month leave of absence. He’s having a vacation in Australia.”

  “Oh, Christ! Yes!” Paul shot his fists in the air.

  “We got these friends in Australia,” said Karl.

  Candy nodded.

  “ ‘Friends’?” Paul grinned like the very devil.

  Karl tipped his head. “Like good friends. Like friends’ll do whatever we tell ’em to do. You know, like escort him to the Sydney Opera House, escort him to the Outback. Whatever works for them.”

  Paul went on laughing. These two guys were a real tonic. “So who takes over at Mackenzie-Haack?”

  “Old Clive. Old Clive surprised us both. He actually went up against Bobby Mackenzie and that could be a real career cooler, right?”

  “That’s the truth.”

  Karl got up, stretched; Candy followed suit.

  “We gotta be goin’,” said Candy.

  “Yeah. Well, as long as Ned’s okay, we don’t have a beef with you, Paul. It’s been very interesting, this talk.”

  Remembering his book, Candy pulled it away from the chair and held it out. “Now, will you sign?”

  “My pleasure.” Paul got a pen from an old cup and signed the book. “There.” He snapped it shut.

  Paul walked them to the door where they shook hands.

  “A very interesting conversation,” said Candy.

  Karl said, “Ditto that. Only listen, Paul, you just got to stop fucking around with other people’s lives. You’re a controlling son of a bitch, you know that?”

  Paul blushed. He knew it.

  They were walking down the hall when Karl turned and asked, “You don’t happen to know some guy connected with Ned named Patrick?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Huh. Just a thought.”

  They said good-bye again.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  In the publishing industry, news travels fast. Very fast. Especially bad news, which is the good news of the publishing industry. Night, day, dusk, dawn—makes no difference. It’s on the street.

  When Bobby Mackenzie heard, a couple of hours after Ned had been hit and a couple of hours before any word was given out on his condition, that Ned Isaly was the victim of a hit-and-run! Sweet Jesus! he grabbed his ticket to Australia, ordered a car be sent round, wrote a note to his wife (which he considerately pinned to his pillow) in which he told her he was trying to sign up a writer in Australia and he had to get there fast. “Good-bye. Don’t let anyone into the wine cellar.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  What a peculiar question to end up with. Patrick? Paul stood in the open doorway, gnawing at a small callus near his thumbnail and thought about it after they left.

  He closed the door and went back to his office and sat slumped in his chair as ashamed of himself as he had ever been in his life. Poor Ned Isaly, for God’s sakes. He didn’t believe the accident had been anything but your average New York City hit-and-run, but, still . . . He had signed the contract; Candy and Karl hadn’t done it; Arthur certainly hadn’t done it—anyway, those three were at the scene. And God knows Bobby Mackenzie hadn’t been involved. Not only was there no reason now to get Ned out of the way, but also Bobby was scared shitless of the pair he had so insouciantly hired himself.

  What a jerk.

  What a business.

  “What’s a casque?”

  Paul thought he had asked this in his mind until he turned around and saw Hannah, materialized in the office doorway, wearing her nightgown and clutching one of her pages. How long had she stood there, ghosting around?

  “Honey, how long have you been there? What are you doing out of bed? Where—” He stopped when he realized he was asking one question after another and not waiting for the answer. “A casque? Isn’t that a headpiece? Like in armor?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I was asking. I need a weapon to put in the hunted gardens for the Dragonnier. I think he’s having a lot of trouble.”

  “Well, a sword would do. But does he need one?”

  The Hunted Gardens evolved at some point—and Paul assumed at the same point as the manuscript did for just about every novel: that is, the point of clammy fear that it wasn’t any good, that it wasn’t working, and even if it was, the writer couldn’t think of one damned more thing to say—into becoming the near-exclusive domain of the Dragonnier, a character whose main hold on life (and fame and a story) was h
is ability to get along with dragons. So he wasn’t a dragon slayer, but a dragon tamer, or something like that.

  He held his arms out and Hannah whisked across the room to sit in his lap.

  Paul said, “I wonder if maybe you’re making your story kind of melodramatic because you think this garden hunting isn’t exciting enough to hold your reader’s attention.”

  Her little forehead creased into furrows. “Mela-what?”

  “Dramatic.” As she channeled her anxiety into rolling and rerolling the page she held, he said, “It’s what’s called unearned emotion.”

  Oh, yes, that cleared the whole thing up, her squiggly little eyebrows told him.

  “You’re afraid that maybe people won’t want to read any more about your gardens—”

  “No, I’m not. I just think they’ll want to read more about the Dragonnier. And, anyway, I didn’t stop writing about the hunted gardens. I can’t because that’s where the Dragonnier lives. And the dragons are. See, they’ve always been there. I just haven’t told anyone until lately.” Her sly look said Gotcha!

  Lord knows he had to give her credit for pulling that particular rabbit out of the hat. Still, as a reader, he felt a bit cheated. “But, listen, you’ve gone for ninety-some chapters without ever mentioning the dragons. I mean, do you think that’s playing fair?”

  “They were hidden, see. It’s not my fault if they were hiding. The Dragonnier should have said.”

  “Said what?”

  “That the dra-gons were there.” She pinched up the sleeve of his shirt and started to hum.

  “But, Hannah, it’s your story so it’s your responsibility.”

  “Maybe we should send her to Bread Loaf this summer.”

  Molly’s voice. Molly stood in the doorway, leaning slightly against the doorjamb, one foot tucked over the other and her arms folded across her breasts. “Bread Loaf might help. She’d probably get some editorial advice, have an opportunity to get a lot of feedback, maybe snag an agent.”

  Hannah slipped off his lap and went to swing on her mother’s hand.